2/3 Of Americans Yearn For The Political Middle - A Case Of Moral Cowardice?

Find a 'middle' with this asshole and his cult followers? Get real!

"The only things in the middle of the road are dead skunks and yellow lines."  - Progressive columnist Jim Hightower

In the interest of full disclosure let me come right out and admit I have no use or tolerance for the American political "middle". Hence, see no remote purpose in complying with the oft heard plaintive plea (from clueless pundits) that  we need to somehow find civility and "meet in the middle".  Why? As Tafari Jones writes in his TIME essay ('The Myth of the Moral Middle',  November 5, p. 56):

"I find myself annoyed by the hand wringing about how we need to find common ground. People ask how we might 'meet in the middle' as though this represents a safe, neutral and civilized space.  But this American fetishization of the moral middle is a misguided and dangerous cultural impulse. 

The middle is a point equidistant from two poles. That's it. There is nothing inherently virtuous about being neither here nor there.  Buried in this is a false equivalency of ideas, what you might call the 'good people on both sides' phenomenon. But when we revisit our shameful past ask yourself, 'where was the middle?"

He has a salient point and there are numerous examples. For example, when Native Americans were being wiped out by the U.S. Cavalry in the 1870s- 80s and their tribal lands seized where was the "middle"?  Was it to kill all the braves and leave the women and children? Was it to make fake treaties to grab Indian lands - and then ship the victims (like Geronimo and the Apache) off to reservations where they withered and died- but not kill them?

What about slavery? Where was the middle there?  If we reject the basest extremes of chattel slavery, i.e. as portrayed in '12 Years A Slave' - where if Massah wanted some entertainment he'd use some excuse to take out his whip and flog one or more of the slaves while banjo music played- where was the middle?   Would it have been a softer 'indentured servitude' - which actually ensued during Reconstruction when "freed" slaves were allowed to remain on plantations and work the land- but only for a pittance-  and it was never enough to be truly free, and own the land?

In terms of Dotard's immigration policy, where is the middle? Is it only to separate migrant families but not to cage the  toddlers or infants?

Transferring the concept of the threat of  'the other'  to Nazi Germany, where was the middle? Was it to inter the Jews by the millions in the concentration camps - but not to gas them in the Holocaust?

In the end, the embrace of the middle is the position of the moral coward. Or as Jones puts it (p.57):

"The search for the middle is rooted in conflict avoidance and denial."

Going on to note that for too many Americans it is "painful" to accept there are actually racist and sexist knuckle draggers, homophobes and xenophobes in our midst.   Hence:

"Perhaps there is some way to look at this, some view from the middle - that would allow to communicate and realize a national identity is the tie that will bind us comfortably.. ."

Which is arrant twaddle because it suggests that "the fact we can't all get along is more significant than the issues over which we are sparring".  Thus, it will never ever come to being that I will "get along" with a climate denier because our views are 180 degrees opposite, and I believe the climate issue is one of national emergency, hell, global emergency..   I will also never get along with a racist, a white nationalist or Trumpie. No, I can't say I hate them like vermin rats- like wifey does -  but let's say I deplore them intensely.   There ain't no way I'd invite any of them to the Thanksgiving table.

All this is relevant after a recent NY Times op-ed in which we learn millions of Americans in the middle are now "tired of politics" - especially after the tumult of the midterms, and are tuning out.  We learn, for example:

"Most  Americans do not see their lives through a political lens, and when they have political views the views are far less rigid than those of the highly politically engaged, ideologically orthodox tribes."

This confirms what I've always suspected about the middle: they are simply not as well informed precisely because they are non-ideological and hence less politically engaged. Hence, they typify the kind of voter who'd cast a ballot for a presidential candidate  he "could have a beer with".  In other words, the bottom basement sort of decision framework.

Rather than being "rigid" the ideological, non-Middle voter has an orientation and vision.    It is ideology that gives one’s world and perceptions context and color. If you lack an ideology, as an old logic teacher once put it to me, then you will find yourself cast adrift and swayed by any and every meme, blabber or blowhard that might try to influence you. Of course, one always checks his ideology against reality, this is important! But one needs a central POV to make any sense of the world. This is  precisely the quality that those embracing the middle lack.

