Is It True? Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, And A World Of Assumptions

It feels good to be right, a confidence deep down in the bones, a certainty that dispels all doubts, beliefs that give purpose and meaning to an otherwise dreary existence. Certain things simply feel right and need no further reflection.  

According to some there is an international Jewish conspiracy.  The Old Testament makes it clear that the Jews are God's chosen people and can therefore act with righteous impunity, controlling international finance, Hollywood, and geopolitics. 

American right wing conspirators, say progressives, are out to establish an ultra-conservative regime which will subjugate women, restore Jim Crow, institute Christian theocracy, and return the economy to a Robber Baron laissez-faire state.

JFK was murdered not be a lone gunman but right-wing operatives, FBI informants, CIA black ops personnel, international bankers, and Cuban assassins. 

9/11 was not the work of Islamic terrorists but by a cabal of Pentagon strategists and right-wing zealots who designed the attack on the Twin Towers to justify military adventurism and the creation of an Orwellian state of siege and internal terror. 

Why do people go off the rails and look for answers in the realm of fantasy? Some of the earliest work on the subject in the 60s was by Hofstadter who suggested psychopathology:

The paranoid style is a result of 'uncommonly angry minds' whose judgment is somehow distorted, said Hofstadter; and following in the same vein some scholars came to view conspiracy theories as a product of psychopathology, such as extreme paranoia, delusional ideation or narcissism.  In this view the delusional aspect of conspiratorial beliefs results in an incapacity for social or political action. 

To the extent that conspiracy theories fill a need for certainty, it is thought that they may gain more widespread acceptance when establishment or mainstream explanations contain erroneous information, discrepancies, or ambiguities. A conspiracy theory helps explain these ambiguities and provides a convenient alternative to living with uncertainty.  Or that the human desire for explanations of all natural phenomena aids the conspiracist in the quest for public acceptance.  

In very simple terms, many people are already disposed for various reasons to mistrust 'the facts' and have already internalized a belief that something is or is not true. 

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of conspiracy theories is that once you have adopted one theory on the basis of internalized feelings, selective 'evidence', and socio-pathological needs, you easily adopt others.  

Conspiracy theories aside, the tendency to make conclusions on presumptive, incomplete, or highly selective evidence is common. No issue being debated today is settled, despite its currency. Critical information is deliberately overlooked so not to upset the applecart. 

Abortion rights advocates, convinced that abortion has only to do with women's civil rights, and therefore ignore its moral and religious implications.  Popes John Paul II and Francis have talked compelling of expediency and charged women with acting out of narrow, practical interests, refusing to admit the moral and social consequences of their actions. 

Black activists conveniently ignore the systemic problems of the inner city and its persistent dysfunction. They operate on the assumption that white elitism, racism, and ingrained capitalist opportunism are the causes for social and moral incoherence in black neighborhoods - not the culture of entitlement, refusal to accept personal responsibility, and moral failure.

The meme, once broadcast, becomes viral.  The black man can do no wrong.  He is the inheritor of a superior racial history, one of African communal harmony, sensitivity to the natural environment, and of high spiritual evolution; and has been deprived of a voice because of white supremacy, greed, and ignorance. 

Gay and transgender activists insist that sex is a fungible quality - sex at birth is nothing but a 19th century, outdated and outmoded construct; and persistent claims to unique heterosexual legitimacy are nothing more than Biblical cant and Christian conditioning. 

All of these beliefs, once they become viral, are impossible to counter. Those who seek certainty and political righteousness willingly join the crowd.  It feels good to march with others for abortion, against climate change, and for the black man, homosexuals, and women. Codicils, caveats, and on-the-one-hand arguments have are not part of the libretto. Singing in one voice confers identity, meaning, and purpose. 

What is common to all true believers, and why they are so passionate about their causes is the need to belong? Without belief, belonging and purpose, we are only Lear's 'poor, bare, forked animal' condemned to live without respite in Hobbes' brutish, nasty world. 

Yet true belief and belonging breed intolerance, and America has become an angry, divided and divisive place, seemingly more so than ever before.  In today's electronic age, it is easier than ever to proclaim and spread beliefs no matter how irrational, and to attack others for their disbelief. 

Adherence to causes, therefore, is not surprising.  The promotion of a healthier climate or social reform are not simply political aspirations but moral choices.  It is wrong, say progressives, to sit back and let the world warm.  Social activism is a good higher than individual spiritual evolution or satisfaction of personal desires.  So not only is belief in a cause righteous and good, it is an expression of a superior moral attitude. 

Last but not least is the psycho-social phenomenon of perception.  Psychologists and sociologists have long been aware that perception is always subjective, influenced by assumptions and past experience.  Two eye witnesses are bound to see the same thing in different ways.  A devout Muslim will read his own assumptions about non-Muslims into the Old Testament.  A fundamentalist Christian will assume that Armageddon is near because of world disorder, distortion of traditional values, and perverted notions of social equality.  

God destroyed the world once, tried without success a second time (Sodom and Gomorrah), and promises in Revelation to do it once more, finally. How the true believer interprets signs of coming doom depends, like everything else, on assumptions, past influences, and disposition.  

Robert Browning, Lawrence Durrell, and Akira Kurosawa were but three of many artists who portrayed the fallibility of perception and the perennial predominance of subjectivity over objectivity.  Four observers, four different takes on 'reality'.   

Given what seems to be this common wisdom, it is hard to understand why so many are so self-assured and dismissive other's views.  The fragility of the notion of settled anything, absolute truth, undeniable objective fact should be obvious. 

A Woman Who Knew Her Place - The Saga Of A Harvard Call Girl

Alison Whitfield had been an exceptional student at Harvard – summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and mention in the Crimson as one of the university’s up and coming stars.  Alison had not declared her plans by graduation and intimated that a year off would be a needed respite from her studies and would give her time to assess her life, but assured everyone that she would not disappear.  ‘Watch this space’, she said.

Alison had grown up in a patrician family of proper Bostonian lineage, part of the Davenport expedition to Connecticut that left the oppressive, puritanical Massachusetts Bay Colony for the more tolerant communities and promising territory along the Connecticut shore.  

There were few English settlers there when the Davenport party arrived, trappers and traders who did business with the Pequots and Mohegans, but in a short time the New Haven Plantation prospered.  It had a wide and protected harbor, fertile lands, and friendly Indians.  

The Whitfield family remained in New Haven for generations, although one branch left for what were considered even more ideal reaches in New Jersey. The Whitfields who remained married well,  became deans and deacons of Yale University, and were active in the southern branch of the Newport Three-Cornered Trade. 

Alison’s mother’s side of the family was equally reputable, having come with the first English settlers of Jamestown, settled along Albemarle Sound until they moved to Norfolk and much later to Richmond.  Rebecca Palmer’s ancestors had settled the Northern Neck and were among the associates of King Carter whose vast holdings produced tobacco and wealth for the King.

The Palmers were given especially good land by Carter, and they invested their wealth in the new cities of the Tidewater.  Her great-great uncles fought against the British in the Revolutionary War and later generations for the Confederacy.

In short, Alison’s pedigree was impeccable.  While she was called out for her family’s participation in the slave trade (Whitfield-owned sailing ships had brought slaves to the Caribbean as part of the slave-molasses-rum trade) and for fighting for the Confederacy (Palmer ancestors had served with valor at Chancellorsville), she was nonplussed.  It was the valor of the officers who fought for the South and the enterprise of the merchants who built New England into an economic power which counted, not the socio-political context of the day.

 ‘Racist!’ was shouted so often with such increasingly marginal logic, it became to Alison as inoffensive as Christmas sugar plums.

Much to the consternation of the women in the ranks of Harvard’s progressive caucus – dour, unattractive, short, and remarkably plain – Alison was beautiful.  She had inherited all the best physical genes of both mother and father, and was to every man on campus, stunning.  She was as classically beautiful as Catherine Deneuve, an ironic similarity because of the profession Alison chose – not acting, but the life of a courtesan as played by Deneuve in Belle de Jour.

Alison reveled in the contradictions of Harvard life.  She was hated by the progressive radicals who had become the campus arbiters of status, social posture, and right speech and who was jealously loathed by the feminists who, despite their outrage and righteous gender activism, wanted to be her; and she was loved by all men.

Political radicals swallowed their pride and images of slave ships and Confederate officers, and did whatever it took to ingratiate themselves with her; the few conservatives on campus were far more forthright and forward; and every other creed, race, ethnicity, or political persuasion made some kind of a play.  

