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

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
378
offered a choice on these matters in the political system, and the
ideological institutions prefer tales about a shift to the right that is more
congenial to their own perceived interests and their conception of the
proper government role in economic and global management.
In the case of military spending, the reasons diverge sharply from the
pretexts, as we have seen. The same is true of the other side of today’s
coin: the attack on the working class and the poor. The pretext is an
alleged popular shift towards “conservatism.” The reasons are basically
two: first, the real decline in US hegemony which makes it impossible to
pursue simultaneously the “great societies at home and grand designs
abroad” of Kennedy-style rhetoric, requiring a sacrifice of the former
since the latter are a sine qua non of policy for elite groups; and second,
the deep concern felt across the spectrum of elite opinion over the Crisis
of Democracy in its various manifestations, a crisis that demands a
return to obedience and austerity, to the “sacrifice and discipline” called
for in the halcyon days when business could control the state without
interference from the lower orders.
But the real issues do not arise for the electorate. On these, the
public is granted no voice, in accordance with the workings of capitalist
democracy in the United States, as already discussed. The reasons why
voters paid little attention to issues as they voted, or did not even take
the trouble to show up at the polls, are not obscure. It took a discerning
eye to perceive a difference between the candidates, and history offers
few reasons to believe campaign promises in any event. The campaign
was, as always, a major media event, part of the hoopla designed to
show how marvellously democracy works. But commentators on the TV
debates reflected a sharper insight when they chose to discourse
learnedly on Mondale’s choice of a necktie, or debated whether
Geraldine Ferraro looked down too much at her notes, or waited to see if
Reagan could weather a TV performance without some incredible