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

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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this professionalism and the unusual openness of the government to
scrutiny—also under attack by “conservatives”—make it possible to
obtain a good deal of relevant information and understanding of the
contemporary world, for those who are willing to make the effort to
escape the doctrinal confines and have the commitment to persist in this
course. Opportunities for organizing are available, with difficulty but not
with the barriers posed elsewhere, and even the important option of civil
disobedience remains when the state has limited resources of violence to
employ against relatively privileged groups.
These persistent elements of a society far more free than most made
it possible for the Crisis of Democracy to develop during the sixties, as it
had before. It was widely believed that the crisis had been resolved by
the measures undertaken in subsequent years, that the dread Vietnam
syndrome had been cured. The hope that all of this had been put to rest
in the “quiescent 70s” was quickly shattered by the popular response to
Reagan’s attempt to rekindle the aggressive enthusiasms of Kennedy’s
New Frontier. It is, in fact, remarkable that the 70s have so commonly
been described as a period when popular movements were tamed. As
many people know from their own experience, this allegedly quiescent
period was one of wide-ranging activism; it was precisely in this period
that the feminist movement became a vital force, with a far-reaching
impact on social life, along with the environmental movement and much
else. The growth of the disarmament and solidarity movements in
response to the “Resurgent America” programs of the later Carter and
Reagan Administrations should have come as no real surprise.
The fashionable talk about the “me generation” and the growth of
narcissism may have some basis in reality, but it reflects more than a
little wishful thinking and conscious propaganda as well. If people,
particularly young people, can be persuaded that their contemporaries
are fixated solely upon their own interests and pleasures, then human