This is a subject that I have discussed before but it just doesn’t seem to want to go away.  And realistically, it shouldn’t.   After writing The Angler and the Black Sites, a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross was released that covers how the U.S. Government treated what were called “High Value Detainees” in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention Program.   What is significant about this report is that it comes from the International Committee of the Red Cross.  One of the things that the Committee does is probe how people kept in captivity around the world are treated by the country that holds them.  Usually what it looks at is the treatment of Prisoners of War.  Its reports are seldom contemporaneously released to the public as if that were to occur they might lose some of the access to Prisoners of War that they – and really nobody else – have.    This policy is part of International Law as well as the so-called Geneva Conventions which establish rules on how wars are conducted and combatants and non-combatants are treated.  There is not universal acceptance to the principles, however you can read about what is established and form your own opinion. It does raise a question though, are there rules for waging war? 

One wonders as an incident in a 21^st  Century asymmetric war hit the news cycle the day this is being written, August 15, 2009.

Insurgents struck at the main symbol of the Western military presence in Afghanistan today, killing at least seven people and injuring nearly 100 others in a massive car bombing five days before nationwide elections.  The blast, just outside the front gate of the headquarters of the NATO force, was likely aimed at deterring Afghans from voting in Thursday's presidential and provincial assembly balloting, Afghan and Western officials said. The Interior Ministry blamed "enemies of peace and stability in Afghanistan."

To return to the original topic, it wasn’t until the mid 19^th Century, specifically 1959, that this query was seriously raised. It was formulated in a most inoffensive manner as follows:

Would it not be possible, in time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime by zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers?" It was this question that led to the founding of the Red Cross. He also asked the military authorities of various countries whether they could formulate "(...) some international principle, sanctioned by a convention and inviolate in character, which, once agreed upon and ratified, might constitute the basis for societies for the relief of the wounded in the different European countries?

As is noted, this second question was the basis for The Geneva Conventions.

Thus the ICRC was born.  It has pursued this stated purpose as best it could through the many “European” wars during the remainder of the 19th Century and the more encompassing “World Wars” of the 20th.  Needless to say, it was difficult and rules agreed upon in a “time of peace and quiet” weren’t always followed once wars were started and waged to a conclusion.  To determine if this concept, as a policy, was or wasn’t followed in World War II is something that has engendered controversy as well as some consensus.  As an example, take concentration/death camps and the use of nuclear weapons. In a book about the opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Psychologist Kenneth Keniston makes the following salient points:

At Auschwitz and the other Nazi concentration camps, more than six million Jews were systematically exterminated. Although their executioners were sometimes brutal sadists, acts of personal cruelty were the least momentous part of the extermination of European Jewry. Even more impressive are the numbers of "decent," well-educated Germans (who loved their wives, children, and dogs) who learned to take part in, or blind themselves to, this genocide. Murder became depersonalized and dissociated, performed by a System of cold, efficient precision whose members were only following orders in doing a distasteful job well.

Bureaucracy, technology, and science were linked in the service of death. Evil became "banal," in Hannah Arendt's words; it was impersonal, dissociated from its human perpetrators, and institutionalized in an efficient and "scientific" organization.... Keniston goes on to point out that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States was probably unnecessary, and that while Germany had done the unthinkable, "Hiroshima demonstrated how simple, clean, and easy (from the point of view of the perpetrator) doing the unthinkable could be."  

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the fire-bombing of Dresden, all largely non-strategic attacks on predominantly civilian targets, killed perhaps a quarter-million people, while Hitler's gas chambers killed six million Jews. But are there distinctions between these horrendous acts in addition to those that turn on number alone? Consider at least the possible bearing of the following four points: (i) the American attacks on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden were at least justified at the time in terms of an avowed military function - shortening the war - and most of the people involved apparently believed this justification, while Hitler's slaughter of the Jews was never justified on any war-related basis, but rather with a quasi-religious ideology of "purifying the race;" (ii) the attacks were also by military organizations using weapons of war, not a separate operation using gas ovens; (iii) the attacks were brief, discrete actions, whereas the slaughter of the Jews went on continuously for nearly five years; and (iv) the bombings, of course, were at a distance, and the victims were not in direct view of the bombers.

I have no further comment on that, however World War II was so bad that after it concluded, another attempt was made by the survivors to establish basic principles on individual responsibility in any war.  These basic principles were agreed upon by virtually every nation including the United States.

In Nuclear Weapons and the United States, I discuss how the post World War II arms race fits into this paradigm.  My point, usually missed or totally misunderstood, was that the problem is not who controls nuclear weapons, the problem is nuclear weapons.   In support of this conclusion I provided a statement  from one of the prominent U.S. Cold Warriors serving Presidents Kennedy and Johnson who nonetheless saw the essential failure in logic in defining hydrogen bombs as useful military weapons.

