The Opera House was packed. Full. A week before the lecture. They set up a link to the Paramount movie theatre. It was packed. Full. Two days before the lecture. They had loudspeakers outside both the venues relaying his speech. The police complained about the traffic congestion from the crowds.

He may not be honoured in his own country, but to huge numbers of people around the world, Chomsky’s views explain what the US does clearly and transparently. I suspect that far more people see the US as Chomsky describes it than via any other commentator.

“Progressive blogs are far more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than conservative bloggers are to identify with the Republican Party.�

Bowers and Stoller, perhaps unsurprisingly, see this as an advantage for progressive blogs. I disagree.

I don’t see the problem and I don’t see how this is ‘messianic’.

Just look at most of the largest “left” sites: dKos, Firedoglake, MyDD etc.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Chris Bowers’ and Matt Stoller’s 2005 study “The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere,” one of the conclusions of which was “Progressive blogs are far more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than conservative bloggers are to identify with the Republican Party.”

Bowers and Stoller, perhaps unsurprisingly, see this as an advantage for progressive blogs. I disagree.

the blogosphere’s almost messianic vision of the Democratic Party

Can you provide a high-profile example of this? Because I don’t see it. I do see a strong desire to get Democrats elected despite a good amount of disgust with them, because the Republicans are you know, Satan incarnate.

3. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before, but then again I don’t think it will happen often from now on, either. Somebody fucked-up. Bad. To let this happen.

I remember how quickly in the fall of 2001 it became conventional wisdom that we’d be having 9/11s on a fairly regularly basis (of course the anthrax business didn’t help…thank goodness they caught whoever did that ;-) ). Moreover, a lot of wingnuts I knew seemed positively pleased by this “fact.” It was as if the U.S. had suddenly become an Israeli settlement on the West Bank…and this was a good thing, because, shorn of our pre-9/11 illusions, we could become hardened, righteous crusaders against teh Evil!!1!!

Scary times…

I also agree with Max that the so-called left of the blogosphere’s almost messianic vision of the Democratic Party does not serve it well.

But as for your second countervailing force, forget it. Religious scum (wingnuts) cannot be trusted to correctly or decently battle religious scum (ayatollah asshollahs). This is the Hitchens fallacy, the assumption that Bush’s war represents and serves the interests of the Enlightenment against religious Dark Ages fanaticism. Actually, we of the Enlightenment are caught in the middle of a civil war amongst World Wingnuttery. To sign up for Bush’s crusade meant to bin Ladenize the United States by strenghtening the forces of wingnuttery within it. No thanks. Bin Laden could never destroy us, nor our institutions. Bush could, and has largely succeeded. I can’t and couldn’t do anything about bin Laden considering the make-up of the American regime. But I can and could, as an American, hopefully obstruct, via protest and dissent, the American Taliban. That was my duty as a citizen and I didn’t really care if it meant I coincidentally agreed with ANSWER or Free Mumia people or Pat Buchanan.

My thoughts on 9/11:

1.Numb/stunned
2.Oh my god, Holy shit those poor people
3. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before, but then again I don’t think it will happen often from now on, either. Somebody fucked-up. Bad. To let this happen.
4. What would a cynical and devious bastard like Richard Nixon do to the country were he President and a grusome opportunity arise like this?
5. What Bush will do will be as bad or worse than that.

I didn’t have a blog then, but everything I feared has pretty much come true. Now I bitch about people — non-wingnuts, who should have known better — who were fools for Bush, not because I have some sort of vanity about being a Nostradomas, but because I’m goddamn sure I wasn’t alone in being right about all this, and I’d like to see a little meritocracy in the punditosphere. I want every non-wingnut cobag who signed up with Bush’s crusade to eat it.

