Your first glance at this post will likely scream TLDR, but I hope everyone will give it at least a quick look, the issue is important, it's important enough to turn The Skeptic Society into Answers in Genesis, and then delete my forum account without reason and without a reply when asked why. And it's enough to get a few members here behaving like creationists.

It really doesn't take much to get a good skeptic to behave just like a creationist. All you need do is try to discuss Noam Chomsky's work. You can check this out in two recent, even active threads here: Pull no punches....Chomsky on the US, and Sam Harris debates Noam Chomsky, or in a spate of Chomsky-related threads back in 2011. For going on 5 decades, he has tried to wake people up, to expose the virtual reality Americans live in, and how they are propagandized into such beliefs. Chomsky recently sat down for a discussion with Lawrence Kraus, Chomsky & Krauss: An Origins Project Dialogue.


At 1h32m16s, he says:

Chomsky:
“[Everyone] should remember that there is a secular religion that is even more devastating [than theistic religions] and that's things like the concept of american exceptionalism. That's a secular religion."

His books and talks are generally a simple exposition of facts, cogent, concise, and with a compelling, unrelenting logic. He seldom offers any characterizations, like bad, evil, or lies, just facts, easy to check because even in his appearances, he references documentation quite often. He leaves most of the conclusions to the reader/listener. And he doesn't espouse some political agenda, he rarely mentions his political leanings. Those who attack him employ a few well known and ridiculed methods, ad hominem is very frequent, writing him off as a leftwing crank, a marxist, or america-hater, etc. Often they will use the 'yeah but so and so is a lot worse' line, but how is that any kind of defense? One response here was 'he's been saying the same thing for years' about an article dealing with the Iran nuke agreement, years? The one thing you almost never see is an attempt to refute the facts.

Do you know Chomsky's work? If you aren't familiar with it, you can take a quick crash course in reality, see Noam Chomsky in London - Year 501, A broad overview of the history they don't teach you. :



Then check out Noam Chomsky - The Political Economy of the Mass Media :



dealing with his book , with Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media where you can hear about the media and its involvement in the process of propaganda. If you think you know his work, but haven't actually read any or seen him talk, you owe it to yourself to watch these and not sheepishly go along with the herd.

So what's this post about? It's about the US living in a virtual reality no different than the ones created by religion, and how skeptics in general, the movement, and a couple of the largest national organizations seem to live in it too, how they resist facing the undeniable truth just like real believers of religions do. It's me asking how the fuck can you call yourself a skeptic, especially a critically thinking skeptic, if you wallow in the comfortable, guilt-free world where the US isn't THE major terrorist organization in the world, the biggest war crime-committing country, where the US isn't probably second only to N. Korea in how propagandized it citizens are. And it's about trying to live like Matt Dillihunty espouses on The Atheist Experience and was what he talked about in his appearance at the 50th Anniversary of The American Atheist Society in Austin a couple of years ago.



If you think Chomsky is full of it, then simply show me where he is wrong to any significant degree. Watch the first video, even if Chomsky has ¾ of his facts wrong, the remaining ¼ is more than enough, the reasoning, the logic is inescapable. If you disagree, fine, explain how. Explain in a way that doesn't turn you into a sad apologist like we atheists have to deal with all the time.

And that brings me to the juicy part, when I tried writing to The Skeptic Society and cfi, to ask why a thoroughly propagandized country isn't on the skeptics agenda. The propaganda allows for 10's of trillions of dollars sucked out of the tax payer, the killing of tens of millions of innocents, harms that utterly dwarf those of standard religions, of UFO believers, altmed quackery etc, the usual stuff skeptics pursue. Are they credulous swallowers themselves?

The reply I got from cfi came from Kendrick Frazer himself, the gist of it that that's politics, they don't do politics. My reply objecting that it's not just politics received no reply, nor did a follow up a year later. This is a bullshit excuse, but further efforts seemed futile.

It's my exchange with The Skeptic Society that is most telling, and damning. I'm just going to paste it all in here, the only edits are to remove some identity and email information, otherwise it's everything warts and all. RDFers may recognize my userID. The reason I tried again after a year had passed was an article in Skeptic earlier this year, A Skeptic’s Guide to the War on Terror by Richard E. Wackrow, Skeptic Magazine, Volume 20 Number 1, on aspects of the war on terror that hinted at the reality behind the propaganda, but didn't go anywhere near far enough into the light, more detail in the emails.

And then it got disgusting. Since I wasn't getting anywhere that way, I decided to take it to the forum there at The Skeptic Society. See the post below. I had to sign up as I didn't have a membership, got the confirmation, and posted. Then I got an email from Jim Dominic saying they couldn't publish my post, it contained private correspondence. Well, it wasn't private, I was writing to the organization in what amounted to a 'letter to the eiditor'. When I tried to log back on to the forum, my userID was suddenly no good, it said my username was inactive, when I tried to get an activation email sent to me, I was told my email/login info could not be found. When I replied to Dominic about all this, my email was simply ignored, as was a follow up attempt. This was galling, but what's worse is how lame it is. I even tried writing to Shermer about it, and got no response. This too is all included below.

