An Eagle in His Nest

 John Ganz in his newsletter today quotes from a new essay about the controversy that has ensued, following revelations of the extent of the personal acquaintance between Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein. For everyone who at one point admired Chomsky when they were a budding leftist, this news was indeed a blow; and many on the Left have apparently been arguing for months over whether we now have to reevaluate his entire career. 

My own view is that Chomsky always had certain annoying and disingenuous intellectual foibles; but at the same time, he became a hero to the anti-war left for a reason. I found myself reflexively quoting him—without the thought of Jeffrey Epstein even entering my brain—just two days ago, on the subject of the dehumanizing way we treat war in this country. Many of Chomsky's best lines and moral observations retain their emotional power. 

Rather than reassessing or negating any of these earlier achievements, then, I think we can simply say of Chomsky what André Gide did of Romain Rolland (in his Afterthoughts on the USSR): "The cause of my grief was that so few men reach the end of their life before showing the extreme limit of their greatness. [...] This eagle has made his nest; he takes his rest in it." (Bussy trans.)

We grieve all the more because the message of the younger Chomsky—the eagle before he had retired to his nest—seems more necessary and urgent than ever. U.S. imperialism, aggression, and hypocrisy have reached extremes under this administration that we have not seen in years. As an opinion writer observed in the New York Times yesterday, the Trump administration's latest oil deal with Venezuela seems to recapitulate the worst chapters of U.S. colonialism past. 

The writer, Francisco Rodríguez, observes, of the way the U.S. has transformed Venezuela into a puppet state for oil interests: "This is not the first time that the United States has attempted to manage a country it has invaded. More than a century ago, citing Theodore Roosevelt’s interventionist interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington imposed similar protectorate regimes on Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. [...] These experiences did not end well."

I am reminded of Anatole France's prophetic warning in The White Stone: "Following upon Cuba, reduced to the state of a vassal republic, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the annexation of the Philippines, it is impossible to say that the American Union is not a conquering nation..." (Roche trans.) 

I think too of one character's observation in Sinclair Lewis's 1929 novel Dodsworth: "We go around hollering that we’re the only bona fide friends of democracy and self-determination, and yet with Haiti and Nicaragua we’re doing everything we accused Germany of doing in Belgium."

So too, in our own era, we quite rightly condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, or China for threatening Taiwan. But how is our ongoing attack on Iran, or our neo-colonial quasi-occupation of Venezuela, or our starvation blockade of Cuba, any different? 

These are the sorts of hypocrisies that Chomsky in his heyday could have pointed out better than anyone.

And so, we say of Chomsky—"America hath need of thee!"

Of course, the poet I'm alluding to with that line himself lived to become the antithesis of all his own youthful liberal values. Wordsworth too, like Chomsky, like Rolland, was a textbook case of a writer who did not "reach the end of their life before showing the extreme limit of their greatness"—another eagle resting in his nest. That is why Browning wrote of his former idol: "we shall march prospering, [but] not thro' his presence." 

And that, alas, is what we must say now of Chomsky too. Not that nothing he ever did in the past was worthwhile; but that he is no longer the leader that will guide us into the future. We will march on, but not through his presence. 

The Left can survive this loss—but it is indeed a grievous one. What Shelley wrote of Wordsworth we say now of Chomsky: 

Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battling multitude:

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,—

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.