What the Heck, Noam?

In a 30-minute clip posted here, Noan Chomsky is asked whether the United States suffres from too little rational political dialogue -- something I wrote about last week. Typical of Mr. Chomsky, he says "no." That's typical partly because it is contrarian, and partly because it's not entirely consistent with other things he says.
Through most of the piece, Chomsky says that a significant majority of the American population actually desires things often associated with liberals -- increased spending for help to the poor (though not "welfare"), decreased military spending, fewer restrictions on gay marraige. He says the problem is that the polarized elite, including too many journalists and bloggers, do not reflect this ppular reality, and so distort the discourse.

I don't know one way or the other whether Chomsky has his facts right, but I'm not sure it matters. Either way the problem is with the political discourse rather than the opinions or deires of most people. We don't have a closely divided people, we have a closely divided and very hot debate.