Pandemic, The Election, 'Racing Towards Catastrophe Under Sociopathic Fanatics': Noam Chomsky

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'Noam Chomsky: We are racing madly towards total catastrophe under the leadership of sociopathic fanatics,' Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! AlterNet, Aug. 1, 2020. - Excerpts, Ed.: We spend the hour with Noam Chomsky, who says decades of neoliberal policies that shredded the social safety net & public institutions left the country ill-prepared for a major health crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll has topped 150,000 on Wednesday, the highest of any nation by far. The hardest hit states per capita are FL, LA, AZ, MS, AL, NV, SC, TX, ID, TN and GA. Today we talk about COVID and so much more with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist & author, Professor Emeritus at MIT and now laureate professor in the Dept. of Linguistics at the University of Arizona.

NOAM CHOMSKY: We should understand the roots of this pandemic. If we do not understand the roots and extirpate them, there is going to be another and worse one coming. So far we have been kind of lucky. The coronavirus, pandemics, epidemics are very serious, and there are many possibilities. So far, all the ones that have happened in the last ten or 15 years, either the virus has been very deadly but not very contagious, like Ebola, or very contagious but not very deadly, like COVID-19. What happens when the next one comes along that is both very contagious and very deadly? We are in deep trouble. Much worse than this and the so-called “Spanish flu”..There are ways of dealing with it. After the SARS epidemic in 2003, scientists knew that another one is very likely. They warned against it. They presented policies that could be carried out. They weren’t implemented, in part because of deep institutional pathologies. The drug companies who are the obvious candidates for dealing with it can’t, by straight capitalist logic. You don’t spend money to try to prevent a catastrophe ten years from now. What you do is try to make money tomorrow..

The government could step in. The government, in any event, does most of the basic research for vaccines and drugs, almost all of them. So they could have stepped in, create laboratories, and plenty of unlimited resources. But they are blocked by the neoliberal plague. Remember Reagan—that government is the problem, not the solution, which means we have to take decision-making and action out of the hands of government, which has a flaw; it’s somewhat responsive to the population. We have to shift it to unaccountable, private tyrannies, which are totally unaccountable to the population. That is the meaning of Reagan’s slogan. That is the fundamental principle of neoliberalism. We’ve been suffering—the world has been suffering from it for 40 years, except for the tiny percentage who have become super rich & extremely powerful. Well, that blocks the government.

Nevertheless, there were things that the government could do. When the Obama took office, in the first few days, Obama called the presidential scientific advisory board, which had been established by George H.W. Bush who had some respect for science. Obama requested that they put together a pandemic reaction program, a way to deal with a pandemic if it comes. They came up with a report a couple weeks later. It was implemented. It was in place until January 2017. Trump came into office, the first few days, dismantled the whole system. “We have to destroy everything that Obama did. We have to wreck everything.” Because it is the only way to look like you are doing something. So that went.. At every level, we are racing madly towards total catastrophe under the leadership of sociopathic fanatics. It is as if some evil demon decided to take over the human species and drive them to self-destruction. Much of the world is trying to counter it, almost all of the world, but the U.S. and Brazil are the extreme cases of racing with dedication towards disaster.

Going back to this election, that is the reason why it is the most dangerous, the most significant election in history...

- Read The Full Article, https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/noam-chomsky-we-are-racing-madly-towards-total-catastrophe-under-the-leadership-of-sociopathic-fanatics/

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1. Important excerpt:

Chomsky, in my opinion, is not using hyperbole or be sensational. This a dire warning and those of us who are not supporting the malignant, dangerous psychopath and his party need to meme this somewhat, hence I repeat it.

I totally agree with Prof. Chomsky. He is in his 90's and not about messing around or bandying about. The gravity of the situation is hitting home and we are all involved, one way or another, now:

Going back to this election, that is the reason why it is the most dangerous, the most significant election in history. Why Trump is, in fact—this may sound outrageous, but it’s true—Trump is the most dangerous figure in human history. The Republican Party today is the most dangerous organization in human history. You can compare Trump to, say, Hitler, the Wannsee declaration in 1942, called for killing all the Jews, tens of millions of Slavs, not destroying humanized society. There has been nothing like this. Nothing.

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2. Tx for that impt. part; Chomsky's stunning, profound perspectives

should awaken and motivate every one of us. Grave is the word for the times we're in now.

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3. You are welcome.

Yes, we are getting a very big and real kick in our complacency.

Sigh.

[Baked Potato]

4. The One Percenters are in charge.

They have their fly-aways and bunkers. That will do while they ride it out.

[mr_lebowski]

5. Things get bad enough, a buncha 1's and 0's stored on computers somewhere ain't gonna count

for jack shit. So there's that.

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6. Things will never get that bad. Just on the edge.

But, I agree in principle.