Conspiracies and the Political

Conspiracies and the Political

Peter Schultz 

 

 

https://dissentmagazine.org/article/cultural-marxism-conspiracy-frankfurt-school/ 

Interesting stuff. What the author doesn’t entertain is that conspiracy is at or is the heart of the political. "“Conspiratorial play is a universal of power politics….” [Oglesby] And because it is universal, because it permeates the political, it disappears, as it were, just like the atmosphere “disappears.” It is hidden in plain sight, just like “Mother Culture.” 

Thus, those who speak or write about particular conspiracies, like those who speak or write about Mother Culture, are labeled “theorists;” that is, they are not empiricists, they are not being empirical. They are not seeing reality, but they construct theories while residing in their ivory towers….or the CIA. Hence, the term “conspiracy theorists.” And, of course, it is relatively easy to concoct and subvert “theories.” 

"“It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels.”  

― Carl Oglesby   

 Or: It isn’t conspirators who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause conspiracies.  Hence, like troubles, conspiracies are intrinsic to politics. 

“The expansionary dynamic of Western culture has been the root, the denominating constant, of modern history. The grandeur of Western liberalism, its material abundance, the flourishing of its arts and sciences, its painful construction of constitutional democracy -- these interconnected achievements have been financed by the sustained theft called imperialism.” 
― Carl Oglesby, Containment and Change 

Imperialism, always troubling and intrinsic to politics, is conspiratorial, always. 

The Half Never Told: May 21, 2026

  

The Half Never Told: May 21, 2026

Peter Schultz

 

         “In 1787, the Constitutional Convention allowed the [slave] trade to go on.” And Baptist focused on the “owners” who “would drive decisions about him [the slave].”

 

         But it wasn’t just about “him” and, most importantly, it was about slavery itself and the decisions that sanctioned, created, promoted, protected, and constructed slavery as an institution taken as justified. And because thought of as justified, as justice, a slave regime was created. And this was the crucial issue, not the slave trade.

 

         That this was the crucial issue is confirmed by the vast expansion of slavery that took place after the slave trade was outlawed. The outlawing of the slave trade was, from the point of view of ending slavery, meaningless. [By the by, those slaves who were captured by the government when illegal slave traders were captured were sold into slavery in the US. They were not freed in the US or elsewhere.]

 

         Similarly, the Missouri Compromise was meaningless insofar as post-compromise “active white opposition to slavery dwindled toward the vanishing point.” That compromise was merely a tinkering with the parts of the slavery regime that existed.

 

         “The interstate slave trade mocked the hopes of abolitionists that slavery would die out on its own.” [186] Of course it did because slavery was not a growth. It was a regime and regimes don’t grow; they are constructed.

 

         “Slavery expansion was consciously chosen, a crime of intent.” Well, not so consciously chosen in a slave regime and definitely not criminal in that regime. So: “Most whites, … North …  and South, believed that slave owners had obtained their slaves by orderly business transactions, well recorded by law.” [188] Indeed, they had! Slave trading was legitimized by the regime, which like all regimes defined the just and the unjust. That’s what regimes do, construct beliefs about what is just and unjust.

 

         Focusing on the slave trade hides the crucial issue, slavery and the slave regime. They become the “back story,” so to speak. When treated as such, such stories are powerful because they permeate the action that more visible stories do not. So, when Jane Austen, e.g., treated slavery as such a “back story,” she was in fact favoring that story and revealing its dominance. E.g., in Mansfield Park slavery actually dominates that story because it dominated life at Mansfield Park, even having the made the Park possible. Just as the British military dominates the action in Pride and Prejudice.  And, of course, quite clearly, how the British Navy – and Austen’s anal sex joke about “rear admirals” – dominates the action in Persuasion. [Another example of slavery serving as such a back story occurs in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, the back story of significance is that the Connecticut Yankee is an arms manufacturer, and he serves as a foil to Merlin who is a magician. He also creates a holocaust, which is quite some commentary on modernity.]

 

Jefferson’s obfuscation: Jefferson asserted once that slavery was like riding a wolf, holding on, and not knowing whether to hold on or to let go. But that’s a soft sell. In a slave regime, the wolf is on the loose, and in control. The choice? Kill it or die or succumb to it. We’re not riding the wolf; it’s chasing us, threatening to devour us.  

