Krystal Ball – About Things That Matter

The Mainstream Media Finally Discovers Noam Chomsky: For All the Wrong Reasons

For years, many progressives have complained that the mainstream media (MSM) have ignored perhaps the most insightful political commentator in the western world. I’m referring to Noam Chomsky who in a rare moment of recognition was identified (nearly 45 years ago!) by Time Magazine as “arguably the most important intellectual alive today.”

Despite the unaccustomed mainstream kudo, the iconic scholar, social dissident, and progressive hero has for all the intervening years been systematically excluded from news show interviews. He’s virtually never asked for commentary or quoted in the mainstream press.

And why not? After all, he’s the harshest, most relentless critic the MSM has. It’s no stretch to say he’s their Public Enemy #1.

For instance, Chomsky’s magisterial Manufacturing Consent details how organs such as The New York Times (NYT) and Wall Street Journal (WSJ) serve not to inform the public, but to deceive them into accepting public policies that harm not only “Americans” but the entire world. Most recently, he has argued that the only western politician to tell the truth about the Ukraine War is Donald Trump.

One would think such provocative argument (always backed by impeccable documentation) would merit an interview on “Meet the Press” or somewhere on NPR. But no such luck. For the MSM, the otherwise celebrated MIT Professor of Linguistics continues his relegation to a proverbial voice in the wilderness.

However as of last week, all of that has changed. Since then, the MSM has finally taken notice. And when Professor Chomsky declines comment, Rupert Murdoch’s gang (along with “progressive” online commentators) are scandalized by his refusal to engage about what even those progressives characterize as the Wall Street Journal’s “fantastic” journalism. They accordingly shift into cancel culture overdrive.

For instance, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti hinted they might have to remove from the set of “Breaking Points” a prominently displayed copy of Manufacturing Consent. Kyle Kulinski ruefully described the revelations as a severe “gut punch” discrediting his hero. He just couldn’t get over it.

Why the change?

You guessed it: SEX.

Chomsky’s Sex Scandal

New documents released by The Journal reported that the 94-year-old Chomsky met several times with Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, of course, is the convicted and “suicided” pedophile who probably worked for the CIA and the Israeli Mossad. Chomsky’s meetings, we’re told breathlessly, occurred well after Epstein had been convicted and jailed for soliciting minors for prostitution. So, the esteemed professor must have known.

The document in question was a previously undisclosed Epstein appointment calendar that also included CIA director, William Burns, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Bard College President Leon Botstein.

This was not a question, everyone hastened to add, of Chomsky’s presence in Epstein’s infamous Black Book; nor is his name listed in any flight log for the pedophile’s “Lolita Express.”

Still, why his silence and abrupt, “It’s none of your business,” when questioned about his admissions that he met several times with the infamous Epstein?

Moreover, we’re told that Chomsky and his wife once even attended a dinner Epstein arranged for them with Woody Allen and his wife – after which (shudder) Chomsky identified Allen as “a great artist.” (How incriminating is that?! I mean, Allen has only 16 Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay – the most such nominations ever.)

Chomsky’s Response

Yep, that’s it. By all accounts, that’s the heart of the scandal. Again, it’s not that the 94-year-old is suspected of having illicit sex. It’s not even that (unlike Bill Clinton) he got a massage from a possibly underaged “masseuse.” Rather, it’s that he met several times with a convicted felon, Jeffrey Epstein, and had dinner with Woody Allen and his wife, that he admired Allen as an artist, and that he reminded suddenly interested journalists of his right to privacy about such matters.

That’s it.