The first and second round of emails, artskeptic is the person who replied to an email sent to the email address they have listed for contact, I do not who this person is:

Re: From a puzzled skeptic

-----Original Message-----
From: mechtheist <mechtheist>
To: skepticssociety <skepticssociety@skeptic.com>
Sent: Mon, Feb 3, 2014 8:51 am
Subject: From a puzzled skeptic
I thought I was a pretty good skeptic most of my life, even before about 1972 when, while between the 7th and 8th grades at a catholic school in a small farming community in Texas, I realized the absurdity of belief in a deity. I've been a member of various skeptic orgs over the years, reading a lot of the magazines and other literature. Then, about 6 months ago, I watched a Noam Chomsky video, which lead to a binge on the huge catalog of his lectures available on youtube. Chomsky has doggedly, for decades, exposed the extent to which the US population is so thoroughly propagandized, arguably to a significantly greater degree than it is by religion, though I'd assume the two intertwine.
So now I'm puzzled at the near total lack of any mention of any of his reporting by the skeptical community. Searching for mentions of Chomsky with google site: searches at csicop.org, , at skeptic.com, andcenterforinquiry.net, yields mostly linguistic related links, or forum posts. Is the national myth, the national religion, somehow hands-off? Or is it that the skeptical community has been utterly credulous when the corporate media feeds them the propaganda so ubiquitous across the myriad array of media available today?
Right now, we have leaders in the House and the Senate desperately trying to force us into a war with Iran, trying to ramp up as much as possible our petroleum use, and reducing aid to the poor while shoveling billions to the richest corporations and people. The double-speak bullshit appears to spew out at unprecedented levels, arguably driving us into a climate catastrophe, and it's all for corporate profits. And skeptics are largely silent on the fundamental issue.
All the good work in debunking of bigfoots, of psychic whatever, UFOs, and theisms, seems an impotent waste, a sideshow, if compared to the horrors we US citizens are all complicit in by our citizenship. The horrors inflicted on the world and its own citizens by US actions, which have killed millions, probably tens of millions, and we all played a part, if only through willful ignorance. Chomsky often declares a great moral sentiment, “You are responsible for the predictable results of your actions.” How is it that the great champions of debunking seem blind to the mass misery and death this country inflicts routinely while claiming to be the exceptional Good Guys of the world?

If nothing else, the revelations of Manning and Snowden of late have exposed the vast array of lies the government tells with such great facility, often the very lies and types of lies, misinformation, and double-speak Chomsky's been telling us about for decades. Maybe there is a problem with how Chomsky is perceived, that is irrelevant to what the reactions should be to the facts he lays out, and the facts speak for themselves. How can anyone consider themselves a skeptic while appearing incapable of seeing through the national mythology? Surely by now you react in disgust whenever you hear of the great British Empire, well, the US has replaced them as chief exploiter The West was built on the loot from centuries of raping much of Africa, the Americas and large parts of Asia, for a long time on the backs of slaves. And it is still going on, even as we march faster and faster to a climate disaster unavoidable because we won't let facts be an impediment to corporate profits. Where are the skeptics? Makes me a bit ashamed to have ever called myself one.

From: artskeptic
Political issues are not our mission. We cover largely those issues that can be addressed scientifically.  

Some limited aspects of political science can be addressed scientifically. For example, it can be determined through statistics what kind of institutions in which societies provide citizens with the most well being (once a definition of "well being" is agreed upon--that in itself is a great debate.) As a rule, no matter what's being measured, the Scandinavian countries usually come out on  top. Ironically while I am sympathetic to many of Chomsky's viewpoints--his heart is in the right place--he may be on the other end of the political spectrum from the Scandinavian way of governing. I don't follow Chomsky enough to know if he is still calling himself a Marxist, but it just goes to show that political/sociological issues are complex. 

Other issues can not be addressed because data can not be accessed. When Bush was going to go into Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction a couple of our readers called on us to determine if there actually were any. But of course given the situation we couldn't send any specialist in to settle the issue.  Historians could have looked at history and noticed that war is often preceded by exaggerated claims of the other sides faults--that has been studied. So we could have guessed that the weapons of mass destruction claims were exaggerated. But we couldn't have done a scientific determination without actually getting boots on the ground to look for them.

The "bigfoot skepticism" type articles are to show people how investigations can be done and to teach critical thinking skills. When I first read James Randi's classic book "Flimflam" I was puzzled to see that he included an entire chapter on what seemed to be an incredibly silly topic:  fairies. But the story of how Sir Auther Conen Doyle--the inventor if the eminently rational Sherlock Holms--came to believe in fairies is a template for unraveling why people believe in many other extraordinary claims. We are not focused so much on telling people what to believe (what is truth in all cases), as much as we want to teach how to critically analyze things.

mechtheist
 Thank you for taking the time to reply at such length, it really is appreciated. I understand not addressing politics, politics is supposed to be about balancing preferences, values, etc, but what we're dealing with here is facts and how thoroughly the US public is shielded from them. And these are issues that can be addressed scientifically. Manufacturing Consent, written with Edward S. Herman, is a science-based model on how propaganda is used to shape citizen’s perception. That propaganda creates a false view in the public's mind, just like a religion. Not only are his works full of detailed facts that can be compared to the virtual-reality the media projects, they most assuredly are trying to “teach how to critically analyze things”, to quote what you say you are most focused on.

