Today, after a full year of Friday Vocabulary posts, I am pleased to announce the launch of my Lexicon page, comprising every word I have used in my weekly Vocabulary, along with its definition. (Or at least one definition; several words utilize a meaning other than the most common. Caveat lector!) In addition to showing every word used, the Lexicon page is searchable, with a search box below the displayed words (by default 50 words are shown, so you may have to scroll down a trifle). Just select “Word Entry” from the dropdown (an ungainly denotation, which I may change if anyone actually cares), enter your search term, and Voilà!
The search function matches on parts, so, for example, you can quickly find all the ‘super’ words I’ve shared.
Or you can look at the ‘ology’ words, if you’re so inclined.
My personal favorite is this search on the string ‘ence’, which returns some of my most favorite words, including one from the very first Friday Vocabulary post, over eight years ago.
You can also search by definition, among other things. Go ahead, give it a try!
Now I have not been promulging Vocabulary lists every week for the last eight years. In fact, I have only been consistently doing so for the past fifty-two weeks after stopping some four months into the original experiment in 2011 (save for one exceptional post in 2016). Still, a number of words have passed under the WordPress, and now all those words are assembled for your perusal and study. In fact, over seven hundred words have been defined so far — 702, to be precise. The Lexicon listing, however, currently shows 707 entries, as I have broken out some definitions (such as for ‘supercillium’ in the first image above) when a word’s meaning was sufficiently distinct, or when a given definition spanned two parts of speech.
For the most part, these words are those I stumble over in my reading. I usually use an app to quickly look them up — though the app not infrequently lacks either the word or the meaning I look for — and then eventually add them to my Vocabulary for some week in the future. Some words remain in my prospects list for a long, long time, either because I have difficulty defining them or because I am flummoxed as to what sentence I might construct for them to inhabit. At times I find a prospect when looking up another word (I use a physical dictionary—at least one!—as well as the app when preparing my vocabulary). And occasionally one of my (three!) readers will suggest a word, for which I am ever so grateful.
When preparing the weekly listing, I look at the candidate word in my dictionary app as well as a physical, not to say bulky, dictionary. I most frequently use The Oxford Universal Dictionary, a one-volume tome that has been a wonderful resource, as it often contains older terms its digital sibling lacks. The particular edition which sits by my desk is the third, published with addenda in 1955. Of course, some terms require more effort, such as ‘flavescent’, which I believe showed up in a novel by one of the lesser Brontës, if memory serves me well. Always there is the Internet as well, in truly desperate cases. I then create a definition trying to be true to the sense of the word as I encountered it, while not slavishly copying the dictionaries consulted (which would be plagiarism).
Creating a sentence can sometimes be difficult, especially if the word is one I have only rarely seen in my reading. Looking at the word as used over time in different sentences gives me the feel for the word before I trap it in my example sentence. For older words, I consult the former BYU corpora, now English-Corpora dot org, using primarily the Early English Books Online (EEBO), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Like all ‘free’ resources, some of these have begun to throttle my access, though I usually don’t hit the limits in my once-a-week searching.
Keen-eyed observers (if any remain to read this far) will have noted the anomalous ‘2’ at the tail of my 702 Lexicon entries. These represent a couple of bonus words, slang terms which I appended to my usual listing. I may start doing this more regularly, as there are so many non-standard terms which I feel should be preserved, though I may need some divine help if I am to craft sentences for terms like ‘on fleek’ (not a candidate).
I will continue to update the Lexicon with new words from the weekly posts, and may play around with other features and fun. It seems I may have to learn PHP to do some things I’m thinking of, however, and that seems … boring. Especially when I have new Dray Prescot books to read. Let me know if you have features you’d like to see, though, and I will endeavor to make your wishes a reality. And please do let me know of any favorite words you’d like to see on Friday; that I can do much more readily I am sure.
Friday Vocabulary
1. squamous — composed of scales, covered with scales, scaly
She had gotten too close to her idol, and now perceived that the shoulders of his fashionable rope sweater were covered in squamous dandruff flakes, and that he had quite hairy ears.
2. cryptesthesia — perception by hidden or paranormal means, such as clairaudience or clairvoyance
Welker preferred to denote the phenomenon as cryptesthesia rather than mind reading, reasoning that some quite mundane mechanism may have delivered the information to the recipient though that person remained unaware how he gained the knowledge.
3. bombinate — to buzz, to hum
I prefer The Well-Tempered Clavier of Glenn Gould myself, though I confess that when he bombinates continually it can be somewhat distracting.
4. hayward — officer in charge of fences and enclosures, esp. to prevent stray cattle from a commons encroaching upon enclosed fields
The tanner filed a cross-complaint, alleging that his sole milk cow had been maliciously seized by the hayward, who had conspired with Gertrude to allege bovine trespass where none had actually occurred.
5. analeptic — strengthening, restoring, invigorating; awakening, esp. from drugged state
After so much weak tea and jello, her analeptic chicken soup was just the restorative I needed to cast aside my sick bed and return to the world of the living.
6. blether (also blather or blither) — to talk nonsense volubly; to babble
He really did perform quite heroic feats during the war, you know, though of course we all just assume his tales are false because he is always blethering on about some impossible adventure that current events happen to remind him of.
7. vervain — verbena officinalis, a common European plant once much used for its supposed medicinal qualities
I see where druids walked the groves of Mona—I see the mistletoe and vervain
[Whitman]
8. pavonine — of or like or resembling a peacock
Leave it to Richard Feynman to demonstrate the mysteries of quantum electrodynamics through the pavonine iridescence of a droplet of oil on water.
