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Its worse than a bad cliche, and I've been stunned as an observer on this site, how many of the more intellectually minded people seem to fall victim to thinking in the same platitudes a standard ignoramus who doesn't even watch the news does. The problem with the above style of comments is that it fails to take geopolitics seriously and fails to understand alternative viewpoints. If it wasn't Putin, any other Russian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Zelensky, any other Ukrainian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Biden, any other American leader would be beset by the same scenario and conditions.
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?
"Presidents come and go but the policies remain the same." - Vladimir Putin
Indeed; the automaton peasants (who lack agency) of Ukraine were told by their CIA handlers (who have agency) to riot and oust the hapless Yanukovych (who lacks agency) and was replaced by American puppet Zelensky (who has agency and should use it to sue for peace). This led noble leader Putin (who lacks agency; anyone in his shoes would do the same) to regretfully declare war.
Makes sense. As you say, they're beset by the same scenario and conditions. Anyone in their shoes would do the same.
Don't know why you're trying make a mess of history on the matter. Even the regime change wing of the State Department admits of their activities in Russia's backyard and the very thing I'm calling it out for.
And as such, Russia's response is reasonable in turn to US' operations in their sphere of influence.
I'm not sure why you believe Global Research .ca, an anti-globalization conspiracy website, represents the regime change wing of the State Department, but this would be both an incorrect citation and not a rebuttal to the post on hyper and hypo agency.
Similarly, you seem to have missed that point that he was making fun of the argument structure, and not actually making a position that your argeement with would advance your position.
And where would you expect to see the other side that vested western interests have an interest in keeping suppressed? CNN? Fox? MSNBC? How about the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy? Or is he just a senile old man at this point?
You're the one who obliged with the logic of that statement. Makes it difficult to argue against if you stand with it.
Non-American or European media, to start. Al Jazeera has good production value if you're insistent on English language, but if you're willing to indulge in machine translation then there are entire other continents of geopolitical fans with viewpoints- and memories- outside of anglosphere cultural frameworks.
However, your citation wasn't to have someone on the other side of vested western interests- your citation was on a claim of what the vested western interests were themselves supposed to be admitting. Citing someone accusing them of stuff is not them admitting to... well, you were very vague and generic, to a degree it's not clear what was supposedly being confessed to (or not).
Which, admittedly, was probably the rhetorical technique intended, it was just an odd appeal to authority to neither cite the authority, or anyone with special insight into the authority's position, but then to immediately appeal to an outsider with no authority when the lack of authority was noted.
Chomsky was a senile old man at heart decades ago, given that he's been an anti-american tribalist for longer than you've likely been alive with no particular moral creed to peg consistency to otherwise, and not a particularly impressive one unless you're awed by sophistry. If you think he's the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy, you have a very shuttered view of the world of American critics.
If you want intellectual heft, try the French foreign policy establishment and its advocates. Defiantly not-American enough not to buy into Anglophone tropes by default, but familiar enough with both western cultural contexts and a cultural inclination towards argument structure to be delightfully relevant, and with significant national patronage in order to define themselves against the US in their attempts to align Europe to their interests.
I suspect the difficulty is that you don't seem to recognize- or at least acknowledge- a satirical tone of non-agreement. Neither he nor I were standing with the position, and your continuing insistence that they were (and your word choice in the process) is suggestive that part of the reason why may be that English isn't your first language.
Unironic Chomsky-stanning should be an immediate warning sign of bad-faith intransigence. Manufacturing Consent is the first and definitely not the best book about mass media manipulation attempts within a fragmented yet saturated information ecosystem. He is celebrated for being among the first, thats it. That anti-west types latch onto this book is an appeal to (intellectual) authority that is wholly unearned.
A single pedantic disagreement with your otherwise wholly defendible read of Chomsky is the statement that Chomsky has
My disagreement is that Chomsky consistent moral creed is to ascribe every ill action in the world to the USAs omnipresent tentacles and to define every ill action as either fulfilment of US actions or someone stumbling in their own attempts to be a champion against the US. Chomsky should be mocked eternally for supporting the Khmer Rouge and Serbia, and his denial of both genocides is just the cherry on top of the incompetence shit cake he keeps insisting on eating. Khmer Rouge was perfectly capable of shitting itself after it antagonized the Viets and Thais and celebrating them as a bastion of socialism in his book 'After the cataclysm' is laughable since it supports the genocidal socialist failure instead of the victorious socialist success of Vietnam. Similarly Chomsky chained himself to the sinking ship of Serb ultranationalism simply because it was not liked by Nato, writing an entire book to whine about how evil NATO only acted because Serbia was continuing the dream of socialism. Even after his pets have been proven to be evil genocidal incompetents Chomsky still deigns to lecture survivors of socialism on why they had no agency, famously getting the entire nation of Czechoslovakia angry at him for claiming that they had things better under communism.
tldr Chomskys worldview is USA bad socialist failures good. anyone citing chomsky as a positive betrays an intransigent bias that is unlikely to be dissuaded.
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