re: "Publishing In A Handbasket"

Sarah A. Hoyt at According to Hoyt ("playing the authorial game") discussed conspiracies, propaganda, disinformation, and "the narrative."

Money quote(s):

"“I entered our section offices through a washroom booth in MacArthur Station. You won’t find our offices in the phone lists. In fact, it does not exist. Probably I don’t exist either. All is illusion. Another route is through a little hole-in-the-wall shop with a sign reading RARE STAMPS & COINS. Don’t try that route either – they’ll try to sell you a Tu’ penny Black.” Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters."

Forget the movie version, read the book.

(Although CAA quite enjoys Donald Sutherland in general and thought Julie Warner was scrumptious as "Mary.")

"There is nothing so inherently human as feeling a frisson of excitement at the idea that behind the rational, dry world we know, conspiracies move in the shadow, manipulating men and societies to their whims."

Not that conspiracies don't exist in the real world. Quiet the opposite. The thing is there are so many conspiracies (for values of "conspiracies"), each working at cross-purposes, that it's hard to see any one or another getting much in the way of an upper hand.

The most successful conspiracies develop a narrative, a world-view, into a consensus that is self-perpetuating over the long term. (Which is a subject for another time and a better writer.)

"Science Fiction and Fantasy is particularly rife with conspiracies and long-held secrets. Part of this is that for some of our premises, say “there are aliens among us” or “the fairies have always been here” or even “of course there are vampires. They all work for the IRS.” "

The best science fiction takes just a single fact about reality or possible futures (or pasts) and twists it just so, and lets the logic flow therefrom.

"(E)ven in Puppet Masters, Heinlein had the UFO landings be real and the government has sat on them.

Yesterday I was talking to a young friend about conspiracies and the possibility of conspiracies, particularly by the US government. You have to understand, my own young self was convinced that the US government well well-night omnipotent, and I think so are most Europeans of all ages. I remember when, a few years ago, I told my parents that our passports were going to take – I think – six months (aftermath of 9/11) and was told I was lying. This was impossible. “Big country like that. Such an efficient government.”

I think I preferred it that way. Yes, yes, I saw all the movies with evil CIA does something evil. Sorry. I still preferred the idea that our government was sharp like a well-honed blade and capable of doing things and keeping them secret for years. Why don’t I believe that? Well… I first came to the States as an exchange student during the Carter presidency. Very few illusions can survive killer rabbits."

Just so.

"(F)or the record let me say right now that I don’t believe there are UFOs hiding among us. If the IRS employs vampires, they must survive on blood sausage. And the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy. Well, duh. Of course it was. It was a soviet conspiracy. That was why Oswald was trained. He came to the US to kill Kennedy. Look, children, sometimes things are what they appear to be, and that’s the greatest conspiracy. (And why, you ask. Oh, tons of reasons, including the fact that our sainted president WAS on prescription drugs that lessened his self control. But it’s also possible it was an agit prop operation, something the Soviets were VERY GOOD at. Look at its effect: it succeeded in radicalizing the leftwing of US politics as nothing before it had. And sometimes the effect is exactly what it was meant to be.)" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Remember what I said about above about the most successful conspiracies? Communism or bolshevism or marxism or whatever narratival expression of the "original" conspiracy did of course exist and many unspeakable (or least barely spoken-of) and fell deeds were committed in its furtherance and in its behalf. And that just scratches the surface. Adding Kennedy to that body count, justifiably or not, is in essence the merest feather-weights increase to that weighty collection of evils.

(Look, you can take CAA out of the Cold War, but you can't take the Cold War out of CAA!)

"I don’t believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in misinformation. As all of you know, I stop short of being Roman enough to deify Heinlein. BARELY short. So I will refrain from saying that his starting with the conspiracy and then leading us to the real way something really big can keep secret RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES was deliberate and a work of genius. Perhaps it was. Ginny is no longer alive for me to ask.

It’s also entirely possible he just used the conspiracy to draw us in, and of course the misinformation was part of what he saw with World War II and the Cold War. The juxtaposition is possibly accidental.

