January 18, 2010

A Triumph of "Cognitive Infiltration" in Action!

Cass Sunstein, head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and a long-time mentor to the President, suggested in his 2008 paper Conspiracy Theories that the government engage in "cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories."

I guess that finally explains why in 2005-2007 Sunstein's protege, U.S. Senator Barack Obama, made tax-deductible contributions totaling $53,770 to the church of Rev. Jeremiah "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color" Wright. Obama must have been, obviously, Sunstein's undercover agent infiltrating Wright's conspiracy theory-promoting organization for two decades.

What other possible explanation could there be?

Sunstein's success having Obama infiltrate Wright's church was the perfect test case proving his theory in Conspiracy Theories: look how moderate Wright became!

It will all make sense, you see, once Cass Sunstein explains the hidden pattern to you. The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs sees all, knows all, understands all. You have nothing to worry about. Nothing, I tell you, nothing!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

18 comments:

goldman sucks said...

Will Matt Taibbi come under the axe for his conspiracy theory article on Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone magazine?

Henry Canaday said...

Among self-parodying, high-LSAT whack-jobs, Cass Sunstein had become the gift that keeps on giving:

1) Sunstein complains that the Internet is fragmenting people into isolated ideological communities, diverting them from the objective public forum of The New York Times’ coverage of national issues.

2) After 50 years of liberal jurisprudence dismantling the efforts of local governments to encourage traditional moral behavior, through schools and public recognition of religion, Sunstein invents his “nudge” concept, whereby government encourages people to adopt behaviors that the elite thinks will advance their material lives.

3) Now Sunstein has come up with this proposal to subvert the subversives through government infiltration of crackpot movements, the Ur movement of which is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, which no prominent member of Sunstein’s political party dares challenge too openly.

divinryan said...

Reason had a good article on this too, noting "[i]t's a peculiar worldview that thinks even skepticism needs to be centrally planned." See http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/14/mary-rosh-federal-agent .

Hunsdon said...

There's some kind of meta Umberto Eco joke in here, but if I told you about it . . . .

Captain Jack Aubrey said...

Was Sunstein thinking of any conspiracy theories in particular, because he's noticeably vague about which conspiracy groups, "conservative" or "liberal," he thinks the government should infiltrate.

Robert said...

And they said that Bush was scary!

Anonymous said...

When I get around to it, I'd like to run those Obama answers to the Sunstein questions through some software to see whether Sunstein actually wrote them - or tidied them up [the way that Ayers wrote Dreams].

Anonymous said...

Will Matt Taibbi come under the axe for his conspiracy theory article on Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone magazine?

Sunstein's people dispatched Nell Minow to destroy Matt Taibbi.

Statsaholic said...

Steve is here making a funny joke based on the fact that for Elitists, Conspiracy Theories are only to be opposed when White People promote them.

Therefore Sunstein doesn't bat an eyelid that his President was extremely close with one of the Major Conspiracy Theory Promoters in the Country, simply because the Rev. Wright is not White.

This is a pattern with the Obama Administration, to say the least.

First Napalitano says the real Terrorist Threat comes from White Nationalists and Ron Paul supporters, and not from Muslims.

Then there's Erroll Southers, nominated to be the head of the Transportion Security Administration:

Q: "Which home-grown terrorist groups pose the greatest danger to the U.S.?"

Southers: "Most of the domestic groups that we have to pay attention to here are white supremacist groups. They're anti-government and in most cases anti-abortion."

Kanta said...

Statsaholic: It's my understanding that Sunstein's paper explicitly referred to conspiracy theories spread in the Islamic world about 9/11, with many of the spreaders presumably being non-whites.

dearieme said...

Re Obama's birth certificate:-

1) Probability that it shows that he was not born in the USA: low.
2) Probability that it shows something acutely embarrassing to Obama: high.
3) Probabilty that, given (2), those people who have seen the birth certificate now have considerable power over Obama: near certain.

Is that a conspiracy theory? I don't think so. But it might answer some of those "Why does Obama..." and "Why doesn't Obama..." questions.

kudzu bob said...

Gore Vidal's advice is to speak of "coincidences" rather than "conspiracies." Very wise.

Anonymous said...

What's wrong with me pointing out that Cass Sunstein's people dispatched Nell Minow to destroy Matt Taibbi?

I don't know how Komment Kontrol could possibly object to that.

Is my problem that I should have referred to Cass Sunstein as one of Newton Minow's people?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, if you oppose abortion you're a terrorist. Especially if you're white. And the government is going to do something about you!!

No wonder gun sales are up. Hm...no, that would be a conspiracy theory.

Polistra said...

I'm genuinely puzzled that Sunstein seems to believe his AP idea is new. Anyone who has been involved in any movement on either side in any decade of the last century is aware of how infiltration works. CPUSA was so completely infiltrated in the '50s that it faded because nobody knew who was real and who wasn't. The Nuke Freeze movement in the '80s was quite openly AP'd; the operatives cheerfully described themselves as "ex-CIA" or "ex-State Dept."

If he's really that uninformed, nobody on either side should listen to him.

Or is he a meta-AP of some sort? One never knows.

Anonymous said...

Oops - sorry.

Looks like the LIFO stack was acting up again.

Svigor said...

Statsaholic: It's my understanding that Sunstein's paper explicitly referred to conspiracy theories spread in the Islamic world about 9/11, with many of the spreaders presumably being non-whites.

I'd like to think that's intentional humor, but the cynic in me says "no."

NedLudd said...

Management by Rumor is my favorite fundamental management theory. You encourage rampant rumoring and then make one of them come true.

It's self-perpetuating and you have to make few if any real decisions.