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Clinton and Gabbard

November 17, 2019

Everybody knows that Clinton attacked Tulsi Gabbard, and this is causing a scandal.

I thought I would have a quick look at what this was all about. What I found was another example of (dis)information, or mess of information, at work, and it is of some interest to look at how this mess operates.

Firstly, Clinton gave an interview on the 17th of October 2019 in which she said some members of the Democrats were likely Russian Assets and aiming at splintering the Party like Jill Stein had done…

Her argument was pro-Trump forces would not necessarily only try to get people to vote for Trump, but to actively not vote for the Democratic opponent. She said they would say:

You don’t like me? Don’t vote for the other guy because the other guy is going to do X, Y and Z or the other guy did such terrible things and I’m going to show you in these, you know, flashing videos that appear and then disappear and they’re on the dark web, and nobody can find them, but you’re going to see them and you’re going to see that person doing these horrible things.

This might be a bit exaggerated, but it does seem to encapsulate a lot of what was happening during the last election. Clinton continued that the Republicans,

They’re also going to do third party again. And I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up. Which she might not, ’cause she’s also a Russian asset.

Many early media reports suggested that Clinton had said the Russians, rather than the Republicans, were “grooming” a candidate. In either case, no evidence seems to be presented by Clinton.

This was not wise set of statements, but Clinton probably lost the Presidency, and we got Donald Trump, because of people splitting the ‘left’, so it is not unreasonable she should have feelings on the matter, and warn that more intense versions of the same techniques are likely to be used again.

Apparently Tulsi Gabbard went on twitter claiming that Clinton and the Democrats were smearing her, and implying that the Democrats were corrupt. It is not clear what Gabbard’s source of the story was, possibly earlier mainstream media reports.

Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain,

it was always you, through your proxies and … powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

We can see several standard approaches here.

  • Trying to make the tweeter look as though they are being suppressed
  • Trying to make the Tweeter look important – the others are frightened of the threat she poses, hence things they say are to be discounted.
  • Responding to a smear with a bigger smear taken as common sense, or what everybody knows.
  • Discrediting news which the tweeter finds objectionable by ‘dissing’ media in general; as if there were not more accurate and less accurate media organisations.
  • Accusing the other person of inherently taking a position which they may not have taken, and cannot deny without appearing to take that position.
  • There is also some soothing of any of the ‘Left’ who did not vote for Clinton and thus helped Trump to victory, by opening with the unsupported accusation that Clinton is the “Queen of warmongers” and “embodiment of corruption”. To reiterate, Clinton has been endlessly investigated by hostile inquiries, and they have never found an offence she can be charged with, or even thoroughly accused of. She is hardly the exemplar of evil – unless you take the absence of evidence and charges as showing how evil and cunning she is.

The Story was taken up by Fox News who broadcast Gabbard’s twitter statements and interviewed her. Gabbard clearly liked the segment as she tweeted it. It is probably not going too far to postulate that Fox saw a story which would cast the Democrats, and their favourite villain, Hillary Clinton, in a bad light and so were eager to participate in the issue, and stir it up for their own political aims.

On the 19th of October, CNN host Van Jones said that Clinton had come out against Gabbard, “a decorated war veteran” with “just a complete smear and no facts.” CNN seems to have heavily promoted the allegations and the conflict, although I have not checked thoroughly as to how heavily they promoted the line.

We can, therefore, note that at least two examples of the “corporate media” which Gabbard condemns, seem to have been fairly sympathetic to her position.

Someone asked a person, Nick Merril, who is associated with Clinton (I don’t know to what degree, although he likes portraying himself as close), if Clinton had meant Gabbard, and he replied something like:

Divisive language filled with vitriol and conspiracy theories? Can’t imagine a better proof point than this.

and

If the nesting doll fits

There is no evidence from his statements that he had any inside knowledge, but that he thought Gabbard’s response to Clinton made the general point.

Most mainstream news companies went with Gabbard’s version of the story as this was the only version being broadcast, until some of them checked the interview and found that Clinton had not named Gabbard. They then attempted to clear things up.

Other news companies then attacked the retractions. One I saw, argued that Clinton did attack Gabbard and was lying, and played the interview, concluding, to the effect that ‘there you are no question of it’. Unfortunately, in the clip they showed, Clinton did not mention Gabbard at all, despite their explicit claims to the contrary.

If that was the best they could do, then it is clear that Clinton did not attack Gabbard by name, and apparently not by implication either (unless you consider the use of ‘her’ as an implication).

A day or so later (20th October or thereabouts), the President saw this as an opportunity to use the story to defend Gabbard and himself, saying:

Hillary Clinton, I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, she’s the one accusing everybody of being a Russian agent. Anybody that is opposed to her is a Russian agent. That’s a scam that was pretty much put down.

I don’t know Tulsi, but she’s not a Russian agent, I don’t know Jill Stein. I know she likes environment. I don’t think she likes Russians. If she does like them, I know she’s not an asset.

These people are sick. There’s something wrong with them,

[Different media sources give different orders, and slightly different phrasings for Trump’s statements, probably because he made them several times, (probably at a Press Conference, and in a hyper-friendly interview on Fox) as he saw it as an opportunity to dismiss the Mueller inquiry’s findings, and the general evidence he both received Russian support and his campaign attempted to attract Russian support]

This acts to keep the story going, and to keep it phrased in a certain way.

However, what can we conclude about Gabbard’s quick response to Clinton?

  • a) At best, Gabbard is thin-skinned and likely to completely break up under pressure from the Republican media. If she can’t handle this she has no chance of survival in real heat.
  • b) She may have a guilty conscience and recognised herself in the comments.
  • c) She tried to smear Clinton and the Democrats, in order to persuade her followers not to support whoever is chosen to run for President if it wasn’t her (and her nomination is probably unlikely), and therefore keep Trump in power.

According to some reports, rather than just backing down and getting on with her campaign Gabbard is pressing Clinton to retract “her accusations”, through her lawyers. According to these stories (which may not be true of course), she demands that Clinton say:

“On October 17, 2019, I made certain statements about Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Among other things, I accused her of being a Russian asset and that Russia was grooming her to be a third-party candidate.

“I was wrong. I never should have made these remarks, and I apologize. I did not have any basis for making the statements. I acknowledge my grave mistake and error in judgment in this matter.” [there is more]

Clinton cannot retract what she did not do, but Gabbard appears to want to create as much chaos as possible, as you would expect if she was trying to splinter the Democratic Party and keep Trump in power. She may not be trying, but that is what she appears to be doing.

