Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

Protocol 19 I learned awhile back that when you have an editor you don't have to do everything. You can, just not. As the writer, my job is to put the things on the page. As the editor the job is to clean up that mess. I do not know if I'm allowed to show notes I get from my editor, so I won't, but I'll say this--most of the notes are about word choice and phrasing. It's very rarely about the content. When it is about content, it's almost always that I need to take stuff out, not because I'm wrong (though that does happen), but mostly because what I've said isn't needed. When I teach my writing students, I tell them something similar, most of the time the writing is bad because it's too long not too short. They've been trying to make a five page report five pages for all of high school and here I am trying to teach them that if I say 1000 words, 800 will do if you've made your point.  The point of that ironic introduction is that Protocol...

 Protocol 18 This week's protocols is weird. It's spaceman, UFO weird; and the only anti-Semitism in it is a few "goys" and "Goyims" thrown in there as if to remind us what this book is supposed to be; but generally this protocol is weird because it is so bland. This is one of those protocols I'd have one of my classes read because it's short but it also doesn't say anything. The subject of this protocol is the ruler of the conspiracy.  We are 66 pages (according to the PDF of Cooper's book acquired from the internet archive) in and there is little that we know about the rulers of the conspiracy. What little we do know is almost always contradicted by something else. On one hand the kings and rulers must be members of the conspiracy on the other hand they can be regular people who are blackmailed by the conspiracy. The problem is one of consistency, does the conspiracy want to control things from the throne or from behind the throne? Througho...

It's that time of the year, when I have to grade papers which are going to be (hopefully) more coherent than what we've been reading. I'll have a new update next week. 

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...

Depression saved me. I had a roommate one that was very into Ayn Rand, and he kept telling me that I needed, NEEDED, to read the Fountain Head. I took one look at the size of the book, and in my depression spiral, said 'no.' It was too big, too long, and my depression wasn't going to let me read it. I should also explain that at this time I was reading the History of Florence by Niccolo Machiavelli; and a history of Rome that argued that the fall of Rome was due to the change in the Legions from different forces to one large mobile army (I'm not exactly convinced of that argument). Still my brain took a hard pass on Ayn Rand.  For a class I had to read her "Anthem," which is significantly shorter, but, somehow just as preachy. I found her prose to be trite and terrible. The idea, that some force prevented people from saying the word "I" (this is the revelation at the end of the book) was absurd. If the word "we" is used in the singular enou...