Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Cracked: 7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened

Here's #7:

In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we're 6talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.
Read the rest of this conspiracy and the other 6 plots here.

Major General Smedley Butler is an interesting character. This is what wikipedia has about him:
During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.
Major General Butler also has the distinction of being one of the first to recognize our military industrial complex. His short book "War is a Racket" lays it all out there (using examples primarily from WWI) and is still relevant today.

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.

Read the whole thing here.

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2 comments:

The Swindle said...

I didn't want you to get the impression that this post wasn't important. Let me just pose a question if I may...

How RIPPED to shreds do you think Obama (for example) would get if his grandfather had orchestrated a fascist coup to overthrow the government? Once you start thinking about it, it really is scary how deep the rabbit hole goes in terms of the media in this country and what they term as "important news".

Randolphus Maximus said...

The bias that I see not just in the MSM but in the MSB (main stream blogosphere) as well isn't really in terms of left vs. right. I see it more like statist vs. antistatist. Take the 3 leading candidates for president and our foreign policy. The scope of the debate doesn't include whether we should get involved with the internal affairs of other countries or not. But discussion is only limited to what extent our government should interfere with the internal affairs of other countries or not.