Secret Societies in Government, truth or fearmongering?

[Femmebott]

I am being bombarded with information about the possibility of US Gov being "run" by "secret" societies...they seem very convinced with themselves and their "evidence". I will say that I am not so naive as to assume our government window is uncurtained, but come on! The thing about secrets is that YOU are not supposed to know! If this information is classified, why is it being paraded around on youtube by anarchists and conspiracy theorists? IS there ANY truth? Or are these guys just reminiscent of the Y2K fearmongers?

[realJim]

secret societies? How about blatant self fulfilling big interest groups? Money talks, and (us) little guys walk. Our government is probably one of the better ones, but it's not immune to the power of per$uasion.

[Synamon]

If this information is classified, why is it being paraded around on youtube by anarchists and conspiracy theorists? IS there ANY truth?
Those two sentences are contradictory so I'm going to go with no.

Anyway there is a thread on this already: Boomers and the New World Order (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

[Causa Mortis]

Those two sentences are contradictory so I'm going to go with no.

Anyway there is a thread on this already: Boomers and the New World Order (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Right. There are some individuals who are completely self-rationalizing and who won't respond to evidence that directly contradicts whatever ridiculous thesis they advance. So I usually just poke fun at them, and then ignore them.

[Femmebott]

Please tell me how they are contradictory.

[alrightgame]

Please tell me how they are contradictory.

They are contradictory when you try to get proof from them. They never have the proof. Listen to a radio show called Coast to Coast. Listen to a couple of episodes. Most of these people that talk on this radioshow all have one thing in common, they can't reveal proof.

[Femmebott]

ugh! You people are so literal. I should have put quotation marks around the word information. That is basically what I meant...

[deinotes]

Sure there is truth in conspiracy theories that most of the "secret" societies really exists, the doubt comes only if they are really as "evil" as portrayed and if they are connected as portrayed by the conspiracy theorists.
The funny part is that there are tons of conspiracy stories about the same subject and that almost all have a other story of who is at the top behind the curtain and how the different groups are interlinked.
I think it's more plausible that these groups may be "evil" but only because they have a self interest. There is no man behind the curtains needed to make poeple do bad things.

[Undead Bonzi]

If you kill a million random people for the crime of murder, chances are one of them was probably actually guilty.

I shall elaborate with a longer, more disgusting and unnecessary analogy.

Picture a giant mountain of shit. This mountain of excrement is built from a wide offering of individual poo. Some is green, some is brown, some is in a variety of colors that could give a rainbow a run for its money. In some of these offerings of doody there are undigested corn kernels of truth. Looking at the shit mountain you can see them and if you are so inclined you can even smell them. However, to any rational intellect it is obvious that if you are hungry it is better to go to a field and pick a ripe ear of corn than it is to paw through the half digested excrement of fools.

Do you understand my point?

[Bluesea]

is "secret society" another way of saying publically uncommunicated agenda

...they are hiding something from us and it must be bad and we are intuiting it and are not fooled ... we will find the evidence even if it seems ambiguous to others ... we know it leads to the big proof, the unquestionable proof ... and we will not let you, the innocent public, have the wool pulled over your eyes ...

our so called protector is our greatest enemy ... where does that come from in the human psyche?

[Hamburglar]

Anyway there is a thread on this already: Boomers and the New World Order (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Burn. It saddens me that threads like that receive so much attention. As NT we should be able to gloss over that and not dignify it with a response. What is it about INTJ and having to be right, no matter if the debate is stupid?

[deinotes]

Burn. It saddens me that threads like that receive so much attention. As NT we should be able to gloss over that and not dignify it with a response. What is it about INTJ and having to be right, no matter if the debate is stupid?
??? And just actually how much time did you respond in that thread ?
If you would like to see some debate about a other topic start a thread about it.

[Synamon]

??? And just actually how much time did you respond in that thread ?
If you would like to see some debate about a other topic start a thread about it.
He has made threads. His point, I believe, was that the conspiracy nutjobs online get attention because rational people feel the urge to point out the inconsistencies and fallacies and flat out lies they spread.

It's a no win situation no matter what you do. If you ignore them then other people see their claims and don't see anyone refuting them so they might get the impression that there was something to the outrageous crap they spew. If you respond then you draw attention to them and people see the attention and wonder what all the fuss is about, plus it gives the impression you are taking them seriously. Presumably, that's why Femmebott made this thread, she either saw the fuss or she saw unrefuted claims.

[Stickman]

He has made threads. His point, I believe, was that the conspiracy nutjobs online get attention because rational people feel the urge to point out the inconsistencies and fallacies and flat out lies they spread.

It's a no win situation no matter what you do. If you ignore them then other people see their claims and don't see anyone refuting them so they might get the impression that there was something to the outrageous crap they spew. If you respond then you draw attention to them and people see the attention and wonder what all the fuss is about, plus it gives the impression you are taking them seriously. Presumably, that's why Femmebott made this thread, she either saw the fuss or she saw unrefuted claims.

If you've read the thread (and that's a stretch, every post is several paragraphs long) then you'd see that almost every point is ripped apart. These conspiracy theories tend to be poorly put together and more or less inconsistent.

Normally I would ignore them but there's a large movement of people who genuinely believe in that kind of stuff and I just feel like I have to do something to tide them back. I think it's ultimately futile though; Fox News and right-wing talk radio have a much higher budget than I do.

[Night Runner]

I'll be the odd man out (what else is new?) and actually respond to the original post. :) No, I don't think our government is run by secret societies. However, I'm pretty certain that there are (semi-)secret societies that run a lot of things and very old influential families that possess mind-boggling amounts of wealth and political capital.

