1 00:00:01,501 --> 00:00:03,870 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:03,870 --> 00:00:05,238 Commons license. 3 00:00:05,238 --> 00:00:07,474 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:07,474 --> 00:00:11,544 continue to offer high-quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:11,544 --> 00:00:14,080 To make a donation, or to view additional materials 6 00:00:14,080 --> 00:00:18,051 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:18,051 --> 00:00:22,956 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:22,956 --> 00:00:26,426 AUDIENCE: I think with the past election-- 9 00:00:26,426 --> 00:00:29,529 so Donald Trump is, obviously, one of the 1%, right? 10 00:00:29,529 --> 00:00:33,033 So why do you think there's such different views on 11 00:00:33,033 --> 00:00:35,502 whether or not he's representative of America, 12 00:00:35,502 --> 00:00:37,804 whether being the American dream or being or being one 13 00:00:37,804 --> 00:00:40,073 of the "crooks" in the top 1%? 14 00:00:40,073 --> 00:00:43,676 NOAM CHOMSKY: For one thing, there's no America. 15 00:00:43,676 --> 00:00:46,179 There's many splits. 16 00:00:46,179 --> 00:00:49,149 And some of the splits are quite sharp. 17 00:00:49,149 --> 00:00:56,022 In fact, this country has become polarized in the last 50 years 18 00:00:56,022 --> 00:00:59,592 to an extent that's never happened before. 19 00:00:59,592 --> 00:01:04,464 In fact, just take a look at the two political parties. 20 00:01:04,464 --> 00:01:12,939 Up until the 1960s, the parties weren't all that different. 21 00:01:12,939 --> 00:01:16,076 You couldn't distinguish a moderate Republican 22 00:01:16,076 --> 00:01:17,676 from a liberal democrat. 23 00:01:17,676 --> 00:01:21,146 They're more or less alike. 24 00:01:21,146 --> 00:01:26,553 By now, the parties are so differentiated that literally 25 00:01:26,553 --> 00:01:29,989 people don't intermarry across parties. 26 00:01:29,989 --> 00:01:31,925 And it's become-- literally, there 27 00:01:31,925 --> 00:01:34,194 are some good studies of it. 28 00:01:34,194 --> 00:01:39,065 And what actually happened is it's connected with race. 29 00:01:39,065 --> 00:01:42,535 Up until the 1960s, the Democrats 30 00:01:42,535 --> 00:01:47,539 were kind of a coalition of Southern Democrats, 31 00:01:47,539 --> 00:01:50,910 all extreme racists, and people who 32 00:01:50,910 --> 00:01:54,414 were very powerful because they stayed in office forever 33 00:01:54,414 --> 00:01:58,384 since the South was a one-party region. 34 00:01:58,384 --> 00:02:00,887 Take a look at "The New York Times" this morning. 35 00:02:00,887 --> 00:02:03,490 There's a headline about one-party Alabama. 36 00:02:03,490 --> 00:02:06,693 Everybody is a Republican, as if that's something new. 37 00:02:06,693 --> 00:02:09,262 That goes back to the Civil War, except now they 38 00:02:09,262 --> 00:02:10,330 call them Republicans. 39 00:02:10,330 --> 00:02:12,432 They used to call them Democrats. 40 00:02:12,432 --> 00:02:15,602 But same system, basically. 41 00:02:15,602 --> 00:02:18,938 But the Southern Democrats were extremely powerful 42 00:02:18,938 --> 00:02:22,509 because the senators had senior positions. 43 00:02:22,509 --> 00:02:24,644 They'd been there forever. 44 00:02:24,644 --> 00:02:26,146 There was a big block. 45 00:02:26,146 --> 00:02:29,849 They had a big effect on legislation. 46 00:02:29,849 --> 00:02:32,352 So if you look at the New Deal legislation, 47 00:02:32,352 --> 00:02:33,786 there was a lot of progress. 48 00:02:33,786 --> 00:02:36,055 But it was straight racist. 