 

Did Lincoln realize this? That he wondered and spoke about the perpetuation of our institutions suggests he did. Slavery as a regime made perpetuating America’s original institutions as conventionally understood highly unlikely. And appeals to the spirit or ghost of Washington or to strict law-abidingness would be insufficient for that perpetuation. What was sufficient, ala’ Lincoln? Read his second inaugural as he provides his answer there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modernity and Slavery

  

Modernity and Slavery

Peter Schultz

 

                  A question: Does modernity starve or feed slavery? This question assumes that slavery is natural; that is, is intrinsic to political life, whether it is just or unjust.

 

                  Herbert Storing argued that Locke’s natural rights provided “an uncomfortably large opening toward slavery.” This makes it sound as if this “opening toward slavery” was a by-product, an accidental result, as it were, of Locke’s understanding of natural rights. Slavery was a result, but it was not the agenda. Locke’s understanding of natural rights allows slavery to emerge, but that understanding doesn’t enhance slavery’s status. Slavery exists but it isn’t valued.

 

                  However, it could be both. That is, slavery is, and it is valued. It was chosen and not just accepted because it was unavoidable. And, as an aside: Is this the meaning of what is labeled “realism?” That is, realists embrace slavery, e.g., as valuable. Being realistic means embracing both war and slavery, along with torture and other inhuman practices.

 

                  In reading Edward Baptist’s book, The Half Has Never Been Told, two considerations emerge. First, there is the role, the central role that slavery played in the creation and development of the United States. Baptist does a marvelous job of illuminating just how central slavery was to the economic and political development of the United States, serving to create a wealth producing economy that eventually made the United States the economic powerhouse it has become. But slavery also served to unify the politics of the United States, as that unity built around slavery, its extension, and fears of slave revolts.

 

                  Second, there is question of slavery’s role in political life. That is, can the political be affirmed without affirming slavery in one form or another? Affirming the political is best understood as affirming the quest for greatness, for empire, for political, military, and economic greatness. Given the overwhelming appeal of such greatness, the question arises over how slavery can be starved or deterred. If Storing’s take on Locke is correct, then it would seem that modern natural rights, modernity that is, will not, cannot starve slavery.

 

                  The Enlightenment, as it is called, might be more limited in its ability to ameliorate the human condition than many have claimed. And, perhaps, those limitations stem from the Enlightenment’s disparagement of hedonism, understood as the joys of contemplation of the beautiful or the joys of discovering and participating in the beautiful, which some have thought of as the promise of mysticism, of some “revealed” religions. Insofar as enlightenment is understood as secularizing for the sake of “progress,” just so far enlightenment cannot starve the appeal of slavery. And as Baptist shows, the enslaved in the United States embraced hedonism, e.g., song, dance, and love to maintain their humanity, insofar as that was possible. Could it be that a genuinely human politics is hedonistic? It just might be.                  

Daniel Ellsberg, US Regime, Part II

  

Daniel Ellsberg, US Regime, II

Peter Schultz

 

                  An email exchange regarding my post on Daniel Ellsberg, the US regime, and Vietnam:

 

The Reply:

“Selection From Nixon

“YOUNG WOMAN: You don't want the war.  We don't want the war.  The Vietnamese don't want the war.  So why does it go on?
Nixon hesitates, out of answers.
“YOUNG WOMAN: Someone wants it...  (a realization)  You can't stop it, can you?  Even if you wanted to.  Because it's not you.  It's the system.  And the system won't let you stop it...
“NIXON: There's a lot more at stake here than what you want.  Or even what I want...
“YOUNG WOMAN: Then what's the point?  What's the point of being president?  You're powerless.
“The girl transfixes him with her eyes.  Nixon feels it.  The nausea of the Beast[1] makes him reel.  The students press in on him from all sides.
“NIXON: (stumbling)  No, no.  I'm not powerless.  Because...because I understand the system.  I believe I can control it.  Maybe not control it totally.  But...tame it enough to make it do some good.
“YOUNG WOMAN: It sounds like you're talking about a wild animal.
“NIXON: Maybe I am.

 

“[1] "After 'The Last Press Conference' he was finished.  He should have disappeared, but he didn't.  In order for Nixon to have become President in 1968, Jack Kennedy had to die, Lyndon Johnson had to be forced into retirement, Dr. King had to die, Bobby Kennedy had to die, Hubert Humphrey had to be eviscerated in Chicago.  It almost seemed that Nixon was being helped, helped by something dark, something sinister, something frightening.  Some thing.
"And we called it The Beast.
"The Beast became a metaphor for the darkest organic forces in American Cold War politics: the anti-Communist crusade, secret intelligence, the defense industry, organized crime, big business.  People and entities with apparently divergent agendas.  But at a certain moment in history, their interests converged.”

