Political Conspiracy Theory
Nov. 17th, 2012 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penpusherRecently, I responded to a post. I don't think you actually need the text of the original to make sense of this but in my comment back, I said:
Those that cannot create seemed doomed to destroy. I guess we need both creators and destroyers but the destroyers need to destroy the right stuff, and that's always the problem, isn't it?
I feel another thinkpost coming on, but I will say this. You are right. When you position money as the most important element, when getting the most wealth becomes the focus, everything else becomes secondary and by secondary I mean irrelevant.
And that's the soulless, vacuum of suck that we are rushing towards.
But the comment back really required more than just a passing response which is why I waited until the weekend and why I brought it back to my journal to do that proper thinkpost. So, here is the response, and my reaction to it.
The comment back about my reaction above was as follows:
I am saying that all parties are part of one conspiring group who are intentionally playing out pre-planned theatrics, fleecing and controlling the entire population of the country.
I´m saying that money is one tool they use to hoard all the power.
I´m saying that all the democrats and republicans, including Barack Obama, are very much one group of conspirators who are only pretending to be at odds so that the citizens of the country continue to be fooled into thinking they have any choice at all, and so that they will be distracted from all the horrendous shit that the Demopublicans---AKA The People Who Own The Country--are getting away with.
I´m saying there are in fact numerous distractions set in place for just this purpose ... the whole racism against Obama being one of them (or at least the fueling of it), the so-called "birthers" phenomenon being another one (or at least the fueling of it), just to name a few ... This is all premeditated and purely intentional. In fact the entire society is built to create and perpetuate such distraction.
I´m saying that the average citizen is just as responsible as the people pulling the scam, for buying into it. Each person has a responsibility for themself, however, tangentially the average person has a weak and poor character.
I´m saying a lot of things here.
You just worked on Obama´s "campaign."
And we agree, how, Dean?
There's a lot to try to go through there. And, I really didn't think I would be getting a response like this one, since that wasn't necessarily the direction the original post seemed to be going. But I wanted to give this a proper examination to try to analyze these elements and see if it, in whole or in part, rings true.
Let's start with a basic concept. In order for a conspiracy to work, it would rely on at least several people to make it work. And, the bigger the conspiracy, the more people you would need to control both the nature of and the information about it.
Having said that, I do not believe that all parties involved in government are one conspiring group.
Now, I understand that if we pulled out a board game, like Monopoly, we could play the game together and be at odds with each other as we each tried to win. So, if that's the analogy, that's a bit different from believing that we would be playing this game in order to work together to distract someone else from their lives or to take from that other person.
So, no. That concept doesn't work for me. I don't see any evidence that this is what's happening.
Now, if you want to make a case that all of politics is just a game and that there are similarities regarding *some* elements of what these representatives want for their constituents, I would agree with that. But that's very different from the statement being made above.
Also, the concept of "pre-planned theatrics" is a difficult one. And really I won't spend a lot of time on that point, but based on how humans act and react, and the various level of reaction, it would be impossible to know exactly how things can, would or could go if there were some Svengali pulling the strings. Such a master plan would require a better grip on the emotional side of things or at least know where the range of emotions would take any particular player in this game, and that would change from minute to minute and from event to event.
Briefly, we have had people who insist that 9/11 was a US government action, designed to open a gateway for us to go into the Middle East and start a war, just as an example. But that really couldn't be the case, at least not unless the facts of the event as we know them were completely fabricated.
But if THAT were the case, that everything we think we know about the attacks were untrue, there would be a fairly large number of people who would know that info, or a portion of that info. Just based on how news gets leaked, especially about something that is both of international interest, like an attack on US soil, AND would require the kind of cover-up needed to plug every potential hole in the system that would allow us to discover the "truth," well, you can imagine how difficult and more importantly how expensive that would be. And that would be just one of a series of events, any of which could unravel to expose this conspiracy.
You might offer the thought that there was some sort of skeleton crew team that is just taking the actions and reactions of we humans as we go and making new decisions on the fly, based on what happened. Again, that is a different concept from what is being suggested here.
Money is a tool. That I totally agree with, and we all should agree with, because money is an exchange: it is what the job you do pays you for your time, skills and effort. Of course, money itself is power, because money allows you the ability to do things. But what do you do with that money?
