So…About Chomsky. (Noam Chomsky’s Tragic Coda.)

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I think it's fair to say that there aren't many thinkers and theorists that I've relied on as much as Nome Chomsky.

I mean, he's near the top, to be sure. Now, unlike the right-wing movement that is incapable of introspection,

the revelations about Chomsky's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein have caused a bit of a stir on the left.

So let's talk about Chomsky and the nature of hero warship.

Nome Chomsky's Sheen had already diminished when it was initially reported that he'd maintained a casual correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein,

and once he even defended this relationship to the Wall Street Journal, saying,

I'm unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.

And that artist was Woody Allen, so there's a lot here. Further insight into his take on hobnobbing with objectively terrible people is found in this response to the Harvard Crimson.

I've met all sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don't regret having met any of them.

Okay, there's meeting war criminals and social pariahs as part of one's work and travels, and then there's choosing to befriend them and even advise them about the very thing that made them a pariah.

Now, one of the correspondences leaked in the recent drop was an email that cannot be misinterpreted in any way.

The best way to proceed is to ignore it begins Chomsky. That's particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women,

which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder. Like I said, impossible to misinterpret.

I mean, he is, after all, our most famous linguist, and he is or was one of my favorite public intellectuals.

I even joined in on the fun after the release of Captain Fantastic where they promoted the idea of Nome Chomsky Day. I even put it on our podcast calendar.

That's the movie I don't know if you remember, but it's where one of the children in the movie challenges the notion of celebrating Chomsky Day over Christmas,

and the Vigo Mortensen character says,

You would prefer to celebrate a magical, fictitious elf instead of a living humanitarian who's done so much to promote human rights and understanding.

But here's where the discussion about hero worship enters the picture.

So when I first started on YouTube, I toyed with a segment called Heroes and Villains,

because I was deep into name checking all of these horrible neoliberal figures who were responsible for tearing down liberal institutions.

So to balance the equation, I wanted to profile people who offered positive contributions to the project of Unfucking the Republic.

Now, I didn't get very far. I think the series contains exactly three entries, Peter Teal and Ayn Rand is Villains,

and Nome Chomsky as our lone hero.

Now, ultimately, I found the style of writing and the presentation to be beneath the conceit of the entire show,

but rather than just go back and erase that like it never happened, I wanted to stand up to it and dissect it properly.

What I value about Chomsky is his ability to pierce the veil of complexity.

No jargon or reliance on high-minded theories and inaccessible language,

just straightforward, unemotional analyses offered with moral clarity.

And yes, I just said moral clarity unironically.

Now, that's not to say his political views were invaluable, for example.

A lot of people have criticized his reluctance to clear a prior stances on events like

the atrocities of the Kimmer Rouge, once evidence mounted to contradict his statements.

But these missteps were few and far between and in otherwise extremely long and very prolific career.

So clear were his investigations that Chomsky became kind of a gateway drug for burgeoning leftists.

He was the Oracle of Common Sense, the easily quotable gut check on endless inquiries

that were complicated by the likes of his other leftist contemporaries like Foucault or Zizek, right?

So he wasn't caustic or biting, although he could be dismissive and disagreeable.

And he was accessible in a literal and figurative terms.

I mean, I'm seemingly one of hundreds of thousands of people who can genuinely claim to have myself

had a personal email correspondence with this guy.

So as the author of countless books and lectures,

Chomsky has become one of the most quoted people in history.

I mean, up there with names like Plato and Freud.

But his antipathy towards structures of power and his critique of capitalism made him an outsider

to mainstream culture that portrayed him as a crank and a Marxist.

And he's neither, by the way.

So Chomsky's true superpower is a photographic memory.

His ability to retrieve names and dates and facts made him the perfect interlocutor.

And a nightmare for anyone who dared oppose him in a public forum,

which is something that William F. Buckley found out the hard way,

which is why Chomsky was never invited back to his show and was rarely invited to participate

in this modern debate culture.

He's also really long-winded.

He's disarming, yet not charming.

He's dispassionate, yet stubborn.

He suffers no fools, but he's willing to engage with anyone.

But his monotone presentation is a surefire cure for insomnia.

So very hard to have him on these type of shows that look for soundbites.

So that's why you don't hear as much about him in the mainstream.

But, you know, for education purposes and for people looking to do deep dives

into leftist theories and kind of check their own sensibilities and ideas about the world,

he was amazing.

Now throughout his career, he cared very little what anyone thought of him.

And he appeared not to engage in the sort of careerism that someone of his stature might fall victim to.

In fact, he maintained this disheveled professor persona for decades

and appeared to care little about the trappings of fame or fortune.

And then along came Jeffrey Epstein.

Yeah, and it turns out Chomsky is deeply fallible after all.

Now this is more than Chomsky just responding to anyone that reached out to him.

This is a personal relationship that he apparently cherished.

So much so that he was more than willing to overlook one of the worst crimes that a person could commit

and he minimized them and offered advice on how to navigate the negative publicity associated with them.

He nourished this friendship.

He sought personal advice and accepted lavish gifts like private jet rides and accommodations.

And he did so after it was fully apparent what Epstein had done.

So this wasn't a blind spot.

It was an absolution.

Before the full scope of their relationship came to light, I too found myself offering excuses.

I said things like, well, John Lennon was an abusive asshole, but it doesn't make the music bad.

And the history is rife with people who did extraordinary things for the world, but who lacked character.

Liars, cheats and scoundrels who we celebrate to this day are lauded for their lasting impact on from their work,

not from their lapses and personal judgment.

Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr. John Kennedy, just to name a couple.

So is this really any different?

Yeah, I think it is.

These other figures and men like them, mostly men, sought power as the head of governments or the head of movements.

And whether you think it's fair to put people like FDR, MLK and JFK together is less relevant than what they mean to the culture and to history.

See, we forgave them their personal sins because of who they fought for and how they fought for it.

We overlooked their flandering ways to see the bigger picture, but Chomsky was the bigger picture.

He wasn't asking for power. He was giving it to us.

He was guiding us to see the true nature of corrupting power and to give us the tools to dismantle it with moral clarity and objectivity.

I mean, his seminal contribution outside of his chosen field of linguistics was this concept of manufactured consent and how the powerful use it to oppress and silence.

And his final act was to personally advise one of the most powerful and evil men of this era on how to manufacture consent while absolving him of the most egregious acts that a powerful man can perform.

There's no difference in my mind at least between this behavior and that of a Christian nationalist leader who absolves Donald Trump through the prosperity doctrine that suggests that wealth and power in this life means that Jesus already favors you.

Now, Chomsky remains a potent gateway to leftist ideology because his prose is so plain, so accessible and so clear.

It's there if you need it. In fact, in my original piece on him, I referenced a Bill Moyers profile on Chomsky from 1988 where Moyers asks him whether it takes special access or training or education to positively impact the social and political discourse.

And Chomsky responds by saying that it's different than the other sciences that it's completely accessible if you just think critically and behave honestly.

And understanding this, ironically empowers us to bury his legacy for good.

You're right, Nome. There is nothing special about this discipline. No super intellect or photographic memory is required to see things clearly.

But it turns out that honesty is a little bit harder to come by.