Blog companion to my course "Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking." Taught as part of the general writing curriculum at SUNY Geneseo.
Interlude
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No post this week. It's the end of the semester and I must focus on grading.
Protocol 17 A good start is what you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea. And fortunately, the Elder agrees...sort of. This protocol is a strange one, it is more evidence that the Protocols are not meant to be read like a normal book. We are supposed to cherry pick sections of it as evidence of the conspiracy while making the assumption that the rest of the book offers support for the part we cherry picked. I'll spoil the surprise now, this protocol contains three distinct subjects, which are unrelated narratively from each other. I] The practice of advocacy produces men cold, cruel, persistent, un-principled, who in all cases take up an impersonal, purely legal standpoint. The elder is going to discuss lawyers and the legal profession. I know that hating the lawyers is as old as the legal profession. We have Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher and Jack Cade discussing the formation of a new society and Dick the Butcher suggests, "First thing we do, let's kill...
Well, finally. I've probably mentioned this before: but I used to be a conspiracy theorist. I was a Mulder-type, X-files, quasi-militia supporting, conspiracy theorist in the 90s. I believed in the UFO thing, I believed in the government plot to keep that a secret, and I believed in the one-world government bullshit. Somehow, and thankfully, this was separate from my devout religious belief, but that's probably because I was raised Catholic. The Vatican was dealing with its own conspiracy at the time: only that one was real and they were doing it. The coming "New World Order" was definitely a thing in my mind. At this point in history, the NRA was tilting towards the batshit conspiracy theory haven that they have become. It was around this time that they called federal law enforcement officials "jack booted thugs" causing George HW Bush to turn in his lifetime membership. They did so as a response to both Waco and Ruby Ridge, which the perception was that ...
Protocol 10 The people that Cooper is writing for claim to believe in one thing above all: The US Constitution. It's almost always clear that they have never read it, do not understand it, and think it says things that it does not. These are the people that think the Declaration of Independence is a legally binding document, are aware of something called the Federalist Papers but that's about it, and they usually tip in favor of odd sovereign citizen positions. It's important also to remember that this book was written in the 1990s and the right-wing militia movement hated Bill Clinton. To be fair, they didn't like George H.W. Bush either, but nothing like their vitriol for Bill Clinton. In my opinion, there was nothing that Clinton did to earn their ire. I think that he took office in 1992 and it just coincided with right-wing conspiracism as a movement. Yet he's the president, by default, he must be part of the conspiracy. The conspirators could not allow someon...
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