[WS:] The logic of the above escapes me altogether.
I think the elephant in the room is that conspiracy theories serve a function similar to magic rituals - they create an illusion of manageability of something that is no manageable - at least to ordinary schmucks. If the world events are procured by a small cabal of conspirators, then tracking and exposing these conspirators will produce a change in the world events and thus the conspiracy theorists can dream that they can save the world.
Or put it differently, the elephant in the room is that conspiracy theorist tend to have difficulties in conceptualizing systemic causes of events and anthropomorphize these causes instead.
Wojtek
On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> On May 13, 2010, at 12:01 PM, martin wrote:
>
>
>> On May 13, 2010, at 7:14 AM, LBO News from Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> Anyway, I’ll drop this topic after this. But aside from the details of
>>> the 9/11 obsession—the melting point of steel-type arguments—I really don’t
>>> get the political point of it. Is American imperial power just a ruse? A
>>> trick by a small cabal of plotters? Or something that permeates the
>>> structures of global politics, economics, and culture—even the insides of
>>> our minds?
>>>
>>>
>> Are they mutually exclusive?
>>
>> The elephant in the room is this: The entire rationale for the imperial
> war in Afghanistan is the 9/11 conspiracy theory (Cheney/Obama version).
> Though craven acceptance of that theory does not necessarily imply support
> for the war, it absolutely precludes making any sort of convincing political
> case against it.
>
>
>
> Well, Dick Cheney is gone, and things go on pretty much as before, folks.
>>> Or do the plotters enjoy seamless and leakless transitions of power?
>>>
>>
> With Bush-litebrown in the White House it looks quite seamless. Anything
> that can be called "state secret" or "national security" (and that, as far
> as Obama is concerned, means anything at all) remains quite leakproof.
>
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> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
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