9. threap — to chide, scold, rebuke, blame, reprove; to bicker, argue, quarrel, dispute
It is foolish to have any discussion with him, as he will threap that the color red is heavier than the blue of the noonday sky, and similar nonsense.
10. torpid — dormant, unmoving; sluggish, inactive; lacking vigor, apathetic
Too benumbed even to bother picking up the remote, the torpid young man watched unseeing as Vanilla Ice remodeled yet another fixer-upper during the television marathon.
Friday Vocabulary
1. chalazion — swollen bump on eyelid caused by clogged oil gland
While a chalazion is frequently mistaken for a stye, the latter is usually found at the edge of the eyelid and is quite painful, whereas the former can appear anywhere within the eyelid and does not usually cause pain.
2. dissolute — debauched, licentious, morally lax
Ironically, though she had warned her sister about the dissolute old roué, she found herself caught in one of his manipulative schemes.
3. condoler — one who expresses sympathy or grief with or for another
Strangely enough, the taxi driver proved to be my best condoler, though I did not realize it as I hastened to the airport for the funeral.
4. sequela — morbid consequence of previous disease; any consequence
His weakening mental acuity, the sores which never healed, and his fatigue and general malaise, all were judged to be the normal sequelae of venereal disease during that era, before the discovery of antibiotic drugs.
5. fettle — to make ready, to prepare
The housekeeper pretended to fettle the room, cleaning the already spotless candelabras in hope of overhearing some of the latest news from the town.
6. curiologic — of hieroglyphic writing in which pictures directly represent objects; of pictorial representation as in a rebus
Early attempts to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were foiled by the assumption that the mysterious writing was primarily curiologic in nature.
7. facetiae — witticisms, humorous remarks or writings, pleasantries
With the decline of formal public speaking, and the replacement of humor by memes, the collections of facetiae which often made up a large portion of the after-dinner speaker’s library have gone the way of most books, vanished like other creatures that outlived their times.
8. whence — from what place?; from what source or cause?
Whence comes this urge to waste your life in useless battle against a much stronger foe?
9. obtrude — to thrust forward unduly; to push (something) upon a person, esp. without invitation
We felt sorry for her at Lady Roxana’s cocktail parties, where she would obtrude the most callow and weak ideas upon some of the deepest and most insightful thinkers of our time.
10. chrism — consecrated oil mixed with balm, used as unguent for certain sacraments; sacramental anointing
Both of the dead drug dealers had an oily residue upon their foreheads, the tell-tale chrism showing that a priest had been upon the scene before the police.
Friday Vocabulary
1. teratogenic — disrupting development of fetus or embryo, thus causing birth defects
Pregnant women should avoid high intake of vitamin A, as teratogenic effects have been noted.
2. periapt — amulet, charm
“Do you deny, then, that you used this very periapt to conjure forth your sworn servant, this supposed cat, in fact a demonic minion of the Evil One?”
3. quintal — hundredweight
While in the summer pasture our dairy cows each produce almost two quintals of cheese, most of which we take to market.
4. throstle — a thrush
I heard his song before I spied the nut-brown throstle perched on a high bough of the apple tree.
5. bubo — inflamed swelling of lymphatic gland, esp. in groin or armpit
Though the inguinal bubo in his groin had receded, the venereal disease had not finished its malefic attack upon his health.
6. emulous — desirous of rivaling or imitating
With his latest work the Dutch sculptor, emulous of the renown his former mentor still enjoyed at court, hoped to capture the attention of the king.
7. fancy-work (also fancywork or fancy work) — ornamental piece of needlework
She sat by the window, her fancy-work forgotten as she heard at last the distant hoofbeats and rumbling of his approaching carriage.
8. aquamanile — medieval pitcher, often shaped like an animal
The baron washed his hands under the water poured from the brass aquamanile held over the basin by the new page, the youngest son of Sir Ewen.
9. curvet — leap of rearing horse in dressage in which the hind legs are kicked out as the front legs descend; to leap in this manner
The frisking horses were bounding and curvetting in the meadow at the foot of the sedge hills, gloriously happy in the sun and their exuberant youth.
10. melena — dark tarry stool
Not only is melena a symptom of serious internal hemorrhaging, it is also the focus of a question or two on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
Friday Vocabulary
1. schism — (ecclesiastical) breach in Church unity, division of church into mutually hostile groups; division of previous unity into opposing parties
Excuse me, Miz’m, but isn’t it a mere solecism to view communism only through the prism of colonialism, ignoring, for example, the late 20th Century schism between Marxism and socialism?
2. leveret — young hare; pet, mistress
The puppy flushed a timorous leveret from the overgrowth by the neighbor’s back gate last month, and now insists on searching every square inch of the foliage whenever we walk past.
3. meretricious — of or pertaining to or characteristic of a harlot; tawdry, alluring by false or vulgar show; deceptive
Every metal surface was gilded, the floor covered in deep pile snow white carpet, the upholstery brocaded in white and gold, and it seemed like some meretricious antechamber to the boudoir of a tacky hooker servicing rich but classless dolts who imagined that this was ‘classy’ interior design.
4. objurgate — to chide or scold or rebuke
Prentiss was deep in his cups by the time we got to the bar, and refused to leave off venting his pique, instead objurgating “every damn critic” who had dared to criticize his show and consequently (in his telling) had gotten him fired.
5. exponible — requiring explanation or restatement (particularly of a proposition)
Jamie knew only obscure facts, making him a frustrating and exponible companion, as every remark he made had to be followed by a detailed elucidation of the obscure allusion that had seemed so obvious and pertinent to him.
