Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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militant and activist, a “wimp” standing by helplessly while the Russians
take over the world. The major domestic programs of the Kennedy and
Reagan Administrations were a huge military build-up and regressive
fiscal measures to stimulate investment. The “monolithic and ruthless
conspiracy” of Kennedy has become Reagan’s Empire of Evil. The
similarities of program and rhetoric tell us something about the real
spectrum of American politics.
There are also some differences; there was nothing in the Kennedy
period to match the mean-spirited attack on the poor undertaken by
Reagan, though one must bear in mind the decline in relative US power
in the interim and the corresponding reduction of means to achieve
domestic and international ends. Kennedy could envision “great societies
at home and grand designs abroad,” in the words of presidential adviser
Walter Heller, 77 but now the hungry and destitute must sacrifice for the
“grand designs,” as is recognized, in their own style, by Kennedy’s “neoliberal”
descendants.
There are other striking differences. The Kennedy Administration
evoked much enthusiasm and admiration among the liberal
intelligentsia, but there is no Camelot today. In part, this difference
reflects the fact that the Reaganites dismiss the intelligentsia with
contempt while Kennedy offered them a place in the sun, a chance to
rub shoulders with the great and even to share in the exercise of power.
Furthermore, Kennedy’s programs seemed to promise success, in part
achieved, while Reagan’s successes lie primarily in mortgaging the
country’s future while overseeing a vast transfer of resources from the
poor to the wealthy, as statistics on real disposable income demonstrate,
if the homeless in the street do not suffice.
These differences reflect in part the social base of the Reagan
Administration, in part the decline in American global hegemony, a
decline that has also affected the superpower enemy despite much