At the best, it means that the information so strongly fits with her filters (“Clinton is corrupt,” “The Democratic Party authorities are against me,” “people who support me agree Clinton named me”), that Gabbard cannot be bothered to check what she already knows, or that she does not want to loose face, media attention, or campaign momentum, by admitting the story is distorted.

We already have that problem, in a President who seems to primarily believe what Fox News tells him is the case, and who throws aside counter information, that does not fit with his bias and filters.

We can also see the story being used for political purposes, and in attempts to settle scores, and hostilities. This distracts from attempts to find out what is correct or even what is plausible. Some reports suggest that Gabbard’s fund raising was boosted by the ‘scandal’, which would provide another reason to keep going with the story, but I’m not accepting that as correct at the moment.

This now, seems to be becoming the normal response to news. Accept what fits with your existing bias, or political strategy, and don’t check to make sure its correct. If you are wrong, then let the news cycle move on, or create a new disturbance. Being wrong is irrelevant, and people will eventually forget you were wrong.

For me, this series of events as well as describing motivators of the information mess, opens the question of whether Gabbard is a suitable candidate for President? Let us compare her with someone who is not a presidential Candidate. AOC.

AOC is intelligent and competent, she handles pressure well, she deals with conflict wittily, she makes news, she does things, she works well with others, and she improves the standing of her Party.

Gabbard may have good policies, but clearly does not handle pressure or conflict well, and she does not seem to do much to improve the Party’s standing. I don’t know anything about how she works with other people, and so far I have seen no evidence that Gabbard has done anything, above the routine, with her four terms in Congress. However, she does appear to be trying hard to split the Party, and keep Trump in office. If she is not trying to do this, then it is hard to praise her intelligence.

Incidentally, it was reported in February that:

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

So the Russians may like her. She has supported their actions and propaganda in Syria [1],[2],[3] which makes that support plausible. [I’m not quite clear why realistic suspicion of US foreign policy, translates so often into the ideas that everyone the US supports must be bad and that Putin is the Good Guy. But it does]. The conspiratorial right and Fox has also apparently supported her, although I doubt this would translate into support for her in an election against Trump. If so, then this adds to the likelihood of the news being stirred and distorted, for the Right’s benefit.

Let us be clear, that despite the popularity of the “both sides are equally bad,” meme, there is no doubt that Trump is far worse than Clinton would have been, and if you are remotely Green, then that should be obvious. Trump will gladly destroy and poison people to boost corporate power. He joyfully supports destruction of the environment. Throughout the world, we have all had our probabilities of uncomfortable eco-death increased by the election of Trump. It is not smart to fall into the same trap again.

This means, of course that if Gabbard does win the primaries, then it is important to support her against Trump, and not get caught up in counter wars against her of the kind the Republicans will try to start up.

It is that vital to defeat Trump.

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Neoliberalism, Climate and Fire…

November 14, 2019

The public service association of NSW has said that National Parks and Wildlife Service has been gutted of staff by the Coalition, especially of experienced fire managers. The number of experienced staff was cut from 289 to 193. The government appears to have assumed, as neoliberals do, that all workers are interchangeable, and replaced knowledge and experience with basic entry level people, and they have pretended this makes no difference.

The chief of the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, told their staff this month that Treasury (actually the government hiding under another name as usual) had ordered savings of $81.4 million by July 2020, and that despite their best efforts this would result in further cuts to the National Parks service and to the Energy and Science division.

The government has tried to blame previous governments of many years ago for a perceived lack of hazard reduction fires in the present, but the National parks service actually exceeded the Government’s own targets, despite the shorter season in which is safe to do hazard reduction (due to climate change)…. So as usual the only people to blame are the Coalition themselves.

The government also claims that the number of trained fire fighting staff as been increased, but it has actually fallen from 1349 to 1060. The Coalition’s own “Labour Expense Cap” means that $20m a year has to be cut from wages budgets by the fire service, which means even fewer experienced fire fighters.

The problem here needs to emphasised, because the volunteer fire services have been stretched to exhaustion already and summer is yet to come. Firefighters will die. I guess the neoliberal attitude is that you can always buy another.

Former NSW Fire Chief, Greg Mullins tried to organize a meeting of fire chiefs with the Federal Coalition to discuss responses to climate change earlier in the year, and was rejected twice.

Structurally, we would like to actually go back to being retired and not to have to speak out. We would like the doors to be open to the current chiefs, and allow them to utter the words “climate change”. They are not allowed to, at the moment.

The Guardian 14 Nov 2019 11:17

On a slightly different note, workers from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment who were attending an AdaptNSW forum on showcasing best practice in reducing the impacts of climate change on communities, received an email stating “Public Affairs has issued advice [to you] not to discuss the link between climate change and bushfires.” The next day, the minister said this was a mistake, but it was a mistake entirely in keeping with Coalition policy, and it had its effect.

The government does not appear to recognise that Climate change, and increased ecological destruction causes any problems for NSW that cannot be solved by taxcuts, taxpayer funded gifts to developers, destruction of knowledge, misinformation, suppression of disagreement, denial of responsibility, silence and sacking workers.

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Climate and politics

November 13, 2019

It is, we have been told, (by the Deputy PM, no less), a “bloody disgrace” to talk about climate change during the current massive bush fires, because we have lost lives and property. However, the Coalition don’t refuse to talk about the drug problem after a group of people die from drugs; they do talk about terrorism if people are being fire bombed by terrorists; and they do pretend all sick refugees are criminals and cannot be let into the country.  They also don’t seem to have a problem with the Murdoch Empire’s attempts to blame the fires on apparently non-existant Green party policies or influence.

So why can they not talk about climate change, when there are horrific bush fires threatening people everywhere? Why do they say it is not helpful to lessen the cause of the problem?

The problem for the Coalition, is that they think it a “bloody disgrace” to talk about climate change at any time, unless they are pretending to be doing something.

Perhaps talk about climate change would lead to them having to admit they have been mistaken for a long time about climate, about water, about fossil fuels, about mining in or under water tables, about land clearing, and so on. Being wrong something the Coalition seems to find incredibly difficult to admit.

Who knows, if we talk about climate, perhaps we might start talk about whether their economic policies have done anything other than benefit very small sections of the population.

One crack and the whole thing might start falling apart.

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Even handed climate politics

November 13, 2019

In Australia we are in the midst of horrendous early bush fires, driven by drought and high temperatures…. They may be the most widespread we have had. It is estimated by the Rural Fire Services that 300 homes may have been lost There is political dispute as well: should we talk about climate change at this moment?