6. epistaxis — nosebleed
He was prone to epistaxis, which he claimed was due to distant relation to European royalty, but which we all knew was caused by his serious drug habit.
7. dally — to loiter; to delay by trifling; to talk idly; to toy with, esp. in amorous pursuit
Do you dally here to keep from your appointed rendezvous with destiny, on the Senate floor, or are you just happy to see me?
8. peri — supernaturally beautiful fallen angels of Persian mythology; a lovely person
Cast out of her heavenly home this wandering peri found a welcome on my couch in Venice Beach, doomed for a while to remain in the sordid material world of the slacker class, to my great gratitude.
9. paling — picket fence
My discomfiture was complete when I looked up and saw Jocelyn’s face peering over the paling that surrounded the yard, her twinkling eyes telling me instantly that she had witnessed the whole embarrassing scene.
10. litotes — (rhetoric) figure in which positive is expressed by negating the contrary; understatement
Though he could speak platitudinal remarks if need be when in the company of strangers, amongst his friends and family my grandfather’s highest praise was expressed in the softest litotes, and Grandmama knew that when the food was “not inedible” that Grandpapa was sure to have seconds, or even thirds (if she let him).
FBI ID’s Conspiracy Theories As Dangerous Ideas, Nation Yawns
In fulfillment of a promise made to a friend to review a recent news link, I hereby present some remarks upon both the link and the underlying FBI document which engendered this news, “Anti-Government, Identity Based, and Fringe Political Conspiracy Theories Very Likely Motivate Some Domestic Extremists to Commit Criminal, Sometimes Violent Activity“.
- What the FBI Doc Says
- What the Yahoo! News Article Says
- What It Means
- The Message Is The Menace
- Why Conspiracy No Longer Matters
Summary of FBI Document
Though the FBI ‘Intelligence Bulletin’ which found its way to Scribd in a scrubbed, unclassified form has a lot of words, the document consists of five pages of (often repetitive) assertions, one (mostly blank) page of cryptic reference to ‘Intelligence Requirements’, five pages of appendices (of which three are hidden polemic definitions of conspiracy theory and two are boilerplate FBI verbiage about NPC Random Encounter tables—sorry, I meant confidence assessments), three pages of footnotes (which are fun and frustrating to read), and one page at the end which is a Customer Survey form. Sheesh.
Leaving aside the appendices, etc., as well as the examples given, the FBI doc presents the following argument:
- Conspiracy Theory makes people do crimes
- Conspiracy Theory gives people targets
- Conspiracy Theories will keep coming
CAVEAT: If crimes don’t happen, then never mind
On the other hand: Maybe it’s just extremist ideology makin’ people do crimes.
But … nah. Conspiracy Theories play a big part in, and amplify extremist ideology.
And … that’s it. That’s the entirety of the argument presented by this ‘Intelligence Bulletin’ which was apparently over four years in the making.
More below on the FBI document, but now let’s turn to the Yahoo! [ugh] News article….
Summary of News Article
Performing both exegesis and reportage, the Yahoo! News article by Jana Winter can be rendered thusly in Cliff Notes fashion:
- FBI says Conspiracy Theory is “domestic terrorist threat”
- FBI mentions QAnon, President Trump
- FBI says real conspiracies or cover-ups could increase threat
- (though the FBI doesn’t specify which cover-ups it refers to)
- FBI now splits Domestic Terrorism thusly:
- Race Motivated Violent Extremism
- Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Extremism
- Animal Rights/Environmental Extremism
- Abortion Extremism
- FBI sees Conspiracy Theory as part of Anti-Gov/Authority Extremism
- An Expert “raised doubts” about the memo, questioning FBI’s assumption that ideology rather than mental illness drives violence
- FBI identifying Conspiracy Theory as threat could be problematic, because Trump
- Another expert says no evidence Conspiracy Theories are more prevalent now
- Yet another expert classifies the FBI memo as continuing “radicalization analysis” it uses on ISIS, etc.
- And one more expert says the radicalization theory is “bogus”, just an excuse for mass surveillance, and that the FBI is paranoid
- Back to ‘yet another expert’ (from #10) who says none of this matters, since under the Trump administration the Department of Homeland Security got rid of all the analysts looking at domestic terrorism
So What Does All This Mean?
Not much.
This is just a tempest in a teapot. Or—since we no longer use teapots—a cyclone in a Keurig® K-Cup®. The verbiage of the FBI document is so deadening and repetitive as to be almost devoid of meaning, and it is very difficult to see how any of the information in the memo could be used to detect or foil any actual domestic terrorist threat. For this reason, the biggest news here was the list of examples the unknown FBI agent used to support his labored and meaningless contentions. So it is apparently news now that some nutjob was planning to drive to Illinois last December to blow up a satanic temple monument at that state’s capitol building in order to raise awareness of Pizzagate.
The reality is that the FBI has a difficult time defining domestic terrorism (there is no official law or definition), let alone swimming in the murky waters of conspiracy theory. And the author of the Intelligence Bulletin is no Fox Mulder. He (c’mon—you know this was written by a “he”) learned about conspiracy theories the way most people do, through Wikipedia, Snopes, and those books and white papers some professor gave us as assigned reading. Like most assigned reading, the agent skimmed lightly and grabbed the topic sentences from the introductions. The unfortunate fact is that domestic terrorism is defined after it happens, and this FBI memorandum is ‘leading from behind’, identifying this potential threat based on statements from people who committed or attempted to commit violent crimes, either in jailhouse interviews or in their manifestos or social media leading up to the event.