Anyway, the Times' piece cites a  study by a nonpartisan organization, More in Common,  that paints a picture of a society that is far more disengaged — and despairing over divisions — than it is divided.  The study itself was ostensibly conducted in an effort to understand the forces that drive political polarization, and surveyed a representative group of 8,000 Americans.

Of course, no formal study was needed to grasp the forces driving polarization and division, only common sense and logic.  Thus, if you believe babies from immigrants need to be grabbed and caged while I do not, then we instantly  have opposition - hence, division. There is no amount of modulation that will dilute or remove it.   Spread it over a large enough population - with separate segments holding these opposite views - and we have "polarization".  But that is a GOOD thing because: a) we don't want every manjack in the country believing infants ought to be caged and separated, and b) it isn't morally right - and can never be!

This also applies to a host of other "divisive' issues from climate change, to taxes, to voter suppression (such as recently happened to Stacy Abrams' voters in GA) and the nonsense claim of "voter fraud" by the Right. . In other words, there must be division and yes, polarization,  if a pronounced segment of the population embraces regressive  policies and comes into political power- Then it must be checked, lest that power metastasize, and we get an authoritarian state where the Constitution becomes just a piece of paper.. Similar to what happened in Germany in the 1930s  when all the "good Germans" grew dumb and numb as the Nazis took control over their nation.

Then, predictably, we read in the Times' piece:

"At its heart is a vast and often overlooked political middle that feels forgotten in the vitriol, as if the country has gone on without it. It calls that group the Exhausted Majority, a group that represented two-thirds of the survey".

But these poor little exhausted folks seem to forget - or never processed- that political combat in the present circumstances is needed. Is "vitriol" necessary? Perhaps not, but let's say that it currently goes with the territory given how Dotard Trump is setting the direction and odious example for much of  it.  And as I've written before, so long as he's around and his lying, outrageous comments - and actions- are evident,  there will be hostile reaction from many of us and that will indeed become vitriolic on occasion.  Hey look, at least I don't depict Trump hanging by his orange neck in all my posts attacking him.   The article then quotes a 36-year-old home health care worker in Topeka, Kan., (Jamie McDaniel)  one of several people in the study  who was interviewed for this article:

“It feels very lonely out here,  Everybody is so right or left, and you’re just kind of standing there in the middle saying, “What happened?’”

What happened, in case you missed it, is that a Russian stooge traitor took over this country in the 2016 mis-election, and is driving this nation toward destruction with his violation of the Constitution and embrace of authoritarianism.  Now, we could all make nicey- nicey and sing kumbaya - but then we'd be like the good Germans who allowed the Nazis and Hitler to take over Germany. This we cannot allow, so we fight against the minority faction in our midst and their dictator -Fuhrer,   Herr Trump, aka Drumpf.   If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. Deal with it but don't stand there scratching your butt wondering 'what happened?' - that only confirms my belief of cluelessnness and ignorance.

McDaniel, sad to say, embodies the problem with too many Americans, as I've often observed:   that they are unpracticed and untutored in deep politics .  This is why so many adhere to the "middle" or what author Curtis White once called  "the Middle Mind". The 'Middle Mind' is a safe mental space where all the old verities are true. These are the tropes trotted out endlessly by our shameful politicos and news media to manipulate our consciousness, i.e.. we inhabit  the "land of the free" - never mind we have more people incarcerated than all the other nations together.  And we are the "land of opportunity"  never mind upward mobility has fallen steadily the past 3 decades leading to unbelievable levels of inequality."

Meanwhile, the media white washers seek to enshrine in the American people the political and historical memory of gnats. This is why politicos can play them over and over again, and why the targets never advance their insights as to what is happening to them and why. It is also why author Gore Vidal once referred to our nation as the "United States of Amnesia".   This is now evident in the "More in common" survey which conceivably could see more than half of Americans checking out for the crucial 2020 election - where we have the chance to finally ditch Trump in a legal fashion.  As 'Last Week Tonight' host John Oliver put it last night in reference to Trump and authoritarianism:

"The world is dabbling with something very dangerous right now, and America needs to be careful. Look, I know democracy can be often by design frustrating.  Checks and balances can be irritating and slow...but removing them opens the door to something much worse."

As for Tafari Jones, for him - as well as me - the choice is stark and never clearer:

Is the search for a misplaced "national unity" more important than our core values and  principles?   I.e. "is it more important we understand the motives of white nationalists or that we prevent them from terrorizing communities?"

