Summary

This chapter details the combination of efforts that wealthy elites have gone through to detract from the population’s ability to impact government policy. These efforts’ success can be seen in a recent poll that concludes “that about 70 percent of the population has no influence on policy- they might as well be in some other country” (139). The common political system plays to the interests and needs of a fraction of the population, and, not coincidentally, the wealthiest fraction of the population. According to Chomsky, this system has provoked “this tremendous antagonism toward institutions- all institutions” (140).

This antagonism, in Chomsky’s opinion, paved the way for the presidency of Donald Trump, someone “who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets...