Rule by secrecy Book

Let's get this out of the way, first. This book is Conspiracy Theory 101 from start to finish. It's also probably mostly bullshit. For that reason, it's hard to review or rate. Have you ever wondered "What secrets connect Egypt's Great Pyramids, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Council on Foreign Relations?" Of course, you have. This question burns at the core of every sentient human being. I have to admit I'm torn between giving this book one star or five. As a thought exercise, it's fun as hell, and there's undoubtedly some spooky, unexplainable things covered in Rule by Secrecy. But let's put Jim Marrs into perspective here. His website and his own other writings reveal he's a firm believer in a plot involving the US government to stage the 9/11 terror attacks. Tell me something, someone, please. If our government was competent enough to fake something like that, why couldn't they fake finding a nuclear bomb in Iraq, or even a dirty bomb, or hell even a bunch of blow darts tipped with Ebola? Something to justify it? You know, a couple of covert CIA agents plant a nuclear bomb in a bunker, and all of a sudden the war seems justified and everyone calms down. It'd certainly go a long way toward promoting this terrible conspiracy Marrs sees everywhere. God, it would have been so easy to pull off, and a brilliant (if totally amoral) tactical move. Certainly it would have been easier to keep quiet than the full conspiracy Marrs believes has been hidden from us. Which brings me back to Rule by Secrecy. The same people, Marrs believes, that rule the world and planned 9/11, are connected through the CIA, Johnson (who killed Kennedy), the Council on Foreign Relations, a few elite banking institutions and universities, the bloodline of Jesus, Templars, Nazis, the Russian Revolution, the American Civil War, the Vatican and oh, aliens. Who built and / or inspired the building of the Pyramids in Egypt. By Freemasons. Or something. I could add Papa Smurf to the list and it wouldn't be any less surreal or plausible. It's all far, far too complex. Nothing like this could ever be kept secret. Surely, even the evil overlords of this plot would be too fucking confused by their own conspiracy to ever get around to ruling the world. And these organizations he implicates can barely pave roads or overthrow third-world governments without a subsequent Senate investigation. Nevermind that many of his arguments are based on documents that are long since proven to be hoaxes or lies. He strings together bits of actual fact with fanciful storytelling to make it sound like the Bush family sold gas directly to the Nazis to fulfill an alien agenda as ancient as Christ. Rule by Secrecy is fun, but maybe not entirely... sane. Conspiracy theories like this are terrifying but comforting. They let us pretend there's something more than human hate and incompetence running the world. It's a lot more comforting to think LBJ was cunning enough to get away with killing Kennedy than to know how terrified and confused Johnson really was at the time. It's more comforting to think there's a conspiracy than to think nobody in the entire world really has a handle on things. Rule by Secrecy would make a great movie, but I don't know that it flies as research or a provable thesis. I do wonder, though, if Marrs isn't a disinformation agent working for some shadowy intelligence service. This kind of stuff is great for getting people to look in all the wrong directions. (That's why the CIA invented Scientology!) Now that would be a great fucking story.

NC