WEBVTT 00:00:01.501 --> 00:00:03.870 The following content is provided under a Creative 00:00:03.870 --> 00:00:05.238 Commons license. 00:00:05.238 --> 00:00:07.474 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:07.474 --> 00:00:11.544 continue to offer high-quality educational resources for free. 00:00:11.544 --> 00:00:14.080 To make a donation, or to view additional materials 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:18.051 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:18.051 --> 00:00:22.956 at ocw.mit.edu. 00:00:22.956 --> 00:00:26.426 AUDIENCE: I think with the past election-- 00:00:26.426 --> 00:00:29.529 so Donald Trump is, obviously, one of the 1%, right? 00:00:29.529 --> 00:00:33.033 So why do you think there's such different views on 00:00:33.033 --> 00:00:35.502 whether or not he's representative of America, 00:00:35.502 --> 00:00:37.804 whether being the American dream or being or being one 00:00:37.804 --> 00:00:40.073 of the "crooks" in the top 1%? 00:00:40.073 --> 00:00:43.676 NOAM CHOMSKY: For one thing, there's no America. 00:00:43.676 --> 00:00:46.179 There's many splits. 00:00:46.179 --> 00:00:49.149 And some of the splits are quite sharp. 00:00:49.149 --> 00:00:56.022 In fact, this country has become polarized in the last 50 years 00:00:56.022 --> 00:00:59.592 to an extent that's never happened before. 00:00:59.592 --> 00:01:04.464 In fact, just take a look at the two political parties. 00:01:04.464 --> 00:01:12.939 Up until the 1960s, the parties weren't all that different. 00:01:12.939 --> 00:01:16.076 You couldn't distinguish a moderate Republican 00:01:16.076 --> 00:01:17.676 from a liberal democrat. 00:01:17.676 --> 00:01:21.146 They're more or less alike. 00:01:21.146 --> 00:01:26.553 By now, the parties are so differentiated that literally 00:01:26.553 --> 00:01:29.989 people don't intermarry across parties. 00:01:29.989 --> 00:01:31.925 And it's become-- literally, there 00:01:31.925 --> 00:01:34.194 are some good studies of it. 00:01:34.194 --> 00:01:39.065 And what actually happened is it's connected with race. 00:01:39.065 --> 00:01:42.535 Up until the 1960s, the Democrats 00:01:42.535 --> 00:01:47.539 were kind of a coalition of Southern Democrats, 00:01:47.539 --> 00:01:50.910 all extreme racists, and people who 00:01:50.910 --> 00:01:54.414 were very powerful because they stayed in office forever 00:01:54.414 --> 00:01:58.384 since the South was a one-party region. 00:01:58.384 --> 00:02:00.887 Take a look at "The New York Times" this morning. 00:02:00.887 --> 00:02:03.490 There's a headline about one-party Alabama. 00:02:03.490 --> 00:02:06.693 Everybody is a Republican, as if that's something new. 00:02:06.693 --> 00:02:09.262 That goes back to the Civil War, except now they 00:02:09.262 --> 00:02:10.330 call them Republicans. 00:02:10.330 --> 00:02:12.432 They used to call them Democrats. 00:02:12.432 --> 00:02:15.602 But same system, basically. 00:02:15.602 --> 00:02:18.938 But the Southern Democrats were extremely powerful 00:02:18.938 --> 00:02:22.509 because the senators had senior positions. 00:02:22.509 --> 00:02:24.644 They'd been there forever. 00:02:24.644 --> 00:02:26.146 There was a big block. 00:02:26.146 --> 00:02:29.849 They had a big effect on legislation. 00:02:29.849 --> 00:02:32.352 So if you look at the New Deal legislation, 00:02:32.352 --> 00:02:33.786 there was a lot of progress. 