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525 lines
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525 lines
28 KiB
Plaintext
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CELINE'S LAWS
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by Hagbard Celine
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As every thinking person has noticed, our national life has
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become increasingly weird and surrealistic. The waiting lines at
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banks and post offices are growing longer all the time, even
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though demographers tell us US population is no longer rising.
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The street signs more often than not say WALK on the red and
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DON"T WALK on the green. You can't get a plumber on the
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weekends. Nobody has been able to explain the cattle mutilations
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yet. Every survey shows that the price of consumer goods, the
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number of violent crimes, and the eerie popularity of THE GONG
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SHOW are ominously accelerating.
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I believe I have found the explanation these distressing
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trends. Needless to say, I cannot present, in a short article,
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all the evidence which I have accumulated in three decades of
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careful metasociological research; that will have to await the
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publication of my three-volume study, "Why Everybody Is Going
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Bonkers." Here I can only mention the thousands of depth
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interviewws, the innumerable flowcharts and helix-matrix
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equations, the vast files of computer readouts, the I CHING
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divinations, and other rigorous scientific techniques used in
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developing what I modestly call Celine's Laws of Chaos, Discord
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and Confusion.
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Celine's First Law is that National Security is the chief
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cause of national insecurity!
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That may sound like a paradox, but I will explain it at one.
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Every secret police agency must be monitored by an elite corps
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of secret-police-of-the-second-order. There are numerous reasons
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for this, but three are especially noteworthy.
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********************************************************************************************
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NATIONAL SECURITY IS THE CHIEF CAUSE OF NATIONAL INSECURITY!!!
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*******************************************************************************
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1). Infiltration of the secret police, for the purpose of
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subversion, will always be a prime goal of internal
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revolutionaries. This is an ordinary part of the spy-counterspy
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game. There is nothing Weather Underground would like better
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than having a few agents in the FBI or CIA, for the same reasons
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that the FBI or CIA would like to have a few agents in Weather
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Underground.
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2). Such infiltration will also be a prime goal of hostile
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foreign powers, for the same reasons.
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Please note that these are simple facts of the secret-police
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game, well-known even to the general public, the subject of many
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ingenious plots in popular spy films, and not particularly
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alarming...yet. Nonetheless, the seeds of Chaos, Discord,
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Confusion, and Paranoia are already here, for the simple reason
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that once a human being develops the habits of worry and
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suspicion, he or she finds increasing justifications for more
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worry and more suspicion. For instance, Richard Q. (not his real
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initial), one of my interview subjects, became concerned, after
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ten years in the CIA, with the possibility of infiltration by
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"extraterrestrial" agents. He was eventually retired when he
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began to claim that demons in the form of dogs wanted him to
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assassinate Laverne and Shirley.
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3). Secret-police officials acquire fantastic capacities to
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blackmail and intimidate others in goverment.
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Stalin executed three chiefs of his secret police in a row,
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because of this danger. One of my informants claims that every
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president since the National Security Act was passed in 1947 has
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learned how to have sexual intercourse without making a single
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audible sound, because of the possible electronic eavesdroppers.
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As Nixion says so wistfully on the Watergate transcripts, "Well,
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Hoover performed. He would have fought. That was the point. He
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would have defied a few people. He would have scared them to
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death. HE HAS A FILE ON EVERYBODY!" <Caps added>. Thus, those
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who employ secret-police organizations MUST monitor them th be
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sure they are not acquiring too much power.
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In the United States today, the superelite that monitors the
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CIA is the National Security Agency. ( And a group called "The
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Store" monitors the NSA).
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Here is where a sinister infinite regress enters the game.
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Any such elite, second or third order secret-police agency must
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be, according to the above pragmatic and necessary rules, subject
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to infiltration by native subversives or hostile foreign powers,
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or to acquiring "too much power" in the opinion of its masters.
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(It may even be subject, if Richard Q. was correct in his
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anxieties, to extraterrestrial manipulation). And so, it, too,
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must be monitored by a secret police of the third order.
