On Oct 17, 2005, at 10:16 AM, Charles Brown wrote:
Jim D:
BTW, my empirical observation is that conspiracy theories are much
more the rave these days on the left than are systemic theories (e.g.,
Marxism). When Dan Scanlan suggested that "911 and other chaos ... Is
fostered [by the Bush elite] to keep arms sales up, oil controls in
place"
he was stating a type of opinion that is extremely common on the left.
^^^^^^^
CB: Dan Scanlan's statement doesn't sound like a theory that
everything
going on politicaleconomically is explained by this fostering of
this and
that, ergo, it is not a socalled conspiracy theory of anything but the
specific events referred to, that is it is not the error of
substituting a
conspiracy theory for a system theory.
Here's what I actually wrote:
"Issues like this [A CIA study reported in SLATE that Bush didn't pay
attention to intelligence that predicted chaos in Iraq] keep us from
seeing their own responsibility for 911 and other chaos that is
fostered to keep arms sales up, oil controls in place, plain folks
subjugated and progressives sidetracked. If we weren't discussing
this, we might be creating strategies for prosecuting the CIA and its
cohorts in the House, Senate, Executive and media for creating Al
Queda in the first place and funding Bush family buddy Osama Bin
Laden, etc."
I made no reference to Illuminati, Gnomes of Zurich or the Wizard of
Oz. I was addressing the fact that stories are floated by people with
the power to float them that divert attention away from more
important issues. My response to Jim's tossing of the phrase
"conspiracy theories" at my argument is that giving the observation a
name doesn't alter the validity of the observation. I may not have
said THAT very well, but that's what I meant. The world is, in fact,
replete with conspiracies, discovered daily. I'm not arguing and
never have that they are connected into a larger conspiracy.
It's been 42 years now that news media has been able to fluff off
inconsistencies in the assassination of John Kennedy by simply
calling them "conspiracy theories", ignoring all the while that the
single bullet/single assassin scenario is, itself, a conspiracy
theory, albeit unfounded in fact.
I can't prove it, of course, but I do reckon that the folks
responsible for that assassination have been running parts of the
country ever since, and expect to be living in rapturous Heaven when
the government files are released in the 2030's.
Dan Scanlan
