For some, change can be scary. For others,
change can be frightening. But for Chomsky, change is everything.
I, too, believe
in change. I believe that if we truly want to better our lives, whether
immediately or down the road, we must make changes in our lives. However, many
people can believe in change, but that does not mean they are putting in effort
to make changes. Chomsky, on the other hand, takes change and uses it as a call
to action.
In his 2017 work,
Requiem for the American Dream: The 10
Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power, Noam Chomsky suggests changes
that I had never considered before reading this book. For instance, I had never
considered the idea that poverty is the reason behind a failed democracy. I had
also not considered taking a substantial amount of money to put towards the
poor. Chomsky suggests that “This is in the interest of all classes, including
the prosperous themselves; and therefore the proper policy is to accumulate any
surplus revenue in a fund, and then distribute this fund in block grants to the
poor.” (location 230) Chomsky truly believes in helping those less fortunate in
order to achieve a better state of the nation. Chomsky offers ideas that the
poor are the difference between an oligarchy and a democracy. “The real
difference between democracy and oligarchy is between poverty and wealth.
Wherever the rulers, whether they be a minority or a majority, owe their power
to wealth, that is an oligarchy. Wherever the poor rule, that is a democracy.”
(location 218). This idea of the poor being the rulers is a bit of a new idea
for me. Sure, we live in a nation where “anything is possible”, hence the American
Dream. And, yes, there have been presidents who came up in more modest
backgrounds, but I am still not fully convinced we live in a nation where
someone without money could become an elected official. Everything seems to
revolve around money. No money; no ads. No ads; no promotion. No promotion; no
one has any idea who you are or what you stand for. In our nation, money both
talks and walks.
Money is
everything. Chomsky offers to us that our “democracy is hypocrisy” (location
253), and I must say that I’m beginning to agree with him. If his ideas that a
wealthy person in control is an oligarchy, then we truly are living in a hypocrisy
of democracy. If we cannot make strides of effort to fix the gap between
wealthy and poor, then we are living in hypocrisy. If we cannot elect an
official who comes from a poor class, then we are living in hypocrisy. If we
wake up every morning and chase our American Dream only to be shot down by big
business, busy banks, and bellowing businessmen, then we are living in
hypocrisy.
And it occurs to
me that we, collectively, are living in the hypocrisy of our nation.
I liked what you said about "living in the hypocrisy of our nation." Another thought is that this is sort of like the Matrix. We are believing in a false reality, and that influences the way we interpret our experiences. We believe that if work hard and do the right things, then we our lives will improve, but if we don't, then we blame ourselves and not the system. Or we blame the political party that is not our own. Or we blame the president. We don't see that the system is set up against us.
ReplyDeleteI think your writing is very well thought out and I really liked how you brought around your main point again and the end so the whole thing tired together. That made a very enjoyable read. I also enjoyed how you used change as a basis of your argument because that's Chomsky's whole idea about everything, we nee to change or nothing will get better and we will continue to live in hypocrisy.
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