Check Facts Before Going Off on Conspiracy Theories

A couple of people, whose identities I would rather protect but can say that I care for both of them, recently lowered a bomb of a news story on me.  In it apparently our own state government has a special agenda for persecuting and even eliminating their identity group, based on two news stories, one about paramedics and the other a piece of legislation signed into law a few days ago.  Upon hearing their narrative, I expressed empathy with them and outrage as to what was going on.  Then, later on in the day I got on my computer and investigated both stories, which these two had tied together into a sort of conspiracy.  The stories were completely unrelated, with the event about the emergency medical services having taken place long ago back in 2012, and in a distant state, just to begin with...along with other mitigating factors.  As for the bill in question, I read its official summary in detail and concluded that my friends' fears were completely unfounded...albeit with a possible hidden reason for their group's underlying concern that they probably didn't want out in the open.  Let me just say that all of this drama and rushing to judgment with sinister conspiracy theories doesn't just afflict right-wingers like MyLumpyPillow boss Mike Lindell...anyone can go bananas over absolutely nothing if that's what they feel led to do and are too lazy to perform just a little honest fact-checking and refuse to allow for the possibility that their initial hunch was wrong...

Quote of the Week...from José Altuve

 I feel proud to be able to play every day.  That's what makes me really happy.      ---José Altuve

José Altuve is perhaps the most talented and accomplished hitter in baseball today when it comes to pure batting.  He has played for his major league career on the Houston Astros, a team that has won the Amercian League pennant four out of the past six seasons and the World Series in 2017.  It was in that year of 2017, however, that the franchise...and players like Altuve...have received much negative attention for its team scandal in which, during home games in their stadium, opposing teams' catchers' signals to their pitchers were secretly filmed and conveyed to Astro batters to give them an unfair advantage, a clear violation of the rules that has tainted them in subsequent years...even up to today as Houston plays Philadelphia in this year's Series.  This sort of cheating scandal isn't new to sports, and instead of going more deeply into it I'd like to discuss what it does to players like Altuve who get stuck in it.  José Altuve is the last player who needs an unfair advantage to prop up his already spectacular batting, and he reportedly was angry whenever the others tried to give him stolen signals.  But whenever there is a conspiracy within an organized group to transgress the rules or law, be it a sports team, the police, a political group, family, just about any workplace, or even an informal social clique, the "Code" comes into play which compels the members to silence in the face of the violations...this doesn't just happen in The Godfather and Goodfellas.  The result is such members find themselves as victims of a no-win situation that they had little-to-no influence in creating.  Either they come clean and report the violations outside the group and be shunned as violating the Code, or they stay true to the Code and get vilified by the outside...such is the situation Altuve and other Astros players like pitching ace Justin Verlander find themselves in.  I am personally very much aware of this disgusting aspect of human social interaction and have many memories going back all the way to my childhood of this type of group abuse of individuals.  It's gotten to the point where I have a strong sense of when something untoward is going on around me, causing me to instinctively withdraw as much as possible from contact with those I believe are centrally involved.  And I can tell among a group that certain of them are up to no good...even when I am not privy to any specific information.  People-lovers will say I'm paranoid...no, I'm just experienced and wary.  As for Mr. Altuve, I say don't worry, my friend, be happy and play...

Quote of the Week...from Carl Sagan

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured us.  It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken.  Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never give it back.                   ---Carl Sagan

One of the reasons I picked the above quote...which I once again first saw as a posting by WKTK Radio morning show personality Storm Roberts...is the frequent use of the word "bamboozle": I like it and plan to use it myself.  Carl Sagan was the astronomer who created the 1980s TV series Cosmos in its original run and did much to bring complex science to a level that the masses can understand.  He also seemed pretty adept at understanding how people think, for this quote of his directly applies in great measure to our present time here in 2020, 24 years after his death.  Last Sunday I was driving down NW 39th Avenue here in Gainesville...as I crossed over I-75 I saw several people on the sidewalk overlooking the Interstate, waving big Trump banners to the passing traffic below them.  Today it's more than three weeks after the election with state after state certifying Biden's victory over the sitting president, but Trump refuses to concede, claiming massive voter fraud although all of his legal challenges have been rebuffed in court.  Whether one voted for Donald Trump or not, any reasonable conclusion from his behavior is that he is a sore loser and never acknowledges defeat...but apparently some two thirds of his supporters are incapable of seeing what is right in front of them and have chosen to parrot the president's claim of mass election rigging.  This probably happens in every close election to some extent...I vividly remember disappointed people in 2016 after Trump won exclaiming "Not my president!"...but this year the degree of denial from the losing side seems to be have sharply accelerated. Why?  I think that, along with a very unhealthy personality cult here, it has a lot to do with what Sagan called "bamboozling". People have been fooled by politicians since time immemorable, but recently with the rise of social media like Facebook and Twitter many of the suckers have gone on public record with their views, for anyone to see.  While in previous times folks could just shrug off their betrayed faith in a political figure, nowadays it's probably too humiliating for someone, after so adamantly publicly supporting a con, to admit they were bamboozled.  So instead many just continue with their delusions, existing in an artificial social bubble of an alternate universe where Donald Trump easily won reelection and was cheated out of a second term by a vast, extremely elaborate conspiracy.  As someone generally skeptical of conspiracy theories, I agree with Sagan that it's probably a waste of time for anyone to attempt to steer any of these people back to reality...their pride is too painfully threatened...