[deinotes]

He has made threads. His point, I believe, was that the conspiracy nutjobs online get attention because rational people feel the urge to point out the inconsistencies and fallacies and flat out lies they spread.

It's a no win situation no matter what you do. If you ignore them then other people see their claims and don't see anyone refuting them so they might get the impression that there was something to the outrageous crap they spew. If you respond then you draw attention to them and people see the attention and wonder what all the fuss is about, plus it gives the impression you are taking them seriously. Presumably, that's why Femmebott made this thread, she either saw the fuss or she saw unrefuted claims.
You can always find some pearls wading through the shit. ;)
For example i would never found out about the pnac (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) or read anything from zbignew Brzezinski without the conspiracy theorists.

[zibber]

I found it pretty creepy that both GW Bush and John Kerry had been (and I believe still were) members of Skull & Bones and refused to say anything about the society when asked by journalists.

And I'm the same way as deinotes. PNAC is quite blatantly on the surface.

(And then there's Bilderberg..)

[larkin]

Ah, S&B is just a fancy way of delineating boys of privilege. If they weren't in S&B, those boys would still manage to hold most of the positions of power and find ways to help each other out, it's how rich people continue being rich. S&B is a symptom, not the cause.

Which is generally true of "secret" societies. Assuming the OP is talking about the administration or other political entities, see the paragraph above about the people who tend to hold positions of power. If it were talking about the bureaucracy, outside of the possibility that some particularly well-placed members of the bureaucracy hold positions of a certain kind of power, it seems unlikely. Speaking as a former bureaucrat, the only society they seemed interested in was the water club that paid to use the cooler at the end of the hall. But, admittedly, I wasn't exactly in the halls of power at the HST building.

[Stickman]

You can always find some pearls wading through the shit. ;)
For example i would never found out about the pnac (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) or read anything from zbignew Brzezinski without the conspiracy theorists.

PNAC isn't really a shadow society, but more of an open secret.

[Ytterbium]

I don't think it's a secret at all. Come on people are people, humans are humans. There's no such thing as a 'company', 'goverment' or why not a rock band. It's just a bunch of people whom call themselves such. People have different contact on personal or professional levels. It's a huge spider web. Who knows the rock band members perhaps do a little bit of embroidery in their passtime. Just like a goverment may have unofficial stay-back operations or other informal businesses. And btw who cares?

[LaoTzu]

Of course there will be little cabals of power in any society. Like your local PTA having influence on your kids activities... It's normal and natural. It's not exactly right, nor is it fair; because Western Society is set up to work by and for the people... but people aren't always right, and majorities not always fair to the minority. Power will always gravitate to power.

The law is what is most important...when people start breaking the law, you should be worried. (I'm looking at YOU - Bush supporters! :P ) Worrying about the Bilderbergs or Illuminati, or Skull and Bones is going to get you nowhere.
It's a diversion from actively pursuing change in real and definitive ways.
I like to know everything about everything, much like the next INTJ...but there's a point where you get TOO MUCH information. (look at the JFK assasination...you think we lack information there??)



I think a lot of that conspiracy stuff is unfortunate. I'd much rather Alex Jones were a real reporter, he'd be very good at it; and we could use him doing real issue stories.

[Femmebott]

That Alex Jones does get paid...the shear fact of it makes him already lose some credibility points. Hell, he probably doesn't even believe his own stories...

[Profit]

You can always find some pearls wading through the shit. ;)
For example i would never found out about the pnac (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) or read anything from zbignew Brzezinski without the conspiracy theorists.

In my undergrad international relations classes we talked about PNAC and Brzezinski pretty regularly. Neocons never tried to hid their ideas, they were actually pretty open and blunt about them. If you want information on foreign policy grand strategy just go to the source....foreign policy think tanks. The whole point of coming up with ideas is to publish papers/hold conferences and get your ideas into the minds of politicians and government employees involved in making and implementing policy. There is no need to get shit on your hands ; ).

[PunkinA]

I remember watching an interview with Robert Anton Wilson, author of the Illuminatus Trilogy and a bunch of other secret society fiction.

His conclusion was that secret societies could never last for very long. He felt that historically when a society grew to significant size or influence there would always be some guy who would profit greatly by turning his back on his fellow conspirators and spoiling the whole endeavor.

Of course he was really one of them.

[Night Runner]

I remember watching an interview with Robert Anton Wilson, author of the Illuminatus Trilogy and a bunch of other secret society fiction.

His conclusion was that secret societies could never last for very long. He felt that historically when a society grew to significant size or influence there would always be some guy who would profit greatly by turning his back on his fellow conspirators and spoiling the whole endeavor.

In other words, it's possible but not probable. ;) The same can be said about lots of other things, too. Besides, a simple system of checks and balances is all you really need...

[deinotes]

In my undergrad international relations classes we talked about PNAC and Brzezinski pretty regularly. Neocons never tried to hid their ideas, they were actually pretty open and blunt about them. If you want information on foreign policy grand strategy just go to the source....foreign policy think tanks. The whole point of coming up with ideas is to publish papers/hold conferences and get your ideas into the minds of politicians and government employees involved in making and implementing policy. There is no need to get shit on your hands ; ).Thanks for the tip, as a polymath with a technical degree i didn't got the opportunity to know the source or was blessed with friends who where interested in the higher regions of politics.
But nevertheless as a outsider the arrogant attitude from the Neocons where very interesting.

[Profit]

Thanks for the tip, as a polymath with a technical degree i didn't got the opportunity to know the source or was blessed with friends who where interested in the higher regions of politics.
But nevertheless as a outsider the arrogant attitude from the Neocons where very interesting.

Hell, as an 'insider' the arrogant attitude from the Neocons was very interesting....although very disturbing when they actually tried out their ideas.