version

Well-known member
One of the mental hurdles with these books is they can seem a bit cranky and amateurish and unprofessional, but then, if what they're writing about is true, it's unsurprising that it's only those people writing about it and that they aren't being offered the services of big publishers and editors and so on.
 

luka

Well-known member
What surprised me was how much sex was in the book. The big conspiracy it tackles in the latter half is the JFK assassination but you can infer how easily and effective sexual blackmail schemes can be implemented
theyre always busting into hotel rooms and taking pics in ellroy novels
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the mental hurdles with these books is they can seem a bit cranky and amateurish and unprofessional, but then, if what they're writing about is true, it's unsurprising that it's only those people writing about it and they aren't being offered the services of big publishers and editors and so on.
that makes them better becasue it means they partake in the seediness they are describing. like those scandal sheets in james ellroy novels with all the alliteration
 

version

Well-known member
There's a character in White Noise whose job it is to comb through and review big, avant-garde novels, looking for classified information and the like, for the security services. I've always assumed that was a nod to GR.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yes, I think that's very well put. There was an essay in Lobster about this - it says something like politics is essentially conspiratorial i.e. small groups of people band together and attempt to exert influence without democratic scrutiny. The difference between that and "meta-conspiracies" is you have to believe these secret groups have disproportionate power and also that they exercise it cohesively over time.
There's also the idea that governments have this capacity - the ability to affect events. Anyone who's ever worked in government will tell you about how chaotic and improvisational it all is,
 

version

Well-known member
Same with Covid stuff. Yeah these guys developed a very specific bioweapon, kept it secret and also coordinated a global release program.
The bioweapon thing is much more believable if it stops at some team of scientists manufacturing it for research purposes with, perhaps, government money and the thing accidentally getting out somehow.

The idea that the entire pandemic has been somehow orchestrated just seems logistically impossible.
 

luka

Well-known member
There's also the idea that governments have this capacity - the ability to affect events. Anyone who's ever worked in government will tell you about how chaotic and improvisational it all is,
governments don't affect events? this is a novel take.
 

luka

Well-known member
but this is for lurid scandal sheet sleaze not for 'why senseible people dont beleive the world is flat' surely
 

version

Well-known member
The way it appears to me is that some things are orchestrated and some just happen by chance, accident or incompetence and these things are constantly overlapping and happening on many different levels and in many different places at once, to the point where it's almost impossible to untangle the thing as a whole.

There's also the fact that everyone involved in a given conspiracy or event or whatever doesn't always know that that's what they're involved in. A scientist developing some piece of technology might not know where the money's coming from or what someone, somewhere is planning to do with it. A journalist writing a story might not be aware that they're actually being used as a pawn in a larger game.
 

version

Well-known member
That tweet I posted the other day about COVID not being a conspiracy, but the systems we've built just sort of clicking into place in response to it is kind of how I view things, but with smaller conspiracy-type situations going on at any given time within the larger machine.
 

version

Well-known member
"I certainly don’t think the pandemic was started deliberately as a way to impose tyranny, nor that it was seized upon as such an opportunity in the early stages. [..]
I believe what we have is an emergent tyranny, the various pre-existing components (technologies, cultural enmities etc) of which have been hooked up to each other by the pandemic, transformed into a working machine.
This is my anti-humanist take on it. This tyranny is not the expression of a coherent will, neither of any particular individuals nor of a class. It is more truthful to conceive of it as a fated development rather than a chosen one."
 

version

Well-known member
There's also the idea that governments have this capacity - the ability to affect events. Anyone who's ever worked in government will tell you about how chaotic and improvisational it all is,
There's also the fact that everyone involved in a given conspiracy or event or whatever doesn't always know that that's what they're involved in. A scientist developing some piece of technology might not know where the money's coming from or what someone, somewhere is planning to do with it. A journalist writing a story might not be aware that they're actually being used as a pawn in a larger game.
“...a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it...”
 

version

Well-known member
maybe with specific ends, no, but if the aim is general disfunction and disorder re: south america and the middle east that doesnt seem to be much harder than giving the right groups money
That's a very simple plan though and one that can often have disastrous long term consequences they didn't count on. You can't really plan for chaos as it has a habit of being chaotic and maybe even blowing back on you.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
maybe with specific ends, no, but if the aim is general disfunction and disorder re: south america and the middle east that doesnt seem to be much harder than giving the right groups money
With the Middle East at least, I can clearly see a lot of the outcomes there as the result of short-termism, which is all I'm trying to argue for..
 

version

Well-known member
The mistake I think some people make is assuming everything leading up to a given conspiracy was part of said conspiracy and some of it wasn't just a case of certain events and opportunities happening to present themselves somewhere in the chain.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Afghanistan - rather than try and develop a government that involves the people and suits the country and is developed over time, you get a thrown together administration, then the military spending and contractor dollar machine starts rolling, add in some face-saving and the US is there for 20 years. You don't need an overall goal of "chaos" to explain what's been happening.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
The mistake I think some people make is assuming everything leading up to a given conspiracy was part of said conspiracy and some of it wasn't just a case of certain events and opportunities happening to present themselves somewhere in the chain.
Retrospective wisdom is a wonderful thing. I'm applying it in the post above lol
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
That's a very simple plan though and one that can often have disastrous long term consequences they didn't count on. You can't really plan for chaos as it has a habit of being chaotic and maybe even blowing back on you.
With the Middle East at least, I can clearly see a lot of the outcomes there as the result of short-termism, which is all I'm trying to argue for..
I dont know how forward blowback may be in planning but Im sure at least on some level its accounted for and that however blowback may inevitably take form it can likewise be turned into another advantageous situation. long term short termism.
 
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