00:02:33.786 --> 00:02:36.055 But it was straight racist. 00:02:36.055 --> 00:02:38.825 So Social Security, for example. 00:02:38.825 --> 00:02:41.094 The Southern Democrats were willing to permit 00:02:41.094 --> 00:02:45.098 it to go through as long as it excluded blacks. 00:02:45.098 --> 00:02:46.199 And it did. 00:02:46.199 --> 00:02:49.536 So Social Security was designed to exclude 00:02:49.536 --> 00:02:53.139 the majority of the workforce, agricultural and domestic 00:02:53.139 --> 00:02:54.007 workers. 00:02:54.007 --> 00:02:56.676 Namely, African Americans. 00:02:56.676 --> 00:03:01.514 The GI Bill gave-- it was a segregated army. 00:03:01.514 --> 00:03:04.951 So it didn't go to blacks. 00:03:04.951 --> 00:03:07.754 All the way through, the Southern Democrats 00:03:07.754 --> 00:03:11.491 were willing to tolerate reformist measures 00:03:11.491 --> 00:03:17.997 as long as it maintained the Southern system of deep racism. 00:03:17.997 --> 00:03:24.404 And what amounted to new kinds of slavery. 00:03:24.404 --> 00:03:28.141 Well, what happened in the 1960s was the civil rights 00:03:28.141 --> 00:03:30.276 movement broke through this. 00:03:30.276 --> 00:03:36.182 The Democrats began to pick up civil rights legislation. 00:03:36.182 --> 00:03:38.952 And the Southern Democrats simply pulled out. 00:03:38.952 --> 00:03:42.355 That's Nixon's famous Southern strategy, 00:03:42.355 --> 00:03:47.060 let's appeal to the South and turn them into Republicans 00:03:47.060 --> 00:03:49.495 on straight racist grounds. 00:03:49.495 --> 00:03:51.598 So the parties realigned. 00:03:51.598 --> 00:03:54.200 And a large part of rural America 00:03:54.200 --> 00:03:55.802 went along with it, too. 00:03:55.802 --> 00:03:58.504 That's quite separate from urban America. 00:03:58.504 --> 00:04:02.842 The lines became sharper during the neoliberal years, when 00:04:02.842 --> 00:04:04.744 rural America was just smashed. 00:04:04.744 --> 00:04:08.615 Rural America meant working class, industrial America. 00:04:08.615 --> 00:04:12.051 Small towns with those industries and so on. 00:04:12.051 --> 00:04:14.220 That was all smashed. 00:04:14.220 --> 00:04:17.490 Urban America, that's where the 1% is. 00:04:17.490 --> 00:04:20.860 That's where we come from-- the people who prosper, 00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:23.162 the more educated, and so on. 00:04:23.162 --> 00:04:28.501 So these splits became extremely sharp. 00:04:28.501 --> 00:04:32.672 It's increased with new media. 00:04:32.672 --> 00:04:37.143 So the cable television, social media, and so on. 00:04:37.143 --> 00:04:40.513 One of their effects is to intensify the split. 00:04:40.513 --> 00:04:50.056 So one part of America lives in talk radio and Fox News. 00:04:50.056 --> 00:04:52.759 I don't know if you listen to talk radio here, 00:04:52.759 --> 00:04:54.294 but you should. 00:04:54.294 --> 00:04:56.362 I often listen to it when I'm driving. 00:04:56.362 --> 00:04:58.064 It's very interesting. 00:04:58.064 --> 00:05:01.467 And what's interesting is not Rush Limbaugh and those guys. 00:05:01.467 --> 00:05:02.702 They're predictable. 00:05:02.702 --> 00:05:05.838 But the people who call in are what's interesting. 00:05:05.838 --> 00:05:09.442 And that's a slice of Boston. 00:05:09.442 --> 00:05:11.544 We're not talking about Mississippi. 00:05:11.544 --> 00:05:13.413 We're talking about Boston. 