We have a classic example of the “both sides are equally bad” meme, being used to excuse and support the political Righteous in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. To give more context the SMH is frequently denounced by the Murdoch Empire and the Right wing Coalition government as rabidly leftist.

The papers’ chief political correspondent, David Crowe, wrote that: “A crisis is supposed to bring out the best in Australians. For too many of our politicians, it only brings out the worst…. [the fires] should jolt politicians out of their tired games about who is to blame for the emergency.”

He mentions Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack ranting about “inner-city raving lunatics” who talk about climate change, but mentions “McCormack’s defenders say he was provoked by the Greens” – so its not really Mr McCormack’s fault.

He glibs over Barnaby Joyce saying two people died because they were Greens, and excuses him because later in the day he was tired from fighting a fire at his parent’s farm.

He then castigates Jordon Steele-John, a Green, for saying “You [the Coalition] are no better than a bunch of arsonists – borderline arsonists, and you should be ashamed…. Your selfishness and your ignorance have known no bounds for decades, and now our communities are paying the price.” (Crowe only uses parts of this statement, so the above came from another article and, according to some people, Steele-John was speaking in a parliamentary debate in which public money was being offered for new Coal power stations. I have not yet been able to check this as there is so much indignation about this statement.)

Crowe strangely does not remark that Greens and others have been frustrated by years of inaction and insult, only to see their predictions coming true, and still the government refuses to do more or less anything but insult people, stir up anger and then call for calm…

Crowe is then lined up to say that the PM Scott Morrison “rightly argued for a collective calm in the political rhetoric, while NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian adopted a no-nonsense approach to questions about the fires and climate change.” Ms Berejiklian was not quite that no-nonsense if you read her comments – she too did not want to talk about climate change, or what to do about it, either and suggested it was appropriate to shut up and help people, as if helping and discussing were impossible at the same time.

So, according to the “both sides are equally bad” meme, Right and Left are equally bad but the Right is much better…. Nice move.

Crowe keeps up the pressure on Steele-John writing…. “Using the fires to call for an end to coal mining is as cynical as any of the politics from the major parties. And anyone who accepts the science on climate change should also accept the science that says shutting down the Australian coal industry on its own would make no substantial change to future bushfire risk.”

Of course it must be “cynical” to propose that something should be done when the right still proposes nothing except penalising protests against companies who promote climate change.

However, it is true that due to the delays of the political righteous in Australia and the US stopping burning coal will no longer make things better.

However anyone who accepts the science should know that not stopping coal will make things much, much worse in the long run.

Strange that the idea must be crushed by this even handed approach……

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Problems of Transition 07: Neoliberalism and Developmentalism

November 9, 2019

Continuing the series from the previous post….

Of these two political and economic movements (Neoliberalism and Developmentalism), Developmentalism is the oldest, but has since the 1980s been blended with Neoliberalism. As powerful movements and ideas, they can form obstacles to transition.

Developmentalism

Developmentalism can be argued to have its origin in the UK with coal-powered industrialisation and mass steel manufacture, which formed a reinforcing positive feedback loop; steel manufacture helped implement industrialization and also increased military capacity to allow plunder of resources from colonies. Industrialization helped increase demand for steel. Fossil fuel energy was cheap with a high Energy Return on Energy Input. This loop provided a model for the ‘development’ of other countries, partially to protect themselves from possible British incursion.

While the UK’s development was developed alongside and with capitalism, capitalism was not essential for development, as was shown by developmentalism elsewhere. The earliest deliberate developmentalism was probably in Bismark’s Germany, followed by Meiji Japan, neither of which were capitalist in any orthodox sense. Japan rapidly became a major military power defeating both Russia and China. Revolutionary Russia also pursued developmentalism, and after the second world war developmentalism took off in the ex-colonial world becoming the more or less universal model for progress, or movement into the future, and flourished in many formally different economic systems.

During the 1980s, but especially with the collapse of European Communism, and the birth of the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’, developmentalism became more strongly tied to international capitalism, and especially neoliberal capitalism. We can call this ‘neoliberal developmentalism’.

Neoliberalism 1

As I have argued elsewhere, neoliberalism is the set of policies whose holders argue in favour of liberty in free markets, but who (if having to make a choice), nearly always support established corporate plutocracy and appear to aim to destroy all political threats to that plutocracy.

Developmentalism and ecology

Developmentalism was built on fossil fuel use, and economic growth through cheap pollution and cheap ecological destruction. It also often involved large scale sacrifice of poorer people, who were generally considered backward and expendable in the quest for national greatness. Sometimes it is said that in the future succesful development will mean less poisoning, destruction and sacrifice, but the beautiful future may be continually postponed, as it was with communism.

Developmentalism was also often ruthlessly competative in relationship to other states and the pursuit of cheap resources. Developing countries often blame developed countries for their poverty, and this may well be historically true, as their resources were often taken elsewhere for little benefit to their Nation. Many developing countries also argue that they have the right to catch up with the developed world, through the methods the developed world used in the past. It is their turn to pollute and destroy. If this idea is criticised, then it usually becomes seen an attempt to keep them poverty ridden and to preserve the developed world’s power.

Developmentalism is related to neoliberal capitalism via the idea that you have to have continuing economic growth to have social progress, and that social progress is measured in consumerism and accumulated possessions. However, after a point neoliberalism is about the wealthy accumulating possessions, it does not mind other people loosing possessions if that is a consequence of its policy. Both the developing and developed world have developed hierarchies which tend to be plutocratic – development tends to benefit some more than others.

After the 1980s with the birth of neoliberal developmentalism, the idea of State supported welfare and development for the people was largely destroyed as developing States could not borrow money without ‘cutting back’ on what was decreed to be ‘non-essential’ spending. The amount of environmental destruction, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions also rocketed from that period onwards, despite the knowledge of the dangers of climate change and ecological destruction. The market became a governing trope of development, as it was of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism 2: The theory of Free Markets

In theory, ‘free markets’ are mechanisms of efficiently allocating resources and reducing all needs and values to price, or messages about price.

Theory does not always work, because large-scale markets are nearly always political systems rather than natural or impersonal systems.

Big or successful players in the market nearly always attempt to structure the market in their favour. Wealth grants access to all other forms of power such as violence, communicative, informational, legal, ethical, organisational, religious and so on. If there is no State, then successful players will found one to protect their interests and property. If there is a State they will collaborate with others to take it over to further protect their interests and property.

Everything that diminishes profit, especially profit for established power, is to be attacked as a corruption of the market and therefore immoral and to be suppressed. If people protest at not having food, or at being poisoned by industry, they are clearly immoral and not working hard enough. Political movements which oppose the plutocracy or its consequences may have their means of operation closed down, or find it difficult to communicate their ideas accurately through the corporate owned media. The market ends up being patterned by these politics.

