Tom,
Regarding how some on the left and right view conspiracy and the
economy, I offer this from my favorite American novelist, Gore Vidal.
"It's not a conspiracy theory," he observes, "money thinks alike." In
Vidal's view, capitalists are motivated to pursue profit maximization as
"naturally" as night follows day. Isn't his anti-conspiracy theory of
capital's "nature" what separate the analysis of the Chomskys from the
LaRouches?
Regards,
Seth Sandronsky
>Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 09:19:57 -0800
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker)
>Subject: [PEN-L:4129] Illuminaughtiness
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Hmmm. Secret societies and the state of the left, eh? I've often had
the
>experience of doing in-depth research on some important and neglected
matter
>and then running smack dab into a conspiracy kook's diatribe that
discloses
>pertinent and verified information (inevitably mixed in with sheer
nonsense).
>
>Part of what makes someone like LaRouche so scary is that _some_ of
what he
>says is true, worth paying attention to and systematically covered-up
by the
>"respectable" media. Any one remember ex-FBI agent Dan Smoot and his
John
>Birch Society rantings about the "Invisible Government" run by the
Council
>on Foreign Relations? How does one totally dismiss such a "right-wing
>conspiracy theorist" and then seriously entertain, say, Noam Chomsky,
Holly
>Sklar or Phillip Agee? None dare call it coincidence.
>
>One of the problems with the left is that people on the left have a
>puritanical double standard about "conspiracies". It's kind of like
>masturbation -- we only do it ourselves for hygenic reasons but those
other
>guys (who buy the dirty magazines) are ADDICTED to it, fercrissake.
>
>The "all-encompassing conspiracy" is an incongruous concatenation of
post
>hoc ergo propter hoc stories, punctuated at key intervals by outright
>forgeries. But aversion to conspiracy theories can have an
anaesthesizing
>effect on our understanding of the perfidy of imperialism. To give an
>example, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is an exposed forgery,
but
>that doesn't make the House of Rothschild a pure figment of the
anti-semitic
>imagination. Nor does it make the government of Israel beyond reproach.
>
>The old litany of the International-Jewish-Communist-Bankers'
conspiracy is
>enough to make cosmopolitan lefties soft-pedal their suspicions of
finance
>capital just to make extra special sure they're not unknowingly
endorsing a
>passage in Mein Kampf. One can't avoid a certain quantum of cognitive
>dissonance in this murky territory.
>
>It might help to see conspiracy theory in the light of infantile
attachment.
>We all want to receive the security of a relationship that develops in
a
>straight line, although none of us can fully comply with the strictures
of
>giving such security. "Betrayal" is thus imminent in all of our
>relationships. Culture and religion might even be seen as almost
exclusively
>concerned with deflecting the potentially explosive effects of the
>inevitable betrayal. Sometimes this "deflection" might be better
described
>as a ricochet.
>
>Let's face it folks, Jesse Jackson is a chump and Jack Kemp is an O.K
guy.
>Right? The worm of conspiracy offers to backcast today's unsettling
>constellation of political facts and forces unto an "always already"
fairy
>tale. Personally, I remember hearing silver-tongued Jesse spin out some
>hokum during the 1988 primaries about how federal revenues could be
>"leveraged" without deficit spending. I thought, "What crap. What the
hell
>is "leverage" supposed to mean other than securing debt?" The deranged
>conspiracy theorist can put two (privatizing social security) and two
>("leveraging" revenues) together and get six: just what was _this guy_
doing
>there on that balcony in 1968? Who has he really been working for all
along?
>
>And how do we know that Dan Smoot and Noam Chomsky aren't working
together
>in cahoots with the all-encompassing conspiracy to leak out just enough
of
>the invisible reality to put us all on edge? (Deranged laughter
deleted).
>
>
>regards,
>
>Tom Walker
>http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
>
>
>
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