But, as I’ve already said below, and in keeping with your sensibilities, I can happily agree with MM’s earlier contention that the US is merely “attempting to control” rather than “orchestrate” Ukraine government policies. You’ll admit this is quite a fine distinction, but I can appreciate that what we’ve really dealing been dealing with in this sorry exchange is that unfortunate penchant on the predominantly intellectual left to split hairs and manufacture artificial differences in order to provoke “debate”, preferably fierce, which is its stock in trade.
> On Dec 30, 2015, at 11:27 PM, Bill Bartlett <william7 at aapt.net.au> wrote:
>
> On 29/12/2015, at 3:08 PM, MM <marxmail00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>> On Dec 28, 2015, at 9:51 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Oh my. Frighteningly mentally deranged. I can live with either formulation or perhaps something between “orchestrating” and “attempting to control”.
>>
>> Not frighteningly deranged; merely frighteningly common. It’s just a garden-variety kind of derangement, only frightening at scale.
>>
>> There is no dark room somewhere where cigar-smoking billionaires plot their control of the world; rather, there are many such rooms, and they’re at war with each other, and against us. I’m convinced there’s some kind of erotic fantasy diplacement at play in the attributions to them of magical power in perpetrating their "NWO, regime-change” agenda; it’s hard to see why else it is seriously entertained by people who seem otherwise of basically sound mind. Sure, they all *want* to be puppet masters, but that’s precisely why none of them *can* be - why none of them can make the damn thing move in the direction they want: because they’re all constantly trying to grab the strings from each other.
>>
>> Tragicomically, some of the freedom they enjoy to carry on this chaotic puppet show derives precisely from people’s adolescent fantasies that someone is firmly in control and “orchestrates” things. That belief is depoliticizing and immobilizing, in part because it absolves people of responsibility to try to understand and analyze that actual social forces in play (as opposed to fan-boying those wiley, glamorous elites - much easier to do since it involves little more than monitoring the wires) and in part because it invites stoic resignation in the face of their devious machinations, as they perpetrate their dark agenda with merciless and steely resolve, the bastards.
>
> What annoys me is that this mindset attributes not so much "magical" powers to the super-rich, as super-intelligence. The sad fact is that they don't have either. Their power is down to the fact they have money, not to any special abilities. Attributing special abilities to the super-rich seems to be part of the myth that their wealth and power must somehow be a result of merit. Its like all conspiracy theories, it is wrong because they don't actually merit their wealth and power in any way.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
>
>
>
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