"Logic"; Behold a Pale Horse pp. 166-170

The titles for these chapters are quite something, I've never paid attention to them before, but they are quite revealing. Here is the beginning of chapter 9:

"Anatomy of An Alliance

The Logic for the New World Order

The Glue that Binds That Alliance of Power 

and

The Consequences

'All that is necessary for evil to triumph 

is for good men to do nothing.'

   -Edmund Burke 1729-1797

As a quick aside: in my research, I discovered something very interesting, Irish Philosopher Edmund Burke never said this quote, even though it is widely mis-attributed to him. 

Back to the task at hand: what the chapter title reveals is a lack of discipline in the writer. Writing instruction repeats a mantra so often it has become a cliche, show don't tell. If you are unfamiliar, it means that the writer should rely on the reader to understand what is going on. If "Bill" is angry, it's better writing to let the character's actions reflect his anger than to state "Bill is angry." A good writer will trust that the intelligence of his reader will figure out that Bill is angry because he broke all the vases in the room. 

Here, Cooper does not have this trust. His chapter title is too long reflective more of a 17th-century treatise, i.e. "Chapter 9: in which the metaphysical doctrines concerning the atoms are discussed." Back then chapters like this accompanied non-fiction works because indexes were not a thing yet. Any of these titles would be acceptable but Cooper has this compulsion to hammer home the point early because he is going to drown us in capital letters. 

What is interesting about the opening of this chapter is that Cooper talks as Cooper. throughout the chapter, there is no poorly understood legal doctrine he's missing (though his facts are incorrect through most of it). He begins the chapter with a personal story, and it works much better than anything we've read so far.

"I give lectures all over the United States. At some point before, during, or after every lecture, some well-meaning but misguided soul, tells me that I have it all wrong and that it's the Jews, the Catholics, the communists, or the bankers that are the cause of all our ills."

When I began this book, I mentioned Cooper's strange relationship with race. In a future chapter, a long time from now (at the pace I'm moving), Cooper is going to word-for-word place the Protocols of the Elders of Zion within this book. He's going to do so while claiming that he's not anti-Semitic. Cooper's overall belief is that racism, anti-Semitism, or whatever other -ism is part of the plot to divide us against each other: 

"The one-group scenario, except for the Illuminati, has been used effectively to divert your attention away from the truth. It has caused you to fight each other in a manipulation that always leads the REAL conspiracy closer to its ultimate goal, a New World Order."

Cooper actually applies some logic to this conspiracy in a way that the average racist conspiracy theorist never does. Here he argues that if the Catholics were really in charge of everything, all the anti-Catholic groups would oppose them. Similarly with claims that the Jews were the overlords—there are too many anti-Jewish groups for the Semitic people to actually gain control. This is the debunking I direct conspiracy theorists toward. I don't attack the "facts" of the theory, I try to get the believers to play out the theory themselves. As Cooper himself writes, "Those of you who believe that Hitler was financed by the Jews so that he could murder the Jews have a serious logic deficit. The Fanatical leftists who tout that it's Nazis behind the conspiracy have ignored the fact that very wealthy Jews are certainly involved, along with many Catholics, Protestants, communists, atheists, capitalists, Freemasons, etc., all of whom are diametrically opposed to each other, at least on the surface."

He's correct. Cooper's theory, as labyrinthine as it is, makes more sense than the Q-anon conspiracy theory or the ramblings of David Icke and Alex Jones--simply because he recognizes this problem. The undercurrent of racism that runs through Jones' theories does not work as a conspiracy because of the infighting amongst the groups he thinks are in control. Do not misunderstand: Cooper's theory is fantastic and absurd; it's just better than Jones' theory. 

It falls apart fairly quickly though. Cooper's anti-racism plea quickly falls away to reveal the theory that he believes. Cooper gives us a promise for the future: "Aliens will be discussed at length in a later chapter." 

The promise of aliens aside, Cooper's theory concerns population. At the conclusion of WWII, the world's elites were informed that unless they curtailed the population there would be civilization collapse by the year 2000. The Club of Rome and the Bilderberg Group are both cited as being responsible for both the analysis and the plan to reduce the population by 2000. 

My temptation is to skip this part of the theory. The population doubled after WWII's baby boom, and then it doubled again. The efforts to cull the population have never materialized--even though the plan involves ready contraception of all kinds and an acceptance of homosexuality. The death rate needed to be increased as well, which is where the New World Order comes in. By the year 2000, there will be too many people to sustain and civilization will collapse. So the great culling must begin. At this point in the theory, I'm wondering who the bad guy is. 

If the Earth's population becomes unsustainable, then reducing the population is the only remedy. In fact, the most humane thing is to prevent the population increase through birth control. Most super and omni-conspiracy theorists have found this population theory to be fertile ground for their own interpretations. Religious conspiracy theorists use it because the Abrahamic traditions bequeath a duty to its followers to have more children and they oppose any kind of birth control. The theory now finds believers in the Covid-19/Anti-vaccination set. So the "they" are going to reduce the population to save us? Ok, fine, this is a coherent theory.

The issue is that Cooper has forgotten what he said nearly a hundred pages ago because this conflicts with his earlier claim that the JASON society is going to use the Galileo Sattelite to transform Jupiter into a small star called Lucifer which was going to stave off the coming Ice Age and usher in the new Millenium. 

Ultimately, my problem with this book is that everything until this point has read like a rough draft. It's been all over the place, lacking any kind of coherence. Cooper is staying on target here, his conspiracy theory isn't veering off into strange places (well, strange for him). If the rest of the book is like this, then I finally get its appeal. I just doubt that anyone could have gotten to this chapter through the others to find out.