Skull and Bones

[NoPasaran]

Poll question: Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones. What is it really? An evil manipulative cabal bent on world domination or just a stupid college fraternity?

[saltpoint]

1. Voted 'Other'

Non-Issue

[Monument]

11. For chrissakes, it's just a bunch of kids. Smart kids, with an odd ...

..little club.

Yalies do things differently than the rest of us. For every fraternity member you've got a guy who is dead serious about acapella, or the trombone, etc.

[saltpoint]

15. OK with me.

[gWbush is Mabus]

2. evil cabal

it would be a stupid fraternity if only it didn't have so many people in positions of power.

[Fovea]

3. Kevin Phillips says it is no longer what it used to be

So now I just associate it with the banality of evil.
Not evil per se, but banal in a way that still attracts some tradition-minded evil doers.

[deutsey]

8. A Yalie friend of mine says the same thing

Although I agree with Alexandra Robbins' characterization of S&B on Democracy Now:

"I don't think that the elected officials who represent our country especially the president should be allowed to have an allegiance to any secret group. Secrecy overshadows democracy. We need a transparency so we can hold elected officials accountable. I don't think its coincidence that I what I would call the most secretive government in America today since the Nixon era is run by the world's most infamous secret society. That's something we want to avoid in the future."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/23/0445212&mode=thread&tid=25

S&B is good at giving its members unfair, exclusive access to power that isn't healthy in a democratic society. That's my big gripe about it.

[jonnyblitz]

12. I just started the book Alexandra Robbins wrote about S and B

But I am not far enough into it yet to have an opinion. Just getting pre S and B Yale history at this point....

[deutsey]

16. I'm so backlogged on my reading list

that I won't get to read Robbins' book for a long time. Is it worth the read based on what you've read?

[jonnyblitz]

20. it is worth it .

it gives a good background history of the whole Yale "experience" from the beginning and it isnt a very long book. I am backlogged on my reading list also. I have to read John Kerry's book ( A Call to Service) plus I am in the middle of the The Zinn Reader (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS ONE) all library books I have to get back before I go away in a week to visit my other sister in Amsterdam.

[lucidmadman]

4. Certs is a deodorant mint

:crazy:

[progressivebydesign]

5. It's the SAME evil cabal as it was when we attacked it here in 2000!

I find it so funny, or actually sad, that people on DU are actually acting like S&B is no big deal. When Bush was running in 2000 it was the most evil, secretive, manaical cult of power brokering scum. Now it's okey-dokey horseplay for rich kids at Yale. I read Fortunate Son.. I have the info I need. Thank you. I'll vote for Kerry.. but... S&B is STILL evil, even if our nominee is a member.

[jpgray]

6. A fraternity tailor made for high-class connections.

It's not just a stupid frat, but it's not a malevolent secret society. It's way for rich well-born kids to network and become cronies of one another. In this respect, it's not much different from other exclusive Ivy League institutions.

[MrPrax]

7. What are the odds?

The two leading contenders for the U.S. presidency are both members of Skull and Bones, one of the oldest secret societies in America. Why is this not a major election-year issue?

Mr. Russert: You both were members of Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale. What does that tell us?
Senator Kerry: Not much, because it’s a secret.
— Meet the Press, August 31, 2003

What are the odds that out of a population of nearly 300 million the two front-runners for the most powerful political office in the world would be "brothers" in a super-elite, secret society that numbers probably fewer than 800 living members? The odds are even slimmer than that, since only a handful of that already minuscule number actually hold political office and would, therefore, be potential candidates.

Mr. Russert: You were both in Skull and Bones, the secret society.
President Bush: It’s so secret we can’t talk about it.
— Meet the Press, Taped on February 7, 2004

Every politician, it is said, has skeletons in his closet, but this is ridiculous. In the cases of President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), we have two politicos whose careers, literally, were launched in a crypt full of skeletons.

http://www.libertythink.com/2004_02_29_archives.html#107837973787996756

Probably not a conspiracy, but certainly eltiism, be definition.

Wonder what Russert knows?

[NoPasaran]

10. What are the odds

That the tw candidates are both graduates of the same elite university?

[loftycity]

9. S &B check out ancestory and bloodlines to be accepted into

S & B...it so deep freemason's and elite. It is truly the creepy at work in our world.

[phillybri]

13. Same as any frat, just w/ a little more influence....

IMHO

[lucidmadman]

14. I've seen the saucers...they're here already!!!!!

:crazy:

[debsianben]

17. Definitely "other"

It's probably not an evil cabal bent on world domination. Probably more like a stupidly ornate way that rich kids can network with each other, bond in college and do unfair favors for one another after graduation.

What it is, in other words, is a bizzarely literalized symbol of the "old boy's network." Just as Bush and Kerry both support NAFTA (bad for workers, bad for the environment, good for mutlinational corporations), Bush and Kerry both supported the IWR and both support keeping U.S. troops in Iraq (bad for working-class kids in uniform being asked to die for oil privatization and Haliburton reconstruction contracts, bad for Iraqi civilians killed in "bombing of suspected guerrilla positions," good for multinational corporations), Bush and Kerry both support the Patriot Act (good for the powers that be, bad for everybody else), and Bush and Kerry agree that government has no "right" to prevent corporations from shutting down plants in the U.S., its on some symbolic level only appropriate that both went to the same rich kids' school and we're both members of the same stupid rich-kids' secret society.

It's a nice reminder that they both represent different shades of opinion within the same basic corporate-funded, anti-democratic political consensus that led to things like NAFTA, the Patriot Act, the IWR, etc., etc., etc.

[lams712]

18. Evil cabal and stupid fraternity are nearly the same thing...

....the Greek system on unversity campuses are self-perpetuating elitist oligarchies that allow for the rich and powerful to establish and maintain personal connections.

[BringEmOn]

19. I think they should both drop trou

and see if they have a 322 N brand on their @$$.

[NoPasaran]

21. Kick for PM Paranoia

:kick: