America’s Descent Into Middle Eastern-Style Conspiracy-Theory Madness

Lee Smith of Tablet has an interesting op-ed piece about the current state of American politics and the press. I know several people have opined that there are too many Trump threads, both for and against. Well, this piece explains why. It is and isn't politics and the press all at the same time.

The state of things right have created a situation where the press *is* a giant conspiracy game.

One thing is clear already: What started as an explosion of shock and anger about Hillary Clinton’s surprise defeat in November has tipped over into the kind of toxic fabulism typical of Third World societies.

The Comey testimony signifies that we have retrofit the architectural features of our democracy in order to legitimize an alternate conspiratorial universe. Comey’s testimony, the Senate and House investigations, former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s appointment as special prosecutor make sense only if you believe the narrative of high-level treachery and espionage that has been leading the network news for the past six months. If you believe the Great Kremlin Conspiracy Theory, all the stories are true, in their essence—even if the specifics of any particular story are wrong. If you don’t believe it, then you’re on Trump’s side—and in bed with the Russians.

The author goes on to spend a bit of time making it plain they don't like Trump and likely voted for Hillary. So we're not talking about some partisan here, just someone who recognizes that the stories to support the theory are not necessarily all true, but they make sense to a narrative.

The problem with conspiracy theories—or the advantage of them—is that they’re difficult to disprove. For instance, consider that there is no evidence showing that the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russia in a plot to “hack” the American election, and yet the story persists—with no less a party than Hillary Clinton, who now asserts that the Russians were aided by “polling data” from an inside source.

But wait: Weren’t the polls dead wrong? Wasn’t that the big story of the 2016 election? Maybe polling data was part of the conspiracy, too. You see, elements of the Deep State aligned with the Trump campaign used Kremlin hackers to break into ADA, the Clinton camp’s billion-dollar AI that determined where the campaign’s resources would go. Trump’s Kremlin buddies deleted the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from ADA’s memory banks, making it impossible for Clinton to travel there.

Remember all the polls? They all showed Clinton winning, but now she says they were guided by insider provided polling data to be able to weaponize their misinformation. And as the writer astutely points out ... how did any of that stop Clinton from committing the cardinal error of ignoring states in the rust that she just assumed would vote for her?

Bit it trickles out more to add to the conspiracy, one that a majority of Clinton voters so deeply want to believe is true, and as the writer notes, it will be hard to disprove because it's like calling someone a racist. How do you disprove that? It's a giant Kafka-trap.

The writer goes on to outline the problem. The press is no longer a free and independent one. It's incestuously intertwined with the DC insider's club. You can go do your research and discover just how many high-powered journalists are connected to the halls of power through things like marriage. But they all go to the same restaurants and parties, use the same jogging trails, etc. There is no longer any distance, so they might as well all be part of the same apparatus.

In other words, the American media has become just like the Arab press, consumed by savvy audiences not for the news it actually publishes but for the various pieces of information disclosed between the lines. In Lebanon, for instance, readers and viewers know which journalists are owned by which political figures or security services. This guy is close to military intelligence, which is controlled by Hezbollah, and this guy is known to be close to the Saudis. Oh, if X is saying Y that’s because A is sending a message to B about C. It’s the same throughout the region, where different regimes speak to each other via the journalists they’re known to control.

That’s what much of the American press is like now. It’s political warfare among the country’s bureaucrats and the political elites—a game for insiders, in which the press, Democratic political operatives, and parts of the intelligence community run information ops against each other while playing on the credulity of the rubes. If you don’t know the score, then you’re the target. In the meantime, however, the public sphere is being degraded, perhaps beyond repair.

What we are seeing is a giant insider war and we get glimpses of it in the press. This Russian thing? It's the battlefield, not the truth. All the leaks and anonymous sources are the feints and counter moves. If you think it's the truth, that the stories are real, that Donald Trump actually did hire Russian hookers to do a golden shower on Obama's bed ... then you're one of the rubes. And there are a lot of rubes and it's tearing the rest of the country apart while they fight their war and we snap, snarl, and growl at each other.