At least for the people directly affected by the terror of white nationalists there is the sober recognition of no safety found in the "in between".  The rest of us need to grasp that too. 

See also:

Trump and American Authoritarianism

Why Rachel Maddow Is Wrong on James Earl Ray - Alleged Assassin of Martin Luther King

"Rachel may be smart, but she needs an editor to keep her from repeating each notion five times before she ever quite gets to the point, and she could also lose that cutesy bullshit she does about mixing cocktails and other nonsense designed to make her seem hip to her coeval."
- Jaime O'Neill, writing on the liberal pretensions of MSNBC

No less an esteemed author than James Douglass ('JFK and the Unspeakable')  has held all of us to account for not seeing that all the 1960s assassinations (JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X) were interconnected and done by the National Security State. Also, each one, according to Douglass, made the next one easier because we all became susceptible to the anti-conspiracy mindset and thereby enmeshed in the media's lies that "one lone nut" was involved each time. Hence, to the extent we gave the media apparatchiks a pass we became accomplices and parties to the "unspeakable" - a term first coined by Thomas Merton meaning incomprehensible evil. Douglass' implication was that the Deep State factored into each assassination and it required deep politics to get beyond the hand waving, and BS stories confabulated by media - most of which was infected by national security trolls (please Google "Operation Mockingbird'.) It was the responsibility of each of us to rip the veneer of lies and deceptions away and probe the document base to the truth.


In an earlier blog post (March 8, 2014), I noted that deep politics is usually too much for network commentators (including the so-called "liberals" on MSNBC) to handle.  In a way this is understandable because  many Americans, as I've often observed, are unpracticed and untutored in deep politics (the dark underbelly that surface politics barely touches)  which is why so many adhere to the "middle" or what author Curtis White once called  "the Middle Mind". Thus, network sensitivities will be oriented toward not pissing off that Middle Mind too much, or forcing it too far from its comfort  zone and belief system.

Maddow, while a sometime incisive narrator, often blows it on key issues. For example, numerous times in 2013-14 one beheld Maddow avoiding like the plague Obama's chained CPI proposal for cutting Social Security. She didn't wish to "go there" because she didn't want to be seen as an Obama basher.  Then there were other Maddow shows  - specifically segments on guns- where she kept the false narrative going that Lee Harvey Oswald was the one who killed John F. Kennedy e.g.   http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/rachel-maddow-again-lies-about-lee.html

By hewing to the "Oswald did it" faction of the Middle Mind, she chose to play it safe in her narrative, rather than risk being called a "conspiracy theorist" or tin foil hat wearer. But by doing so she showed: a) she didn't truly grasp the lying nature of the deep state to use cover stories and b) preferred to bamboozle her audience rather than inform them.

In two earlier episodes of her show this year, around the time of the Confederate flag brouhaha, she interjected Jack Kershaw, supposedly one of the lawyers for alleged Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray. She then presented - to emphasize her point Kershaw was a racist (and by extension his client - hence the assassin with a motive) graphic images of a garish and ghoulish statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest (founder of the Ku Klux Klan). Maddow's intent was clear:

Jack Kershaw was a brazen racist who idolized the founder of the KKK

James Earl Ray originally hired Kershaw as his lawyer.

Ergo, James Earl Ray had to be guilty of killing King - for racist motives.


However, as with Lee Oswald, Maddow is also in the dark on Kershaw's shady background and how he actually played Ray. As reported in Wikipedia:

"Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. The magazine said that the test results showed "that Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone." Ray fired Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview and hired Mark Lane".

Playboy, in fact, did not have the expertise (at least its designated interviewer) to make that determination  and in any case it was conducted inappropriately without Ray or a genuine lawyer present for counsel - as opposed to an exploitative bloodsucker.

Kershaw's racism and role is also what a former black FBI agent (Donald Wilson) would have called a "red herring" as it had nothing to do with the actual case. Wilson, let us recall, was the agent who discovered James Earl Ray's abandoned white Mustang a week after King's killing -in an Atlanta parking lot. Inside the car he also discovered a set of papers, one of which had the name "Raul" written on it, and on another paper the phone number of the Atlanta FBI office.  Wilson withheld the papers and ten years later resigned from the Bureau ('The Assassinations', p. 479). In 1997, he copied portions of the uncovered papers and delivered them to the King family.