00:05:13.413 --> 00:05:18.818 It's a slice of Boston which is in some other universe. 00:05:18.818 --> 00:05:20.653 The things they believe, the things they 00:05:20.653 --> 00:05:22.989 hear, the things they read. 00:05:22.989 --> 00:05:26.559 That's why, I forget the exact number. 00:05:26.559 --> 00:05:30.563 But maybe half-- some large percentage of Republicans 00:05:30.563 --> 00:05:33.466 think that Obama is a Muslim and that he wasn't 00:05:33.466 --> 00:05:35.168 born in the United States. 00:05:35.168 --> 00:05:37.603 You hear that drummed into your head all the time. 00:05:37.603 --> 00:05:38.971 OK. 00:05:38.971 --> 00:05:43.142 And of course, the hatred of Obama was substantially racist. 00:05:43.142 --> 00:05:48.348 I mean, why is the Affordable Care Act called Obamacare 00:05:48.348 --> 00:05:50.683 by Democrats, by liberals? 00:05:50.683 --> 00:05:53.853 Was Medicare called Johnsoncare? 00:05:53.853 --> 00:05:54.921 Of course not. 00:05:54.921 --> 00:05:56.556 We just accept the racism. 00:05:56.556 --> 00:05:58.591 It's part of us. 00:05:58.591 --> 00:06:00.693 So sure, it's Obamacare. 00:06:00.693 --> 00:06:02.862 This black guy pushed it through. 00:06:02.862 --> 00:06:05.932 And that's liberal Democrats call it that. 00:06:05.932 --> 00:06:07.934 We don't even think about it. 00:06:07.934 --> 00:06:10.470 But it's because it's all deeply ingrained. 00:06:10.470 --> 00:06:14.740 And when you get to parts of the culture where that's all 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:19.645 they hear-- talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Loren McLaughlin, 00:06:19.645 --> 00:06:20.847 or whatever her name is. 00:06:20.847 --> 00:06:24.717 You really have to hear this stuff to believe it. 00:06:24.717 --> 00:06:30.990 And for large parts of rural, lower middle-class, 00:06:30.990 --> 00:06:33.993 small businessmen, the kind of people who vote for Trump, 00:06:33.993 --> 00:06:35.828 that's what they live with. 00:06:35.828 --> 00:06:38.831 And by now, with the reconstruction 00:06:38.831 --> 00:06:41.478 of the political parties-- the Republicans 00:06:41.478 --> 00:06:43.069 are an interesting party. 00:06:43.069 --> 00:06:49.242 They are slavishly dedicated to the welfare of the super-rich 00:06:49.242 --> 00:06:51.344 and the corporations. 00:06:51.344 --> 00:06:53.479 Take a look at their legislative programs. 00:06:53.479 --> 00:06:56.249 Paul Ryan is the extreme example. 00:06:56.249 --> 00:06:59.652 The most savage, brutal programs you can think of. 00:06:59.652 --> 00:07:03.022 So that's the actual Republican Party. 00:07:03.022 --> 00:07:04.791 But their constituency is people who are 00:07:04.791 --> 00:07:11.164 being harmed by these programs. 00:07:11.164 --> 00:07:14.567 It's the kind of paradox that Arlie Hochschild 00:07:14.567 --> 00:07:16.436 wanted to understand. 00:07:16.436 --> 00:07:20.306 And I think when you read through what she found, 00:07:20.306 --> 00:07:21.774 you can understand it. 00:07:21.774 --> 00:07:26.078 But even true of things like environmental issues. 00:07:26.078 --> 00:07:30.016 So in the Bayou area where she was working and living, 00:07:30.016 --> 00:07:32.652 there's an extremely high rate of cancer. 00:07:32.652 --> 00:07:35.121 In fact, it's called Cancer Alley. 00:07:35.121 --> 00:07:38.191 And the reasons for it are the petrochemical corporations 00:07:38.191 --> 00:07:42.829 who just pour poisonous chemicals into the Bayou. 