The Noble Lie

I’ve been trying to find a way to articulate why I am not posting nearly as much as I used to, and this article might do it for me. These are poisoned wells we drink from, and this is nothing new to the Obama administration. It’s nothing new, I’ve been reading stories about angry Muslim kids getting suckered into doing stupid things by FBI provocateurs for ages now. The most effective way to neutralize a resistance movement is to run it yourself.

• Glenn Greenwald – Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal
• Raw Story – Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups
• Infowars – List of published Cass Sunstein papers and books

The first and most important thing to say about this is that nothing in this paper is new or radical. What he calls “cognitive infiltration” is, despite the denial in the paper, only different in available technology from COINTELPRO and other techniques used in the past to bust up wrongthink and ownlife strategies.

The main thesis of this short paper is that conspiracy thinking is caused by “crippled epistemologies”, that so-called “conspiracy theorists” carefully filter out all but a few sources and harden themselves against any orthodox or official sources of correction. He posits that conspiracy thinking is largely a product of closed, authoritarian societies, and that conspiracy thinking in an open, free society with a transparent, accountable government such as ours (I’m sure you can sense the smirk in these words) is destructive because it corrodes our ability to trust our benevolent institutions uncritically. He also suggests that laws like the Freedom of Information Act might do more harm than good, suggesting that the best way to protect our supposed open society is to close it.

My experience has taught me that, if anything, the conspiracy-minded got that way because they were more open to taboo sources of information, not that they were necessarily closed off from the mainstream. The truly “crippled epistemology” is one which does not think critically and engage skeptically any source of information, be it Alex Jones or the Department of Defense. Those people are ripe for “cognitive infiltration.”

PS: “Sunstein” translates to “Sun Stone“.

PPS: Obama should be given credit for his commitment to diversity. What other president would have an academic slinging vitriol at conspiracy theorists as well as an outspoken 9/11 truther working for him? Of course, who still has their job..?

Catherine Austin Fitts, former investment banker, former Bush Sr. HUD Commissioner, the woman who discovered massive-scale S&L style scamming of the HUD market by insiders, author of the magnum opus “Dillon Reed & Co Inc., The Aristocracy of Stock Profits,” writes insightfully and powerfully about how the banksters made a killing by killing our economy. To my knowledge, she coined the term “tapeworm economy.” Her experiences with insiders scamming HUD, and the government’s legal assault of her company Hamilton Securities, are a microcosm of the collapse of the US real estate market that started our current financial crisis.

• Catherine Austin Fitts – 2009: The Year of the Great Vampire Squid
• From the vault: Catherine Austin Fitts on the Jim Puplava show

I have followed Fitts and her work at Solari.com for a while. Her two essential economic questions are: “Who’s your farmer? Who’s your banker?” You can find the answer to the first question at your local farmer’s market. The second question is one that people are increasingly asking themselves, and finding a better answer in local credit unions and smaller banks. I kissed my big bank goodbye years ago and have been much, much happier at our local credit union, who was not up to their eyeballs in phony baloney derivatives when the 2008 economic tsunami hit.

I cannot deny
All the evil traits and the filling of the crates
When you do come out
And you slither up to me in your pimpin majesty
But I cannot grow
Till you eat the last of me, oh when will I be free
And you, a parasite
Just find another host, just another stool to post

Cause you, my tapeworm tells me what to do
You, my tapeworm tells me where to go

Pull the tapeworm out of your ass

- System of a Down, “Needles”

The following excerpt is from “The Mask of Sanity” by Harvey Cleckley. It cites an article in Playboy magazine and subsequent book extolling the virtues of the psychopathic personality type and calling it the “new spirit of the age”. It isn’t so new anymore, but it’s well worth a read.

Psychopathy is a biological tragedy, but societies can be arranged in such a way to encourage psychopathic behavior from its participants. Just as psychopaths attempt to mimic the forms of “normal,” so-called normal people can be trained to mimic the psychopathic form. What would a psychopathic society look like? This point is highlighted very well by the documentary film, “The Corporation.”

Credit goes to Polly once again, for introducing me to this book.

Since the last edition of this book was published in 1964 discussion of the psychopath has continued and further attempts have been made to evaluate his status. A remarkable, and curiously misleading, presentation of the subject was offered only a few years ago by a lay writer, Alan Harrington, first in the popular magazine Playboy and later in Psychopaths, a book amplifying his theme.

