Subject:
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Re: An armed society...(what if?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 25 Jan 2002 14:04:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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1545 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> How many must there be for a conspiracy?
>
> What if there are a few people at the top manipulating things with the use of
> their power bases (law enforcement officers)? Is that a conspiracy? I am not
> asserting that is the case, merely hypothesizing and clarifying.
As further clarification, it might be useful to distinguish between the
Foucault's-Pendulum-style Conspiracies and simple two-guys-working-together
conspracies. The former generally cannot exist in its described form, since
it demands far too much coordination, efficiency, and secrecy to be viable
in anything like the real world, despite what conspiraciphobes might assert
to the contrary. The latter exists all the time and in many, many forms; my
coworker and I might conspire to sneak an extra fifteen minutes on our lunch
break, or a mayor and a police commissioner might conspire to loot the
"evidence" stash.
Additionally, events can conspire without implying any devilish overseers
at the helm; a number of factors "conspired" to have a guy rear-end my
vehicle last month. In that sense, "to conspire" simply means to work in
conjunction toward a single end, but I don't suspect that the Templars were
behind it.
The essential difference relates to the level of organization and the
breadth of the enterprise in question. I would suggest that disparate
factions working toward a similar goal do not constitute a Conspiracy; some
deliberate coordination between them is fundamental. Thus, if Officer A
independently plants drugs on Person X in an effort to set him up, and if on
another occasion Officer B independently plants an illegal firearm on Person
X in an effort to set him up, I don't think that would count as a conspiracy
between the two Officers, since there was no intent of coordination.
There aren't any ironclad distinctions of definition, and there is a lot
of room for blurring between capital-C and lower-case-c.
Dave!
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: An armed society...(what if?)
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| (...) not (...) [snip] (...) In our nation (and every nation?) those with the power of wealth have a large amount of power over the laws of the land. They wield this power to assure that they keep their wealth. What degree of conspiracy is going on? (...) (22 years ago, 25-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: An armed society...(what if?)
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| (...) The Templars, indeed. It was the Hospitalars, but the money was provided by the Gnomes of Zurich. Fnord. (...) To actually address Chris' question back up at the top: as few as two. But conspiracy is usually defined as having some illegal (...) (22 years ago, 25-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: An armed society...(what if?)
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| (...) Dave! Is this the semantic game AGAIN?! Man, you love to talk about words... Maybe we just need another word for what happens -- maybe the word "conspiracy" is insufficient to describe observed phenomena. I keep thinking about chaos theory, (...) (22 years ago, 25-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: An armed society...(what if?)
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| (...) For one semester in 1988, I was playing with being a criminal justice major. It ended up being really dull, so I moved on to several other major fields. But in that process I determined that there are cops who know what's going on and why (...) (22 years ago, 25-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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