According to Wilson (p. 491, op. cit.):

"In my opinion King's assassination was not a black-white issue. It had nothing to do with racism.  The stories you read about whether Ray was or wasn't a racist are immaterial. That's a red herring. King wanted to redistribute the wealth of this country. That was a big turnaround for him. Now that got the attention of the shadow government people. A decision was made, he had to be eliminated"

Factoring into King's campaign for economic equity was his campaign against the Vietnam War which put him into Johnson's sights.  Johnson, ultimate architect of the war (via his National Security Action Memorandum 273 - then concocting the Tonkin Gulf pretext), could not have Martin Luther King 'crossing' him on Vietnam and fomenting protests against his policies. He also regarded it as 'backstabbing' after giving (grudging) support to King's Civil Rights program.

Further, Jack Kershaw was only one of dozens of Ray lawyers, and the more important counsel for him was William F. Pepper. It was he who finally brought the case  before a court- 32 years after King's murder- that "extended the responsibility for the assassination beyond the scapegoat James Early Ray to the United States government" according to James Douglass (Op. cit., 'The King Conspiracy in Memphis', p. 497)

Pepper, author of Orders to Kill, in a speech he gave on Feb. 4, 2003,  noted that what incepted his investigation into the King killing was an article  by journalist Steve Tompkins in the Memphis Commercial Appeal.  It dealt with the infiltration of the civil rights movement and black leaders by U.S. military intelligence.

The article showed that what transpired in the 50s, and 60s was a continuation of what had seized the American security state zeitgeist since the Russian Revolution. That is, that blacks were regarded as the prime candidates for being recruited as communists because they had the most motivation for revolution against the imperious white -controlling state.  Hoover suspected Rev. King was in this category as well, and used that to justify hounding him.

Pepper noted that "one paragraph" in particular caught his eye. It noted that on the day of Rev. King's  assassination there was in place a Special Forces Alpha 184 team, and no one understood at the time why this 6-man  sniper unit was present in Memphis. Pepper then approached Tompkins, observing this introduced a whole other dimension to the case - which was now not nearly as closed as the media would have had us believe.

Pepper's breakthrough (and what led to his book) arrived on learning that a film existed of the King assassination. It was in the hands of Army psyops (psychological operations) officers who had been in Memphis that day to take photographs of everything, everyone in the vicinity of the Lorraine Motel.  One of the officers, as Pepper noted - in his speech and in the book - just happened to spin his camera around on hearing the shot, toward the bushes in front of the motel.  The film held the clues Pepper needed and rather than do an injustice to the findings, I think blog readers need to get hold of the entire book, or at least avail themselves of this abbreviated account of Pepper's findings from the speech he gave:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/WFP020403.pdf

In the preceding, Pepper observes that:

"Martin King was killed because he had become intolerable.  It was not just that he opposed the war and was going to the bottom line of a number of the major corporations of the United States, those forces that essentially rule the world at this point in time - the transnational entities. But more importantly, I think the reason is because he was going to bring a mass of people to Washington in the spring of '68 and that was very troubling.

The military knew that once he started out bringing the wretched of America to camp out in the shadow of the Washington Memorial - and go every day to see their Senators and Congressmen - to try to get social program monies put back that were taken out because of the war- and they got rebuffed again and again they'd become increasingly angry. It was the assessment of the Army that he would lose control of that group."

Pepper goes on to indicate that had the event spiraled out of control there would not have been enough troops available to quell the violent (they suspected) results. Hence, taking out King removed the threat of instability.

My additional take is that LBJ wanted King's voice silenced once and for all. He'd gotten too much attention on the Vietnam issue, and it undermined LBJ's "great legacy" - having already taken control of all of Kennedy's ideas and programs and pushed them through. Let's also bear in mind the Army itself would have done nothing without the go ahead from the "commander- in-chief".

Sadly, all Maddow's good work (such as her documentary, 'Why We Did It' on the shady origin of the Iraq war) is overshadowed and undermined by her reluctance to delve into the deep politics of our history. Because without that deep politics understanding, including that Oswald was a pawn used by the national security state to gain power, her work echoes a shallow grasp of the political dynamics at work and the hidden forces subverting those dynamics, i.e. buried within the 'Deep state', see e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/54637/outing-the-deep-state


This is perhaps the most deceitful deep politics abuse of all, given the deep state and in particularly its national security operatives,  were responsible for carrying it out. The  cover-up of the facts by nominal liberals like Maddow.  is  perhaps understandable given that LBJ was the plausible architect of the hit, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/lbj-was-reluctant-warrior-it-doesnt.html

And Libs, desperate for would-be "canonized" heroes, are often prepared to latch on to anyone - given all the columns and pages Ronnie Raygun has managed to suck up. But LBJ,  given his venomous background in TX, is absolutely the wrong choice for any exaltation.

That he would extend his treachery to eliminating Martin Luther King. Jr. for his anti-Vietnam War and economics crusade, is therefore not beyond the pale.

No, 'This Baby' Won't Be Living To 142!

On the cover of a recent issue of TIME,  the 30 point font  to the side of an infant's  head proclaimed: 'This Baby Could Live To Be 142 YEARS OLD'  The  cover subtitle added:  "Dispatches from the Frontiers of Longevity" -but it could as well be posed as "Dispatches from the Frontiers of Laughability".. As per other news items that preceded it, we're asked to seriously believe newborn infants (especially Americans) will actually live to 142 years of age.  Reading the piece also becomes an exercise in cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we're inundated with all the ways "science" can make this happen, and on the other informed "but modern culture offers little in the way of treatments or cures for chronic disease that afflict older people".

So why the hell would anyone in his right mind want to exist past a certain age as a likely vegetable, suffering from Alzheimer's disease if there's no remote cure or effective treatment on the horizon?  That's the $64 question for which we're mostly just offered bafflegab and bollocks. Such as:  "It needn't be so...instead we might change the course biologically and socially".

Yeah, right! And anthropic Easter bunnies come to life on that day and hand out colored eggs in baskets, while tooth fairies deliver money in exchange for kids' teeth, and oh, by the way...LBJ  was too "decent" a man to have ever taken out JFK.  Don't TIME's cognoscenti give readers any credit for common sense? Ah well, that may be why TIME is mainly geared to the "Middle Mind" - once described by Curtis White as that vast landscape where controversy, reality and hard facts never rear their disputatious heads. All you have to do is "believe" and accept the words as substitutes for actions.

Or, as TIME's nabobs put it: "With sufficient financial support the potential for advances is breathtaking.."

Yeah, well, how about just extending life QUALITY instead of pie in the sky, ridiculous quantity? By which I mean, pouring money into Alzheimer's research which currently (at barely $0.5b a year) is vastly under funded compared to cancer and cardiology research. Do that, then I might believe most people have a chance of living to maybe 90 with some degree of life quality, independence and dignity as opposed to having their brains waste away in some long term care warehouse....errrr...nursing home... as veritable vegetables!

The other aspect that these longevity geniuses only touch on is the matter of financial support. How will the elderly maintain financial security and the implied independence until they finally shuffle off this mortal coil? We are only treated to assorted nibbles and hollow promises, such as that corporations "will have to change" and hire more oldsters. Right, and if you put your money on that you'd lose more than if you'd bet on the Bears to win SB XLIX last year at this time in a Vegas Sports book.

As I already noted (post of Feb 27) $550,000 net worth is probably okay for most to have a comfortable 20 years of retirement.  This would be until roughly age 85. Now extend that to 95 but with 2 percent inflation (conservatively) factored in each year and you come to $770,000. Take the tally on to age 105 and you are looking at $880,000 and to 115 we get, $990,000 and to 125 you're at $1.1 million and to 135 you're at $1.21 million.  We haven't  reached 142 yet, and I've not even factored into the mix medical inflation - including for prescription drug costs - and the fact that Medicare may only be in  voucher form by 2020. (Meaning seniors will have to pay most of the costs) And finally, for a wake up call compliments of CBS finance analyst Jill Schlesinger: 38 million Americans don't even have retirement accounts!

How does this reality square with TIME"s "longevity dispatches" fantasies? Well, it doesn't!

TIME also assumes in its prologue to the initial piece that: "Everyone wants to live longer", but that desire comes with caveats galore for rational folk . For example, why would anyone today,  at say age 67 or 68,  want to live to even 100 when numerous "hells" are set to be unleashed especially as climate change- global warming enters its ultimate phase?