For this reason the FBI document presents its case that Conspiracy Theories “very likely motivate some domestic extremists … to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity” with the following huge caveat:
One key assumption driving these assessments is that certain conspiracy theory narratives tacitly support or legitimize violent action. The FBI also assumes some, but not all individuals or domestic extremists who hold such beliefs will act on them. The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts. Indicators that may lead to revised judgements or cause a change in the confidence level associated with this assessment include a lack of conspiracy theory-driven criminal or violent activity in the near to long term or significant efforts by major social media companies and websites to remove, regulate, or counter potentially harmful conspiratorial content.
The caveats at the end of this quote read like the ‘cover-your-ass’ statements in SEC filings. “If what we say will happen doesn’t happen, this changes what we said would happen.” Also of note is the slightly ominous shifting of blame for domestic terror to the social media companies who apparently could stop the madness if they would just stop the flow of these dangerous ideas. Good luck with that.
As the Yahoo! News article points out, the FBI has been having a tough time trying to categorize the potential threats from homegrown violent extremists, and this memo is likely just another attempt to get a handle on an obvious problem of which ‘none dare speak its name’. But again, not much smoke here, and even less fire.
The Message Is The Menace
But there is a huge problem here, hidden in plain sight (just like most conspiracy theories, once you know how to look). The FBI document and the news article based upon that memo are just two sides of the same debased coin. This little kerfuffle in a K-Cup® is perhaps emblematic of the effects of a sort of Gresham’s Law working in the marketplace of ideas. A deadening of thought and insight is visible in the moribund bureaucracy of the FBI as well as in the formulaic news generated from the mediocre memo.
The Secrecy is a Symptom of the Same Disease
Each paragraph, heading, and footnote of the FBI ‘Intelligence Bulletin’ is labeled with a classification marker, meaning that each of those items starts off with either (U), (U//LES), or (U//FOUO). The designation ‘(U)’ simply means ‘Unclassified’. The first paragraph of the document (after the title, which is marked ‘(U//LES)’ is marked as Unclassified, and defines the ‘(U//LES)’ designation thusly:
(U) LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE: The information marked (U//LES) in this document is the property of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and may be distributed within the federal government (and its contractors), U.S. intelligence, law enforcement, public safety or protection officials, and individuals with a need to know. Distribution beyond these entities without FBI authorization is prohibited. Precautions should be taken to ensure this information is stored and/or destroyed in a manner that precludes unauthorized access. Information bearing the LES caveat may not be used in legal proceedings without first receiving authorization from the originating agency. Recipients are prohibited from subsequently posting the information marked LES on a website on an unclassified network without obtaining FBI approval.
Sigh. So we have an implicit Intellectual Property claim being staked out here, just like that email you got from your cable company who claims each communication is copyrighted and cannot be copied or shared. Where does the madness end? The designation ‘(U//FOUO)’ is not defined in the document itself, but means ‘Unclassified – For Official Use Only’. This originated with the Department of Defense, who sought to use this designation to prevent such labeled material from being released under the Freedom of Information Act. Double sigh.
So, having established that I am prohibited from looking at most of the meat of the memorandum (since only a few items besides footnotes are marked with the simple ‘(U)’—a few headers and mention of Sandy Hook, Cosmic Pizza, and two other crimes), we find further secrecy-induced information necrosis when we peruse the footnotes. Almost all proper names are redacted from the information given therein, although in most cases anyone with halfway decent Web search skills can fill in most of the blanks. We’re not talking only ‘Names have been changed to protect the innocent’ here; a Tucson Police Department posting on Facebook is given as
https://www.[Name withheld].com/TucsonPoliceDepartment/posts/10155545208458531 where “[Name withheld]” is “Facebook”. Similarly, a Twitter tweet is referenced in the FBI footnotes as https://www.[Names withheld] status/1086090064323440640 where “[Names withheld]” elides “twitter.com/VopReal/” (also note there’s a bogus space between the redaction and the next word of the URL, ‘status’).*
The obvious question is who this information is being protected from, and the answer seems to be the people, the citizens of the United States. Contractors have access, and other police agencies. Doubtless one of these or somesuch made this document available to the reporter who broke the story, as is revealed by the Survey Form at the end of the document. We’ve all seen this form in one guise or another: the recipient is asked to rate on the ‘Very Satisfied-Very Dissatisfied’ scale the ‘Product’s overall usefulness’, the ‘Products relevance to your mission’, the ‘Product’s timeliness’, and the ‘Product’s responsiveness to your intelligence needs’. Check boxes are provided to show ‘How do you plan to use this product in support of your mission?’ and a couple of text boxes allow the recipient to describe how ‘the product’ adds ‘value to your mission’ and how the product could be improved. Naturally, each question is designated ‘(U//FOUO)’.
Thus any actual information in this or any similar report is hedged in with so many codicils, parenthetical statements, caveats, and mind-numbing feats of bureaucratic legerdemain as to be useless once it is promulgated, except to ‘add value to your mission’—whatever that crap may mean.
Then again, all the secrecy and attempts to hide what little information may exist here simply feeds the very desire to be among the cognoscenti that drives much of conspiracy narratives. Thus the opening pages of The Andromeda Strain are gripping not due to their deathless prose, but because they are portrayed as part of a Top Secret document in which ‘Courier should be notified immediately of any missing pages’, grabbing the reader by promising to show the hidden truth behind events. Similarly, the opening chapter from one of the old conspiracy theory canonical texts, Milton Willam Cooper’s Behold A Pale Horse, purports to be taken directly from a Top Secret document smuggled out to true patriots, detailing how Operations Research methods were being used to manipulate the populace into doing just what the power elites desired. (It’s B.S., by the way. But you already knew that.) Labeling a menu as “For Official Use Only” just feeds a mindset in which all knowledge is the secret property of a select few, the Geheimnisträger who carry the woeful burden of the truth in all its secrecy.
