Tonight my face was the glare in the glasses of the Left's most prominent living intellectual.

Noam Chomsky--- despised by most Americans, or those few who know his name; revered in Europe and the Middle East; the second most quoted person of all time; the academic outlet of anti-war, anti-globalism, anti-imperialism, anti-atrocity activism--- gave a speech tonight at NYU.

His argument outlined the abandonment of "basic moral truisms"--- namely, that the United States must abide by its own international laws. For him, it began in Nuremberg, when the definition of "war crime" came to mean "a crime that you committed and we did not." The U.S. routinely ignores the Geneva Conventions and participates in state-sponsored terrorism--- then it declares war on nations who do the same.

Chomsky says that we accepted Washington's version of what the Iraq war is--- a Messianic crusade to spread democracy. Bush, as a true Christian, simply had to do the moral thing and liberate a victimized people. Never mind the polls that tell us those victims do not quite see it that way. (According to Chomsky, exactly one percent of Iraqis felt that the American military had good intentions, and that was before we killed almost 100,000 of them while torturing their friends in Saddam's former dissident prison.)

It was a delight to see him up close and hear his thoughts; he's always held a strong and steady voice, because for him the human world is always in despair and the leaders of today are always tallying up atrocities to fill the pages of tomorrow's history books.

And: my fucking keyboard stopped working. This entry, in fact, was sponsored by my beautiful boyfriend and his beautiful Presario Notebook. Anybody stopping by Staples with some cash to waste in the near future?