A serious and regrettable confusion, I believe, is likely to come from opinions quoted by this author that seem very plainly to advocate that the psychopath be admired, chosen as a leader, or at least as a model for other men. Referring to one of these opinions, the author says, “The menacing psychopath is embraced. Incredibly … it seems at first shock … we are urged to turn into an ‘antithetical’ version of the outlaw and find our way to his radical vision of the universe.”

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“In Le Figaro magazine of 6 January 2007, Alain-Gerard Slama wrote that ‘the two cardinal values on which democracy rests are liberty and growth.’ This is a perfect defintion of liberalism. One in which, of course, what the author takes care to call ‘democracy’ is simply the liberal system, bending the word to the requirements defined in modern ’semantic workshops’. (This is the name in the United States for bodies charged with imposing on the public at large, by way of the control of the media, the use of words that best meets the needs of the ruling classes.) This now customary slight of hand naturally authorizes a whole series of very useful discrepancies. If the word ‘democracy’, for example, must now be used only to define liberalism, then a new term is needed to denote that ‘goverment of the People, by the People, for the People’ which was seen as the very essence of democracy not so long ago. The new term chosen by the semantic workshops is ‘populism’. All that is needed, then, is to equate populism (in the face of any basic historical knowledge) with a perverse variant of classic fascism, and the effects desired can be obtained with a disconcerting facility. If it occurs to you, for example, that people should be consulted on this or that problem that affects their future, or that the incomes of the business world’s great predators are really indecent, something within you immediately warns that you’re in danger of falling into the most disturbed ‘populism’, and consequently that the ‘filthy Beast’ is approaching you in great strides. As a well-brought-up citizen (well brought up by the media industry), you immediately know what you should really think and do.”

Jean-Claude Michea, “Realm of Lessser Evil”

New Scientist ran an article about the sinister potential of crowdsourcing and social networking, shedding light on how government and law enforcement can and already are tapping into the awesome potential of this mass of bored, naive Facebookers. Notice the Pentagon-funded crowdsourcing experiment mentioned in this article — evidence that the military-industrial complex is definitely paying attention. The CIA and In-Q-Tel (a CIA company) have been dedicating resources to social networking and so-called “open source intelligence.”

One of the hypothetical “games” the New Scientist article posits is to show the user a snapshot from a protest followed by a number of mug shots, asking the user to identify the mug shot belonging to the person in the protest for a nominal fee. Confirmation and certainty is established by repeating this little transaction many times over with many users. It would be presented like a game or “Hot or Not” style app, optimized for simplicity, speed, and repeatability. Payment could be a few cents of real money, or any of a host of virtual currencies and game points. Facebook users are already hopelessly addicted to games and sharing apps which are little more than thinly-veiled scams. Like shot-machine addicts, these people can mindlessly click through widgets for hours.

The article also mentions already-running systems on the Texas border that allow any user to tune into public spy cams and report suspicious activity they see. If they’re smart, they will turn it into a game and keep score.

Henry David Thoreau lamented, “We do not ride upon the train, the train rides upon us.” In this age, we are all ridden upon by information. Americans consume 34 gigabytes a day worth of data, mostly from mass media sources stuffed with advertising messages and grades of propaganda. Each one of us is stuffed so full of marketing messages, memes, pre-packaged opinions, slogans and jingles it’s a miracle we ever hear ourselves think.

Merlin Mann at the productivity site 43 Folders wrote a brief essay titled “Enough,” which makes the analogy between gorging on food and gorging on information.

“Enough” is what I said when The Noble Lie went dark for a while and I fell behind on all of my blogs and other forms of social networking.

It is endlessly fascinating how much time, effort, and planning goes into enabling humans to sail smoothly from one unconscious commercial urge to another as they go about their day. As we drift through businesses, supermarkets, and restaurants, our unconscious is tugged this way and that by sensory stimulus and the ever-present hum of advertising.

Recently, the New York Times ran a story about the psychology of dining. The big restaurant chains have studied this topic intensely and have modeled their entire operations around the insight gained, from the layout of the menu to the color of the buildings and logos. As the recession grinds on, smaller restaurants are turning to these menu consultants and asking them how they can make more money putting the same old food in a fancy new package.

All advertising and marketing messages can be distilled down to one basic message: over-consume. Gorge yourself on consumerism. Don’t deny yourself, you deserve it. This is the fabricated narcissistic supply that separates a fool from his money.

The ability to say no is perhaps the most important skill in life to learn and cultivate, and in consumer societies this skill is always eroding. Practice it regularly.