Just Watched The Social Dilemma Documentary Movie

Melissa, Will and I recently set down and watched on Netflix a very intriguing and disturbing documentary film, released just this year: The Social Dilemma, released for general public viewing just a couple of weeks ago after appearing at the Sundance Film Festival in January.  In it former Google designer Tristan Harris, along with several other former major Internet company employees, present their view that uses of social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter...along with simple Internet use of search engines like that of Google, present skewed outcomes because the companies providing these services use complex algorithms deliberately designed to give the user what he or she wants and pander to people's prejudices in order to increase their usage...not necessarily providing truthful or balanced information.  Each user has a separate profile that the company analyzes to increase their addiction to the application by feeding back material that supports their own preconceived notions. This is creating among adults a very politically divided, bubbled-off society with each "camp" armed with its own "facts" and perceived outrages perpetrated by the other "side" as they spend their time shouting past each other on the various issues and politicians.  But with teens...and preteens as well...social media can become very addictive and personally demeaning, possibly even contributing to suicide...

I just finished rereading A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin's first volume of his apparently never-ending A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.  His fiction may be fantasy in that it involves a mythical world, dragons, monsters up north and the like, but with regard to how unseen forces manipulate the characters into acting against their own interests, it is very, very real and applicable to what is going on now with not only social media and the Internet in general, but also television and radio: the companies obey the bottom line of economic profit, which is provided by advertising, which in turn is driven by viewership...regardless of the truth value of what is being put out there.  As with Martin's book with his "puppet masters" stringing the characters along with their strategically-placed provocations eventually pitting the House of Lannister in open conflict against that of Stark, Harris and others reveal that these corporate AI algorithms have come to the conclusion that inciting people's passions about different subjects and themselves is the most cost-effective way to increase onsite activity and get those crucial profits for the company...and this is causing our children to become more withdrawn and insecure while our society as a whole is much more deeply divided and uncivil...

This past Sunday evening I was watching the end of an exciting, close football game between the (boo) New England Patriots and the (hooray) Seattle Seahawks.  My 'Hawks managed to squeak out a close victory on the last play of the game, but what if the broadcasters behaved the way of social media or search engines?  While not denying the final score in favor of Seattle, NBC, knowing my preferences, would have exalted everything Seattle did while casting New England in the role of dastardly, evil villains...and the officials were of course biased against the Seahawks.  But for my neighbor who likes the Patriots, the presentation by the same NBC on his TV would portray his chosen team as the heroes robbed of a victory by Seattle's cheating and poor officiating: New England really did win, even if the score says otherwise...must be some kind of hoax.  That sounds crazy, but if The Social Dilemma is right then in a way that's a lot of what we're getting on our smartphones and computers.  Users beware: they're taking us for a bunch of damned fools, and maybe they're right...I highly recommend this documentary and let the wise among us wake up to the danger...

Extreme Cynicism Equals Extreme Gullibility

How do you con someone to support you, either by them giving you their money, their vote, or adopting your cause?  I would answer, after having witnessed numerous examples of successful confidence schemes in the media, marketplace, and politics over the years, that first you need to establish that whatever you're promoting is outside the realm of the "establishment"...the forces that be per se...and that "they" not only cannot be trusted, but also are in opposition to your own agenda...which of course is only for the greater good and "truth".  This goes for selling alternative health food/supplements, claims about alien abductions/Roswell/chemtrails/bigfoot/ancient aliens/etcetera, denial of established science about evolution, ecology, and/or climatology, conspiracy theories such as Truthers, Birthers, and those with an anti-Semitic foundation, historical revisionism....and what the current president-elect, a fixture of the financial elite establishment for decades, has managed to accomplish by identifying himself as coming from "outside" that establishment in favor for the ordinary citizen.  To be suckered into following any of the aforementioned requires in advance a cynical rejection of established norms and an accompanying uncritical gullibility in favor of alternatives...as far-fetched and distant from believability and accountability as they may be...