Skeptics often point out how egregious it is when fundamentalists try to defend the episodes of genocide in the OT, but what you're telling me is 'Meh, that's just politics' when it's your country doing the genocide. I can't figure out how Chomsky can be a marxist and also somehow on the opposite side of the spectrum from the Scandinavians? And I doubt he ever called himself a marxist. My guess is you haven't been exposed to Chomsky's work to any significant degree. Let me beg you, and I don't use that word lightly, to see the documentary Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnB8MuQ6DU

This is what Massimo Pigliucci had to say about it:

Rationally Speaking
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Chomsky the anarcho-libertarian
But I had never seen Chomsky in action, a lacuna that was remedied at least partially during the last couple of days, when I watched the documentary “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.” I'm not easily given to hero-worship, and in fact I'm pretty sure that Chomsky himself would be horrified at the prospect, but I must admit that I quickly adopted a new role model for my own modest forays into public intellectualism.

Being exposed to his ideas for the first time had a similar effect on me, powerful and shattering, a bit like what I hear from theists finding their way to atheism after years as a believer. Watch that video, then check out Chomsky on the 501 years since Columbus,
Year 501
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21F-vWXO ... 4M&index=6

Then please get back on whether it's just politics. If you don't want to take the time, you should understand theists who can't be bothered to read a book on evolution, and it means you are comfortable with genocidal policies if done by your own country, it's only wrong when they do it.

artskeptic

you're telling me is 'Meh, that's just politics' 

No I'm not. I'm saying a couple things.
---A single social movement group can't do everything--they have to focus. For example: I'm for saving whales, Bill Gate's work in Africa, and civil rights. I'm against government corruption and waste, child abuse and social oppression. But our focus is on teaching the public how to handle extraordinary science claims. 
    Back in the 60s the civil rights, feminist and anti-war groups that evolved into trying to be all things to all people ended up burning off all their energy (mostly with infighting on where to put their resources) and changing little, while those who were less radical and maintained focus are still with us.

    ---We cant do much with claims of faith or opinion except to point out that that's what they are. If someone claims the Shroud of Turin is Christ's actual burial cloth as a claim of faith, we can't address that. But if they say they have scientific proof that it is, then we can address the specific proof they bring up. 
    For the most part political people are not making specific scientific claims. Their viewpoints are to them self evident, given their peer group and individual interests. While Marxists, the American Religious Right and the more ideological Libertarians all make the claim--as do so many political groups--that their movement is the inevitable wave of the future, these kinds of claims are usually so broad that they fall into the faith category rather than the science category. 



My exposure to Chomsky was more than 20 years years ago when I used to hear an occasional  speech of his on listener sponsored radio. Is he or was he a Marxist? Depends on how you define it. The intellectual anti establishment left has a lot of nit-picky categories as to who is to be called what--socialist this or that, Trotskyite this or that, Leninist this or that...on and on and on....  My recall from back then is that he did use the M word to describe himself  I see the Internet has him now calling himself a "libertarian anarchist".  (I'd like to see someone establish either a pure Libertarian group or a purely anarchist group. Social experiments along these lines thus far usually turn out to be oligarchies dominated by a single charismatic personality. )

mechtheist
  Thanks again for the reply, for taking the time to seriously consider what I said. Chomsky calls himself an anarcho-syndicalist, the 'anarchy' part bears little relation to how the word is usually used, and he seems to have rejected Marxism by the age of twelve-and that was a long long time ago.

I didn't write only to question where are the societies, but where are the skeptics. I haven't really heard any talk of these things at the individual level. You clearly didn't watch the videos and have only a vague memory of what Chomsky discusses, which you have written off as 'marxists', which I informed you he wasn't, and you brushed that off again with further irrelevancies and then threw in some pejoratives about hits 'type' of folk. But then, you don't really know what his type of folk is.

You also seem to think Chomsky preaches about forming some new kind of social order, he doesn't. What he actually does is to try to get the citizens together to end the vicious, brutal, murderous and genocidal behavior of the government. In order to convince people why they need to do so, he lays out a vast array of facts, the kind of thing any decent skeptic could check out since his written work is heavily referenced, and he references much of what he says in the lectures as he speaks.

So, you dismiss what you know nothing of, can't be bothered to learn about what really is even when the references are handed to you, insist your vague, poorly recollected knowledge is true, which it isn't, and gen up straw-man arguments. Can you give me one reason to not call you a creationist? Metaphorically of course, I only mean to say you are a believer in the national mythologies, seem to not want to know the truth, and dismiss or ignore the evidence that is clear and right in front of you. Which is to say, a representative of The Skeptic Society is broadly a swallower of propaganda and resists being better informed about uncomfortable truths. As I said in my letter, I'm ashamed to have called myself a skeptic.

artskeptic

So, you dismiss what you know nothing of, can't be bothered to learn about what really is even when the references are handed to you, insist your vague, poorly recollected knowledge is true, which it isn't, and gen up straw-man argument...

