Government
The problem is that the actions of infamous dictators work too well as reference points as to why a particular courses of action are bad.
If a former KGB director destroys direct elections to dumas… maybe there is no such thing as a former KGB agent.
Bush Administration, under the control of the new political hack CIA director, is now ridding the CIA of anybody except political hack yes-men. The doubters of the politicized intelligence and the anti-Chalabists that the neo-cons hate so much… gone. Get rid of any possible whistleblowers — or doubters of the imposed conventional wisdom (most recently — Saddam’s stockpiles of WMDs), and the truth will have to squeeze out in other ways.
Not that it may matter too much. Back to Colin Powell… he wasn’t a “yes man”, but he was willing to play the part of one when one was needed. Maybe it’s best that the Government be completely evil, so that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind. (Incidentally, Joe Lieberman says he’d go for a cabinet spot in the Bush Administration. I hope Lieberman gets his wish, so we can forgo having him in the Senate’s opposition party caucus.
Back when I was typing out old New York Times articles (from a batch of discarded Library Books), I stumbled at the articles involving the “Iranian Oil Crisis” of 1953. They were hilarious in their incredulity, and provide us with the basic template for the “official story” ahead of every coup America has orchestrated since. (Key point: there’s always a huge part of the mob that is confused, and just waiting to see which way the Wind Blows, because the first attempt has a good chance of misfiring, and you need an explanation for the crowd… in this case, apparently there’s a huge movement of “Royalists”, because there’s nothing a nationalistic populace with a nationalistic leader wants more than a government decided on blood-lines.) But I didn’t know how to post them, and an extensive footnoting of a batch of articles seemed excessive.
Somewhere in the back, the truth came out… as if to telegraph the incident, the New York Times printed the “absurd allegations found in Pravda.”
Keep that in mind as the years unfold.