Noam Chomsky

The essential account of geopolitics right now, from one of our greatest living intellectuals - including a new afterword on President Donald Trump Noam Chomsky: philosopher, political writer, fearless activist. No one has done more to question the hidden actors who govern our lives, calling the powers that be to account. Here he presents Who Rules the World?, his definitive account of those powers, how they work, and why we should be questioning them. From the dark history of the US and Cuba to China's global rise, from torture memos to sanctions on Iran, this book investigates the defining issues of our times and exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of America's policies and actions. The world's political and financial elite are now operating almost totally unconstrained by the so-called democratic structure. With climate change and nuclear proliferation threatening our very survival, dissenting voices have never been more necessary. Fiercely outspoken and rigorously argued, Who Rules the World? is an indispensable guide to how things really are.

Reframings

Who Rules the World?

Emily McMeans

“"Because of the United States." More precisely, because of the Republican Party, which by now is becoming a real danger to decent human survival.”

“Both parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period of the past generation. Mainstream Democrats are now pretty much what used to be called "moderate Republicans." Meanwhile, the Republican Party has largely drifted off the spectrum, becoming what respected conservative political analyst Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call a "radical insurgency” that has virtually abandoned normal parliamentary politics. With the rightward drift, the Republican Party's dedication to wealth and privilege has become so extreme that its actual policies could not attract voters, so it has had to seek a new popular base, mobilized on other grounds: evangelical Christians who await the Second Coming, nativists who fear that "they" are taking our country away from us, unreconstructed racists, people with real grievances who gravely mistake their causes, and others like them who are easy prey to demagogues and can readily become a radical insurgency.”

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