I might also add that this cynicism/gullibility dualism is not just a phenomenon of America or the Western world.  I see this in the Islamic culture as well, where some people raised in the Muslim faith will cynically reject the well-developed, stable social structure within that society in favor of jumping uncritically into violent Jihadism, meekly buying into whatever lies their new masters tell them.  So cynicism and gullibility going hand-in-hand is not culture-centered...it probably spans all of humanity.  But I never hear anyone discussing it...what do you think?

Nixon's Resignation Anniversary and Conspiracies

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon because of his role in the cover-up of the break-in of the Watergate Hotel in September of 1972.  This blatant failure of a true conspiracy illustrates why anything likewise done on massive scale is prone to failure: there are too many opportunities for people to betray the plot, especially in a time such as now in which communication is so readily available and instantaneous.  Yet it seems that all around us we have supposed conspiracies about just any area in which the government, banking, and/or big business seem to play any significant role.  Take what I've been hearing lately about the Ebola virus crisis on George Noory's late night Coast-to-Coast AM radio show...

Ever since they transferred that Ebola-infected American health worker to Atlanta from West Africa, George Noory has been vocal in his questioning of the wisdom of bringing the Ebola virus into the United States like this, all precautions being taken in this process for the isolation of the virus from the general population notwithstanding.  Then he had on as a guest someone who quite rationally emphasized that the Ebola virus isn't easily transmitted from person-to-person and that he would have no problem sitting next to an infected person on a plane.  This guest said that the malnutrition, scarcity of clean water, pollution, general poverty, war, and political oppression common to the lands where the Ebola virus had grown to epidemic proportions had compromised the general population's immune systems and made them much more susceptible to infection.  He also speculated that the aid worker and his colleague who were being sent for treatment in the U.S. probably were just fatigued and weren't actually infected with Ebola.  That's a reasonable opinion, as I see it...whether it is right or not is another matter.  But this guest went further with his argument to claim that the reason that there is now so much media coverage of the Ebola outbreak is due to the development within the American pharmaceutical industry of a new Ebola vaccine which they are anxious to produce and market.  Only one problem: those African nations are too poor to buy it.  But a panicked American public wouldn't be, and isn't it convenient that Ebola is now here on our shores?  So to him, there is a conspiracy to overdramatize the Ebola crisis so that the drug companies can make big bucks.  O.K., that's one conspiracy.  But the following night...

The following night on Noory's show, a different guest came on with his own spin about Ebola.  He claimed that the U.S. was obtaining patents on all the various strains of the virus and that nefarious elements within our government were using those lands in Western Africa to test their effectiveness (supposedly at wiping out human life).  You see, this guest claims to believe that there is an ongoing conspiracy in some parts to kill off nine tenths of the human race on the proposition that this is the optimal population level for planetary sustainability.  But with both conspiracy theories, there is no real proof...just shadow groups working behind the scenes to manipulate the media and the government.  My take on these ideas is that were there true conspiracies, either as the first or second guest had expressed them, then they would have been exposed long ago, with witnesses coming out and documents released.  Instead, conspiracy theorists like Noory's two guests paint a picture of a sealed group of people who have a tight control of all of the information concerning their "plots" and on all the people involved in them.  Not plausible at all, I say...

Paul Is Dead and JFK Plot Theories

In writing about various conspiracy theories that have been spun over the years, I could replicate the information that is readily available on the Internet. But seeing that those who read my blog are already either pretty intelligent and well-informed about performing searches or have found my blog through a search (proving that they are capable in this area), I decided to instead focus on my own circumstances and reflections regarding those "theories".

With conspiracies in general, I believe that human nature, along with the concept of chaos when as few as three variables come into play, make elaborate conspiracy/cover-up theories like the JFK assassination plot, the moon hoax, the 9/11 "inside job", and the "Paul is dead" cover-up preposterous. But it's still fun to "play" the game for a while, just as I may enjoy watching a far-fetched James Bond or science fiction movie or read a Stephen King or Philip K. Dick novel. And then return to the real world, none the worse for wear. Unfortunately, this return to reality after exposure to some of this stuff is beyond the means of some people.

