Pretty obvious - substitute ‘all-knowing being’ for ‘evil human power structure’, and it’s plainly a sinister bit of propaganda seeking to impose unquestioning loyalty.
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This is known as showing off your vocabulary. It has nothing to do with accelerating (imminentizing) the end of the world, by sacrificing red heifers, or what not.
Rather, it’s a heresy alleged to be practiced by utopian political movements. Don’t even try to make the wolf dwell with the lamb, or to bring peace amongst nations, etc, etc because to do so is to ursurp God.
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Holy freakin christ, why don’t these religiosity types just keep that crap to themselves? Why drag the rest of the world down their depressingly deadly glory hole? I mean, take a clue from David Koresh in 1993 or Jim Jones back in the 70s. Just take yourself and your believers (the brainwashed masses), go out back and shoot yourselves. I promise, you’ll meet the baby jesus.
Red cows. Really.
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Showing off my vocabulary doesn’t count if I can’t be bothered to spellcheck. But that’s interesting - I had always assumed it meant accelerating the end-times in a purely destructive way, just sort of burning it all down so (some) people could get to heaven.
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I can’t speak to the Abraham story, but in the story of Job it’s clear that He is a degenerate gambler. Maybe there was a bet behind this one, too
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I don’t disagree, but we should probably start a different thread; this is way off topic…
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You will never find me, for one, arguing with Noam Chomsky.
Military Industrial Complex, anyone?
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It’s a poor way of phrasing the truth, which is that the GOP is currently the organisation that poses the greatest threat to humanity’s future. He doesn’t get a pass for that gaffe, what with his bloody academic specialty.
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boredom. “All the other Gods have creatures to play with and kill. Why not me?!”
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Boredom is yet another human trait.
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It’s a variation on the same game that everyone else in power is playing on macro and micro scales: get yours in whatever way you can at whatever cost to others, then pull up that ladder just before things go truly pear-shaped.
For Russia as a whole that currently means: reconstructing the old Russian/Soviet empire as closely as possible (which will require the Western economic and military consensus to come to an end – hence the recent shenanigans); establishing itself as a regional power (good enough in a post-superpower world, especially one where liberal democracy is no longer the norm); using its nukes and military to be the neighbourhood bully when it needs something; squeezing what economic and geopolitical leverage it can out of the fossil fuels (including the deposits currently under the Arctic); and toughing it out next 30-40 years as the bills for climate change and late-stage capitalism start coming due.
What happens after that? The current powers-that-be in Russia, like right-wingers over age 55 in the U.S. and elsewhere, don’t give a damn about what happens to their kids and grandkids (or think that hoarded wealth will somehow save them).
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BTW, I bet Gareth Evans would be pretty chuffed to know Chmosky thinks he was a PM.
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*Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes
*Just Who Is This God Person Anyway?
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No, he is very specific that he means “the most dangerous organization in human history”, and doesn’t need a “pass” for that phrasing.
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I don’t know. Does there need to be a “most dangerous entity ever!” declared at all? The US government itself strikes me as a pretty good candidate. Ecological catastrophe has been ignored by all parties in power for a very long time. The Paris Accord is arranging deck chairs on the Titanic in addition to being non-binding and far under realistic course-correction numbers. And the US government is 100% responsible for the very existence of nukes (under our socialist-leaning president FDR), not to mention their proliferation. The GOP of today (and really, the past 30 years give or take) is a soulless, morally bankrupt group, but I’m under no illusions that they are solely responsible for the state of affairs. They are trying to take them to their logical conclusion, but they have not been alone.
As I mentioned above, I don’t really care. Noam is free to use a little hyperbole now and then, but it’s just silly. And, as I also mentioned above, very western-centric thinking.
Edited for clarity and spelling.
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I was trying to be charitable to him, but absent that charity I’d have to agree with @cannibalpeas that Chomsky, as much as I agree with him on some other issues, is just plain wrong on this one. There have been many other organisations throughout recorded history that, had they prevailed in their goals, would have posed an existential threat to humanity. Just because they lost doesn’t mean they disappear from history.
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Gotta say i agree with Chomsky on this one.
Did those earlier organizations have at their disposal all that the current GOP has, as the ruling party of the most powerful empire ever? (Of course not.)
It’s the power they currently have wedded with their heedless ideology that makes them the most dangerous ever, not merely their ideology.
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When those organisations were the ruling powers behind truly totalitarian one-party governments and absolute monarchies that ran the most powerful empires of their day, they indeed had more unchecked power than the modern Republicans currently enjoy.
I don’t dispute that things are looking bad in the U.S. in terms of surveillance and internment camps and such. I also don’t dispute that the GOP wants single-party rule and has made great strides toward realising that ambition (gerrymandering, Citizens United, undermining the independent judiciary, etc.). However, until I see them accomplish their goal (and I keep a weather eye on a number of flags in this regard) it’s still hyperbole on Chomsky’s part.
As I noted above, they have the strong potential to be the most dangerous organisation in human history, but at this point the jury’s still out.
… notwithstanding their sweeping, anti-democratic process, gerrymandering.
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Sure, but did those earlier organizations have at their disposal all that the current GOP has, as the ruling party of the most powerful empire ever? (Of course not.)
Let’s not overlook that Chomsky’s talking about most dangerous not in terms of relative power within any given historical context, but rather in terms of ending life as we know it, or as people used to say, ending human civilization.
Granted, but Chomsky’s never been a member of the jury/peanut gallery/etc. As he’s said before (paraphrasing here), when you tell the truth to most people, it sounds like news from Neptune.
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