In the real world of real political leaders, a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized in advance as a catastrophic blunder; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history; and a hundred bombs on a hundred cities are unthinkable.

Essentially if one country attacks another country that also has nuclear weapons capability, it can be assumed that the country that was attacked will launch a counterattack also utilizing nuclear weapons.  So use one and you get one in return.  Would that be considered a good move on the attacking nation’s part?  That’s a rhetorical question.  FYI.

So where does this leave the debate concerning the U.S. Government and its use of torture?  Was what it did in any sense moral or legal in terms of  “individual responsibility in any war” as well as International Law? 

Now I would not argue that the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States didn’t have all the characteristics of an act of war, was planned and perpetrated by terrorists with the intent of causing mass murder and ensuing chaos and that a military response from the United States against those responsible for this horrendous act was expected and required.  Without question, it was an event analogous to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 which engaged the United States in World War II.

I really do not like to discuss what happened in 1941 and the United States involvement in World War II because, among other reasons, the nations it was at war with are now among its closest allies.  Perhaps all that remains relevant is that it raises questions about human behavior, which might be difficult to sum up better than what was said in the movie Chinatown in a conversation between actors John Huston and Jack Nicolson:  “Given the right circumstances, human beings are capable of anything.”  Indeed.

Return to the main point under discussion however, the real issue is in what manner the United States responded to the attack it suffered on September 11, 2001.  That the United States Government might have done something that in the minds of the terrorists who perpetrated the attack which, in their worldview, made it justifiable is not under consideration here.  Certainly none of the people who died or were injured or who suffered as a result were more responsible for any form of offense than the civilians at Hiroshima, Dresden or the holocaust victims at Auschwitz.  Anyone who believes differently than I do on this issue is dealing with the wrong person and invited to look elsewhere for help.

But I am only a single individual and I can do no more than pose a question.  The evidence is overwhelming in sources previously cited that individuals working in the employ of the United States Government committed acts that if judged by the standards of International Law were crimes of war and crimes against humanity.  The questions remaining are  (1) who was involved and (2) what should be done.  Finding an answer to the first question should not be difficult but it is still waiting to be officially investigated and accomplished. 

I assume that everyone has taken a college level course in Biology, Zoology, etc., and is familiar with terms like Carbon Cycle, Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen, Life and so on.  If not you can click on the links for more information.  When I am able to, I like to stay informed about things that are going on in the world, things in general as well as things that might affect me and those I care about.  This is why I actually read the news from newspapers on the Internet.  To find out what happened on any given day, a newspaper published in any major city in the United States will provide that.  Sometimes however, more detailed information is needed and one has to look a little deeper to find what is required to fully understand something.

I took the photographs with this story on Monday November 24, 2008 on a flight between Rome, Italy and Washington, DC somewhere over the south of France.  The Boeing 767-300 I took the pictures from was at an altitude of about 36,000 feet (>10,000m) and plums of heat can be seen in the images captured.  They rise to a certain altitude and are then picked up by the jet stream.  I'm not certain what the source of this atmospheric phenomenon is but one possibility is a nuclear reactor.  France obtains about 80% of its electricity from nuclear fission plants which can produce intensive atmospheric heat.

Recently Frontline had a story on Global Warming.  It is very good and makes it difficult, very difficult in fact, not to be concerned, whether or not you expect to be around in 2050, and what you are going to do if you are.  The program I'm talking about is a two hour presentation and you can see it here. It is explained there in detail what could happen to the planet if the earth's temperature increases beyond a certain point. To summarize in a few sentences:

Runaway Climate change is defined by most scientists as a point beyond about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of the planet heating up, or 2 degrees [Celsius]. That's roughly the point at which the world's biological and physical systems take over as primary sources of greenhouse gases and kick off a chain reaction which then continues on its own. So the world has to prevent that point from being reached. What happens is that many of the world's critical systems -- such as the ocean, the forests, the soil -- begin releasing large amounts of greenhouse gas as the planet warms. Take the oceans: The colder a body of water is, the more gas can be dissolved in it. As it warms up, it loses gas. For example, with a bottle of soda, warm it up and the gas bubbles out -- exactly the same happens with the oceans. The warmer oceans get, the more carbon dioxide they release; the more carbon dioxide they release, the warmer they get; and it goes on and on like that in a vicious cycle. The forests and tropical forests, when heated up a little bit, start to die back. Trees are basically sticks of wet carbon. As they die, that carbon is oxidized. It turns to carbon dioxide that causes more temperature rise that kills more trees. The soils are full of bacteria, little bugs which eat all the detritus in the soil. As they warm up, the metabolic rate of the bacteria increases, and they breathe out more; they produce more carbon dioxide. It is a load of effects like this which are called runaway or positive feedback effects -- a process creating more of itself and just accelerating, and goes on accelerating. So that's why, beyond a certain point, which scientists put at roughly 3 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of total warming, it gets snatched out of mankind's hands, and it turns into a runaway process which man won't be able to stop.

