“A distracted and hypnotized public won’t ask questions, make demands, or build movements.”
American history has many examples of governmental and corporate plots that deceive, kill, create wars, and ruin lives. United States covert operations destroyed movements domestically and overthrew governments overseas. No one has to prove the existence of high level conspiracies that furthered the interests of the state and or its corporate partners.
But these facts do not mean that every shocking and inexplicable occurrence is a plot concocted by powerful forces. The recent killing of 59 people by a Las Vegas gunman is the latest event to draw speculation for all the wrong reasons. The official explanation, that a man brought guns into hotel rooms, broke windows with a hammer, and then proceeded to shoot more than 300 people is entirely plausible. Yet there is an impulse to pursue questionable reasoning and prove that the official story is a lie meant to cover up a nefarious purpose.
Seizing upon incidents such as this to prove larger conspiracies is a waste of time. This bad habit actually gives the rulers a greater ability to do wrong. Instead of focusing on very clear and obvious efforts to deprive us of our human rights and our very lives, otherwise intelligent people spend precious time debating how someone gets luggage into a hotel room.
“The recent killing of 59 people by a Las Vegas gunman is the latest event to draw speculation for all the wrong reasons.”
The search for cover ups is understandable because so much official subterfuge abounds. But the eagerness to question any and everything is misguided and disempowering. While amateurs suddenly consider themselves experts on ballistics the system grinds on, committing acts of evil under our very noses.
The media work hand in hand with the imperialist duopoly to spread tall tales about election interference from Russia. These falsehoods are worthy of greater examination. They are very dangerous because they further the cause of the neoconservative, imperialist duopoly and make the case for war.
We are told to believe that Russia used social media to sow discontent. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, a useless relic full of Democratic Party hacks, respond with a chorus of approval. While websites are being disappeared under spurious claims of fighting fake news, the people most impacted by governmental wrong doing give full support.
“The eagerness to question any and everything is misguided and disempowering.”
There is always a conspiracy afoot to start wars. There is always a lie used as a pretext. Iraq has WMD, Libya plans to massacre its people, North Korea is planning to kill us all and Syria is killing democracy and using WMD to do it. The targets keep changing but the game is the same, a never ending conspiracy meant to get buy in for American aggressions.
While there is endless questioning about whether someone could fire multiple rounds of ammunition from a 30th story window, no one is asking how Congress and the New York Times have concluded that photos of puppies in a Facebook ad are part of a plot to attack the United States. Election interference is a purely American affair. The Republicans have stolen local elections, the presidency itself in 2000 and may have done so again in 2016. No puppies were used in the process.
A federal judge ruled that Green party candidate Jill Stein did not have legal standing to demand a vote count in Michigan. But the person who did, Hillary Clinton, refused to do so. The duopoly rolls along, playing at phony differences. One political party habitually refuses to speak up for itself and its voters. Suspicious behavior indeed.
“No one is asking how Congress and the New York Times have concluded that photos of puppies in a Facebook ad are part of a plot to attack the United States.”
The most effective lies are the biggest, the ones created by influential people who insist on having their way in the world. They want to keep us distracted and frightened. They want to intimidate other nations, or take their resources, or keep their own people incarcerated. So they tell us to be afraid of crime or WMD or North Korean rockets. We are whipped into a frenzy of fear about Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong Un or some other villain du jour.
We are most likely to be correct if we assume that these assertions from the corporate media and politicians are themselves meant to create dissension. A distracted and hypnotized public won’t ask questions, make demands, or build movements.
If Stephen Paddock was part of a conspiracy in Las Vegas it might have worked in this way. Create a crime that would make millions of people ask questions, but not about the right things. Now that would be a conspiracy worth discussing.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
“The principal aspect of United States capitalist society is not merely bourgeois domination but bourgeois white supremacist domination.”
The Democrats’ HANDS OFF rallies included “HANDS OFF NATO” and excluded “HANDS OFF PALESTINE,” but not all rally goers got the memo.
The Trump administration’s escalating trade war has sent shockwaves through the global economy, with Wall Street giants sounding the alarm over an imminent recession. As markets reel and experts warn…
Senator Cory Booker’s recent 25-hour Senate speech is hailed by some as an act of resistance. Really, it exposes the moral bankruptcy of neoliberal politics, as his performative progressivism clashes…
"One Spring Day …" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
