Noam Chomsky hasn’t yet spoken publicly about the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, but we can surmise his views from a recent interview with The Guardian.
When asked what he thought of a Donald Trump presidency, he responded:
“It’s hard to say because we don’t really know what he thinks. And I’m not sure he knows what he thinks. He’s perfectly capable of saying contradictory things at the same time. But there are some pretty stable elements of his ideology, if you can even grant him that concept. One of them is: “Climate change is not taking place.” As he puts it: “Forget it.” And that’s almost a death knell for the species – not tomorrow, but the decisions we take now are going to affect things in a couple of decades, and in a couple of generations it could be catastrophic.”
Chomsky explained what he would like to see happen with the next administration in the United States:
“I would like to see serious and significant steps made to put an end to the use of fossil fuels, to create sustainable energy systems and to save the world – as much as we can – from likely environmental catastrophe. I would move very quickly towards de-escalating military confrontations, which are quite serious, and move towards fulfilling our legal obligation to rid the world of nuclear weapons. I would like countries to become democracies, not plutocracies.”
He also said that no matter what happens in this election, we need to work towards turning the American political system from a plutocracy into a democracy. How can we do this?
“It’s not very hard. In the US, it simply means going back to mainstream ideas. To quote John Dewey, the leading US social philosopher of the 20th century, until all institutions – industrial, commercial, media, others – are under democratic control, or in the hands of what we now call stakeholders, politics will be the shadow cast by big business over society. That’s elementary and it can be done.”
Given that the American people have elected Trump to the presidency. our task is more urgent to ensure all institutions are under democratic control.
Noam Chomsky Predicted The Rise Of Trump 6 Years Ago
The post Noam Chomsky on How to Respond to a Trump Presidency appeared first on Educate Inspire Change.