>>> <DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com> 01/14/00 02:45AM >>>
>>Petchy, our hippy insurance expert (of whom, I am sure, more in the
>>fullness of time), has a saying about this which might or might not be
>>original
>> "The history of the world is not, of course, shaped by shadowy elite
>>conspiracies; but it is a useful analytical tool to treat it as if it
>>were".
>>&&&&&&&&&&&
>CB: Exactly, an INSURANCE agent is guiding your political thinking. and
you think the above is clever. Amazing. >They have you thinking like an
ostrich and you think you are the clever one.
>The history of the world is replete with shadowy elite conspiracies. How
do you think elite TINY MINORITIES >have been able to rule over majorities
without extensive trickery and ruse. Religion is a massive hoax, and it
>wouldn't help the shadowy elite if they didn't know it.
Sorry, Charles, this is yet another example of my grating and tiresome flippancy obscuring any point I was trying to make. The epigrammatic sentence above is meant to be said with a sort of sarcastic smile. I'm actually on your side of this one.
&&&&&&&
CB: Sorry, I'm reading too quickly. More of a hippie than a insurance salesman, but we all gotta eat
&&&&&&&&
I've never understood why anyone would believe in anything other than a conspiracy theory for a lot of political events. The usual alternative is that a lot of intelligent, capable people completely f'cked things up, leading to an accident which happened to further their aims. Since most governments employ agencies whose stated purpose is to carry out dirty tricks against opponents of the ruling status quo, it doesn't seem like an extreme belief to me that these people do something to earn their money from time to time.
You might also consider the theory popular in some left wing circles that the various security and intelligence services are a bunch of semi-comical bunglers, who are always following the wrong man, getting caught, etc, etc, a view reinforced by books like Peter Wright's "Spycatcher" and the DGSE/Rainbow Warrior affaire (quite why the second one, an entirely successful operation, is meant to prove incompetence is beyond me).
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
CB: I'm not entirely opposed to a comical path to revoluton as an alternative to the straight line Lenin march. At the very least it must be investigated as a radical alternative given the current low effectiveness of the straight shot. Clowning the way to power has the advantage of surprise. How we can use the Peter Sellers types in this process I have not focussed on.
CB
Petchy isn't an insurance agent in the strict sense -- he's an industry analyst like me, and a very strange character. He spent the 1980s tracking down fraudsters for Lloyds of London, and lent me the copy of "Soviet Planning Today" that I affect to be reading whenever the boss comes near.
cheers
dd
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