me: >> Just because something is written into the law does not mean that elite >> machinations play no role.
Joseph Catron wrote: > If you allege elite machinations, but neither prove them, nor show that > they're necessary, well, I think the situation speaks for itself. It's > possible that Israeli commandos sneak into my apartment at night to hide my > cell phone and keys too, but it's more likely that I'm simply absentminded, > and if I went around claiming the first scenario, I would rightfully be > considered a lunatic. I dunno. In (the first) Mayor Daley's Chicago, when I was growing up near there, the cops had a reputation for enforcing the laws against Blacks that weren't enforced against Whites, against critics of the Daley government but not against its friends, etc. A lot of this occurred because some people had more "pull" with the elite (the top of the Daley Machine), meaning of course that elite machinations were at play. That was a long time ago (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth), but I severely doubt that this kind of behavior has gone away completely, either in Chicago or in the US as a whole. I would guess that this behavior would be even more common in a place like Russia, which lacks even the anemic, constrained, and managed democracy which prevails in this country. For example, the US CIA is almost entirely shielded from democratic accountability or strictures of transparency. Thus it is a major agency of elite machination, though mostly its operations are mostly outside the US. (The CIA is a conspiracy, but not one worthy of conspiracy theory, because that theory attributes to it much more knowledge and power than the CIA actually has. They have to compete with other secret agencies (including those officially working for the US) along with overt organizations such as the police forces -- while motivating the rank and file agents to obey orders exactly as desired and to communicate information to the top accurately and completely. The CIA is also subject to conflicting pressures from Congress and the White House. ) > Reviewing my e-mails, I'm not sure how you could have misread them so badly > (assuming that's a reference to anything I've written.) "Silly" is exactly > my description of the dominant conspiracist discourse among leftists around > PR. I was responding to Carrol, not to you. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, you should at least know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