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But this third-order secret-police (such as Nixon's notorious
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"plumbers", or more currently, "The Store"). is also subject to
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infiltration or to acquiring too much power...and thus, with
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relentless logic, the infinite regress builds. Once a goverment
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has n orders of secret police spying on each other, all are
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potentially suspect, and to be safe a secret police of order n+1
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must be created. And so on, forever.
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******************************************
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* THUS WHO EMPLOY SECRET *
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* POLICE MUST MONITOR THEM TO *
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* BE SURE THEY ARE NOT ACQUIRING *
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* TOO MUCH POWER. *
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******************************************
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In practice, of course, this cannot really regress to
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infinity, but only to the point where every other citizen, or
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until the funding runs out, whichever comes first.
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National Security in practice, then, must always fall short of
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the logically ideal infinite regress which we have shown is
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necessary to the achievement of its goal. In that gap between
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the ideal of "One nation under survillance, with wiretaps and
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mail covers for all" andthe strictly limited real situation of
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finite funding, there is ample encouragement for paranoias of all
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sorts to flourish. In short, every government that employs
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secret-police agencies must grow more insecure, not more secure,
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as the strength, versatility, and power of the secret-police
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agencies grow.
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For instance, a certain left-wing nation which has employed
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secret-police agencies for 61 years has now reached the point
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where the leaders are terrified of painters and poets. In
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another, right-wing nation infested with secret-police agencies,
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several purges have been caused by three practical jokers who
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regularly call middle-rank officials on the phone and talk in
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what appears to be a code. The secret police, of course, are no
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fools, and are aware that this might be what it in fact is, a
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form of anarchist humor; but they can't be sure.
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What usually happens in such cases is this: an official
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receives one of these mystery calls, saying perhaps "Pawn to
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queen rook five. No wife, no horse, no mustache. A boy has never
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wept nor dashed a thousand kim." He knows immediately that
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surveillance upon him will be increased tenfold. In the next few
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days, while memories of all his mistakes, small bribes,
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incautious remarks, and other incriminating events haunt his
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imagination, he observes the increased surveillance, and begins
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to suspect even the most loyal of his subordinates of watching
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him with eyes that miss nothing and to give a sinister
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interpertation to everything. Within ten days, he usually
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attempts to contact a foreign goverment to seek political
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sanctuary, and the secret-police net closes on him.
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By the same process of worry leading to more worry and
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suspicion leading to more suspicion, the very act of joining a
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ecret-police organization will eventually turn a man or woman
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into a clinical paranoi; in layman's terms, "bananas" or "wigged
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out." THE AGENT KNOWS WHOM HE IS SPYING ON; BUT HE NEVER KNOWS
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WHO IS SPYING ON HIM! Could it be his wife, his girl friend, his
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secretary, the newsboy, the Good Humor man?
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For these reasons, secret-police agents develop elaborate and
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complex theories to account for what is actually going on.
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According to one of my tables of data, there isn't a single
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theory held by professional conspiracy buffs which isn't also
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believed by many members of our various secret-police agencies.
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In fact, the exact percentages of believes in these extravagant
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scenarios are quite similar among a group of 1,000 CIA agents and
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a control group of 1,000 readers of the underground press, as
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shown in table 1.
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Table 1. True Believes in various Conspiracy Theories Among CIA
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Agents and Underground-Press Readers.
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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:: :: :: UNDERGROUND PRESS ::
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::CONSPIRACY THEORY :: CIA :: READERS ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::The Yankees (Eastern :: :: ::
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::millionaires) run :: 25% :: 30% ::
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::everything :: :: ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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:: The Cowboys(Western :: :: ::
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:: millionaires) run :: 25% :: 15% ::
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:: everything :: :: ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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:: It's the result of :: :: ::
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:: civil war between :: 23% :: 17% ::
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::Yankees and Cowboys :: :: ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the 33 degree :: :: ::
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:: Masons :: 5% :: 5% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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:: It's the Jesuits :: 5% :: 5% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the Elders of Zion :: 2% :: 2% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the Military :: :: ::
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::Industrial Complex :: 1% :: 2% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the Bilderbergers :: 1% :: 2% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the Gnomes of :: :: ::
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:: Zurich :: 1% :: 2% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the Lesbian :: :: ::
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:: Vegetarians :: 10% :: 28% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::It's the Rock n Roll :: :: ::
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:: Empire :: 2% :: 2% ::
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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a). Source: Gallup, Roper, and Hogtied, "WHO'S WATCHING WHOM"
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(Washington, DC: US Goverment Printing Office, 1979), p. 432.
