© Andrew Rusk/FLICKRNoam Chomsky
After 18 months of Trump in the White House, American politics finds itself at a crossroads. The United States has moved unmistakably toward a novel form of fascism that serves corporate interests and the military, while promoting at the same time a highly reactionary social agenda infused with religious and crude nationalistic overtones, all with an uncanny touch of political showmanship. In this exclusive Truthout interview, world-renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky analyzes some of the latest developments in Trumpland and their consequences for democracy and world order.
C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, I want to start by asking for your reading of what took place at the Singapore summit, and the way this event was covered in the US media. Noam Chomsky: It's reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn't bark.
What was important was what didn't happen. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not undermine the prospects for moving forward. Specifically, he did not disrupt the process initiated by the two Koreas in their historic April 27 [Panmunjom] Declaration, in which they "affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord" (repeat:
on their own accord), and for the first time presented a detailed program as to how to proceed.
It is to Trump's credit that he did not undermine these efforts, and in fact made a move toward facilitating them by cancelling the US-South Korean war games, which, as he correctly said, are "very provocative." We would certainly not tolerate anything of the sort on our borders - or anywhere on the planet - even if they were not run by a superpower which not long before had utterly devastated our country with the flimsiest of pretexts after the war was effectively over, glorying in the major war crimes it had committed, like bombing major dams, after there was nothing else to bomb.
Beyond the achievement of letting matters proceed, which was not slight, no "diplomatic skills" were involved in Trump's triumph. The coverage has been quite instructive, in part because of the efforts of the Democrats to outflank Trump from the right. Beyond that, the coverage across the spectrum
illustrates quite well two distinct kinds of deceit: lying and not telling relevant truths. Each merits comment.
Comment: The bigger the ship (of state), the harder it is to turn around unless the captain understands its mechanics, the sea in which it is sailing, and has the know-how to commandeer the vessel to its ultimate course - that spot on the horizon. Is Trump that captain? Robert Gore has some ideas on that question.