In his own defense, Chomsky reiterates:

His private life is no one’s business.
He has no moral obligation to disclose information about its details.
In any case, the answers to relevant questions about his meeting with Epstein are already in print and so have no need to be rehashed.
Moreover, Chomsky invokes “a principle of western law that once a person has served his sentence, he’s the same as everybody else.”
And so, as a believer in the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution, Chomsky looked on Epstein accordingly.
When reminded that (thanks to U.S. Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta) Epstein’s “punishment” was far less than merited, Chomsky points out that the one to be blamed in that case is Acosta, not Epstein.
Finally, Chomsky notes, though Jeffrey Epstein did give large contribution to MIT, he is by no means the worst person to do so. (Chomsky observes for instance that outside his office window at MIT is a university building called The David Koch Cancer Center. Now, in Chomsky’s eyes, that’s the real scandal at MIT. He describes Koch as a candidate for one of the “most extraordinary criminals in human history.” Koch, he says, was responsible for shifting the Republican Party from a moderately sane political organization to being the most dangerous organization in human history which may destroy us all. No one, Chomsky charges says anything about that.)

Thus runs Chomsky’s impeccable, basically libertarian, and anarchistic reasoning.

In addition, we know that:

Part of Epstein’s “cover” included his habit of meeting, patronizing, and being photographed with famous people including prominent academics. Michael Wolff’s Too Famous reports that Epstein’s collection of framed photographs included pictures taken with a pope, several U.S. presidents, the Dali Lama, Bill Gates
According to former Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz (who despite having been accused of rape by one of Epstein’s underaged “proteges” remains a regular commentator on Murdoch’s Fox News), Epstein maintained relationships with prominent academic leaders to prop up his own social credentials.
He accordingly met with top scientists and intellectuals.
For their part, the academic leaders in question understandably courted Epstein who had built up a reputation as a generous funder of higher education.
It would make sense then for an academic of Chomsky’s stature to function as an MIT fundraiser.

Conclusion

In view of the above, who could be surprised at Professor Chomsky’s “It’s none of your business” impatience with reporters and news sources who have ignored him for years. Of course, he’s impatient with their sudden “interest” not in his trenchant analysis of their own journalistic crimes, but in what turns out to be “human interest” and “personality” issues that ignore his huge body of work and the bigger picture. Such misdirection has for decades been the very target of Chomsky’s criticism in the more than 100 books he has written.

Similarly, the same media so anxious to pursue the superficial, remain strangely incurious and un-investigative in pursuit of the real issues connected with Jeffrey Epstein, viz.:

The hidden details of and responsibility for his “suicide.”
Epstein’s connections with the CIA and Mossad.
The content of the vaults of Epstein’s endless films recording the crimes of the rich, famous, and politically powerful – all now in the possession of U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Why no plea deal has been made with Epstein accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in exchange for what she knows about those same prominent figures.
The full details of Epstein’s Black Book.
Those Lolita Express flight logs.
And why the Epstein records have remained sealed for so long and possibly will remain sealed for decades to come?

And why are progressive media so ready to take seriously the suddenly “fantastic journalism” of Rupert Murdoch’s crowd? Why did they shift so abruptly into Cancel Culture overdrive? Evidently, all is forgiven for Fox News and WSJ, while all is cancelled and forgotten about the incomparable contributions of the previously “most important intellectual alive today.”

Can no one recognize a hit job when they see it? Can’t they recognize the fingerprints of the CIA? Can’t the left identify a classic case of guilt (or character assassination) by association? Why no suspicion that Wall Street Journal and Fox News magnate, Rupert Murdoch have finally seized upon a chance to discredit one of their harshest critics? Why no curiosity about a possible CIA attempt to draw attention away from William Burns’ association with Epstein disclosed on the same appointment schedule with Chomsky’s name on it?

However we might answer such questions, the bottom line here is that Noam Chomsky’s reputation should in no way be sullied by any sensationalism surrounding this latest “revelation.”

Gleeful Liberal Pundits Arrogantly Bash China’s Covid “Dystopia:” 10 Reasons to Mistrust Them

The war in Ukraine is far from over. Yet already even the so-called “alternative media” are softening us up for the next conflict – this time with China.

That’s the conclusion easily drawn after witnessing a recent Sinophobic segment of “Breaking Points” with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti (see above). Together they gleefully tag-teamed on China’s Covid-19 “dystopia.” (“Dystopia,” you recall is an “imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.”)

According to Enjeti and Ball, that’s China for you. Under its “authoritarian” regime, the people there lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. A familiar story this side of the pond.