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b). All figures are percentages. Figures do not add to 100, for
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a variety of reasons. For a list of them, please send 25 cents
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and a list of suspicious persons in your neighborhood to the US
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Dept. of Bedding, Washington DC 20001.
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c). Includes those who blame it all on the Bavarian Illuminati;
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those who hold a multiconspiracy theory (e.g., the Lesbian
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Vegetarians are allied with the Yankees and Bilderbergers against
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the Cowboys, the TV Networks, and the Cattle Mutilators); those
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who believe it is all part of the UFO Cover-Up; and those who
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claim that demons in the form of dogs told them it's connected
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somehow with the alligators in New York's sewers.
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::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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************************************
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* IN RUSSIA, THE GOVERMENT IS *
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* TERRIFIED OF PAINTERS AND POETS! *
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************************************
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Now, Table 1 clearly gives a picture of a rather schizzed-out
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nation. This is the result of the impossible infinite regress
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and its resultant of worry leading to more worry.
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Furthermore, if there is a secret police at all, in any nation
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you care to imagine, every branch and department of that
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country's government becomes suspect, in the eyes of cautious and
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intelligent people, as a possible front or funnel to the secret
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police. (That is, the more shrewd citizens will recognize that
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something titled a branch of the HEW or even PTA might actually
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be run by the CIA). Inevitably, the government as a whole, and
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many nongovernmental agencies, will be regarded by reasonable
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persons with fear and trepidation. Proverbs like "One can't be
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too careful these days" and "Better safe than sorry" become a
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kind of sinister folk wisdom.
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But further yet: any government which already has a secret
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police (and a secret police monitoring the secret police, etc).
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will become alarmed on observing that its more hip and
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intelligent citizens now regard it with loathing and misgivings.
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The government will therefore increase the size and powers of the
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secret police. This is the only rational move, within the
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context of the secret-police game.
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******************************
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* SOMETHING PASSING AS A *
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* BRANCH OF HEW MIGHT BE A *
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* FRONT FOR THE CIA! *
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******************************
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(The only alternative was once suggested sarcastically by
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playwright Bert Brecht, who said, "If the government doesn't
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trust the people, why does'nt it dissovle them and elect new
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people?" No way has yet been invented to elect a new people; so
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the police state will instead spy on the existing people even
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more vigorously).
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This, of course, creates additional paranoia in both the
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governors and the citizens, because a suffciently pugnacious
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secret police will eventually "have a file on everybody,"
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including its own creators. This leads to another infinite
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regress: the more people will loathe the government, the more
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power will be given to the secret police.
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Thus, whether any of the hypothetical conspiracies mentioned
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earlier really exist or not, a system of clandestine goverment
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inevitably produces, in both the rulers and the ruled, a mood of
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paranoia in which such conspiracy theories flourish.
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This escalating sense of suspiciousness is accelerated by the
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fact that every secret-police organization engages in both the
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collection of information and the production misinformation.
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That is, you score points in the secret-police game both by
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hoarding signals (information units)---that is, by hiding facts
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from competitive players---and by foisting false signals (fake
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information units) on the other players. This creates the
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situation which I call Optimum Fuckup, in which every participant
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has rational (not neurotic) cause to suspect that every other
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player may be attempting to deceive him, gull him, con him, dupe
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him, and generally misinform him. As Henry Kissinger is rumored
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to have said, "Anybody in Washington these days who isn't
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paranoid is crazy!"
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One could generalize the remark: anyone in the United States
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today who isn't paranoid must be crazy!!!
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**********************************
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* "IF THE GOVERMENT DOESN'T *
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* TRUST THE PEOPLE, WHY DOESN'T *
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* IT DISSOLVE THEM AND ELECT A *
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* NEW PEOPLE?" *
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**********************************
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The deliberate production of misinformation (or, as
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intelligence agencies more euphemistically call it,
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disinformation) creates a situation profoundly disorienting to
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the philosopher, the scientist, and the ordinary Joe who wants to
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know the best time to go to the bank. The desire to discover
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"what-the-hell-is-really-going-on" (the definition of science
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offered by physicist Saul-Paul Sirag) is totally incompatible
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with the circulation of disinformation; we all need to know, at
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least roughly, what the hell is really going on if we are not to
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stumble around like blind robots colliding with things we weren't
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told were there.
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Maybe the UFO's really exist---or maybe the whole UFO
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phenomenon is a cover for an intelligence operation. Maybe there
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are black holes where space and time implode---or maybe the
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entire black-hole cosmology was created to befuddle and mislead
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Russian scientists. Maybe Jimmy Carter really exists---or maybe
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he is, as the National Lampoon claims, an actor named Sidney
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Goldfarb specially trained to project the down-home virtues that
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the American people nostalgically seek. Perhaps only three men
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at the top of the National Security Angency REALLY know the
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answers to these questions---or perhaps those three are being
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deceived by certain subordinates (as Lyndon Johnson was deceived
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by the CIA about Vietnam) and are as disoriented as the rest of
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us. Such is the logic of a Disinformation Matrix.
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Personally, I find it easier to believe in UFO's than in black
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holes or Jimmy Carter; but that may just indicate the damage to
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my own brain caused by the Optimum Fuckup of the Disinformation
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Matrix.
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According to a recent survey 19 per cent of the population
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believe the moon landings were faked by Stanley Kubrick and a
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gang of special effects experts. Perhaps these archskeptics are
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the sanest ones left among us. Who among the readers of this
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file has a security clearance high enough to be ABSOLUTELY sure
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that these ultraparanoids are wrong?
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This general tendency toward chaos discord, and confusion,
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once a secret police has been established, is complicated and
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accelerated by Celine's Second Law, to wit: "Accurate
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communication is only possible in a nonpunishing situation."
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This is a very simple statement of the obvious, and means no more
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than that everybody tends to lie a little, to flatter or to
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protect themselves, when dealing with those who have power over
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them, especially the power to punish. (this is why communication
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between parents and children is notoriously befoolzled).
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Every authoritarian structure can be visualized as a pyramid,
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with very few at the top and very many at the bottom, as in the
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flowchart of any corperation or bureaucracy. On each rung,
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participants bear a burden of nescience in relation to those
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above them. That is, they must be very, very careful that their
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natural sensory activities as conscious organisms---the acts of
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seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, drawing inferences
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from perception, etc.---be in accord with the wishes of those
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above them. This is absolutely vital; job security depends on
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it. It is much less important---a luxury that can easily be
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discarded---that these perceptions be in accord with actual
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reality.
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*************************
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* COMMUNICATION IS ONLY *
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* BETWEEN EQUALS. *
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*************************
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For instance, in the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the agent had
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to develop the capacity to see godless communists everywhere.
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Any agent whose perceptions indicated that there were actually
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very few godless communists anywhere in this country wold
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experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance: his or
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her reality grid was at variance with the official reality grid
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of the pyramidal authority structure. To talk about such
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divergent perceptions at all would be to invite suspicions of
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eccentricity, of intellectual wiseacreing, or of being oneself a
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godless communist. The same would apply to any Dominican
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Inquisitor of earlier centuries who lacked the capacity to see
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witches everywhere. In such authoritarian situations, it is
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important to see what the authorities see; it is inconvenient,
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and possibly dangerous, to see what is actually there.
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But this leads to an equal and opposite burden of omniscience
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on those at the top, in the Eye of the authoritarian pyramid.
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All that is forbidden to those at the bottom---the conscious
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activities of perception andand evaluation---is demanded of the
|
||
|
master classes, the elite and the super-elite. They must attempt
|
||
|
to do the seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking,
|
||
|
and decisionmaking for the whole society.
|
||
|
But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is told only what
|
||
|
his target thinks will not cause him to pull the trigger. The
|
||
|
elite, with their burden of omniscience, face the underlings,
|
||
|
with their burden nescience, and receive only the feedback
|
||
|
consistent with their own preconceived notions. The burden of
|
||
|
omniscience becomes, in short, another and more complex burden of
|
||
|
nescience. Nobody really knows anything anymore, or if they do,
|
||
|
they are careful to hide the fact.
|
||
|
As the national security paradigm approaches (or attempts to
|
||
|
approach) the ideal infinite regress of spies-spying-on-spies-
|
||
|
spying-on-spies, etc., the resultant general trepidation causes
|
||
|
all persons to hide anything they know (if it differs from the
|
||
|
official reality), not only from their superiors, but from peers
|
||
|
and inferiors as well. Anybody, after all, might be part of the
|
||
|
nth-degree secret police. "One can't be too careful these days."
|
||
|
The burden of nescience becomes omnipresent. More and more of
|
||
|
reality becomes unspeakable.
|
||
|
But as Freud noted, that which is objectively repressed
|
||
|
(unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable).
|
||
|
Nobody likes to feel like a coward and a liar constantly. It is
|
||
|
easier to cease to notice where the official reality grid differs
|
||
|
from sensed experience. Thus Optimun Fuckup gradually becomes
|
||
|
Terminal Fuckup, and rigiditus bureaucraticus sets in; this is
|
||
|
the last stage before all brain activity ceases, and the society
|
||
|
is intellectually dead.
|
||
|
Celine's Third Law is like unto the first two, and holds that
|
||
|
AN HONEST politician is a national calamity.
|
||
|
At first glance, this seems preposterous. People of all
|
||
|
shades of opinion agree that at least on the axiom that we need
|
||
|
more honest politicians, not more crooked ones. Please remember,
|
||
|
however, that people of all shades of opinion once agreed that
|
||
|
the Earth is flat.
|
||
|
Your typical dishonest politician (bocca grande normalis) is
|
||
|
interested only in enriching himself at the public expense, a
|
||
|
goal he shares with most of his fellow citizens, especially
|
||
|
doctors and lawyers. This is normal behavior for our primate
|
||
|
species, and society has always been able to endure and survive
|
||
|
it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
********************************
|
||
|
* NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING, OR IF *
|
||
|
* THEY DO, THEY ARE CAREFUL TO *
|
||
|
* HIDE THE FACT! *
|
||
|
********************************
|
||
|
|
||
|
An honest politician (bocca grande giganticus) is far more
|
||
|
dangerous. He or she is sincerley commited to bettering society
|
||
|
by political action. In practice, that means by writing and
|
||
|
enacting more laws. Indeed, many groups of idealistic citizens
|
||
|
publish rating sheets on politicians every year, and those who
|
||
|
have created more laws are estimated as having higher value than
|
||
|
those who are frequently absent when bills are voted upon. The
|
||
|
assumption is that adding more laws to statute books is a
|
||
|
positive achievement, like adding more money to our paychecks or
|
||
|
more art works to a museum.
|
||
|
A little thought, however, shows that this assumption is not
|
||
|
tenable. Every law creates a whole new criminal class; for
|
||
|
instance, when marijuana was illegalized in 1937, several hundred
|
||
|
thousand formerly law-abiding citizens became criminals
|
||
|
overnight, by Act of Congress. As more and more laws are passed,
|
||
|
more and more citizens become criminals. The chief cause of the
|
||
|
rising crime rate is the rising number of laws being enacted. An
|
||
|
honest politician, who keeps his nose to the grindstone and
|
||
|
enacts several hundered laws in the course of his career, thereby
|
||
|
produces as many as several million new criminals.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It is furthermore mathematically demonstrable that the more
|
||
|
laws there are, the more restrictions there are on the freedom of
|
||
|
the individual. If there were, say, only three laws in a given
|
||
|
society---e.g., Thou shalt not kill; thau shalt not steal; thou
|
||
|
shalt not lie or defraud---there would be only three restrictions
|
||
|
on freedom, which all rational persons would accept as obviously
|
||
|
necessary to the maintenance of order. When there are several
|
||
|
hundred thousand restrictions on freedom, most of which are felt
|
||
|
as extremely irksome by large segments of the populace.
|
||
|
In fact, it would take a brigade of lawyers several weeks,
|
||
|
minutely examining your affairs, to determine if you are a
|
||
|
criminal. Certainly, no ordinary citizen has the time or
|
||
|
research facilities to discover if he or sshe is in violation of
|
||
|
one out of skillions of laws currently on our statute books. In
|
||
|
many cases, two lawyers consulted independently will give
|
||
|
opposite opinions about whether or not a given course of action
|
||
|
is in violation of the statutes.
|
||
|
And new laws are being enacted all the time. Obviously,
|
||
|
unless there is a sudden paper shortage, the number of laws on
|
||
|
the books will eventually reach the point satirized by T.H.White,
|
||
|
in which "everything not prohibited is compulsory." It would
|
||
|
then probably only take a few years or decades more for a cadre
|
||
|
of honest politicians diligently writing even more laws to reach
|
||
|
the complementary point where "everything not compulsory is
|
||
|
prohibited."
|
||
|
|
||
|
*********************************
|
||
|
* EVERY LAW CREATES A WHOLE *
|
||
|
* NEW CRIMINAL CLASS OVERNIGHT! *
|
||
|
*********************************
|
||
|
|
||
|
At that stage the nightmare world of Orwell's 1984 will be
|
||
|
achieved. Crooked politicians, merely interested in the normal
|
||
|
human activity of making themselves rich and comfortable, could
|
||
|
never create that ultimate horror; but honest and idealistic
|
||
|
politicians bring us closer to it every day, with every new law
|
||
|
they enact.
|
||
|
These three generalizations---that national security produces
|
||
|
national insecurity; that authoritarianism produces
|
||
|
miscommunication and eventual idiocy; and that honest politicians
|
||
|
are a plague upon society---will be found to fully explain the
|
||
|
Decline and Fall of Rome, the Decline and Fall of the British
|
||
|
Empire, and the Decline and Fall of any country you care to name.
|
||
|
They are as universal as Newton's laws of motion and apply to
|
||
|
ALL cases. Of course, the American Sociological Association says
|
||
|
I am mad. Mad, am I? They said the Wright Brothers were mad.
|
||
|
They said Edison was mad. They said Baron Frankenstein was
|
||
|
mad...
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
HABARD CELINE was trained in contract law and naval engineering
|
||
|
but claims he acquired his real education playing the piano in a
|
||
|
whorehouse. He is captain of the world's largest yellow
|
||
|
submarine, the Leif Erikson, and president of Gold and Appel
|
||
|
Inc., an import-export firm that has frequently aroused the
|
||
|
suspicions of law enforcement agencies ("137 arrests and no
|
||
|
convictions," Hagbard brags). Some claim that he is a master of
|
||
|
disguise and has successfully passed himself off under such
|
||
|
alternative identities as Howard Cork, Carl Cory, Hugh Crane,
|
||
|
Clutch Cargo, Captain Nemo, etc., and has appeared in countless
|
||
|
epics and sagas.
|
||
|
I am mad.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Another file downloaded from: NIRVANAnet(tm)
|
||
|
|
||
|
& the Temple of the Screaming Electron 415-935-5845
|
||
|
Just Say Yes 415-922-2008
|
||
|
Rat Head 415-524-3649
|
||
|
Cheez Whiz 408-363-9766
|
||
|
|
||
|
Specializing in conversations, obscure information, high explosives,
|
||
|
arcane knowledge, political extremism, diversive sexuality,
|
||
|
insane speculation, and wild rumours. ALL-TEXT BBS SYSTEMS.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Full access for first-time callers. We don't want to know who you are,
|
||
|
where you live, or what your phone number is. We are not Big Brother.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
|
||
|
|
||
|
|