Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

We're kind of finished with the CFR. Allen's not, but I am. I've explained what it is and what it does, but that isn't going to convince anyone that is on the Illuminati side of things. As an academic, it's very hard to explain to people what I do for work. The amount of time I am "in office" or "at work" is very small. I teach two courses which amount to five hours a week. The rest of the time, I'm writing, reading, or just pondering the things that I have to write and read. Yes, I would likely be doing these things for free, but I am lucky in that respect. In either case, when I'm scratching with my pen in my notebook, that's work. It is also work that I don't get paid for, and it's work that probably is going to have little influence on the outside world.  A think-tank is like that. It's just a bunch of people getting paid to think about stuff, and once in a while the things they have thought about end up in public. You...

 Last week we discussed the Illuminati because this book mentions it in passing and it is too well known of a subject for me to not cover. The next three pages after this talk about the same thing only with a different name: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). I've mentioned this group before but I'll recap it for you: it's just a different name for the Illuminati by people who are disposed to think that such a group exists. It simply doesn't matter what the name of the group is anymore: Illuminati, CFR, Tri-Lateral Commission, Freemasons, the international Zionists, international bankers, the Deep State, or whatever it is that the Q-anon people are claiming. The devil has many names, and just like the devil this is all made up.  "In addition to Paul Warburg, founders of the C.F.R. included international financial Insiders Jacob Schiff, Averell Harriman, Frank Vanderlip, Nelson Aldrich, Bernard Baruch, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. These men did not ...

As promised we have a single paragraph to talk about this week. It's a loaded paragraph too, but I can't skip over the subject matter. Let's recap the context: Allen is setting up the idea that COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM are really plans by wealthy elites to conquer the world...or something. The plan that Allen believes isn't really thought out, but let's put that aside. He's claiming thus far that the wealthy elites formed a plan after WW1 (which they orchestrated) to set up the USSR through various funding measures. This was all directed by the Round Table group and Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, we must remember was a diamond tycoon in an era where the moral problems of diamonds weren't a concern.  Rhodes, Allen alleges, wanted a secret society (true-ish) to spread control over the globe (again, true--but not for the reasons Allen thinks) and he modeled it after the Illuminati. So without further ado, here is the paragraph:  "It should be noted that the originat...