Trump and the Democrats stumble into a ‘Wilderness of Mirrors’

https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/06/09/trump-in-the-wilderness-of-mirrors/

Summary: James Bowman looks at the increasingly fantastic claims — backed by insubstantial stories — about Trump’s connections to Russia. He compares this crisis to an incident in the early years of Nixon’s administration. It’s a powerful analogy. Also note that while Nixon was innocent of this accusation, he went on to made serious mistakes that led to his resignation. Trump might have only innocent relations with Russia, but will he last the full four years?

“These with a thousand small deliberations

Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,

Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,

''With pungent sauces, multiply variety

In a wilderness of mirrors.”''

— “Gerontion” by T.S. Elliot (1920).

https://theurbansurvivalkit.com/wilderness-of-mirrors-meaning/

The meaning of wilderness of mirrors is when a spy operation is so complex or becomes overly complex that it’s too difficult or impossible to tell between lies and facts.

This is the inexplicit point at which an intelligence / clandestine operation reaches a critically unstable state where truth and deception is no longer discernible or friend and foe is longer recognizable.

Due to the dynamic nature of these types of operations, an inherently overcomplex plan or an OP that develops into an overcomplicated one, could become unviable and unlikely to succeed.

In theory, a sophisticated plan should be more effective and efficient with a higher likelihood of mission success than a simple plan.

In practice, the more basic the plan, the better.

Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors

Religion and the History of the CIA

Michael Graziano’s intriguing book fuses two landmark titles in American history: Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness (1956), about the religious worldview of the early Massachusetts colonists, and David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors (1980), about the dangers and delusions inherent to the Central Intelligence Agency. Fittingly, Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors investigates the dangers and delusions that ensued from the religious worldview of the early molders of the Central Intelligence Agency. Graziano argues that the religious approach to intelligence by key OSS and CIA figures like “Wild” Bill Donovan and Edward Lansdale was an essential, and overlooked, factor in establishing the agency’s concerns, methods, and understandings of the world. In a practical sense, this was because the Roman Catholic Church already had global networks of people and safe places that American agents could use to their advantage. But more tellingly, Graziano shows, American intelligence officers were overly inclined to view powerful religions and religious figures through the frameworks of Catholicism. As Graziano makes clear, these misconceptions often led to tragedy and disaster on an international scale. By braiding the development of the modern intelligence agency with the story of postwar American religion, Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors delivers a provocative new look at a secret driver of one of the major engines of American power.

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