This collection of essays is timely given the amount of heated debate going on about the state of Western democracy, particularly in the US. Chomsky’s perspective - my interpretation: What democracy?
It is true that democracy is a word thrown around with little regard for what it means. Is it a system of election or an ideal?
Either way, of course, the US has never been a pure democracy. When the country was founded only white men who owned property could vote and there was no one who suggested that the government existed to act on behalf of the average citizen.
Today, of course, we have the Electoral College, allowing the presidential candidate receiving the least popular votes to actually win election. And the fact that the least populous state has the same Senate representation as the most populous state. If you live in South Dakota, therefore, you have far more theoretical power over the government than a resident of California or Texas.
And it doesn’t stop there. The US Senate, arguably the more powerful of the two houses, is run by committees, and the committee chairperson, usually chosen by seniority within their party, wield outsized power because they single-handedly control which bills actually make it to the floor for debate and a vote. Most of these chairman and chairwoman, as it turns out, hail from those same least populous states that already enjoy an inflated amount of Senatorial power. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, for example, arguably the most powerful committee in the Senate, represents Vermont, the second-least-populous state, home to less than two-tenths of one percent of Americans. (This distortion occurs for a lot of obvious reasons including social homogeneity, less competition for the job, etc.)
The strongest point Chomsky alludes to is that the ideal of democracy is not really a function of how you structure elections. It’s about having politicians who are carrying out the will of the citizens. And it is in this regard that virtually all modern democracies score the lowest.
In part, of course, that is because not all citizens are the same. And the citizens who count the most in today’s political world are the citizens who hold the capital. They are the ones who determine which politicians wield power because their money allows them to control elections, and it is, therefore, their interests that the politicians care most about.
Which is why our elected politicians in Washington refuse to take positions supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. They don’t care. Unless you can afford to contribute a gazillion dollars to their next re-election, your opinion doesn’t really count.
When it comes to American foreign policy, therefore, Chomsky makes an irrefutable argument that despite all the talk about promoting democracy and protecting the oppressed, the overwhelming objective of our foreign policy is to protect and promote the financial interests of our banks, hedge funds, and corporations. We have actually overthrown democratically elected governments, Chomsky notes, for the simple reason that they refused to do the bidding of our investor class.
Chomsky has one of the most insightful minds putting thought to paper today. The book is extremely well written and thoroughly researched. If you recoil at his basic premise you owe it to yourself to read it.
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