 

My response:

Thanks. This is wonderfully illuminating about American politics and about Stone. The American regime, as usual, controls, not even but especially presidents…..because, after all, they are elected to preside over that regime. Hence, the title of “president.” Although they don’t know it, the regime is what Nixon and the young woman are talking about.

 

But then Stone goes off, obfuscating things with the idea of “the Beast.” It isn’t a beast, it’s a regime, as Aristotle and others understood. But the Beast makes it melodramatic! And the beast successfully hides the truth about the political. And thus Stone obscures the worth of Nixon’s claim that he might be able to “tame” what he calls “the system.” 

 

A “taming politics” is definitely not a progressive politics. It may be said that the Anti-Federalists wanted a tamed politics, whereas the Federalists wanted a progressive politics. But even Nixon doesn’t fully understand what he’s talking about, doesn’t understand the choices to be made and that were made, e.g., the embrace and extension of slavery. He’s just trying “to relate.” And Stone also doesn’t understand the political or what’s at stake. 

 

It’s not "a wild animal" that’s being dealt with. It’s the political! 

 

 

Daniel Ellsberg, the US Regime, and the Vietnam War

  

Daniel Ellsberg, the US Regime, and the Vietnam War

Peter Schultz

 

                  The key players in the Johnson administration thought they were acting on “the problem of Vietnam,” that is, acting on what Vietnam needed. But they weren’t. They were acting on the US regime and what it needed or required. And that meant war. There was no way out.

 

                  Regimes are ways of life, constructed ways of life, of living. Once constructed, they are architectonic, they are controlling. As a result, the empowered ones in any regime, the elites, are like prisoners or captives of the regime. To act against the regime’s requirements is subversive of the regime and of their own status therein. This is why what may be called “contra regime advice” is kept secret and goes unspoken publicly by those with power within the regime.

 

                  Daniel Ellsberg’s Secrets, his memoir, illustrates this phenomenon. Despite his doubts and disagreements with the official policy of expanding the Vietnam war and America’s role in it, he kept his doubts and disagreements quiet as he went along with that policy and even helped the war’s expansion. Ellsberg was far from along. His boss, John McNaughten also disagreed with US policies to the point that once, exasperated, he said to Ellsberg: “You don’t understand, Dan. I don’t want us to be in Vietnam six months from now! I want us out! Out, Out, Out!” [87] Others, significant others like George Ball, Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield, Richard Russell, and Clark Clifford felt and acted the same.

 

                  Ellsberg realized this advice had to be kept secret, as did all advice “urging extrication” from Vietnam. In fact, that there was such advice did not make an appearance in the Pentagon Papers. Why? Because “That revelation would burden the president with personal responsibility for all that followed from is decision to reject [such an] alternative.” [83] Such revelations would make clear “that a president strongly inclined to escalate had had a real choice…, an extrication option … actually recommended by advisers of great authority.” [83] That is, it would be clear that LBJ chose US war-making in Vietnam, a choice that wasn’t demanded by the situation, by the actions of the North Vietnamese or other communist nations.

 

                  In other words, it would be revealed that LBJ did not want peace; he did not want to avoid war in Vietnam. He wanted war, he sought war, even against the advice of “advisers of great authority. That revelation would be too burdensome for LBJ and for the US regime, a regime that had to disguise its embrace and endorsement of war, a disguise that legitimated Johnson’s presidency as well as the regime he presided over.

 

                  The most basic problem confronting the US then was not Vietnam. It was, in fact, the US regime, a regime that was war-like to very dangerous degrees. It might even be said that the problem then was not Vietnam or even communism; it was US imperialism.

The Crime of Slavery

 The Crime of Slavery

Peter Schultz

    Baptist, in his book The Half Never Told, argues that the slaves, by
using the word "stole," "made it clear that this common story was a
crime story. Buying and selling people was a crime. Buyers and
sellers were criminals." (187) And for Baptist this was a radical
change in the debates around slavery.

    But he also points out that "Instead of being individual misfortunes,
enslaved people realized their own experiences were part of a giant
historical robbery, a forced transfer of value that they saw ... in ...
widening clearings, cotton bales ..., and slave coffles...."

    Well, this "giant historical robbery" was the result of imperialism and
empire. Slavery was just one manifestation of this imperialism and
empire. Hence, defeating slavery requires critiques of imperialism
and empire, and calling slavers "kidnappers" is insufficient. 