Economics is a pretty big landscape and can take us in a lot of different directions. It's pretty unwieldy to try and cover it, because there's very little about it that's clear and concise! And really economics "experts" don't always seem to know or understand how it works, so there's that.
To be able to manipulate the economics of just one country would be Herculean, to say the least, but this sort of level would be on a global scale to be effective, and that model just doesn't work.
I guess it's easy to think that all politicians are alike and that President Obama is just another one. But based on everything I know about the man, his childhood, his education, his interests, his family, his attitude and his work, that's a complete disservice to who he is and what he has accomplished.
Not to mention the fact that he is attempting to succeed against the people who do not favor his politics and the people who do not favor his skin tone. In many, but not all cases, these are the same people, with differing agendas. I would also say that the "birthers" phenomenon is just a façade for the racism that seems to be coming out of everywhere now, as a reaction to knowing another 4 years of a man of color in the White House is about to happen. It's pretty horrific, this reaction to it all.
I guess the biggest question would be how would a conspiracy like this even work? Who would profit from it? You always need to ask who the big winner is for something like this. And there has to be an answer or there couldn't be a plot. Somebody we could potentially name would be the biggest gainer, and we should at least have, if not the name of this person, a general sense of who it might be, or the companies owned that are sharing in the profits and the elements involved in all of it.
So, I will now offer up my theory. It's not that involved. It's brief. It's sorta straightforward and it does have a bit of conspiracy to it.
1. People are self-interested and certain ones will put their interests ahead of everything.
2. People can put together plans when like-minded people find each other (like in Congress or on LiveJournal).
3. Unless you're paying attention, you may not notice manipulation, but in government there are people constantly paying attention: the various forms of the media.
4. The greediest will spill the beans on a plan if they can get more by telling than by not.
And that's the fail safe. If you're going to try something as crooked as manipulating the American public (and in the process, the world), using a whole bunch of people with clearly differing agendas, someone will be the weak link. And if there's a better chance for any one of them to tell their story and do better from it than by staying silent and marching to someone else's tune, that house of cards falls faster than the speed of gravity.
Is our political system flawed? Of course it is. Can there be tampering and manipulation? Yes. But is this a part of a larger, overriding plot? I don't see any evidence to support that, but more importantly, I don't see any method to attempt it even if someone wanted to try.
Those that cannot create seemed doomed to destroy. I guess we need both creators and destroyers but the destroyers need to destroy the right stuff, and that's always the problem, isn't it?
I feel another thinkpost coming on, but I will say this. You are right. When you position money as the most important element, when getting the most wealth becomes the focus, everything else becomes secondary and by secondary I mean irrelevant.
And that's the soulless, vacuum of suck that we are rushing towards.
But the comment back really required more than just a passing response which is why I waited until the weekend and why I brought it back to my journal to do that proper thinkpost. So, here is the response, and my reaction to it.
The comment back about my reaction above was as follows:
I am saying that all parties are part of one conspiring group who are intentionally playing out pre-planned theatrics, fleecing and controlling the entire population of the country.
I´m saying that money is one tool they use to hoard all the power.
I´m saying that all the democrats and republicans, including Barack Obama, are very much one group of conspirators who are only pretending to be at odds so that the citizens of the country continue to be fooled into thinking they have any choice at all, and so that they will be distracted from all the horrendous shit that the Demopublicans---AKA The People Who Own The Country--are getting away with.
I´m saying there are in fact numerous distractions set in place for just this purpose ... the whole racism against Obama being one of them (or at least the fueling of it), the so-called "birthers" phenomenon being another one (or at least the fueling of it), just to name a few ... This is all premeditated and purely intentional. In fact the entire society is built to create and perpetuate such distraction.
I´m saying that the average citizen is just as responsible as the people pulling the scam, for buying into it. Each person has a responsibility for themself, however, tangentially the average person has a weak and poor character.
I´m saying a lot of things here.
You just worked on Obama´s "campaign."
And we agree, how, Dean?
There's a lot to try to go through there. And, I really didn't think I would be getting a response like this one, since that wasn't necessarily the direction the original post seemed to be going. But I wanted to give this a proper examination to try to analyze these elements and see if it, in whole or in part, rings true.
Let's start with a basic concept. In order for a conspiracy to work, it would rely on at least several people to make it work. And, the bigger the conspiracy, the more people you would need to control both the nature of and the information about it.
