The Deception Game

The best deception is the truth.

This is why spies prefer to assume the identity of a dead person. If they make up their own ‘legends’, they run the risk of being caught because of an inherent defect in any legend. A legend has no birth certificate nor a record of being issued one. 

But so long as people do not know the dead person is dead, the spy assuming the identity of a dead person has a ‘history’ which is airtight. It is made up of the history of the dead person plus whatever the spy says it is. The dead person is not going to rise up and contradict him or her.

Conspiracy theorists intend to deceive. They have a ‘clever’ way for doing it. They do it in such a way that their victims do not know they are being deceived. On the contrary, their  deception will appear very much like the truth. But it is still a deception. 

How do they achieve this amazing result? 

They do it by attaching to the truth a non-existent conspiracy …

What for?! Isn’t the truth good enough? Why of all things add a conspiracy to the truth?

This is the point: They include the conspiracy to gain power over people they don’t like. Truth is not really important to conspiracy theorists. There are people they don’t like. They create non-existent conspiracies so that they can have an excuse for hating them. But people always welcome the truth. When you piggy ride the conspiracy on the truth, you have new recruits and thus more power.

This is what conspiracy theorists do. They agree to our ordinary description of the world. But to this description they add a conspiracy. They say the world is the way it is because it is engineered by some powerful people who, besides being powerful, are also evil. It is these evil people they want to draw your attention to. It is purely coincidence, of course, that these evil and powerful people happen to be people they don’t like.

The conspiracy theory formula: Truth + Conspiracy = Hate.

Reality TV discovered a slightly different formula.

Reality TV formula: Falsehood + Fun = Hate. 

The stories in Reality TV are in fact made up. But the audience finds them fun. They find them fun because in these programs there is always a villain, to whom the audience can direct their … let’s say, distaste. In Reality TV, there is fun and excitement and an outlet for anger.

So we have two formulas and they have both proven to work. And not just work, but work very well.

Both formulas are used to deceive. Now Trump wants to deceive. He wants to stir up hate and anger through deception. Both formulas have been useful to him.

But what about his followers? Do they buy into both formulas? 

I think it is possible that some of Trump’s supporters are there only for the fun and not so much for the hate. That is to say, they are more in the Reality TV mode. They can still distinguish between Reality TV and reality.

For this latter group, the attempted assassination could be an eye opener. It brings it to life in the blink of an eye that people can actually die because of Trump. 

This eye opening could include Trump himself. (It seemed it did but for a short duration only). Trump can enjoy the deception game in prison. But if he dies, that for him is the end of the game. A dead person can neither be deceiver nor the deceived.

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• Cryptanalytic Method Omnibus Edition: Follow clues and develop new clues from old.

• What are clues? Clues are the characteristics of structures, sometimes disguised.

• To crack a cipher, you first have to create it. Through trial and error. Guided by clues

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