Inbox: What about Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope?

I'm somewhat familiar with Quigley. I don't actually own the book but a local library has a copy and I've checked it out before. It's massive and I'll confess I didn't read it all. I pretty much focused on the conspiratorial Round Table sections everyone talks about. And mind you, it's been a good fifteen years or more since I looked at it.

He's interesting and I would add that he's been somewhat hijacked by not a few within conspiracy circles. I say that as one who would be accused by the mainstream of embracing conspiracy. I certainly believe that history attests to them and I don't doubt what Quigley saw with regard to the Round Table and the Anglo-American Establishment.

That said, one must be careful. The Tragedy and Hope podcast you mention, I've never actually listened to but I've heard the host interviewed by James Corbett and others. He's pretty interesting as is Corbett at times. I guess I take exception to the view put forward by some of these folks that EVERYTHING is orchestrated. I don't believe that for a moment. I'm not sure what Plummer says but I know how Corbett and JE Pilato talk about history and current events. There's a lot of good stuff there but they go astray I think. The world is far too complicated to be orchestrated to that degree.

I think many things are definitely manipulated. I think certain specific things are orchestrated. I think there are grand strategies but these don't always go the way they're planned. I think there are defections and betrayals, some quite serious. I think there are sometimes virtual civil wars within the circles of power and yet within an assumed consensus. I've mentioned it before but CS Lewis also spent a good amount of time talking about circles of power and influence. I think that's what is at work. It's the Round Table, it's the Think-Tanks, it's the intelligence agencies, certain law firms, banking circles, lodges and clubs, it's the elite meetings and foundations, it's political and military circles, it's academia, Silicon Valley and the media... it goes on and on. Don't forget the criminal world. They too play a part and there is some overlap. Most people in these formal institutions are not privy to anything conspiratorial and yet it's all right there if they have their eyes open. I believe in mostly Open Conspiracy. There are plenty of outrageous deceptions going on right out in the open if you bother to look.

I saw things in the military because I was looking. Others could have seen but didn't because their minds (and hearts) were geared in a completely different direction.

That said there are some downright wicked and pernicious conspiracies... grand scale deceptions that if people really grasped, it would bring down the system. Some of these are open others are deeply hidden from the public.

People rise and fall within these circles. They have moments in which they are far more influential and they are sometimes 'tapped' to join other circles and higher circles. If they stagnate they get passed up. It's a constantly moving game of musical chairs. Some know how to play and last a long time. Is there a supreme circle of grand masters? No, I don't think so. This is where I think a lot of well meaning people make a wrong turn. They're all Communists or they're all Jews or Bankers etc...

No, they're all people invested in power and certainly the figures who sit atop the world of business, intelligence and politics are very powerful. Are they committed to an ideology? I think they are committed to various ideologies that shift with time and I think that they don't all agree on everything. I think they can actually have some serious disagreements... again within the consensus. Otherwise you will be forced out.

It might take awhile to force you out. You might start a faction and make waves and shake things up. But if you're a threat to the structure of power... you're gone. You'll end up like Strauss-Kahn... who actually may be trying to make a comeback or as with not a few others you end up destroyed or dead.

Again, there are figures that transcend these spheres and float near the top of various circles. These are powerful people indeed and yet they may not have the actual 'hands on' power to launch a war etc...

But they know the people who do and they can work the system and move things in that direction.

And while they may potentially wield vast power they may balk when presented with actual conspiratorial plans. They can do what they do within their own framework, ethics and range of conception. I may find Robert McNamara to be a deeply flawed and immoral man, one who has justified lies and mass murder for the sake of the system and yet I'm also quite sure that in his mind he was acting with integrity and by solid ethical standards. Such standards would allow for cover-ups and propaganda because it was necessary for public stability and the larger threat of Cold War escalation.

Do I think he was the sort ordering murders? Probably not. While he denied even remembering being presented with the plans for Operation Northwoods I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that he would have been genuinely against that sort of thing.

And yet that doesn't mean he's off the hook. And the fact that Northwoods was even conceived tells you a lot about how some of these people will think. Just because Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Armitage would do things that James Baker and Colin Powell wouldn't and just because they might not like each other doesn't mean that Baker and even Powell aren't up to their necks in dirty stuff. They're all part of the same hypocrisy, all part of the same evil system.

Sometimes these people go too far and they're taken down, betrayed, or they mess up in some other way. The notion that there's a Swiss castle filled with cigar smoking men in front of computers with a baphomet on the wall... I don't buy it. To be fair I don't think that's what Corbett is trying to say but sometimes... it begins to approach that kind of scenario.

And even if there are Masonic cabals (like P2) and MJ-12 type groups (like in the X files)... they wouldn't possess that kind of all encompassing control.

That said, technology is opening new doors to this kind of near comprehensive control.

There's another element to all this but it's even more nebulous and one that only Christians can really talk about...and that's the way the angelic/demonic realm influences rulers and nations. That's something we know to be the case but exactly how that works... I don't know. I can only speculate. Once again it's another topic that's been hijacked by people that tend to go wild with their speculations and scenarios and thus it ends up being discredited.

See also:

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-angst-of-1990s-and-documentary-on.html