Welcome to post-legal America
How the Magna Carta became a minor carta
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/noam_chomsky_on_post_legal_america/
In general I am not one to believe in conspiracy theories. That attitude has evolved over my life, though. As a child I was intensely into UFOs, for instance, but the discovery that the vast majority of the iconic images were known fakes and essentially all the rest could easily be explained awakened the skeptic in me. I was convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, not because I believed in any grassy knoll (to me the forensics is quite convincing: all the shots came from the book depository), but because his behavior wasn’t in alignment with the vast majority of political assassins. That attitude changed when I saw an interview of Lee’s brother where he said that he was convinced that Lee had done the dirty deed because Lee never once denied being responsible and Lee likely wanted to bask in the glow of the spotlight.
I have read about global conspiracies of various elite organizations, such as the Masons and of course Jews, but just couldn’t get interested in them because of the implausibly large number of people that would have to keep their efforts so secret. This article, though, is a real eye opener for me as it spins a plausible story about a global conspiracy of elites to govern the world, yet requires no one keep any secrets at all. Indeed, the ‘conspiracists’ (can you call it a conspiracy when there is no secrecy?) can detail their efforts on the evening news and people will _still_ ignore their efforts. This is a really interesting article and I encourage all my reader(s) to take the time to absorb it (it is a bit long, but please make time). I have snipped out a couple of portions, though, that I believe warrant emphasis…
…the public must be “put in its place,” marginalized and controlled — for their own interests of course. They were too “stupid and ignorant” to be allowed to run their own affairs. That task was to be left to the “intelligent minority,” who must be protected from “the trampling and the roar of [the] bewildered herd,” the “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” — the “rascal multitude” as they were termed by their seventeenth century predecessors. The role of the general population was to be “spectators,” not “participants in action,” in a properly functioning democratic society
I am afraid that I exhibit much of that attitude. The only caveat I can offer, though, is that I am viewing the sheeple from a position where (if the article is to be believed) they have already been trained to be helpless and ignorant (and like it). I have viewed collectivism (a more polite word for communism) as an unstable form of government because it is so vulnerable to being taken over by a strong personality intent on maximizing personal gain over collective gain. However, it does allow for the average level of existence to be quite high, though at the near absolute expense of any elite or wealth. I acknowledge that it is _possible_ for a collective to be stable, presuming a well-educated group of people that continually monitor themselves to mitigate against herd behavior behind a charismatic leader, I am just not used to seeing groups of those sorts of people (outside of such fantastic things like Star Trek), just an individual here or there.
I have advocated a system that blocks sheeple from participation in government, but my approach allows anyone who is intent on investing some time and thought into the system whereas the above quote seems clear to me that non-elites are, by definition, incapable of participating in governance and thus must be excluded. Since elitism is inherited (can’t be one if you weren’t born to the right parents and attend the right schools, doanchano), the above quoted approach is nothing different than a monarchy. Once you get convinced that the sheeple are incapable of thought (something I tend to agree with whenever I see the poll numbers for Romney) then it is a trivial step to actively engineering society to keep ‘them’ pacified and under control. Indeed, it is trivial to extrapolate to our entire idiotic popularity contest form of government election as nothing more than a well orchestrated effort to keep the sheeple so wound up that they don’t have the energy to give a damn that the elites are carefully rigging the system in their favor.
Like I said, a real easy ‘conspiracy’ theory to believe.
Among the many topics that are not the business of the bewildered herd is foreign affairs. Anyone who has studied declassified secret documents will have discovered that, to a large extent, their classification was meant to protect public officials from public scrutiny. Domestically, the rabble should not hear the advice given by the courts to major corporations: that they should devote some highly visible efforts to good works, so that an “aroused public” will not discover the enormous benefits provided to them by the nanny state. More generally the U.S. public should not learn that “state policies are overwhelmingly regressive, thus reinforcing and expanding social inequality,” though designed in ways that lead “people to think that the government helps only the undeserving poor, allowing politicians to mobilize and exploit anti-government rhetoric and values even as they continue to funnel support to their better-off constituents” — I’m quoting from the main establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, not from some radical rag.
