Yeah, the "conspiracy" was carried out in open in the United States Congress, and is called the Taft-Hartley Act, which (among other things) bans Communists from union office. This provision is litle enforced today. but it led to a big purge when enacted in 1947, and there were a lot of CPers and some Trots in high union office.
Point being: much of the evil the government and the bosses do doesn't have to be and isn't done on the sly. It's done out in broad daylight, and you can read all about it in the Congressional Record. That doesn't mean there aren't dirty deals (aka conspiracies) that happen all the time -- hell, I'm from Chicago, the city whose motto is Ubi Mei?, where's mine, if I recollect Mike Royko's Chicago Latin correctly.
No doubt there is a a lot of crookedness, corruption, and conspiracy to steal from the public everywhere. But what conspiracy-mongers don't understand about capitalist democracy is that the big damages, like the Anti-Communist Purge of the Unions, are perfectly legal and can be carried out in the open because the bosses and the govt aren't ashamed and feel that they have nothing to hide. They make the rules,w hich has normative as well as merely legal force, meaning that it legitimates what they do that they do it by democratic means out in the open. Why should they "conspire" on those mattters? They don't have to. And they don't do it.
That doesn't mean there isn't govt illegality, like COINTELPRO, or corruption and conspiracies around it. But that is mot the main way the main things happen. There is your error.
If you think that we anticonpiracists are naive because we underestimate the ability and willingness of the govt to use force, do harm, repress people in pursuit of their democractic rights and legitimate interests, you are mistaken. We are every bit as cynical as you about that. More so: we doubt that the govt has to do much in the way of hiding this conduct.
jks
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