If you think the climate hiccups being experienced now - including the constant polar vortex intrusions - are a big deal, stay tuned for the first year of no seasons and ensuing heat waves lasting 90-120 days with mean temperatures 100-110F. Even before then, say by 2025-2030 we will likely see electrical blackouts over extended periods, water shutdowns (or breakdowns of decaying urban water delivery systems, since we haven't done shit to repair them) and even power grids collapsing from excess demand - with tens of millions trying to "stay cool",  keeping thermostats at 81F.

You really want to stretch your years out to live in those conditions?  REALLY? Well sure, the richest one percent will because they can afford to - living in their golden -gated condos far from the decaying cities that will have no backup power. Just as the wealthy now enjoy nice clean air and water because the frackers mostly won't go near  their upscale environs. No, they prefer to crank out their  fracking effluent near where the poorer populations live.  Those who will get the cancers and lung diseases that they won't be able to treat because the medical costs will bankrupt them. 

On the positive side, and there is a little bit, there are a few nuggets of useful advice in the several articles that can enable people to enhance their health and life quality. Examples: meditating - to "extend length of telomeres " to delay aging, and just "jumping up and down 20 times a day can improve bone density". But these are relegated too far to the latter pages while the longevity Pollyannas bloviate over the front pages.

 Sure, we'd all like to live to 142, or maybe just 100 -  if we've already entered the gray zone - but only if we can retain all our 'marbles' and also have the funds to support ourselves without having to beg on the street for dimes or leftover cat food. Oh, and only if the world and conditions coming fast at us won't be replicating another Venus!

On Space Aliens, Scientology, Yeti - the JFK Assassination – And ‘Teaching Pigs to Whistle’

Should the Kennedy assassination and UFOs even be discussed in the same critical piece?

In an intriguing article (‘Black and White and Gray’) in the October/November issue of ‘Port of Call’ (Region VII Newsletter for Intertel) Dr. Steve Mason proposes the question:

“How do you determine if an individual has a reasonable grasp on reality?”

But, of course, many would opine it’s a loaded question and automatically respond: Well WHO is doing the testing? Does the person – in the matter of the question at hand – have his own grasp of reality  (especially knowledge) on the subject, or is he just fooling himself?  Is he merely a therp or psychologist, lacking knowledge or expertise on the specific matter? Then his assessment can’t be worth much. (Mason himself observes that “between Relativity and Quantum Physics there is a lot of gray”. Indeed! Particles behaving as waves, one electron passing through two diffraction holes at the same time, etc.)

In many matters, such as the belief in things like the Loch Ness monster, UFOs (as actual alien craft monitoring us 24/7), Scientology’s clearing of “engrams” and Abominable Snowmen (Yeti), it isn’t a matter so much of grasp of reality as distorted reality. Somehow the people invested in these beliefs (which mean, btw, accepting something as factual without evidence) have allowed their overall grasp of integrated reality to be distorted by an emphasis on a “one trick pony” (e.g. UFOs as alien craft) which robs their ability to profoundly grasp the rest of what’s going on in our world.  But I assign the same sort of distortion to those who never read books and only get their ‘news’ from comedy shows, or who have their nose stuck in smart phones tweeting nonsense all day long.

 The issue of who assigns “reality” is also key. And also, just what constitutes it?  Is it based on one type of perception, or multiple ones as well as reasoning in terms of those. Well, I have what I call an ‘integrated reality’ test which I will post next so people can see how they do. It isn’t predicated on asking nonsense questions for way out beliefs (whether in Yeti or 4” high fairies that speak Gaelic) but rather real world attention and response to real world issues – whether in economics, politics or basic science.

 In his article Dr. Steve notes that “for many years” it was his job to “judge the sanity of others”. He wrote that “if they said I was the one who was crazy then I knew for sure they were nutters” – which is a fair response. But then again, it depends on the issues being discussed. And rather than calling someone “crazy” a better question is: How well informed is the person regarding the issue under debate?

 Is what is referenced as a “nutball” issue really that, or is it purely a product of inattentive orthodoxy which – as author Curtis White noted in his book, The Middle Mind- is all about preserving a politically vanilla landscape which doesn’t tolerate challenges to the order paradigm. White's contention, well supported in his book, is that an entire government -corporate PR - academic specialist structure “exists to manage the public mind.” This is to ensure its collective thoughts don't veer too far off the orthodox path, or into realms that seriously question or challenge the powers-that -be. As he puts it (p.12):

"We have the lovely pretense of serious inquiry: no one gets hurt and no one has to worry that something undesirable might come of it. Like a demand for real thought. We are free to say anything we like so long as what we say does not suggest...that the ruling order has no right to rule"

     IF one then asserted JFK was murdered as part of a coup d'etat, to enable  a national security state elite takeover of the government, then this comes close to saying the same thing. 