Although John F. Kennedy was murdered on 1963, for me the first true immersion into conspiracy theories was of the contrived story that Beatles co-leader Paul McCartney had been killed in an automobile accident in 1966, occurring either on September 11 or November 9 (depending on how one interprets the "clues"). I first heard about this in the spring of 1970 at school in the eighth grade during morning televised announcements. Apparently, some upperclassman had picked up on the rumors begun the previous year by a pair of Detroit radio DJs and had put together a pretty compelling presentation at the end of the announcement show that morning. A couple of years later, a classmate friend of mind decided to make this his term paper topic. I began to listen to "clues" on Beatles songs and examine the albums. Why the other Beatles would go to all the trouble to bring in a replacement "look-alike" Paul to permit the band's continuity in the public eye and then furtively place these clues on their material never occurred to me, or to many others, apparently. But it was fun. It also made me wonder whether I could manufacture my own conspiracy/cover-up by first taking incidental lyrics and album design features and then constructing a secret "narrative" to fit them. This is, after all, what those DJs did with McCartney's premature demise.

Speaking of Kennedy's assassination, as I child in the 1960s I never heard of Jim Garrison's campaign to promote his view of it as a complex conspiracy involving right-wing extremists and secret agents (as shown in Oliver Stone's movie JFK). It was only in the 1970s when I caught wind of the notion that others beside Lee Harvey Oswald may have been in on the assassination. Three of the arguments promoting the idea of a conspiracy were (1) witnesses in the area reporting hearing more than the officially-established number of shots, (2) the single-bullet theory accounting for both the first bullet going through the President and then hitting Texas governor John Connally was too outlandish to believe, and (3) the real killers shot JFK from a hidden spot on a grassy knoll as he was passing by. But (1) I travelled to Dallas in 1994 and drove through the same area, past the places immortalized in those tragic scenes. And I noticed that in real life, everything is much more closed in, with tall buildings everywhere. Giving the idea that witnesses heard echoes instead of extra shots more credence. (2) The Discovery Channel investigated the single-bullet theory by meticulously recreating the parameters of the assassination, using the same type weapon that Oswald had, shooting from the same height, angle, and distance. They closely mimicked the bone structure of the victims by having models made with "skeletons". They placed the victims (models) in positions as close as possible to filmed records. And then shot the models and analyzed the results. By this, the one-bullet theory was CONFIRMED, not refuted. (3) One doesn't have to be a marksman to know that, in order to hit a moving target, you would need to reduce the effects of that motion on your aim. The way to do this is to align yourself with the direction of the motion, as Oswald did from his position at the Texas Schoolbook Depository in order to keep the angular change at a minimum. Those supposed assassins at the grassy knoll would have been shooting from the worst possible angle, perpendicular to the President's car as it passed by. Why would anyone plan it this way?!

In December 2000, I heard a late-night radio interview with the late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson. In it, Anderson laid out his own conspiracy theory about JFK's death. And like those who created the "Paul is dead" narrative, he constructed it from contributory circumstances. The narrative: in the 1960 presidential election, JFK's father, with the help of the Chicago mob, bought the vote and the state of Illinois, giving him the election in 1960 (although in reality Kennedy didn't need Illinois in the final count). So the mob expected good treatment from JFK as president in return. But JFK made his brother Robert attorney general and RFK went after the mob, creating a feeling of betrayal among the gangsters. Also feeling threatened was Cuba's Fidel Castro, whom the CIA was trying to kill using the mob. Well, according to Anderson, both the mob and Castro "saw the light", got together, and conspired to kill Kennedy. Huh? Oh well, when you're a true believer in something, you accept the contributing "evidence" and ignore anything that would contradict it.

Conjectures About Bin-Laden, Creating "Reality"

In keeping with the theme of November as "conspiracy month"...

People who easily find themselves falling for conspiracy theories often proudly refer to themselves as "skeptics". After all, they ARE skeptical of the prevailing, commonly held take on whatever it is that they think is being manipulated behind-the-scenes by others. But a true skeptic takes in all of the available facts, not just those which affirm his/her biases. So, in writing here about Osama Bin-Laden, I must make a disclaimer: I fit NEITHER definition of a skeptic, at least for the purpose of this article. Because (if you can stand it, here it goes)....I don't know for sure what's really going on, but that's not going to stop me for speculating.

