PARANOID YET ?
PARANOID YET?
Be anti-conspiratorial with U.S. Sen. Christopher Hayes (R-Conn)
If you weren't before, you will be, after .. reading Christopher Hayes': " 9/11: The Roots of Paranoia". Nation magazine, Dec. 25, 2006) Through those of his kind -- shabbos goyim; good gentiles -- the G-d of the Jews is installed in America "under God", as in the New Testament. It's ways -- "monotheist" -- have replaced the ways of the her's -- The Trinity. That is the spiritual wave-front his article represents.
Hayes' style is to attack what he claims to deplore in a way that justifies not deploring it. This, I would explain in psychosemiotic terms, is the impossible twistedness that results from having reached a certain position in TokenSpace* (the field of group communication) that is intrinsically Unsquare* (incompatible with reality). (However, this may be meta-paranoia, here. Whichever squares.)
First, he professes to deplore the accusation made by much of the world that the U.S. tortures. Torture is NEVER justified! his stern tone admonishes (in a Youtube statement, Oct. '05). Abu Ghraib wasn't torture. The US does not violate the Geneva convention.
But denying that the word fits shows how it does. Why isn't Abu Ghraib torture? No answer, except "We don't torture. Torture is never justified."
Now, evoking Richard Hofstadterder's tired terminology, he deplores the paranoid style spread by 911 conspiracy theorists.
Nevermind the real paranoid style acted out by Town Hall Republicans over the years, with every news broadcast an "alert", every critic "in bed with the enemy", and preemptive attacks to protect against imaginary weapons. It's like during the Vietnam war, anti-war organizers were called paranoid for claiming the FBI was tapping their phones. Later verified, the record was corrected by saying "the paranoids were right". (I saved the NY Post heading.)
Comments on Hayes : The Essentially Unsquare.
A. His opening gambit is to focus, from the outset, on who is to blame, not the factual issues. All the detail scrupulously laid out and argued by the Truth Movement is barely nodded to, its their "blame the government" attitude Hayes features. But: 1. in regard to the official story, the question of blame is subsequent to the question of truth; and 2. "the government" en masse isn't made the culprit, but factions inside it, if the story is wrong. Hayes' 'straw man' construction re-sets the stage as "irrational, government-hating conspiracy nuts", well-meaning perhaps, objectifying their sense of persecution. But that is really NOT what is going on, so the focus on government blame is not square with reality.
B. The one substantive point he considers, rapidly -- the rest are dismissed as focusing "on physical minutiae" -- reinstates just the conclusion it is supposed to reverse: Citing the popular Popular Mechanics (March 2005), who "assembled team of engineers, physicists, flight experts and the like" to "critically examine the Truth Movement's most common claims," finding them "almost totally without merit", he writes, "To pick just one example, steel might not melt at 1,500 degrees, the temperature at which jet fuel burns, but it does begin to lose a lot of strength, enough to cause the support beams to fall." And leave molten steel in the footprints weeks later? But nevermind. The point is to undermine the unofficial perspective, and any alternative suggestion simply reinstates Popular Mechanics expert authorities official, safe position. He is blind to the fact visible to everyone else, that such attempts to douse the fire (odd source for Senators to draw from, but, Hey! they have NASCAR fans in Connecticut, too!) in fact fuel it. For if it comes down to what you refuse to see, or call by its name if you do, that argues just as strongly for the other side.
C. And, as Shays easily asserts that Abu Grhaib was not torture, because we do not torture, so the "conspiracy theory" does not rest on evidence: "The problem isn't with conspiracy theories as such; the problem is continuing to assert the existence of a conspiracy even after the evidence shows it to be virtually
impossible." There it is again. An attempt to reverse what the evidence actually shows by displacing the word ("evidence") onto a untenable consequence, where it can be denied -- dubiously -- and, in the process, affirming it as the situation NEEDING denial. A twistedness that refutes itself by becoming visible.
