Have you noticed how many people, when discussing the assassination attempt on former US Donald Trump, start the conversation with: “I am not a conspiracy theorist, but…”? With the Trump shooting I believe we have witnessed a drawing back of the curtain from the conniving Wizard of Oz revealing such an elaborate stage performance of those trying to draw the strings in world politics, that not to see it would show the tin man to have more sense than you.
It does not matter whether Trump staged the event, whether it was the CIA or a lone gunman, it revealed the machinations of a political system that is significantly put together by smoke, mirrors, and PR.
What is a ‘conspiracy’? Why have we made it a dirty word? At its core, it denotes a group of people plotting something they didn’t necessarily tell you about. It appears the act of keeping it hidden is causing distress. If you had been part of the planning committee, you would have called it a ‘strategy.’ There were so many secret strategies at play in the US election process, that it has become a farce that has become real. We close the curtain again so we can claim we do not see.
Joe Biden was so obviously a cardboard cut-out of a person on the presidential stage. His neurological decay had been apparent for quite some time, but it was denied in order to serve vested interests and protect the brand. He was cruelly propped up and kept there by people who lied about it.
I have friends who viciously attacked me in public about how nasty I was to suggest he lacked capacity. I was labelled ill-informed, and worse – a conspiracy theorist. “He stammered as a child,” they said as if it explained everything. The only thing it shows is that it is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled.
Degenerative brain condition
Even a cursory investigation into degenerative brain conditions will teach you that stammering and the symptoms Biden displayed are not related, yet people who pointed it out were vilified. The emperor had nice clothes, but he had lost his mind – and no one was allowed to say it, for fear of ending up in intellectual sackcloth and ashes themselves.
The same camp that showed an unhealthy denial of Biden’s illness also developed an oversensitivity to the many problematic aspects of Trump’s candidacy. Their opponents call it TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and Biden groupies sure did go bonkers at the mere sight of an orange tuft. Trump can drive people insane, including his acolytes.
Trump supporters hail him a messiah of peace, who by himself – and he is the only one alive who can do this – stop WW3 and save the West from descending further into its woke madness. How exactly this miracle is to be achieved remains unclear. Will he grab all trans people and Putin by their privates until they give up? They also neglect to mention that under Trump’s tenure, there was that curious incendiary incident in Iran and that nonsense with the attempted coup in Venezuela.
What if Trump is not anti-establishment or anti-war? What if he is just anti-not being in charge of it?
Division
Division among Americans in the two parties has never been this high. The tribes have spoken: you are in or you are out. People report that it has become difficult to have a civil social discussion with members of the opposing party. The middle shrinks to make way for the extreme. Things have changed. The Americans seemed to have clicked their heels three times and are not in the same state anymore. The voter is on an election road, accompanied by the walking dead, the man who was almost dead and the Keystone Cops. You can’t make this stuff up. Or can you?
To what extent has the confluence of corporatism, globalism, social media, and our gleeful consumption of it manifested in such an elementary binary narrative that even five-year-olds can understand it? There is a goodie and a baddie; you can choose one. The good one is so virtuous and the bad one so evil that it is okay to cheer for wars as a show of support.
When did it become like this? When did a group of tolerant liberal democrats allow it?
I suspect we find safety in picking a side because pre-consciously we sense a deeper shift. Someone else is writing the script and pulling the strings. It is not about two people and what they represent.
What we are experiencing is a new form of government collaboration with private enterprises. It has somehow become the twist in the tail wagging the dog. Free-market capitalists and free-market philosophers have long been opponents of undue government influence on private enterprise, but is it OK if it works the other way around? We seem to have skipped a phase that might have looked like old-school fascism and are now witnessing what looks like a hostile corporate takeover of executive government functions.
“Military industrial complex”
Fifty years ago you were labelled a “conspiracy theorist” if you took suggestions of the “Military Industrial Complex” seriously. Today, it is accepted as fact. Since then, Covid has shown us how governments can sway under the pressure of large pharmaceutical companies and its resultant propaganda. In that process, the media, also came under the spotlight, suggesting allegiance to advertising dollars, rather than journalism. Is this just the highest form of free enterprise: to gain a monopoly or advantage by capturing regulating authorities? Ultimate winning strategy and fair play? Or is it something more sinister?
Whatever it is, we don’t have a word for it so we don’t talk about it. I hear mutterings about the ‘Deep State’ which are rebuffed by accusations of conspiracy theorists at play.
What can you do? You look down, wring your hands and argue: “I know our side probably starts wars at the behest of people whose business model is based on conflict, but at least we are not as bad as those Commies and Nazis.” Shrug and go.
That is when the spectacle in front of the curtain becomes so alluring. It is an easy story to follow. We point fingers at the old man who can’t speak anymore and the rude man with the ginger cat on his head, because when the world is a circus, the biggest clowns and fools are always in the audience.
The evolutionary advantage of free markets is that, at any time, the audience can refuse to buy a ticket. They might lose interest, complain, or revolt. Freedom is adaptive. The competitive leverage of free speech is that we have many feedback systems and loops. They are not always apparent, clearly articulated, or quick. Yet superhuman computation events like elections send a message. And that is why are privy to this godawful Punch and Judy show where the puppeteers are visible on stage. Liberty gives you permission to make mistakes and learn from them.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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