Nobody Likes Me: None Dare Call it Conspiracy II pg 11-12

 I was really hoping to get through the first chapter this week. Then I started reading from where I left off (I don't read ahead) and...nope I barely got through the next page. I imagine, and hope, that these posts will cover more ground. Conspiracy books like this get repetitive as the initial rage that fueled the first writings peters out and the author becomes more and more aware that they are lacking anything of substance. It can take a while, David Icke's books are 500 hundred pages long, but he pads the middle with genealogy charts and pictures. This book doesn't have that...I hope. Anyway, let's get into it.

The first chapter is still trying to argue that we should take it seriously, which is not a good sign. You make your position known and then dive into arguing it with whatever method your chosen discipline uses: empirical evidence, argumentation, or logical/mathematical proofs. The title of the book is where the subject lies, if a person opens the book then you shouldn't waste their time trying to defend that choice. What's at stake here is the conspiracy theory of history. This is the superconspiracy narrative that every event in history has been planned out by a group of puppet masters all pulling the strings. There are two problems with this view: one we deal with in greater detail below, but the second one is the nature of the events themselves. Conspiracy theories like this only consider events that are popular, not events that are important. The examples they pick typically fall into both categories. But generally speaking, they miss the mark when they think that certain deaths are part of the conspiracy. For instance, and to borrow a more recent example, when Princess Diana died in an automobile accident--it was a popular event but it was not important. The 27 club is full of popular deaths but not important deaths. Not to denigrate the loss of life, or the suffering people have felt from their loss, but the idea that these deaths changed history is absurd. What did the world lose when Kurt Cobain shot himself? Or, if Diana had lived what would be different? What was the thing she did that ended when she died? I would contend nothing. When Churchill was ousted as P.M. that was important, but not globally popular so it rarely factors into these narratives.

The other problem is that the amount of people needed to control history is way too many to be a plausible plan. My example is always Watergate: less than a dozen people were involved in the break-in, a couple of them were literally former intelligence agents, and they couldn't keep it a secret. Further, history is most accidents, it's poorly stored ammunition in the hold of a ship in Cuba and suddenly it is, "Remember the Maine!" and the Spanish-American War. This then led to American intervention in Cuba until a guy who couldn't make the MLB decided to take up politics and then we have the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Hitler gets into art school, a lot changes. Books like these seem to think that these random accidents can be controlled. They have to or else their reason for existence goes away.

The book offers two possibilities: 1| things happen by accident and are uncaused by anyone or 2| things are planned and caused.

I literally use this example in my class to describe a false dilemma when it comes to New World Order (NWO) theorists. The issue is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Hitler didn't get into art school because post-modernist art was all the rage in Europe during the interwar period. Adolf was, at best, a competent realist painter (look up his paintings, they're...ok) and the Vienna school wasn't taking him. That is not something that can be controlled as it would take a tremendous amount of foresight and resources to adjust the cultural fad of the type of are in vogue at the time. A powerful enough society could rig the election that got him the chancellorship but everything else is too much.

The authors attempt to put a period on this idea, "If you believe that something like 32,496 consecutive coincidences over the past 40 years stretches the law of averages a bit, you are a kook."

The authors are trying to pitch the opposite of their argument. They claim the conspiratorial worldview is that true one, but if you think that all of these coincidences since 1936 (the book was written in 76) are just the way things should happen well you are the kook but society won't consider you one. In fact, the opposite is true: thinking that these coincidences are too much makes you a social kook but you actually are the genius and everyone else is a...here we go, "sheeple." They didn't invent this term but that's the sentiment.

The book then resorts to the tactic I introduced last week (which, only a page later is not repeating itself--to be fair): bashing the very people that they want acceptance from: academics.

"Why is it virtually all 'reputable' scholars and mass media columnists reject the cause and effect or conspiratorial theory of history?"--Pg. 11

Because they really attached themselves to David Hume in college?

Kidding aside, it's because you have no proof. History professors attach cause and effect all of the time, I've read arguments that basically claim WWI and WWII should be considered one war with a halftime show for a decade. The reason this argument exists is that without WWI you don't get the same WWII. Japan doesn't militarize in the same manner, France and England stand up to German annexations, etc.

The reason we reject this view of history is that it's fucking bonkers. You don't have proof of your claims. This song is sung by every pseudoscientific theorist promoting ancient aliens, free energy, or the idea that the Chinese landed in the new world. The most recent group to take this flag was the flat earthers. The Netflix documentary "Beyond the Curve" has several people claiming that academics won't address flat earth because we're all sheep and are afraid of the truth. We don't address it because it's not worth the effort and repeating your claims if only to debunk them, gives them credit where it is not due.

Yet this misunderstanding of academics doesn't end there. They claim that most scholars follow the crowd, and that rejection of the mainstream is tantamount to exile. Except it's not. I spent a chapter redefining the term "conspiracy theory" in opposition of the scholar who has written the most on the subject. I'm not ostracized because of it. Newton didn't get thrown out of science (natural philosophy) for disagreeing with Aristotle, nor did Einstein for disagreeing with Newton. Adam Smith wasn't ridden out of Edinburgh for arguing against Mercantilism as an economic system, he was lauded for writing the book that did it. Paradigm shifts only happen because scholars buck the system.

This claim is also what current climate change denialists think as well. The reason that all the science agrees is that you aren't allowed to disagree. This is a claim made by people who have never worked in the academic side of academics. Find me evidence that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare and I'll agree, as well as the rest of us scholars. Tell me that there is really an NWO/Illuminati/CFR like group and you better bring evidence. Otherwise, you are a kook who is arguing from faith, not belief.