Part of the Casswiki article series Ponerology and psychopathy
“When a man lies he murders a part of the world”
- Merlin from the 1981 movie Excalibur.
Robert Canup, has said that 99% of all of the problems confronting mankind can be traced to a single cause: the problem of the plausible lie.
The plausible lie is what COINTELPRO (counter intelligence programs using covert or underhanded activity aimed at destroying movements or ideas the power structure finds threatening while maintaining deniability) is all about.
Our world seems to have been invaded by individuals whose approach to life and love is so drastically different from what has been the established norm for a very long time that we are ill- prepared to deal with their tactics of what Robert Canup calls “plausible lie.” As he demonstrates, this philosophy of the “plausible lie” has overtaken the legal and administrative domains of our world, turning them into machines in which human beings with real emotions are destroyed.
Plausible lies are monstrous things propagated by evil people for the express purpose of deceiving good people into doing the will of those who do not have their best interests at heart. It’s that simple. The most powerful of these lies are so plausible that nobody even dreams about questioning their validity.
Richard Dolan elaborates on this point in his UFOs and the National Security State:
Some will dismiss this as one of the many conspiracy theories dotting America’s landscape. The very label serves as an automatic dismissal, as though no one ever acts in secret. Let us bring some perspective and common sense to this issue.
The United States comprises large organizations - corporations, bureaucracies, “interest groups,” and the like - which are conspiratorial by nature. That is, they are hierarchical, their important decisions are made in secret by a few key decision-makers, and they are not above lying about their activities. Such is the nature of organizational behavior. “Conspiracy,” in this key sense, is a way of life around the globe.
Within the world’s military and intelligence apparatuses, this tendency is magnified to the greatest extreme. […]
Anyone who has lived in a repressive society knows that official manipulation of the truth occurs daily. But societies have their many and their few. In all times and all places, it is the few who rule, and the few who exert dominant influence over what we may call official culture. - All elites take care to manipulate public information to maintain existing structures of power. It’s an old game.
America is nominally a republic and free society, but in reality an empire and oligarchy, vaguely aware of its own oppression, within and without. I have used the term “national security state” to describe its structures of power. It is a convenient way to express the military and intelligence communities, as well as the worlds that feed upon them, such as defense contractors and other underground, nebulous entities. Its fundamental traits are secrecy, wealth, independence, power, and duplicity.
Nearly everything of significance undertaken by America’s military and intelligence community in the past half-century has occured in secrecy. The undertaking to build an atomic weapon, better known as the Manhattan Project, remains the great model for all subsequent activities. For more than two years, not a single member of Congress even knew about it although its final cost exceeded two billion dollars.
During and after the Second World War, other important projects, such as the development of biological weapons, the importation of Nazi scientists, terminal mind-control experiments, nationwide interception of mail and cable transmissions of an unwitting populace, infiltration of the media and universities, secret coups, secret wars, and assassinations all took place far removed not only from the American public, but from most members of Congress and a few presidents. Indeed, several of the most powerful intelligence agencies were themselves established in secrecy, unknown by the public or Congress for many years.
Since the 1940s, the US Defense and Intelligence establishment has had more money at its disposal than most nations. In addition to official dollars, much of the money is undocumented. From its beginning, the CIA was engaged in a variety of off-the-record “business” activities that generated large sums of cash. The connections of the CIA with global organized crime (and thus de facto with the international narcotics trade) has been well established and documented for many years. - Much of the original money to run the American intelligence community came from very wealthy and established American families, who have long maintained an interest in funding national security operations important to their interests.
In theory, civilian oversight exists over the US national security establishment. The president is the military commander-in-chief. Congress has official oversight over the CIA. The FBI must answer to the Justice Department. In practice, little of this applies. One reason has to do with secrecy. […]
A chilling example of such independence occurred during the 1950s, when President Eisenhower effectively lost control of the US nuclear arsenal. The situation deteriorated so much that during his final two years in office, Eisenhower asked repeatedly for an audience with the head of Strategic Air Command to learn what America’s nuclear retaliatory plan was. What he finally learned in 1960, his final year in office, horrified him: half of the Northern Hemisphere would be obliterated.
If a revered military hero such as Eisenhower could not control America’s nuclear arsenal, nor get a straight answer from the Pentagon, how on earth could Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon regarding comparable matters?
Secrecy, weath and independence add up to power. Through the years, the national security state has gained access to the world’s most sophisticated technology, sealed off millions of acres of land from public access or scrutiny, acquired unlimited snooping ability with US borders and beyond, conducted overt or clandestine actions against other nations, and prosecuted wars without serious media scrutiny. Domestically, it maintains influence over elected officials and communities hoping for some of the billions of defense dollars.
Deception is the key element of warfare, and when winning is all that matters, the conventional morality held by ordinary people becomes an impediment. When taken together, the examples of official duplicity form a nearly single totality. They include such choice morsels as the phony war crisis of 1948, the fabricated missile gap claimed by the air force during the 1950s, the carefully managed events leading to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution…
The secrecy stems from a pervasive and fundamental element of life in our world, that those who are at the top of the heap will always take whatever steps are necessary to maintain the status quo.
Skeptics often ask, “Do you really think the government could hide something like this for so long?” The question itself reflects ignorance of the reality that secrecy is a way of life in the National Security State. Actually though, the answer is yes, and no.
Yes, in that cover-ups are standard operating procedure, frequently unknown to the public for decades, becoming public knowledge by a mere roll of the dice. But also no, in that … information has leaked out from the very beginning. It is impossible to shut the lid completely. The key lies in neutralizing and discrediting unwelcomed information, sometimes through official denial, other times through proxies in the media.