That's rather flattering. No thanks--I don't think I want to have any further conversation with you. 

mechtheist
No,  it was blunt, and it was honest.  This is extremely serious stuff that should bother everyone deeply.  Your reply only emphasizes my point by avoiding addressing the issues I'm raising while not actually disputing my unflattering characterization of your response.  Cutting off the conversation only furthers my position, skeptics shouldn't avoid uncomfortable truths, that's the opposite of how a good skeptic should operate.

I sincerely appreciate your responses, and most definitely meant no offense.

Now, this is really laughable, typical apologist BS

artskeptic

No,  it was blunt, and it was honest.

I do not communicate with people who insist in engaging in ad hominem attacks. 

mechtheist
I'm only replying because it offends my sensibilities to let such an inane accusation stand without protest.  I can't fathom how anyone could interpret my words as ad hominem.  I corrected some errors in your ideas about Chomsky and described your actions/inactions and how they sounded to me like common creationist behavior.  Clearly, none of that is ad hominem.  

Have a good day, sir, I guess I came to the wrong place.

A year later, the second round:

mechtheist
It’s been a little over a year since I wrote to your organization to ask why you fail to cover the religion of nationalism/national mythology, essentially much of the work of Noam Chomsky. In your latest issue of Skeptic, Vol20No1, there is a series on terrorism. It’s pretty good, and actually discusses some of the BS mentioned in my earlier letter, but it’s grossly inadequate. While in my copy of Skeptic this series has more red marks than the backs of any 10 flagellants, one phrase from the third paragraph of the lead article says it all: “. . . an often uncritical media” ‘Uncritical’??? The media actively works to promote the propaganda of administrations. No serious questioning allowed of many of the most serious failures the government, of failures and breeches of the democratic process, of corporate influence etc etc etfucking cetera. Viewing any given day of The Young Turks, or Democracy Now suffices for proof of this.

Right now, there is the Richard Engel scandal at NBC, really serious shit, where it really appears that what was reported was the exact opposite of the truth, and clearly in line with the anti-Assad/Syria push going on back then. Recently we had a media chock full of the same folk that lied us into war with Iraq now trying to lie us into a war with Iran. How often was it mentioned their gross failures in Iraq? Why were these obvious liars and morons even allowed on air? A particularly ludicrous example in this theater of the absurd was administration spokesperson Jen Psaki saying “As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions by nonconstitutional means.” A roomful of serious, actual journalists should have burst out laughing at such doublespeak. Such examples abound, abundant proof of a virtual reality created by the propaganda state we live in, much like the fantasy world of religions, but you appear to have your collective heads buried in the sand.

Failing to address these issues is an egregious failure for a skeptic, it makes calling yourselves skeptics laughable, almost obscene. Chomsky recently sat down for a discussion with Lawrence Kraus, Chomsky & Krauss: An Origins Project Dialogue 

[youtube]http://youtube.com/Ml1G919Bts0?t=1h32m16s[/youtube]
At 1h32m16s, Chomsky's words make manifest the absurdity of skeptics and the skeptic orgs calling themselves 'skeptics' and ‘critical thinkers’:

Chomsky:
“[Everyone] should remember that there is a secular religion that is even more devastating [than theistic religions] and that's things like the concept of american exceptionalism. That's a secular religion."

The exchange regarding my last letter and your representative artskeptic was less than lame, in fact it was pretty much like arguing with a creationist.

As Chomsky says, this secular religion is far more devastating then the theistic religions, the quack medicine, UFOs, etc. It’s the cause of the so many genuine horrors, wars, all matter of ills, to ignore it, to call it ‘politics’, as if that excuses you from addressing what should be your raison d'être, is a gross dereliction of duty for any one or any organization that would call themselves critically thinking skeptics.

artskeptic
If we got a really good article in either critiquing or supporting Chomsky we would consider it, but his ideas and opinions are admittedly not on the top of our list of topics to pursue.

Failing to address these issues is an egregious failure for a skeptic, it makes calling yourselves skeptics laughable, almost obscene.
(By the way,  almost everyone who disagrees with us about anything uses this argument. Seriously--I expect to read it in almost every critical email I open. )

mechtheist
Once again, you don't seem capable of responding.  This article is not about Chomsky, I use Chomsky because he's the most prolific and well known of the many many people and groups out there exposing how propagandized the US is.  I provided a few examples showing how compromised the press is, and in fact is a major contributor to this fabric of non-reality.  You didn't address a single issue I've raised, you seem to have an obsession with Chomsky but know nothing about him whatsoever, as you proved in our last exchange.  Is there anyone in your organization that can actually respond without spewing irrelevancy after irrelevancy?  I didn't want to have contact with you anyway, I thought you weren't going to reply to anything from me again, as you stated in your last email.  This you did after a ridiculous accusation of an ad hominem attack, which not only was ridiculous, but I explained how and why it was, and I got no reply.  You can't respond to anything I've said, you're not worth conversing with.  Please pass this along to someone who is capable of addressing arguments with relevant responses.

