Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF WALMART

OR, IF EVERYBODY’S IN ON IT, WHY HAVEN’T THEY ASKED ME?


Our text for today is :

Things only appear random because you're standing TOO CLOSE!

Let's cut to the chase here. Conspiracies are real. A trade union is a conspiracy against the rat-bastard capitalist running dogs who run big business. The capitalist running dogs in turn conspire against the honest workers to screw them out of every penny and when they're coughing and flopping about from emphysema, sack em and be done with em! A political party is a public conspiracy against its rivals - or, it's the public face of a private conspiracy. Football teams sit around and watch videos of the team they're up against next and figure out where the weaknesses are - they're conspiring in secret too.

So : you look at it one way, and everything's a damnable conspiracy! And that's the way I'm looking at it today! That woman across the road has some remarkable hanging baskets outside her house, but I REALISE NOW that all those peonies and dahlias are hiding cameras! They can't fool me. I call upon you all as witnesses, in case I'm found in a bag of quick drying cement on a grassy knoll somewhere.

Pardon me, I have to take my tablets.

David Aaronovitch's introduction spells out nicely enough why the conspiracists get my goat and my other pack animals so successfully. It's because they put me in the position of having to defend the authorities ! Yes! Me! Like I would want to do that! But that's what I'm doing when I bat away these crazy theories, which are like, you know, only a theory like gravity's a theory - we know they're really saying this is how 9/11 really went down, man . (It was Mossad!) So then I have to say no, no, you're wrong, the FBI is an organisation of great integrity and would never fabricate evidence and never perpetrate falsehoods upon the public! That's right! Of course they wouldn't!

There's a word for the position these conspiracists put me in : invidious. There's a feeling I get when blustering about how the authorities are honest and trustworthy : mortified.

That's the first reason why I hate these conspiracy theories. And the second is : they mess with my mind in making me think that facts aren't facts at all but received opinion. In this they are like a sharp course in practical philosophy - how do you know what you know, Descartes, what lies beyond the veil, cogito ergo vomit, how do you know you're not a brain in a tank and all that kind of stuff which is alright in theory but not when someone is ranting about the death of Robert Calvi, the CIA and the first Gulf War and the vatican and Monica Lewinsky and the protocols of the elders of Walmart.

As David says elegantly :

given the desire to believe, it is easy to confuse detail with thought.


9/11 : in August 2004 Zogby Opinion Research found that 2/3 of New Yorkers under the age of 30 thought that the US Government either knew the attacks were going to happen and allowed them to proceed or actively engineered them. So what? Most people living in the US and UK believe their governments are corrupt, cover up crimes routinely, steal you blind, go to war for hideous ignoble reasons and lie about them all the time, it’s the nature of government. So what? Do we think that people in former centuries thought they were blessed with their Kings and Popes?

Let’s imagine that � say � America wakes up one day and says - Stone the crows!* You were right! Bush and Cheney are indeed war criminals! Let’s try ‘em! Let’s prosecute all those who sold this phoney war to us citizens and got so many soldiers killed for nothing! What then? Will future governments never make these blunders again? Will the CIA become a force for Good? Do the conspiracists dream of a world without spies? Or again: the Iraq war was according to many conspiracists “all about oil�. If oil is going to become scarce in the West in � say � 50 years time, wouldn’t it be a prudent thing for the US government to secure future supplies? And since you can’t invade a country just like that you have to find a reason, hence WMD and the non-existent threat of Saddam Hussein? Hey, you purple in the face anti-Bushers, you should be praising this great president for guaranteeing our lovely Western lifestyle for another few decades!

What happens in Britain : a big controversial event takes place (death of Diana, invasion of Iraq) � official explanations are offered and routinely derided � the whole outraged nation demands a public enquiry with one voice � and they get one � 18 months later the chairman Lord Seriously-Old or Sir Dreadful Bastard announces the results � which confirm the official explanation was correct in all particulars � two thirds of the nation by then have become bored and are playing on their X-Boxes � the one third left all denounce the findings as Yet Another Whitewash. What has been accomplished? It is a kind of theatre. Everyone takes their appointed place and goes through their allotted script.

VARIOUS OBSCURE PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN UNCLEAR CIRCUMSTANCES

It doesn’t matter if the theorist believes in his own conspiracy theory because these theories are, like religion, a series of psychological strategies which exist to deal with the extreme perplexities of our human situation. We are meaning-seeking individuals in an apparently meaningless and very big & scary universe. Yesterday I heard an astronomer on the radio describing what you would find if you rocketed off to outer space and didn’t stop for nothing � her voice became a pleasant, relaxing drone� “then when you leave the solar system you see now that you are in an outer arm of the Milky Way galaxy which contains hundreds of billions of stars and then you see that the Milky Way itself is part of a cluster of galaxies each of which which contains hundreds of billions of stars and then you see that there are far away hundreds of billions of other galaxy clusters each of which which contains hundreds of billions of galaxies containing hundreds of billions of stars� and by this time I was seriously freaking OUT and in a burst of Tourette’s syndrome I screamed at the radio “HEY LADY, WHO KILLED BRIAN JONES?�

So, for instance, the theory of the deliberate blowing-up of the levees in New Orleans in order to flood the black areas � almost endorsed by Spike Lee’s film � is an expression of the perennial feelings of people who feel oppressed. Many of the main theories propose such a vast complex conspiracy that they become truly farcical � you get quite indignant that you aren’t in on it, everyone else seems to be. So this stuff appears to me to be like the secularised, dark shadow cast by the setting sun of religion. Whereas the Christian cosmology presents an essentially benevolent universe spelled out by Jesus:

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

GODLESS MALIGNANCY. COOL!

The conspiracist sees only godless malignancy, a world of men suborning each other, killing the good, doing harm. I note that each believer, the religious and the conspiracist, denies the existence of accident, co-incidence or mistake : everything is intentional in these thought worlds. There is always a Plan. The conspiracists replace one God with many � but are they not all facets of the One in an infinite dance? No. The hundredheaded gods of the conspiracists don’t dance at all � you put a foot wrong and the CIA or the Freemasons or the Jews or the British Royal Family or the Order of the Solar Temple or the Jesuits or the Knights Templars or the Communists or the Mob will frug you to death.

I realise now I have been conspiring against my own peace of mind for years!


3.5 stars.


* A Nottingham expression of surprise