RandomGuy
04-23-2006, 02:57 PM
I have a plan to destroy America.
Turn America into a monocultural country, with anything different scorned and automatically dismissed as inferior. History shows that ethno-centrism consistently leads to evil empires, like the British, German, or Japanese in recent history. When you can make the emotional, irrational case that anybody who looks, worships, or speaks differently is sub-human and deserves to be subjugated or worse yet, rounded up into camps for slow deaths, it is easier to convince the simple-minded that “obeying orders” doesn’t require ethical judgments. Virulent nationalism is a subtle, insipid and irresistible poison that darkens the spirit and provides a clear path to evil.
Second, to destroy America, constantly invent new enemies that don’t look or speak your language. When you can make a case to the faithful that their worst fears are true about their neighbor who looks different, they can take the easy path and not find out for themselves what that person is really like. People like to be lazy, and getting all your opinions from someone else who makes an emotionally appealing case is easier than actually going out and finding out real facts or taking the time to understand another culture.
The politics of outrage trump facts every time.
Make it an article of belief that your nation is 100% superior in all ways to everyone else’s. The differences between your culture and every other one is obviously because theirs is worse than yours. Since your culture is superior to everything else, your government must be infallible too.
I would make it an article of belief that leaders of the ruling party can’t be questioned, even when they break the law. To question leaders is to be unpatriotic and traitorous. Unity brings us into lockstep so we can all march together towards a greater nation.
I would encourage single-party government, and make strides towards permanent one-party rule. A good way to do this is to allow government to start spying on its own citizens in secret. Since the ruling party obviously knows what is best for everybody, create a climate of fear, so you can increase government police powers. Governments have always shown that they can be trusted with unchecked power, right? Only unchecked power has ever made societies safe and secure.
I would create a climate of secrecy in which anything remotely embarrassing to the ruling party is a state secret and to reveal any of these embarrassing secrets would be harming national security in a time of great crisis. The enemies of the rulers are the enemies of the state. I would put anybody that did this on trial, unless of course it was one of the rulers attempting to do the same thing for political gain. Hypocrisy is ok, because winning at any cost is the only concern for a one-party government.
To destroy America, you would also never tell the whole truth, and never admit you did anything wrong, especially when your incompetence directly gets people killed. Remember that you can’t maintain the image of an infallible leader if you have inconvenient part of the truth pointing to mistakes. The easy thing in these cases is to use that climate of secrecy to hide the climate of arrogance.
You would stand behind the really incompetent ones because they are weak link in your chain of one-party dominance. If they fail and people die, don’t admit they are less than perfect. Create an autocratic culture of loyalty to the party, because that is more important than loyalty to the public good.
You would consistently give in to business interests over the public good, because businesses provide jobs and money to your ruling party. The public good has to take a back seat so that exploitation of people and resources can be done in the most short-sighted manner. Short-term fixes will become the norm and long term vision will be forgotten. It is better to have the short-term profits to be had from pollution than it is to have a healthy productive workforce.
Once you have quashed the truth and gotten the nation into lockstep by marginalizing the opposition, you can solidify your one-party rule so that people will never think that there is any alternative to your infallible government. Once you can do that you can distract the people with short-term threats so that they lose sight of the long-term freedoms that you are slowly taking away when they aren’t looking. Because people don’t think for themselves, you can cook up any kind of harebrained short-term scheme, because the long run doesn’t matter anymore.
Then you have destroyed America and created a new totalitarianism the like of which the world has never seen.
Pretty scary stuff.
Turn America into a monocultural country, with anything different scorned and automatically dismissed as inferior. History shows that ethno-centrism consistently leads to evil empires, like the British, German, or Japanese in recent history. When you can make the emotional, irrational case that anybody who looks, worships, or speaks differently is sub-human and deserves to be subjugated or worse yet, rounded up into camps for slow deaths, it is easier to convince the simple-minded that “obeying orders” doesn’t require ethical judgments. Virulent nationalism is a subtle, insipid and irresistible poison that darkens the spirit and provides a clear path to evil.
Second, to destroy America, constantly invent new enemies that don’t look or speak your language. When you can make a case to the faithful that their worst fears are true about their neighbor who looks different, they can take the easy path and not find out for themselves what that person is really like. People like to be lazy, and getting all your opinions from someone else who makes an emotionally appealing case is easier than actually going out and finding out real facts or taking the time to understand another culture.
The politics of outrage trump facts every time.
Make it an article of belief that your nation is 100% superior in all ways to everyone else’s. The differences between your culture and every other one is obviously because theirs is worse than yours. Since your culture is superior to everything else, your government must be infallible too.
I would make it an article of belief that leaders of the ruling party can’t be questioned, even when they break the law. To question leaders is to be unpatriotic and traitorous. Unity brings us into lockstep so we can all march together towards a greater nation.
I would encourage single-party government, and make strides towards permanent one-party rule. A good way to do this is to allow government to start spying on its own citizens in secret. Since the ruling party obviously knows what is best for everybody, create a climate of fear, so you can increase government police powers. Governments have always shown that they can be trusted with unchecked power, right? Only unchecked power has ever made societies safe and secure.
I would create a climate of secrecy in which anything remotely embarrassing to the ruling party is a state secret and to reveal any of these embarrassing secrets would be harming national security in a time of great crisis. The enemies of the rulers are the enemies of the state. I would put anybody that did this on trial, unless of course it was one of the rulers attempting to do the same thing for political gain. Hypocrisy is ok, because winning at any cost is the only concern for a one-party government.
To destroy America, you would also never tell the whole truth, and never admit you did anything wrong, especially when your incompetence directly gets people killed. Remember that you can’t maintain the image of an infallible leader if you have inconvenient part of the truth pointing to mistakes. The easy thing in these cases is to use that climate of secrecy to hide the climate of arrogance.
You would stand behind the really incompetent ones because they are weak link in your chain of one-party dominance. If they fail and people die, don’t admit they are less than perfect. Create an autocratic culture of loyalty to the party, because that is more important than loyalty to the public good.
You would consistently give in to business interests over the public good, because businesses provide jobs and money to your ruling party. The public good has to take a back seat so that exploitation of people and resources can be done in the most short-sighted manner. Short-term fixes will become the norm and long term vision will be forgotten. It is better to have the short-term profits to be had from pollution than it is to have a healthy productive workforce.
Once you have quashed the truth and gotten the nation into lockstep by marginalizing the opposition, you can solidify your one-party rule so that people will never think that there is any alternative to your infallible government. Once you can do that you can distract the people with short-term threats so that they lose sight of the long-term freedoms that you are slowly taking away when they aren’t looking. Because people don’t think for themselves, you can cook up any kind of harebrained short-term scheme, because the long run doesn’t matter anymore.
Then you have destroyed America and created a new totalitarianism the like of which the world has never seen.
Pretty scary stuff.