Having said that, I do not believe that all parties involved in government are one conspiring group.
Now, I understand that if we pulled out a board game, like Monopoly, we could play the game together and be at odds with each other as we each tried to win. So, if that's the analogy, that's a bit different from believing that we would be playing this game in order to work together to distract someone else from their lives or to take from that other person.
So, no. That concept doesn't work for me. I don't see any evidence that this is what's happening.
Now, if you want to make a case that all of politics is just a game and that there are similarities regarding *some* elements of what these representatives want for their constituents, I would agree with that. But that's very different from the statement being made above.
Also, the concept of "pre-planned theatrics" is a difficult one. And really I won't spend a lot of time on that point, but based on how humans act and react, and the various level of reaction, it would be impossible to know exactly how things can, would or could go if there were some Svengali pulling the strings. Such a master plan would require a better grip on the emotional side of things or at least know where the range of emotions would take any particular player in this game, and that would change from minute to minute and from event to event.
Briefly, we have had people who insist that 9/11 was a US government action, designed to open a gateway for us to go into the Middle East and start a war, just as an example. But that really couldn't be the case, at least not unless the facts of the event as we know them were completely fabricated.
But if THAT were the case, that everything we think we know about the attacks were untrue, there would be a fairly large number of people who would know that info, or a portion of that info. Just based on how news gets leaked, especially about something that is both of international interest, like an attack on US soil, AND would require the kind of cover-up needed to plug every potential hole in the system that would allow us to discover the "truth," well, you can imagine how difficult and more importantly how expensive that would be. And that would be just one of a series of events, any of which could unravel to expose this conspiracy.
You might offer the thought that there was some sort of skeleton crew team that is just taking the actions and reactions of we humans as we go and making new decisions on the fly, based on what happened. Again, that is a different concept from what is being suggested here.
Money is a tool. That I totally agree with, and we all should agree with, because money is an exchange: it is what the job you do pays you for your time, skills and effort. Of course, money itself is power, because money allows you the ability to do things. But what do you do with that money?
Economics is a pretty big landscape and can take us in a lot of different directions. It's pretty unwieldy to try and cover it, because there's very little about it that's clear and concise! And really economics "experts" don't always seem to know or understand how it works, so there's that.
To be able to manipulate the economics of just one country would be Herculean, to say the least, but this sort of level would be on a global scale to be effective, and that model just doesn't work.
I guess it's easy to think that all politicians are alike and that President Obama is just another one. But based on everything I know about the man, his childhood, his education, his interests, his family, his attitude and his work, that's a complete disservice to who he is and what he has accomplished.
Not to mention the fact that he is attempting to succeed against the people who do not favor his politics and the people who do not favor his skin tone. In many, but not all cases, these are the same people, with differing agendas. I would also say that the "birthers" phenomenon is just a façade for the racism that seems to be coming out of everywhere now, as a reaction to knowing another 4 years of a man of color in the White House is about to happen. It's pretty horrific, this reaction to it all.
I guess the biggest question would be how would a conspiracy like this even work? Who would profit from it? You always need to ask who the big winner is for something like this. And there has to be an answer or there couldn't be a plot. Somebody we could potentially name would be the biggest gainer, and we should at least have, if not the name of this person, a general sense of who it might be, or the companies owned that are sharing in the profits and the elements involved in all of it.
So, I will now offer up my theory. It's not that involved. It's brief. It's sorta straightforward and it does have a bit of conspiracy to it.
1. People are self-interested and certain ones will put their interests ahead of everything.
2. People can put together plans when like-minded people find each other (like in Congress or on LiveJournal).
3. Unless you're paying attention, you may not notice manipulation, but in government there are people constantly paying attention: the various forms of the media.
4. The greediest will spill the beans on a plan if they can get more by telling than by not.
And that's the fail safe. If you're going to try something as crooked as manipulating the American public (and in the process, the world), using a whole bunch of people with clearly differing agendas, someone will be the weak link. And if there's a better chance for any one of them to tell their story and do better from it than by staying silent and marching to someone else's tune, that house of cards falls faster than the speed of gravity.
Is our political system flawed? Of course it is. Can there be tampering and manipulation? Yes. But is this a part of a larger, overriding plot? I don't see any evidence to support that, but more importantly, I don't see any method to attempt it even if someone wanted to try.