For example, neoliberal free markets always seem to allow employers to team up to keep wages down, as that increases profit, and render Union action difficult as that impedes the market.

While these actions may not always have the desired consequences, the market, at best, becomes efficient in delivering profits, but only rarely in delivering other values. Thus people without money are unlikely to have food, or good food, delivered to them. Indeed those people may well be sacrificed to efficiently feed others who have both more than enough food and more disposable wealth, and hence who make more profits for the sellers.

Through these processes, there is an ongoing transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, increased by the power relations of plutocracy.

In plutocracies, it is normal to think that the poor are clearly stupid or not worth while, rather than they have lost a political battle, or been unfortunate.

Neoliberalism and ecology

If it is profitable to transfer the costs of ecological destruction onto the less powerful, and less wealthy, public then it will be done as with other costs. The cost and consequences of destruction will not be factored into the process, and this will give greater profit.

Even, leaving the natural world in a state in which it can regenerate becomes counted as a cost. If it is cheaper to destroy and move on, most businesses will do this, especially the more mobile wealth becomes. For example, I was told yesterday that on some Pacific Islands, overseas fishing companies bought fishing rights to sea cucumbers (which are extremely valuable given the prices I saw in some shops). They took all the sea cucumbers they could, threw the smallest onto the beach to die, and moved on, leaving the area more or less empty. They had no ties to the place, or to the regeneration of local ecologies. The whole ecology of the islands could collapse as a result of this profit taking, but only the Islanders suffer in the short term.

Likewise spewing poison is good for business as it is cheaper than preventing it. Neoliberal governments will support or even encourage powerful pollutors, if they are established members of the plutocracy, as President Trump is demonstrating nearly every day. These pollutors and destroyers have wealth and can buy both government support and politicians in general. They can pay for campaigns and propaganda. They can promise easy well paid jobs in their industry, and those people who were politicians and are now in the industry demonstrate the benefits of this position and are persuasive. Within neoliberalism, with wealth as the prime marker of success, the destructive business people are also considered virtuous and superior people, so the destruction they produce must also be virtuous.

In this situation, objecting to cheap ecological destruction, or proposing ways of preventing such destruction becomes seen as an attack on the powerful and on morality of the system in general.

One of my friends who studies neoliberalism, seems to be coming to the view that neoliberalism’s first political success came about in the 1970s through opposing the idea of Limits to Growth, and supporting ideas of capitalist expansion through endless technological innovation and creativity. This movement assumes that (within capitalism) desired, or needed, technological innovation will always occur, and be implemented, with no dangerous unintended consequences. This seems unlikely to always be true, and to be primarily based in fantasy and wish-fulfillment. It was also probably more attractive to voters than voluntary austerity. It allowed the continuance of ‘development’.

If this is the case, then neoliberals (rather than Conservatives) have been implicated in anti-ecological thinking from the begining.

The UK and Germany actually have Conservative parts in the mainstream Right, and they seem relatively happy with moving from coal into renewables – so we are not talking about every form of capitalism being equally destructive.

In Australia, neoliberalism is reinforced by the learnt dependence of the official economy on resources exports – whether agricultural or mineral, both of which have tended to destroy or strain Australian ecologies. Most Australians think mining is much more important to the economy than it is, expecially after all the subsidies and royalty and tax evasions are factored in. This visions of success implies that destruction is probably acceptable. Australia is big after all, and most people never see the sites of destruction, even if they have large scale consequences.

These processes have lead to a power imbalance in Australia, in which the mining sector calls the shots, and boasts of its power to remove prime ministers. It not only creates loyalty, but also terror.

Renewables, less cheap pollution, less cheap destruction of ecologies, less poisoning, are threats to established ways of ‘developing’, and to be hindered, even if they are ‘economically’ preferable, or succesful in the market.

In this situation, it is perfectly natural that other forms of economy, or activities which could potentially restructure the economy and disrupt the plutocracy, should be stiffled by any means available. In this case, this includes increasing regulation on renewable energy, suggesting that more subsidies will be given to new fossil fuel power, and increasing penalties for protesting against those supporting, or profiting from, fossil fuels.

In Australia, Labor is rarely much better than the Coalition in this space, as the fuss after the last election has clearly shown. It is being said that they failed because they did not support coal or the aspirations of voters to succeed in plutocracy, and they vaguely supported unacceptable ‘progressive’ politics.

Neoliberalism as immortality project

This constant favouring of established wealth, leads to the situation in which people with wealth think they will be largely immune to problems if they maintain their wealth (and by implication shuffle the problems onto poorer people).

At the best it seems to be thought that wealthy people are so much smarter than everyone else, that they can deal with the problems, and this success with problems might trickle down to everyone else. Thus wealth has to be protected.

These factors make the plutocracy even more inward looking. Rather than observing the crumbling world, the wealthy are incentivised to start extracting more from their companies and the taxpayers, to keep them safe. They become even more prone to fantasy and to ignore realities.

Conclusion

Developmentalism and Neoliberalism constitute the major forms of policy dominating world governance, and visions of the future.

In the English speaking world neoliberalism dominates. We have more totalitarian neoliberals (Republicans, Liberals, Nationals) and more humanitarian neoliberals (Democrats, Labour etc).

In the rest of the world, developmentalism can occasionally dominate over neoliberalism (ie in China), but the idea of economic expansion and a degree of emulation of the supposed economic success of the ‘West’ remains a primary aim.

Developmentalism and Neoliberalism both establish and protect ecological destruction for wealth generation and are among the main social obstacles to a transition to renewables.

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Problems of Transition 06: Climate Change and Failing US ‘infrastructure’

November 8, 2019

The US is an example of the general case. Infrastructure tends to be failing, and climate change makes this worse. The costs and effects of failing infrastructure could make transition to a more resilient ‘sustainable’ society, even more difficult.

The first thing to understand is that US infrastructure (which includes roads, bridges, dams, airports, sea ports, drinking water, power lines, pipelines, waste storage, inland waterways, levees etc) is falling apart at the moment. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has been pointing this out for years.

In their most recent “report card”, issued in 2017, the ASCE estimated that the US needs to spend about $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the problem. They say this is a serious problem, requiring serious spending, and it is not going to get better ‘naturally’. As no one is getting ready to spend anything like that, the situation will continue to get worse, more costly to fix, and harder to fix. Patch up jobs merely mask the problem.

What climate change adds to this situation, is that it appears to be bringing more extreme weather events. This puts more pressure on infrastructure.