For many Americans, the name Osama Bin-Laden has the same level of infamy, if not worse, as Adolf Hitler. And to the extent that I think that ALL mass murderers are evil villains, I agree with that viewpoint. But back in the 1980s, this sun-of-a-gun was an allied guerrilla warrior in our proxy war in Afghanistan against the then-occupying force of the Soviet Union. Our popular culture was full of praise and support for Afghanistan's "freedom fighters" (see Rambo III or the James Bond flick The Living Daylights). Bin-Laden was right in the middle of this and was a brave fighter. And some of our money and supplies (and intelligence) may have gone to him (this is where I have a big "I don't know" feeling). And why not? He was our ally. But "ally" does not necessarily equate to "friend", although it could have had we followed through with support after the Soviets withdrew. While our main concern, the Soviet Union, was on Afghan soil, we were all for the people of Afghanistan. The moment they left, we quickly went back to virtually ignoring the area. So Osama Bin-Laden, with his bravado and his wealth, looked around him and determined that America's actions regarding Muslim nations were ultimately only directed at promoting its own interests. To him, the U.S. was like any other foreign occupying power. Any American military presence on any Muslim-populated territory was, to Bin-Laden, just as illegitimate and warlike as what the Soviets had done in Afghanistan. And thus, since the early 1990s, Bin-Laden and his organization Al-Qaeda have been at war against the U.S.,its western allies, and those Muslim nations supporting American military presence on their soil.

But why haven't we captured or killed Bin-Laden more than eight years after the 9/11 attack that he authorized? He is believed to be in Pakistan somewhere (if still alive, that is). Or possibly southern Afghanistan. But I find it (and here is where my skepticism may be interpreted in different ways) difficult to believe, in such a relatively small area to search, and with Pakistan being our political and military ally, that we haven't been able to pinpoint his location and "get" to him. And now I wonder (I tend to do this on this blog, for better or for worse)...

Suppose that, on some intelligence level, the U.S. has always maintained some contact with Bin-Laden. And after 9/11, suppose further that they got an ultimatum through to him: keep it off American soil, or YOU will be "soil". Does that sound so far-fetched? Well, consider this: It fits with the reality we're experiencing nowadays. Does it seem to you that Osama Bin-Laden is going to be caught anytime in the near future? How about the middle future? How about...ever? Remember our impressive intelligence and military performance in late 2001 that drove the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan (but obviously not out of existence)? And once that goal was accomplished, how our emphasis there petered, even though Bin-Laden was still free at large? And how instead, President George W. Bush resurrected an old bogeyman in Saddam Hussein for everyone to hiss at? Could that have been done, at least partially, in order to distract public attention from the failure to locate the head terrorist? And if this all is true, then could it be that we made a secret deal with Bin-Laden after 9/11? And finally, am I ever going to write anything else without making it a question?

To make a deal with the individual responsible for a terrorist attack that caused nearly three thousand American civilian deaths would have been political suicide for Bush. But if he could be reasonably sure that Bin-Laden would "play along" in the future, a deal could well have been justified as being in our national security interests.

Not that any of this really happened, mind you. I just don't know. But I'm just having some problems fitting the facts together. No domestic Al-Qaeda attacks since 9/11. Bin-Laden never caught. We're still in Afghanistan, but we're focusing on fighting the Taliban, not Al-Qaeda. The sudden deliberate diversion of national attention away from Afghanistan and Bin-Laden toward Iraq in 2002. Hmmmmm....

Can you see from all this how easy it is for people to construct a "reality" solely from the circumstances that frame it? No, I honestly don't think that Bush made a deal with Bin-Laden. I also don't believe that Paul McCartney died in a 1966 car crash or that the six Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 were elaborate hoaxes. But those notions also came about by people inserting theories to account for circumstances that indicated their veracity.

And now we come to those making outlandish claims about our current president. Obama wasn't born in the U.S., he's setting up a network of concentration camps to deal with future dissidents, he is turning America socialist/communist, he wants to kill old people, and so on. Each "theory" is presented by revealing "facts" pointing inexorably to the horrible conclusion. But I hold that, with a little creativity, one could pretty much manipulate circumstantial facts to create any kind of underlying "reality" that one liked.

Recently we have seen in the news the big story about the arrested Afghans who were apparently part of a terrorist plot to bomb places in the United States. But since we caught them, this information wouldn't go into the "circumstances" supporting or refuting the "deal with Bin-Laden" assertion. So that assertion keeps its life. That's quite intellectually dishonest, but it is regrettably how a lot of people think things out!