It’s not enough to Never Take Seriously Again idiots like Richard Cohen or Joe Klein or Lieberman who continue to sign up for more Freidman Units. I want above all else for the masses to Never Take Seriously Again *anyone* who signed up for one Friedman Unit.

at the same time, i was never willing to accept for a second that we should allow religious fundamentalism a foothold on this earth. and if it meant killing some innocent people to do so, i was always ok with that. divorcing the actual act of destroying fundie govts from an imperialist tendency on the part of the destroyer–well, that’s hard work.

so here you have two countervailing forces–anti imperialism (and a recognition that most bad things in the world have been done by the US over the past 50 years) mitigated by reality (we have the guns, and who else can actually get rid of religious scum like the taliban or the ayatollahs) times history (a tedious list could follow, mossadegh arbenz and so on).

it’s pretty muddled. but there is an analysis here that would result in a better world than the fascist fuck up we’ve allowed to be created in our names, all of them, each of us individually with varying levels of culpability.

If you explain that their self interest is harmed by shooting a lot of people indiscriminantly you win, as long as that is your first argument and you don’t trip their (hippie) BS detector by making emotional or ethical pleas first.

Example: Torture.
#1, it doesn’t work. (link data)
#2, it makes our problems worse. (5 cousins swearing vengance for this outrage makes things worse)
#3, you want moral equivalance, how about doing the same things done in the inquisition (note: may not work on catholics), as well as done by the terrists.
After these arguments you can start appealing to their humanity, and/or the absurd argument.
Response to the ticking time bomb: If a terrorist said he would tell you where the bomb was if you raped your own daughter, would you do it?

Then you can get to the kindergarten lesson of: Hurting people is wrong.

Bombing Afghanistan to “fight terrorism” is to punish not the Taliban but the victims of the Taliban, the people we should be supporting. At the same time, war would reinforce the worst elements in our own society–the flag-wavers and bigots and militarists. It’s heartening that there have been peace vigils and rallies in many cities, and antiwar actions are planned in Washington, DC, for September 29-30, but look what even the threat of war has already done to Congress, where only a single representative, Barbara Lee, Democrat from California, voted against giving the President virtual carte blanche.

There are plenty of other such examples. Fahrenheit 9/11, for instance, which claimed that an Afghanistan invasion — as opposed to an attempt to kill or capture Osama bin Laden — was motivated by an interest in oil. I hear a lot of people thought that movie was pretty good. Of course, “sensible” liberals have to distance themselves from the “Michael Moore”s of the world. He’s fat!

If Chomsky is attacking conventional wisdom or well-established theory, he is almost always right. If Chomsky is defending his own theories, he is almost always wrong. (But in a subtle and convincing way.)

Funny story: I have a wingnut nephew from Missourah. I was taking him to visit my wife in her lab at MIT, and we were standing in the elevator. An older gentleman got in, nodded pleasantly, and said, “Good morning.” He then hummed a jaunty little tune until he got off a few floors up.

When I told my nephew that he’d just met Noam Chomsky, he just about shit himself.

“The netroots criticized the Iraqi effort a) for not gaining the support of the U.N.; b) for not armoring the troops sufficiently; c) for not proving the existence of WMDs; d) for not proving connections to Al Queda; e) for not using enough troops.�

Yes, they accepted all the assumptions behind the U.S. intervention

Whoa, what internets were you and Max surfing in ’02-03? Because nobody I was reading was “accepting the assumptions” behind the invasion. We were attacking with every means at our disposal, which meant the invasion itself and the way they went about it.

This jumped out at me as well:

The 60s left read Marx, Trotsky, Luxembourg, Lukacs, Chomsky, Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, C.L.R. James, Ernest Mandel, Joan Robinson, Herbert Marcuse, Michael Harrington, Saul Alinsky. What does the netroots read?

If this isn’t elitism I don’t know what is. Maybe I don’t. But since when do you have to read a bunch of specialist literature to be a progressive? Some of us have lives. Personally I feel life is to short to waste puzzling over fucking Marx, and Chomsky’s language hurts to listen to. My study time is occupied by people like Elvin Jones and Thelonious Monk. Fuck this guy if it’s not good enough for him.