 

Psychologists, as author Chris Hedges has warned ('Empire of Illusion', p. 129), bear particular scrutiny. As Hedges observes:

 

"Psychologists, in and out of government, have learned how to manipulate social behavior. "

 

He goes on to note that such manipulation has as its primary objective an adherence to conformity, especially of thought. (The cult of "positive psychology" is particularly involved in this, but psychologists are also part of the CIA's ongoing psych agenda, as first demonstrated in "Operation Mockingbird")

 

The dispassionate observer and especially those of us trained in deep politics also need to be wary of the conflation bogey which even Dr. Mason manifested in his Port of Call piece.. For example, while trotting out the clearly whacky beliefs such as Raelism,  Scientology and Yeti, he also drags in the JFK assassination while observing:

“There are those who believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy involving LBJ, the CIA, the FBI and maybe even Lee Harvey Oswald – but the jury is out on the last one,.”

But it is exactly here where he crosses the line from a logical assessment of extreme fringe beliefs to a real world political case and for which an actual conspiracy has more than ample evidence to support it (based on files released since 1993). This also leads one to ask if he is really qualified to say anything about the event even peripherally or via invoking sarcasm. For example, I don’t take seriously anyone’s opinion if s/he can’t first pass a basic test to do with the actual constellation of accepted facts in the case, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/05/basic-test-on-kennedy-assassination-can.html

 The aim of the test is to expose the lack of actual knowledge concerning a real historical event, say as opposed to mere anecdotes or rumors concerning a mythical entity like the Yeti, Loch Ness monster or “Big foot”.  If then a person can’t even get at least 18 correct then he isn’t qualified to discuss the assassination – or even offer quips. And if he isn’t qualified to discuss the event then he’s not qualified to discuss a conspiracy pertaining to it.

 For example, Dr. Mason - as is usually the wont of JFK conspiracy skeptics or phobics (like Marilyn Elias of the SPLC)  indiscriminately bundles possible components together without any explanation or clarification.  Thus, when the untutored reader reads the passage highlighted above – with seemingly unrelated components (FBI, LBJ, CIA) muddied together, it appears that the whole conception of conspiracy is absurd. But that has been the intent of the 'Mockingbird' media for as long as I can recall.  (Google: “Operation Mockingbird”). Is Dr. Steve part of the Operation Mockingbird axis? Hardly. He’s just a specialist – like many others – probably unaware of it, because he hasn’t done enough investigation and research on his own. But this is precisely why HE is the one responsible here for distorting others’ perceptions regarding the JFK case.

If one intelligently grasps that the ones who actually carried out  the deed are separate from the architects, then he also sees it's egregious to conflate actors as if they are all distinct possible conspirators to the same degree and with the same objectives.  But had Steve Mason really done his  preliminary work (after deciding he’d interject a few lines on the JFK conspiracy) using texts such as Donald Gibson's 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency',   he'd have seen how the CIA, Oil, Banking, and the Military-Industrial Complex have been in bed together for decades.  He’d also have seen how close LBJ and Hoover (not the WHOLE FBI) were, and both had much to lose if JFK was re-elected. LBJ for his role in the Bobby Baker scandal and Hoover for his role in covering up the earlier (1962) assassination threats directed at JFK from Carlos Marcello (see Mark North’s excellent book, ‘Act of Treason’)

 As for LBJ,  no one - including me-  has said he was an active participant. But no one other than a dunderhead (like Vince Bugliosi) would deny he stood to gain immensely if JFK was knocked off - since Kennedy planned to dump him from the 1964 ticket on account of the political damage from the Bobby Baker scandal.  Knowing this, and there's little doubt he did, all LBJ had to do is nominally assent to an existing plan, probably made aware of it by Allen Dulles or Hoover. NO documents need have been signed, or actual vocal indications given.  What is the evidence? Look no further then all the material evidence (the limo with bullet-marked windshield, actually taken apart re-assembled, the suit coat, and a curb stone near where James Tague was struck)  “lost” or destroyed in the immediate aftermath – following Johnson’s swearing in and being in control of the Secret Service, the autopsy team at Bethesda (where JFK's brain oddly "disappeared")  etc.

