I really like Noam Chomsky's work – but perhaps that's because I'm not an American citizen. He's known for his contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics, but is more widely known for his political activism, media criticism an blatant criticism of the US.

In a video interview he spoke of the disparate conditions impossed on mainstream and dissident opinion. As a dissident himself, I suppose he understands this better than most. And so, as Chomsky has written about terrorism, he shown how terrorism corresponds to power, that therefore the power powerful states are more involved with terrorism. The peak of this argument is that the US is the most powerful state and by argument, is involved in massive terrorism.

By making such arguments, he is required to give huge amounts of evidence in support of the argument. If he were to say that George W. bush is a terrorist, he would be required to give significant evidence in support of the statement, while on the other hand, stating that Gaddafi is a terrorist, very little evidence is required from the public.

This is a wonderful example of the dynamic between a dominant story and a alternative story. A dominant story is one that high levels of subscription and an alternative story is one with lower levels. So, the dominant story around Gaddafi si that he's a terrorist, while one of the alternative stories is that he is not.

the interesting thing is that a dominant story is not directly proportionate to the amount of evidence that supports it. It is instead strengthened more by perception. I can easily form a dominant story about myself that as a social maven, lets say, with very little supporting evidence. What happens then is that the more realistic alternative story is subjugated.

This, in part, explains why public opinion is so fickle – because it is easier to assert what the dominant story is, rather than assert an alternative and then have to back it up so heavily.dominant stories are comfrotable and alterative stories are tough to deal with.

It is important to note that society has means of constricting the dissident opinions. I'll take talk show radio as an example. Because of the advertising based model, dissident opinions are very rarely allowed to be aired because the time it takes to give supporting evidence is hindered by the need to air adverts. Chomsky himself uses this example.