Who is decieved?

[MorkandMindy]

And can you change your mind if it turns out it is you?

This has universal applicability, it can apply to:


1. Finding you may have been misinformed at work and deciding whether to delve deeper and discover the truth or whether it is easier and saves face to stick with your original belief.


2. Finding out you may have been misinformed at school about your nation's history and that you might have to relearn it all.


3. Present day politics. What if the ones you have long thought are the bad guys, wanting to implement World Government etc. are actually the good guys, and that they are right to say the World has become too dangerous a place for big governments to just do whatever they like?

Or what if there isn't a real choice at all, behind door A is the same entity as behind door B? What if both identical entities really can be reshaped into whatever we want them to be?

 

[farmer joe]

Well I believe I have been deceived, but trying to find the truth seems to be impossible. What's behind door C?

 

[Paradoxum]

Well if you realise you are wrong you can chance your mind.

I don't really understand the question.

 

[MorkandMindy]

I think the policy makers (called 'advisers') will avoid door C.


Door A is the World continues as at present - the US trashes a country every few years, usually the same one as Israel wants trashed, Pope continues to ban condoms, and there is a big population die off in Africa. World government exists, just that it is the US running most of the World, as at present. Delegates go to UN mainly for the prestige and free snacks.

Door B is the World takes a 'liberal' direction and the UN gets some say and the ICC gains jurisdiction in the US as well as everywhere else - under the condition that nothing before 2015 is included, so the war crimes of the Bushes and other Presidents etc. are not considered. Africa gains condoms and birth control through the efforts mainly of China, and the die off doesn't happen but the population stabilises and life in Africa improves considerably. The US is not very pleased about that but can no longer make war without UN approval and gradually slides from World domination.

Door A and Door B converge as the US becomes more responsible and even on the odd occasion, a bit caring, and most likely both doors will lead to a mix of both, starting more Door A ish and becoming more Door B ish as the decade progresses.


Door C is to the right of the present (if that seems possible). Israel nukes Iran, China holds the US vicariously responsible for supplying the planes and allegedly some of the bombs, and ceases buying US debt. The US dollar devalues overnight and establishes a stable trade balance with Europe. Europe now takes centre stage in the World.


Door D is the one we don't talk about.

 

[Paradoxum]

I like the sounds of door B, but I don't think many countries can be trusted yet to vote in moral way, eg: China and Russia against strong words against the killing in Syria. I'm for a strong UN in the end though.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Well if you realise you are wrong you can chance your mind.

I don't really understand the question.

My point is a lot of people won't change their minds.

Christianity for example has not changing your mind but believing to the end to gain entrance to heaven. Change your mind and you roast.

And it is core to entering Christianity that you make a public proclamation at baptism.

When Mindy gave up her faith she was ridiculed by members of the family.

A right wing Fundamentalist I know lacks education and therefore likes to show that he 'has his head screwed on the right way', by challenging people about their liberal beliefs. And he's got his son in on the act.

Now the son is in his early teens what is the chance this fellow is going to admit his mistake?

They have told friends, others at Church, and taken a stand on something and then would be admitting themselves to have poor judgement if after umpteen years they admitted to have been wrong all along, so they continue by reinterpreting everything to suit their beliefs.

 

[MorkandMindy]

I like the sounds of door B, but I don't think many countries can be trusted yet to vote in moral way, eg: China and Russia against strong words against the killing in Syria. I'm for a strong UN in the end though.

Well it's the core concept of democracy that more people leads to better decisions.

We know darn well now that the US going off on it's own and trashing Vietnam was very very wrong, and trashing Iraq was also wrong.

The World was almost unanimously against the US on both of those.

I don't know what the media has been saying about Syria, but really just how short is our memory?

We trashed Vietnam, by mistake (Domino Theory was disproved, oh well), trashed Iraq by mistake (maybe got it confused with Iran), bombed Libya when we said we wouldn't and landed solders there when we said we definitely no way would do anything like that.



The US imposed a 'no-fly zone' in Libya to protect the people from being bombed by the Libyan Air force. Naturally it is necessary to fly in a no fly zone to ensure no bad guys fly in it, and the next thing that happened was Europe wanted to bomb the pro Gaddaffi forces. Turned out Europe had more bombers than Libya (no surprise) but wanted to do a lot more damage, so needed to call the US in. And far from reducing the carnage, the 'no-fly zone' became the 'we bomb zone'.



