Conservative Quote by Noam Chomsky
““For instance, there's a college in northern California called Chico State, which is where guys like Reagan and Shultz [Reagan's Secretary of State] send their kids so they won't be infected by "lefties" at Berkeley. The place is right in the middle of four hundred miles of cornfields, or whatever it is they grow out there, a million miles from nowhere, and when you fly in you land at an airport that's about half the size of a house. Well, when I landed there, a student and a faculty member who were like the two local radicals at the school came out to meet me. And as we were walking to the car, I noticed we had to go a pretty long distance, because the airport was all surrounded with yellow police tape. So I asked these guys, "What's going on, are they rebuilding the landing strip or something?" You know what they said? "No, that's to protect the airport from Arab terrorists." I said, "Arab terrorists in northern California?" But they thought so. And when I got into the town, everybody was walking around in army fatigues and wearing yellow ribbons, saying "If Saddam comes, we're going to fight to the death," and so on.””
About This Quote
Source Speech: Interview, date unknown
The speaker describes a rural California town with heightened security paranoia, using exaggerated anecdotes to illustrate fear of perceived threats.
In simple terms: Exaggerated fear of threats in a remote town.
Question assumptions about security narratives.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- travel
- college visits
- community events
- political discourse
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- How does satire affect credibility?
- What real fears underlie such narratives?
The anecdote may be satirical, reducing factual reliability.