Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

We're back with no more interruptions. Grading is done and I can certainly carve out the time to write these updates...until the next grading season that is.  We come back with Allen focusing on a familiar target to 90s era conspiracy theorists: the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers are one of those people/families that are so wealthy that the word "wealth" doesn't apply anymore. They aren't rich, they are beyond it. So this makes them a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, anarchists, socialists, and a bunch of other people that normally wouldn't agree on anything. The central idea that all of these groups agree on is: someone like them shouldn't have that much influence when they are largely unaccountable. Nelson Rockefeller was accountable when he was NY governor, but that's not what people like Allen mean. He means overall they have so much money that nothing can happen to them which is a bad thing.  And I, agree. Pre-Covid, I worked as a va...

 I play a lot of strategy games on my computer. For some reason, they just make sense there, where the console is for all of the other types of games. One thing that I never neglect, is establishing a web of spies (when I'm able). In the old Red Alert, I would spend an inordinate amount of time training spies because sure, the Russians were coming but I wanted to know every single thing they had in production. I just like it. The new Civ has a really great espionage mechanism, and I love sabotaging and stealing all of my rival's stuff. Sure, they own two continents and our trade is so intertwined that war between us is almost impossible...but for some reason, they just can't get that spaceship built can they. The reason that I bring this up is because of one important feature about espionage: it doesn't work if the enemy knows it is happening. So when Allen tries to link the trade with the USSR (which is one of the things that prevented the outbreak of a hot war) with t...

 No post this week. It's the end of the semester and I must focus on grading. 

 Books like this aren't meant to be read slowly. They really aren't meant to be read, they're meant to be skimmed. There are a few reasons for this, primarily being that the authors know they aren't factual they appeal emotionally. If you take your time to read through the book you become emotionally detached and the book betrays itself. It's repetitive and bland. By chapter 2, we get the point, but emotionally we're bound to its claims because the writing angers up the blood. In the modern age, the reason that the book isn't meant to be read slow is that fact-checking is so easy now. If I stop at each paragraph, I can easily find how many false claims are being made. This is not why this type of book was written.  We begin chapter 6 "Rockefeller and the Reds" with a heavy head because even though I was never going to jump in to these claims, it was fun to run through all of them...until I took a week off, and now I'm so emotionally detached th...

We're kind of finished with the CFR. Allen's not, but I am. I've explained what it is and what it does, but that isn't going to convince anyone that is on the Illuminati side of things. As an academic, it's very hard to explain to people what I do for work. The amount of time I am "in office" or "at work" is very small. I teach two courses which amount to five hours a week. The rest of the time, I'm writing, reading, or just pondering the things that I have to write and read. Yes, I would likely be doing these things for free, but I am lucky in that respect. In either case, when I'm scratching with my pen in my notebook, that's work. It is also work that I don't get paid for, and it's work that probably is going to have little influence on the outside world.  A think-tank is like that. It's just a bunch of people getting paid to think about stuff, and once in a while the things they have thought about end up in public. You...

 Last week we discussed the Illuminati because this book mentions it in passing and it is too well known of a subject for me to not cover. The next three pages after this talk about the same thing only with a different name: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). I've mentioned this group before but I'll recap it for you: it's just a different name for the Illuminati by people who are disposed to think that such a group exists. It simply doesn't matter what the name of the group is anymore: Illuminati, CFR, Tri-Lateral Commission, Freemasons, the international Zionists, international bankers, the Deep State, or whatever it is that the Q-anon people are claiming. The devil has many names, and just like the devil this is all made up.  "In addition to Paul Warburg, founders of the C.F.R. included international financial Insiders Jacob Schiff, Averell Harriman, Frank Vanderlip, Nelson Aldrich, Bernard Baruch, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. These men did not ...

As promised we have a single paragraph to talk about this week. It's a loaded paragraph too, but I can't skip over the subject matter. Let's recap the context: Allen is setting up the idea that COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM are really plans by wealthy elites to conquer the world...or something. The plan that Allen believes isn't really thought out, but let's put that aside. He's claiming thus far that the wealthy elites formed a plan after WW1 (which they orchestrated) to set up the USSR through various funding measures. This was all directed by the Round Table group and Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, we must remember was a diamond tycoon in an era where the moral problems of diamonds weren't a concern.  Rhodes, Allen alleges, wanted a secret society (true-ish) to spread control over the globe (again, true--but not for the reasons Allen thinks) and he modeled it after the Illuminati. So without further ado, here is the paragraph:  "It should be noted that the originat...