00:07:42.829 --> 00:07:45.031 And these are people who live in the environment. 00:07:45.031 --> 00:07:45.631 They hunt. 00:07:45.631 --> 00:07:48.401 They fish. 00:07:48.401 --> 00:07:50.403 Quite apart from the fact that their children 00:07:50.403 --> 00:07:52.605 are dying of cancer. 00:07:52.605 --> 00:07:55.308 These people are environmentalists. 00:07:55.308 --> 00:07:58.978 And the people they vote for are the ones 00:07:58.978 --> 00:08:01.447 who want to destroy the EPA. 00:08:01.447 --> 00:08:05.084 And when you look into it, it turns out there's a reason. 00:08:05.084 --> 00:08:09.088 For them, what the EPA means is some guy 00:08:09.088 --> 00:08:12.391 in a suit who comes from Washington and tells us, 00:08:12.391 --> 00:08:14.527 you can't fish here. 00:08:14.527 --> 00:08:16.262 That's the EPA. 00:08:16.262 --> 00:08:19.532 But that guy does nothing about the petrochemical plants. 00:08:19.532 --> 00:08:24.003 So why shouldn't they want to get rid of the EPA? 00:08:24.003 --> 00:08:26.873 That's their lives. 00:08:26.873 --> 00:08:30.209 That's the kind of lives that these people are living. 00:08:30.209 --> 00:08:34.551 And when you see it firsthand-- and even you 00:08:34.551 --> 00:08:38.343 can see it right here if you want to-- you 00:08:38.343 --> 00:08:40.019 can understand the attitudes. 00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:44.190 They're not as paradoxical as they sound. 00:08:44.190 --> 00:08:47.593 It's leading to a very strange situation in the country. 00:08:47.593 --> 00:08:50.363 Very dangerous one. 00:08:50.363 --> 00:08:54.467 Incidentally, most of the Trump voters 00:08:54.467 --> 00:08:56.969 were not working class and poor. 00:08:56.969 --> 00:08:59.872 They're mostly kind of lower middle-class or very rich. 00:08:59.872 --> 00:09:01.874 Those two groups. 00:09:01.874 --> 00:09:05.211 But there were working people who voted for Trump, 00:09:05.211 --> 00:09:09.282 or who voted for Scott Brown here. 00:09:09.282 --> 00:09:13.152 And many of those people voted for Obama. 00:09:13.152 --> 00:09:18.824 They believed his rhetoric about hope and change. 00:09:18.824 --> 00:09:23.162 And when they saw very quickly that hope and change means 00:09:23.162 --> 00:09:26.532 money for bankers and nothing for us, 00:09:26.532 --> 00:09:29.201 they became deeply disillusioned. 00:09:29.201 --> 00:09:34.173 And so they're now trusting the word of a con man who 00:09:34.173 --> 00:09:37.376 also says hope and change. 00:09:37.376 --> 00:09:40.079 But it's not that different from the 2008 election 00:09:40.079 --> 00:09:42.682 in some respects. 00:09:42.682 --> 00:09:50.133 Just a different con man. 00:09:50.133 --> 00:09:51.591 AUDIENCE: How do you think we could 00:09:51.591 --> 00:09:56.596 go about trying to change the attitudes of like, what 00:09:56.596 --> 00:09:58.531 people think that the EPA does? 00:09:58.531 --> 00:10:00.199 Or like, that idea of being in a line? 00:10:00.199 --> 00:10:03.402 How do you think we could change that? 00:10:03.402 --> 00:10:06.138 NOAM CHOMSKY: By interacting with people. 00:10:06.138 --> 00:10:07.306 It's the only way. 00:10:07.306 --> 00:10:11.310 That's what organizing and activism are about. 00:10:11.310 --> 00:10:16.849 You have to be in touch with the people who have these beliefs. 