AZProgressive
AZProgressive's JournalNoam Chomsky: Here's why Americans know so much about sports but so little about world affairs
The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway to influence the real world.
By Noam Chomsky / Noam Chomsky's Official Site
QUESTION: You've written about the way that professional ideologists and the mandarins obfuscate reality. And you have spoken -- in some places you call it a "Cartesian common sense" -- of the commonsense capacities of people. Indeed, you place a significant emphasis on this common sense when you reveal the ideological aspects of arguments, especially in contemporary social science. What do you mean by common sense? What does it mean in a society like ours? For example, you've written that within a highly competitive, fragmented society, it's very difficult for people to become aware of what their interests are. If you are not able to participate in the political system in meaningful ways, if you are reduced to the role of a passive spectator, then what kind of knowledge do you have? How can common sense emerge in this context?
The following is a short excerpt from a classic, The Chomsky Reader, which offers a unique insight on a question worth asking -- how is it that we as a people can be so knowledgable about the intricacies of various sports teams, yet be colossally ignorant about our various undertakings abroad?
CHOMSKY: Well, let me give an example. When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.
In part, this reaction may be due to my own areas of interest, but I think it's quite accurate, basically. And I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere.
https://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-heres-why-americans-know-so-much-about-sports-so-little-about-world-affairs
Atlanta United wins MLS Cup in just its second season
Atlanta United has completed the incredible two-year odyssey from expansion start-up to Major League Soccer champions.
With a 2-0 win over the Portand Timbers in the MLS Cup before a record crowd of 73,019 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta United won its first league championship in just its second season in existence.
Josef Martinez and Franco Escobar provided the goals, Martinez's coming in the first half at 39 minutes with Escobar seemingly sealing the championship with a second at the 54-minute mark.
Atlanta United's title is also the first for the snakebitten sports city since the Atlanta Braves won the 1995 World Series. The Braves' World Series win had been Atlanta's only major professional sports championship until Atlanta United's triumph.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2236263002
Trump's ties to the Russian mafia go back 3 decades
Journalist Craig Unger talks Russia, Trump, and “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history.”
By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Updated Dec 7, 2018, 9:17am EST
On November 9, 2016, just a few minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov approached a microphone in the Russian State Duma (their equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and made a very unusual statement.
“Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.”
Nikonov is a leader in the pro-Putin United Russia Party and, incidentally, the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov — after whom the “Molotov cocktail” was named. His announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was, in fact, a victory for Putin’s Russia.
Longtime journalist Craig Unger opens his new book, House of Trump, House of Putin, with this anecdote. The book is an impressive attempt to gather up all the evidence we have of Trump’s numerous connections to the Russian mafia and government and lay it all out in a clear, comprehensive narrative.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/9/12/17764132/trump-mueller-russia-mafia-putin-craig-unger
What happened to the Arizona Hot shots?
He was hired by them to be their offensive coordinator.
http://arizonacardinals.freeforums.net/thread/610/freeze-arizona-hotshots-offensive-coordi
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