Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 It is with great regret that I announce that this book has not jumped the shark, it should have, because it's poorly written, poorly researched, and comes to terrible conclusions. That alone should have been enough but it does another thing that should have confined it to the trash fire of history and somehow didn't: it made predictions.  Predictions, that never came true. Well, some of them did, but they did so only because the predictions are so general that you can figure out something that will fit. It's the broken clock being right. Bill Cooper and Alex Jones both claim to have predicted 9/11, but their prediction was "something big is going to happen." It lacked any kind of specificity and if we look at their track record, they were more thinking that it was going to be an NWO type thing anyway. So, it doesn't really count as a prediction any more than my prediction that someone will win the lottery...eventually counts as a prediction.  Predictions are

I find it interesting when reading/listening/watching anything that portrays the Soviet/Nazi front of WWII; that it's not clear who the real villain is. Of course, Hitler and the Nazis, but that also means that we are rooting for Stalin; and it's easy in the beginning because the Soviets were attacked first. But, again, we are rooting for Stalin to be the hero that the world needed. In Allen's world, there is a stark villain but in reality there isn't a hero either. Allen has the world set up in a false dichotomy but he wants everyone reading to take "not one step back" but there is no enemy advancing on us. There isn't a step back to refrain from but there also isn't a step forward.  As I ended with last week, Allen thinks this is an information war but he hasn't provided us with anything more than "rich guy A knew rich guy B." He claims that these connections are enough to justify action, but I ask "what kind of action would be eff

 I think, dear reader, we have entered the final chapter of this book. Probably, it's hard to say but given that this chapter is titled: "You are the Answer," I think I have a good assumption here. My only problem is that I'm still not quite sure what the question is supposed to be. You might want to accuse me of being dense, "he's saying that there is a massive conspiracy to throw the United States into COMMUNISM, duh." I get that, but he has not made this case so far. He thinks he has, so we have to assume this counter-factual. Meaning that we are going to pretend for the sake of argument that this position of his has been made and is logically sound and valid. It's a big ask, I know, but we pretend that Iron Man's suit made sense for a solid decade we can do this together.  Now, I have to give credit where it is due, and Allen's call to action is actually well written. In the first paragraph of the chapter, he is both impressing upon the r

 When did "vise" become "vice?" As in squeezed like a vice? I noticed that in reading today's section that Allen calls it a "vise" and it just looks wrong, and in this book when something stands out as being wrong it's something. Of course, I could be wrong and am just using the British spelling of it--I've been known to do that for some reason.  The word comes up because Allen has on page 79, a picture of a vice/vise. With the "middle class" in the center and the two clamps around it. The top clamp (the enemy above) is labeled with the names Rothschild, Rockefeller, and the CFR elite. The bottom is labeled with the SDS, the Black Panthers, the Yippies, the Young Socialist Alliance, and something called "Common Cause." I look at this list and I know immediately that my post is going to be about these groups and Wikipedia is getting a strong visit from me today. We will put these groups aside and deal with the overall critici