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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Kirby Warden writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> <snip>
>
> > > Kirby's conspiracy thing is actually small potatoes when you realize that it
> > > doesn't take a conspiracy to ruin things. Still, I might call it a
> > > conspiracy of ignorance, apathy, and comfortable living. And I have to
> > > admit --it's contagious. I know I caught the bug some time ago. But, at
> > > least I know I have become apathetic. Why I even respond to these debate
> > > posts is a matter for speculation...
> >
> > I don't think you and I are really in disagreement on fundamentals,
> > save the "systemic failure" thing (which has its merits, true).
> > My major issue was with the *intentionalist* reading, so I apologize
> > if that didn't come through as the target. But I do know that I haven't
> > spent nearly as much time looking at the expansion-of-powers issue in
> > the last three months as I want to--only enough to know that I oppose
> > most of it. But that's not the point I was trying to get at.
> >
> > best
> >
> > LFB
>
> I think you've read me wrong.
>
> I don't fear a "systemic failure" (I assume you mean the collapse of society?)
>
> What I fear is the *enslavement* of our society.
Actually, given the basis of the USA as constituted--its core
principles--I'd argue that enslavement would, in fact, constitute
the collapse of our society. (But I did read you in the "enslavement"
sense, actually.) But it would require some massive, sudden trauma
to the entire national body that would make 9/11 look like a blip.
To be perfectly honest with you, my father wasn't big on New World
Order conspiracies, but he *did* believe that the government was up
to no good in some new and especially sinister way. That's rubbed
off, and I have the same cynicism (hard to believe, isn't it?). Do
you remember when Bush addressed the Congress, with virtually every-
one there except Cheney who was in an "undisclosed location"?
I was waiting. I was waiting to see if something would happen to
this assembled locus of power. A low-yield nuke. A new suicide
attack of incredible magnitude. Something. But nothing happened.
If there *is* a conspiracy of some kind, they're being very bad at
it; they've missed a lot of opportunities to put a WWII-style regime
of censorship and austerity in place, or worse--an interim "wartime"
government.
> At many levels we are
> already slaves. So long as we depend upon money/credit (as opposed to a
> barter system or a currency whose physical form holds real worth) then we
> must depend on the "system" to supply it to us. Most people must work *for*
> someone just to eat. One by one our basic nescessities are falling into the
> control of governments or corporations. I mean really,here in the Great
> Lakes area, corporations are fighting over water!!
I'm from Michigan, I know it well--and the gas companies are special
villains this time of year. (And yes, I think they do engage in some
serious gouging.) We've been "slaves" in the sense of needing to work
just to eat for a long, long time--in fact, since the late 1700s for
the majority of western European and American society, and much longer
for many Asian cultures. Becoming wage-earners does exactly what you
state--it alienates us from subsistence and from the land--but it makes
our very way of life, from textiles to motorcycles to jet fighters,
possible. The "system" has been in existence for a long, long time,
and it's been advancing to the point we see it at now slowly and surely.
It's nothing new or surprising. Americans, however, notice it because
we're used to lots of space and the homesteader/pioneer ideal. It's
no surprise to me that most of the antigovernment folks grew up in
rural areas and either remain or have returned there.
(Actually, I lectured on the 17th-century stage of this today. Strange.)
> It is not a pattern that I see or have accepted, but rather a conditioning.
> We are a very busy people. We are busy trying to make a living, pay the
> bills, support our families, entertain ourselves... So long as we are busy
> working, then we aren't thinking about why we are working.
>
> A corporation does not provide us a job for our benefit, but for theirs.
>
> I fully believe that it is the corporations that really run the nation. Not
> because abundant evidence says so, but because I have yet to find *any*
> evidence that this is not the case. I have found that what is not seen or
> documented is sometimes more important that *is* seen.