For example, dams and levees will have to survive more frequent, rapid and severe flooding and storm surges. Such storms are also likely to affect drinking water (also affected by mining and fracking, and possible lowered testing standards as money is taken away from Government based Environmental supervision). Storms in other countries such as Australia (I’m not a US resident, so I’m not up to date with US events) have already caused blackouts, through knocking down power lines; the more decayed the infrastructure, the more they will be knocked down. Roads and bridges also tend to get swept away by severe events. Research has already shown that gas pipelines are leaking badly – oil pipelines breaks are more visible and thus tend to get fixed – but more severe storms will increase both the rate of leakage and possible fire danger.

Rising sea levels, which now appear locked in as Antarctica starts to melt, will affect ports, and anything built on low lying land. This often includes oil refineries, and major cities that have grown around ports. Storms and storm surges are likely to increase along US coasts, especially down south as we seem to be seeing already in the Gulf of Mexico, and off-Florida. Whether people have been lucky so far, or whether the storms will generally avoid the coastline we will see with time. Relatively, small increases in water levels can drastically increase the damage from storm surges on low lying land, or up waste water pipes that dump into the sea.

Increased heat and drought, in some parts of the country, will increase wildfires, and we seem to have already seen this in California and in many other parts of the world – again Australia leads the way. Droughts also bring threats to food supplies and farm profitability. This can be compounded by privatized water supplies, which take water from rivers and deliver it to wealthy businesses – not all infrastructure is necessarily beneficial to everyone. Humans do not work well in runs of extreme heat (anything over 40 degrees centigrade), especially if they are already not well, and this will put extra strain on hospitals, not to mention families and incomes.

Changes in permafrost conditions in the Northern US, may weaken foundations, leading to built item collapse….

Furthermore, most of the US’s infrastructure (and everyone else’s) has been designed with the assumption that climate will remain stable. It is not designed for resilience under changing weather conditions. Even if it had been designed with this change in mind, it is extremely hard to predict what local conditions will become – climate is a complex system, and while we can predict trends we cannot predict specific events.

The US Fourth National Climate Assessment suggests that the US government “must act aggressively to adapt to current impacts and mitigate future catastrophes…to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades” and “climate change is expected to cause substantial losses to infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.”

It is highly probable that increasing destructive stresses on failing infrastructure will have harmful results.

The most obvious result is massive economic disruption, and disruption of transmission of vital supplies, such as water, food and energy. Modern Western cities are not designed to be self-sustaining; if they are cut off from supplies then living conditions will rapidly become difficult for most people. Places like Cuba where cities have been built around much smaller supplies of petrol, and less elaborate infrastructure, may be more resilient, but they are likely to be greatly affected by weather. Effects will not be uniform.

However, the cost of repairing this extra damage will add to the cost of repairing infrastructure in general, and add to financial stress and debt in government.

The extra cost of repair will probably take money away from transition to a more resilient, less polluting system. It could perhaps inspire such changes, as the old system falls down, but that depends on whether established power relations actively strive to stop transition and demand more of what their wealth has been built around. Current political behavior, does not suggest optimism.

Insurance companies are getting worried, and it will be getting harder to insure property in particular locations, and infrastructure is part of what makes a location, and adds to, or diminishes its vulnerability. “Insurers have warned that climate change could make cover for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24bn (£18bn) of losses in the Californian wildfires”. This will increase the precariousness of life, for ordinary people, and add to their difficulties of making ends meet, especially under the likely new normality of extreme weather events.

You might want to see whether your own costs are increasing, or your local area is becoming uninsurable.

There is another form of ‘infrastructure’ which is often ignored in discussions of failing infrastructure. This is the natural ecology. The natural ecology provides many services we need vitally, but do not notice because they have been provided freely of human action (even if some of them have been charged for). These services include: oxygen supply, waste removal, drinkable water, food supply, and so on. Continual pollution, poisoning and destruction of this infrastructure in the name of development and profit, diminishes the ability of the natural infrastructure to deliver its services, which adds further stress to social life, and increases the likelihood of extra costs and disaster.

Climate change is a consequence of the destruction of this wider infrastructure, and adds to the destruction in a positive feedback loop. Again, the situation will not get better by itself.

Conclusion

Infrastructure (both human-built and natural) is falling apart in the first place, and not designed to face the added climate stresses we are all facing. It is likely to slowly crash, and the results of the crash may not be protected, or coverable, by insurance.

Refusing to consider the problem, which is what most governments are doing, because of the costs, will not make it better. Declining tax revenues (largely because of corporate tax evasion, taking profits overseas, and tax cuts for the wealthy) do not make dealing with the problem easier.

On the other hand, some governments seem to be actively trying to make the situation worse, by lessening restrictions on ecologically damaging behavior by corporations, and encouraging fossil fuel use and pollution.

Those governments are not acting in your best interests whether you ‘believe’ in climate change or not. Political action is required for survival.

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On conspiracy Theory 02

November 6, 2019

Probable Conspiracies

This continues from the previous post.

However, I’ve kept suggesting that conspiracy is normal. The question can then arise, what seem to be some major conspiracies, for which there is evidence? And of course my choices are influenced by my own politics.

Media support for the Right generally. One can think of the NYT spending more time on Clinton’s supposed crimes than on Trump’s real crimes. We can think of the way that Trump’s supposed rape of a thirteen year old was barely mentioned, when if this accusation involved Bill Clinton then, probably it would have been everywhere. Indeed we can check this probability by looking at coverage of the Epstein affair in which it was freely asserted that the Clintons had a reason to kill Epstein, but it was rarely pointed out that Trump had exactly the same supposed reasons for murdering him, and far more capacity as President. We can look at the Murdoch Empire, and its celebration of free markets, the Right, the Bush Jr. war in Iraq, its opposition to social services and so on.

As further support for this position, we can also think of the way that most of the media went with Trump and William Barr’s own summary of the Mueller Report, when this was an overtly surprising strategy to take. You go with the description of something likely to be critical of the President, which was completely made by the President’s allies? Was this just bias or conspiracy? or is there no difference?

The ideology of the mainstream media seems to verge from Humanitarian Right to Totalitarian Right, while they (conspire??? to) pretend that some media is horribly biased towards the left, to disguise this. That way, pro-corporate information effectively becomes unchallengeable, and that benefits corporate media owners and their class as a whole. Does this arise from conspiracy or accident, or because of similar ownership and aims?