The Medium is The Mediocrity
The Yahoo! News article is mired in its own habitual performative tropes, from choosing a few choice nuggets of meat-like product from a document that is mostly gristle, to throwing experts at the problem. Along the way the particles of news atoms are stirred to high heat, hoping the the resultant Brownian motion will suffice to trigger trending in social media (which it did, and here we are).
To make the already-too-long a little shorter, I’ll note that the first expert consulted, David Garrow, is said to have “raised doubts” about the FBI document. The reporter goes on to say that Mr. Garrow was questioning the FBI’s assumption that ideology drives violence rather than mental illness, but the term “raised doubts” connotes something quite different when discussing conspiracy theories. To raise doubts “about the memo” implies that the memo is somehow counterfeit, suspicious, or a hoax. Why did not Jana Winter simply say that the expert ‘questioned the assessment’ of the document?
Indeed, the dichotomy between ideology and insanity exposes that all our base are belong to someone else. Certainly this past weekend makes many suspicious of one half of that contrast pair (take your pick). And the FBI’s insistence that something other than madness makes Americans commit seemingly mad acts points out both the difficult place that Bureau finds itself in as well as the bizarre word-salad we must consume every day now. For the reality is that concepts such as ‘mental illness’ or ‘extremism’ are simply placeholders for a society to label anything that doesn’t accord to societal norms; but nowadays norms have been thrown out with the baby, along with the idea that facts exist, that words have meaning, and that value is something beyond what a product adds to a corporate entity’s ‘mission’. In the midst of the apocalyptic devastation of truth, justice, and the American Way—along with any other ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’—the once respectable though minor place of Conspiracy Theories among the shrines of Wacko has been made null and void, and Conspiracy, like every-damn-thing else, no longer means anything anymore.
Why Conspiracy No Longer Matters
Though it is difficult to precisely define Conspiracy Theory (and it is really a fool’s game, as today’s sneered-at ‘Theory’ becomes tomorrow’s history when the CIA finally confirms that, yes, they did dose one of their scientists with LSD, just that one time), it is obvious from historical examples that yes, conspiracy ideas can drive some people to violent acts. Besides the obvious Cosmic Pizza instance referenced by the FBI memo, the couple responsible for the 2014 Las Vegas shootings that ended in Wal-Mart followed the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory, along with the Bundys. (It’s sad we now have to specify which Las Vegas shooting we mean.) Both the Unabomber and the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik espoused conspiracy ideas in their respective manifestos (though parts of Breivik’s are plagiarized from Kaczynski). Do we include Blood Libel tales as a conspiracy theory? If so, there are numerous instances—as recently as the notorious Damascus case in 1840—of Jews being murdered for this idea. Certainly the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a Conspiracy Theory—perhaps even The Conspiracy Theory of the Modern Age—and though it is difficult to exactly ascribe this pogrom or that massacre specifically to the Protocols, that vicious forgery certainly played a large part.
Often, however, it is authority itself which has used Conspiracy Theory of one stripe or another to justify its own violence and murder. For every actual Gunpowder Plot (though even there you get into weeds of doubt) you will find a Titus Oates and the Popish Plot, which imaginary conspiracy against the king led to the executions of over a dozen innocents. Darius the Great posited a pretender on the Persian throne to justify his own rebellion against the rightful king he denigrated as the ‘false Smerdis’. During the French Revolution the changing parties in power used Conspiracy Theory ideas over and over again to justify eliminating each successive wave of rivals until, on a fateful day in Thermidor, the rivals were all used up and the Jacobins—Conspiracy Theorists par excellence—were themselves accused of being malicious plotters and were eliminated in their turn. And how many Romans were executed because the emperor feared falsely that they were plotting to kill him?
Belief in Conspiracy Theory does not inevitably lead to violent acts, of course. Its effects can range from mild dislocation from factual bases of understanding to the creation of political movements, such as Boss Weed’s Anti-Masonic party inspired by the supposed murder of Captain Morgan by Freemasons, or the Know Nothing movement founded on a belief in a Romanist conspiracy to undercut traditional American values. Many people believe some sort of conspiracy hides behind the murder of John F. Kennedy, yet few if any of these people commit any untoward acts.
How far such beliefs may move a person towards madness is itself a fraught question. Delia Bacon’s belief that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare turned into a monomania that led her to England where she eventually haunted the tomb of The Bard, seeking to dig up his grave for evidence she was convinced lay interred there. Philip K. Dick’s delightful Confessions Of A Crap Artist portrays the gentle insanity of a group of UFO True Believers in the 1950s. And can anything but some mental disarrangement explain why so many teenagers spent hours searching The Beatles’ pictures, albums, songs, and lyric sheets to uncover evidence of the ‘Paul Is Dead’ theory?
