If I'm catching your general drift, you're saying it's better to use various means of info management / dissemination than bullets and bombs. I'll agree with you--I'd rather be lied to than shot, or than have someone else shot.
Problem is, it's not that simple.
I hope going with a hypothetical helps here--sometimes doing so is a way of evading truth/realities, but that's not my intent.
Here goes: what if there was a 'big lie' (lie is a strong word, but that's what we're talking about if we're 'managing information') that got everyone to stop their various wars everywhere. Let's say, by means of Hollywood special effects and so on, enough people became convinced that the world was being invaded by aliens, that people stopped shooting each other and started to cooperate in defending vs. aliens. If the alien invasion scenario is too far fetched, substitute bird flu, or global warming, or some other catastrophe.
How long would it take, once the 'big threat' lie was successful, before we'd have further 'info management' to maintain it, and to keep people in power who knew coordinated/knew about it, and stop those who questioned it, and so on, to the point of 'peace' by such means being so repressive that fighting and dying might not seem extreme.
I'm sure there are cases of clever manipulations of info. preventing unnecessary wars, but I can't go to the extreme--and as I took your statement, it allowed for such--of letting Bush-era 'info management' continue in order to save lives. If anything, Bush-era death tolls show the need for exactly the opposite.
I heard about this yesteday on "On the Media." Bayer's position doesn't pass the "smell test." If Bayer has a reasonable concern - whether terrorism or trade secrets or some other - it needs to get that information to the public and not rely on havng a dock on a river and therefore a connection to the Coast Guard. No one will accept that explanation.
it takes an uber-positive president to rebrand a "global war on terror" as "overseas contingency operations."
But tell me, sir, how can you say, sir, that the war has nothing to do with the recession? How, sir, do you exclude the Pentagon and the perpetual struggle for global empire from "the size of government"? The resources poured into it should instead go towards putting and keeping our own house in order, sir.
I for one will not be surprised at all, sir, at how much the deficit will increase under this administration. What does surprise me, sir, is that anyone can mentally divorce the squandering of our resources on perpetual war from the neglect of domestic needs and the economic and social miseries that result.
It's a well-known scientific fact that drinking too much bottled water makes you fuzzy. :-)
I heard about this yesteday on "On the Media." Bayer's position doesn't pass the "smell test." If Bayer has a reasonable concern - whether terrorism or trade secrets or some other - it needs to get that information to the public and not rely on havng a dock on a river and therefore a connection to the Coast Guard. No one will accept that explanation.
it takes an uber-positive president to rebrand a "global war on terror" as "overseas contingency operations."
But tell me, sir, how can you say, sir, that the war has nothing to do with the recession? How, sir, do you exclude the Pentagon and the perpetual struggle for global empire from "the size of government"? The resources poured into it should instead go towards putting and keeping our own house in order, sir.
I for one will not be surprised at all, sir, at how much the deficit will increase under this administration. What does surprise me, sir, is that anyone can mentally divorce the squandering of our resources on perpetual war from the neglect of domestic needs and the economic and social miseries that result.
We respect your right to voice your opinion. But I also have the right to say that your opinion is stupid. That's the beauty of freedom of speech.
Pages