Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

the imperial family in England plays a real role in depoliticizing the place, and Reagan reminded me a bit of that.41 For instance, every session of Parliament in England opens with the Queen reading a message written by the ruling political party, and everybody pretends to take it seriously. But in another part of your brain, you don’t ask, “Did the Queen believe what she was saying?” or, “Did she understand what she was saying?” or “Will she remember what she was saying?” or, “Did she lie to the Parliament?” Those are just not relevant questions—because the Queen’s job is to be royalty, and to be revered, and to be admired, and to be the model woman that everybody’s supposed to be like. It’s kind of like playing a game in the political system, even though people there do in fact take it seriously in a sense—like they care if the Princess Diana is having a spat with Something-Or-Other, they think about it, and they talk about it, and so on. But of course, at some other level of their intelligence, they know that it has nothing to do with life.