The Hidden Agendas Of Conspiracies

7/29/2019 The Hidden Agendas Of Conspiracies

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The Hidden Agendas of Our Conspiracies

On the day before one of the biggest mea culpas in sports, the awaited

Oprah interview with Lance Armstrong, the efforts to delegitimize

President Obama in his second term have increased their velocity and

are becoming more extreme and desperate. The efforts are also bigger

and more ridiculous. And sad and tragic.

As the empty chair staged at the Republican convention quickly became

a set piece to symbolize lynching and empty chairs were roped and

swung from trees, so from the tragedy of Newtown, a legion of

truthers have taken snippets of video and blasted the internet with

lies. But look beyond the unfounded proofs that are asserted as facts.

What the leaps of judgement and flights of make-believe reveal is a

distress, a emotionally fraying. Its deep anger and helplessness has

nothing to do with Newtown or the governmentor the falsehoods it

strenuously push.


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It takes several deep breaths to get past the conclusions that are

passing for facts about Newtown. It takes deep reflection to understand

the attraction of this insanity in the comment streams. It leaves a

country wondering whether it can survive as a civil society when hate

and ideology seem to grow without constraint, grabbing our sorrow

into its arcade.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) released a computer app for ages

four and up that simulates an indoor practice range and allows players

to shoot a digital rifle (an M9) at targets that are human coffins. Aiming

paints the target with a bulls-eye. When targeted and hit, the casket

falls to the ground, flat. For ninety-nine cents, the app upgrades the

firing weapon. Does this promote responsible gun ownership and

safety? Is it encouraging the use of safe firearm technologies, including

micro-processed owner recognition? The NRA says yes. Their free one

touch app provides safety information and other updates.

Does the app warn youngsters about the dangers of gun accidents in

language they can read or understand? No, but Apple's iTunes lists it as

available to four-year-olds, since it is only shooting at coffins and not

human action figures, and therefore is not deemed violent. Does it

require supervision? No. Yet it creates the NRA version of the video

games the NRA argues are responsible for gun violence in the firstplace. Now the NRA has added to the culture it claims makes killing an

attractive macho fantasy with game of its ownfor four-year-oldsby

reinforcing the thrill for children as young as four of pulling the trigger

and watching coffins fall. Again. And Again. It scores every hit.

The newest National Rifle Association ad, out today, calls the President

an Elitist Hypocrite. That description is a direct personal attack. It

also uses his two children as a part of the attack. They have armed

coverage, the ad says. Why shouldn't the rest of America's children have

armed protection?


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Can the same level of training and professionalism be guaranteed for all

of America's children? In the form of teachers, principals, volunteers,

and security armed, with no prior experience, nominal training, and no

common standard? Or will it vary, as do educational results? That

variance is a life and death risk to our children.

But to the point: do other American kids receive death threats every

day? Yes, the President's adorable girls receive a stream of unpublicized

threats. Do other kids get their names associated with the darkest,

sickest acts that humans can commit against each other? When given

the opportunity for taking the high ground and leading a national

stand-down, the NRA instead issued more slime, called attention to the

President's children, adding the kind of inflammatory labels they believe

to be partly responsible for the rise in random violence! Their ad targets

the President with no real facts, just as spree killers with no real ties

target those they want to take out. And the ad ignores and fails to

answer the big question: will banning assault rifles reduce the threat for

all children, everywhere?

So the NRA ignores the level of threat faced by the President's family. It

ignores that more guns means more opportunities for their misuse. And

the NRA ignores that its own ads and apps celebrate and push what itclaims to deplore, making the NRA hypocrites and liars, and elitists who

value guns over saving lives.

The NRA ad exhibits the same blind fury that shooters do. Its words

have the same purpose as bullets.

Newtown has become a source of myths of disbelief. Not disbelief in

the shock and pain of the horror, but a denial of the horror; myths that

turn the tragedy into connivance. What's interesting is no society can

sustain itself on negatives, can govern itself as outlaws, can sustain a


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war against civil authority. Long-term conflicts in Africa's western,

central and eastern regions show clearly the scars of sustained wrong-

doing, both political and armed. Hunger, poverty, illness, violence,

helplessness, despair, assassination, and loss of family and community

lead to a desparate life of fear and want. But America is unique in trying

to build a consensus on myths of disbelief.

What do so many disbelieve? The root is Barack Obama is President.

That he won. Their fury at his second term has redoubled; it's a redux of

their worst nightmare.

To effectively deny his power and positioneven his wholeness as a

father and husbandhis effectiveness as a leader or even his having

won reelection, new threats and labels and events are bound together

and reworked to support disbelief. This state of disbelief becomes their

zone of performance, the kind that athletes speak about. But in the

zone of disbelief, the peaks of performance are built on lies.

We are watching performance peaks now about Newtown. Its stories of

conspiracies, magically extracted from assumptions and conclusions

that don't add up. If an elaborate real-time, real-life conspiracy were in

play that day, if it were possible to arrange it and pull it off, wouldn't it

seem improbable that someone would forget to change a dress, a detailthat television generally gets right by having dressers assigned?

So our largest tragedy is reassigned as our greatest hoaxso its weight

pulls down the government and the leader at the head.

I've seen this only once to this degree in history. It was in a small news

item in an issue of an 1865 Charleston Courier on microfiche. It cited

that, leaving Savannah, Union generals ordered 5,000 enslaved mothers

to drown their children before being permitted to follow the troops; the

Army had no provision for children and babies. The article reported


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Our differences often do lead to paradoxes, to unanswered questions

assoicated with the hard moral and political choices that lead forward.

Paradoxes abound in society and allow for contradictory goals to be

pursued. We agree thou shall not kill, but send drones and troops in

preemptive strikes to hills and homes in distant places to kill enemies

defined by association. Paradoxes are also at the center of many of our

conflicts. We (the collective we) say The State has no religion, but

we argue the Christian Bible has a single definition of marriage to which

the state must adhere. We want to provide for equal opportunities for

minorities, but does affirmative action limit others? We cherish children;

we offer reproductive choice. It is a healthy tension, especially when it

limits the extremes.

But paradox, the dual dimensions of truth, the qualitative dialectic that

Marx claims is at work in society, the balancing of opposing elements

that the I Ching expounds, does not permit a rewriting of great issues to

reflect a phantasmagoria of extremes or a one-sided myth. Events can't

be separated from their truth; but sadly, conspiracy myths are now a

part of our national truth. Their paradox is they are threatening to

overrun what they truly cover up. They claim they have discovered

cover-ups and hidden agendas. But in plain sight, their claims cover up

and muddle the profound depth of our love, our acceptance of Barack,our sorrow for children dying on our streets and in our schools; the fact

that sometimes our tears are glue to bind us by a shared feeling that

keeps the circle unbroken; that we are not stupid or dupes.

What the conspiracy theorists, the truthers, mainly paper over is their

profound rabid, hatred of Barack. It drives their revelations. They revel

in its negative space. They are set to destroy every sustaining idea of

him. Their outrage has no shame. They are willing to despair our dead

children, our grieving families and loving parents, our caring neighbors,

to heap him with scorn and blame.


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The 2014 Portrait of Barack Obama, The President of the United States

The Hidden Agendas Of Conspiracies

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