Again if you or anyone you care about are going to be alive in 2050 and beyond, I suggest that you set aside two hours and look at the Frontline Presentation. 

For all countries to recalibrate their economies to globalism could require adjustments which may not be pleasant.  This may be especially true for the United States however the abundance of resources this country has may allow it to quickly catch up and lead the transition to energy sources that don't endanger the planet.  And I can understand the feelings regarding global warming of those in underdeveloped and developing countries toward the United States and other advanced industrial societies which might simply be stated as "Well it took you 150 years but you broke it, so you fix it."  It just requires the political will to deal with what are critical choices.  Time will tell. 

INTRODUCTION.

In History and Hatred, a review of Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred, Richard Webster observes:

Feelings of rage and hostility in particular are subject to denial and projected on to others. ‘Violently angry and afraid of their own aggression, paranoids defend against their rage by viewing themselves as the victims of persecutors.’ In effect, the paranoid’s impulse to persecute and tyrannize others is denied and projected on to phantom enemies who then become imaginary persecutors who must be hunted down and subsequently destroyed.

The reality of the 2008 Presidential Election in the United States seems to have been conducive to bringing the ideology of political extremism into a mode of open expression of views that were far beyond the historical norm of political discourse established in the mid to late 20th Century.  Here is an example:

The ignorant and gullible voted for Obama.  He will fail.  Mark my words everyone who voted for this man will regret it.  Go out and rent Omen III.  He is opening the way for the Antichrist.  I will never call him President.  This is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In what follows, I intend to explore is that belief in such a convoluted interpretation of reality in spite of a multitude of factual contradictions frequently supplement and accompany long running episodes of obsessive paranoid delusions and that such constructs are motivated and maintained by fear, hate and overriding assumptions of self inadequacy.

I.  The First Series of Tests.

People with a condition this severe seldom know the difference between what they see in dreams and other periods of low-threshold consciousness and what they experience while dealing with real people. The relationships they have with real people are generally highly degraded so it is seldom that the person really knows where they are in space and time or consciousness and diminished consciousness.   

They are miserable on this stage, all the relationships they have ever had have been miserable relationships, and until they develop comprehension of the entire world and not just the stage they think is a world, all the relationships they will ever have will be miserable, false, delusional and alienated. The happiness they think they enjoy is false happiness and their existence is false existence. The problem they have is that they do not comprehend what happiness is or what a human being is. They are only consumers and the definition of happiness they have is given to them by those who supply the consumable goods that perpetuate the existing social order.  In other words, consuming what they are given is by definition happiness. This is a societal phenomena and a point that I will return to later.  Such an existence must be highly frustrating.

As C. Wright Mills observed in The Sociological Imagination:

Nowadays people often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct. What ordinary people are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family, neighborhood; and other milieu, they move vicariously and remain spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel.

In Social Theory and Social Structure, Robert Merton discusses distinctions between manifest and latent functions. It follows that the merging of  differences between the real and engendered consciousness in delusional paranoia and political extremism have common characteristics which are most obvious as the observable distinctions between manifest and latent functions:

It is precisely the latent functions of a practice or belief which are not common knowledge, for these are unintended and generally unrecognized social and psychological consequences. As a result, findings concerning latent functions represent a greater increment in knowledge than findings concerning manifest functions. They represent, also, greater departures from "common-sense" knowledge about social life. In as much as the latent functions depart, more or less, from the avowed manifest functions, the research which uncovers latent functions very often produces "paradoxical" results.  The seeming paradox arises from the sharp modification of a familiar popular preconception which regards a standardized practice or belief only in terms of its manifest functions by indicating some of its subsidiary or collateral latent functions. The introduction of the concept of latent function in social research leads to conclusions which show that "social life is not as simple as it first seems." For as long as people confine themselves to certain consequences (e.g. manifest consequences), it is comparatively simple for them to pass moral judgments upon the practice or belief in question. Moral evaluations, generally based on these manifest consequences, tend to be polarized in terms of black or white. 

The hypothesis here is that political extremism and its antecedents exhibit the characteristics of latent functions.  The first series of tests then was to attract the attention of the subject population selected for study.

Ia. Methodology - Participant Observation on the Internet.

By the early 21st Century, most major news sources (newspapers, news magazines, television networks) had established a presence on the World Wide Web, aka Internet. This provided a simple means for a news organization to interact with its audience.  For example, a news story might appear and present an analysis of a national or international issue and then allow its readers to comment on the story.  The sequence of comments frequently became debates among those who comment and unfortunately in many examples went far beyond the context of the subject of the article.   

Since this was all impersonal and the news organization publishing the story on the Internet made little effort in censoring the viewpoints expressed, a wide variety of opinions could easily be found.  I've already mentioned that 2008 was a presidential election year in the United States.