A conspiracy theory is when you weaponize these kinds of narratives through mass media to put them to political use. Conspiracy theories are about channeling the direst energies of the masses—the peasants with pitchforks. The concern before the November election was that Trump was going to put the ignorant, hateful, and violent American masses in the streets to stay. In retrospect, it is obvious why that assessment was flawed. The “deplorables”—as Clinton called them—do not own the platforms or networks through which it is possible to proliferate weaponized narratives capable of doing real damage to our polity—the elites do.

And we see then out an about don't we? ANTIFA ...

They're slowly being weaponized.

No: We’re the problem. The real danger is that the once-sturdy institutions and procedures of our democracy—the press, the intelligence community, political parties, etc.—have been used to legitimize a conspiracy theory.

Liberal Arabs will tell you that the way to combat ignorance, or the nature of the mind captured by conspiracy theories, is through education, learning how to think critically. It is a hopeful idea. And yet education is nothing but an institution that reflects and confirms the values of the culture it arises from. Institutions like a free press are also contingent historical products.

What we’re watching now reflected through the decay and delirium of our institutions is something much more common in history—a society moving toward obscurantism.

And now there is so much we don't know, aren't allowed to know, and because of that suspicion, that we aren't being told the full story, or even the real story of what we are allowed to know, this site is eaten alive by the biggest conspiracy with legs at the moment: what's currently happening in DC. It's a real conspiracy given legs and approbation by our very own elites.

a reply to: ketsuko
I have been trying to explain this to my neighbor, he refuses to believe it.

I am sorry that i have nothing to add to this beautiful insight.
I just had to give you a Ketsuko

a reply to: ketsuko

That was such a good read K - thanks, and I echo your sentiments vis-a-vis the elites civil war, I too am seeing that - it really is the only thing that makes sense as to the madness that is happening all around us right now.

If you think of a hidden institution that has been in the making by elite bloodlines for over a century, then Trump comes out of the blue and takes the reigns of it without appropriate elite approval - there will be blood.

a reply to: ketsuko

I want to take this time to apologize for making any thread or post during the election last year as my words were an obvious attempt at swaying opinion and changing the election results.

I should have never have used my rights to free expression.

Is many of us that knows what is going right now in Washington, we knew the minute the elections were won by an outsider, the outrageousness of such an event.

Now is a name for what the media is doing, is call mass anti trump hysteria, feeding everyday negativity, lies and controversies.

a reply to: ketsuko

Thanks for bringing this to ATS Kets!

Ironically, Comey said it best. Paraphrasing, those who are talking don't know the classified information and those that do, aren't talking. Instead of taking available information, looking at it from a logical approach and then bringing that information to the people in the most transparent possible manner would be the proper approach.

While I can certainly understand that we all, including journalists, have bias of some measurable extent, there needs to be some sort of congruity to the information being presented for public consumption regarding OUR government.

Both sides are guilty of lapping up the false narratives, even wholly false articles, to sate our bias. There is a simple solution here. Something that many on both sides can agree to. That is ridding ourselves of this false dichotomy of R and D. More representatives and parties. Stop fueling this global media machine with cheap and plentiful information that they can freely spin into obscurity!

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: ketsuko

I want to take this time to apologize for making any thread or post during the election last year as my words were an obvious attempt at swaying opinion and changing the election results.

I should have never have used my rights to free expression.

We aren't supposed to think. We aren't elite. Our lot is simply to do what they tell us to.

a reply to: ketsuko

I know.

I'll just watch moar tv so they can tell me what to think.

Great thread, star and flag for this. It's one of the reasons why i stopped watching the weekly political shows, I always wind up screaming at the tv. And folks look at me like i'm crazy.

They've weaponized propaganda. Terrible.

originally posted by: cenpuppie
Great thread, star and flag for this. It's one of the reasons why i stopped watching the weekly political shows, I always wind up screaming at the tv. And folks look at me like i'm crazy.

They've weaponized propaganda. Terrible.

There are a few places that I have had to stop frequenting as often because they upset me. It doesn't make me happy because I used to enjoy reading them no matter how often I would disagree, but it does illustrate how bad things are rifting apart.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: ketsuko

I know.

I'll just watch moar tv so they can tell me what to think.

I'm not sure how you get your information, but I spend a bit of time watching fake news, and I'm being serious here. If you want to know how peoples brains work, you need to understand the information they're being fed so as to arrive at their conclusions that, irrespective of what any one person or institution says, the earth IS flat.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

I take a story and see how it is spun.

