Discussing Noam Chomsky on Kibbutz democracy

Although the kibbutzim are very authentic democracies internally, they are there are a lot of very ugly features about them. There's tremendous group pressure to conform. I mean, there's no force that makes you conform, but the group pressures are very powerful. The dynamics of how this works were not really very clear to me, but you could just see it in operation. The fear of exclusion is very great.

It's like being excluded from a family. If you're a kid and your family excludes you. Like, maybe they let you sit at the table, but they won't talk.

Yeah. But but but but this is, one of those things where it reminds me of in the discussion group, someone someone mentioned, Millay in Argentina who is like an ultra Zionist, American puppet in Argentina who said, Israel is a bastion of Western values. Someone shared it, with with the sort of the the implication being that that that that that this was an untrue statement, that Israel isn't isn't a bastion of Western values, and he's saying that to try to butter up the West and, you know, whatever. But what Milley said is correct. It's because you're not understanding what Western values are.

You're you're assigning a a virtue that isn't there. So so when you when when someone says Israel is a is a bastion of western values, you think, no. It's not. But Western values aren't virtuous. It is absolutely a bastion of Western values.

Israel is absolutely a bastion of Western values, and that's the whole problem. Because Western values is the basis of colonization, is the basis of Coercion. Coercion, brutal savagery, violence, exploitation, oppression. All of these are western values, and Israel represents all of that. And so when Chomsky begins by saying that it is the perfect example of of a democratic system, and then he goes on to say all of these negative things about it, those aren't inconsistent.

Those aren't contradictory statements. He may not understand it himself, but actually, yes. Because in order for there to be a democratic system, you need all of those things that he mentioned about the kibbutz. In order for there to be a functioning democratic system, you need absolute rigid conformity in the society. You need complete conformity in order for for for anything to get done, in order for that to be a functional system in any way.

Everybody has to agree.

Don't belong.

Yeah. Everyone has to agree. There has to be complete unanimity consensus. Otherwise, how can a democracy even function? There's no way it can even function.

Everybody has an opinion. How? It it has to be like that. So there's not a contradiction there. But we think of it as a as a contradiction because we've also drank the Kool Aid about how wonderful democracy is.

You know? It's like it's it's it's it reminds me also of, you know, like Ahmed Idad. I've said I've mentioned this before. Like, Ahmed Idad, one of the things that he said, you know, obviously, way back in the day, they always made a that they stuck with me, probably because I was raised a Christian, you know, nominally, that there's a huge difference between Christian theology or in in in in the case of Maya bringing Catholic, specifically Catholic theology, and what's actually in the bible. What the bible actually says is you wonder where they even got Catholicism from.

There's, like, no basis for it in the actual words of the bible. But Christians are raised on the theology which prevents them from ever reading the bible objectively. So an anytime they read the bible, anytime they read the their scripture, their book, they're reading it through a filter. They have an autocorrect Yeah. Activated in their brain That when it says this, it means this.

When it says that that, it means this. You know? So they never actually read what it says. It's it they're they're programmed to to have their the theology confirmed and affirmed by whatever they read even if it has nothing to do with with what they've been taught. And it's the same.

It's with my With these. Yeah. No. No. It's the it's the same with these concepts.

Western values, democracy, all of these things. You can't have I mean, if you if you really think about it, liberty and democracy, they can't work together. They they can't work where everyone everyone has liberty and and individual in individuality, individualism, the these this completely sabotages any way that democracy can function. There's no way that it can function if everyone is is a is a unique individual with their own views and their own interests, and then you also have liberty. Well, how are you how are you supposed to keep a society together?

Well, you can't and you haven't. And the only way that you've been able to the only way that you've been able to have a a society continue in any way, shape, or form is by not actually being democratic. Because you you have realized at some point in fact, the founding fathers, so called themselves, did. They were very skeptical about democracy, actually. That's why they wanted democracy for the few because that's reasonable.

We can we can you know, like like, you know, American sort of dissidents, say, critics of America, on a very artificial sort of superficial level who are critics of America on a very superficial level, think that that the founding fathers were hypocrites because they believed in democracy for the few. No. That's the only way it can work. Okay. They were right.

The the the what what changed is that

The narrative? Is that is yeah. The what changed is that is that the the what you used to

be able to say out loud, you can't say out loud anymore because everyone got indoctrinated into this idea about democracy. Democracy for all, equality for all, equal rights for all, so on and so on. That that that Americans got this idea in their head that it's supposed to be for everybody. But founding fathers never never wanted it to be that way, and it wasn't necessarily because they were just bastards. It was because they were smart enough to know that's an impossible system to work.

I mean, this is what I've said too. I've said I've said in the past that that that any any governmental system, it doesn't matter what you call it, It will always incline towards authoritarianism necessarily. Necessarily.

And

and and and and that's that's talking about real existing power. Real existing power will always incline towards authoritarianism. Then so what you have to do, like, in a in a place like America or the West generally, you have your democratic system that has no power. You can't have you can't have two things. You can't have a democracy a a democratic government where the government has the power.