I think it is time we started listening to other countries.

.

 

[razeontherock]

Door D is the one we don't talk about.

Is that the one where Patton's idea of colonizing Russia while we could, and Bush's idea that Iraqi oil would pay for the war, where we "ride herd on the middle east," actually takes place?

 

[razeontherock]

the 'no-fly zone' became the 'we bomb zone'.

Hey, I thought you just said no one talks about what's behind Door # D! [Bombs r us, cheaper by the dozen, Crazy Harry for President?]

 

[MorkandMindy]

Hey, I thought you just said no one talks about what's behind Door # D! [Bombs r us, cheaper by the dozen, Crazy Harry for President?]

We've been doing Bombs R Us, the problem is all the populations of the countries of the world are not pleased. The governments are playing along, after all the same rich and powerful run them as run ours, but increasingly the public are not.

Door D is the one I'm a bit reluctant to talk about. A sort of analogy exists here with the situation where 911 was sort of foretold in 'The Towering Inferno'. Behind Door D is a reality sort of foretold by 'Twelve Monkeys'.

Once again the mechanisms are different and the over all motives are different between the movies and the possible reality but there is a similarity in the outcome.

Anyway, if you want to escape the possibility of getting somewhat depressed by this 'science fiction' then don't put on your reading glasses:


Israel was the only nation to survive. As you may be aware Israel bought the 'doomsday bug' off South Africa before apartheid ended. History over, speculation begins: As a precaution in 2013 the entire population of Israel received immunisation against the doomsday bug in with the mandatory flu vaccinations.

Despite all the safeguards a technician was able to pass a small amount of airborne virus out when the filters were changed onto a damp tissue and left work before it had deactivated. He/she then cultured it in a raw egg and on holiday spread it through the island population in a Greek holiday resort. From there it spread to every part of the World.

So Israel got the oil under the land occupied by Palestinians, and everywhere else for that matter, total access to the water resources and the land of Southern Lebanon. The UDF occupation forces with no Palestinians to harass instead went out into the World collecting yachts and cruise liners stranded in various ports, everyone who lived, lived happily ever after.

Instead of the oil running out pretty much completely in under 40 years it lasted basically forever, the oceans restocked with fish, the ruined soil of the American Prairie began to recover.

There were scattered communities that survived: Inuit villages, a few villages in the Andes, some tribes out in Tibet and Mongolia.

In the end, although the very rich had long talked about population reduction through elimination of the 'non thinking masses', the action was not carried out as the result of a decision by any 'Illuminati' or government or secret society but by just one person. No state or group was responsible. That is what happens when offensive weapons become enormously powerful.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I think only Door A is even remotely plausible. Can someone please explain to me the mechanisms of how B, C, and D come about? And how does post 1 correlate with post 4?

 

[MorkandMindy]

I think only Door A is even remotely plausible. Can someone please explain to me the mechanisms of how B, C, and D come about? And how does post 1 correlate with post 4?

Post 1 vs Post 4

The reason is simple. The thread was going nowhere; for 10 days there were no responses. Then Farmer Joe asked what was behind door C, so that is the direction the thread moved in.

 

[MorkandMindy]

I had a number of things in mind when I opened the thread.


Foremost in my mind was an American Christian Fundamentalist who occasionally emails me really off the wall opinions and evidently holds a minority opinion.

In the last days of the G W Bush era he was still a rabid Bush supporter, maybe the only one in the county apart from his 11 year old son.

He emailed me claiming the Republicans were being complained about by the liberocrats concerning the state of the economy and how it was the fault of Clinton and his anti American policies that had lead to 911 and made the economic crash inevitable despite all their man of God was doing to avoid it.


I responded with a graph of how the nation's finances were heading deep into the ground and had gotten a lot worse with the arrival of W,

I was very surprised indeed to see the following week he had changed his mind

well, sort of. Instead he simply declared W to be a Democrat in elephants clothing and carried on slanging off Democrats and praising (true) Republicans.



That was actually what I had in mind when I mentioned door A and door B, Obama or McCain, not that much of a choice, just between bad and worse.

 

[MorkandMindy]

I think only Door A is even remotely plausible. ...

Door A is the World continues as at present - the US trashes a country every few years, usually the same one as Israel wants trashed, Pope continues to ban condoms, and there is a big population die off in Africa. World government exists, just that it is the US running most of the World, as at present. Delegates go to UN mainly for the prestige and free snacks.