Furthermore, a large number of studies suggest that most media downplays climate change at best, and is often actively hostile to the idea, or suggests nothing practical can be done, or that action would cost people money. These positions support those established patterns of wealth and power, which are challenged by the recognition of ecological destruction, and people have to be distracted from this. Other information we have like Exxon denying their own research in public to sell more oil, seems to support this position, but this might not involve acting in common with the media. People in the media could just be frightened of climate change, like a lot of other people, and not want to go too deep into its threats. Or perhaps they did not want to upset major sponsors.

Is the fact that a significant part of the population thinks the Media is left wing, evidence of a general and accepted conspiracy to delude people as to their real sources of oppression in corporate economics and power in a closed ecology? Or is it just the way things work?

Pro-Corporate Economics. We can think of corporate funding of think tanks which support climate denial, tax cuts for the wealthy, anti-union propaganda, ‘free market’ economics (which supports corporate oligopoly), consumerism and so on. This is so big its absolutely mainstream. But is it conspiracy, or just the normal workings of information in capitalism?

Did Mises and Hayek support their funders in principle, just happen to have theories which were useful to those funders, or tailor their theories to go along with the funding? We don’t know, but we can ask where they obfuscate, and whether their theories are worked out logically? Why, for example, do they never see wealth as a source of power which could corrupt the market? Why do they see hierarchy in business organisations as good, but outside business organisations as bad? Why do they try to prevent democratic regulation of a non-working ‘free-market’? Would thinking along these lines have threatened their funding?

There are the long trails of the Mont Pelerin Society and the Atlas Network, which have only existed because of corporate funding, although these organisations seem relatively unknown in mainstream conspiracy theory. Perhaps because they appear to operate in support of maintaining corporate dominance, and the function of most contemporary conspiracy theory is to support the capitalist elites? But is that another conspiracy, or is it the shallowness of contemporary reporting?

There appears to have been an active attempt to fund climate change denial, or ecological destruction denial, through these think tanks and corporate organisations, for the benefit of heavily polluting corporations. Is this conspiracy, or is it just the way corporate capitalism routinely deceives people to sell products, and avoid responsibilities for damage?

Through similar forces (or attempts to please powerful wealthy people), the mainstream left of contemporary English speaking politics have embraced “the market” as a marker of acceptability, and possibility. As a result they would probably have been considered right wing 30-40 years ago. But this swing to the right cannot be admitted. Is this a conspiracy, as well?

Support for Trump. We can think of the forces working for Trump’s election in 2016 and earlier, not just the media, but Cambridge Analytica (through Facebook directly or indirectly), Russian misinformation and so on. This may be multiple conspiracies, rather than one over-arching conspiracy, and it is of course hard to know what effect they had. However, given Trump’s narrow win, only a small effect would be necessary to be significant.

However, even if they had no effect, they could still be conspiracies. Conspiracies do not have to succeed to be active. And what is the difference between conspiracy and underhand political manipulation? This point also emphasises function; for instance, through the functioning of the electoral system, various third party candidates had the effect of helping Trump to win, by taking votes away from Clinton, even if they did not want to, or set out to do that.

If we are in conspiracy mode we can point to evidence suggesting this effect of third parties was not simply accident, or bad planning. How do we tell? I suppose by whether they do it again or not….? Or this idea could be a way of distracting Democrats from how badly they ran their campaign.

State based propaganda. The Russians also seem to be conspiring with the US Right to make it look like they are more than simple imperialists in Ukraine and Syria (or that the US is worse, which is irrelevant to their own position), and they seem to have lead the way in promoting the idea that George Soros is part of the Jewish/ISIS conspiracy or whatever, which now seems so much part of the US right’s conspiratorial outlook – probably because Soros is a successful business person who supports open societies, rather than closed free market cliques, or closed authoritarian cliques. These actions are so overt, its probably not a conspiracy, its just effective propaganda. The Soros idea probably reuses some of the old Jewish conspiracy motifs.

From the Mueller report and other sources, we know that the Trump campaign attempted to conspire with the Russians to influence the 2016 election, and we also know that Trump attempted to conspire to obstruct the course of justice, and dismissed people who he thought might be fair or hostile to him. We know that he attempted to force another head of State to provide information useful to him in the next election. He even publicly asked his supposed enemies the Chinese to do the same. We know that Republicans appear to be conspiring to obstruct any impeachment inquiry, cast doubt on its proceedings and cast doubt on evidence relating to Trump, and in this they are largely being supported by the media. They also appear to be using the mechanisms of the State (the ‘deep state’?) to obstruct the inquiry. We know that this impeachment inquiry is being portrayed as unprecedented, when Republicans attacked Obama and both Clintons without much in the way of evidence for years.

We also know that Republicans appear to be conspiring to gerrymander electorates and to keep out Democrats or left wing candidates. They seem to be trying to get ‘pure-left’ people to attack the Democrats in preference to attacking Republicans, and vote for third party candidates to keep the Republicans in power. Is this a conspiracy, or is this just politics as normal?

Hiding and distracting. Trump raves about witch-hunts and conspiracies against him. Are Trump’s actions and accusations, simply hiding his preference for environmental destruction, and giving tax cuts to wealthy people, especially property owners? Is this a conspiracy, or just Republican politics made plain? Its certainly important, but we can lose sight of it in other conspiracies – which itself may be a conspiracy. Obviously corporations who benefit from environmental destruction have much to gain from Trump’s policies, but the truthful slogan “Republicans: better at poisoning you” probably would have little appeal.

Paedophilia in Churches. We now know this happened. People in authority in Churches raped children repeatedly. Others knew about it and hid it. People who were known to have raped children were moved to places where their activities were not known, so they could rape more children. If anyone came to allege that people had been raped, or they had been raped, the full might of the Church was used to discredit them, and to protect the rapist. If someone did receive compensation then they would be sworn to secrecy. The aim seems to have been to do anything to protect the name of the various churches, and that involved protecting rapists, or preventing the presence of child rapists from being recognised. Whether people discussed what they were doing or not, or conspired in the ordinary sense of the word, is almost irrelevant. All the hallmarks of conspiracy were present. Power was used to oppress the relatively powerless, and was used ruthlessly.

After this Church based action, it is hard to disbelieve that conspiracy never happens amongst the powerful.

Conlcusion

Conspiracy happens, but it can be a bottomless pit, and easily manipulated, and serve to attack those who might help people.

Genuine conspiracies probably involve people who are naturally powerful, and attempting to retain their power and privilege against challenge. Fake conspiracies usually involve a misrecognition of power (such as saying academics, artists, scientists, gays, marginal religions etc. are to blame for everything) , but yet again people have conspired to replace the ruling classes, so it is sometimes difficult to allocate blame. However, if there is a choice between wealthy people conspiring to maintain their position, and a crowd of scientists, with different politics, interests and wealth positions, trying to displace them, then it would probably be safer to assume the conspiracy comes from the wealth establishment – as wealth buys all other sources of power.

Whatever you think, it would seem to be a mistake to ignore the importance of conspiracy theory, and possibly of conspiratorial action promoting that theory, in the contemporary world.

It also seems likely that supporters of parts of the corporate sector ally together to support the corporate sector, support pro-corporate economics, delay on acting on climate change, and support politics which benefits wealthy people. Organisations can also conspire to hide their own defects or immoralities. These distinct possibilities, should not be dismissed. They are most likely normal behaviours not strange extremes, or mere theory.

The abuse of an approach is not proof that the approach is always wrong.

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On Conspiracy Theory

November 1, 2019

You can easily be dismissed in academia for proposing conspiracy theory, indeed the very name is a dismissal in itself. However, this reaction also dismisses an important trope in modern life.

This post has frequently collapsed which is possibly evidence of conspiracy. 🙂

It continues in the next post

Plausibility of conspiracy

People naturally “team-up” to do things because people can do more together than alone, and coordinating the actions of different groups acts as a source of power, just as wealth adds to that power. Sometimes people join together without telling outsiders – although sometimes it won’t be hidden, the collaboration can just avoid publicity, perhaps through the group’s influence on the media, and perhaps because of fear of legal action. In these cases we can call it conspiracy, if we want.

As Right wing conspiracy theorist Gary Allen argued, we know relatively powerless people can produce great effects by conspiring (as with those people who organised the French and Russian revolutions), so why not accept that already powerful people could also conspire/collaborate with effect against other powerful people or against the populace?

Indeed we know powerful people team up to magnify their effect, in things like the “Minerals Council of Australia”, and the “Business Council of Australia”. We know that wealthy people subsidise news organisations to promote their ideals and politics, or to hide news that might disturb those ideals and politics. We further know that wealthy people subsidise think-tanks to support them, and provide “independent testimony” for their ideals and politics. Some of these wealth-founded media organisations, like Breitbart, and Fox news pretend to be reacting to left wing bias elsewhere and hide their embedding in elite wealth.

Conspiracy theory could always arise with investigation of how the ‘ruling classes’ go about ruling, rather than just being crazy stuff. The problem, then, is to identify that class and its actions plausibly. Before we move onto that problem let us consider a few other problems with conspiracy theory.

Problems with Conspiracy Theory

Popularity and persuasion do not equal truth The most obvious problem is that such theories can be very popular and very wrong. They can be promoted by agents of the powerful, to distract from the operations of those powerful people, and to motivate hatred against possible enemies, or because it is easier, quicker and more appealing to construct an imagined conspiracy, than to do real analysis, and to check initial bias.

As the people identified as being in a conspiracy are generally acting politically according to the conspiracy theory, then conspiracy theory tends strongly to be an arm of politics and affected by political bias and intention.

For example, it seems extremely unlikely there was ever a world wide conspiracy involving all Jewish people, or even some Jewish people, which aimed at taking over the Western World. I don’t know of any evidence other than a few obviously fake documents, and a few statements attributed to members of powerful and wealthy Jewish families, which may or may not be theirs, or which may be taken out of context. While inaccurate, the theory summarised in an acceptable symbolic form a lot of conservative nationalist problems with world capitalism. It was also based in a wide-spread anti-Semiticism which had been fueled by Christianity for a long time and so fitted in with existing pre-conceptions. As such it was obviously believable to many and the consequences of this theory were horrific, and enabled horroric acts to be carried out. This particular conspiracy theory still hangs around.

Are conspiracy theories themselves conspiracies? We may even ask whether this conspiracy theory was a result of a conspiracy against Jewish people, which aimed to make them scapegoats for problems, and use this scapegoating to gain power?

At a much lesser level, we can also think of many of the conspiracies that Hillary Clinton was supposedly involved with, from Pizzagate to the vanished emails, or the accusations she had people, who threatened her, killed. Nothing incriminating has ever come to light from the many and wide hostile investigations into her. Indeed, so little criminal activity has been revealed by people eager to attack her, that she may be the cleanest politician in US history. However, as a result of the promotion of these theories and inquiries, her name was blackened and many people in the US hate her in particular and use her as an exemplary example of a corrupt politician. Does this hatred result from a conspiracy to discredit her? Or was that ‘team-up’ an accident? While she may not have conspired, it may be interesting to ask why so many appear to have acted together against her – especially given that the failure of these investigations was not used to promote her integrity.

The consequences for the world, of the apparent conspiracy against her seem to have been pretty grave so far, and are likely to get worse.

This selective bias factor is also illustrated by the comments on a youtube video in which Noam Chomsky outlines the ways that the Right made climate change into a “liberal conspiracy” rather than a distressing fact. It seems that many people commenting were eager to accept Chomsky’s accounts of US foreign policy and military action, but thought he had sold out (or become part of a conspiracy) when he denounced the conspiracy to denounce climate change. People choose what conspiracy they believe in by their existing ideologies and biases, or by their loyalties to particular groups, not by the strength of the evidence presented.

As another example of how existing bias filters ‘facts’, Gary Allen, if I remember correctly (and I don’t have the book with me to check at this moment, but I will), argued that American capitalists subsidised Lenin. He then concluded that some wealthy people in the US establishment were Bolshevik communists, rather than concluding that (if these facts where correct) Lenin probably was doing what he was paid to do which could explain why the revolution was totalitarian and not liberatory. Allen was also celebratory that Americans had such common sense they hated communism, without knowing anything about it…. Nothing to do with US media propaganda, and the wealth elites, of course.

Other conspiracy people point to the mention of ‘Liberals’ as tools of the Elders of Zion in the Protocols to argue that modern Democrats and left-wingers are tools of international jewry, rather than bother to check that ‘Liberal’, in the days the Protocols were written, meant something more like modern Republican supporters of unrestricted capitalism, ie themselves – which would surely produce some dissonance for them. Again the bias, and group loyalties and hostilities, foreclose understanding and make links that are not likely.

People rarely ever seem to think that some conspiracy could be deliberately affecting what they think about the world at this moment. They assume their ability to track conspiracy is evidence of the conspiracy they are tracking. But, if conspiracy is a mode of politics, how can you trust the information you are using to prove conspiracy?

As implied earlier, we can assume that these supporters of the validity of the Protocols and Allen are part of the conspiracy they are supposedly denouncing; either operating as false flags, or being manipulated by those engaged in conspiracy…. and that demonstrates another problem with conspiracy theory: everything can be made to fit together neatly, by supposition and bias. This leads to another problem…..

