Game theory and secret societies

[Confuseling]

Hehe. The so called Golden law of governance; who has the gold makes the laws.

Hardly the same thing though, from a US citizen's perspective. Firstly, depressingly, there's the universal tendency to value your compatriots more than others. Perhaps more importantly though, you can make the case that the sanctions were a good thing - not a proposition I agree with, but one that can be assembled into a coherent argument. Most people are utterly disillusioned with politics, and more or less stop listening when the argument bogs down, reverting to archetypes and personalities. Forcefully repeat a few platitudes about defending our values and evil dictators and people aren't going to listen to the people asking whether sanctions against a tyrannical regime actually do anything to weaken it or just kill more poor children; that's politics, therefore it's boring.

This is a situation utterly different from one in which you can demonstrate unequivocal evidence that the US government deliberately, directly or through its proxies, killed large numbers of its own citizenry. Sure, a few people will refuse to listen no matter what you show them - at least at first. But as soon as you have serious minded groups accepting that the evidence stacks up, hesitant people begin to seriously evaluate your case. It inevitably happens first among the peoples who most want it to be true - i.e. America's competitors and ideological opponents.

What to do with the evidence? I don't know. Take it to the UN. Or other governments. Or pirate radio. Or flood the net. Or distribute pamphlets. But the point is do something. No organised response = no evidence.

By brought low I mean the complete destruction of present civil society. If the media, academia and government are deliberately - or even unconsciously - ignoring clear evidence, that is the only course of action.

 

[metamars]

So you're suggesting that China and Iran would be perfectly happy to "bring the US low" by somehow forcing US citizens to confront the evidence of US's responsibility for Iraqi deaths, if only it weren't for the inconvenient fact that Iraqis just don't count as much as Americans (to Americans)?

For sure, I agree with your observation of a "universal tendency to value compatriots more than others". Nevertheless, if China and Iran are so eager to bring the US low, why don't they use the US' deadly meddling in Iraq to at least give us a black eye? Are you suggesting that it must be "all or nothing"? Either aim for "the complete destruction of present civil society", or keep your mouth shut until the evidence of US government murder of Americans appears?

If so, I must say that I find this an incredible point of view. First of all, I don't believe that either China or Iran want such a chaotic situation to prevail in the US. We do have nuclear weapons, after all. Is it in their interest to create such instability in the US?

Secondly, even if this was their goal, I also find incredible any sort of "all or nothing" strategy.

Thirdly, even if 911 was proven, in the minds of, say, 95% of Americans, to be either LIHOP of MIHOP, I also find incredible the notion that this would "bring us low". People have rents to pay, children to raise, lives to lead. We are too fat and happy to have any kind of chaos or revolution, even if we're disgusted with our government, and facing an almost assured economic decline (and thus not all that happy). Survival comes before politics, for the vast majority of people - I think this is a truism in all countries.

Quite frankly, I'd be more concerned that Americans are so jaded that even conviction of 911 traitors in a fair court of law would elicit yawns and resignation (after a blip of anger, I suppose), at the expense of an enhanced sense of responsibility for allowing the government to degenerate to such a low level. Do not citizens of a democracy, even such a dysfunctional one as is evident in the US, have a responsibility to try and correct their government? Beyond voting, writing the occasional letter to their Congressman, and whining to friends, family, and strangers? I think so, but I suspect that your view of expected consequences of 911 convictions is not unlike that of many 911 Truthers - and just as wrong.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"

Attributed to Thomas Jefferson

 

[Confuseling]

Are you honestly suggesting that if the majority of the population of the US believed that the government had deliberately killed large numbers of its citizenry in order to start an illegal war or two, and political opposition, mass media and academia had conspired to avoid noticing, there wouldn't be a revolution?

I think we must have our wires crossed here. You have to understand that in all of these posts I am talking about the case where the proof has been publicly available for some time, and there is a conspiracy of silence. Hell, if it transpired that the hijackers were still alive, or couldn't have flown the planes like that, or steel buildings didn't collapse from fires, I'd grab my trusty pitchfork and jump on the first train to Westminster. America would turn to absolute bedlam.

Would China want to create such a situation? I would suspect so, yes - I doubt it would affect them directly. Even if they didn't, choosing a longer game perhaps, you would have to expect some country, somewhere, or even some dissident group (Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, MEND), with the competency to point it out in stark terms, to be trying to do so.

This negates the 'we have clear proof but the media won't listen' argument - it plainly doesn't make sense. It does not in any shape or form disprove the conspiracy, but says something about the standard of evidence available.

And yes, if revealing injustices in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Palestine would instigate an American revolution, I'm absolutely certain that foreign powers would do it. They'd document them to the nth degree and then broadcast them onto US soil using any means possible. Geopolitics is still often a fairly zero-sum game when it comes down to it - and it's only Western hegemony that temporarily disguises that. So why not do it anyway - the 'black eye' you mentioned? Because we already know all of those things already, but we're either too cynical to care or consider this course of action better than the alternatives. Put it this way: why doesn't the African Union put together expensive TV ads bludgeoning home the point that Western trade injustices are killing 30,000 children per day? Sympathy fatigue, combined with a sense of impotence. There's nothing we can do, or it's Somebody Else's Problem^TM. If they did, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to most people. That's really not the same thing as: "Your government deliberately and consciously murdered thousands of your civilians and hundreds of thousands more foreigners; none of the checks, balances and dispassionate observers even noticed, let alone did anything about it; you might be next."