Denial is used by individuals, groups, and even nations to defend themselves against disturbing feelings, contradictions, thoughts, or events. An unpleasant situation is simply rendered nonexistent. Responsibility or blame is projected neatly upon someone else. Repression and denial are often interrelated and undistinguishable. Denial is far subtler than simple lies or misrepresentations. Lies are usually discovered and exposed. Denial is an unconscious mechanism that permits anyone to escape conscious awareness,. Denial can even develop into a powerful conviction. It is often involved in religious fervor, irreconcilable marital conflicts, chauvinistic nationalism, and political or national idealism, and is a frequent aspect of blind faith.

The above words are from William Bryan Key, the guy that wrote Subliminal Seduction, the book that has saved me thousands of dollars over the years in unpurchased deodorant. Specifically, it is taken from The Age of Manipulation: The Con in Confidence, The Sin in Sincere, his 1989 book, page 84. I read Subliminal Seduction back in the 1970s, and it got me looking at advertising, especially ice cubes in liquor ads, but I could never spot much of the perversions going on there on my own. I’d like to read it again, but the most recent Amazon offering is pricing it at $153. It’s become a collectors’ item.

Continue reading “The reaper of the past visits only in the evening” →

I am reading Foucalt’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. It is a slow walk, as I find my self looking up quotes at the beginning of chapters written in foreign languages, and lots of words that are new to me. For instance, see below, idée fixe, meaning an obsession. I’ll try using that in a sentence later today, and see if it impresses. This morning I came across the following, and am now wondering which of the four listed categories I fall in. Am I a cretin, a fool, a moron or lunatic? I have to be one, as the speaker, Belbo, claims we are all one of them. Or, worse yet, am I a hybrid? Reminds me of the Andy Williams song, What Kind of Fool am I? Honestly, given mistakes I make, and the great certitude I apply, I can only be a maroon, Bugs Bunny’s word for moron.

I transcribed what follows and skipped around, eliminated quotation marks and other punctuation.

Continue reading “Don’t be shy – choose your category” →

I am no example of freedom of thought, as I came of age when TV first came on the scene, and even though it was black and white and grainy, I was completely invested. Dad fought it, but he was never around to control it, so he left messages behind, called “directives”, which my brother and I scoffed at. One time he monkeyed with the wiring on the set before he left for his private drinking town 115 miles awaay, and I quickly figured out what he had done and fixed it. We never talked about it.

My older brother and I were latchkey kids. Mom had to work to pay the bills so we came home to an empty house and the TV each day. But it was Three Stooges, that sort of thing. One time in the evening we were watching some show about the Revolutionary War, and it showed General Washington in a tent at Valley Forge with a young black soldier, and he was telling him that he should be patient, that things would get better, but only gradually. Mom came marching out of the kitchen and stood in front of the TV and said something like “They are showing people from back then saying words that were written yesterday.” That was memorable, it is called, I know now, “presentism”, and it is everywhere. She had a brain, never really applied it to anything however. These days she would have been in college.
Continue reading “When you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” →

Note to Readers: I had for years heard about a CIA Memo that recommended use of the words “conspiracy theory” in dealing with critics of the Warren Report on the death of President John F. Kennedy. I have printed it in full below. Note that 1) There is no person by the name of Clayton P. Nurnad, author, anywhere on Earth, and 2) the document is dated April 1, 1967, April Fools Day. Further, I learned after writing this post that the document was released by CIA after a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times. I regard the newspaper of record to be spooky itself. Taking all of this into account, I conclude that there is nothing to the memo, that it has no impact and no force, and was CIA merely having a laugh at skeptics expense. What a waste of time!

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Use of the term “conspiracy theory” is in wide circulation now, and was first used in the post-JFK era in 1967 in a CIA memo since made public. The document can be found online, and I have reprinted it below. As used these days, the term gives ordinary people a tool to use to attack smarter people who suffer natural skepticism in the face of official “truth”.  These are generally people who can think properly and who are naturally skeptical. I am not referring to flat earthers or people running around claiming that every other beautiful starlet is a man in drag. I am referring to people who deal with the “truth” of the major events of our times, like JFK/RFK/MLK, 9/11, Covid and on and on, and who are simply skeptical. This is our sin: doubt.

These days the term appears everywhere, and in practical use has the effect as a “thought stopper”. As soon as some clown says “Watcha got there, a conspiracy theory?”, the term “tinfoil hat” makes its way into the conversation, and the skeptical person is cowed into silence by those of lesser intelligence. In other words it is a tool, used by clowns, to prevent smart people from speaking their minds in public. It is simply brilliant.

This morning I took a trip through the 1400-word memo. It was written by Clayton P. Nurnad, and there is no biographical data available on him. Ancestry.com turns up no information on such a person. Forebears.io/surnames, with a database of 31 million names, turns up no Nurnad. Given that, I think it safe to speculate the name is made up, typical of a spook agency. We have no idea who wrote it.

I have underlined various sentences and phrases I found interesting.  I note with interest that:

1. The document relies on the two-party system and disagreements between them as a real thing, so that it says that Gerald R. Ford, a Republican, would not hold his tongue for sake of Democrats, and likewise Senator Richard Russell, a Democrat vs Republicans. CIA surely knows this to be nothing more than a masquerade.
2. Further, it states that Oswald was a loner, and so would not /could not be a CIA employee. (Not necessarily that, but this man Oswald, an actor, was a good one.)
3. Finally, it suggests CIA employ “propaganda assets” to negate and refute critics of the Warren Report. (I do wish this Nurnad guy had named them.)

There’s more than that to digest, of course. But do note that the word “conspiracy” appears only six times, and “conspiracy theorist only once. However, since the time of this memo, the words have become common fodder for those of lamer perceptive abilities to crush detractors by use of the CT meme, and other pejoratives like “tinfoil hats.” Did this memo intend to set off such a parade of num-nuts in charge? I doubt it. That came later. However, while TV and crime and news shows often show conspiracies among Arabs (terrorists), Mexicans (cartels), pedophiles (Epstein), Italians (mobsters), Chinese (everywhere!!!), and on and on, they do maintain the fiction otherwise expressed in the memo, that conspiracy on the large scale would be impossible to conceal in the United States. This I assume because someone would talk, and further that we have a real journalists and a burrowing news media.

A guy with a name like Nurnad surely knows of what he speaks.

Continue reading “April 1, 1967: Nurnad speaks out” →