Posted on 02/12/2016 6:17:50 AM PST by Kaslin
Welcome to Infomercial America, or, if you prefer, the United States of Spam.
Whenever political conspiracy theories break out into the open, pundits and intellectuals name-check the brilliant but flawed essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter.
Under President George W. Bush, the "9/11 Truthers" were the poster boys and girls of the paranoid style. Others hinted that the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina might have been deliberate. Under President Obama, it was the "Birthers." A related theory was that Obama is a secret Muslim. A generation before that, it was the John Birch Society and various other groups convinced that fluoridated water was a nefarious communist plot. And let's not even get started on the issue of who really killed Kennedy.
Such theories have been commonplace since the 18th century, when the Masons first took over this country and duped people into thinking elections matter.
I kid, I kid.
Like many other contagions, such notions tend to get disinfected when brought out into the sunlight. And then we forget about them.
The problem, however, is that the contagion is still there, like mold spores beneath the floorboards. Conspiratorial thinking really isn't about politics, it's about life. And it has no permanent ideological home.
Indeed, "conspiratorial thinking" isn't even the right term. A better one might be "gnosticism." Properly speaking, gnosticism should be capitalized (even my spellchecker says so) because the capital G version refers to a heretical Christian faith born in the second century. There's no need to delve too deeply into all of that, but the word gnosis means "knowledge" in Greek, with a connotation of "secret knowledge," or, if you will, the hidden truth.
In an era when everything was suffused with religious meaning and orthodoxy, the heretical Gnostics argued that the official story of Christianity was a ruse. They claimed special insight and secret wisdom. They knew the real deal. If the Gnostics were alive today, they might send you email spam saying, "Click here to learn the five things the Church doesn't want you to know about your eternal soul."
Today, religion doesn't suffuse everything, and for many Americans it doesn't inhabit anything at all. But the gnostic impulse is alive and well, eating away all forms of orthodoxy like termites behind the drywall.
Many of us have our pet theories that the food industry or the medical establishment or some other corporate behemoth is concealing the truth about what to eat or how to live or who really makes the decisions out there. And if you don't, you almost certainly know someone who does.
Whole industries depend on the deep-seated suspicion that "they" are keeping you in the dark. If you have an email account, you've heard from people promising to tell you the "one trick" doctors don't want you to know. Infomercials populate the television ecosystem promising they have the secrets Wall Street doesn't want publicized. Commercials on talk radio blare out warnings that if you don't find out the hidden truth about this or that, you won't be prepared for the apocalypse just around the corner.
The political parties tell me every day in fundraising emails that hidden forces and secret radical agendas can be held at bay if I donate $5. Bernie Sanders is a veritable spokesman for anti-billionaire paranoia. He's the redeemer who will fight the stygian forces of the Kochtopus at Megiddo.
Donald Trump is all about the gnosis. He insists that the idiots in Washington don't understand anything, particularly the "Art of the Deal" (Now in paperback!). If elected, he will simply apply his magical secret wisdom to the black hole in Washington and turn it into a supernova of winning.
Indeed, Trump has been playing this game for years. He still won't back off his poisonous belief that vaccines cause autism. The roots of his current presidential bid (he's tried before) lay in his "birther" shtick. His spamtastic Trump University -- now called the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative and being sued for fraud -- promised to reveal the secret techniques Trump used to amass his fortune. Students say they paid thousands and got nothing.
For millennia, snake oil salesman have promised shortcuts, quick fixes, secret tricks and easy riches by claiming that the Powers that Be are deliberately hiding the good stuff. In the past, the Powers that Be could hold such claims at bay, particularly in the political realm.
But now, the spammers are inside the gates, threatening to overturn it all with one secret trick that will deliver happiness, justice and, of course, winning forever.
Jonah is still VEWY ANGWY with Trump.
Ah yes, now the habitual liars in the “Media” want to accuse everyone else of being liars.
Tell you what JG, clean up your own industry history of habitually lying by omission and half truth then we will take your seriously.
“A related theory was that Obama is a secret Muslim.”
___
0bama’s words and deeds have taken it from theory to actuality.
How could anyone possibly think that?
But of course that begs the question: who are "they," the string-pullers, the puppet-masters? I'm not convinced that George Soros has his fingers in everything, or that there's a communist under every bed. Nor do I believe that the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, or any other sinister cabal is meeting in a dank dungeon somewhere plotting the subjugation of humanity.
But there's still that nagging suspicion that somewhere, someone is manipulating events toward a desired end, and that I have zero influence on what that end is or the means to achieve it.
Sounds like Jonah finally got around to seeing this season’s South Park.
Ah yes, now the habitual liars in the “Media†want to accuse everyone else of being liars.
Tell you what JG, clean up your own industry history of habitually lying by omission and half truth then we will take your seriously.
The GOPe like foolsgoldberg keep trying to betray/control us on their faux conservative plantations.
Trump and his voters ignored them, won and broke the rules of the plantation masters by voting for Trump in NH. This is scaring our former masters of the faux conservative plantations.
It is wonderful to see the long standing corrupt political system disintegrating right before our eyes. A system that hates working Americans, rewards illegals and those who bring them into America to freeload off the American workers in the faux conservative plantation.
We are seeing a paradigm shift with us selecting our Presidential Candidate instead of the GOPe and DEMe elites, who hate us, selecting our candidates.
There is a Black Swan event occurring with the daily suicidal self wrought destruction of the GOPe, Open Border Thugs, DC faux pundits, Faux News, ABCNNBCBS and the left wing fish wraps. Something similar may be happening with the DEMes.
Many of us are looking forward to seeing the broken bones, drying blood and entrails of the Lying GOP Open Borders Elite, their DC faux conservative pundits, their mediots, their phoney pollers and focus groups, Faux, ABCNNBCBS, their hired tv and radio hacks strewn across the primary states as much as our victories in those states.
We have escaped from their faux conservative plantations, and we are not going back for more lies, abuse and mistreatment from our former GOPe masters.
Jonah Goldberg hates Trump.
We hate Jonah Goldberg
Ann Coulter loves Trump.
We love Ann Coulter.
Ann Coulter hates Cruz.
We hate Ann Coulter
Jonah Goldberg loves Cruz
We love Jonah Goldberg.
On FR we demand purity.
The problem is we don’t agree on the grading criteria.
FUJG
Somebody tell that guy to shut up.
Yowza, Grampa Dave! Please tell us what you really think. I like your style!!!!!
Mr. Goldberg is it a conspiracy that you, being Jewish, are no longer free to stroll around Paris safely?
Would you like for that to be the case here in the U.S.?
Are there Americans working to achieve that goal? Is it “conspiratorial” for me to appose them?
Conspiracy theorists (and I count myself among them) believe the interests of the elite (around the world) and the interests of the common man are in complete conflict.
The elite uses secrecy, lies, violence or threats of violence to hide their agenda and their actions—on almost any topic of public policy.
While that doesn’t mean every conspiracy theory is true it does mean that we cannot trust the elite’s version of events under any circumstances.
When people’s careers are dependent on pushing the “accepted truths” and “party line” the rebuttable presumption must be that they are lying.
LOL!
You seem to underestimate by a wide margin the determination of these people that you shall bow to their nod.
Look what they did to the States that left the Union in 1861, Think you rate any better treatment?
Thanks.
That is what I think about the GOPe!
Great questions based on reality!
Are those the latest marching orders? My FR Secret Decoder Ring is broken.
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