Noam Chomsky, "Deterring Democracy"
Here�s a true story.
Last Tuesday (or Wednesday morning, depending on how you look at it), I had trouble sleeping. At about 5 in the morning, I decided to stop tossing and turning and put a tape of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on TV, figuring that would knock me out. Two hours later, the end credits were rolling, and I was still awake.
I didn�t have to go to work until one in the afternoon and I was going to be working all night, so I sure as hell didn�t want to get up yet, especially since I was working off perhaps three hours of sleep total. I lay in bed for another half-hour, trying different positions, pulling covers over my head, hitting myself with a hammer, but I was still awake. Not that I wasn�t tired; in fact I was exhausted. I just couldn�t seem to make the last drop-off into sweet, blissful sleep.
Finally, I gave up. I arose, walked into the front house, talked for a few minutes with Alex and Smoking Buddy, who were awake for some reason I still haven�t figured out, and then grabbed this book. I went back into my room, opened up the book � and fell asleep after reading two pages.
I also stayed asleep until 12:15 in the afternoon.
Not that I didn�t like the book. In fact, I think this was one of the better Chomsky books I�ve read. But I�ve said it before, I�ll say it again: Chomsky is thick and dry and almost painful to get through. Perhaps I was too harsh to Michael Moore earlier.
Anyhoo, this was written just before we went to bomb the shit out Iraq in 1992, so it�s almost spooky how precognitive he was with his writing. There are plenty of other areas where he offers his analysis/prophecy such as Panama, Turkey, and Brazil, but we�ll never know if he was correct because the media never reports on the issues he�s talking about.
Oh, and I almost forgot: there are numerous points where he wears his sarcasm on his sleeve, something I don�t remember in him before, or at least not with this kind of volume. Hell, there�s even a point where Chomsky says �fuck!� Of course, even that part is dry and stiff. To quote: �Such statements lack cognitive meaning. They are imprecations, like shouting �Fuck You� in public; they can elicit only a stream of abuse, not a rational response.� dfkh;dfal;ks kj ha9087ht89hfxzcjmh;
Oh, I�m sorry, I fell asleep and smacked my head on the keyboard.
