Ebeneezer, Conspiracy Theories, and Misunderstanding Occam's Razor

Ebeneezer, a very good friend of mine, is probably one of the more interesting people I know. He is, first of all, bright and clever -always a welcome combination (or not). Moreover, he is a man of extreme talent, ever ready to learn something new, whether in music, technology, or cooking fish. He has also studied political science, history, and psychology whilst in college and when completing his masters, but for some reason hates discussing any of these topics. Be it some dinner conversation on Brazil's future or some musing (at, say, a bar) on the political economy, Ebeneezer, for whatever reason, dislikes (or so he tells us) discussing these or similar matters.

He also gets extremely annoyed when someone does indeed start discussing history, political science, or psychology and says that a certain event has taken place for something other than the simplest of reasons. (This would be Neezer's insistence on Occam's Razor, though he's getting the definition wrong, as most people do, confusing topicality with simplicity). Like when I insist that the latest war in Iraq began for reasons other than messianism (i.e., bringing Jesus and free markets to those heathen Muslim protectionists for the sake of all civilization). According to him, these are conspiracy theories and therefor ridiculous.

Like many, many others, my friend of old assumes that there are no conspiracies, that people do not get together and conspire to do a, b, or c. Funny and tragic at the same time: being from Brazil, he should understand that not only do many conspiracy theories exist, but some of them are no longer theories, such as Globo Television attempting to defraud the 1982 Rio de Janeiro elections for Governor. To Ebeneezer, this would be absurd: never would Globo's owner, Roberto Marinho, do such a thing! Never would he have such power! Then again, there's that BBC documentary from 1993, Beyond Citizen Kane, which Globo had courts prohibit from circulating in Brazil, and the very helpful book on Globo by V.C Brittos and C.R.S. Bolaño, which detail (beyond doubt, in my opinion) just how powerful Marinho was and Globo continues to be. Ebeneezer would do well to check out these sources, but something tells me he won't.

As Noam Chomsky once observed (actually, he did so many times, since he is incredibly repetitive), a lot of folks, usually from sectors of the establishment, like to dismiss any notion that several individuals might conspire against the public good as, again, conspiracy theories. They do so with disgust, a frown or menacing look on their faces. So when we suggest Florida's Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris, helped steal the 2000 election for George W. Bush, it's a conspiracy theory. When it is pointed out that wars are started to increase corporate profits, (amongst other reasons, obviously) we're lunatics, the kind of people that think no one ever landed on the moon. When it is suggested that the American Media purposefully presents the Israel-Palestine conflict in a very biased fashion, with an obvious favoritism towards the Jewish State, we're crazy, prone to hateful "anti-semitic" propaganda (the quotes are due to the fact that anti-semitic is used in a mistaken fashion in the US and much of the world, implying that only Jews are Semites). And, of course, the latest episode recently seen in the news showing a willingness by some of its major participants to conspire against the public good is the latest financial crisis, with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke continuously cheating the American public out of hundreds of billions, soon to be trillions of dollars to help out banks, financial institutions, and other major corporations that, since the eighties (at least), have been making one outrageous mistake after another, creating a shitball of ill-conceived choices that has ultimately led us to the present state of things -that, my friends, is just hippie Marxist ranting.

I'm sure Neezer would simply read a post like this and piss all over it, since it is presumably full of crap: to my good friend, Iraq was but a series of debacles born of dumbfounding incompetence, oil was never a real issue; Globo and its (thankfully) now-defunct owner Marinho aren't/weren't as powerful or mean-spirited as they are/were made out to be; the 2000 US Presidential election was never stolen, it was simply organization incompetence at work; wars are started with a dynamic all their own (very true), but never due to private interests (laughable); Israel just chanced into unbridled, unquestioning support from the American government and population; and Paulson and Bernanke would never act out of naked self-interest or to shamelessly help out their rich finance mates. In Ebeneezer's magical world, when something doesn't happen in a vacuum, we can always understand events as people fucking up or getting really lucky; otherwise, the explanation's faulty. There are no class interests, folks don't conspire, people don't scheme.

Again, it would be funny were it not tragic; it's like a brilliant mind going to waste. Ultimately, I understand complaints that the lament I just uttered in this post is without importance, for indeed it is; actually, this post is here just so I can tell Ebeneezer, should he ever again make fun of my "tendency to believe in conspiracy theories", that he can go fuck himself, with evidence provided. But all kidding aside, I do hope that this post might help my ever-talented, ever-skeptical good friend and bandmate to see the world is actually more complicated than his misreading of Occam's Razor would have him believe.

Obs. 1: Neezer, in case you're wondering: yes, I love you, and for trashing you I owe you a nice single malt and a blowjob, though I guess you'll only want the former.

Obs. 2: The video concerning the American Media's bias towards Israel is quite revealing but I can't embed it; I strongly urge the reader to see it, though, it brings to light issues with which many are not familiar.

Now that the Masturbation is Over

The last year or so of US elections has been the biggest circle jerk I've seen in my entire life; the willingness of otherwise sane and reasonable people, both in the US and abroad, to treat Barack Obama as God's gift to humanity was frightening. It is perfectly understandable that after eight years of G.W. Bush, people should look forward to some sort of shift (or change, as Obama followers/worshippers kept repeating for the past year or so), but this blind devotion, this reckless following of the man's every move and every word, should be of some concern.

Especially because we must not forget that Obama is now the president-elect not of Mali or Bhutan, but of the United States of America. We've already seen what this entails when we were still in the Democratic primaries, and both Obama and Hillary Clinton went to grovel at the feet of Israel (represented, it would seem, by AIPAC) -here is a transcript of Obama's speech to the organization. It is surreal (or is it unreal?) how every presidential candidate since 1967 (the date the Israelis proved "useful" to the US in keeping them frisky Arabs in their place) has had to pledge alligiance and undying support, right or wrong, to Israel. That said country's intentions towards those whose territories it occupies might be most sinister, or that the country regularly proves to be incredibly biggoted and indifferent to others' cultures or feelings, is apparently irrelevant. Of course, Obama might have been lying (or something to that effect) when pledging his eternal love for Israel over AIPAC's watchful eyes; perhaps he is sane enough to realize the US is the one country that can force the Israelis to go for peace by simply not paying for their present attitudes. Here's hoping that's true, not just for the sake of Palestinians or Iranians, but for the sake of Israelis, too (after all, as Eric Alterman pointed out, Israel is much more than the conflict we see on TV or read about in irrelevant blogs such as this one).

But Israel is one part of the problem: already, Obama plans to focus on Afghanistan -soon to become his own Vietnam, as such a war is, at least according to America's British allies, unwinnable (and if not unwinnable, too costly). If his plan for change is to leave Iraq (quite sensible) and fight the Taliban (utterly useless and stupid), then his followers and worshippers are in for a surprise. As a general prediction (something I'm not particularly good at), it might be wise for Obama's legions to realize his strategies for foreign policy, though not as awful as those of G.W. Bush, are no great improvement over the mistakes America has been committing since the end of the Cold War.

Worry also stems, again concerning Obama's inexhaustable supply of blind devotees, from the man's choice in cabinet, from keeping Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense to making Robert Rubin a part of the economics team for the White House. If by change he simply means not being as bad as Bush, great, he's well on his way; real change in this particular matter, however, seems to be a rather distant dream. This again brings us back to what being the President of the USA means and entails, and one can't seriously expect any drastic, shocking change to come about in a country as conservative and as addicted to the status quo as America.

To see just how conservative America and Americans are, it would be wise to consider another side of the election, which is where a sizeable portion of the citizenry chose to formally declare through the vote that gays and lesbians (and, in some places, unmarried people in general) are lesser citizens. Not only this, but a whopping 48% of the popular vote went to John McCain; and considering the past eight years and said candidate's brutally incompetent campaign (not to mention his choice of VP in Sarah Palin, of whom we have "shocking" new revelations), 48% of the popular vote indicates a huge amount of people that still buy the shtick, the nonsense that emanates from the Republican "information" machine, from the party being all about smaller government and less taxes to its ideals being about success for all and love of family. 48% of the popular vote is, at this point in time, frightening.

But we must be realistic: Obama's election is a huge victory for America, even if the man turns out to be as much of a lie as Bill Clinton was. A black man (or, still in some parts of the country, a nigger) being elected to the nation's top political post is nothing short of dazzling, a victory not only of common sense but of Justice, social and otherwise. It is now almost possible to believe once again that the United States is a land of opportunity for all, that it is indeed a country of greatness. It might have been important that Obama's message won, were it not shameless propaganda, but it is of paramount importance that he won; between having a walking victory for civil rights, an individual both calm and serene, in the White House, as opposed to a war-mongering shit who trades in fear and masturbates to the Cold War: it might be wise to go with the former. It is also safe to say that if McCain had taken the vote (or shall we say Palin, for McCain is quasi-senile and about to exit, stage left, from some form or other of cancer), any hope of America becoming halfway decent again could have been tossed in the shitter for good. Thankfully, we can use the shitter for other purposes.

I sincerely do hope Obama's campaign message materializes into something other than crude, disgusting propaganda, and I do hope that he might help make a better America not just for Americans but for the whole world as well. It is high time someone stepped into the Oval Office and took the United States from being a rogue country, a danger to civilization itself, and made it into the dream we've always wanted to believe the US might be. It is worrisome that he has stepped into office with such blind devotion following his every move, his every word, but it can't be too much to hope (yes, that word again) that such devotion might prove well-founded in the end. Caution is called for because being President of the United States more often than not entails preventing change rather than promoting it, and it is essentially this notion which makes Obama worship worrisome. But if the man does turn out to be the agent of change he (and his fans) professes to be and tranforms the US from an agent of agression to an agent of peace; and from a country of inequality and religious fanaticism to a land of economic and social justice and tolerance, then we are in for a truly wondrous and happy surprise. May it be so.