Let Down by the Left

Let Down by the Left

To be a leftist in the US is to be let down. That goes for all three of us. We might think we’ve taken one step forward on the symbolic road toward a better world, but it’s then three steps back. It’s like a failed dance step. It’s more than depressing. Look at contemporary society and societies around the world. Our species is a train wreck that won’t get off the track. Noam Chomsky, the linguist, is a darling of the left. He’s a public intellectual and go-to idol on the left. The newest dump of Epstein files, however, casts a pall on Chomsky’s former statements about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Chomsky had a substantive relationship on many levels with Epstein, and this was after Epstein’s original conviction on sex abuse charges against minors. The relationship, again, ended up being quite substantial according to newly released Epstein files (“Newly released files shed new light on Chomsky and Epstein relationship,” Guardian, February 3, 2026). Like I said, if a person even thinks he or she is a bonafide leftist, think again. The Chomsky-Epstein connection is not guilt by association or an ad hominem attack, but a glimpse into power and political points of view and the criminality of Epstein. I leave readers to conclude whether or not those who were in the confidence of Epstein facilitated Epstein’s horrific and abominable sexual perversions.

It’s shit like the citation above that continues to add to the fog of what the fuck we’re doing, where we’ve been, and what destination we are headed toward.

I knew at the end of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War that the left could not sustain itself. The left in the US had already been bashed by years of anticommunism and charges that it hadn’t been patriotic enough of its support for that war, actually three wars going on at the same time when Cambodia and Laos are factored into the equation of killing fields, which Cambodia certainly was with the help of the US war there.

Since then, it’s been one rearguard battle after another around the world. William Blum in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II (2004) is pretty good, if a bit grinding in its very excellent recounting of overt and covert wars the US carries out with about 750 military bases around the world. Talk about empire!

Since the terror attacks of September 2001, the US has been in a full-court press mode. That’s how empires reach their decline. I don’t know if Osama bin Laden realized how successful his get-back attacks were? The US remained, and still is, full-throttle in the Middle East since those attacks.

The current fiscal year witnesses about a trillion dollars give or take a few more billions of dollars while putting the screws to our own people in healthcare, housing, food, etc., etc., etc. Pay attention to Epstein and the orange man long enough, and the latter’s terror against immigrants, many with legal status in the US, and most will get how the wealthy and the greedy and the vile live their lives.

When the Occupy Wall Street Movement was repressed by New York City police and beyond New York, and the 1% had and has its day, is it any wonder how police repression of minorities in the US and ICE repression of immigrants would not be an expected outcome? We’re a police state, and with a nod to Blum again, the police of the world.

The repression on college and university campuses is yet another example of the war at home over the genocide in Gaza. Trump et al., with the help of some Democrats (Remember Biden’s policy toward Israel’s ongoing war there?), was followed up by the full-court press against higher education. As I write, Trump seeks to bash Harvard University again and again. Higher education kowtowed to Trump with hardly a whimper. The so-called leaders of these institutions have folded one after another.

Now, in much of the US, the environment has come back to bite us, with fossil fuels bringing about the fracturing of the polar vortex. We also witness the opposite effects of heat waves, droughts, and forest fires. The forces at our throats are the forces of evil that see short-term greed and meanness as normal, and there are hardly any critical critiques or credible voices on the left.

I realize that Professor Chomsky is recovering from a serious health-related issue.