But are such charges valid? To find out, consider first the accusations themselves, secondly the hubris behind them, and finally a real-life example suggesting caution about indictments of cultures and policies few in the west can understand.

Accusations Vs. China

According to Enjeti and Ball, the People’s Republic lockdown strategy, though admittedly spectacularly successful in combatting the first two waves of Covid, is failing miserably with the Omicron version.

“Whew, thank God,” they seemed to gloat. “That was a close one. Imagine, if we’d have to admit that China’s universal healthcare system and prioritization of citizens’ lives and community health over business profits and getting people back to work has something to teach us.” Close one indeed.

Ball specifically expressed her happy relief by observing that she and others like her initially experienced a kind of “China envy” regarding the way the country so efficiently and effectively dealt with Covid since the pandemic’s dawn in 2020. She then admired the way lockdowns, testing, contact tracing, provision of personal protective equipment, vaccinations, and expansions of hospital facilities kept Chinese fatalities minimal compared with the nearly one million pandemic deaths in the United States where such policies took months to develop. All of that seemed to explain why even though China has four times the U.S. population, over the first two years of the pandemic, it experienced only a fraction of America’s Covid fatalities.

Thankfully, however, in the welcome light of China’s struggles with Omicron, the truth has come to light. According to a chuckling Enjeti, China’s “dystopian nightmarish lockdown” reveals the sad truth. “This is what full communist collectivism really looks like,” he said.

Say what? “Full communist collectivism?” China?

In other contexts, commentators like our intrepid pair explain China’s economic and social successes as “not really socialism.” Instead, China’s capitalist nature is what accounts for its success.

Now however it’s “full communist collectivism” that explains everything.

Such self-contradictory and infantile analysis enabled Ball to chime in that though there’s “a long way” before we in the U.S. have a real true democracy, “at least the say of the people (she rolled her eyes appropriately at this point) “means something. And I will take that and all of the strife and messiness that it entails on a daily basis over drones circling overhead chastising your soul for wanting freedom.”

Ball’s reference was to Shanghai residents’ being admonished by drone loudspeakers to (according to somebody’s translation) “Please comply with Covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”

Oh, the horror! What could be more authoritarian than asking people to control their soul’s desire for freedom and ask them not to sing? What evil masters the poor Chinese have!

And imagine this: government food deliveries (to Shanghai’s 27 million people!) have been disrupted. Black markets for scarce commodities have resulted. The elderly are especially threatened.

According to a smirking Enjeti, the other end of the mortality table is threatened as well. Officials in Shanghai, he reports, are defending the policy of separating babies and young children from their parents if they test positive for Covid-19. “So, they’re literally taking children, he lamented, who are testing positive for Covid and administering treatment to them in public health centers.

And besides that, “there are people kneeling (sic) in the street and as people pass by, they check their ID passes and swabbing them constantly. This is the full stuff of nightmares of authoritarian lockdown.”

According to the “Breaking Point” hosts, all such horrors are due to Shanghai’s “total zero policy” regarding Covid.

Luckily, Enjeti claimed, we know all about this, while the Chinese people do not. According to young Sagaar, “We probably have a better idea of what’s happening in Shanghai than people in Beijing and in the rest of the country, just because of the Chinese government’s ability in order to crack down. In the Chinese equivalent of Times Square there were signs saying, ‘Don’t believe everything you see on social media and do not share viral videos’.”

Yes, it’s gotten that bad. Shanghai’s government is actually telling its people not to trust what they see on social media. Dangerous advice indeed.

Unhinged Hubris

Please excuse the sarcasm that leaked into my account that I had planned to be simply descriptive. However, the ironies and arrogance of the “Breaking Points” segment was so stunningly slanted and obviously anti-Chinese that I just couldn’t help myself.

