Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 It's grading time which means that I will not be posting this week. I'll be back next week for more Webster. 

We shift locations from France to the German states in 1848. Going concurrent with the French revolution apparently. A little context, Germany is not one country. Much like Italy in the Renaissance period it’s a series of republics, principalities, and theocracies with ill-defined borders and a shared language. The strongest of these is Prussia which has a Spartan like devotion to military prowess and has, at its head, the one known as Frederick the Great. We met Frederick earlier in this book, and Webster is not a fan. She’s not a fan, because she hates Germans. I mentioned this in the beginning of this series: the only thing that kept her from becoming an English Nazi is that she hated Germans too much. She was anti-Semitic and as we have seen, a fascist—but aligning herself with the German people was a step too far. It’s a weirdly focused racism that keeps one from becoming a Nazi but here we are. Conspiratorially we’ve met Germany when we dealt with Robison’s book. His problem ther...

When we ended last week, Webster was trying to explain that the Revolution of 1848 failed because it didn’t instantly fix the problem of unemployment. Instead, what it did, was set up a council which then created employment camps that helped people find jobs. This was bad for the reason that the state should not do this. Why? Well, let’s see if she can explain it this week. We get a quote from a character named “Mermeix,” aka Gabriel Terrail; a mediocre journalist and person who accepted bribes in order to change the story. The quote is, “ a government cannot guarantee work since does not depend on it to provide customers.” This is a pseudo profound bullshit. It sounds good at first glance, but any inquiry into this idea shows how vapid it is. The entire thing is based on a false premise; not all work is based on the idea of a transactional relationship. You don’t need customers for work. No one built a road for “customers,” educated children for “customers,” or led the police for “cus...