The Political and Conspiracies
Peter Schultz
James Hougan [Secret Agenda] asks why didn’t John Mitchell “simply defenestrate … Liddy” when he offered his original plan for surveillance during the 1972 presidential election. Answer: Because he didn’t understand the political. He didn’t understand that “conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means….” [Oglesby, The Yankee and Cowboy Wars]
Political actors are invariably conspirators, thereby making politics “conflict-wracked and dialectical,” not “serene and hierarchical.” [Oglesby, ibid] Mitchell didn’t see Liddy as dangerous because he didn’t appreciate that Liddy was conspiring for his own purposes, his own advancement and achievement, for the sake of his own power, and not just for Nixon’s re-election.
The crucial thing to remember is that the allure of politics is POWER. Political power is seductive, and it leads, invariably, to conspiracies. Conspiracies are the political norm, the default position of politics.
To understand what this means, care must be taken when reading Oglesby, who was writing in the context of JFK’s assassination, which was, obviously, a most significant event and conspiracy, a really BIG conspiracy. But as L. Fletcher Prouty points out, most conspiracies are small, insignificant – at least at first. Which is one reason that they work. If you focus on Nixon’s conspiratorial behavior during Watergate, you will overlook Dean’s, Haig’s, McCord’s, Hunt’s, Woodward’s and Bernstein’s, Admiral Moorer’s, and Ellsberg’s conspiratorial behavior. They all behaved conspiratorially.
Failure to appreciate the conspiratorial character of politics helps explain passivity like Mitchell’s vis-à-vis Liddy. It helps explain the passivity, inactivity evident in the lead up to 9/11. The thought that politics is “serene and hierarchical” is misleading, even delusional. Moreover, grand conspiratorial theories, those Oglesby calls “the omnipotent-cabal” conspiracies, tend to reinforce the view that politics is serene and hierarchical. Conversely, as Oglesby notices “every faction … conspires against each and each against all,” leading to repeated failures.
It would seem that the conventional wisdom about politics is that being hierarchical makes politics serene. Certainly, those in positions of power tend to see hierarchical politics as essentially serene. Oglesby himself implies as much by linking serenity with hierarchy and contrasting it with conflict and dialectic. But what if the situation is the opposite, viz., that hierarchy doesn’t create serenity but the opposite as humans struggle for power? The allure of power, which the essence of the political, makes any and every political hierarchy conflict-wracked and dialectical. There are those with power and those who want it. And because every regime is hierarchical, to one degree or another, every regime is conflict-wracked as the struggle for power goes on between those with power and those who want it. As illustrated by the consequences of Mitchell’s treatment of Liddy, this is something that those embedded in the upper reaches of a hierarchy cannot afford to ignore, even regarding aides and supporters. Conspiracies and conspirators pervade the political arena and they constitute “normal politics by normal means.”