I mean, think about the pomposity of young pundits living in a country that has experienced many more per capita Covid deaths than China criticizing a 6000-year-old culture that apparently places the common good above individual “freedom.” Consider 10 such overreaches by Enjeti and Ball:

To begin with, they adopt a moral position that amounts to the pot calling the kettle black or people in glass houses throwing stones. To repeat, Americans whose government failed miserably to protect their citizens from a viral pandemic, have no moral right to criticize a government like China’s which did.
That U.S. failure is never seen by commentators like our 2 exemplars as indicating the systemic failure of capitalism. Yet, China’s successes with the first two waves of Covid along with its vigorous efforts to combat Omicron somehow indicate the failure of Enjeti’s “full communist collectivism.”
Enjeti and Ball also naively take at face value a 4 second video (showing buildings somewhere at night with sounds of people wailing in the background). They present the footage as unquestionably demonstrating the plight of Shanghai’s suffering millions. Instead, in the light of recent revelations about CIA and Pentagon deceptions, such easily faked video should have evoked strong journalistic skepticism.
Similarly, Enjeti imagines Shanghai residents’ understandings of complex concepts such as “soul” and “freedom,” and “sing” (and of “government” for that matter) are accurate, non-ideological, non-propagandistic CIA translations of the Chinese terms involved.
He further imagines that such terms have the same meanings for Chinese as they do for Americans.
Moreover, Enjeti actually claims that he, a 20 something American, and the rest of us have a better understanding of what’s happening in Shanghai than the Chinese do. Such hubris needs no commentary.
“Breaking Points” also gives the impression that children separated from parents “to be taken for treatment in a health center” represent permanent involuntary separation of child and parent (like that practiced by the U.S. at the Mexican border) instead of simply taking children (with their parents’ permission?) for treatment.
Perhaps worst of all, “Breaking Points” never explains or even speculates why the Chinese government has adopted its lockdown, zero tolerance policy. The program simply leaves the impression that zero tolerance is a question of the mean communists exercising arbitrary power for the sake of doing so. Could it be however that Beijing actually cares about the health of the Chinese people and prefers saving lives to a return to normal that will increase corporate profits while causing preventable losses of life?
Finally, the “Breaking Points” hosts assume that the term “authoritarian” is univocal in meaning. China is “authoritarian;” the U.S. is not. “Communism” is authoritarian; capitalism is not. Such misunderstandings fail to reflect the undeniable fact that ALL extant systems of political economy are authoritarian, be they capitalist or socialist. Certainly, it’s undeniable that by definition America’s capitalist “empire” (a term enthusiastically embraced by its politicians) can never claim to be democratic or a respecter of human rights. It’s essentially authoritarian. That is, by nature, empire is imposed upon (not chosen by) its subjects. The same goes for capitalism itself. Yes, it has its Tweedle Dum vs. Tweedle Dee elections. But under capitalism, most of our time is spent working for wages under completely authoritarian bosses who give us no say over how we spend our time and who can fire us at whim.
With all systems sharing authoritarianism, the question is which kind do we prefer – one that takes care of ordinary people or the type that prioritizes the needs of the rich. It’s clear from the examples like “our” allies Brazil, the Philippines, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, etc.., which type of authoritarians the United States prefers. Policies towards China (which has virtually eliminated poverty among its people and enjoys their 85% approval) as well as towards Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, do the same thing.

Conclusion

I have a Chinese friend who takes part in a prayer circle my wife and I participate in.

Recently, at one of our sessions with our Chinese friend absent, members of our circle were lamenting the plight of Shanghai’s residents as reported by news outlets like “Breaking Points.” “It just all seems so inhumane,” most prayer circle members lamented.

The next night we checked it out with our this-time present Chinese sister. We knew her elderly parents lived in Shanghai. We were worried about them.

“Well, what about the horror of Shanghai?” we asked her.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” she replied. “It’s just the Chinese government overacting a bit to Covid. My folks are o.k.”

“Wow,” was the response of others in the group. “I guess you just can’t be sure whom or what to believe.”

Should Progressives Be Inspired by the DC Rioters?

Last week, Michael Moore asked an important question on OpEdNews. He wondered “Why Are We Not Uprising?” His revolutionary issue was the lack of single-payer healthcare so relentlessly highlighted by the worldwide covid-19 pandemic. Why no revolution, he asked, when so many are dying from clearly remediable causes – when the vast majority of Americans want single-payer?

