Let's talk a little bit about Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky is a linguist and a philosopher.
He's now 91 years old and he's had some pretty
damn good takes lately that have unfortunately
really rattled and shaken up a slice of the
American left wing.
That's very, very anti.
Joe Biden.
So as an example, a few months ago, maybe
it was a month ago, Noam Chomsky said, of
course, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden and
everybody should vote for Joe Biden.
And that was the take.
And it was not particularly controversial,
but there were a lot of people who were very
upset with Noam Chomsky, saying that he has
sold out in some way.
But I was glad to hear him say it, because
there's definitely crossover between Bernie
fans and Chomsky fans.
And not all of them agree that voting Trump
out to replace him with Biden is good.
Now, I believe that that is good.
That is the right decision to make.
So does Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky was recently interviewed by Michael
Brooks, who has some clips on our channel.
If you go back in the archives a little bit
and Chomsky said, Trump is undeniably the
worst criminal in history.
And what I like about this is that Chomsky
has shown a commitment not to allow the forest
to be missed for the trees when people start
getting into.
Well, you know, back in the 90s, Biden didn't
take Social Security cuts off the table.
So that means he's running today on cutting
Social Security.
You know, it's like, hold on.
Hold on a second.
Hold on a second.
Up.
Biden is not running on cutting Social Security
today.
In the 90s, Biden said I wouldn't preemptively
take it off the table in a negotiation.
While I disagree with what Biden said in the
90s, that was almost 30 years ago.
And he's not running on that now.
And Trump is an evil madman who must be removed.
Noam Chomsky.
It's been very good at distilling that every
time he's asked about this and he does it
here in this interview as well.
Let's look at a sort of condensed transcript
and actually want to read through it, because
this really matters.
Noam Chomsky said, quote, This sounds strong,
but it's true.
Trump is the worst criminal in history.
Undeniably, there has never been a figure
in political history who is so passionately
dedicated to destroying the projects for organized
human life on Earth in the near future.
This is not an exaggeration.
People are focused now on the protests.
The pandemic is serious enough that we will
emerge from it at a terrible cost.
The cost is greatly amplified by the gangster
in the White House who has killed tens of
thousands of Americans, making this the worst
place in the world for the corona virus.
We will emerge from the pandemic, but we're
not going to emerge from another crime that
Trump has committed.
The heating of the globe, the worst of it
is coming.
We're not going to emerge from that.
The ice sheets are melting.
They're not going to recover.
That leads to exponential increase in global
warming.
Arctic glaciers, for example, could flood
the world.
Recent studies indicate that on the present
course in about 50 years, much of the habitable
part of the world will be unlivable.
You won't be able to live in parts of South
Asia, parts of the Middle East, parts of the
United States.
We're approaching the point of one hundred
and twenty five thousand years ago, when sea
levels were about 25 feet higher than they
are now.
And it's worse than that.
The Scripps Oceanographic Institute just came
out with a study that estimated that we are
coming ominously close to a point similar
to three million years ago when sea levels
were 50 to 80 feet higher than they are today.
Noam Chomsky goes on to say, quote, All around
the world, countries are trying to do something
about it.
But there is one country which is led by a
president who wants to escalate the crisis
to raced toward the abyss to maximize the
use of fossil fuels, including the most dangerous
of them, and to dismantle the regulatory apparatus
that limits their impact.
There is no crime like this in human history.
Nothing.
This is a unique individual and it's not as
if he doesn't know what he's doing.
Of course he does.
It says if he doesn't care if he can pour
more profits into his pockets and the pockets
of his rich constituency tomorrow, who cares
if the world disappears in a couple of generations?
As far as the government is concerned, we're
seeing something pretty interesting.
Parliamentary democracy has been around for
350 years, starting in England in sixteen
eighty nine with the so-called glorious revolution
when sovereignty was transferred from the
royalty to the Parliament.
The beginnings of parliamentary democracy
in the US came about a century later.
Parliamentary democracy is not just based
on laws and constitutions.
In fact, the British Constitution is maybe
a dozen words.
It's based on trust and good faith.
The assumption that people will act like human
beings.
And then after Chomsky talks a little bit
about Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.
Chomsky goes back to quote, It goes deep into
issues well before Trump.
But he is a unique phenomenon.
Again, the worst criminal in human history.
So his minor crimes are to destroy American
democracy and to amplify a pandemic, killing
over a hundred thousand people.
But those are minor crimes by his standards.
What's so important about this is that Chomsky
distills the importance of not messing around
with these sidebar arguments.
What we're seeing is as bad as I and others
have been saying, much of it, the incompetence,
the authoritarian tendencies, the ruined global
alliances, the worsening crisis, crisis of
climate change, while Trump doesn't care.
They were all completely predictable from
day one.
And I was not unique in predicting it.
I'm not taking any unique credit for predicting
it.
This is not a time for maybe I'll stay home
or maybe I don't care or I don't really like
Biden or whatever you contribute to the worsening
of the problem.
If you do that, that's how critical this is.
And I'm so glad that we are hearing it from
Noam Chomsky.
We'll have some of these Chomsky quotes on
the show's Instagram page at David Pakman
show.
Make sure you're following us there.
Also, make sure you're following me on Instagram
at David Pakman.
I posted a video of how I now drink water.
Might be interesting to
some of you.
