[lbo-talk] "Left" Believers In Warren Report

[Kenneth Campbell]

Doug wrote:

>It's a waste of valuable time, and makes you look
>like a loon. Pretty much everything you need to
>know about how things work is right in the open.

Yeah. What he said.

My pet theory is that conspiracists are under the "petty bourgeois
umbrella of realities." They are able to believe that things happen in
secret cabals and manipulations because they are isolated. I wrote about
this once on PEN-L.

The petty bourgeois (like the Canadian Federation of Independent
Business) is "meshugeneh-crazy" because they are totally isolated:

 1. They have to beg bureaucrats at banks for help
 2. They hate big business, which is always crushing
    them without concern
 3. They love big business, because they dream of
    being bought by big business
 4. They can't create a unified body of lobbying to
    save their lives because they are always desperately
    trying to rip customers off each other

I believe psychiatrists should invent a new entry in the DSM-IV: "Small
Business Personality Disorder." Kind of a cross between Paranoia and
Narcissism with strong Borderline tendencies (I love you! I hate you! I
love you! I hate you!)

A sub-category of that would be conspiracies.

Back in 1995 or something, Doug wrote a small comment that has never
left my thinking: He noted that one doesn't often in life get an "enemy"
who articulates their plans every day, and clearly -- he meant the
business pages. The WSJ is a great newspaper (ignore the editorial
section) because it details, with precision, what is happening.

You don't need conspiracies to explain anything. It's all there.

Ken.

--
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence
as you can find outside an advertising agency.
          -- Raymond Chandler