The good news first. I finished transcribing Evil Hides in Darkness, the tenth (!) installment of my saga. It clocked in at 15981 words, which brings my total to 222,046 words. I began to transcribe installment eleven, The Limits of Magic, this morning, and realized I had the beginning stored in a Google Drive doc (I'm not doctrinaire about my methods, even if I have my preferences). Um...let's just say, as I suspected, this installment is going to be the longest yet. Hmm...
In other news...
As I've mentioned, I enjoy Cory Doctorow's writings, and I've found him to be clarifying and informative. I not only read his blogs, I've read three of his books--and one of them was on the details around "intellectual property"--in the entertainment industry. I genuinely like this guy, and through him I've since been turned on to The American Prospect, which is providing fantastic coverage of issues I care about.
So please take that into account when you read what I wrote to him below after reading his latest post. I like Doctorow, but I loathe Noam Chomsky, and damn, am I done with staying silent when I see someone like him promoted in any way.
Doctorow sent a polite reply, which he didn't have to do. Hopefully I'm not blocked now.
Deb in the City
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Hi Cory,
I'm glad to see that Chomsky managed to trip into a useful opinion. Given his toxic, career-ending sexism (at least according to all of the accounts I've heard of women who studied under him at MIT), as well as his callousness (I recall hearing an interview in which he defended keeping monuments to confederate leaders), his misunderstanding of the position on NATO expansion, plus his advocacy for "peace negotiations" to end the war in Ukraine--not to mention that he was, of course, found to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein's (I'm sure they spent a good deal of time talking about cutting edge science and culture, not indulging in anything unsavory)--it is truly amazing that he could arrive at a common sense opinion about political activity.
We go to the polls to elect someone who will do the best job out of all of the options to advocate for and legislate to our needs. We're not inviting someone into our family or even over for dinner. This is a relatively simple proposition and doesn't require any posturing around labels.
For the record, I was happy to be considered a progressive-left-liberal Democrat until the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011. I was disgusted by the shocking lack of compassion by almost everyone on my side of the aisle, especially those who were, like me, Gen X/Baby Busters/Slackers who got an education about the Holocaust and genocide and recognized what they were looking at. As horrified as I am by what's happening in Gaza, I keep looking around for those people to care about what's going on--still!--in Syria. I'll also take as vigorous a demonstration of concern for the trafficked children of Ukraine.
All to say that even while I am contacting my state and federal legislators every week--not to mention regularly bugging the city councilors in Boston, staying active in municipal organizations, and marching to help unionize businesses in my area--Chomsky and other "leftists" can keep their seal of approval. Actually, they can all try a little harder to earn mine.
Thanks,
Deb (She/Her/Hers)
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