My research methodology was to express my own viewpoints formulated over the years as what might be best described as a member of the political party of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt in some of these exchanges and use the responses my comments provoked or received as data for analysis.  While the opinions I expressed were on the one hand cues to obtain data for analysis, they were nevertheless what I really believed.  

In other words, I participated in the election and voted for the candidates I had supported and truly felt needed to be elected if anything like the United States I grew up in was going to survive.  Thus during August 2008 I started reading the presidential election coverage in the Washington Post, a newspaper considered to be one of the top two or three in the United States.  I began reading articles and commenting on them when I thought had something sufficiently notable to say to other readers.

My comments were spontaneous although the ideas I expressed were part of my current thinking about the issues in the election and the problems the United States was facing at home and around the world.  I can think of only a few instances where something I said provoked a direct response but many of my comments were recommended by other readers.  I take this as a measure of agreement although I suppose that it is possible that someone might recommend something I said even if they didn't agree.  I have no idea when that would occur so I essentially ignore that scenario.

Ib. An Opening Look at the Nature of the Data Obtained.

I want to make some qualifications on what is presented from this point onward.   I saw comments in the same group that I was writing into which were really disturbing and, like the example at the top of this article, qualify as thoughts of the type under discussion here as expressed in the title. These were my reactions to some of them:

BarryOR wrote:

What is clear is that there are a lot of extreme right wing nuts and organizations in this country historically and right now who are capable of anything. Putting bombs in churches, shooting real bullets into groups of unarmed people, things like that. It seems pretty obvious that Obama is the good person in this cast. McCain belongs in an institution.

10/7/2008 12:44:55 AM

Recommended (13)

BarryOR wrote:

We have just survived 8 years of an administration that has devastated the country with near record levels of sustained unemployment and job loss, decimated town after town, state after state with multiple deployments of National Guard Troops in fighting a war of highly questionable importance, telling the nation that things were going well in its conduct while many inside the White House and Pentagon knew this wasn't true. And now in its fading months, it has also brought attention to an economic crisis unparalleled in almost 80 years. And it is increasingly apparent that the political party responsible for what has happened in the past 8 years is willing to do just about anything to remain in control of the U.S. government.

On the other hand, one candidate, Senator Barack Obama, has gone to considerable detail in making his viewpoint on the political issues known to anyone who can access his website. Those who are not sufficiently computer literate to do that, can go to any library and ask for assistance. You see, for democracy to work people have to vote as well as be knowledgeable of the deciding issues. Right now anyone still undecided on how to vote therefore should look at Senator Obama’s website as well as the site of his opponent in this campaign.

There is a significant difference between what each candidate has put on the www. Part of Senator Obama’s website is devoted simply to refuting inaccurate and false comments, aka lies, made about him in the campaign. Many of these comments are overtly racist and cannot be tolerated in a rational political discourse.

And why is that? Well I’ve cited this before.  From the Baltimore Sun:

“John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.”

10/28/2008 12:01:52 PM

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This has been an example of what was obtained through the methodology selected for this study.  To progress beyond this point, certain concepts need to be more specifically defined.

II.   Conspiracy Theories and Metaphysics.

Next I'm going to discuss conspiracy theories as ideal typical theories, what characteristics they have that are unique to the ideal type and why "some" people are attracted to them.

If people work together on a project to obtain a common goal and share common beliefs are their activities a conspiracy?  A reasonable person would say no.

If they make efforts to keep their activities secret, is that a conspiracy?  Again a reasonable person would say no.

So what constitutes a conspiracy and a delusional conspiracy?  Generally if a group of people act together to deceive others for ulterior purposes and one is getting closer to a working definition of a conspiracy.  A conspiracy theory then is a theory with the general characteristics of a conspiracy that attempts to explain a real or imagined event.  Conspiracy theories frequently conflict with more rational and acceptable explanations for the same event or condition and require supporting beliefs that are not part of a widely shared construction of reality held by a usually large majority of people who have knowledge of the event the conspiracy theory offers an alternative explanation for.

Are people who believe conspiracy theories mentally ill?  Put differently, are people who are involved in a conspiracy mentally ill?  A distinction has just been made between people who may be actually involved in a conspiracy and those who believe in conspiracy theories as an explanation for history or a series of historical events.  To believe in a conspiracy theory one must, of course, also believe that there are people involved in instigating and maintaining the conspiracy.  And again the folks maintaining the conspiracy must be doing so because it is not in their interests for others to understand their actions and motives for their actions.  So they go to extremes to keep this secret.

Can one find examples of conspiracies in history and in everyday life experiences?  Of course.  Can their be theories about such events that are not considered a product of mental illness?  Certainly there can be.

