Review - Hopes and Prospects, by Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

The answer is simply that we love the truth. These books are often the most illuminating and truthful about the state of the union and present a picture of your republic that the news doesn't usually show you. You can read The Audacity of Hope, maybe even find some inspirational one-liners about change - but you won't find any actual plans or any real blueprint for the future (or the present).

You could read books from the opposite end of the spectrum from Chomsky, like a piece from Greenspan about how backward the isolationist policies of struggling developing nations are that nationalize banks, form protectionist subsidies and ban foreign direct investment (much to the chagrin of the upper echelons within U.S. and World Bank bureaus). But then you won't receive the common-sense opinion that Alexander Hamilton literally founded the nation that Greenspan lives in with the exact same principles - principles that were necessary to make it an industrial superpower.

In the meantime, Chomsky's Hopes and Prospects was inspired by conventions he presided over in Latin America. Chomsky intended to provide ideological relief for a struggling, beleaguered group of Latin economists and politicians staring down the barrel of imminent country-altering American FDI, though Prospects reads more like any other Chomsky piece. He does offer some hope for new revolutions, people-first movements and beacons of democracy within a haze of despotism - but for the most part, Hopes and Prospects is the same old Chomsky. That is, a scathing indictment of a morally-bankrupt global hegemon like the U.S. with a bulletproof grocery-list of their lies followed by the subsequent truth.

So not that having the same ol' Chomsky is a bad thing.

Ideas Addressed:
--Are there signs of hope around the globe for reducing misery and oppression?
--How will American hegemony adapt over the coming years?
--How has the Obama administration responded to missions of world-peace, nuclear disarmament and negotiations in Israel/Palestine?

Incendiary and truthful.
Indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how power is constructed and operates in the U.S.

Despite its name, few tales of hope are present.

Will Chomsky ever make it back onto late-night TV?

To set the tone of his "hopes" section, or at least the only section with much hope to speak of - Chomsky begins. By discussing major cultural turning points over the past several hundred years and how they were subsequently primed for revolution. Think of the conditions in Haiti as an example. What was once described as a lush paradise by conquistadors has been run roughshod by American corporations for over a hundred years. The country is now mostly an uninhabitable sprawl of desert and pavement. Chomsky cites the democratic changes that may (read: may) help the country and turn things around.

Shortly after describing the few small, mostly forgettable tales of potential hope (mostly within Latin America only), Chomsky plunges into his usual tirade against American foreign policy. If you've read Chomsky before, you know that his text is full of heart-wrenching tales of hypocrisy and greed within governments around the world that simultaneously makes you as sick as much as it fills you with rage (or cynicism). You scan from line to line, always thinking: they did that? The government did that? It's truly scary stuff and often makes the reader particularly angry - but there are historical lessons buried between the lines within Chomsky's power-bashing that endure.

so the story continues around the world, with only a few exceptions. The best-known is Japan, which managed to avoid colonization - and is the only country of the South to have developed and industrialized during this era, a correlation they tells us quite a lot about political and economic history. A well-documented conclusion is that sovereignty, hence ability to control internal economic development and to enter international market systems on one's own terms, is a crucial prerequisite to economic development.

For countries still struggling with their economies, it doesn't make much sense to instill rules that make the game harder. Rules like free markets and a well-treated, well-paid workforce. It's easy for a man from a country built on slave labor to say those things - often under the guise of a moral crusade. Seemingly legitimate reasons for anything, when voiced from a position of power, often carry political overtones. This is another strong lesson from history that Chomsky extolls with an avalanche of evidence. The most compelling of which are ideals like liberty, freedom, democracy and the like - from a government notorious worldwide for supporting radical right-wing despots in a bid to keep the money-machines well-greased.

democracy has always been proclaimed as a guiding vision, but it is not even controversial that the United States regularly overthrew parliamentary democracies, often installing or supporting brutal tyrannies: Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, a long list of others. There were Cold War pretexts, but they regularly collapse upon investigation. I will not insult your intelligence by recounting how Reagan brought democracy to Central America by terrorist wars that left hundreds of thousands of corpses and three countries in ruins, a fourth tottering.

So yes, this installment is mostly doom and gloom -- again. But for those readers who want a compelling account of global atrocities from the peoples' perspective, very reminiscent of Howard Zinn, Chomsky is never a poor choice. Don't get me wrong, Chomsky's never-fail indictment of American political leaders is transparent, but if you actually want to get the facts about some of the shortcomings of the Obama administration on matters of world peace, nuclear disarmament, military spending and more, Chomsky's your man. If you want to see why Israel's containment tactics fail to qualify as defense but truly qualify as terrorism and genocide, Chomsky's your man.

If you want to read someone that's not just throwing down lies and historical amnesia for money or self-preservation -- Chomsky is your man.