“The Malignant Nature of Pseudo Debate”

[Cliff Varnell]

E. Martin Schotz

The Waters of Knowledge versus The Waters of Uncertainty:

Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/27th_issue/schotz.html

<quote on, emphasis added>

THE MALIGNANT NATURE OF PSEUDO DEBATE

Perhaps many people think that engaging in pseudo debate is a benign activity, that it simply means that people are debating something that is irrelevant. This is not the case. I say this because every debate rests on a premise to which the debaters must agree, or there is no debate. In the case of pseudo debate the premise is a lie. So in the pseudo debate we have the parties to the debate agreeing to purvey a lie to the public. And it is all the more malignant because it is subtle. The unsuspecting person who is witness to the pseudo debate does not understand that he is being passed a lie. He is not even aware that he is being passed a premise; it is so subtle that the premise just passes into the person as if it were reality. This premise -- that there is uncertainly to be resolved -- seems so benign. It is as easy as drinking a glass of treated water.

But the fact remains that there is no mystery except in the minds of those who are willing to drink this premise. The premise is a lie, and a society which agrees to drink such a lie ceases to perceive reality. This is what we mean by mass denial.

That the entire establishment has been willing to join in this process of cover-up by confusion creates an extreme form of problem for anyone who would seek to utter the truth. For these civilian institutions -- the media, the universities and the government-- once they begin engaging in denial of knowledge of the identity of the assassins, once they are drawn into the cover-up, a secondary motivation develops for them. Now they are not only protecting the state, they are now protecting themselves, because to expose the obviousness of the assassination and the false debate would be to reveal the corrupt role of all these institutions. And there is no question that these institutions are masters in self protection. Thus anyone who would attempt to confront the true cover-up must be prepared to confront virtually the entire society. And in doing this, one is inevitably going to be marginalized.</q>