Nine One One plus Two

[StuartStark]

Conspiracy nuts. Fringe dwellers. Card-carrying members of the Grassy Knoll Society. The tinfoil hat brigade.

They tried to warn us.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. In the sphere of politics, he who indulges a reactionary dismissal of the possibility of conspiracy is as dangerously foolish as he who instantly embraces whatever scatterbrain theories happens to cross his transom.

A house is a conspiracy of wood.

It is a fallacy to think that everybody who is involved in the final conspiratorial construct is necessarily "in on it" from the beginning. The Nazi Party was founded by Thule, a Bavarian "secret society." Its every policy was shaped by a core of absolutely committed co-conspirators, and enforced by a relatively small cadre of trusted and unquestioning true believers. From this viral nucleus, the conspiracy's ends worked their way outwards to virtually the entirety of German civilization. It acheived almost total infection.

Now, can it be said that there was a "conspiracy" - as that term is understood in its most esoteric sense - at the core of Nazism? I believe the historical record proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Was every German who participated in and/or supported Nazism "in on" this conspiracy?

Obviously not.

Did their not being in on the conspiracy mean they weren't a PART of the conspiracy?

I don't think so. The part many of them played may well have been unwitting, but they were still very much "a part." They were the wood that made up the house. The conspiracy of the few manifested itself through them, literally... through their flesh and brains. Through their souls.

Before you ask, let me tell you… I don't know what it is I'm writing, here, exactly. Whatever it is, it isn't a manifesto. Nor is it journalism. And it isn't really an op-ed piece, in the traditional sense.

I don't quite know what it is, to be honest with you. All I know is I started writing it in November of last year, and I've been planning on writing it since shortly after the 2002 State of the Union address. I keep going over the notes I've collected for this piece, and the only thing that becomes clearer to me is the fact that I have no idea what I'm trying to say.

It's probably futile… the gropings of a man alone in his doubts, hands splashing through a hissing electric blizzard of disinfotainment, blindly fingering textures and surfaces in the hopes of touching some modicum of the horrible truth he suspects lies just beyond his ability to comprehend. But I feel like I have to go through with it. So please, indulge me…

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a word to describe society. Alone, man is a tiny speck… so fragile and easy to kill. When men come together to form a social compact, moving as one, working as one, they become Leviathan.

Nowadays, Leviathan is so huge, most of us don't even think about it anymore. We're parasites, skimming across the surface of our corner of flesh, oblivious to what goes on "inside." Like Doctor Jekyll's crotch lice, we go on doing what we do, scuttling through the pubic forest, feasting on dead skin and dried sweat salts, blissfully oblivious to the good Doctor's transformation into a murderous, psychotic thug.

What concern is it of ours if our host should occasionally choose to bash in some unlucky wench's skull with his walking stick, then rape her while she dies? And if he chooses to sneak into a bakery in the middle of the night to mix rat poison in with the flour, so be it! Just so long as he doesn't scratch us off, we crabs won't raise a fuss. Leave us to our own devices - fat, drugged and distracted - and there's practically no limit to how much corruption we're willing to tolerate.

Systems everywhere are in disarray. The most foundational of institutions are starting to crumble. Take the Roman Catholic Church as an example, dissolving in a puddle of scum and denial. Extreme fringe figures have attained positions of great power, bringing their extreme fringe ideas with them. Their positions are being presented as the new status quo. Distraction has fed our apathy, which has fueled their impressive successes.

Starting on this day two years ago, the Bush administration has done everything in its power to inculcate fear in the populace. They have brandished that fear as their most powerful weapon in a war against freedom, against centuries-old constitutional guarantees, against everything that stands in the way of their meticulously plotted New World Order.

Folks, the truth is that the Powers That Be had nothing to fear from Saddam Hussein. Iran and North Korea could never mount a serious challenge to their supremacy.

The only power in the world that is capable of challenging their New World Order… is the American voting public. That this authoritarian cabal of war profiteers and ideologues came to power in the world's oldest and most robust democracy must surely be their downfall. I believe this to be a truth they all sense, deep down. With every freedom they repeal, every dissenting voice they silence, and every constitutional guarantee they trample under foot, they are confessing their fear for - and declaring war upon - the only enemy on this planet that is capable of taking back the awesome power they have stolen.

That enemy is you. You would do well to prepare yourself for battle.

(used with permission)

[ixion]

1. good sentiment, StuartStark

welcome to DU... :hi:

if you haven't already, read this...

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/holmgren01.htm

[StuartStark]

2. I love that piece!

Thanks for reminding me!