@wissoxfan83 said:
I love a good conspiracy theory as well as the next guy or gal. However, I have to resist the urge to say conspiracy whenever something goes on against KU.
I keep telling you: THERE ARE NO CONSPIRACIES, WHEN ACTIONS ARE LEGAL.
There is only cooperation resulting in legal asymmetries.
You are too smart to talk about conspiracies, even casually, as you have just done above.
You are a teacher of our children if I recall correctly.
Its scary to think that you may be talking to your students about conspiracy theories and dismissing them as put out by kooks, when the conspiracy theories and the kooks (often spooks) that spread them, are so irrelevant.
Conspiracies are largely for suckers and the last thing I want is some teacher teaching kids that conspiracy theories are prevalent and usually bogus. I don't know if they are mostly bogus, or not, because real conspiracy theories are mostly about illegal activities and I don't know much about, nor want to know much about, illegal activities. Teaching kids about conspiracy theories would be like teachers wasting valuable teaching time teaching kids that the sky is not green. Everyone can look up and know its not green. Kids don't need to be taught that. The question is why is the sky blue? Common sense should tell most kids and adults that conspiracy theories are mostly irrelevant to what goes on in daily life, especially in big important stuff.
IMHO conspiracies drive almost nothing that happens in a big dollar value way in our culture, and so they are a huge waste of time to talk about, and an insult to persons' intelligences also. The law enforcement authorities are among those most qualified to talk about conspiracies and its worth noting that many of them couldn't even see a conspiracy in John Kennedy's head being blown back and to the left by a documented ex Marine Corp radio eavesdropper and documented participant in a fake defector program run by the CIA firing at him from behind.
IMHO, asymmetric legalities are what drive 99% of the big dollar unfairness in the world and I believe that even as I am able to concede begrudgingly after all these years, that, well, yes, my beloved President Kennedy, once a member of ONI, got whacked in a cross fire in Dallas by some folks that hoped to sew dissension in our government because they understood the deep divisions created by JFKs steps to defrock the CIA, sharply reduce commitment to South Vietnam, build a special operations capability (a Praetorian guard if you will) reporting directly to JKF (not the JCS) and became the first President since Lincoln to print a competing currency to the Federal Resere Note (Silver Certificates).
I didn't always think conspiracies were so marginal. I got seduced by the whole conspiracy smear game for awhile. But once you dig in a little and do your homework, its just another spinfluence technique that got over used for several decades, especially when the XTReme Wacko Right was going after Clinton, but then went on steroids during the naught decade when the national security state began flexing its psy-ops and propaganda muscles big time after 9-11. It was like the public relations, media spin managers, psy-ops types, and propagandists, engaged in public dumping of the "c" word and there was no countervailing force in media to counteract them. It wasn't a conspiracy either. It was just a media management strategy; that's all. But in one of the great ironies of propaganda, or maybe not, the "conspiracy" word then got picked up as a popular phrase by many socio-economic and professional classes of America. It became this new contemporary variation on saying someone was "full of shit." But the beauty of it as a smear word was that it also implied something about someone being crazy; that's the most sadly hilarious part of the whole episode. Instead of telling persons one disagreed with one was full of shit, one said, awwwww, you're a conspiracy nut, or a conspiracy theorist. It was wild to watch it unfold, as someone that suspected it was bull shit from the beginning. But now here we are and people still pull it up and use it frequently long after the professional spinfluencers have moved on from it.
Let's go down memory lane, or should I say the memory hole, again.
The massive wealth redistribution since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980? All legal. No conspiracy. All done with huge amounts of monies invested legally in lobbying and getting legislation enabling the legislation. Carefully planned out. All the conservative and neoconservative organizations involved? All legal. All operating legally the vast majority of the time. These organizations have been openly and proudly orchestrated by persons taking enormous credit for--ever hear of Grover Norquist--and pride in having shifted the wealth upwards where they think it belongs. They don't believe poor people should do better. They didn't believe the middle class was necessary after the Cold War ended. Unions as a bulwark against communism after communism fell? Fugggeddabout'em. Greed was good. Universal health care? Who cares if 40 million fellow citizens can't see a doctor until they are convulsing and hauled into an emergency room and denied care, or under treated? Make money. Take it from medical care by cutting services to more and more Americans. Making money by taking it from the middle class was good. Taxing the middle class to pay for moving their firms and jobs abroad was good. And legal. Oh man was it ever legal. And fun!!!! Talking about conspiracies is how you distract those suffering from the vicious asymmetries of designed wealth redistribution upwards, not how you remedy the egregious abuse.
Conspiracy is for suckers.
In wealth redistribution and in basketball and in most every other form of high buck activity probably, and college basketball now qualifies as a high buck, not mega buck, but high buck activity IMHO.
