By Eliot Boswell
A certain type of god rolled into town last Friday under the moniker of Noam Chomsky. The lecture he gave was exactly what was expected, and it's probably fair to say that everyone in attendance went home with their political itches simultaneously well-scratched and further irritated.
Chomsky - the game-changing linguist cum dissident political pariah cum premier public academic cum internationally known social critic - spoke in Portland as part of the weekend's EcoNvergence conference on the country's current economic and ecological crises. Other speakers included author Derrick Jensen and economist Thomas Palley.
Chomsky's keynote, delivered at 7 p.m. on Friday night, concerned itself primarily with last year's economic collapse of some of America's largest financial institutions, and began from the question, "What happens when elites fail?"
Echoing Paul Krugman's recent columns in The New York Times, Chomsky submitted that the recent bailouts of major players like AIG and Bank of America have, contrary to intent, given the companies no future incentive to invest in a prudent manner.
In holding with his oratorical style, Chomsky moved with such fluidity between disparate topics that the recent coup d'état in Honduras seemed inevitably connected with the uncertain relationship between U.S. government and our mass media, a topic he explored in greater detail in his book "Manufacturing Consent."
His reputation for controversy, however, reared its head when he compared the current American public's mentality with that of the Germans in the immediate rise of the Third Reich.