One needs to look closer at what a theory is.  In science, a theory is something that attempts to explain something that is observed.  Such an explanation should imply causality.  In other words, it explains an observed phenomena and its antecedent.  Expressed in mathematical logic, if a then b or if a occurs then b follows or b is the result of a.  Both a and b must be observable and measurable events and their relationship must be consistent over time. 

If it is believed that a causes b but the existence of a cannot be observed, then one has beliefs that are held to explain something, although there is nothing observable that will substantiate the beliefs really exist.  Explanations based on beliefs are deemed Ontological.  This argument quickly moves into the arena of metaphysics.  Put simply, metaphysical beliefs do not require empirical validation.  Instead they are based on assumptions about reality. They are in fact ideological.

Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.   A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.

In science and usually in everyday life, beliefs about reality based on assumptions are defined as speculation.  In science, theories present a testable hypothesis, accompanied by calculations, empirical data and a plausible model depicting the phenomenon the theory is about.  Most importantly, scientific theories are published in peer reviewed journals.   Speculation, on the other hand, is an ad hoc assertion, nothing more. 

To conclude the discussion on science and speculation in this section, I would like to cite a passage from the Demon Haunted World by the late Carl Sagan, legendary astrophysicist and educator.  He describes a "Baloney Detection Kit" which can be thought of as a heuristic for uncovering pseudoscientific arguments. 

The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments: 

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").

Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.

Quantify, wherever possible.

If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.

"Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.

Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

Additional issues are :

Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.

          Check for confounding factors - separate the variables.

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric:

Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.

Argument from "authority".

Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavorable" decision).

Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).

Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).

Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).

Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).

Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)

Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").

Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.

Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).

Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).

Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").

Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).

Confusion of correlation and causation.

Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..

Suppressed evidence or half-truths.

Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"

To state the obvious, for any dialogue to be more than speculation there must be observable "facts" to confirm.  Thus attempts to assert speculation as science requires no  "baloney detector" at all.

IIa.  Speculation and Delusions - Do People's Actions Coincide With Their Beliefs?

In his relatively short life Erving Goffman established himself as the most perceptive sociologist of the 20th Century.  In his significant book (one of many), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he observes:

When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them. They are asked to believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess, that the task he performs will have the consequences that are implicitly claimed for it, and that, in general, matters are what they appear to be. In line with this, there is the popular view that the individual offers his performance and puts on his show 'for the benefit of other people'. It will be convenient to begin a consideration of performances by turning the question around and looking at the individual's own belief in the impression of reality that he attempts to engender in those among whom he finds himself.

The concept of self is important to understanding much of Goffman's insights.  For purposes here, self is taken to mean one's perception of self-identity.   While many less simplistic definitions can be found in the psychological literature, self and self-identity are the impressions of identify which I am interested in here.  Therefore self means one's personal identity. 

According to Goffman and others, one generates a self everyday.  This self is what one presents or projects to others in daily activity. To put it somewhat differently, self is a self-image, that is, an image that requires some degree of effort to generate and maintain; the purpose of this process is to appear as one wants to appear to others.   It is obvious that unless one associates with others, this characterization of self is meaningless and acquires, to some extent at least, a certain degree of abnormality.

Other concepts that are implied in Goffman's analysis are the ideal types inner-directed and other-directed modes of behavior that are defined in the work of American sociologist David Riesman. These ideas are formulated in another important book about the American middle-class The Lonely Crowd.

The character of post WWII American society impels individuals to "other-directedness", the preeminent example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors' approval and fear being outcast from their community. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship.

Operating in an "other-directed" mode has been compared to employing interpersonal radar.  One is constantly looking to see what others are present in an observational space and what impressions about one's self they are in the process of gathering.  One is always tasked with developing and enhancing situational awareness. 

At this point I think I can begin to answer the question that was posed in the title to this section: Do People's Actions Coincide with Their Beliefs.  Now there should exist a theoretical basis for changing the question slightly: Do People's Actions Coincide with Their Beliefs About Self.

Before doing this, let's summarize what has been presented so far.

Political Extremism has been linked in the literature to Fearful and Delusional Beliefs.

Individual Behavior has Meaning and Consequences however it is not always the obvious or Manifest Functions and Consequences that are most critical to social interaction.

Behavior may have Latent Functions and Consequences that are not obvious or easily understood but nevertheless may constituent the foundation of specific patterns of behavior and social interaction.

The Methodology and Purpose of the study has been defined as Participant Observation within the 2008 Presidential Election process in the United States and preliminary examples of the observations were presented.

Conspiracies and conspiracy theories are discussed.

The differences between Scientific Methods of building and developing theories are contrasted with Metaphysical and Ideological conclusion formation and the latter are termed speculation.

A paradigm for investigating and understanding Social Interaction appropriate for the study is presented.

At this point we may begin to look at delusional beliefs and what results from their interaction with non-delusional beliefs (i.e., beliefs based on scientific method); how do conspiracy theories originate and what role do delusional beliefs play in their development.

