This interview is literally 24 years ago today.
In the pre-Internet age, and especially pre-YouTube days (it is amazing to recall that YouTube first appeared in 2005!), C-Span was the only place you could see Chomsky from time to time. Chomsky's analysis is largely accurate, and his recognition of how the Clintons operated and operate remains spot on.
I remember seeing this interview, and was so happy for us having C-Span. I remember screaming at the time against the Clintons' betrayal, but finding that professionals and coastal people, where of course I lived, found me to be retro at best, naive and radical overall. I kept saying we have to care about people in Iowa, in Ohio, in Kansas and throughout the South. I would get the usual line, well, they are a bunch of racists, as if minorities did not live there, first off. And worse, as if that is the only way to define people who lived there.
I wound up leaving the Democratic Party for most of the rest of the 1990s. I first joined Perot's party, The Reform Party, in 1994, and drifted toward the Greens for the rest of the decade. I became persona non grata among various Orange County, CA Democrats, and one in particular told me I had ruined any chance I had to ever run for office. I laughed, and said, With my medical costs each year, to risk losing a job, or taking leave from a job, was already out of the question. And, from what I saw, there was never any chance to have someone with my New Deal views receive the money support, as this was pre-Internet, too, so that the Democratic Party was already in the hands of large donors at that point.
Overall, I have always taken the position that people in the United States are akin to our brothers and sisters, and we owe a societal duty towards each other. Yup. Still retro, still naive and still at least economic radical.