49 00:02:36,055 --> 00:02:38,825 So Social Security, for example. 50 00:02:38,825 --> 00:02:41,094 The Southern Democrats were willing to permit 51 00:02:41,094 --> 00:02:45,098 it to go through as long as it excluded blacks. 52 00:02:45,098 --> 00:02:46,199 And it did. 53 00:02:46,199 --> 00:02:49,536 So Social Security was designed to exclude 54 00:02:49,536 --> 00:02:53,139 the majority of the workforce, agricultural and domestic 55 00:02:53,139 --> 00:02:54,007 workers. 56 00:02:54,007 --> 00:02:56,676 Namely, African Americans. 57 00:02:56,676 --> 00:03:01,514 The GI Bill gave-- it was a segregated army. 58 00:03:01,514 --> 00:03:04,951 So it didn't go to blacks. 59 00:03:04,951 --> 00:03:07,754 All the way through, the Southern Democrats 60 00:03:07,754 --> 00:03:11,491 were willing to tolerate reformist measures 61 00:03:11,491 --> 00:03:17,997 as long as it maintained the Southern system of deep racism. 62 00:03:17,997 --> 00:03:24,404 And what amounted to new kinds of slavery. 63 00:03:24,404 --> 00:03:28,141 Well, what happened in the 1960s was the civil rights 64 00:03:28,141 --> 00:03:30,276 movement broke through this. 65 00:03:30,276 --> 00:03:36,182 The Democrats began to pick up civil rights legislation. 66 00:03:36,182 --> 00:03:38,952 And the Southern Democrats simply pulled out. 67 00:03:38,952 --> 00:03:42,355 That's Nixon's famous Southern strategy, 68 00:03:42,355 --> 00:03:47,060 let's appeal to the South and turn them into Republicans 69 00:03:47,060 --> 00:03:49,495 on straight racist grounds. 70 00:03:49,495 --> 00:03:51,598 So the parties realigned. 71 00:03:51,598 --> 00:03:54,200 And a large part of rural America 72 00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:55,802 went along with it, too. 73 00:03:55,802 --> 00:03:58,504 That's quite separate from urban America. 74 00:03:58,504 --> 00:04:02,842 The lines became sharper during the neoliberal years, when 75 00:04:02,842 --> 00:04:04,744 rural America was just smashed. 76 00:04:04,744 --> 00:04:08,615 Rural America meant working class, industrial America. 77 00:04:08,615 --> 00:04:12,051 Small towns with those industries and so on. 78 00:04:12,051 --> 00:04:14,220 That was all smashed. 79 00:04:14,220 --> 00:04:17,490 Urban America, that's where the 1% is. 80 00:04:17,490 --> 00:04:20,860 That's where we come from-- the people who prosper, 81 00:04:20,860 --> 00:04:23,162 the more educated, and so on. 82 00:04:23,162 --> 00:04:28,501 So these splits became extremely sharp. 83 00:04:28,501 --> 00:04:32,672 It's increased with new media. 84 00:04:32,672 --> 00:04:37,143 So the cable television, social media, and so on. 85 00:04:37,143 --> 00:04:40,513 One of their effects is to intensify the split. 86 00:04:40,513 --> 00:04:50,056 So one part of America lives in talk radio and Fox News. 87 00:04:50,056 --> 00:04:52,759 I don't know if you listen to talk radio here, 88 00:04:52,759 --> 00:04:54,294 but you should. 89 00:04:54,294 --> 00:04:56,362 I often listen to it when I'm driving. 90 00:04:56,362 --> 00:04:58,064 It's very interesting. 91 00:04:58,064 --> 00:05:01,467 And what's interesting is not Rush Limbaugh and those guys. 92 00:05:01,467 --> 00:05:02,702 They're predictable. 93 00:05:02,702 --> 00:05:05,838 But the people who call in are what's interesting. 94 00:05:05,838 --> 00:05:09,442 And that's a slice of Boston. 95 00:05:09,442 --> 00:05:11,544 We're not talking about Mississippi. 96 00:05:11,544 --> 00:05:13,413 We're talking about Boston. 97 00:05:13,413 --> 00:05:18,818 It's a slice of Boston which is in some other universe. 