Status Updates From Manufacturing Hysteria: A H...

Long before Wikileaks, in 1971, there was the Media (Pennsylvania) break in: FBI files stolen and gradually released over a long period.

This is amazing. There was no limit to the FBI's methods, including provoking a deadly clash between two black power groups. Forget about crazy conspiracy theories: there's plenty of REAL conspiracies to justify skepticism (at best) toward law enforcement at all levels.

The mysterious paradox of J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI: an "obsession with the unimportant" (e.g., a scoutmaster whose wife belonged to the Socialist Workers Party) while city crime rates rose, organized crime expanded and a few actual, real spies flourished (spies in the FBI itself!).

In 1956, there were fewer than 5,000 members of the American Communist Party -- 1,500 of them FBI agents and informers!

"It was those ideas -- that is, a powerful critique of the social inequities of the capitalist system -- rather than any tangible political power, that made the Communist Party so threatening to the established order."

Wow. Eisenhower instituted a program called "Operation Wetback" that deported more than half a million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in less than SIX months. That's even more than Obama!

You know hysteria is at work when a political, economic philosophy (communism) can be vilified interchangeably with sexuality (homosexuality). In such cases, words and concepts are just being thrown around bearing a frightful affect.

The real conspiracies (revealed eventually by history) are much more predictable than the "conspiracy theories." One bad thing about the paranoid, implausible conspiracies is that they distract attention from the actual behind-the-scenes machinations of government, business, etc. One lesson: always be skeptical when someone tries to make you afraid or angry.