humorlessbitch - God Says: Crisis and Hope

God Says: Crisis and Hope

September 18th, 2009 § 1

chomsky

Noam Chomsky: It is always well to keep in mind Adam Smith’s astute observation about policy formation in England. He recognized that the “principal architects” of policy—in his day the “merchants and manufacturers”—made sure that their own interests had “been most peculiarly attended to” however “grievous” the effect on others …

Honestly, am I just a Radical, to suppose things needn’t be this way? That glossy and fetching appearance, don’t you know, lies and corruptionalways pretty themselves up. Counting on people not noticing. Which of course works.

… the free flow of capital creates a “virtual senate” of lenders and investors who carry out a “moment-by-moment referendum” on government policies, and if they find them irrational—that is, designed to help people, not profits—they vote against them by capital flight, attacks on currency, and other means. Democratic governments therefore have a “dual constituency”: the population, and the virtual senate, who typically prevail.

And I bet you thought this was a democracy. You. Silly. Thing.

Here we have the fact, Noam Chomsky is god. He has both the uncanny ability to sum up the horribleness in trenchant, unforgettable phrases … and he is always right. I expect this has something directly to do with his ability to face the truth. The whole truth.

…the management of electoral extravaganzas in the United States by the public relations industry, peaking with Obama, who won the industry’s award for “marketer of the year for 2008.”

Which is usually so painful to mere mortals. We can in reality do but little. This be the way it is.

… the unprecedented authority just granted General Stanley McChrystal—a special forces assassin—to head the operations. Petraeus’s own counter-insurgency adviser in Iraq, David Kilcullen, describes the Obama-Petraeus-McChrystal policies as a fundamental “strategic error,” which may lead to “the collapse of the Pakistani state,” a calamity that would “dwarf” other current crises.