The above just serves as reinforcement for the earlier quote, just brought into a more modern perspective. Indeed, it is very easy to extend the ‘conspiracy’ theory to include the author (and, were I to have a large readership, to myself) since by allowing a certain amount of dissent the ‘shadow government’ can help direct the energies of the few that might evolve into revolutionaries. I am reminded of parts of the book the God Emperor of Dune (Frank Herbert was one of my favorite authors) where the leader would ‘test’ revolutionaries and if they passed the test (the test was basically to determine if they so committed to their cause they would give their life to it) then they were put in charge of the government. No strings attached, nothing. If they survived the test (and the test really was just about that simple), they got to be in charge. It was amazing how fast (granted, this is a book of fiction) they dropped right into line and started to back the system the revolted against. It is trivial to pick apart policies established for the greatest good of the greatest number when you don’t have to implement any of those policies, but once you are responsible for the _consequences_ of any failed policies (and presuming you are a real rebel and not just in it for show (hence the testing)), suddenly the tradeoffs of (reasonable intelligent, greatest-good-for-greatest-number) existing policy make so much more sense.
Sticking with the conspiracy theory aspect for a few more moments, the last nail in the coffin of my belief in UFOs was when someone articulated the theory that, due to budgetary and manpower limitations, the CIA (or whatever it was called back then) developed a way to snow the Russian spies with irrelevancy by initiating these stories about UFOs, Roswell crashes, etc. All that was necessary was from time to time (looking back, about once a decade) have a senior intelligence or military official ‘leak’ ‘evidence’ that the stories are true as his last official act. Thereafter he could deny it all he likes (or embellish, as he desires), the conspiracy believers had what they needed to continue on their own. That way, spies attempting to learn about the latest military / spy technology had to wade through these endless stories of mistaken eye witnesses to the point that it almost becomes impossible to know the ‘real’ from the fantasy. That helps to explain why it was possible to develop the stealth fighter and bomber all those years without anyone in the mainstream being aware of it. Any reports were from fringe UFO nuts easily ignored by the mainstream.
Thus, one can easily see that people like me could be working for the elites and creating a way to vent pressure. Of course I deny such, though an objective view of my life’s accomplishments would say I have been rewarded for such behavior.
The record of the terrorist list is of some interest. For example, in 1988 the Reagan administration declared Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress to be one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups,” so that Reagan could continue his support for the Apartheid regime and its murderous depredations in South Africa and in neighboring countries, as part of his “war on terror.” Twenty years later Mandela was finally removed from the terrorist list, and can now travel to the U.S. without a special waiver.
Another interesting case is Saddam Hussein, removed from the terrorist list in 1982 so that the Reagan administration could provide him with support for his invasion of Iran. The support continued well after the war ended. In 1989, President Bush I even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in weapons production — more information that must be kept from the eyes of the “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.”
The above just reinforces the elite nature of our government (substitute ‘elite’ with ‘oligarchy’ in pretty much any of my earlier posts and the conclusions remain exactly the same). The elite own and operate our government for their own personal gain and when it is convenient to overthrow another government or reverse a deeply held policy to maximize personal gain, well all that is necessary is some palaver for the masses. Since the sheeple have been trained (for generations, if the author’s statements are to be believed) to be credulous, it is trivial to wave the red cape and misdirect their ire.
This is such an easy ‘conspiracy’ to believe in. It requires so little effort, sucks in and converts essentially anyone who would rebel, and is basically immune from compromise. Given the lengths of time that it seems apparent that the sheeple have been trained (bred?) to be credulous, how could one overcome that inertia? Of course, one could easily argue that by accepting this argument one is abdicating one’s responsibility to fight the system, but it seems even more that even without a global ‘conspiracy’ it is impossible to make any changes from the outside and who would want to make changes once one was inside?