III.  Delusional Beliefs and Political Extremism.

FYI.  I'm not really interested in conspiracy theories, my study is about the people that believe them.

Before proceeding it is critical to reiterate the scope of this study.  What I will discuss is limited to the contemporary United States.  I will not discuss the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or for that matter the American Revolution.  Neither will I attempt to explain so-called wars of national liberation in the Third World or more correctly the Underdeveloped World. In this article,  I have previously described incidents of political extremism that occurred during the 2008 Presidential Election in the United States.  While I'm not going to dwell on it, my belief is that much of the political extremism connected to the 2008 Presidential Election did result from delusional beliefs.  Further, this particular example of political extremism did not end with the 2008 election.  It continues in the present tense as do the delusional beliefs behind it.  Again I have written on this extensively and am not going to present anything more on the topic.   You can read some of my other Blog Posts to see what I am talking about.  See in particular Did the Republican Party lose an Election or a Civil War.

However now I'm putting this aside and I'm going to select a single belief that does not have a huge following, although in some cult-like circles it does have many devoted even fanatical believers. However the subject is so incredibly fantastic and so easily disproven that defining the ideas behind it as delusional is not particularly difficult.  Additionally I have chosen this belief because I have been exposed to it directly and can cite examples from my own experience about how those who accept it generate their conception of self and how they view the world. 

I realize that in addressing this subject there is zero probability of engaging in rational dialogue with the cult's most zealous members.  What I've discovered from attempting this fleetingly is that it is like talking to a wall. Regardless of what one says regarding methodology or evidence, it is simply ignored and promotion of the "standard line" resumes. With that stated, it is time to proceed.

One wonders, what ideology, what "conspiracy theory" could be so fantastic?  

Someone sent this link to me in a NowPublic email, asking what I thought of it.  911 Blueprint for Truth.  Note: if you start watching, it goes on and on and on.  In any event, my first thoughts were "I've seen this before."  While not exactly the same presentation, many others like it.  At first, I didn't say much about it as a staging, but remarked that it might be a good idea to put this and other productions like it in a story along with the opposing viewpoint and let people draw their own conclusions about the subject.  The opposing viewpoint which I saw as most relevant was based on an investigation by the U.S. National Institute of Science and Technology.

One common source of the many 9/11 conspiracy theories is the 911 Truth Movement.  This link provides an overview. It can be considered a controversial subject.   The basic premise is that the collapse of World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2 was caused by a building implosion.  Such events are commonly conducted by experts in the controlled demolition industry.  Such exercises take place in highly secure situations and are not done in secret.  Steps are taken to prevent injury to the public or those involved in the procedure itself. 

This process is typically utilized for removing obsolete structures and there is nothing in the historical record of a controlled demolition in the United States being part of a conspiracy, resulting in the deaths of thousands, before the 911 Truth Conspiracy Theories surfaced circa 2002-2003.

Many of the members of the 911 Truth Movement are academics, many with somewhat dubious careers, but are rarely part of civil or industrial engineering faculty.  Summarizing, these theorists maintain that elements of the United States government were responsible for the events of September 11, 2001, and were part of an effort to maintain the "military industrial complex" and U.S. hegemony over the parts of the planet it dominates.  Thus the involvement of Al Qaeda in any kind of 9/11 plot  is denied.  In fact, groups like Al Qaeda are simply depicted as convenient scapegoats, or a role even more bizarre, for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq that the Bush administration was already planning.  Obviously this would constitute a conspiracy of vast proportions which would include but not necessarily limited to the following assumptions:

bin Ladin was trained and funded by the CIA.

Bush signed National Security order W199i to take FBI agents off the bin Ladin family trail.

bin Ladin met with a CIA agent only weeks before 9/11.

George Bush senior met with a bin Ladin brother on the morning of 9/11.

bin Ladin denied responsibility for 9/11.

And previously bin Ladin has clearly accepted responsibility for everything, why not this time?

The bin Ladin family were rushed out of the US after 9/11.

The December 2001 bin Ladin “confession” video is an obvious fake.

Some say al Qaeda doesn’t even exist.

And that bin Ladin didn’t use the name al Qaeda until after 9/11. 

To refute this, one simply has to ask whether Osama bin Ladin accepted responsibility for the 9/11 attacks? And is there credible evidence that al Qaeda exists?  Yes.

I'm not going to provide a detailed rebuttal of this, it is not within the scope of this article and it has already been completed by others.  Many additional refutations of 911 Truth beliefs can be found in peer reviewed documents written by experts on aviation, civil and mechanical engineering and other scientific disciplines on the Internet and elsewhere.  The Journal of Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories is a good place to start. 

So In the remainder of this article I'm going to focus on the delusional aspects of 9/11 conspiracy theories and why they constitute extremist beliefs.

