The Invisible Hand

Gore Vidal in Wonderland

Gore Vidal presents us with a target rich environment this morning care of the LA Weekly. It seems that the Chomsky of Amalfi is the last guy on earth who knows the truth about 9/11 that the Bush Administration has not yet been able to silence. Another FBI/CIA screw up no doubt.

Rather than make a conventional critique of the US response to the 9/11 attacks, Vidal immediately cliff dives into murky waters with some insane yarn about how Unocal Corporation needed the Taliban to help them build a pipeline to the Caspian Sea. This was going to be one hell of a long pipeline since Afghanistan is nowhere near the Caspian. The purpose was to sell oil to China. Of course, it would be a lot easier to sell Alaskan oil to China and Caspian oil to Europe . . . or that's just what THEY want you to believe.

Indeed, according to Vidal, the US government has been deliberately keeping American students in the dark about geography for the past 40 years for this very purpose . . . of course that doesn't explain 76-year-old Vidal's ignorance of the Caspian Sea's general location.

Unocal, with the US Marine Corps, was planning to occupy Afghanistan in October 2001. Apparently everyone knew about this but kept it quiet from you and me. Not sure why since we're powerless anyway.

Osama or somebody (this key bit of information eludes Vidal) attacked the United States pre-emptively on September 11th but that just provided Bush the pretext for toppling the misogynist Taliban regime. Which is good but for all the wrong reasons, and on and on.

At this point Vidal, with warning lights flashing and klaxon horns blaring, goes into full meltdown. Unocal, Enron, Henry Cabot Lodge, Noriega, The New York Times, the United Fruit Company . . . it's a conspiratorial Chernobyl! Even the interviewer loses patience with the old fool. The fact is, Chomsky is far better then Gore Vidal at this nonsense and frankly second-tier lunatic conspiracists are thick on the ground these days.

Gore Vidal is a true 20th century intellectual. He believes a cabal of huge corporations controls the world and that he is boldly speaking the truth to power. But the huge conglomerates of the last century and the command and control strategy they relied upon evaporated long ago. There isn't anyone in control . . . not the Rockefeller brothers, not the Trilateral Commission, not even the United Fruit Company.

Now some people would greet this realization with optimism . . . after all if no one is in control than that means each of us is free to strive and either achieve or fail on our own. But to others, the bracing breeze of freedom is a bit too chilly. They want to believe there is someone or something keeping them from being part of the controlling cabal . . . a position they deserve to occupy . . . well, isn't it obvious? If they're not getting the recognition and prestige they crave it must be because the fix is in. The alternative is a bit to troubling to contemplate . . . especially if you're fast approaching your eightieth birthday.