One of the Most Menacing Problems and Yet Most Consequential --

[ancianita]

How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful: Noam Chomsky & Glenn Greenwald


"This concept of equality of rule under law has never been the predominant theme to describe American political reality."

While we're waiting for Jan 20, Rule of Law is worth a wider look (and not necessarily a partisan look).

[Hortensis]

1. That statement is simply not true. Note who it comes from.

There's always a market for this stuff, and it's always the weakest who are most vulnerable because they imagine their lack of moral strength is shared by all. And of course there are those for whom the glass is always empty. These wealthy dealers never fail them.

Failure to always be what we want and are supposed to be does not mean we fail period.

[ancianita]

6. Okay. Ad hominem is the frame for you. Fine.

Last edited Sat Dec 5, 2020, 03:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Take a look at 1:02:05 (which I can't believe you saw, but if you did) again:
GG: "It raises the question about whether or not significant economic and wealth inequality can coexist with rough political equality.
Or whether or not, once there's a small faction that can gain so much power through its wealth, then political equality or democratic institutions cannot possibly resist it any longer."

Then I look at your sig line: "We can have democracy in this country, OR we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Nancy Pelosi to the nation on opening the 116th congress.

It seems to me that you missed that Greenwald, Chomsky and Pelosi are pretty much in the "market for this stuff," even in the different contexts of their work. If you say that we who listen to them are weak because "they imagine a lack of moral strength by virtue is shared by all," then I don't know that you'd include Democrats who consider themselves thinkers about larger forces that influence politics. Yet Pelosi does. And most Democrats do, too.

I think it's true that people are born into systems (or think they are) that promote this "glass is half empty" or full" stuff, and those who made the glass and half filled it before people were born, indeed like to manage people's perceptions as binary and either-or.

I think this discussion and the questions that follow are important expansions of our moral compass in binary politics, and the discussion helps us see examples of state and international forces that force and exempt rule of law in ways that benefit those forces, with trickle down (and dubious) benefits to us who they somehow convince most of us that we should be thankful for.

We don't fail and we're not fooled. I think we can see the glass, and binaries, and think our way to how to end managed perceptions that put Greenwald on the right and Chomsky on the left.

[Hortensis]

10. And I think both of those have become wealthy and famous

by inculcating disaffection, disillusion and disbelief in in America's liberal, progressive party. They're just two of many sabotaging the hope and will of the electorate by undermining belief in the value of voting at all.

They're tragically effective saboteurs of the very ideals and progress they not only claim to espouse but do so while posturing as possessing a higher virtue that the Democratic Party can never achieve.

They've been doing this for all the years the Republicans have become dangerously corrupt and authoritarian, all the years the billionaire class has grown and become increasingly dangerous, all the years the climate crises have been growing and growing, and of course all the recent years that the religious extremist and white nationalist culture warring has been coming to a fascistic boil on the right.

All the while knowing ONLY a powerful Democratic Party could stop it and would with enough power.

What do people like this really believe? Beats me. Best guess they were corrupted by the extremely large market for packaging indulgence of their own dishonest negativism and resentments as phony intellectualism. For men of real talent who initially make names for themselves honestly before turning to indulgence of their worst selves (and by far most ARE men), commercial success is very achievable. And this success combines satisfaction of those worst impulses with fame and lucrative incomes, and above all the influence scorpions have always had on those they deceive.

[ancianita]

11. Thanks for your take on them.

In undegrad and grad school in the 70's I studied Chomsky's linguistics model of language as genetic imprint, which got him, IIRC, to MIT.

His politics came during the 80's when little was conveyed to Americans about foreign policy as policy and who benefitted. I was involved in getting my union to disinvest from American companies that helped prop South African apartheid. I picked up Chomsky's booklets about America's foreign actions abroad, at the time liberals were being bashed by Reagan, Atwater, Gingrich every day in horse race media. I found his outlook on our foreign policy an informative counter to the Republican foreign policy disasters I'd seen.

I haven't taken either of them for underminers of democracy. Yes, they have been doing what they're doing all the while authoritarian governments and corruption have grown. They've apparently not been famous with enough or the right people, and no platforms but college campuses, conferences, second level journalism field. Not corporate. And not enough Americans have known just how corporate values have saturated our nation's systems.

I've seen them as informers of young people about who/what has been done in their name, and impacts their best interests. I'm glad to have learned from their examples, just how presidents' actions and foreign policies have both exhorted and exempted themselves from the rule of law they've said everyone is equal before. Over time we've come to learn how we've maintained rule of law as more aspirational than we know. As with yet more pardons that undermine the power of the judiciary and people's trust in governance, by crooked leaders and enablers who just walk away while we're exhorted to move on and forget about it. Talk about scorpions. I hope Georgians are pissed off enough to do something to rid themselves of them.

It seems to me that pointing out examples about how power and rule of law have actually been demonstrated might seem inconvenient, but I'd feel better for the future at seeing its patterns more clearly because of this talk. In the future, if our leaders don't hold other leaders accountable, for whatever reasons they can muster, then rule of law aspiration loses and something else establishes itself in government.
To me that's worse than a lawyer and academic talking about it.

[question everything]

2. Glenn Greenwals is now a worthy source?

[George II]

3. Glenn Greenwald has gotten so extreme that he was even drummed out of his own organization.

[scarletwoman]

4. FYI, this video is from 2013, before Greenwald lost his mind.

[stonecutter357]

5. Glenn Greenwald ?

[ancianita]

7. Might as well laugh at Noam Chomsky, too, while you're at it.

[alwaysinasnit]

8. TY for the timely reminder ancianita!

[ancianita]

9. ...