    Labeling slavery a "crime" will not coalesce with anti-slavery politics. Unless
imperialism and empire are critiqued and rejected, slavery - in one
form or another - will go on. After all, slavery is as "natural" as
imperialism and empire.

Morality, Crime, and Politics

  

Morality, crime and politics

Peter Schultz

 

From The Half ... Never Told: "Moral discomfort and political

interest did not coalesce into a lasting opposition to [slavery's]

expansion." (158)

 

Of course not because morality provides little guidance for politics.

Consider "war crimes." They don't coalesce into a lasting opposition

to war because they are usually committed by those who are making

war for the sake of socially approved and acceptable ends. They are

just like Tony Soprano, whose crimes were means to socially

acceptable ends, wealth and status for him and his family. (Ditto for a

small time hood like Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X.)

 

Ditto with immorality. This is why Trump's immorality doesn't lead

many decent, moral Christians to reject him. Trump's immorality is

not significant because his political ends are in the service of what

they deem to be socially approved ends.

 

What's most important politically are the ends being pursued; the

means are of decidedly secondary importance. Which helps explain

why the political is so often intertwined with immorality, injustice,

and repression.

White Supremacy

  

White supremacy

Peter Schultz

 

What's the better description of the regime created in the United

States with the Constitution and thereafter, a slave regime or a white

supremacist regime? The latter. "then again, there was the fact that

a third of the refugees [from Cuba] were free people of color,

forbidden to immigrate to the U.S. and unwanted by whites in New

Orleans - particularly by English-speakers who preferred the

ostensible clarity of their own American pattern in which all black

people were assumed to be enslaved." (54)

 

Or deserved to be enslaved. Enslavement was a value, not just a

fact. Such value required white supremacist thought, belief. White

supremacy was/is more fundamental than slavery, as slavery as a

fact could be accidental or incidental, as could be white rule as well

But regimes are not the results of accidents or incidents. They don't

grow. They are constructed on the basis of values thought to be

best, with the possession of those values justifying rule.

 

"Allowing slavery's expansion, the mayor and other wealthy

Louisianans insisted, made white New Orleans and white American

more prosperous and more united, binding states and factions

together." (55)

 

"The governor himself enforced only a single law. Following territorial

regulations to the letter, he expelled all free males of color over the

age of 15 who had entered on refugee ships." (55)

 

Slavery was a reflection of white supremacy. But white supremacy

was a reflection of elitism. Elitism is the fundamental political

phenomenon that needs attention, that needs to be dealt with to

ameliorate the human condition. Should Plato's Republic, e.g., be

read as a critique of elitism? And wouldn't that be "a horse of a

different color" than that ridden by the neo-cons and others?

 

[Page numbers are from The Half Has Never Been Told]

The US Slave Regime, Part II

  

The US Slave Regime, Part II

Peter Schultz

 

                  So, the question occurred to me: What’s the better description of the regime created in the United States with the Constitution and thereafter: a slave regime or a white supremacist regime? The latter.

 

                  As Baptist wrote in is The Half That Was Never Told: “… then again, there was the fact that a third of the refugees [from Cuba] were free people of color, forbidden to immigrate to the US and unwanted by whites in New Orleans – particularly by English-speakers who preferred the ostensible clarity of their own American pattern in which all black people were assumed to be enslaved.” (54)

 

                  But it should read deserved to be enslaved. Enslavement was a value, not just a fact. Such value required white supremacist thought, beliefs, actions. White supremacy was/is more fundamental than slavery, because slavery as a fact could be accidental or incidental, as could white rule as well. But regimes are not the results of accidents or incidents. They don’t grow. They are constructed on the basis of values thought to be best, while those possessing those values justifiably rule.

 

                  Per Baptist: “Allowing slavery’s expansion, the mayor and other wealthy Louisianans insisted, made white New Orleans and white America more prosperous and more united, binding states and factions together.” (55)

 

                  “The governor himself enforced only a single law. Following territorial regulations to the letter, he expelled all free males of color over the age of fifteen who had entered on refugee ships.” (55)

 

                  Slavery was a reflection of white supremacy. But white supremacy was a reflection of elitism. So, it turns out that elitism is the fundamental political phenomenon, one that needs attention in order to ameliorate the human condition. Should Plato’s Republic, e.g., be read as a critique of elitism? And, when done, wouldn’t that be “a horse of a different color” than that ridden by some neo-conservatives and others?