On the other hand, Conspiracy Theory beliefs have been manipulated from time immemorial by those with their own, sometimes hidden, agendas. Besides the use Darius made of a ludicrous replacement of King Cambyses by Smerdis, recent history shows so very many cases where the Plot is a tool to be used by another’s hands. We have learned that the Seth Rich murder plot alleged against Hillary Clinton has its own Russian origins, for example. The Russians themselves have been played, however, as when Reinhard Heydrich used one Soviet general’s query about becoming a spy for the Nazis to cast suspicion in Stalin’s mind against his entire general staff, leading to the Generals’ Purge and the destruction of Russia’s top military ranks in the years heading towards the Great Patriotic War. Though the origins of ‘Red Mercury’ are still in some doubt, the bogus material has been sold by conmen in the Middle East for fantastic sums, and there are surely more buyers for this fictional fissile shortcut. On a more prosaic note, how much money has been raised by declaiming fears that “They’re coming for your guns”—either in direct donations to the NRA and its ilk or in purchases of a few more dozen for your stockpile?
One should not believe that Conspiracy Theory is solely a madness of the Right; there is no evidence for that idea, as the case of the French Revolution clearly proves. Persons purporting to be most liberal are among the strongest supporters of Anti-Vaxxer ideas which clearly shade into Conspiracy Theory, especially when the idea of a cover-up is broached. Similarly, believers in the MJ-12 documents or the Thane Cesar theory tend to be anti-authoritarians of a leftist bent, when they espouse any aspect of that political dichotomy. And I daren’t look even glancingly at some of the conspiracy ideas surrounding the downfall of Bill Cosby or O.J. Simpson.
But, as I said, none of this matters. Because Conspiracy Theory doesn’t matter anymore. Once this was a field for monomaniacs and researchers manqués, but no more. The heyday of Conspiracy Theory is over, its febrile sun sunk with the other stars in the disappearing heavens of the Enlightenment and the Modern Age. There were giants in this field: Augustin Barruel, Mae Brussel, Jim Keith, Mark Lane, Bob Lazar. A single sentence in Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy And Hope could spawn a hundred articles and books. The works ranged from Fletcher Prouty’s The Secret Team and Carl Oglesby’s The Yankee and Cowboy War to Nesta Webster’s The French Revolution and A. Ralph Epperson’s The Unseen Hand. Self-appointed ‘researchers’ gathered every scrap of evidence they could find, read every book pro and con, and cross-referenced each mention of each person, place, or thing in obscenely detailed files. (Mae Brussel started out by ordering the full version of the Warren Commission’s report, creating an index for the whole thing (which the Report didn’t have), and ended with labyrinthine shelves and shelves of files all cross-referenced, when she was given cancer (according to some).) Studying secret societies were brilliant academics like J.M. Roberts and René Le Forestier as well as hacks like Akron Daraul (pseudonym of Idries Shah) and Michael Baigent.
But none of that matters. Because nothing matters anymore.
To call QAnon a Conspiracy Theory is like calling Dutch Schultz’s last words a Bible concordance. You can call it anything you like, but unless you are a genius junkie wife killer, you probably make of it nothing more than what you start with, which is gibberish.
Go ahead. Go and watch the lady with her ‘What Is Q?’ video from her car. There is a tangled mess around conspiracy, religion, magic, the mind, etc. But “Q” ain’t it. The … what word to use? … noodlers in Q could no more do real Conspiracy Theory than the idiots who steal Amazon packages containing epsom salts could pull off an Ocean’s Eleven ‘caper’. Even criminals are debased in our current age.
And yet it just doesn’t matter. Not because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk cause they’ve got all the money (though that’s still true), but because apparently people can now just say whatever they want and then say that those words mean the opposite, or mean something somehow orthogonal to that, or mean any ol’ damn thing they say they mean, and that’s where we’re at. Hell, at least the aptly named Holocaust denier Arthur Butz put in the effort to cherry-pick self-serving statements from a Nazi facing the noose to use as bullshit evidence in The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Nowadays apparently “evidence” means “someone said so” or even “I say that someone said so” or “I saw it on TV, all those Muslims celebrating when the Twin Towers fell”. Ugh. And it does not matter. No matter how many times a young boy or whoever points out that the kings heinie is completely exposed along with everything else, nothing changes.
Thus the FBI memo (thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?) can lay out a Wiki-garnered list of Conspiracy Theories, mixing such apples and oranges as New World Order and False Flags, while the news can focus on the fact that “President Trump is mentioned by name briefly” (and then quotes the memo which makes the mention only in the context of the QAnon crap cribbed from Snopes in the FBI document). And at no time do either the FBI or the news make the obvious correspondence between The Donald and what passes for Conspiracy Theory now: stupidity and fact-free thinking are all the rage. Truth, as MC 900 Ft. Jesus warned us, is out of style.
So sure, the FBI can alert LEOs and contractors about the possible potential sometimes maybe danger that Conspiracy Theory may pose, and the media can plague the DOJ about its language when it talks about the terrorism which “must not be named” (or at least defined). But none of this will make a bit of difference until something fundamental changes. In the marketplace of ideas, the currency of truth has been completely withdrawn from circulation, and the debased counterfeit that is left is being passed from hand to hand like junk bonds being traded by overly talkative coke-fueled wheelers and dealers before the crash.
So we’re likely to have more nonsense like Jade Helm 15, where the Texas Governor and a U.S. Senator (aka The Zodiac Killer) publicly expressed concern about the supposed attempt by the United States military to invade Texas, using Walmart stores to stockpile guns for use by Chinese soldiers with orders to disarm Americans. And crumbs from “Q”, who is likely a crumb himself, if not a крошка.
Footnote
* Pro Tip: You can find any Twitter status given just the ID value at the end; just replace the unknown twitter handle with a known twitter name and it will automatically resolve to the correct handle. Thus, if you know a status ID of “1149818855537070080”, you can just use https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1149818855537070080 and the tweet will come up (unless it’s been deleted since).