D. And there is much more. So many Americans (1/3, by a July Scripps News Service) believing their "government" is behind the tragedy of 9/11 puts him in mind of the Germans vis a vis the celebrated Reichstag fire incident, blamed on a socialist nitwit and leveraged by Hitler and the Nazis into a cause celebre and consolidation of power.. Exactly why Shays should be led to this comparison -- which fits -- is stated this way: "To the extent that there is a unified theory of the nature of conspiracy, it is based, in part, on the precedent of the Reichstag fire in Germany in the 1930s." If you can't explain all of 'em, I guess his reasoning goes, you can't explain any, this one being one, which is so absurd, once one stops to think about it, that old taste of ultra- twist kicks in.
E. Now, more: Who knew that THE STORY THAT THE NAZI REGIME WAS BEHIND THE REICHSTAG FIRE WAS A MYTH? -- AN 'URBAN LEGEND' Hitler amd cohorts used, but didn't cause? Hayes reveals it! Actually, he says, historians now agree that the one accused, van Lubbe, acting alone, set the fire, damage from which was exaggerated for propaganda purposes; it wasn't a plot by Hitler and Goebbels, and there are lessons to be learned from this situation, he notes, namely, wide-spread popular conspiratorial ideas can be quite wrong, while quite understandable. But: a. I do not think it is accepted scholarly opinion that van Lubbe acted alone (admitting the damage was probably exaggerated and the symbolism undoubedtly exploited to the max by Josef Goebbels); and b. the no doubt unintended side-effect of this historical correction, if it is such, is to position Germans who would follow Die Fuehrer, suspecting -- perhaps secretely applauding -- for pulling off what "The Reichstag Fire" came to mean -- with Americans vis a vis the official story of who perpetrated 9/11. And with this, Senator Hayes brings his gift for self-refutation to the acme. It's OK if the conspiracy theory goes around; we are ike good Germans, half-knowingly swept along by opportunistic fanatics capable of exploiting tokens of symbolic assault to suspend the constitution and establish a ruthless Fascist National Front, will full power and authority of the state.
. But
I'll swear, it was news to me, as I know to many others, a wide-spread impressiion that needs correcting broadly, one would think, if they were interested in keeping their holocaust facts straight.
This will have to be pursued further to see the convoluted wave fronts splitting, mixing, re-matching previously stable sign-uses. Imagine learning that the German volk capable of kristallnacht a few years later
Be anti-conspiratorial with U.S. Sen. Christopher Hayes (R-Conn)
If you weren't before, you will be, after .. reading Christopher Hayes': " 9/11: The Roots of Paranoia". Nation magazine, Dec. 25, 2006) Through those of his kind -- shabbos goyim; good gentiles -- the G-d of the Jews is installed in America "under God", as in the New Testament. It's ways -- "monotheist" -- have replaced the ways of the her's -- The Trinity. That is the spiritual wave-front his article represents.
Hayes' style is to attack what he claims to deplore in a way that justifies not deploring it. This, I would explain in psychosemiotic terms, is the impossible twistedness that results from having reached a certain position in TokenSpace* (the field of group communication) that is intrinsically Unsquare* (incompatible with reality). (However, this may be meta-paranoia, here. Whichever squares.)
First, he professes to deplore the accusation made by much of the world that the U.S. tortures. Torture is NEVER justified! his stern tone admonishes (in a Youtube statement, Oct. '05). Abu Ghraib wasn't torture. The US does not violate the Geneva convention.
But denying that the word fits shows how it does. Why isn't Abu Ghraib torture? No answer, except "We don't torture. Torture is never justified."
Now, evoking Richard Hofstadterder's tired terminology, he deplores the paranoid style spread by 911 conspiracy theorists.
Nevermind the real paranoid style acted out by Town Hall Republicans over the years, with every news broadcast an "alert", every critic "in bed with the enemy", and preemptive attacks to protect against imaginary weapons. It's like during the Vietnam war, anti-war organizers were called paranoid for claiming the FBI was tapping their phones. Later verified, the record was corrected by saying "the paranoids were right". (I saved the NY Post heading.)
Comments on Hayes : The Essentially Unsquare.
A. His opening gambit is to focus, from the outset, on who is to blame, not the factual issues. All the detail scrupulously laid out and argued by the Truth Movement is barely nodded to, its their "blame the government" attitude Hayes features. But: 1. in regard to the official story, the question of blame is subsequent to the question of truth; and 2. "the government" en masse isn't made the culprit, but factions inside it, if the story is wrong. Hayes' 'straw man' construction re-sets the stage as "irrational, government-hating conspiracy nuts", well-meaning perhaps, objectifying their sense of persecution. But that is really NOT what is going on, so the focus on government blame is not square with reality.
