Facts can be encoded and saved on any computer. They can even be manipulated, but that usually requires some form of creative intelligence as yet unavailable to computers. Presentation and portrayal require an active intelligence which serves a purpose — good or evil — interacting with other minds via some estimate of what it takes to get a reaction.
So we have a story of particularly egregious uproar over government abuse which may not have been exactly accurate. This requires a bit of mea culpa. You can chase the links on your own, but I counsel you to at least skim the comments on both.
It requires seeing there are more flowers in the Garden of Wisdom than a few gilded lilies. Let’s expand this to see what I mean.
Using the term “The Feds” is almost dangerous these days, unless you provide a context to sharpen the meaning. For example, my own take on this story is to see multiple levels of dirty-do. First, the good soldiers of the Empire aren’t always bumbling idiots, but their intelligence is focussed on their orders. That means they tend to miss things they aren’t required to know for their jobs, and perhaps the accident of some private hobby. Supposing the FBI actually did their homework with some intelligence, they would probably easily discover someone using either botware on Ashton’s computer, or spoofing his IP address. If they don’t know enough about these things, it may not prevent Ashton’s prosecution and incarceration. Think about Julie Amero. Once that bulldog seizes upon a story, all the universe is a liar for contradicting the private truth of that little clique of government thugs. It’s possible this is at work in Ashton’s case, but maybe not.
American justice, like it or not, assumes if Ashton is not guilty of the particular charges at hand, “The Feds” have really messed up. It matters not a whit what else we may allege Ashton to have done, because then we move over into Roman style justice, anathema to the cold logic of American legal history. Charge him with stuff you can prove, and all is fair and just.
However, the good soldiers of the Empire are hardly the only players here. The sacred masters of the Empire are most certainly cynically using the soldiers. Whether that is at play here will probably be impossible to prove. However, having been privy, via abuse against myself, to such cynical manipulation as a former foot soldier of the Empire, I have no problem seeing the strong likelihood here. Those popular conspiracy movies and books don’t tell the half. The real stuff is nastier than words can describe. Again, this is my own personal experience from the days when I was a true believer in The Cause of the Empire.
So perhaps they noticed this wild tale of Ashton and his mom’s propensities, and took advantage of them. As one commenter on Grigg’s blog notes, perhaps there was some high-level steering to bring a half-truth to the notice of those of us who howl about the evils of the Empire. It happened to Dan Rather (I was no fan of his, but that’s another matter). Feed them enough half-truth as bait, drop in the complete lie, then expose it. Voila! Dead credibility. Grigg surely makes a suitable target for such schemes.
His willingness to make amends proves at the very minimum Will knows what really matters to his core audience of truth-seekers. Of course, it is also the primary mark of spiritual maturity: truth is bigger than any one of us. This is wholly unlike the Alex Jones types. That latter is pure huckster. While he may well serve a useful function in providing investigative leads, that man does not care about truth much at all. He wants to make a sale, and make it today. The very worst you could say about Will Grigg is he is smart enough to make his profits later, quietly, by building a stronger market based on long-term credibility.
On yet a higher level, we should have learned long ago the arms industries, a primary source of profit for what the Apostle John called Babylon, is the real winner here. Those of us caught in the middle between rapacious imperial power, and the indolence of the masses, have little choice but to spend on arming ourselves. If we do not, we cannot claim to stand for justice before God. At the same time, the Empire spends even more on arming, and makes noises about taking away our arms. When the king is horny, he wants all butts bared to him, not to mention hands and feet prevented from moving to escape or resist his pleasure. The soldiers of the Empire refuse to admit there’s anything wrong with that, since their narrow focus makes government their god, at least unconsciously. They find in such raping “the will of God.” They are the ones who will share in spilling blood, including their own.
The masters of the Empire will surely lose less, but at some point, some of them will bleed, too. Babylon’s yet higher elites will assume they can escape all that blood-letting. They have, so far, it seems. Our lack of leverage against them does not make immaterial our study of their ways. While they are not delivered into our hands, as it were, they will surely become the Devil’s food in the end. We rest in knowing our struggle against the foot soldiers, and their masters in the Empire, is not wholly in vain.