Monday Book Report: Agnes Grey
In partial fulfillment of the promise I made to read works by the sisters of Charlotte Brontë, and in partial penance for baiting remarks I made purporting to disdain “women writers”, I have just completed Agnes Grey by the lesser Baldwin—I mean Brontë, of course—Anne Brontë, the youngest sibling of the much ballyhooed literary sisterhood. Dragging myself to its pages after slogging through the wearying words written by her elder sister, Charlotte, I was pleased to find a novel which was better written than Jane Eyre, even though the latter was much more erudite and obviously the more thoughtful and painstaking work. In contrast to the most famous novel of the most diminutive Brontë, Agnes Grey has no references to deep cuts from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, though quite enough Bible quotes are to be found within its twenty-five fairly well-paced chapters. Where Miss Eyre broods, Miss Grey pines, and in a more seemly manner.
TRIGGER WARNING:
Agnes Grey depicts scenes of animal cruelty.
The plot, in brief, tells the story of young Agnes, frustrated because her family treat her like a child, boldly striking off to make her own living as a governess. The first family she works for harbors a child which we would now recognize as a serial killer in training. In spite of the unspeakable brutally of the family, Agnes is disappointed when the family dismisses her for having engendered little learning among her charges. (All the while every modern reader—one assumes—is silently shouting at the book, “Leave! Go! Get out!” and is relieved when our protagonist is not forced to endure more of the bestial cruelty she finds at this, her first assignment.) She then gets a position with a family having four children: two boys and two girls. The two boys are soon sent to school to get an actual education, and the majority of the novel details Miss Grey’s experiences as governess of the two ungovernable teenaged girls placed in her care. Along the way are several homilies in both internal and direct dialogue about the wonderful Christian virtues of hard work, good thoughts, humility, &c. At the end—ah, but that would be spoiling it, though if you do not see the ending coming from as far away as you might make out a distant figure on the horizon, you should enjoy most English literature for you will always be surprised.
No one triumphed over my failure, or said I had better have taken his or her advice, and quietly stayed at home. All were glad to have me back again, and lavished more kindness than ever upon me, to make up for the sufferings I had undergone; but not one would touch a shilling of what I had so cheerfully earned, and so carefully saved, in the hope of sharing it with them.
Like most kids who move back in with their parents, Agnes tries to pay something for her room and board.
At this point I would like to stake out a contrarian position vis–à-vis this novel. Though Miss Grey devotes much of her internal monologue or her narration (the two may not, in fact, be distinct) to bemoaning the lack of authority granted her by the parents, to decrying the unruly natures of her charges, and to shaking her (figurative) head at the complete disinterest in learning shown by the children in her care, there is another explanation for the fact that the youngsters in both families she serves do not make progress in their education and deportment: Agnes Grey is not good at her job.
I fear, by this time, the reader is well nigh disgusted with the folly and weakness I have so freely laid before him.
This is where the reader is supposed to say, “No, really. It’s fine. It’s not you; it’s me.”
This is hinted at quite strongly in several places and, indeed, Miss Grey obsesses over this very question, though she feels that the idea that she “had presumed to take in hand what she was wholly incompetent to perform” is just another of the baseless aspersions against her by those who have not provided her with more power (she desperately wishes to whip her students, just once) and better qualified pupils. (One is reminded of Lester Maddox, Governor of Georgia last century, who was confronted with the appalling condition in Georgia prisons, and who retorted that the problem was not with the prisons, but rather the need for a better class of prisoner.) There are many passages that illustrate just how incapable this young girl is to teach others, despite her high hopes and ambitions. For example, we are told that the eldest Murray girl learns music quite well when taught by the “best master the country afforded”, achieving “great proficiency” in the art. Agnes herself even ascribes the success of the small school she and her mother open in the closing chapters of the book to the efforts and abilities of her mother, not to herself.
Many will feel this who have felt that they could love, and whose hearts tell them that they are worthy to be loved again; while yet they are debarred by the lack of this or some such seeming trifle, from giving and receiving that happiness they seem almost made to feel and to impart. As well might the humble glow-worm despise that power of giving light without which the roving fly might pass her and repass her a thousand times, and never light beside her: she might hear her winged darling buzzing over and around her; he vainly seeking her, she longing to be found, but with no power to make her presence known, no voice to call him, no wings to follow his flight; the fly must seek another mate, the worm must live and die alone.
Um … yeah, right … okay?
But this is a quibble. The book is solid enough, with a few characters who are not mere caricature, and a religious sensibility of that type William James labelled ‘healthy-mindedness’. Nothing wrong with that as long as the proponent stays mindful of Jesus’ warning given in Matthew 23:3 to do as you say. And Agnes Grey does that, at least, in her thoughtful way. If the trigger warning given above doesn’t apply to you, you could do worse than to read the novel. It doesn’t scintillate on every page like the prose of Jane Austen, but … what does?
But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in a moment.
Anne Brontë can write pellucid prose.
Friday Vocabulary
In Kirkcaldy whilst visiting Fife you can visit Sailor’s Walk, which is actually two 17th-century houses, both with the distinctive pantile roof often seen in this part of Scotland.
2. persiflage — light banter; frivolous way of treating any subjectThough he may appeal to the younger set with his knowing talk of the people’s will and equality for all, we can discern the knowing persiflage and even a hint of sarcasm beneath his supposedly earnest professions.
3. lacustrine — of or relating to a lake or lakesBuried beneath four centuries of lacustrine silt lay the remains of the sacrificed twins, their golden chains still bound round their necks.
4. supercilium — colored stripe on bird’s head running from beak to just above the eye; (obsolete) eyebrowHis sole ability which defined him as an actor was his almost unique facility at raising one supercilium while at the same time depressing the other.