Right. You have to sideline the government. If you wanna keep the democracy, you have to sideline the government, and that real existing power exists in an authoritarian, totalitarian private sector. Yeah. And that's part of the part of the genius of the whole, I guess, you could say libertarian the, you know, free market, the whole free market idea that the government shouldn't interfere in business.

Yeah.

It means the irrelevant facade of power doesn't get to interfere with real existing power. The facade of power that the people get to participate in

Oh.

That that that is meaningless.

Okay. Gonna represent you. Yeah.

You can you can you can be over there and do that and feel happy, but don't interfere with real power with the real power. The the like I said before, the politicians will make the decisions that we tell them to make. They will implement the policies that we tell them to implement. Those will undoubtedly be unpopular with the population, but the politician will be the effigy who gets burned in protest over those policies. The people who are actually dictating the policies are untouched.

Yeah.

And it's fine. You can you can burn that politician, bring in a new one, and pretend that you solved the problem.

Yeah. Yeah. Replacing. Got a representative.

Yeah. As long as you don't look over here Yeah. Where the decisions are being made. Yeah. If you look over here, then we're gonna have a problem.

And then you're gonna see how actually totalitarian and and authoritarian the state is. The that how how authoritarian and how totalitarian power actually is. And if you if you wonder about that, if you if you have any question or any ambiguity about how actually totalitarian and authoritarian and dictatorial power actually is, then do whatever you want on your job and see what happens. You you know, when when you when you when you read in the newspaper or in the company newsletter that the company is thinking about a merger with another corporation, make an appointment with the CEO and tell them what you think. Tell them what you think.

You if they should do the merger or not, if you're if you're for it or against it. You know? Or or just or just look at the history of organized labor, and you'll know just how totalitarian real existing power is. You know better in the West in in America, in the West, generally, you know better than than North Korea in reality, the people who have the real power. North Korea just isn't sophisticated enough to have a a fake system that can divert the attention of the people to make them think that they have a that they're participating in decision making.

So, yeah, Chomsky is right. It is the perfect democratic system, and that's exactly why it is all of those things that he didn't like. Racist, totalitarian, conformist, exclusionary

Hit my head

as You know? Elitist, classist. It's why it's all those things because that's only way democracy can work. And this is and the thing is is this this is is commonsensical, actually. It's just like it's just like it's just like what Ahmadinejad said about the the theology.

Because if you if you if you if you're not a Christian and you have no experience in Christian theology at all, church teachings and so on, and you read the bible, you will definitely not come to the Christian conclusion. You there's no way that you will come to the conclusion that Christians did. It's impossible. There's no way that you can read the bible from cover to cover even if you forget about the old testament.

Yeah. If you just read

the the the so called gospels and the the the New Testament, even even Paul's nonsense, even if you read that, you cannot come to the conclusion of Christianity. You can't. This is all imposed.

So the direct

And so and so and what I mean is what I'm saying is that there's a there's a cognitive dissonance in that things that you know already, you know perfectly well by your own experience and in your own life, but you've been taught not to notice it. You know, really, you've been taught not to notice it, or you've been in you've been taught to misinterpret it to yourself in your own brain that what you know to be real, what you know to be the way human beings operate and human beings work and groups of human beings and large groups of human beings, then you know perfectly well democracy can't work. And you also know that it doesn't. I'm I'm I'm what I mean is in the theory, you'll know in theory that it can't work. Just like everybody knows in theory, communism can't work.

Yeah.

Because human beings aren't like what you think they like. Your utopia is impossible among the human species. You everybody knows that who has any sense. But this exact same thing applies to democracy. The exact same thing applies to democracy.

It's the same thing because you've never seen it in your life. You you in real life, in in in your real experience. So I'm saying, in theory, you know that the theory is it's unworkable. Yeah. That even the theory is unworkable.

But then you know that it that that in your own society, it doesn't exist. You actually know that already. You know that it doesn't exist. So why you still talk about it? You have to face the reality.

And, again, it comes back it it comes around again, yet again, to the concept of the. This is just a reality in every society and no matter what system you wanna call And there's no way around it, and there doesn't need to be. You just have to accept the the way human society, human life actually is, and then figure out how to navigate how it actually is. But what but what the West consistently does is their solution to the way life is isn't to figure out how to actually navigate the way life is. It's to come up with an idea or a theory that pretends life is some other kind of way.

Right. And then everybody has to believe in this other kind of way that doesn't exist in the real world, and then they make all of their rules based on a delusion of the way human beings exist and the way that human society operates. And then just pretend. We just all pretend. Meanwhile, power is actually operating in the real world the way it operates everywhere in the world.

In America, in whether it's America or yeah. Or Congo or wherever you Nicaragua, no matter where you are or North Korea or where you know? Or or or. It's the same everywhere. It's just it's just some some countries and some societies don't also play games.

The the this is this is just this is just a a question of degrees. You know?

It's it's a it's a question of how discreet you are. That's all. It's like it's

like the difference between but it's it's the difference between someone who's a who's a conman, a scammer, and a mugger.