The Standard Oil Trust was never illegal until long after it had profitted so greatly from its overtly collusive activities that it then reputedly among some colluded with government itself to legislate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act precisely to make sure no other petroleum organization could use trust organization as a means of eclipsing The Standard. Rockefeller himself could not have asked for better legislation to protect his fortune than the Sherman Anti Trust Act which enabled him to restructure his Trust into an oligopoly woven together by interlocking directorates and strategic incentives for oligopolistic cooperation. Same with the Federal Income Tax Act of 1914 that promises preferred distribution of the Federal Income taxes first to pay the debts of the Federal Reserve created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 shepherded into law in the Senate by John D. Rockefellers father in law--Senator Aldrich. All legal. All above board. All known about and debated about and intensely criticized as selling out our Republic in the Congressional record.
There are no conspiracies of real consequence in America.
Oh, maybe the JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations. But, well, exceptions prove rules, sometimes. And who knows? Maybe somewhere down in the bowels of the National Security Act and the National Security Council archives and the body of legislation related to the National Security State it could be argued by some lawyer that those hits were necessary for national security. I am just a citizen basketball fan. I don't know what lawyers arguing under a seal of national security could argue and get away with. I only know that calling torture enhanced interrogation and running a USA torture prison archipelago was considered okay.
I believe it maybe one of the things that distinguishes America from so many other places.
The founders just embraced the idea that less government is better government and that the more legal grey areas you have (and later create) the more room entrepreneurial citizens have room to move, and the more life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can occur, albeit with a goodly share of abuses.
Conspiracies are for crooks and small time suckers and the occasional murder that has to be committed to perpetuate some kind of complex in a legal grey that is about to be out maneuvered by some other complex in a legal grey area.
Otherwise, did I say, conspiracy is for suckers?
Let's keep skipping down memory lane.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was no conspiracy. It was all above board. It was all legal. It was perhaps misnamed. It perhaps should have been called The Sherman Oligopoly Act, or the Sherman Pull Up the Trust Ladder So No One Else Can Do to John D. Rockefeller What John D. Rockefeller Did to Hundreds, or Thousands of Others. Same as the Income Tax Act was perhaps misnamed. It perhaps should have been called the Pull up the No Tax Ladder So No One Else Can Do to John D. Rockefeller what John D. Rockefeller Did to Hundreds, or Thousands of Others.
Do you see why John D. Rockefeller might well have privately supported both the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Income Tax Act, while publicly complaining about them? Both converged to make sure no one could repeat his trick and so eclipse him. Imagine how much harder it would be to corner the oil refining bidness if you couldn't openly monopolize through a trust shell AND had to pay taxes the John D. never had to pay.
This appears to be how the game is played at a high level.
Do unto others, before they can do to you, then clear the wake and institute so that others cannot later do unto you what you just did.
Conspiracies are for suckers and for those so lacking in imagination, skill, power and influence that they have to break the law instead of use it and get it rewritten.
Cooperation in grey areas and rewriting laws/regs as feasible are how things get done in a big way.
Cooperation in grey areas that are not yet highly specified by law is how things get done.
There is nothing I can infer that is illegal, or paranoid, about the apparent Nike/UK/Cal/Westley/Rose/CAA/SEC/ESPN/NCAA complex. Its just there incompletely understood as a complex, because, if it were there, there would be little, or no, incentive for them to explain how they are doing what they are doing in order to make the big bucks rain. Does your plumber like to tell you how to sweat pipes, so you can do it yourself and not pay him? Does investment manager like to explain exactly how he picks the best stocks and exactly who he gets the information from, and how to get it yourself, so you can DIY and quit giving him a fee? No.
So: please reconsider this conspiracy theory allegation stuff fer Chrisssakes, fer Yahweh's sakes, and for Allah's sakes, and for Buddha's sakes, okay?
Complexes are apparently mostly how asymmetric exploitation of grey areas are enabled.
The apparent complex members may not be running around clapping their hands and saying look at what we are doing, but that is normal for all businesses, once they get highly successful and haven't yet figured a way out to keep others from entering in and competing.
I don't recall a single successful business man giving all the keys to his business to anyone outside it, so that another could start up and do what he did and so take a cut of his action; that's not human nature.
We're not talking about Anti-Castro Cubans here.
We're talking about serious business men here and coaches and university presidents, and CEOs, network execs, and Talent agents, etc.
It may not fair, but its probably mostly legal, or at least in a grey area that these individuals believe their lawyers could credibly argue was legal and likely win.
We are talking about Multinational Shoe corporations, a major state university, a high profile basketball coach making multi millions of dollars per year, a former shoe salesmen become coach's agent and entertainment agent/consultant, a major entertainment agent, probably the biggest entertainment agency firm, a Big Five Power conference, perhaps the largest sports network in the USA, and the largest oversight and TV contracting entity for college sports in the USA. And I'm not even including Big Gaming in the complex, but logically could.
Please, please, please, don't spray the squid ink of conspiracy into public discourse, when it is so obviously apparently irrelevant.
If you must, doubt the probability of asymmetric legalities.
Though to be frank, I don't see how you possibly could so with a straight face in todays republic, and today's college game, but at least talk about the 900 pound gorilla in the room, instead of the tit mouse under the floor board.
Rock Chalk!