Evidence [of the true nature of the nature of National Security State and how it really operates] derived from a grass roots level is unlikely to survive its inevitable conflict with official culture, [created by COINTELPRO].
The well-funded arms of the National Security State include the many diverse and often contradictory sources of information and disinformation, including the mainstream media, many alternative media sources, so-called “Truth seeking groups” of all kinds, so-called New Age and Alternative writers and Impresarios of all shapes and sizes, (most of whom are COINTELPRO bogus organizations) and has very seriously affected the 911 Truth/Research community as well, to the point of completely undermining it.
Robert Canup wrote on his webpage:
Imagine for a second that we take a group of serious and responsible citizens and construct what is called, in law school, a moot court. Suppose that we use a real Judge to preside at the court, real lawyers to serve as the opposing councils, real police officers to testify. We have the officers invent an imaginary drug possession charge and we pick, at random, Joe Blow out of the crowd of model citizens to be the defendant. The rest of the citizens are sworn in, questioned, and a jury panel is selected. The trial is started.
”All rise, moot court in and of this jurisdiction is now in session. The Honorable Judge Right Fair presiding.” The case is announced: “The people vs. Joe Blow”. The charge: “Felony Possession of Rock Cocaine - a controlled substance in violation of statute blah blah.” “How do you plead?” “Not Guilty your Honor.”
The police are called to testify - lab reports are entered into evidence. The case against the defendant builds, the defense is lame, consisting mostly of variations of the famous “Liar, Liar, pants on fire” defense. The attorneys present their closing arguments, and the Jury retires for deliberations.
The jury returns, the defendant rises, is found guilty, and is sentenced to five years in prison.
All in all, a successful demonstration of the legal system at work - as close to a real trial as we could make it. We talk to the jurors after the case. To a person they report that they believe justice was served: they carefully listened to all of the evidence, carefully weighed the believability of everyone who testified; they were as fair and as impartial as they could have been. They uniformly feel good about the decision they reached.
It is very easy to imagine all of this occurring.
There is one tiny little problem though: everyone in the room knew for a fact that Joe Blow was innocent. They all knew that the charges against him were an utter fabrication, and yet they not only CONVICTED him, they felt GOOD about it!
Stop and think for a few seconds about the ramifications of that last observation…
If you have the brains to follow what I have said, and enough intellectual honesty to admit that it was your fault when you got sun-burned, then there is only one conclusion you can reach. If the legal system allows you to feel good about convicting someone when you KNOW they are innocent, and you KNOW that the case against them is a pack of lies; then the legal system is worse than useless.
Part of the reason that the jurors feel good about their verdict is that a jury, because of its isolation, is a self referent body. By self referent I mean this: suppose that you decide to check the accuracy of a ruler by measuring it with itself. Hopefully it is obvious to everyone that measuring a ruler with itself will always show that the ruler is accurate to what ever degree you choose to measure it; regardless of how ridiculously inaccurate it may actually be. A judge or a jury ALWAYS feels happy with the verdict rendered, regardless of how absurd that verdict actually is; since the only standard that a judge or a jury has to measure itself with is itself.
Before I can show you how we wound up with a less than worthless justice system, there is a difficult concept that I have to introduce. If there is such a thing as a plausible lie, is it not also possible that there might be such a thing as an implausible truth? Perhaps an example of an implausible truth might make more clear what I am trying to say.
Suppose that tomorrow when you step out of your home that an alien spacecraft lands in front of you. Several alien beings get out of the craft, point at you, laugh, get back into their ship and leave. Now suppose that this is no hallucination, no dream; it really happens. You are now the possessor of implausible truth. What chance do you think you have of convincing anyone else of what happened? You have the truth, but no one will believe you.
What causes your problem is this: truth generally has a feeling of reality to it. However, and this is key, that feeling of reality which makes truth generally plausible is NOT the same thing as truth. What gives truth its feeling of plausibility is the familiarity of that truth. Were EVERYONE to experience aliens laughing at them, the truth of that event would be quickly accepted.
Consider what the scientist who first realized that ‘solid steel’ was mostly a vacuum, went through in trying to explain his discovery to average people. Doubtless somebody attempted to prove the solidity of steel by hitting him over the head with a piece of it. Indeed, had the scientist who made the discovery not had the force of personality to convince others of the truth of his implausible find - we might today not realize that steel is largely vacuum.
What I have to say here is implausible, and doesn’t feel right, largely because it is unfamiliar - not because it contains any inherent falsehood. It is a part of reality that any new discovery will have an air of implausibility to it until it becomes familiar enough to be accepted. Were a new discovery to be instantly familiar it would be of very limited value; it would have covered very little new ground.
Indeed it is the familiarity of the legal system which gives an air of plausibility to the lies from which it is composed. To see how we wound up where we are, it would be useful to explore the history of the legal system.
Thousands of years ago the good people decided that they needed to create a system to insure that people got what they deserved. Imagine for a second that you were an evil person. How would you react to such a system? I think it would really scare you. After all, if people got what they deserved, you would get boiled in oil!
If you were both evil and clever, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to be in charge of that system; to make sure that no real justice ever occurred? Bear in mind that evil people do not wear name tags that say: “Hate me, I’m evil”; they do everything they can to blend into society as a whole. Given this it is not too surprising to see that evil was involved deeply in the formation of the legal system.
Many years ago there was a system of ‘justice’ called trial by ordeal. An example of trial by ordeal was holding a red hot iron to a defendant’s tongue. The plausible lie used to justify this behavior was: if the defendant was telling a lie they would have a dry mouth and would be burned by the iron - while a truthful person would have a moist mouth and would be protected.
The current legal system is descended from such minds - it is much more clever and simply not as obviously evil as that one was.