What happens to a conspiracy revealed?

[Joseph Tracy]

 2 of  the possible consequences : 1) it reveals the true political and moral state of a society, which is what your comments note .2)it is too late to change because the leader is dead, the victims are dead, the coup is accomplished, the war has begun, or  the spying is universal and the the power structure in place has no mechanism of change.  Too late means even though it is torture and  a product of leadership policy and clear violation of national and international laws, there is no longer accountability for such crimes. They are simply a prerogative of the ruling empire which looks ever forward to a brighter tomorrow.  Easier to get forgiveness than permission and more manly.
 
If specific conspiracies are tactical moves in a larger bid for power the response at each stage is critical, as is the  public perception of the larger goal. It is as dangerous to not connect any dots as it is to connect dots that aren't there. For example the dissolution of the bill of rights did not happen all at once. The far right and other interested parties spent years, decades,  stacking the courts with pro-corporate, pro-republican pro-authority judges, and the democrats refused to fight fire with fire, by blocking nominees as republicans did. Also democrats have been as avid for executive power as the republicans and often signed anti-constittutional measures into law. This is not a conspiracy in the legal sense but the effect has been the empowerment of many criminal acts and the subversion of personal political rights.  Cumulatively they have devastated the bill of rights.
The financial come-uppance  of 2008 involved a series of shady to illegal steps: non standard mortgage transfers, predatory loans, faked credit ratings, bundling and leveraging in highly speculative ways, insurance. Not only was each action individually immoral or illegal, there was a plan behind the whole thing which several market observers pointed out as being extremely risky to the financial system as a whole.  Not a single major news organization covered the risk and none of the people who identified the problem have acquired a voice in the MSM except Matt Taibbi if you call Rolling Stone MSM.  Matt Taibbi dug deep enough to show the substantive case for criminal indictments.  But bad news that incriminates or provides fair warning about the behavior of powerful americans is rarely  covered except  by partisan hate media and there is no follow up when legal or political consequences are called for. 

I would say those are 2 real conspiracies with potent historic consequences. The media tends to treat real conspiracies as either inevitable or accidental, unforeseeable almost natural catastrophes. Either way the net effect is passivity and acceptance.   

  If a conspiracy is a one off by a few like Madoff, The shoe bomber or that fake one with the chinese nuclear scientist, the media will be much more judgmental and curious  and involved since there is little possibility of stepping  on the wrong toes.  In these cases conspiracies can still cost big-time like with Governor Christie, but only for a few.  This allows all the public  curiosity and emotions  about misdeeds to surface with no threat of political and economic consequence.  It draws public attention to the media and requires no risk on their part of taking a stand on something . 

I don't know if this pattern  is simply internalized journalistic instinct for survival in the current market, policy pressure from the major decision makers, or some of both; but it is hard not to notice.


On Mar 10, 2014, at 12:59 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> What happens when a conspiracy is revealed to the public? Not much. What about anything has changed since Snowden's revelations? The shadowy group journalist Jeremy Scahill was investigating, Joint Strategic Operations Command - responsible for thousands of covert murders across the globe - was revealed and publicly lauded in the midst of Scahill's investigation. What happened? Nothing.
> 
> Today, another conspiracy is cheerfully reported in the NY Times in the guise of a story about business prowess:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/business/staking-1-billion-that-herbalife-will-fail-then-ackman-lobbying-to-bring-it-down.html?hp&_r=0
> 
> Which leads to the question: is it still a conspiracy if it's completely out in the open? Isn't the excitement of delving into a conspiracy the stray hope: "once people find out about this ..." 
> 
> Not sure that Pynchon answers this fully in any of his books. Sure, he points to a lot of tips of icebergs and facades: industry as the front for something much more sinister, on an almost metaphysical plane. We understand that his "They," while they may have specific servants, don't exist in any tangible form. Can't un-elect them, can't storm their chateaux. But the problem is, when "They" get too metaphysical, they start blending in with the metaphysical scenery - God, Nature, The Universe, Fate.
> 
> But what would happen if the really sinister characters were revealed? If there was a complete analysis of Scarsdale Vibe's or Brock Vond's doings on the front page of the paper of record, and it was treated as a celebration of ingenuity, rather than an indictment or a history-changing moment? To me, this is scarier than any "They" in Pynchon's writings, because this is really happening today here in our world. Pynchon's always known about these people. We all have. It's the casual acceptance of them that comes as a shock.
> 
> Laura
> 
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> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l