10-28-2018, 04:34 PM
(10-10-2018, 02:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I never would have thought humanity could sink this low again. But so it appears. This time there's no-one to save us.
In view of the would-be multiple bomber and the mass shooter of a synagogue, we could go lower. We might excoriate both, but he debases us all.
We must save ourselves. About all that we can do in the next few days is to vote.
When we see expressions of abnormal hatred we may need to challenge those. The creep who mowed down Jews in a synagogue had posted some ugly material of religious-racial hate. Yes, his sort of antisemitism is racist in character. It's clear that Jews lack the numbers and organization for dominating the world, especially in places where there are few Jews. Sure, there are plenty of smart and competent Jews, but they can usually play by the rules of a capitalist society and do well. The competent get paid well and treated well, lest they take their talents with them to some place where their competence get both personal and economic reward.
I had been listening to a lecture broadcast on C-Span in which a professor explains the usual irrelevance of conspiracy theories. As we all should know, the simplest explanation of any event (short of random chance which nobody can explain) consistent with reality is almost invariably the best explanation. If political leaders want war and have the means for convincing the right people, they get war, as the professor illustrated with the example of George H W Bush getting approval for expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Everybody knew the rules in place, and the only one who failed to heed those rules was Saddam Hussein.
If wealth people or those wielding institutional power want something done, they rarely need a devious plot. The combination of resources, implicit permission, and opportunity can make a brute-force action (like Barack Obama ordering the hit on Osama bin Laden) successful. Conspiracies often implode, as even the simplest ones (gangland hits) often implode. Law enforcement may not stop a gangland hit, but it can break a conspiracy after the fact. Conspiracy requires collective action and cohesion, and once an agency like the FBI breaks the cohesion of a group it breaks the plot.
There is no good training ground for a criminal conspiracy except perhaps for a secret police. But even the Gestapo was easy to break after the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.
The most common conspiracy looks like the cover-up. It rarely works.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.