Paul Krugman and Noam Chomsky Agree: Republicans Are A Serious Threat To Humanity

For anyone who is not a staunch Tea Party Republican, it is likely they comprehend that any iteration of the GOP is a threat to Americans; except the rich and the religious. Whether it is taking food from children and seniors, trying to take healthcare access from close to 20 million, or obstructing regulatory protection for everyone, the consensus among the sane is that Republicans are not good for Americans.

Now, for the second time in less than a week, a noted journalist and Nobel-winning economist has joined a staunch progressive in sounding the alarm that if Republicans gain any more power, especially the White House, they pose a threat to the entire world’s population. It was just last week that Noam Chomsky, an alleged “radical” and MIT professor emeritus, said that the Republican Party is so extreme in rhetoric and policies “that it poses a serious danger to human survival.”

Those are strong assertions from both Messrs. Krugman and Chomsky, but they are assertions with merit and not just because the two men are not conservatives. In fact, Chomsky cited an article by two highly-respected conservative political analysts who called Republicans “a radical insurgency” that has totally abandoned parliamentary politics. The conservatives’ exact words in 2013 were that the GOP is “ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Three years later and the GOP has only gotten much more extreme and not only scornful of facts, they openly lie and could not care less when they are revealed to be mendacious. And, as Chomsky and Krugman warn, Republicans are on a crusade to exacerbate global climate change despite reams of data warning the planet, and it inhabitants, are doomed without immediate action.

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Chomsky agrees with Ornstein and Mann and said, “Today, the Republican Party has drifted off the rails. It’s become what the respected conservative political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call a ‘radical insurgency’.” New York Times op-ed columnist, Paul Krugman fairly echoed Chomsky’s warning and wrote that “no less than the fate of the planet rides on the results of this year’s election.”

Chomsky said the GOP and its presidential candidates are “literally a serious danger to human survival” on account of Republicans’ nearly universal rejection of any measures to deal with climate change; something Chomsky, Krugman, sane humans, and 97 percent of climate scientists claim is “a looming environmental catastrophe.” In many parts of the world it is already an environmental catastrophe.

What troubles Chomsky, Krugman, and sane Americans is that all of the leading Republican presidential candidates either outright deny climate change exists, doubt it is a serious problem, or insist that no action should be taken to assuage the potential “environmental catastrophe” that Chomsky asserted “is dooming our grandchildren.”

Where Krugman differed from Chomsky in his Monday column is that while acknowledging that a Republican victory in November virtually dooms the planet, he is hopeful that increasingly affordable renewable energy advances may indeed save humanity; something Republicans and their fossil fuel money machine is intent on stopping at all costs and therein lies the “looming threat.”

In expressing his concern about the upcoming election, Chomsky advised voters to cast their ballots strategically, He noted that “small differences between the factions can make a huge difference in systems of enormous power; like that afforded to the president.” He said, “I’ve always counseled strategic voting. Meaning, in a swing state, or swing congressional district, or swing school board, if there is a significant enough difference to matter, vote for the better candidate — or sometimes the least bad.”

Although not a ringing endorsement of any candidate, Chomsky said that if he lived in a swing state “he’d vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.” Interestingly, Chomsky who has at times been a Clinton critic said her presidency would resemble that of President Barack Obama. What some would say is not a bad thing. Chomsky did not cite the President’s dedication to combatting climate change, or thwarting Republican efforts to make the threat worse. But he has condemned the President for using drone strikes to kill terrorists; something most Americans likely agree is better than risking a terror attack on American soil or sending tens-of-thousands of American troops into harm’s way.

Chomsky told Al Jazeera that regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination, he would cast his general election vote “against the Republican candidate.” He justified his “strategic” vote on the obvious fact that,

“There will be dire consequences to a GOP victory. What they are saying is, let’s destroy the world. Is that worth voting against? Yeah. The likely Republicans candidates are, in my opinion, extremely dangerous, at least if they mean anything like what they are saying. I think it makes good sense to keep them far away from levers of power.” Chomsky knows damn well the Republicans mean exactly what they are saying

It is too bad that regardless which Democrat wins the nomination, and possibly the White House, Americans and the world’s population are still in grave danger. Because  Republicans will control at least one chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives, solely because disgruntled Democrats and angry EmoProgs could not bring themselves to even vote strategically in 2010; and it is why Republicans are powerful enough today to “pose a serious danger to human survival.”

Rmuse

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.