Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 " WC/Author's Note: So now you know. This chapter could only come in the beginning. Your preconceived ideas had to be shattered in order for you to understand the rest of this book." Let's recap the situation: the entire previous chapter, Cooper claims, was not written by him. It was a document that Cooper claims was in the possession of Naval Intelligence in 1969 and was found in an IBM copier on 7 July 1986 which was purchased at a surplus sale. The document itself was dated May 1979 and details the plan the Bilderberg Group adopted during their first meeting in 1954. The dates are confusing, but ultimately they do not matter. What matters is that this chapter is presented as a "found document." I'll repeat the analogy that I used in the beginning: Cooper is portraying this chapter in the same way that Tolkien presents The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as not his writing but his interpretation of a found book, "The Red Book of Westmarch."...

Last week the primary enemy of the Cooper was revealed: the draft. Cooper, by his own account, was never drafted into the Vietnam War but it's entirely likely that he fought alongside people that were so we cannot fault him for the ire he bears for mandatory military service. In fact, one not ever need to serve in the military to dislike the draft; though to support it, you probably need some military service in order to not sound like a hypocrite.  The draft puts the right-wing conspiracy theorists in a weird place. On the one hand, they are against mandatory anything from the government, but on the other, they tend to espouse ultra-nationalist principles. Resisting the draft is what "dirty hippies" and "socialists" do, but they can't square that circle with their reluctance to submit to authority for the exact same reasons that the socialists resisted (the dirty hippies were a different story).  Cooper has spent a bit of time arguing against the elites and...

The Silent Weapons document is very confusing. I've reminded you, the reader, several times already and it bears repeating: the first chapter is not something that Cooper is claiming he wrote. He claims that it was found in an old copy machine that was being tossed in the garbage, but that Cooper could verify its authenticity because of his work in Naval Intelligence. This document is supposed to be for new recruits in the silent war or new recruits prepping to use the silent weapons--or something, I can't keep the thread because Cooper loses it frequently.  Caveat: I've never been in the military so I don't know if the frequent section breaks are a normal thing. The other factor that we must remember is that Cooper's silent weapon is economics. Again, he doesn't have the grasp of economics that he thinks he does, but that is the weapon he's described so far. Computer analysis of economic systems that are far more advanced than the average person can underst...

Every single one of these books begins the same way: they start off really strong and then slow down once they have to provide details. Robison did the same thing when he began writing about the specific people and their actions, as Allen did when he tried to trace the connections between wealthy people and their charities (which, again, Allen thinks charitable foundations are a bad thing). Cooper has the same problem here, but I have to give him credit for what his writing here. So far, Cooper has been discussing some kind of silent weapon. Ok, his audience--the real Americans (both black and white)--are on board. The problem for Cooper, and one that he recognizes, is that these weapons aren't understandable. Cooper doesn't understand economics, we've established that, but even less so is his audience. It's not just that they don't understand it, it's too abstract for them to see his point. Rockefeller is a name to these people, he's not a person. Internati...

Conspiracy theorists love gold. It makes the world go around...well the love of gold--according to David Mamet's 2001 film Heist. From their perspective paper currency is a fiction. Sure, you can have the paper money in your pocket, but you cannot tell another person what it is worth. The value of the money is based on something mysterious which they interpret as fiction because they do not understand it. It's strange because they also do not understand how the price of gold is set either. In the time that I am writing but a concept that would be utterly foreign to Cooper, they love crypto-currencies for the same reason. It somehow seems less arbitrary to them.  Yet if you ask them the very basic question, "what is gold?" You'll get a response that gold is immune to inflation and thus gold-backed currencies are also immune to inflation. However, they are not. You can have inflation with gold-backed currencies all you have to do is keep printing more currency while...