As he considers the news of the day and the responsibility of privileged intellectuals, Chomsky positions himself not with his peers in service to the state but rather with those committed to a higher set of values, “the causes of freedom, justice, mercy, and peace.” For decades, the author has written from this perspective-hardly a chapter passes without him citing a previous work of his own-and by now, both critics (infuriated) and admirers (charmed) are familiar with his analysis. For Chomsky, the Times is a kind of house organ, valuable for many things but more useful as a guide to the conventional wisdom of those who rule: the United States, the G-7, the global trade organizations and financial institutions they control, multinational conglomerates, retail and media empires.
The dean of left-wing American public intellectuals surveys the current scene and despairs.Įver wonder what it must be like to read a single edition of the New York Times the way Chomsky (Emeritus, Linguistics and Philosophy/MIT What Kind of Creatures Are We?, 2015, etc.) reads it? Perhaps the most intriguing chapter here devotes itself to just this exercise, and it usefully reveals his cast of mind.
0 kommentar(er)