5. turbid — opaque with suspended matter, muddy, cloudyBeneath the turbid surface of the lake must be vicious gar and snapping turtles, I felt, ready to rend the flesh from my toes should I dip them even a few inches into the brown still water.
6. whitlow — infection of the tip of the finger or toe, usually suppuratingJackson doubted his fiancée’s diagnosis of a whitlow, recalling that he had removed a splinter from just that finger a few days ago.
7. hoyden — tomboy, romp; boorish or ill-bred girlMiss Alice was a terrible hoyden at ten years of age, always begging to go riding or playing in the fields, so it was quite a shock to see her at seventeen, demurely sitting at the pianoforte playing Hensel’s songs with virtuosity and near brilliance.
8. roister — to act in a swaggering or blustering manner; to revel rudely or noisilyOh, those were wonderful times for roistering from dusk until dawn, and often it was only the crow of the cock that ended our revels.
9. accumber — (obsolete) to overwhelm, to crush, to burdenOft he searched his worn Bible for some solace, but so accumbered was he by religious melancholy that the words of solace seemed proof of his unworthiness instead.
10. beldame — old woman; hag, witch“It’s listening to the superstitious nonsense of that crazy beldame by the sewer gate that’s got you worked up in such a state.”
Bonus Vocabulary
(fantasy gaming)
dweomer (also seen as dwimmer) — aura of magic (on an item, or from a spell), magic power or effectHer golden lasso has a powerful dweomer which compels anyone constrained by it to speak only the truth.
Friday Vocabulary
1. repine — to show discontent, to complain
The whole weary day he repines and sighs at the utter unfairness of it all, making each day wearier and drearier still.
2. operculum — (zoology) gill cover of a fish
Besides the three bands of color (yellow head, black body, yellow tail) which give the rock beauty its Latin name, Holacanthus tricolor, small stripes of red are often seen alongside the opercula.
3. kirtle — long women’s garment worn from medieval times to the Baroque Era over smock or chemise
The barwoman’s scarlet kirtle matched her ruddy cheeks, and distracted from the dirty linen smock she wore beneath.
4. catamount — leopard, ocelot, lynx, or panther; (U.S.) puma or cougar
Having been abducted as a small boy, he is as wild as the bear, the wolf, and the catamount, and I doubt me that any amount of effort will bring him back whole to civilization.
5. hyperesthesia — excessive sensitivity of nerves, as to pain, etc.; algesia
Many felt that the Rhine experiments proved no such thing as extrasensory perception, but rather a seemingly benign hyperesthesia on the part of the subjects, produced by factors which could only be guessed at.
6. gink — (slang) fellow, person
Every time we trot out the pinhead some gink has to claim that it’s a fake chicken, or something stupid like that.
7. blirt — to burst into tears
It made my heart near to burst, to see her blirt so upon the woeful, awful news.
8. ecdysiast — stripper, striptease performer
If she plays the ecdysiast solely in the privacy of her home and only for physical exercise, does she really need to call it a stripper pole?
9. chthonic — of creatures, deities, beings, or other things dwelling in the earth
He sought an ancient and matchless power, known only to the most primitive chthonic beings that resided deep within the bowels of rock and magma, the power to move through matter itself.
10. etiolate — to blanch (a plant) by keeping light from it; to induce a pale, sickly hue in (a person or a person’s skin)
Playing video games for twelve, sixteen hours a day had etiolated his face and hands, and his legs seemed almost leprous.
Friday Vocabulary
1. chancel — area around altar reserved for use of officiating clergy, usu. the eastern part of the church
The choir rose from their seats in the chancel and sang the introit, and we could not help but notice how the mysterious plague had depleted their pious voices.
2. Monothelite — believer in heretical doctrine that Christ has only a single divine will
Pope Honorius I was anathematized by the Third Council of Constantinople for promoting the Monothelites, or at least for having not condemned them out of hand.
3. tinkler (usu. tinker) — (Scot.) itinerant metal worker, usu. a gypsy
Naturally everyone suspected the tinkler who had been seen roaming the vicinage, but his biggest crime was repairing pewter with lead.
4. mischieve — to harm, to inflict loss; to ruin
The obvious conflict between their supposed high morals and their base actions will serve only to mischieve others who might have followed the true faith.
5. overthwart — crosswise, transversely
The grim wizard upon his haggard mount rode overthwart between the opposing armies, haranguing them endlessly with the most vile names and imprecations.
6. bombazeen (var. of bombasine) — twill fabric of worsted and (often) silk or cotton, used as mourning garb when dyed black
She stood in mournful silence, her bombazeen dress trimmed in crape, her hair and face covered by a black veil.
7. morgengab — portion of deceased man’s estate allotted to widow for her use as a direct bequest
Some Bible commentators believe that the gifts described in Genesis 25:6 that Abraham gave to his concubines’ children functioned as a sort of morgengab, a stated gift that foreclosed all interest those men would have to the bulk of the patriarch’s estate, which descended upon Isaac.
8. cleek — to seize with the hand, to clutch strongly or suddenly; to snatch
He acts as if he claught his spouse’s very soul when he took her to wife.
9. shenship — disgrace, ruin
Through the wiles of the evil one he fell into such shame and shenship that no more in this place may his name be spoken.
10. superpurgation — excessive purgation, vomiting, or evacuation of the bowels
The quack prescribed a medicament compounded from that very fruit as physic for my dear cousin, and her resulting superpurgation left her so weak as to approach nigh unto the very gates of death.