 Mason next tries to skirt all these issues – after he’s basically knocked all  past and recent JFK researchers – by appealing to an old and tired meme: that all of us humans are “pre-disposed as hard-wired pattern seekers”. So the evolutionary instincts that served us long ago, i.e. seeing patterns in the bush betraying evidence for the presence of tigers or snakes, are now re-directed to searching for patterns of conspiracy or some form of outer control.

Of course this is bollocks. First, just because pattern perception was valuable once doesn’t mean it has ceased to be in certain cases (e.g. disturbed articles in rooms of one's home betraying an intruder's presence). And second, the assessing of a real conspiracy entails far more than perceiving a pattern. It also entails examination of hard evidence – such as the Warren fraud generated – and analyzing it using physics and human anatomy, see e.g. the approach used herein:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_15.html

 As I carefully showed in the above link, the uncovering of the fraudulent nature of the Warren Commission Report is step one in uncovering one branch  (the cover up) of the three-pronged conspiracy.. This was perhaps most crucial because it meant bending the minds – or trying to – of millions of Americans to the false conclusions of the Warren Commission, and that was ultimately Johnson’s creation. The two other prongs – as noted by deep politics researcher Peter Dale Scott were: 1) the framing of Lee Oswald, see e.g. the clear role of the CIA in laying the groundwork for Oswald to be the patsy:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee_1807.html

And the actual assassination itself – carried out by at least three teams in a triangulation of cross fire. (As evidenced by the bullet numbers, trajectories and directions) That Oswald himself couldn’t have been involved has been demonstrated by the fact that his alleged rifle couldn’t even be operated  – couldn’t be tested properly in the aftermath, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-fhe-jfk.html

 Again, the above  rifle test trials aren’t based on simple “patterns” or perceptions of such, but actual physical tests of the purported rifle used, and carried out by a team of experts. No one who has thoroughly understood the consequences of the tests would remotely believe Lee Oswald was involved in the assassination, other than as a patsy. As for Peter Dale Scott, he's repeatedly warned of the media's role in conflating all three conspiracy legs when discussing the assassination, But this could likely be part of the Mockingbird disinformation plan.

 Mason ends his piece by somewhat lamenting the hyper-speculative, 'belief in anything' state of affairs, in terms of those who propose “fringe” entities and  conspiracies, but also likely those who've researched the JFK conspiracy, i.e. with LBJ, the CIA and Hoover involved at some level (clearly Steve has not):

“So what do you say to someone who tries to fill you in….Absolutely nothing. It’s like trying to teach a pig to whistle. It wastes your time and it annoys the hell out of the pig.”

Teaching pigs to whistle? (Bad analogy, Steve!) What Mason is getting at is that it’s futile to attempt to stop people from searching for patterns and applying them to real life, but often coming up with “unseen” jabberwocky like Alien anti-grav craft monitoring humans 24/7, or discharging engrams through Scientology or tracking Yeti in the Himalayas. 

 But what it doesn’t address is the uncovering (often by diligent work-research) of hard evidence in actual historical events such as the JFK assassination. What about confirmation bias? As a scientist I’m trained to always examine assumptions and facts brought to bear to ensure I am not merely confirming what I already suspect, or selectively extracting only evidence that comports with a hypothesis. I’ve faithfully practiced that not only in my past research into solar flares and sunspot morphology, but also in the JFK case. By such assiduous practice, as I noted in my recent book ‘The JFK Assassination – The Final Analysis’ ,  I have been able to eliminate the hypothesis that “Oswald dunnit” otherwise known as the “lone nut” hypothesis. It fails on so many counts that it doesn't even make the serious threshold and only a naïve or untutored person would accept it.

 Would that others (e.g. Marilyn Elias, Glen Garvin, Steve Mason etc)  could summon the same energy before commenting on a case they know little or nothing about – and especially conflating it with truly marginal or fringe beliefs, examples.  This  tactic confers little benefit in helping people distinguish ideas-beliefs- theories  of merit from those without, while also calling into question their own credibility.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/conspiracies-and-belief-separating.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/11/cam-americans-distinguish-conspiracy.html

and:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/even-liberals-can-be-victims-of.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-southern-poverty-law-center-still.html