98 00:05:18,818 --> 00:05:20,653 The things they believe, the things they 99 00:05:20,653 --> 00:05:22,989 hear, the things they read. 100 00:05:22,989 --> 00:05:26,559 That's why, I forget the exact number. 101 00:05:26,559 --> 00:05:30,563 But maybe half-- some large percentage of Republicans 102 00:05:30,563 --> 00:05:33,466 think that Obama is a Muslim and that he wasn't 103 00:05:33,466 --> 00:05:35,168 born in the United States. 104 00:05:35,168 --> 00:05:37,603 You hear that drummed into your head all the time. 105 00:05:37,603 --> 00:05:38,971 OK. 106 00:05:38,971 --> 00:05:43,142 And of course, the hatred of Obama was substantially racist. 107 00:05:43,142 --> 00:05:48,348 I mean, why is the Affordable Care Act called Obamacare 108 00:05:48,348 --> 00:05:50,683 by Democrats, by liberals? 109 00:05:50,683 --> 00:05:53,853 Was Medicare called Johnsoncare? 110 00:05:53,853 --> 00:05:54,921 Of course not. 111 00:05:54,921 --> 00:05:56,556 We just accept the racism. 112 00:05:56,556 --> 00:05:58,591 It's part of us. 113 00:05:58,591 --> 00:06:00,693 So sure, it's Obamacare. 114 00:06:00,693 --> 00:06:02,862 This black guy pushed it through. 115 00:06:02,862 --> 00:06:05,932 And that's liberal Democrats call it that. 116 00:06:05,932 --> 00:06:07,934 We don't even think about it. 117 00:06:07,934 --> 00:06:10,470 But it's because it's all deeply ingrained. 118 00:06:10,470 --> 00:06:14,740 And when you get to parts of the culture where that's all 119 00:06:14,740 --> 00:06:19,645 they hear-- talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Loren McLaughlin, 120 00:06:19,645 --> 00:06:20,847 or whatever her name is. 121 00:06:20,847 --> 00:06:24,717 You really have to hear this stuff to believe it. 122 00:06:24,717 --> 00:06:30,990 And for large parts of rural, lower middle-class, 123 00:06:30,990 --> 00:06:33,993 small businessmen, the kind of people who vote for Trump, 124 00:06:33,993 --> 00:06:35,828 that's what they live with. 125 00:06:35,828 --> 00:06:38,831 And by now, with the reconstruction 126 00:06:38,831 --> 00:06:41,478 of the political parties-- the Republicans 127 00:06:41,478 --> 00:06:43,069 are an interesting party. 128 00:06:43,069 --> 00:06:49,242 They are slavishly dedicated to the welfare of the super-rich 129 00:06:49,242 --> 00:06:51,344 and the corporations. 130 00:06:51,344 --> 00:06:53,479 Take a look at their legislative programs. 131 00:06:53,479 --> 00:06:56,249 Paul Ryan is the extreme example. 132 00:06:56,249 --> 00:06:59,652 The most savage, brutal programs you can think of. 133 00:06:59,652 --> 00:07:03,022 So that's the actual Republican Party. 134 00:07:03,022 --> 00:07:04,791 But their constituency is people who are 135 00:07:04,791 --> 00:07:11,164 being harmed by these programs. 136 00:07:11,164 --> 00:07:14,567 It's the kind of paradox that Arlie Hochschild 137 00:07:14,567 --> 00:07:16,436 wanted to understand. 138 00:07:16,436 --> 00:07:20,306 And I think when you read through what she found, 139 00:07:20,306 --> 00:07:21,774 you can understand it. 140 00:07:21,774 --> 00:07:26,078 But even true of things like environmental issues. 141 00:07:26,078 --> 00:07:30,016 So in the Bayou area where she was working and living, 142 00:07:30,016 --> 00:07:32,652 there's an extremely high rate of cancer. 143 00:07:32,652 --> 00:07:35,121 In fact, it's called Cancer Alley. 144 00:07:35,121 --> 00:07:38,191 And the reasons for it are the petrochemical corporations 145 00:07:38,191 --> 00:07:42,829 who just pour poisonous chemicals into the Bayou. 