https://radioopensource.medium.com/american-socrates-the-life-and-mind-of-noam-chomsky-show-transcript-6c67f4e5c34e

"What happened is that large parts of the population–which had been passive, apathetic, obedient–tried to enter the political arena in one or another way to press their interests and concerns. They’re called “special interests.” That means minorities, young people, old people, farmers, workers, women. In other words: the population. The population are special interests, and their task is to just watch quietly. And that was explicit".

"I mean, we don’t understand a lot about the human nature, but one of its aspects is mutual aid and solidarity. Other aspects are greed and hatred. Social economic conditions help effect–they don’t determine–but they certainly influence which of these aspects of human nature come to predominate. If you live in a society that respects and rewards greed and disregard of others and getting ahead and look out for number one and the hell with everything else, yes. Those aspects of human nature will come to predominate. If you have something like a functional family where people actually help each other and care for each other, other aspects come out.

We actually have both. So, one advantage of the United States over Europe, crucial advantage, is that institutions have a kind of built in solidarity. So for example, if Nevada is suffering from a recession and New York pays for it, we don’t even pay attention to it. Mississippi gets subsidized by New York. That doesn’t happen in Europe. Greece doesn’t get subsidized by Germany. Quite the opposite, Germany tries to punish Greece. That’s an advantage of the U.S. system, and it’s built in. There are all kinds of things, you know".

"Well, we have to pick and choose, and take say David Hume who had some real insights into the nature of politics. He said you have this strange paradox. He says, “In every society, power is in the hands of the governed. They’re the ones who really have power, but they don’t use it. They’re willing to subordinate themselves to authorities.” And he says, “By what miracle is this reached?” And he said it’s control of opinion. It’s by control of opinion alone that the nobles and the autocrats and the gentleman succeed in getting the public to accept being abused and repressed".

CL: “Manufacturing consent,” so to speak.

"He didn’t use the phrase. That waited for Walter Lippmann who advocated it incidentally. We forget that the phrase was used by liberal Democrats who advocated it. They said that’s the essence of democracy. They were Hume’s noblemen and autocrats".

Chomsky