[Cowperson]

Chomsky reveals the secret of being an amateur political analyst like himself in this paragraph lifted from: "The Pentagon Papers and US Imperialism In Southeast Asia."

It is possible to give some useful advice to an aspiring political analyst who wants his work to be received as thoughtful and penetrating – advice, I am sure, which applies to any society, not merely {34} ours. This analyst should, first of all, determine as closely as possible the actual workings of power in his society, the actual structure of decision-making in social, economic and political affairs. Having isolated certain primary elements and a number of peripheral and insignificant ones, he should then proceed to ignore the primary factors, or perhaps dismiss them as unimportant, the province of extremists and ideologues. He should rather concentrate on the minor and peripheral elements in decision-making. Better still, he should describe these in terms that appear to be quite general and independent of the social structure that he is discussing ("power drive," "fear of irrelevance," etc.). Where he considers policies that failed, he should attribute them to stupidity and ignorance, that is, to factors that are socially neutral. Or, he may attribute the failures to noble impulses that led policy-makers astray, impulses that led them, in particular, to fail to appreciate the venality, ingratitude and barbarism of subject peoples. He can then be fairly confident that he will be regarded as thoughtful and perhaps even profound, and that he will escape the criticism that his efforts at explanation are "simplistic" (the truth is often surprisingly simple). He will, in short, benefit from a natural tendency on the part of the privileged in any society to suppress – for themselves as well as others – knowledge and understanding of the nature of their privilege and its manifestations.

Pretty straight forward.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1972----.htm

Cowperson