Bias Expansion. This occurs when people accept a reasonable possibility of conspiracy and then expand it in areas which are less and less plausible.

For example, it appears that the QAnon movement reasonably argues that people with criminal aspirations, can come to power in hierarchies. These people are likely to have no empathy for others, threaten, lie, cheat, and be focused on their own power, rather than on robbing the corner store. This is plausible, we can see criminality or sociopathy in Religious organisations where we might expect otherwise, and in the management structures that we experience everyday. It is not quite so clear that these criminals always collaborate with each other. However QAnon extend this plausibility, and seem to argue that every person who they dislike is criminal and probably satanic (Hilary Clinton being a good example, because if you are pro-Republican she must be evil), and that President Trump is fighting for the American People against this criminality. Given Trump’s business record, and his actions against his enemies while in power this seems highly improbable. If he is fighting against criminals, it is probably to benefit himself or other criminals he sees as being on his side. However, the theory allows any criticism of Trump’s actions and policies to be dismissed as the work of criminals – Trump is not trying to obstruct the course of justice for example, but obstructing subversive criminals – and thus the theory supports bias in favour of Trump, which again leads to the possibility it is part of a pro-criminal-pro-Trump conspiracy.

I have also read the suggestion that QAnon is satire, directed at ‘ignorant’ Trump followers but, if so, many people (on both sides) take it as genuine. And if it is a satire, then for some people it might well be a satiric conspiracy.

Again people who suspect US foreign policy of being imperialistic, often end up extending their bias and supporting Russian intervention in Syria or Ukraine, when there is little to suggest that Russian interventions are any less imperialistic than the US, but it fits in with an anti-US bias.

There is no end.

Secrecy and projection Another problem with conspiracy theory, involves the fact that a conspiracy is usually secret and so it is hard to get evidence, but this secrecy also makes it easy to fake information (there are few sources that contradict the fakery), easy to interpret data however you want through projection (ie attributing your own vices to despised others who are not that visible) and to use the fakery politically because it seems right according to your existing biases which make the fakes seem plausible.

There is always so much happening in the world, that some evidence for anything you want to prove will probably exist somewhere, and can be linked through some mechanism to others. Such as, if people meet occasionally they must conspire together, or if people agree about something they must conspire together. However, people can agree independently of each other, and anyone can occassionally meet people they have little connection with. The FBI, the Intelligence agencies, the military and many lawyers and judges, may all agree that it looks as if President Trump is behaving in ways which will damage the US, without them having conspired together against him. They may simply agree as to the apparant facts. Just as scientists who think there is a climate crisis, do not have to have conspired together to come to that conclusion. However, if both cases if you believe that Trump is good, or that climate change cannot occur, then the conspiracy functions as an explanation for why others disagree.

Likwise, if you believe that the real reasons for US foreign policy is hidden, which is not unreasonable, and you believe that the US government hides contact with aliens (which a secretive organisation might do), then this secretive foreign policy could have something to do with the secrecy about aliens. Perhaps it is an alien inspired attempt to control the world. Perhaps President Trump (who is known for his tough stance against ‘illegal aliens’) is fighting hard against the aliens, or for the aliens…

And some people have no issue with making up evidence or accusations to support their bias (it must be true if it confirms the enemies’ badness), as seems to be the case with Clinton or Soros.

Assumptions of success Another problem of conspiracy theory is that it often assumes that conspiracies have their intended consequences, which makes them far more effective than normal political movements which fail all the time. A consequence of this is that conspiracy theories are often proposed to explain why the results of an action by the conspiracy proposer’s side did not work. This ‘proves’ that not only were the proposer’s theories correct, but the ideal results were foiled by deliberate evil, exonerating them from attempting to discover if they have innacurate theories and policies, or from making any changes to how they behave.

When one’s favoured side looses, is often a clear sign of conspiracy. Thus I read a lot of conspiracy theory alleging that US Democrats are criminals and evil because some established members of the party can conspire or collaborate together against ‘the Left’ and out-manoeuvre them. To me, this sounds like normal politics in action; calling it conspiracy when one faction defeats another is possibly going too far. Clinton was better at the numbers game than Sanders. But this is probably what we should expect, given that Sanders had only recently joined the party and had not built allegiances, and was probably seen as a something of an opportunist by many members of the party. It does not need active evil.

Again the question arises, who is making this apparently normal internal politics into a conspiracy? Why are they doing so? And are they participating in a conspiracy themselves? The articles alleging dirty tricks in the Democrats seem to aim pretty clearly to discredit mainstream Democrats and persuade people not to vote for them. This benefits the Republicans. So we can wonder if this news is a Republican conspiracy, planted amongst the Left, to split potential democrat Voters? Or are the Left doing it to themselves? The articles might benefit the Republicans without them being a Republican conspiracy: effect does not always imply intent.

One thing that might convince people these articles are a Republican conspiracy is that they seem part of the “both sides are equally bad” meme which, at the moment, benefits the Republicans, especially as nobody points out the problems of their internal politics to such a degree. Also it seems notable that when the Republicans do bad things overseas, the articles say the US is doing bad things, but if it is the Democrats doing bad things, then that is pointed out. But this is not proof, only suggestion. What would be required would be the incredibly difficult work of tracking the articles as they circulate, and who they are circulated by.

Given the massive choice of conspiracies, when I see conspiracy theories in action, I look at what people do with them. If they primarily attack one side of politics, and largely ignore conspiracies which suggest the other side of politics is bad, then I guess they are working for the side which is not blamed, whether deliberately or otherwise.

While people can claim certain allegiances, their selection of conspiracy theories may indicate others or have the effect of supporting those others. But this may not itself be conspiracy.

Conclusion of part 1

People may work together without conspiring, and without even knowing they are working together. This kind of effect happens all the way through complex societies. People make things, which help other people to act. People have similar ideas without ever talking to each other and so on. This is normal, but the interdependence probably can be manipulated.

Interdependence can suggest conspiracy, but it is normal without conspiracy.

However, it is also plausible that members of the Ruling Classes do conspire with others against each other and against those they rule. They may well make use of people who see an advantage in supporting them, or who think that their rule is good and justifies support. These people may not only conspire, but they may use conspiracy theory to hide their own conspiring.

This is not inherently implausible. As implied it is likely that the way the ruling class rules resembles conspiracy.

This discussion continues in the next post, on probable conspiracy.

https://cmandchaos.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/on-conspiracy-theory-02/

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