“Capitalism requires people to be quiet souls in the workplace and wild pagans at the cash register”
- Ron Chernow, Wall Street Journal 1949

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his candle at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1813

I was introduced to George Orwell the usual way for those of my generation, high school english assignments of 1984 and Animal Farm. Both novels had a powerful impact on me, but it was in reading some of Orwell’s other writings and essays that I found the most, and most profound, gems of wisdom. His linguistic knowledge gave him a rare insight into how we think and communicate, as shown in his metaphor of Newspeak.

Words are the primary weapon of the politician. In this essay, Orwell guides the reader through a hall of linguistic smoke and mirrors, demonstrating the many ways that reality is distorted using vague language and semantic tricks. He draws a line connecting literacy, clear communication, and political freedom. Nothing has changed today, except the literacy of our public and politicians.

George Orwell – Politics and the English Language

“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”

Here are a few stories that should give everybody a reason to stop and think about where they go and what they have online.

Wired magazine covers the story of a graduate student, with a handful of FOIA requests, trying to figure out exactly how much money the big media and internet companies make tracking us for government. Some companies were not shy about sharing this information, and some were outraged. Yahoo refused to share any such information, saying it would be used to “shock” customers. No need to be coy Yahoo, and certainly no need for a warrant, in this day and age we surrender our personal information freely to social networks. It’s only tax money from the people you’re spying on, anyway.

Speaking of social networks, law enforcement is finally warming up and getting wily in their use of these treasure troves of personal information. Recently, a university student was busted for underage drinking after becoming “friends” on Facebook with “a good looking girl” he didn’t recognize. The “good looking girl” turned out to be the police department, who snapped up the drunken photos from his profile.

It isn’t only your Facebook friends who have access to your data. Most of the activity on Facebook comes from people using Facebook Apps to take quizzes, give virtual gifts to each other, and play online games. The entire Facebook Apps ecosystem is a minefield of rampant information oversharing and dubious scams posing as games.

In spite of all this, there are those who believe Facebook should be your official internet ID and single univeral login to the web.

You have a right to your privacy. Please be aware of what you put online and who is looking at it.

I appreciate all of the comments, and I’m sorry I’m not getting back to them. I’m in a bit of a blogger’s funk at the moment.

Current issues

• Rice Farmer – Solar Panels and Dust (Rice Farmer is a blog I’ve added to my regular reading, very interesting posts. A common topic is the limitations of renewable energy.)
• Rice Farmer – Brave New World of Chaos
• Rice Farmer – Systemic Breakdown and Non-State Actors
• Below the Beltway – Top Obama Adviser is 9/11 Truther (looks like he’s already apologized and backed away from the statements and GOP members are calling for his resignation)
• Below the Beltway – ‘Clunkers’ Rebate is Taxable
• Injustice Everywhere – Criminal Cops of the Week Time! (TLC runs a new show with slogans that encourage police brutality, such as “Cavity search, anyone?” and “It’s always a good time to taser someone!”)
• DUI Blog – DUI cops inspired by CIA (Man passes breathalyzer test, so he’s shackled to a hospital bed and forcibly catheterized for a urine sample)
• EFF – Cybersecurity Act Returns with a Fresh Coat of Paint
• Wired – Wikipedia to color code untrustworthy text
• We’re Only Human – A Cognitive Metamorphosis (I’m a sucker for Kafka. This article suggests that the bizarre and surreal stirs a psychological need for order and stability in the reader/observer. This might explain a motive for TV news being so insane.)
• Wall Street Journal – The Coming FDIC Bailout
• AlterNet – Why One Night Stands Are Good for You (I can’t make this stuff up.)

Cremation of (Health) Care

• Newsweek – The Health Insurers Have Already Won (While they pretend to lobby and astroturf against it, in truth they are salivating over this new captive market.)
• Wall Street Journal – Health-Care Anger has Deeper Roots (No shit, Sherlock)
• Nicholas Kristof – Until Medical Bills do us Part (A sad story of how caretakers of long-term patients are encouraged to divorce in order to save their estate.)
• National Journal – Health Care Debate Revives Tort Reform Debate (caps on medical malpractice lawsuits)
• UK Guardian – Pfizer drug breach ends in biggest US crime fine

From the Vaults

• EFF – Steve Jackson Games v. Secret Service Case Archive (the classic story of how the creator of GURPS, Car Wars, and the Illuminati card game was raided by the Secret Service)
• Counterpunch – No Regrets: Carter, Brzezinski, and the Muj (What, me apologize?)
• MIT Tinfoil Hat Analysis (Turns out it might not be so good for blocking out the CIA/Alien signals.)