B. The one substantive point he considers, rapidly -- the rest are dismissed as focusing "on physical minutiae" -- reinstates just the conclusion it is supposed to reverse: Citing the popular Popular Mechanics (March 2005), who "assembled team of engineers, physicists, flight experts and the like" to "critically examine the Truth Movement's most common claims," finding them "almost totally without merit", he writes, "To pick just one example, steel might not melt at 1,500 degrees, the temperature at which jet fuel burns, but it does begin to lose a lot of strength, enough to cause the support beams to fall." And leave molten steel in the footprints weeks later? But nevermind. The point is to undermine the unofficial perspective, and any alternative suggestion simply reinstates Popular Mechanics expert authorities official, safe position. He is blind to the fact visible to everyone else, that such attempts to douse the fire (odd source for Senators to draw from, but, Hey! they have NASCAR fans in Connecticut, too!) in fact fuel it. For if it comes down to what you refuse to see, or call by its name if you do, that argues just as strongly for the other side.
C. And, as Shays easily asserts that Abu Grhaib was not torture, because we do not torture, so the "conspiracy theory" does not rest on evidence: "The problem isn't with conspiracy theories as such; the problem is continuing to assert the existence of a conspiracy even after the evidence shows it to be virtually
impossible." There it is again. An attempt to reverse what the evidence actually shows by displacing the word ("evidence") onto a untenable consequence, where it can be denied -- dubiously -- and, in the process, affirming it as the situation NEEDING denial. A twistedness that refutes itself by becoming visible.
D. And there is much more. So many Americans (1/3, by a July Scripps News Service) believing their "government" is behind the tragedy of 9/11 puts him in mind of the Germans vis a vis the celebrated Reichstag fire incident, blamed on a socialist nitwit and leveraged by Hitler and the Nazis into a cause celebre and consolidation of power.. Exactly why Shays should be led to this comparison -- which fits -- is stated this way: "To the extent that there is a unified theory of the nature of conspiracy, it is based, in part, on the precedent of the Reichstag fire in Germany in the 1930s." If you can't explain all of 'em, I guess his reasoning goes, you can't explain any, this one being one, which is so absurd, once one stops to think about it, that old taste of ultra- twist kicks in.
E. Now, more: Who knew that THE STORY THAT THE NAZI REGIME WAS BEHIND THE REICHSTAG FIRE WAS A MYTH? -- AN 'URBAN LEGEND' Hitler amd cohorts used, but didn't cause? Hayes reveals it! Actually, he says, historians now agree that the one accused, van Lubbe, acting alone, set the fire, damage from which was exaggerated for propaganda purposes; it wasn't a plot by Hitler and Goebbels, and there are lessons to be learned from this situation, he notes, namely, wide-spread popular conspiratorial ideas can be quite wrong, while quite understandable. But: a. I do not think it is accepted scholarly opinion that van Lubbe acted alone (admitting the damage was probably exaggerated and the symbolism undoubedtly exploited to the max by Josef Goebbels); and b. the no doubt unintended side-effect of this historical correction, if it is such, is to position Germans who would follow Die Fuehrer, suspecting -- perhaps secretely applauding -- for pulling off what "The Reichstag Fire" came to mean -- with Americans vis a vis the official story of who perpetrated 9/11. And with this, Senator Hayes brings his gift for self-refutation to the acme. It's OK if the conspiracy theory goes around; we are ike good Germans, half-knowingly swept along by opportunistic fanatics capable of exploiting tokens of symbolic assault to suspend the constitution and establish a ruthless Fascist National Front, will full power and authority of the state.
. But
I'll swear, it was news to me, as I know to many others, a wide-spread impressiion that needs correcting broadly, one would think, if they were interested in keeping their holocaust facts straight.
This will have to be pursued further to see the convoluted wave fronts splitting, mixing, re-matching previously stable sign-uses. Imagine learning that the German volk capable of kristallnacht a few years later
posted by Sid Thomas | 1:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home