146 00:07:42,829 --> 00:07:45,031 And these are people who live in the environment. 147 00:07:45,031 --> 00:07:45,631 They hunt. 148 00:07:45,631 --> 00:07:48,401 They fish. 149 00:07:48,401 --> 00:07:50,403 Quite apart from the fact that their children 150 00:07:50,403 --> 00:07:52,605 are dying of cancer. 151 00:07:52,605 --> 00:07:55,308 These people are environmentalists. 152 00:07:55,308 --> 00:07:58,978 And the people they vote for are the ones 153 00:07:58,978 --> 00:08:01,447 who want to destroy the EPA. 154 00:08:01,447 --> 00:08:05,084 And when you look into it, it turns out there's a reason. 155 00:08:05,084 --> 00:08:09,088 For them, what the EPA means is some guy 156 00:08:09,088 --> 00:08:12,391 in a suit who comes from Washington and tells us, 157 00:08:12,391 --> 00:08:14,527 you can't fish here. 158 00:08:14,527 --> 00:08:16,262 That's the EPA. 159 00:08:16,262 --> 00:08:19,532 But that guy does nothing about the petrochemical plants. 160 00:08:19,532 --> 00:08:24,003 So why shouldn't they want to get rid of the EPA? 161 00:08:24,003 --> 00:08:26,873 That's their lives. 162 00:08:26,873 --> 00:08:30,209 That's the kind of lives that these people are living. 163 00:08:30,209 --> 00:08:34,551 And when you see it firsthand-- and even you 164 00:08:34,551 --> 00:08:38,343 can see it right here if you want to-- you 165 00:08:38,343 --> 00:08:40,019 can understand the attitudes. 166 00:08:40,019 --> 00:08:44,190 They're not as paradoxical as they sound. 167 00:08:44,190 --> 00:08:47,593 It's leading to a very strange situation in the country. 168 00:08:47,593 --> 00:08:50,363 Very dangerous one. 169 00:08:50,363 --> 00:08:54,467 Incidentally, most of the Trump voters 170 00:08:54,467 --> 00:08:56,969 were not working class and poor. 171 00:08:56,969 --> 00:08:59,872 They're mostly kind of lower middle-class or very rich. 172 00:08:59,872 --> 00:09:01,874 Those two groups. 173 00:09:01,874 --> 00:09:05,211 But there were working people who voted for Trump, 174 00:09:05,211 --> 00:09:09,282 or who voted for Scott Brown here. 175 00:09:09,282 --> 00:09:13,152 And many of those people voted for Obama. 176 00:09:13,152 --> 00:09:18,824 They believed his rhetoric about hope and change. 177 00:09:18,824 --> 00:09:23,162 And when they saw very quickly that hope and change means 178 00:09:23,162 --> 00:09:26,532 money for bankers and nothing for us, 179 00:09:26,532 --> 00:09:29,201 they became deeply disillusioned. 180 00:09:29,201 --> 00:09:34,173 And so they're now trusting the word of a con man who 181 00:09:34,173 --> 00:09:37,376 also says hope and change. 182 00:09:37,376 --> 00:09:40,079 But it's not that different from the 2008 election 183 00:09:40,079 --> 00:09:42,682 in some respects. 184 00:09:42,682 --> 00:09:50,133 Just a different con man. 185 00:09:50,133 --> 00:09:51,591 AUDIENCE: How do you think we could 186 00:09:51,591 --> 00:09:56,596 go about trying to change the attitudes of like, what 187 00:09:56,596 --> 00:09:58,531 people think that the EPA does? 188 00:09:58,531 --> 00:10:00,199 Or like, that idea of being in a line? 189 00:10:00,199 --> 00:10:03,402 How do you think we could change that? 190 00:10:03,402 --> 00:10:06,138 NOAM CHOMSKY: By interacting with people. 191 00:10:06,138 --> 00:10:07,306 It's the only way. 192 00:10:07,306 --> 00:10:11,310 That's what organizing and activism are about. 193 00:10:11,310 --> 00:10:16,849 You have to be in touch with the people who have these beliefs. 194 00:10:16,849 --> 00:10:18,717 Sympathetically, figure out-- come 195 00:10:18,717 --> 00:10:24,223 to understand why they have the beliefs and interact-- 196 00:10:24,223 --> 00:10:25,324 show them. 197 00:10:25,324 --> 00:10:28,194 Try to lead them to understand that there's 198 00:10:28,194 --> 00:10:30,129 another way of looking at it. 199 00:10:30,129 --> 00:10:31,964 That's what education is about. 200 00:10:31,964 --> 00:10:34,533 That's what organizing is about. 201 00:10:34,533 --> 00:10:40,573 You can do it right in Boston. 202 00:10:40,573 --> 00:10:43,609 That's why activists live in communities, 203 00:10:43,609 --> 00:10:48,047 work with communities. 204 00:10:48,047 --> 00:10:55,388 MICHEL DEGRAFF: Any questions on that side? 205 00:10:55,388 --> 00:10:57,957 AUDIENCE: Speaking to what we've been discussing 206 00:10:57,957 --> 00:11:00,593 these last few minutes, I think there's 207 00:11:00,593 --> 00:11:04,346 a tendency in a lot of-- not only in politics, 208 00:11:04,346 --> 00:11:07,386 but just in general to not be as willing to try 209 00:11:07,386 --> 00:11:12,838 and understand the point of view of somebody who opposes you. 210 00:11:12,838 --> 00:11:15,107 I don't know-- speaking now to politics 211 00:11:15,107 --> 00:11:17,910 specifically-- if that's something that's kind of arisen 212 00:11:17,910 --> 00:11:21,280 the last couple decades, or that has some sort 213 00:11:21,280 --> 00:11:22,815 of historical precedence. 214 00:11:22,815 --> 00:11:24,316 And given the polarization I've seen 215 00:11:24,316 --> 00:11:29,155 in media that's now trickling into various political 216 00:11:29,155 --> 00:11:33,893 constituencies, have you seen any similar effects 217 00:11:33,893 --> 00:11:37,596 in any, maybe historical elections or any sort 218 00:11:37,596 --> 00:11:39,398 of prior settings? 219 00:11:39,398 --> 00:11:43,436 NOAM CHOMSKY: This inability to hear the other person? 220 00:11:43,436 --> 00:11:45,371 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 221 00:11:45,371 --> 00:11:47,940 NOAM CHOMSKY: Sometimes, it takes really extreme forms. 222 00:11:47,940 --> 00:11:49,608 Take Clinton. 223 00:11:49,608 --> 00:11:52,178 I think maybe the low point of the last election 224 00:11:52,178 --> 00:11:56,482 was her mocking of the deplorables, which 225 00:11:56,482 --> 00:11:59,318 had a big effect. 226 00:11:59,318 --> 00:12:04,835 Here is this rich, elite woman who 227 00:12:04,835 --> 00:12:08,127 goes-- talks to Wall Street. 228 00:12:08,127 --> 00:12:10,996 Gets huge honoraria talking to Wall Street bankers. 229 00:12:10,996 --> 00:12:13,666 She's calling us deplorable. 230 00:12:13,666 --> 00:12:15,000 Why are we deplorable? 231 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:20,206 We're hardworking and honest, religious, conservative, 232 00:12:20,206 --> 00:12:21,273 traditional people. 233 00:12:21,273 --> 00:12:23,242 What makes us deplorable? 234 00:12:23,242 --> 00:12:26,712 But that's an extreme example of what 235 00:12:26,712 --> 00:12:29,014 we see around us all the time. 236 00:12:29,014 --> 00:12:33,018 This contempt for the, say, Trump voters. 237 00:12:33,018 --> 00:12:34,286 How can they be so stupid? 238 00:12:34,286 --> 00:12:36,655 How can they be so ridiculous? 239 00:12:36,655 --> 00:12:37,923 They're not humans. 240 00:12:37,923 --> 00:12:41,794 And they feel the same way towards the people walking 241 00:12:41,794 --> 00:12:45,064 around Harvard Square. 242 00:12:45,064 --> 00:12:47,665 There's plenty of that all the back. 243 00:12:47,665 --> 00:12:50,136 Like Benjamin Franklin saying we shouldn't 244 00:12:50,136 --> 00:12:52,371 admit Swedes and Germans. 245 00:12:52,371 --> 00:12:54,533 Not very different.