Noam Chomsky on Paul Ryan and President* Trump

Noam Chomsky, speaking April 24, 2017 at the First Parish
Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His latest book and
now film is Requiem for the American Dream.

Trump, Ryan seize white support while "kicking them in the face with abandon"

Insulated from the American public, President* Trump and Paul Ryan are likely taking a break from their project to direct the springs of cooperative wealth to a concentrated elite class.

Amy Goodman is running a conversation today with Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now.

Other aims of Republicans, a pathological "organization ... dedicated ... to the destruction of organized human life on Earth," in Chomsky's words, continue.

Social dominance; police-utilized infliction; and terror against fellows of disfavored color, history and ideas are objectives in themselves as well as proven means to appeal to the white working class.

For many American whites, to the extent public policy and endorsement of hate can be crafted to inflict injury against black, brown, and Muslim people, success has been achieved, assuming appropriate rhetoric directed against these less-than people for the emotive benefits generated from hearing a Trump, Ryan, or a Roy Moore put anti-Americans in their place.

Said Chomsky in part on Trump, Ryan and the Republican Party's descent into rhetorical and policy madness:

My sense is—this is just a guess—that this is a media strategy, that it’s the Bannon-Trump-Spicer strategy to try to keep attention focused on one or another form of lunacy, but not look at what’s actually happening. And what’s actually happening is that Paul Ryan and his associates behind the scenes are systematically and carefully dismantling every element of government that is of any benefit to people and that doesn’t maximize corporate power and profit.

I mean, the dedication of the Republican leadership, especially the Ryan-type leadership, their dedication to slavish servility to corporate power and wealth is just phenomenal. I mean, read this morning’s business pages. ...

I mean, the healthcare proposal was so shocking that, I mean, it was a proposal basically to cut taxes for the rich and to ensure that poor and middle-class people—the people who voted for Trump, in fact—don’t get medical aid. ...

And step by step, that’s what’s happening behind the façade of Trumpisms and, you know, Spicer antics before the press. And the press is pretty much falling for it. That’s what they focus on, not what’s being carried out. There is, of course, criticism—mild criticism—of outrageous lies, but I think that just plays the game. That’s what the lies are for. Then you can yell about the liberal press that is trying to undermine us. It’s all a kind of a desperate effort to keep a con game going. Trump does have a base, a voter base. He’s kicking them in the face with abandon. And the idea is: How do you hold onto them while you’re doing this? Not an easy trick. And this, I think, is part of the con. And there are people in the press who are pointing it out—Paul Krugman, for one—but nothing like it should be.

Republicans are lunatics, dangerous lunatics.