I'm Not a Conspiracy Theorist - I'm a Conspiracy Analyst. - Gore Vidal
When I was young, I didn't like to read. I did however, read magazines from time to time but they have glossy pictures!
Bored out of my mind one day, perusing my father's library I came across a book by Gore Vidal entitle American Presidency. I had never heard of this man. The book was light and thin, thin enough to read I thought!
I was curious about the history of American presidents and I hoped I could learn something I could impress people with later. The book was not what I expected, but in the best way. It was a marvelous discovery.
In a nutshell, and my main take away from Vidal's writings is this. The book describes how the US president is powerless domestically in the face of industry, finance and special interests. Instead, the US president must project his power outwards onto the international stage through an empirical and militaristic foreign policy. He argues that this has always been the case and continues in perpetuity.
This was shocking to my young mind, but i have often thought of it when observing politics in America and feel that it still rings true today.
Conspiracy Analyst
The term conspiracy theorist was created in 1967 by the CIA and disseminated throughout society to discredit dissenting viewpoints.
To my fellow pizzagate/pedogate researchers, next time someone calls you a conspiracy theorist you can correct them with Gore Vidal's famous statement:
I'm Not a Conspiracy Theorist - I'm a Conspiracy Analyst
I'm often long-winded on this platform, so let's keep this one short and sweet. Here are some quotes by the American author and public intellectual.
Gore Vidal Quotes
"Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so."
"Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice like, Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin."
"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."
"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be."
"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarized republic."
"Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine."
"The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since."
"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return"
"Envy is the central fact of American life."
"Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."
"Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60"
"The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so."
I will have to check out that book. Sounds very enlightening. Nice post.
Really sounds like a good read. I remember having that "Blue Marble" moment as a kid too when you realize the sheer enormity of the theater played out before you.
It really started to sink in when I had to read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Not only was it powerful by itself, but my teacher got kicked out for being a "Communist" and all kinds of chaos ensued over a very benign and enlightening book. Best history class ever.
That does sound like the best history class ever!!
Howard Zinn is a legend.
I didn't have the good fortune to read A People's History in high school, but when i finally got around to reading it, it was an incredible eye opener. I think, at times, we all had the feeling there is much more to history than the official sanitized version we're fed in the education system.
We need more teachers like your History teacher, unbelievable that people who truly teach are weeded out like that. "Communism". Ha!
The only comparable experience I have was when we read 1984 in high school. We were assigned colored arm bands and had to obey students who wore the highest ranking color outside of class. If you disobeyed the higher ranking student, they reported you and you could fall further in the rankings. It was a complete disaster/success that lasted only 48 hours, as it quickly proved students used their higher rankings to abuse the lower ranks and felt completely justified doing so. Best English class ever.