| Conspiracy Theory |
[Jun. 20th, 2006|05:57 pm] |
We've been watching Babylon 5 recently. We're most of the way through Season 3 right now, if you're curious. I'm not gonna talk about it much, 'cause we're not done, but one possible parallel between the Bab5 overarching plotline and modern politics scares the crap out of me, so I will share it with you, my devoted readers. All 4 of you.
In Bab5, the Earth government essentially manufactures an external threat to the people, in order to justify (eventually) Martial Law. In the plotline for Bab5, this strikes me a slightly implausible - I mean, it's fairly obviously a fascism story, and the amount of subtlety is so minuscule as to be laughable - the propaganda techniques they utilize are so obvious a child could see through them.
But then I wondered. I mean, many of us believe that a) the terrorist threat has been vastly overhyped by the current power structure, and that b) the war in Iraq has made that threat somewhat greater, and that c) the war in Iraq has been terribly incompetently managed, which caused b).
What if it was not incompetence, but malice? What if some or several elements in the current government wanted to make the threat worse, in order to justify the increasingly restrictive social climate? I mean, this is the kind of conspiracy I could almost believe in... it wouldn't take all that many people, it's already blindingly clear that the public reasons we went to war were not the private reasons... I can almost believe it.
Not that I actually believe this. Couldn't happen. No chance. They're just incompetent. Right? |
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