Convergence
~William Lind and Noam Chomsky are pretty much at the polar opposite of each other on the so called Left/Right political spectrum. But here are recent quotes from each of them.
This is Lind from his column ON WAR #326: Finis:
"..[T]he U.S. military is largely an intellectual void...“Not invented here” is part of the problem, but the larger part is that our major headquarters think little if at all about war. What they think about is money...most “big ticket” weapons programs are irrelevant to where war is going. That is not what the brass, or the defense companies they plan to work for after retirement, want to hear.
What might change that picture? Nothing will change in DOD until the money simply isn’t there anymore. The news, which is simultaneously good and bad, is that the money soon won’t be there. Like every previous imperial power, we are bankrupting ourselves. A trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there, and soon it adds up to real money. The twin financing mechanisms of piling up debt and debasing the currency can only go on so long. We can already see the night at the end of the tunnel."
And here's Chomsky in an interview with Z Net:
"The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries in this respect. The U.S. is, to a very unusual extent, a business-run society. There are all kinds of reasons for that-it has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here. There are a lot of reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe. The attack on unions has been far more extreme here, and it has been much more successful. Also, the business propaganda has been far more successful. Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions. In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War.
The Second World War ended with a radicalization of the population in the United States and everywhere else, and called for all kinds of things like popular takeovers, government intervention, and worker takeovers of factories. Business propagated a tremendous propaganda offensive. The scale surprised me when I read the scholarship-it's enormous, and it's been very effective. There were two major targets: one is unions, the other is democracy. Well, [to them] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that's robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government. For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you're getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it's a day of mourning because this alien force-the government-is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money. That's the general attitude, and it's a tremendous victory for the opponents of democracy, and, of course, any privileged sector is going to hate democracy. You can see it in the healthcare debate."
While the focus is different, and I suspect each man would hate the other [if they don't already], you can see there is in fact a unity of thought; Capitalism is destroying us.
This is Lind from his column ON WAR #326: Finis:
"..[T]he U.S. military is largely an intellectual void...“Not invented here” is part of the problem, but the larger part is that our major headquarters think little if at all about war. What they think about is money...most “big ticket” weapons programs are irrelevant to where war is going. That is not what the brass, or the defense companies they plan to work for after retirement, want to hear.
What might change that picture? Nothing will change in DOD until the money simply isn’t there anymore. The news, which is simultaneously good and bad, is that the money soon won’t be there. Like every previous imperial power, we are bankrupting ourselves. A trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there, and soon it adds up to real money. The twin financing mechanisms of piling up debt and debasing the currency can only go on so long. We can already see the night at the end of the tunnel."
And here's Chomsky in an interview with Z Net:
"The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries in this respect. The U.S. is, to a very unusual extent, a business-run society. There are all kinds of reasons for that-it has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here. There are a lot of reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe. The attack on unions has been far more extreme here, and it has been much more successful. Also, the business propaganda has been far more successful. Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions. In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War.
The Second World War ended with a radicalization of the population in the United States and everywhere else, and called for all kinds of things like popular takeovers, government intervention, and worker takeovers of factories. Business propagated a tremendous propaganda offensive. The scale surprised me when I read the scholarship-it's enormous, and it's been very effective. There were two major targets: one is unions, the other is democracy. Well, [to them] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that's robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government. For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you're getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it's a day of mourning because this alien force-the government-is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money. That's the general attitude, and it's a tremendous victory for the opponents of democracy, and, of course, any privileged sector is going to hate democracy. You can see it in the healthcare debate."
While the focus is different, and I suspect each man would hate the other [if they don't already], you can see there is in fact a unity of thought; Capitalism is destroying us.