{"id":5099,"date":"2016-06-27T07:33:49","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T13:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=5099"},"modified":"2016-06-27T07:51:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T13:51:15","slug":"paranoia-on-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/paranoia-on-the-left-5099.htm","title":{"rendered":"Paranoia on the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-content\/uploads\/Trump-and-Green-Space-Lizard.jpg\" rel=\"prettyPhoto[5099]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5100\" src=\"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-content\/uploads\/Trump-and-Green-Space-Lizard-300x162.jpg\" alt=\"Trump and Green Space Lizard\" width=\"300\" height=\"162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-content\/uploads\/Trump-and-Green-Space-Lizard-300x162.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-content\/uploads\/Trump-and-Green-Space-Lizard.jpg 306w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: limelight; font-size: 18pt;\">Trump and his Boss<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The right in America is home to a number of paranoid conspiracy theories, as the mainstream media are quick to point out. My favorite is that the world is secretly run by flesh-eating green space lizards disguised as humans, although I am not sure if that qualifies as a rightist conspiracy theory. (It might explain Donald Trump; the lizards didn\u2019t quite get human color and hair right.)<\/p>\n<p>But the soi-disant \u201crational,\u201d \u201cscience-based\u201d left is also a Petri dish for breeding paranoid conspiracy theories. However such theories, or at least their theorists, are generally given a pass, on the general principle of no enemies to the Left.<\/p>\n<p>Pamela Newkirk gives a favorable review in the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/is-white-rage-driving-our-racial-divide\/2016\/06\/22\/fbeec9fc-22a8-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html\"> Washington Post<\/a> to <em>White Rage<\/em> by Carol Anderson, a professor of African American history at Emory University. Anderson documents undoubted cases of oppression of blacks, but then starts seeing mysterious shadows.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Her most explosive allegation is that at a time when marijuana use was down, and cocaine, heroin and hallucinogen use was declining or leveling off, Reagan\u2019s National Security Council and CIA \u201cmanufactured and facilitated\u201d a drug crisis and were complicit in flooding African American communities with crack. She says the administration\u2019s shielding of Colombian drug traffickers \u201cactively allowed cocaine imports to the United States to skyrocket 50 percent within three years. .\u2009.\u2009. Soon crack was everywhere, kicking the legs out from under black neighborhoods,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Reagan administration\u2019s protection of drug traffickers escalated further when the CIA received approval from the Department of Justice in 1982 to remain silent about any key agency \u2018assets\u2019 that were involved in the manufacturing, transportation, or sale of narcotics,\u201d she adds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I see, the Federal government, presumably under both Republican and Democratic administration, has been aiding and abetting the sale of drugs to African Americans. This is what everyone else calls the War on Drugs and which many criticize for its uselessness.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>New York Time\u2019s<\/em> review fails to mention this interesting part of Anderson\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n<p>I remember Cynthia McKinney, Democratic black women Representative who after 9-11 claimed that Bush had deliberately facilitated the whole affair. As Wikipedia summarizes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>McKinney gained national attention for remarks she made following the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2001_US_attacks\">2001 US attacks<\/a>, charging that the United States had advance knowledge of the attacks and that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_W._Bush\">George W. Bush<\/a>\u00a0may have been aware of the incipient attack and allowed them to happen,\u00a0allegedly due to his father&#8217;s business interests: &#8220;It is known that President Bush&#8217;s father, through\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Carlyle_Group\">The Carlyle Group<\/a>, had\u2013at the time of the attacks\u2013joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which have soared since September 11.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But of course, this is not an evidence of paranoia, because as is well known everything blacks claim must be true, or at least must not be contradicted, because they have a privileged position as The Oppressed.<\/p>\n<p>Political correctness trumps rationality for the Left.<\/p>\n<p>PS McKinney is <a href=\"http:\/\/brookhavenpost.co\/commentary-trump-equals-mckinney-in-terms-of-gullibility-proclivity-for-conspiracy-theories\/40470\/\">palsy<\/a> with \u201cDavid Icke, a man best known for believing that the world is run by a secret cabal of shapeshifting reptilian aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-content\/uploads\/Green-Space-Lizards.jpg\" rel=\"prettyPhoto[5099]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5103\" src=\"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-content\/uploads\/Green-Space-Lizards.jpg\" alt=\"Green Space Lizards\" width=\"277\" height=\"182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-5099\" data-postid=\"5099\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-5099 themify_builder themify_builder_front\">\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<!-- \/themify_builder_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trump and his Boss The right in America is home to a number of paranoid conspiracy theories, as the mainstream media are quick to point out. My favorite is that the world is secretly run by flesh-eating green space lizards disguised as humans, although I am not sure if that qualifies as a rightist conspiracy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[585],"tags":[1349,1184,1350,1351,1352,1348,1347],"class_list":["post-5099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-carol-anderson","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-cynthia-mckinney","tag-donald-trump","tag-green-space-lizards","tag-paranoia","tag-white-rage","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5104,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5099\/revisions\/5104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}