. . . has been following the recent events in the US Congress and whether he still feels that the Tea Partiers can be recruited for massive support of progressive causes (the video has been removed by YouTube, but it’s clear from the comments what it was about.) A year ago, I said the following:
There is this huge delusion on the Left that there is a way of connecting with some of these people [Tea Partiers] and getting them on our side. Now Chomsky is participating in that delusion as well. But I don’t think that strategy will work. It never has before.
Everybody was trying to persuade me that Tea Partiers are the movement of the disadvantaged and the unemployed who have a huge potential of coming to support a Liberal agenda.
Today, the representatives elected by those same Tea Partiers have destroyed what this country still had left of its welfare system.
Now, was I right or was I completely right?
But had any of these people ever met or interacted with a real life tea partier?
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I don’t think I have. At least, none that confessed being it. I wouldn’t even know where to find one.
Have you met any?
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Oh, I have colleagues who are tea-party types. Other mathematicians have told me that our taxes are cripplingly high and that only by cutting them is there any hope of creating a viable society.
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Many! Students, community members, etc. They are not closet or potential liberals.
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I already have a hard enough time with the hypocrisy and intellectual laziness of many of my so-called progressive peers. With even more allies like that, who needs enemies?
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I am pretty sure that you misrepresent what Chomsky meant to say. I remember him talking about the Tea party and he actually wanted to warn people.
He said that workers would turn toward them, because the left suck. And I am deeply sorry to say that, but the «left», or what qualify as the left, suck. Chomsky was right.
He is not saying it is a good idea, but that we should try to understand what is happening. Hitler had the workers on his side, but he was far from the left. Chomsky did compare those 2 situations.
Chomsky is a bright man and I am sorry to see that you make him look like a dumb ass, when you missed his point.
I am sorry to react like that, I do like you (even if I don’t know you), but Chomsky deserves better than that.
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I think this is true (what Chomsky said). Said left would have to stop sucking not to have people go right.
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The Left sucks for all of us. You and I, however, haven’t turned to the Right as a result of that.
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Some people will. Can’t assume no one will just because of you and the fox you know. They may not have our education.
Anyway, Obama mislead people himself, with his discourses and attitude. That dude is not left wing at at. He is a Wall street guy, like the rest of them.
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