From: "Marvin Gandall"
No, I think the election was stolen by the Supreme Court justices.
^^^^^ CB: I'm not sure what you mean by "no". Yes, I agree the Supreme Court majority , five, were part of it. I count them as part of the the interlocking directorate of the capitalist bureaucracy, don't you ? Maybe you mean that nobody had to call them up and tell them what to do on this one. I agree with that too.
What's your point ? That the Supreme Court is "structural" ? :>)
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Also, Watergate was an indisputable conspiracy to steal the 72 election. The invasion of Iraq was the work of a cabal with a hidden agenda -- hidden, atleast, from the public although not people who follow politics closely. Maybe one day we'll find out there was another shooter around Dealey Plaza and that Roosevelt really did know the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor; I doubt it, but would not drop stone cold dead if new incriminating evidence did turn up one day.
So while I'm generally skeptical of conspiracy theories,
^^^^ CB: This is starting to look like the most widespread error in left thinking in 2004. Why have a bias against socalled conspiracy theories as to what happens in a particular instance ? This is generalized defense and prejudice _in favor of_ the ruling class oppressive apparatus. What kind of bias is that to cultivate ?
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I agree with you that people in power do conspire. But I think they conspire over big things, because the risk of exposure is so great, as Nixon discovered. A couple of opinion polls two months before an election? Those are hardly earth-shaking events, and too uncertain in terms of results -- there are so many other election variables, many yet to come into play -- for any would-be conspirator(s) to be tempted by what is really penny ante stuff.
^^^^^ CB: Exactly because it is penny ante with less risk, why not do it ? All Rove and people like him is do this type of dirty tricks stuff.
But I have to say that "conspiracy" is becoming the stupidest word in the Left vocabulary. "Conspiracy" from law is an agreement of more than one person, a sort of contract, to do an illegal act.
In terms of how the capitalist bureaucracy works, one of its standard forms of operation includes small groups of people getting together planning and doing stuff. To call these "conspiracies" is a kind of exaggeration. Sometimes they are illegal,sometimes they are not. They are standard operating procedure for the state and its oppressive apparatus for centuries, millenia. To start labelling them conspiracies, and then getting hung up that one who talks about them has a "theory" is starting to look like the greatest corruption of left thought in the last ten years.
I note that the monopoly media has the exact same "theory" about the foolishness of socalled conpiracy theories and theorists. This bourgeois conception is accepted wholecloth on the email left,as far as I can tell. It is quite a thorough brainwashing of the left by the bosses and their ideologists.
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Sorry about the earlier edginess.
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CB:Likewise.
No problem, comrade.
MG