Well done, Frank. A superior dissection of what’s going on. There are echoes of Orwell’s
“1984” throughout, but let’s put the apt quote down here: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Exactly right. Lies do work. Guest workers are seen by many as invaders. Some think housing and food are more expensive because we have immigrants. I think we need more immigration and workers. It is not about money and the stock market. Someone has to do the work. Or will Musk give us robots.
This horror story we're living through brings to mind Tom Glenn's experience in the final days of Saigon as the situation was literally coming apart at the seams:
"Frantic, I went down the hall to the office of the CIA chief of station, Tom Polgar. He laughed at my frenzy and showed me a cable to Washington the ambassador had released that morning. It stated that the signals intelligence evidence of a forthcoming assault could be disregarded. It was all due to the communists’ skillful use of “communications deception.” Stunned, I asked Tom what evidence he had of communications deception. He waved my question away and bet me a bottle of champagne, chateau and vintage of my choice, that he and I would both still be in Saigon a year hence, still at our desks, still doing business as usual."
"I finally understood what was going on. The embassy was a victim of what sociologists now call groupthink syndrome—firm ideology, immune to fact, shared by all members of a coterie."
[Excerpted from Bitter Memories, Studies in Intelligence Vol 59, No. 4 (Extracts, December 2015)]
Well done, Frank. A superior dissection of what’s going on. There are echoes of Orwell’s
“1984” throughout, but let’s put the apt quote down here: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Exactly right. Lies do work. Guest workers are seen by many as invaders. Some think housing and food are more expensive because we have immigrants. I think we need more immigration and workers. It is not about money and the stock market. Someone has to do the work. Or will Musk give us robots.
This horror story we're living through brings to mind Tom Glenn's experience in the final days of Saigon as the situation was literally coming apart at the seams:
"Frantic, I went down the hall to the office of the CIA chief of station, Tom Polgar. He laughed at my frenzy and showed me a cable to Washington the ambassador had released that morning. It stated that the signals intelligence evidence of a forthcoming assault could be disregarded. It was all due to the communists’ skillful use of “communications deception.” Stunned, I asked Tom what evidence he had of communications deception. He waved my question away and bet me a bottle of champagne, chateau and vintage of my choice, that he and I would both still be in Saigon a year hence, still at our desks, still doing business as usual."
"I finally understood what was going on. The embassy was a victim of what sociologists now call groupthink syndrome—firm ideology, immune to fact, shared by all members of a coterie."
[Excerpted from Bitter Memories, Studies in Intelligence Vol 59, No. 4 (Extracts, December 2015)]