Old joke. . . .

Trump falls off a boat and immediately walks on top of the waves to the shore.

Headline of MSM next day?

Trump can't swim

a reply to: ketsuko

Honestly, thats the most sane thing I have read in months.

This whole election cycle was House of Cards reality show. A #ing joke and Trump is our punchline. But this decent into so called conspiracyville is actually circa 2001. Specifically around the September timeframe.

Theatrics and nothing more. They are literally #ing with us at this point.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I want to take this time to apologize for making any thread or post during the election last year as my words were an obvious attempt at swaying opinion and changing the election results.

Apology accepted.

But we all know your carelessness in your posts was the leading cause of Brexit!

originally posted by: Sublimecraft

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: ketsuko

I know.

I'll just watch moar tv so they can tell me what to think.

I'm not sure how you get your information, but I spend a bit of time watching fake news, and I'm being serious here. If you want to know how peoples brains work, you need to understand the information they're being fed so as to arrive at their conclusions that, irrespective of what any one person or institution says, the earth IS flat.

Don't you find it hard?

The environment is so incredibly toxic that there are days when it's really hard, but you're right, it's so important to do so you can keep up with all that's going on.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

If you want to know how peoples brains work, you need to understand the information they're being fed so as to arrive at their conclusions that, irrespective of what any one person or institution says, the earth IS flat.

I absorb news the way an intelligence agency collects data. That means I read every source from anywhere, any and all of the time.

The only way to truly get any idea of objectivity is to start by taking in everything, watching everything and reading everything, whether you agree with it or not.

Only when one has familiarized themselves with all the data from all sources can one begin to filter out data by relevance.

Or that's how I think of it, anyway.

originally posted by: ketsuko
And now there is so much we don't know, aren't allowed to know, and because of that suspicion, that we aren't being told the full story, or even the real story of what we are allowed to know, this site is eaten alive by the biggest conspiracy with legs at the moment: what's currently happening in DC. It's a real conspiracy given legs and approbation by our very own elites.

There's a saying that DC is Hollywood for ugly people. I don't think that's quite accurate though. I think DC is WWE for flabby people.

It's all manufactured drama, innuendo, and conspiracy theories. It has become a team sport with faces and heels, marketing for the actors, media managers, and so on.

There's likely some truth to something. I'm pretty sure Trump has/had some Russian ties, but I don't think they got him elected, and I don't think changing foreign policy is a big deal... the President gets to determine foreign policy.

At the same time though, I think I've got a pretty good read on Trump. Back in high school I got to go to a dinner with him, and sit at his table. We had a two hour long conversation about life. My impression of him is heavily shaped by that impression, as well as observing him over the years. I've noticed that Trump likes to market himself as being brash and unpredictable but the man really only has a couple basic moves (though I will say, he executes them above average):
1. Ask for a lot, make concessions at a bad ratio, flip it around and claim a win because you got something and your opponent gave up X, Y, and Z. He has never made concessions at a good rate because he doesn't know how to negotiate. He knows how to dictate terms when he's strong, but he can't negotiate from weakness.

2. Double down. Make bold statements on something. If it's later proven wrong, double down and challenge facts with your own counter facts. If you're right, you're right. If you're wrong, you convince a few you were right. More over, it falls out of the media after a few days, and no one remembers you were wrong, only the called shot you were right. This can later be resurrected to frame a debate.

3. Character assassinate opponents. Look at all the weird Hillary stuff he put out in the campaign. Now there's endless stories of Comey being eccentric. He does this one all the time. Remember how he framed Ted Cruz? He blamed the guy's dad for killing JFK. He goes negative fast and stays negative. Doesn't talk up himself. Instead he builds hype to carry him, while trashing others.

He's got a couple more, but these are Trumps three main moves for everything. I have a very low opinion of people like him. He's the total opposite of everything he claims. Which ties back into the idea of who we elected. Not only is our government keeping far more secrets from us than they should, but the semiannual elections have become a time to increase secrecy on who we elect. Guys like Trump don't act as they were elected to.

Media, politicians, pundits. They all lie, spin, and distort the process as much as possible in order to create a more appealing product to sell.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Read the news for basic facts. Think a bit and figure out the hows and whys from there on your own. There's no reason to read 30 copies of a story. 1 is sufficient.