Policy is largely set by economic elites and organized groups representing business interests with little concern for public attitudes or public safety, as long as the public remains passive and obedient.
Noam ChomskyHow many educated Americans can even remember the names of the assassinated Jesuit intellectuals of El Salvador, or would know where to find a word they wrote? The answers are revealing, particularly when we draw the striking - and historically typical - contrast to the attitudes towards their counterparts in enemy domains.
Noam ChomskyIn the primary debates for the 2016 election, every single Republican candidate was a climate change denier, with one exception, John Kasich - the "rational moderate" - who said it may be happening but we shouldn't do anything about it. For a long time, the media have downplayed the issue.
Noam ChomskyIf the rewiring of the brain that yielded recursive generation of hierarchically structured expressions took place in an individual, not a group (and there seems to be no coherent alternative), then interaction must have been a later phenomenon.
Noam Chomsky