I have to modify Door A just a bit.

Even the US is reluctant to go totally alone, so to bomb Iraq the US made a spurious claim that it was in some way justified by a UN resolution which basically said that steps other than war could be used to force Iraq to reveal it's nuclear and biological weapons programs.

Therefore since the UN has a lot of countries in it who are the sort we bomb, to get a higher level of agreement the US will in future work with NATO so again the terms 'allies' can be used to sort of hide the fact that it is almost entirely just the US. This is particularly obvious when it comes to bombing because only the US out of NATO has heavy bombers.


So Door A could soon be reworded - NATO trashes a country every few years, ...

 

[razeontherock]

I had a number of things in mind when I opened the thread.


Foremost in my mind was an American Christian Fundamentalist who occasionally emails me really off the wall opinions and evidently holds a minority opinion.

In the last days of the G W Bush era he was still a rabid Bush supporter, maybe the only one in the county apart from his 11 year old son.

He emailed me claiming the Republicans were being complained about by the liberocrats concerning the state of the economy and how it was the fault of Clinton and his anti American policies that had lead to 911 and made the economic crash inevitable despite all their man of God was doing to avoid it.


I responded with a graph of how the nation's finances were heading deep into the ground and had gotten a lot worse with the arrival of W,

I was very surprised indeed to see the following week he had changed his mind

well, sort of. Instead he simply declared W to be a Democrat in elephants clothing and carried on slanging off Democrats and praising (true) Republicans.



That was actually what I had in mind when I mentioned door A and door B, Obama or McCain, not that much of a choice, just between bad and worse.

Or Obummer and Mittens, as the case may be now

 

[razeontherock]

Therefore since the UN has a lot of countries in it who are the sort we bomb, to get a higher level of agreement the US will in future work with NATO so again the terms 'allies' can be used to sort of hide the fact that it is almost entirely just the US. This is particularly obvious when it comes to bombing because only the US out of NATO has heavy bombers.

Let's not forget to thank the Japanese for the prevalence of our aircraft carriers ...

 

[farmer joe]

I had a number of things in mind when I opened the thread.


Foremost in my mind was an American Christian Fundamentalist who occasionally emails me really off the wall opinions and evidently holds a minority opinion.

In the last days of the G W Bush era he was still a rabid Bush supporter, maybe the only one in the county apart from his 11 year old son.

He emailed me claiming the Republicans were being complained about by the liberocrats concerning the state of the economy and how it was the fault of Clinton and his anti American policies that had lead to 911 and made the economic crash inevitable despite all their man of God was doing to avoid it.


I responded with a graph of how the nation's finances were heading deep into the ground and had gotten a lot worse with the arrival of W,

I was very surprised indeed to see the following week he had changed his mind

well, sort of. Instead he simply declared W to be a Democrat in elephants clothing and carried on slanging off Democrats and praising (true) Republicans.



That was actually what I had in mind when I mentioned door A and door B, Obama or McCain, not that much of a choice, just between bad and worse.

Door A and B are both the same door. Only A is on the inside of the door, and B is on the outside of the door. Or is it a revolving door?

 

[MorkandMindy]

Door A and B are both the same door. Only A is on the inside of the door, and B is on the outside of the door. Or is it a revolving door?

Yes. Whereas in the USSR there was one party which in the end was held responsible for everything that happened, in the US and UK there are two parties.

You might think each would then be held to account for what each did, but people don't always remember which party did which and so ascribe whatever went wrong to the party they disapprove of; basically confirmation bias takes over.

I really should call them 'Party A' and 'Party B'.

 

[MorkandMindy]

People say Party A and Party B are really the same. The G W B / Obama handover made no difference to anything.

But I think there is some element of choice in voting, and even some in backing good plans and opposing bad plans after the administration arrives.


But there are several parties in the game. Those with enough money and influence to play the role of 'king maker', remember it takes a billion dollars to fund a Presidential campaign.

And there is Pat Robertson / Billy Graham, 30% of voters mindlessly vote for whoever gets the 'God card'.

And after that there is a bit left. Well there's all those votes that don't get counted on the basis of a technicality, generally from poor areas, and those de registered on the basis of having a predominately black name.

Oh, and even public opinion has a role. Millions protested against the coming War on Iraq, but it went ahead anyway.

 

[MorkandMindy]

I guess the first answer to the question:

'Who is deceived?'

has to be:

E v e r y o n e