IIIa.  9/11 and Extremism.

While the conspiracy theories of the 911 Truth Movement are delusional, unscientific, contain  methodological and factual mistakes and are easily discredited by the application of scientific methods, its believers are still relatively harmless.  In other words, it is confused but largely benign and should be ignored.  

Everyone knows the popular 9/11 "documentary" Loose Change alleges that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolitions, and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile instead of a hijacked airliner. But that's just the beginning: Loose Change also says United Airlines Flight 93 actually landed in Cleveland, its passengers were unloaded and mysteriously disposed of, and that the phone calls which supposedly came from these passengers were actually created using sophisticated voice-morphing technology.   In other words, for every 9/11 theory that is successfully knocked down by people who actually know what they're talking about, a dozen even more outrageous theories rise to take their place. That's why Debunking 9/11 Myths, a devastating, comprehensive and fully documented refutation from the editors of Popular Mechanics, is unlikely to convince the true believers.

For people who are on the verge of joining the "9/11 truth movement" but haven't quite made the leap, however, the book may bring them back from the edge. Debunking 9/11 Myths illustrates how the conspiracy theorists use pseudoscience, rumors, half-truths, logical fallacies, quotes taken out of context and blatant lies to make their case.

What is unfortunate is that it diverts attention away from far more serious issues that aren't delusional at all but in fact are dangerous.  I give examples of this in Section Ib.  You can find examples in my other Blog Posts. 

Nuclear Weapons and the United States.
Developing a Safety Culture in High Risk Environments.
Defending Afghanistan Revisited. 

Enormous amounts of energy continue to be devoted each day to maintaining strange conspiracy theories about the events of September 11, 2001 from sources who claim to be critics of the presidency of G.W. Bush and its policies.  The facts are clear though: Bush was briefed about the potential danger to the country from terrorist plots using hijacked airplanes in August 2001 and ignored it.  When it happened, he appeared dumbfounded, not knowing what the president's role was when the country was attacked - he wasn't even in the operational loop.  Later he was influenced by neocons and what followed led to one of the poorest performances by any president in history.  Recall that speculative reasoning needs no foundation in reality.  It does however offer a simple means to escape it.

Someone needs to look at what happened both before and after September 11, 2001 and the role of 911 Truth.  Almost immediately authoritarian control began to permeate the lives of everyone at record levels, not only in the United States but around the world.  Military action was started and simultaneously planned at a far greater scale.  The  United States presented a case consisting of lies to the United Nations to justify invading Iraq.  Why was it believed by so many?  Perhaps because right wing propaganda immerged with greater credibility to the naive public than it had since the era of segregation and McCarthyism.

And the 911 Truth Movement, was it considered a menace by the established order?  Hardly.  If anything, it was being laughed at.  It was an amusement; it posed no threat to the established order and was tolerated, seen as a diversion that made it far easier to bring authoritarian control into everyone's lives.  The NSA began, essentially without hindrance, knowledge or oversight from Congress, the media or the public, capturing domestic telephone and email traffic.  That's spying on the U.S. public, supposedly very illegal.  And all 911 Truth had was broken links and pleas for donations from people who didn't see the real danger, a danger that is still present today.

I will discuss the ramifications of this next.

IIIb.  The Lethal Impact of Right Wing Beliefs.

I would be largely complete with this now had certain events not occurred in the late spring of 2009 which bring the dangers to a peaceful social order mentioned in the final paragraphs above into focus.  Lawlessness and domestic terrorism occurs frequently in the United States for a variety of equally disturbing causes.  So is it time yet for the government, the FBI, AFT for example, to stop domestic terrorist events before they happen?  What if "potential" domestic terrorists were treated in the same manner as "foreign detainees?"   That might result in preventative detention for the mentally deranged.

WICHITA, Kansas, June 1, 2009 – A clearer portrait has now emerged of the man who took it into his hands to play judge, jury, and executioner of George Tiller, the foremost provider of late-term abortions in the United States. The portrait reveals a mentally disturbed, long-time anarchist and convicted felon, who succumbed to the influence of an anti-abortion domestic terrorist group and believed that he had to commit murder in order to stave off the wrath of God.   In the aftermath of the murder and subsequent arrest, information has surfaced that shows Roeder to be a mentally unstable individual, who as early as the 1990s adopted quasi-biblical beliefs to compensate for his moral failings, and fell under the influence of two violent radical organizations, especially a fringe anti-abortion group far outside the sphere of the pro-life community. This group is the so-called Army of God, a group that advocates domestic terror, violence, and murder against abortion facilities and those who work there.  Roeder’s first experience with violence and terrorism began with his association with the anti-government “Freemen” movement. The Freemen claim that the individual has sovereignty above the government, making them largely exempt from laws, regulations and taxes. Among other things, they began operating their own legal system, and printing their own paper currency independent of state and federal governments.