My attempted forum post:

Forum Post:

This subforum, Politics and Government, has a brief description "Where no two people are likely to agree." I'm sure this true, but many arguments do indeed have objectively true sides. Right now, in the US, it is objectively true that the repuglicans are largely crazy on many many issues. It is also objectively true that the US is a thoroughly propagandized country and that the press, the corporate-owned media press, is a willing participant in creating this fabric of non-reality. Last year in February, I sent an email to this organization puzzling about why this wasn't a common issue with skeptics and skeptic organizations like this one. Broadly, US citizens live in a mythology, a secular mythology, more pervasive and distorting than any theistic one. How, why, isn't this a major focus of skeptics? It should be the primary focus, as it's the source of most of the worst issues facing this country.

The ensuing exchange I had with artskeptic, the person who responded to my email, was disappointing to say the least. It was exactly like arguing with a creationist. Almost every word I received was non-responsive, points raised ignored or misconstrued, the few actually responsive responses were erroneous in some way, which I pointed out, and this was never acknowledged or responded to in any way. No reference given was looked into, facts cited never addressed. I kept using Noam Chomsky's work to illustrate the issues, he being the most prolific and widely known source in this area. But, Chomsky was an example, not the focus of my inquiry. Artskeptic could not get past some antipathy towards Chomsky, kept bringing him up, with obvious ignorance about his work and false accusations based on this ignorance, as if these irrelevancies answered the points I was attempting to raise.

In March, Lawrence Krauss got Chomsky for Chomsky & Krauss: An Origins Project Dialogue. At the time this link takes you to in the video, Chomsky has the line “[Everyone] should remember that there is a secular religion that is even more devastating [than theistic religions] and that's things like the concept of american exceptionalism. That's a secular religion."
That is exactly the point I was trying to make, and it motivated to try again writing to The Skeptic Society, combining with a response I wanted to make to the lead series in the latest Skeptic magazine, on terrorism. The series is quite good, as is most content of Skeptic. It addresses some of these issues, but is abysmally inadequate. Sadly, the response was no different, making Chomsky the issue and not the facts he tirelessly documents. How can anyone or any organization that calls itself 'skeptic' ignore how pervasively the citizens of this country are propagandized? This secular religion, like Chomsky says, is far more damaging, more widespread, than any religion. Living in a virtual reality is not a successful long-term strategy.

The complete exchanges can be found here[this is link to page with quoted text above].

This is the exchange about my account mysteriously disappearing and how nothing was done about it, not even a reply when I asked why:


And finally, the email to Shermer that was ignored:

To Dr. Michael Shermer,

I’m a longtime member/supporter and fan, I own and have read I think 4, maybe 5 of your books. About a year ago, I wrote to The Skeptic Society, through skepticssociety@skeptic.com, with a sincere question. The ensuing 4-5 exchanges I had with your representative, artskeptic, was worse than disappointing, it made The Skeptic Society look lame and hypocritical at best. It was so bad it was little different from arguing with a creationist. Just recently, I thought I would try again, and the response I got was as bad as the first attempt. In my reply to that, I asked for the letter to be passed on to someone who could actually address the issues I raised, but got no reply. You can see the complete text of both exchanges here: http://breathtakinginanity.com/infos/co ... eptic2.pdf . I know it’s TLDR, but you really should, it’s quite damning to an organization that would call itself ‘skeptic’.

I decided to try the SkepticForum, so I registered, getting a confirmation of my activation, and tried to post this: http://breathtakinginanity.com/infos/Sk ... umPost.pdf. It includes the above link. I got a reply, from Jim Dominic<skepticforum@gmail.com>, saying he couldn’t allow the post because there was a link to private correspondence. I replied explaining how I was writing a ‘letter to the editor’ type email, it wasn’t a correspondence with a private individual but with a representative of The Skeptic Society.

While writing that reply, I tried to log back on to the forum, and my ID was basically gotten rid of. Your forum admin, without giving any reasons, made my already activated account disappear. Continuing the reply to the admin about not posting my words, I described how my ID was just gone and inquired why that had happened. I never received a reply, nor to a quick follow up the next day to again ask why my ID was made to disappear. The 3 emails can be seen here: http://breathtakinginanity.com/infos/sk ... change.pdf

Is this really how you want your organization to act, dumping a longtime supporter/society member, with no explanation and refusing to answer why? And all of this because of a little criticism? This is pathetic, what kind of an organization are you running? This is exactly how creationist and fundamentalists run their forums, how they deal with criticism, do you really want you and The Skeptic Society to be so thoroughly compromised? It’s really worse than lame, it’s laughable.

Wow, this is really long, if anyone made it to here, thanks for taking the time. There will be an addendum , I want to reference some more sources that are not Chomsky. There's many many others trying to get to the citizens to alert them to what is really happening. Jon Stewart was one, he constantly lifted the veil of propaganda by doing nothing more than playing clips with the perpetrators

Edit: fixed picture link

Crank, this is a tremendous post and I applaud you for putting it together. Thank you for the Chomsky videos. I am going to watch it in a few minutes.

In that debate between Chomsky and Sam Harris, Harris illustrated the bubble in which he lives. He can easily exonerate Bill Clinton for blowing up medicine factories in Africa by cloaking his language in the heartless calculations of statistics and collateral damage. On the other hand, Harris seems to think that Al Qaeda and ISIS are beyond the pale.

Chomsky's response, which I think is the correct response, is that at least the Al Qaedas of the world do things to be horrible and grotesque because they know it shocks people. There is a tacit understanding in that that the people they kill are actual humans, even if they are "infidels". On the other hand, the people we kill with bombs and drones are just statistics, numbers and collateral damage.

People on the internet lost their shit because they believed Chomsky was saying Al Qaeda was morally superior to the U.S. He said nothing of the sort. He basically laid out how both sides are able to commit atrocities and called them both terrorists.

The one difference is that the reach, scope, influence and capability of the U.S. enables them to kill more people.

Thanks again for the post.

Nietzschean wrote:

People on the internet lost their shit because they believed Chomsky was saying Al Qaeda was morally superior to the U.S. He said nothing of the sort. He basically laid out how both sides are able to commit atrocities and called them both terrorists.

The one difference is that the reach, scope, influence and capability of the U.S. enables them to kill more people.

Thanks again for the post.

Thank you for the comments. I'm not sure how Chomsky rates the two. I'm inclined to disagree with you, sorry, after being complimentary, but I feel compelled to say so and explain. Al Qaeda directly killed some hundreds, maybe thousands. The US has killed tens of millions. As I said in that thread, they didn't intend to in most cases, they just didn't give a fuck, none, these people are not people as far as the US is concerned. Truly horrific slaughter of thousands of children means nothing. When Madeleine Albright was asked about the 500,000 children starved to death in Iraq, she said without much affect, "We think the price was worth it"



How many orders of magnitude multiples of callous deaths does it take before it means you're worse than the intentional killer? And there are plenty of times when it can't be denied the US intends for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of innocents to die. Just one example, the much celebrated destruction of the dams in N. Korea, a country with a rice diet, that needs the water from those dams. We were quite proud of ourselves on that occasion.

crank wrote:

Nietzschean wrote:

People on the internet lost their shit because they believed Chomsky was saying Al Qaeda was morally superior to the U.S. He said nothing of the sort. He basically laid out how both sides are able to commit atrocities and called them both terrorists.

The one difference is that the reach, scope, influence and capability of the U.S. enables them to kill more people.

Thanks again for the post.

Thank you for the comments. I'm not sure how Chomsky rates the two. I'm inclined to disagree with you, sorry, after being complimentary, but I feel compelled to say so and explain. Al Qaeda directly killed some hundreds, maybe thousands. The US has killed tens of millions. As I said in that thread, they didn't intend to in most cases, they just didn't give a fuck, none, these people are not people as far as the US is concerned. Truly horrific slaughter of thousands of children means nothing. When Madeleine Albright was asked about the 500,000 children starved to death in Iraq, she said without much affect, "We think the price was worth it"



How many orders of magnitude multiples of callous deaths does it take before it means you're worse than the intentional killer? And there are plenty of times when it can't be denied the US intends for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of innocents to die. Just one example, the much celebrated destruction of the dams in N. Korea, a country with a rice diet, that needs the water from those dams. We were quite proud of ourselves on that occasion.

It is all cool. I respect your point and I certainly don't want to derail your thread.

I guess I just brought it up because it was an instance when Chomsky is stepping out of a type of U.S.-created "matrix",whether or not people think he was mistaken in doing so.

Your original post is very well done and should give people food for thought. Cheers.

I am renewed in POeditude, The Skeptic Society has managed to boost my point about what a bunch of pathetic low life pieces of shit they are. In the latest eSkeptic, dated August 26, 2016, there is a review of the movie The Look of Silence. The reviewer early on says this is not a political film. Bullshit bullshit bulllshit. Not a single word about the US culpability, none, unbelievable, inexcusable. I posted about this in What's the Last Film You Watched thread. On DemocracyNow the filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer says this:

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: The United States provided aid, weapons, money to the military so that they could carry out this genocide. They may have been involved with masterminding or conspiring to create the events that were used as a trigger for the genocide, the excuse for the genocide, which was the murder of six army generals by other members of the armed forces. But those whatever—all of the CIA job documents pertaining to this period in Indonesia remain classified, and we’re pushing to have those released. Senator Tom Udall introduced a "sense of the Senate" resolution on the day of the film’s release in Indonesia, saying it’s time for the United States to declassify and to take responsibility for its role in these crimes and to declassify its records.
We know—what we already know is damning enough. We know that, for example, embassy officials were compiling lists of thousands of names of public—of public figures in Indonesia—U.S. Embassy officials—and handing these to the army and saying, "Kill everybody on these lists and check off the names as you go, and give the lists back to us when you’re done." I spoke to one of those men, a man named Robert Martens, early in my journey here, and he talked about how this was crucial intelligence he was giving. But these were public figures. And the United States had already funded and trained the Indonesian army and advised the Indonesian army to be deployed into every village in the country, so they were useless for national defense. They were deployed for internal repression and mass murder. And if you are, like an octopus, with your tentacles, reaching into every village, of course you know—of course you know who a local public figure is—a journalist, an intellectual, a trade union leader—who might be opposed to the military government. So this wasn’t intelligence. This was incitement. This was saying—the United States saying, "Kill everybody. We want this new regime to stick. Kill every possible opponent." The U.S. also provided the radios, deliberately, that allowed the—for the purpose of the military coordinating the massacres across the vast archipelago of 17,000 islands that Indonesia is.
And in The Look of Silence, we also see an NBC News report that celebrates the genocide, more or less, right afterwards. And we see, most chillingly, that Goodyear, a major multinational corporation, is on the rubber plantations, where they’re harvesting the latex for our tires and our condoms. Goodyear is using slave labor drawn from death camps to harvest their rubber. This is, of course, what German corporations did on the periphery of Auschwitz a mere 20 years earlier. But here it’s being broadcast on American TV and celebrated as good news, as a victory for freedom and democracy. It should give every viewer of The Look of Silence pause, leading us to wonder whether this was really done—whether the real reason for U.S. participation was the so-called—the struggle of the so-called free world against the communist world, or whether that was a ruse, a pretext, an excuse, for murderous corporate plunder.
AMY GOODMAN: And this was all about the rise of the U.S.-backed dictator Suharto.
JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: That’s right. This is how Suharto came to power. And he remained in power for 35 years. And while in power, he—the U.S. continued to aid that government and to encourage further abuses, including the invasion and occupation of East Timor, which led to its own genocide, where a third of the population of East Timor was killed. This was all to the tune of billions and billions of dollars aid was showered upon the Suharto dictatorship. And that aid started flowing while the rivers were still choked with bodies.

In the eSkeptic review, the author actually says

For some in the skeptical community, there’s a certain morbid satisfaction to be derived from seeing individual cognitive biases so incisively exposed

What sweet irony, I'm feeling rather morbidly schadenfreude-ish at the moment. What a bunch of putzes!

I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

While I applaud your efforts and I agree with your views, I do wonder why you are aiming your attention at the skeptical society in particular?

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

Don't forget that troll hugin had a permanent priapism over smearing him, too. You can often get an idea of the measure of a person from the shrieking ineptitude of their detractors, chomsky is great example of this

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

I can't read for the most part, so I watch videos. You could spend 24/7 watching Chomsky videos on youtube and it would take probably well in excess of a month or two to get most of them. Most of the objectors to Chomsky really have no clue what he says or writes, he is one of the most mis-quoted, misreported, and deliberately distorted people out there. Do you think the English/British have a glorious past full of bringing great happiness and wellbeing to it's colonies over the years? The US is similarly deluded about it's past. I'm not overstating it about how simply and clearly Chomsky's style is, or how compelling and unrelenting the logic. They don't attack his facts, they're way the fuck too well documented. Does that tell you anything? I fell in love with the guy almost immediately. You won't find many horror movies with anywhere near the horror you'll get from Chomsky. Rage and horror, that's what he does to me, multiply the tobacco guy lying in court by a 2-3 orders of magnitude.

Rumraket wrote:While I applaud your efforts and I agree with your views, I do wonder why you are aiming your attention at the skeptical society in particular?

Because we're skeptics. Or supposed to be. Is it expected for skeptics to be easily deluded?

crank wrote:

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

I can't read for the most part, so I watch videos. You could spend 24/7 watching Chomsky videos on youtube and it would take probably well in excess of a month or two to get most of them. Most of the objectors to Chomsky really have no clue what he says or writes, he is one of the most mis-quoted, misreported, and deliberately distorted people out there. Do you think the English/British have a glorious past full of bringing great happiness and wellbeing to it's colonies over the years? The US is similarly deluded about it's past. I'm not overstating it about how simply and clearly Chomsky's style is, or how compelling and unrelenting the logic. They don't attack his facts, they're way the fuck too well documented. Does that tell you anything? I fell in love with the guy almost immediately. You won't find many horror movies with anywhere near the horror you'll get from Chomsky. Rage and horror, that's what he does to me, multiply the tobacco guy lying in court by a 2-3 orders of magnitude.

Sounds a bit like John Pilger on the face of it.

crank wrote:

Rumraket wrote:While I applaud your efforts and I agree with your views, I do wonder why you are aiming your attention at the skeptical society in particular?

Because we're skeptics. Or supposed to be. Is it expected for skeptics to be easily deluded?

Kind of a loaded question isn't it? I don't really believe skeptics are particularly more rational than anyone else. At least, that's what my time as a skeptic on forums such as these has taught me. Plenty of people around here who are just as irrational as any creationist, just on another topic.

Animavore wrote:

Sounds a bit like John Pilger on the face of it.

Had a wiki-"Pilger has been a strong critic of American, Australian and British foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by an imperialist agenda" That's close. One big difference is Chomsky is a scholar, there's probably a huge difference in style. Chomsky is also, and you'll see people mocking this, and it is too often repeated by introducers, the 'top intellectual in the world.' by some number of different groups doing these kinds of ratings. But, the thing is, he lives up to it. He really is one of the most intelligent guys around. I think it's most easily seen in in his versatility outside of his field of linguistics. He's considered by many, who don't have a knee-jerk reaction to anything he says, to have made seminal contributions to a number of fields other than linguistics. The rather juvenile carping you hear about even his linguistics contribution is ludicrous.

As it pertains to his political output, not only is it prodigious, but it exhibits his ability to absorb shitloads of data across many areas and condense it down to his extremely accessible prose/speaking style. You'll hear him called boring or too dry, but he says it's intentional, too much dramatics takes away, distracts, from the message. If you listen to that first video, the 501, you'll get a really good overall view of a lot of his work. After you listen for just a little while, you'll start to get really surprised how much info he packs into his his sparse speaking style.

Not that I'm hyping him or anything. PS, Did you know the US maybe with UK help, shit its been too long since I saw this, but they basically rigged an Aussie PM election? There was much skulduggery & shenanigans, and pissed off people

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

As with all Marxists, nobody has any issue with the problems he raises. It's his solutions. Of course, if you criticise Marxist solutions, then Marxists claim you're blind to the problems, which is their way of smearing anyone who disagrees with their purge-and-gulags approach.

Strontium Dog wrote:

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

As with all Marxists, nobody has any issue with the problems he raises. It's his solutions. Of course, if you criticise Marxist solutions, then Marxists claim you're blind to the problems, which is their way of smearing anyone who disagrees with their purge-and-gulags approach.

The implicit butt-hurt of this content-less post makes me want to read him more.

You see what I mean?

Animavore wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

As with all Marxists, nobody has any issue with the problems he raises. It's his solutions. Of course, if you criticise Marxist solutions, then Marxists claim you're blind to the problems, which is their way of smearing anyone who disagrees with their purge-and-gulags approach.

The implicit butt-hurt of this content-less post makes me want to read him more.

Butt hurt? I couldn't give two fucks what Chomsky thinks about anything. His only utility is in helping mark out those individuals who, by virtue of their Chomsky fanboyism, have nothing of any value to say.

Strontium Dog wrote:

Animavore wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

As with all Marxists, nobody has any issue with the problems he raises. It's his solutions. Of course, if you criticise Marxist solutions, then Marxists claim you're blind to the problems, which is their way of smearing anyone who disagrees with their purge-and-gulags approach.

The implicit butt-hurt of this content-less post makes me want to read him more.

Butt hurt? I couldn't give two fucks what Chomsky thinks about anything. His only utility is in helping mark out those individuals who, by virtue of their Chomsky fanboyism, have nothing of any value to say.

Clearly you do give a fuck as is evidenced by your last pouty, passive aggressive post. If you truly didn't give a fuck you'd've said nothing.

Animavore wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:

Animavore wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:

As with all Marxists, nobody has any issue with the problems he raises. It's his solutions. Of course, if you criticise Marxist solutions, then Marxists claim you're blind to the problems, which is their way of smearing anyone who disagrees with their purge-and-gulags approach.

The implicit butt-hurt of this content-less post makes me want to read him more.

Butt hurt? I couldn't give two fucks what Chomsky thinks about anything. His only utility is in helping mark out those individuals who, by virtue of their Chomsky fanboyism, have nothing of any value to say.

Clearly you do give a fuck as is evidenced by your last pouty, passive aggressive post. If you truly didn't give a fuck you'd've said nothing.

I'm explaining to you why other people give a fuck, as you seemed to be wondering about that.

If you want, I can explain to you how discussion forums work?

Strontium Dog wrote:

Animavore wrote:I really must read this Noam Chomsky fella. He seems to rock the boat and I know from this site and Rationalia that ex-military types seem to hate him or at least think he's clueless, the saying 'ivory tower' is common. And of course he's derided as a 'Commie' by right-wing types.

As with all Marxists, nobody has any issue with the problems he raises. It's his solutions. Of course, if you criticise Marxist solutions, then Marxists claim you're blind to the problems, which is their way of smearing anyone who disagrees with their purge-and-gulags approach.

Hi Strontium Dog. I am not asking this as a smart ass (I'm really not). What is your interpretation of Marxism? You can even PM me if you don't want to get into it here. Or you can totally ignore me and that is cool too.

To a certain extent I sympathize with your sentiment because I have met my fair share of doctrinaire leftists who love shitting on everyone, especially other leftists, for not marching lockstep with every single thing they say. I usually call these people Trotskyists, especially if they are part of a leftist organization.

Chomsky does simplify things from time to time (but who doesn't?). Overall though, I think his voice is necessary in the intellectual wilderness that is the U.S.A.