{"id":58373,"date":"2021-06-25T06:44:15","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T11:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58373"},"modified":"2021-06-25T06:44:15","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T11:44:15","slug":"the-conspiracy-theory-charade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58373","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Conspiracy Theory\u2019 Charade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u2018Conspiracy Theory\u2019 Charade<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

How government and media use the phrase to suppress opposition.by<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Biden\u2019s \u201cNational Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism\u201d<\/a>\u00a0report last week declared that \u201cenhancing faith in American democracy\u201d requires \u201cfinding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.\u201d\u00a0In recent decades, conspiracy theories have multiplied almost as fast as government lies and cover-ups<\/strong>. While many allegations have been ludicrously far-fetched, the political establishment and media routinely attach the \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d label to any challenge to their dominance.<\/p>\n

According\u00a0to Cass Sunstein<\/a>, Harvard Law professor and Obama\u2019s regulatory czar, a conspiracy theory is \u201can effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.\u201d Reasonable citizens are supposed to presume that government creates trillions of pages of new secrets each year for their own good, not to hide anything from the public.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

In the early 1960s, conspiracy theories were practically a non-issue because 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government. Such credulity did not survive the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Seven days after Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson created a commission (later known as the Warren Commission) to suppress controversy about the killing. Johnson and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover browbeat the commission members into speedily issuing a report rubberstamping the \u201ccrazed lone gunman\u201d version of the assassination. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, a member of the commission, revised the final staff report to change the location of where the bullet entered Kennedy\u2019s body, thereby salvaging Hoover\u2019s so-called \u201cmagic bullet\u201d theory. After the Warren Commission findings were ridiculed as a whitewash, Johnson ordered the FBI to conduct wiretaps on the report\u2019s critics. To protect the official story, the commission sealed key records for 75 years. Truth would out only after all the people involved in any coverup had gotten their pensions and died.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u2018Conspiracy Theory\u2019 Charade How government and media use the phrase to suppress opposition.by Biden\u2019s \u201cNational Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism\u201d\u00a0report last week declared that \u201cenhancing faith in American democracy\u201d requires \u201cfinding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.\u201d\u00a0In recent decades, conspiracy theories have multiplied almost as fast as government lies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11096,135,158,24297,379,1372,10969,31366,8530,512,815,843,12368],"class_list":["post-58373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-cass-sunstein","tag-cia","tag-conspiracy","tag-conspiracy-theories-2","tag-government","tag-jfk","tag-jfk-assassination","tag-jim-bovard","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-media","tag-trust","tag-us-government","tag-warren-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58374,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58373\/revisions\/58374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}