Understanding Power

I would say this won’t blow your mind if you are aware of the subjects targeted already, beyond simply reading about them in the newspaper of course, but it covers a wide range of topics posed to the author. And because it’s fairly old, originally published in 2002 I believe, it gives a great, micro picture of leftism at that time. The funny thing about this book is most of the things Nonsky is criticized for by self identified leftists as well as the right, are addressed here—either organically by answering certain questions, or else specific questions about the social perspective and media perspective of him—and what you find is that he doesn’t actually say or believe the the popular perception proliferates. I routinely scroll Twitter and see people saying Nomsky says X and does Y, etc etc etc. And so we can conclude he’s not leftist enough, or is pro capitalism, actually. Yet, ironically, he those things are just the spin on his views. If you actually read him, he will outright state that use of violence is justified but it will be used to undermine the cause, but there is no moral tension in using force. In fact you have to use force. Yet you often see out of context quotes where he seems to be completely against it. It feels very much like the spin on MLK in some ways. Anyway, I digress. I think if you want to get at the actual core values and idea of Chomsky, this is a great book to consume because of the Q and A structure.

Not assembled by Chomsky, but by some genius editors who organized and very precisely cut pieces of many interviews with him. I loved the format. The covered a much broader range of topics than I expected and the more conversational style made it a lot easier to swallow. Now, to the more complicated part of the review – the content itself. Based on knowing a little bit about Chomsky, my approach to listening the book was to pay closer attention to the facts and explanations how and why the works and tactfully let his ideas about how the world should go in one ear and out the other. This strategy worked marvelously. Some of the topics covered are: US foreign policy and its brutal aggression, capitalism and how capital effectively governs the country, media/education/intellectualism and how they are mostly used as propaganda tools, dissent and how they had an actual effect on US government actions. My two main takeaways: - After learning more about how the world works, the only way to deal with the imminent depression and being overwhelmed is to stick to the things we can change and enjoy and work on changing them day after day, putting one foot in front of the other, until we see an improvement. - While flawed, the current system works reasonably well – we live longer, violence is minimal compared to the past, with a little bit of luck one can lead a decent life. Not to say we should accept the status quo, but amount our regular rage about how fucked up the world is, let's at least for a second acknowledge the current complex (and surprising, to me) balance.