Sunday, October 15, 2006

Non-Conspiracy Theory Games

Nice example of the silly thinking of people who pooh-pooh conspiracies from, ironically, a guy who in his writings on our government and the Fed feeds the conspiracy tone, William Greider. Here's what he says:

I don't play conspiracy-theory games. The plots are always too complicated and assign too much skill and foresight to the alleged conspirators. If wicked politicians or the "ruling class" were that smart, America would never lose a war.

Uh, sorry. There's nothing more complicated and filled with extraordinary events having to happen than the Warren Report. (Jack Ruby, a Mafia bagman in the district whose Mafioso had been humiliated by the Kennedys, killed Oswald because he worried about Jackie having to have to come back to Dallas to testify and relive the experience???? Please, Bill, may I call you Bill???) And I think we actually have won some wars, more than we've lost. All some conspiracies take is a few rogue types (think Howard Hunt (twice) or Oliver North) playing God and the people who are supposed to be watching them not paying enough attention and then having to desperately cover their asses. This story the Greiders and his simple cousins like to tell about conspiracies, that a whole lot of people sat around in a room and planned everything out with precision, that no one could keep secrets about it (even if the Mafia or CIA or FBI were involved), is comforting to them, but precisely because the world is trickier than humans realize, the possibilities of multiple forms of conspiracies and outcomes are real. Sometimes we discover them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes they come apart, sometimes they don't. According to Greider, our tricking the Nazis into believing we wouldn't come ashore at Normandy couldn't have happened. Give us a break, please. Power and survival bring forth combinations of people willing to do whatever it takes. Always have, always will. Sometimes they work, sometimes they fail. Knee-jerking with the popular liberal disdain for those of us who deal realistically with a complex and unpredicable world just cheapens you when you want us to believe you that the Fed really controls the United States.