A marginal life with frequent failures, where does such a person acquire the motives to murder someone?  Put differently, does the right wing propaganda that one sees continuously on media sources such as  FOX News play any role in creating a culture where lawless behavior is considered justified?  The linked videos contain examples of what I am referring to.  The question for a civilized society is not whether murder should be universally considered a criminal act. The issue is quite the opposite,  the subject that must be considered is the role of  hate propaganda in lawlessness. 

When grown men joke over reasons a woman might want to terminate a pregnancy, "Oh, something upset her that was on FOX News" one has to question the worldview from where they are gaining this insight. A better question might be why do men abandon their children and leave it to the government to provide for their care and keep them alive.

Perhaps it doesn't matter to some men if care is provided for their abandoned children at all.  Because you simply can't have it both ways. If men abandon their children, let's keep it simple and say it happens after they are born, then abscond (run away) from child support responsibilities established in courts, where do they obtain the authority to attempt to influence others on the subject of pregnancy?   Just leave it for the tax payers? 

Actually the Internal Revenue Service will collect delinquent child support payments if it is able to identify an offender through W2 statements, tax returns or any other means of connecting a social security number to a person.  In addition, many states now require a valid social security number on an application for a hunting or fishing license.    

So the issue really is whether a civilized society should continue to tolerate hate propaganda.  At some point the inflected damage from criminal behavior that is motivated from hate propaganda must become unacceptable.  That is essential to any civilized society. 

The Secret Service and FBI monitor and investigate threats to the president, taking action as required.  Perhaps these efforts need to be greatly expanded in a country with as much political hatred and collective insanity as the United States. 

As if further indication were needed:

The F.B.I. said Mr. von Brunn was not investigation [sic] at the time of Wednesday’s shooting, but the assistant F.B.I. director for the District of Columbia, Joseph Persichini Jr., said the bureau was aware that he had an “established Web site that expressed hatred of African Americans and Jews.”

Not long ago, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about the potential for the  sequence of events that have  occurred in the fairly recent past. 

IV.  Conclusions.

It should be understood that this is a coherent work.  Topics are developed separately but they are building a case that is leading to one set of conclusions. Much of what I say is material I learned from studying books when I was in college and graduate school.  Many of them aren't available on the Internet.  If it doesn't seem to fit together, I can't consider that my problem.  This is critical scholarship in the tradition of social theory and critical theory.  Those unfamiliar with this tradition are not a part of my intended audience.

What I will do is summarize the major points which I think are essential for understanding the work as a whole.  It should be clear at this point that Freudian theory is not a part of the paradigm that is presented.

An individual's self is an image presented to others through behavior in situations where interaction with others occurs.  It is by means of interaction with others that behavior obtains meaning.

Meaning can be interpreted by others in ways the individual did not necessarily intend.  The reaction by others to the individual's behavior is something the individual may incorporate into their conception of self. 

Thus an individual's behavior can be affirmed through interaction with others. Behavior that is not affirmed may be disapproved or ignored.

These points are the basis for theories of deviant behavior and are the logical foundation for systems designed for the control of deviant behavior.

In addition, individual behavior has a purpose.  At times the purpose of observed behavior may seem obvious.  For example, consumption of food and water are biological requirements for the maintenance of life.   

For other modes of observed behavior, its purpose may not be so obvious. 

Robert Merton made the distinction between Manifest and Latent Functions in observed behavior.

Manifest Functions are not culturally relativistic, they are observed and understood. Latent Functions, on the other hand, reveal not so obvious meanings to behavior.  The observed behavior associated with Latent Functions may not appear "out of the ordinary" as they are immediately perceived but may have consequences that are directly meaningful only to the actor. 

Beliefs about reality found in "everyday life" that are held by "everyday people" may only be based on simplistic and unsophisticated assumptions and speculation.  They could generously be termed "Marginal Metaphysics."

Scientific Theories are based on a methodology of repeatable authentication.

Conspiracy Theories and the Denial of Reality Theories of the Radical Right are examples points directly above.

The Radical Right has historically accounted for the most lethal and violent examples of political extremism in the United States.  Nothing from the left is remotely close.

The constellation of Denial of Reality Theories and violent extremism from the Radical Right is now rampant in the United States.

This confluence is a clear and present threat to civilized society and is now recognized as such.

And unfortunately serious scholarship is lacking or non-existent on many of the issues one sees presented in today’s mass media as news.

V. Recommended Reading.

-Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

-Erving Goffman, Asylums.

-Erving Goffman, Relations in Public - The Insanity of Place.

-Alvin Gouldner, Enter Plato.

-Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology.

-Alvin Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology.

-Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests.

-Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man.

-Robert Merton, Manifest and Latent Functions.

-C. Wright Mills, White Collar.

-C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination.

-David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd.