Dystopia always means paranoia

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Am 21.08.2014 16:46, schrieb Joseph Tracy:

> Those on the
> forefront of these obsessive fears almost inevitably became as cruel
> as their imagined foes and willing to dispense with law, reason and
> moral restraint to contain the spread of the very thing they had
> invited into their own thinking and behavior.Those who followed them
> into battle became more likely to commit suicide or suffer fro
> extreme PTSD than any other group - victims in body and soul of the
> conspiracy theories of US politics, their memories of service a
> source only of self loathing. Don't ask why.

I generally agree, but think it should be noted that Stalin was not only 
an imagined foe and that his cruelties were very real. The threat he 
posed to the West, though, seems to have been exaggerated throughout the 
Cold War, from Reinhard Gehlen to "Team B."

Sometimes it is not only the foot soldiers but also those on the 
forefront who committ suicide. I am thinking particularly of Frank 
Wisner here.

With regard to paranoia and obsessive fears, James "Deception is a state 
of mind and the mind of the State" Angleton also comes to mind.

There are some rather wild speculations about James Forrestal's 
mysterious death that point in the same direction and, at least to me, 
are reminiscent of "The Crying of Lot 49". They also accidentally happen 
to connect to contemporary events in the Ukraine...

Relevant quotes:

"Forrestal's alleged last written statement, touted in the contemporary 
press and later biographers as an implied suicide note, was part of a 
poem from Sophocles' tragedy Ajax: (...)"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Forrestal

'There were unsubstantiated reports in the press of paranoia and of 
involuntary commitment to the hospital, as well as suspicions about the 
detailed circumstances of his death, which have fed a variety of 
conspiracy theories as well as legitimate questions. If it is 
Forrestal's handwriting in the poem, according to some intelligence 
sources, then he could not scribble the word "nightingale" in the poem 
because it was the code name of the Ukrainian Nazi elite unit Nachtigall 
Brigade which Forrestal had helped to smuggle to the United States to 
supplant Kim Philby's failed ABN (Anti Bolshevik Nationals), an MI6 
Soviet émigré fascist group.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Forrestal#Assassination_theories

As for the history of the Nachtigall Battalion before its members became 
allies of the US, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachtigall_Battalion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_regarding_the_Nachtigall_Battalion

Ah, the Cold War...

Thanks.

Thomas
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