She was a golden goddess for affirmative action black men who had always dreamed – again, against type and political advocacy – of making love to a beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed white girl.  She was the final rung of the ladder of assimilation for Jews, Hispanics, and Asians.  Hardcore gay men found themselves looking her way.

Alison’s looks alone could not account for such attractiveness any more than Marilyn Monroe’s universal, lasting, permanent appeal.  Both women had an indefinable allure, a sexuality that defied category or description.  Something they were born with and developed as they came to understand their particular, irresistible sexual magnetism.

In the Louis Bunuel film, Belle de Jour, Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve), a young and beautiful housewife, is unable to share physical intimacy with her husband despite their love for each other. Her sexual life is restricted to elaborate fantasies involving domination, sadomasochism, and bondage. 

Although frustrated by his wife's frigidity toward him, he respects her wishes. Severine learns that a common friend is a prostitute at a high-class brothel and she decides to work there.  It will be the perfect place for her to render physical her sexual fantasies and to engage in the even more unconventional desires of the men she services.

Severine is not, according to Bunuel, a disturbed woman, a frustrated nymphomaniac, a Freudian case study; but a highly mature woman who has never been trapped within the confines of the bourgeoisie. She knowingly and purposefully enters the anti-social world of prostitution and is excited by the notion that she – beautiful, aristocratic, educated – can become a call girl.   

It is both a statement of exaggerated possibility – no one needs ever to be trapped – and one of social opprobrium.  The middle class is by nature neutering, inhibiting, and pedestrian.

It was for similar reasons that Alison Whitfield became a high-class call girl in Washington, DC.  She, like the Deneuve character, felt that her sexual adventure – the prostitution of an aristocratic beauty to the crude desires of anonymous men – would be an expression of will and domination.  In its perversity – hundreds of men lining up to be with her, bribing the madam, pleading their privilege and position; and she doing what she wanted, pushing the johns’ particularly unusual sexuality to its limits – it was supremely validating.

Alison was not a vengeful or vindictive woman, and her decision to keep a call book had nothing to do with the ignorance of her accusers at Harvard.  It was only the most interesting twist of her transformation, of her new profession.

She knew the politicians who came to her, especially those who had publicly condemned the abusive treatment of women, had trashed male libido and sexual pursuit, and verbally castrated every man who refused to endorse No Means No.  They came into her bedroom sheepishly, trying to gin up some self respect and personal cover, but buried themselves in her like rutting hogs and then thanked her and thanked her again.

She liked the White House advisors whose hour with her was simply a for-pay interlude in a diverse and active social life.  No questions asked, no apologies given.  Commercial sex was simply a variation, not an anomaly or perversion.  It fit right in with the sexual agenda of their days. A generous tip, a kiss on the cheek, respect, good will, and no refunds ever asked for.

She never considered holding back the evidence, the names, dates, times and even requests of the liberal johns.  The book was compiled and maintained only for publication.  When the time was right – when progressive sanctimony was at its most intolerable worst – she would make known who had been in her bed.

She was not run out of town when she went public.  She was too smart to get herself tarred and feathered; and she knew that as much as Congressman X or Lobbyist Y might say that they hated her for her treachery, all they wanted was one more roll in the hay before she left town.  Besides, she had plenty of well-paid cover.

With her considerable earnings and the private income left by both her mother and father who had never suspected the truth about her ‘K Street job’ she moved to Montana, bought a ranch in Paradise Valley, raised cattle and sheep, joined the Livingston Players, and lived to a ripe old age.

In Search Of Excellence - Talent, Expectation, Ambition And The Corrosive Nature Of 'Diversity'

 The Harvard Red Book is a collection of diaries published for each five-year reunion.  The essays are tributes to Harvard's unique education which respects both the moral precepts of its Puritan founders and the pursuit of academic excellence.  Perhaps more than anything Harvard has always conferred a sense of confidence, duty, and purpose, and the Red Book is a chronicle of how graduating students have applied what they have learned - how this sense of intellectual achievement, ethos of high learning, and culture of purposeful ambition has affected their lives. 

The first five-year Red Book is not only a story of first career choices, but the alterations in career paths taken - changes in direction which show both the versatility and supreme confidence of early alumni.  Many, persuaded that the law would be the best conduit for the disciplined learning and rigorous logic acquired at Harvard and immediately went to law school, decided that it was not for them.  Despite the personal and financial investment, confinement in a predictable place was not to be; and on they went to new careers in art, music, medicine, and science. 

This particular Harvard ethos was best exemplified by the Kennedy Administration which, according to historian David Halberstam in his book, The Best and the Brightest, was comprised of a community of Harvard men, all of whom shared the same intellectual brilliance, desire for patriotic service, and commitment to the foundational values of John Harvard and later Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams. 

While such a sense of intellectual and moral superiority had its downside - an overweening assumption of moral right and an often overvalued estimation of personal ability - the Kennedy White House comprised a unique genius cluster; talented men who had made their mark in business, finance, law, and academia, and who welcomed the opportunity to serve a young president who was certain to revitalize the country after the quiescence of the Eisenhower years. 

Kennedy made no apologies for the elite, privileged character of his appointees.  He, unlike the homey, populist Lyndon Johnson who was to follow him, valued intelligence, talent, and style above all else.  There was no room in the White House of an impatient, ambitious president for 'representation'.  Unlike current Democratic presidents who want their administrations to 'look like America', Kennedy wanted his to look like Harvard and Beacon Hill.

Harvard has always valued the process of learning as importantly as the subjects learned; and once a student has become quick and adept at logical analysis and fluent expression of the conclusions obtained, he can master any discipline.  Kennedy expected his Cabinet and staff to contribute to all policy discussions.  Intelligence was not a siloed trait.  War was a complex enterprise and battlefield strategy was but only one of the factors determining engagement.  Presidential policy decisions relied on comprehensive analysis and in Kennedy's mind his smart men were capable of providing a broad but focused review.  

The hardest thing for this elite group to do was to shed prior assumptions - perhaps the one classical element of disciplined reasoning that trumped all others.  Hard as it was to ignore the assumptions about monolithic Communism, Russian and Chinese hegemony, and the universal expansionist notions of Marxism, such objective reasoning was essential to solving the puzzle of conflict.  Surprisingly few of Kennedy's coterie could manage such analyitical objectivity; but they at least were not given to the random, conspiratorial interpretations of the unschooled. Better brilliance with holes than pedestrian consistency. 

The best managers today whether in the public or private sector, choose their staff according to the very same principles as Kennedy.  Choose candidates from Harvard and you will be at least assured of a fungible intelligence, an ability to sift through clutter, to decide rationally and objectively.  Figuring out the nuts and bolts will come.  Of course some degree of specialization will always be required; but good managers can always tap technical resources and use them as needed.  The success of all programs depends on good judgment, an array of talents and skills coalesced into a well-functioning whole, an understanding and appreciation of environmental, exogenous factors, and eyes on the prize - tunnel vision focus on outcomes. 

The culture of 'inclusivity' and 'diversity' is antithetical to this notion of intellectual excellence. The culture of identity places a premium on race, gender, and ethnicity; and focuses more on democratic populism than inherent brilliance. For all Harvard's insistence on affirmative action, it is still regarded by many as an elite place, too far removed from the common people, the oppressed, and the minority poor to be of relevance.  Better minority applicants with a public school record than members of an insular elite who ipso facto are far removed from the unwashed. 

Like it or not, inclusivity and diversity represent a dumbing down of American culture, for by its very nature it values intelligence and talent less than racial, gender, or ethnic identity.  A company as intellectually heady as that of the Kennedy Administration but without diversity cannot stand.

'Diversity' corrupts at all levels.  Primary schools which should be the crucibles of intellectual excellence have lost all authority as they promote the idea of 'multiple intelligences'. Coloring between the lines, singing a tune, or running fast are equal in importance to high performance in math and reading.  Secondary schools are in turn forced to accommodate these ill-prepared students and do so by devising courses which make learning 'more accessible' - familiar offerings about the black experience or visual aides to prompt the most basic reading skills.  

Universities abiding by affirmative action assumptions, admit students with few real academic qualifications - students who will quickly fall behind, drop out, or graduate with few of the skills and abilities to make them viable, productive citizens. 

Companies, under pressure to become more diverse, hire these graduates and suffer the consequences. It is the turn of the screw with no remediation in sight. 

Progressives have succeeded in their principal intention - to disassemble elites and to ensure the patchwork quilt of America where color, sex, and street culture replace brilliance, enterprise, and ambition - but they and we will pay the price.  Our adversaries - Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea - can only laugh at America's dissolution, a country with no universal moral center, no national ethos, no regard for history or historical determinism.  A country of whim and incidental policy.