00:10:16.849 --> 00:10:18.717 Sympathetically, figure out-- come 00:10:18.717 --> 00:10:24.223 to understand why they have the beliefs and interact-- 00:10:24.223 --> 00:10:25.324 show them. 00:10:25.324 --> 00:10:28.194 Try to lead them to understand that there's 00:10:28.194 --> 00:10:30.129 another way of looking at it. 00:10:30.129 --> 00:10:31.964 That's what education is about. 00:10:31.964 --> 00:10:34.533 That's what organizing is about. 00:10:34.533 --> 00:10:40.573 You can do it right in Boston. 00:10:40.573 --> 00:10:43.609 That's why activists live in communities, 00:10:43.609 --> 00:10:48.047 work with communities. 00:10:48.047 --> 00:10:55.388 MICHEL DEGRAFF: Any questions on that side? 00:10:55.388 --> 00:10:57.957 AUDIENCE: Speaking to what we've been discussing 00:10:57.957 --> 00:11:00.593 these last few minutes, I think there's 00:11:00.593 --> 00:11:04.346 a tendency in a lot of-- not only in politics, 00:11:04.346 --> 00:11:07.386 but just in general to not be as willing to try 00:11:07.386 --> 00:11:12.838 and understand the point of view of somebody who opposes you. 00:11:12.838 --> 00:11:15.107 I don't know-- speaking now to politics 00:11:15.107 --> 00:11:17.910 specifically-- if that's something that's kind of arisen 00:11:17.910 --> 00:11:21.280 the last couple decades, or that has some sort 00:11:21.280 --> 00:11:22.815 of historical precedence. 00:11:22.815 --> 00:11:24.316 And given the polarization I've seen 00:11:24.316 --> 00:11:29.155 in media that's now trickling into various political 00:11:29.155 --> 00:11:33.893 constituencies, have you seen any similar effects 00:11:33.893 --> 00:11:37.596 in any, maybe historical elections or any sort 00:11:37.596 --> 00:11:39.398 of prior settings? 00:11:39.398 --> 00:11:43.436 NOAM CHOMSKY: This inability to hear the other person? 00:11:43.436 --> 00:11:45.371 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:11:45.371 --> 00:11:47.940 NOAM CHOMSKY: Sometimes, it takes really extreme forms. 00:11:47.940 --> 00:11:49.608 Take Clinton. 00:11:49.608 --> 00:11:52.178 I think maybe the low point of the last election 00:11:52.178 --> 00:11:56.482 was her mocking of the deplorables, which 00:11:56.482 --> 00:11:59.318 had a big effect. 00:11:59.318 --> 00:12:04.835 Here is this rich, elite woman who 00:12:04.835 --> 00:12:08.127 goes-- talks to Wall Street. 00:12:08.127 --> 00:12:10.996 Gets huge honoraria talking to Wall Street bankers. 00:12:10.996 --> 00:12:13.666 She's calling us deplorable. 00:12:13.666 --> 00:12:15.000 Why are we deplorable? 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.206 We're hardworking and honest, religious, conservative, 00:12:20.206 --> 00:12:21.273 traditional people. 00:12:21.273 --> 00:12:23.242 What makes us deplorable? 00:12:23.242 --> 00:12:26.712 But that's an extreme example of what 00:12:26.712 --> 00:12:29.014 we see around us all the time. 00:12:29.014 --> 00:12:33.018 This contempt for the, say, Trump voters. 00:12:33.018 --> 00:12:34.286 How can they be so stupid? 00:12:34.286 --> 00:12:36.655 How can they be so ridiculous? 00:12:36.655 --> 00:12:37.923 They're not humans. 00:12:37.923 --> 00:12:41.794 And they feel the same way towards the people walking 00:12:41.794 --> 00:12:45.064 around Harvard Square. 00:12:45.064 --> 00:12:47.665 There's plenty of that all the back. 00:12:47.665 --> 00:12:50.136 Like Benjamin Franklin saying we shouldn't 00:12:50.136 --> 00:12:52.371 admit Swedes and Germans. 00:12:52.371 --> 00:12:54.533 Not very different.