I agree completely that we live in a plutocracy, not a democracy (or
even a true republic as envisioned in 1787). But that development's
not exactly new, either--this concern came up with companies like
U.S. Steel and even as far back as the Civil War, with profiteers
and arms contractors. Some even suggest that it was merchant inter-
ests--the nascent middle class, who were quite rich--that made the
US declare independence at all, rather than have a disorganized tax
revolt that HMG would most certainly have put down.
> As an example (because I don't think that last paragraph is worded well) the
> theory of Dark Matter says that what we don't see in the universe ( all the
> empty spaces) could possibly contain more mass than the entire visible universe.
The problem with that belief is that it opens one up to paranoia.
I know that I'll automatically lose the discussion, but it's the
idea of a conspiracy that *must* be there but isn't bluntly evident
that brought a certain Austrian veteran-cum-failed-artist and his
party to power in a certain northern European country in 1933.
The problems, as the NSDAP saw them, were the rapacious international
capitalist order (personified in the Jews for them), Americanization
(the destruction of German culture and German self-reliance), and
the international conspiracy to keep Germans down from their rightful
position as leaders of Europe. It was all way, way, way overblown,
but people were sensitive to it, and plenty believed it without any
concrete evidence.
In the absence of evidence, a responsible researcher and scholar
cannot--and must not--attempt to draw conclusions based upon what
*might* exist. Correlation does not equal causation; concordance
does not equal intent. Now, here's a question you may wish to moll
over: What's the "negative evidence" you're referring to? In some
situations, you *can* make a case based on absent evidence, but
only starting with the extant material. Otherwise it's not evidence,
only speculation (even if it's correct).
> I believe that the CFR (Council of Foreign Relations) is the *link*. That
> organization has *way* too much money and influence. No matter how good
> they make themselves out to be. Please, look it up, read about it. It is
> just too much money and power sitting at one table.
Council on Foreign Relations, I assume you mean? It may have influence,
but no more than, say, the Century Club may have had in its heyday (or
the Athaeneum, if you're British). Lobby groups are also not new. Just
being made up of influential people (and businesspeople make up less than
a third of the membership) who have money doesn't prove anything. The
same charges have been leveled against the Freemasons, the Jews of Western
Europe, and a myriad of other "elite" insular groups over the last 300
years.
I know that people like Myron Fagan are sure that there's a One World
Government coming, that the CFR has some ability to initiate and control
policy, and all that goes with it, but would you be willing--even
theoretically--to accept that there may, in fact, be nothing quite
so sinister? I'm certainly willing to accept that there *could*
be some massive conspiracy, because it's impossible to prove that
something *isn't* without independent and directly contradictory
evidence (which, like the positive evidence for intentionalist con-
spiracy, doesn't exist). But I don't see the CFR as anything more
than it is--an organ of Western/US global hegemony and capitalist
quasi-imperalism, but only because that's what Euro-American wealth
has been for centuries.
> I don't believe ststematic failure is the motivation, but simply power and
> control. "They" don't have to *take* it, we are handing it to them on a
> silver platter.
You've confused me here--what would be the goal that hasn't already
been achieved? Why would these "forces" want to tinker with success?
Capital interests are doing what capital interests have always done--
I see no historical anomaly. What I want to know is, what do you
think the payoff is supposed to be? Why couldn't it actually be the
fostering of a peaceful international community, because that's good
for profits and production?
(And if you think *we're* being enslaved, you should look around the
world. Our consumer impulses are in fact enslaving *others*. If
there *is* a sinister conspiracy, I'd bet that we as Americans are
on the inside more likely than the outside.)
It's interesting to think about, though. Either way, post-9/11
America is a place where people of conscience need to make their
voices heard.
best
LFB
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Message is in Reply To:
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| (...) <snip> (...) I think you've read me wrong. I don't fear a "systemic failure" (I assume you mean the collapse of society?) What I fear is the *enslavement* of our society. At many levels we are already slaves. So long as we depend upon (...) (23 years ago, 25-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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