The facts of the Kennedy assassination are right in the open. Have always been. But even those who know Oswald was a communist and had a Soviet wife, will say “yes but…” and then on go on blab about the climate of hatred or evil conservatives. Why? Because all the books, most of the articles and ninety nine point nine percent of the dramatizations involving Kennedy go haring off those points and leaving the obvious, visible truth by the way side as something of little importance." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Misdirection. It also works in magic, politics, and other stage performances.

"(W)hile I can’t believe in conspiracies – particularly conspiracies by bureaucracy (wikileaks, anyone?) I do believe in the efficacy of “the big lie”. It works because it doesn’t try to cover up every proof of what really happened. Instead, it suppresses the truth by repeating the lie so often and so loudly, and by accusing anyone who challenges it of being crazy or worse, until truth shuts up and goes away. It’s still there. It’s just that no one looks at it." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Just because Hitler used it (and did so successfully) doesn't mean others don't use the same technique. He also used staircases, automobiles, sidewalks, and tableware.

"(H)ere’s the thing, right now (wikileaks, Journolist) the levers of power and the “shut up, we’re smarter” aren’t working. There are to many other channels of communication, people are talking and posting phone videos of what they actually saw. Oh, some of it still works. The whole Arab Spring thing is not going anywhere as positively as it was painted. I’m sure the readers of this blog, innocent and fragile flowers all, will be shocked to know in most cases it might just be a way to more extremist religious regimes." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA hasn't, yet, read any of Mrs. Hoyt's books but, if her fiction is as good as her web log, that is going to have to change!

"They learned at college that they are smart because they believe a set of things their professors told them — and that only ignorant people believe otherwise. And they want to go on thinking they are smart. They want to be able to tell all those squabbling bloggers and indie writers to “shut up” and “you’re irrelevant” and “we’ll never invite you to the nice parties.” "

10/17

re: "Obama to reduce Iraq strength to 3,000, lose election… "

Moe Lane at RedState ("the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill") is crystal-balling some crystal-balling.

Money quote(s):

"(S)et up the bank shot in 2016 for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton"

Since this post, the target troop strength for the end of this year has dropped another couple of zeros, to (essentially) nothing. The primary official U.S. presence by 2012 in Iraq will be the State Dept. mission there. This actually would seem to put the "blame line" firmly on Sec. Clinton's desk, should anything not go spectacularly well.

(Does anyone actually, seriously, forecast things going spectularly well in Iraq after our withdrawel?)

This would seem to defeat the purpose in setting up a bank shot for her.

(Unless it was a double bank shot intended to sink her.)

"(T)his would work as a long term strategy. Accept that the election’s lost, set up a disaster for the Republican President to inherit and take the blame for, and put the one brave truth-teller in position to come over in 2016 and save the day. It’s not optimal, but then it’s going to take a couple of years for the Democrats to fix everything that Obama’s done to their party. They might as well sabotage things for the GOP in the meantime."

It's not that political strategists can't/don't plan this far ahead, but this is shading past strategizing into the realm of conspiracy.

(Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity and incompetence.)

(9/6)

re: "The Ideology of Pestilence"

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war.") explains how conspiracy is not necessary when consensus suffices.

Money quote(s):

"To conceive of the Islamic invasion as a centrally-directed process is to misunderstand its nature and impose a Western model of behavior on the collective psychological, social, and political actions of Muslims.

Overall Islamic strategy is not coherent and well-organized, no matter how shrewd and effective any of its individual actors and groups may be. To conceive of it as a political entity with a dictator or single decision-making body is to miss the point.

Islam is effective precisely because it is a distributed phenomenon, and utilizes what might be called a micro-ideology — a small set of easily-understood instructions that are encoded and replicated in hundreds of millions of minds across the length and breadth of the Ummah." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Author Tom Kratman says something similar about transnational progressivism; that it's not necessary for there to be a conspiracy, only a widely-accepted consensus about a world-view.

"The exploitation of the infidel may involve a full violent jihad. It may also take the form of razzia — armed raids, pillaging, looting, rapine, and destruction.

In 21st-century Europe, Canada, and the United States, however, the preferred method is what has been called the “stealth jihad” — the gradual but steady infiltration, occupation, and subversion of Western countries.

This does not need to be a hierarchically-arranged and centrally-directed process to be effective. In fact, a full onslaught organized by an outside political entity would be detected and countered, because this is the traditional form of political conflict which the West recognizes, and in which it is supreme.

The stealth jihad in all its forms is the only strategy which can conquer the West, and it is very effective indeed, since our political systems have no template that includes it. We cannot fit it into any conceptual framework, and seem unable or unwilling to devise a new one that would allow us to deal with it effectively." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

The Muslim Brotherhood actually developed, and U.S. law enforcement discovered, the plan for an Islamic takeover of the U.S. Set your search engine for the Holy Land Foundation trial and take a look at was was entered into evidence. Or peruse some of my earlier posts with the Muslim Brotherhood tag.

"Most of the boat people who arrive on Lampedusa or Pantelleria do not view themselves as the vanguard of an Islamic invasion. They come with all the various motivations that you would expect from a group of poverty-stricken and mostly illiterate refugees — fear of repression and violence back home, a desperate search for a better means of subsistence, the desire to take advantage of the legendary bounty of Europe, etc.

However, since they carry within themselves the encoded instructions of Islamic micro-ideology, their modus operandi will be one of rapacious exploitation. They will have no moral scruples of the sort that a Westerner would understand, and feel no shame or embarrassment about being indolent parasites upon their infidel hosts — the simplified Islam they bring with them tells them that this is exactly their due, their basic right as members of a superior social group living amidst their inferiors.

Individual behavior driven by this imperative, when multiplied by thousands or millions, aggregates into an Islamic conquest. Not necessarily suddenly. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Gradually, over decades, there are more and more Muslims. Always taking, taking, taking from the kuffar. Slowly, imperceptibly, as they become more numerous, our system fades away and is replaced by theirs.

In the long run, Islamic exploitation always fails. The parasite always kills its host. The process takes centuries — the glory of the Persians and the Byzantines persisted for a long time after the Islamic conquest. But in the end their lights guttered and died, and they became corrupt and backward satrapies until the magic of petroleum revived them."

This process is well understood among leading Islamic scholars. Witness a recent call, in the interests of ending Egyptian poverty, for the taking of loot, booty, and slaves from the (infidel) West.

re: "Birther Conspiracy: Putting It to Rest or Fanning the Flames?"

DRJ guest-posted at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense") and informed us about some pending legislation.

Money quote(s):

"Several sponsors say their goal is to put to rest any Presidential birth conspiracy theories, but Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee described it as a bid to impeach Obama’s birthright as the first black president."

It would seem to me that, since the Constitution forbids any ex-post-facto laws, that such a law would hardly provide grounds for impeachment, but would perhaps pose an obstacle in a re-election bid.

re: "Are the "Birthers" right?"

Lemuel Calhoun at Hillbilly White Trash ("Commenting about politics, religion, firearms, food, Celtic music, beer, science fiction and the Asheville Vortex.") comments on the speculation.

Money quote(s):

"I haven't gotten involved in the great "where was Obama born" brouhaha for one reason. That nothing can be PROVEN and that means that as far as the American electorate is concerned it doesn't exist. That kind of speculation only gets you labeled as a wako, a "birther" no more sane than the "truthers" who maintain that 9/11 was an "inside job"."

"There does seem to be more here than the ravings of conspiracy loons."

&

"I could give you a certified birth certificate proving that I was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina.

Anyone reading this who was born in the USA could do the same.

So why can't Obama?"

re: "Nirther FAIL: Judge Spanks "Obama is Not a Citizen" Conspiracy Theorists ... Hard"

Rusty at The Jawa Report ("these guys don't really like us but don't mind making a buck selling us an R2 unit or oil or whatever") is demonstrating a sane and mature attitude.

Money quote(s):

"(T)o conspiracy theorists no amount of evidence is enough."

"What you are doing is starting with the premise that Obama was not born in Hawaii, and is therefore not qualified to be President under the "natural born citizen" clause of Article II. (Also see Amendment XIV which clearly states, "All persons born ... in the United States ... are citizens of the United States." This has ALWAYS been interpreted as "natural born citizen"). Yet, all evidence that doesn't meet your standards is rejected as part of a conspiracy to cover up the truth (TRUTH!).

Most sane people start with the premise that Obama was born exactly where he said he was born. If you have some evidence to the contrary, show it to me. "

&

"Since you don't have any real evidence that Obama was not born in the place he says he was, please shut up and stop embarrassing yourselves."