Response to Moore’s article showed that he had indeed touched a revolutionary chord.

But then last Wednesday, when an actual uprising took place, everyone, it seemed, wanted to join hands across the proverbial aisle separating left and right. They jointly lamented the shocking breakdown of law and order. (The “Risings” Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti provide an example of that shared reaction.)

Think about it, everyone said: the rioters actually “desecrated” the Capitol Building’ “sacred” space! They broke some windows. They took selfies of themselves standing at the podium of the House of Representatives. They ransacked poor Nancy Pelosi’s office! They forced Mitch McConnell and Co. to run for their lives.

Washington policemen responded with a wink and a nod.

The horror of it all!

Something similar (with important differences) happened this summer, when Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators took to the streets. Theirs’ was a largely peaceful uprising in the spirit of Martin Luther King. But then, agents provocateurs (and perhaps some demonstrators themselves) had the temerity to break into and loot Wal-Mart’s “sacred” precincts. Windows were smashed; fires were set.

That time, police responded with an iron fist. Demonstrators were beaten, tear-gassed and arrested.

Yes of course, there were those important differences between the two insurrections just cited. The DC protagonists were Trump supporters and right-wing fanatics. Their issue was election fraud. The cause of the BLM demonstrators was police brutality directed towards black and brown people.

Despite those distinctions however, don’t you see what’s happening? Michael Moore’s wish has come true! The first phase of the revolution is unfolding before our very eyes. But even its protagonists don’t recognize its portent and promise.

That’s because they’ve been hoodwinked into seeing each other as the enemy. Rather than joining forces against their common overlords, they’re punching down. The rightists think their enemy are blacks and immigrants whose numbers are rapidly changing U.S. demographics. Meanwhile, leftist demonstrators are the very ones mistakenly vilified by the rightists and their sympathizers among the police.

The empowering solution is for all of us to see the common revolutionary terrain on which we’re standing, namely:

Citizen anger, be it left or right is entirely justified
Both what happened In DC this week and in streets across the country (and world) last summer are the initial stirrings of a widespread working-class revolution.
Michael Moore is right. He’d agree, I think, that the real violence in question here is not breaking windows or setting fires. It’s a system that in the midst of a worldwide pandemic refuses (despite agreement between Democratic and Republican majorities) to refund our taxpayer dollars in the form of single-payer healthcare and guaranteed income for workers displaced by forces beyond our control.
That’s our money they’re not returning to us in this emergency!
Everyone can also agree with Trump supporters that our election system is entirely fraudulent. Voting machines are completely questionable; they should be replaced by paper ballots. Campaign contributions are nothing but legalized bribery. Voter suppression’s many forms (from unnecessary ID laws to the dismantling of the U.S. post office) are a sad fact of American life. Gerrymandering is hideously anti-democratic. So is the Electoral College. The list of fraudulence goes on.
Pelosi and McConnell do not represent us, but their donors. Following the example of our Founders (cf. Jefferson on this!), we should force them all to flee for their lives from outraged citizens and their pitchforks whether the attack comes from the right or the left.
The offices of our mis-representatives deserve to be ransacked.
Ordinary people should seize congressional podia and make their voices heard.
The police too are working class people misled into identifying fellow workers as the enemy while defending their own natural enemies.

I’m currently reading Barack Obama’s autobiography, The Promised Land. It’s an account of a well-meaning ambitious young black man whose rise to the pinnacle of political power gradually but inexorably transforms him into the servant of a class he initially identified as inimical to the interests of the people he wanted to help. It’s the story of an imperceptibly slow cooptation, early-onset blindness, and betrayal of ideals and common sense in favor of power, profit and prestige.

A similar cooptation threatens all of us at this pre-revolutionary moment. It will succeed if we allow our overlords to sell us a narrative that covers up the workers’ revolution that has the Pelosis and McConnells of the world frightened out of their wits. Like young Mr. Obama, we’re overlooking how the rich and powerful are blinding us to our common cause as wage-earning Americans.

Michael Moore (and the rest of us) should take note.