Sure they are: they’re all things which normal people wouldn’t do to other people, and in which the perpetrators weren’t punished.
And by “normal people wouldn’t do to other people”, I mean “stark raving mad”.
And by “normal people wouldn’t do to other people”, I mean “stark raving mad”.
So, in our same list we have:
- A Cuban false flag operation with military intent.
- A CIA Mind Control experiment which is implied to be widespread, but documents don't actually support this. Torturing a few hapless individuals with LSD is certainly terrible, but it's different from "widespread government control."
- A terrible, scientific & racist medical experiment carried out against a vulnerable group of people.
- And then, "human-animal hybrids" ... I'm not sure how to respond to this? A few folks in China did some questionable things, maybe? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
These are all disparate groups, with disparate intent, and unrelated outcome. Please, how are these related? Some people in power did some things are morally wrong? Why include conspiracy theories in this list if that's the only similarity? If you simply wanted to discuss government transgression, you could avoid something as trivial as MKULTA and instead simply mention U.S. Slavery, or the Soviet Famine, or any of the many government-run genocides in world history.
A false flag operation is only about control in the loosest sense. You can't successfully false flag your way into a military conflict with an allied country: it's only useful when tensions are high enough that there is already popular support for a military operation, but an excuse is needed. In that sense, other "excuses" for military conflicts work the same way. The spurious claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was popular only because of 9/11 and sentiment about the middle east at the time. (a similar argument, for example, could not have been made about other countries with WMDs, such as France, Israel, and South Africa) I'm not suggesting any of these actions are acceptable, simply that the salient point here must be deception, not control. Broadly speaking, any government-driven policy or program in some vague sense of the word requires control. There must be enough popular support for any initiative such that it can be successful. Anti-smoking campaigns require coercion as well, and sometimes even deception. Smoking used to be wildly popular, but the government, as well as some powerful groups, were able to use emotional appeals and scare tactics to vastly change the public perception of smoking. Should we lump this effort in with MKULTRA?
I'm not sure that "human-animal hybrids" are real in any non-pedantic way. Even so, not sure what the control aspect is meant to be here.
MKULTRA, however, clearly was about control. The correct conclusion about MKULTRA, however, should be that the CIA needed more oversight, since they were apparently willing to torture people and perform highly unethical experiments to learn how effectively an individual could be controlled. Often glossed over is the fact these these experiments largely didn't work at all at all. No progress on "mass-control" was ever made, and instead, all we're left with is government abuse and torture in pursuit of something that probably isn't possible.
One addendum, it's worth keeping in mind the base rate for these awful gov't incidents you mention. If you only see the bad things, you have subconscious blinders (Kahneman's "What You See Is All There Is"). Try thinking about MKULTRA or Cuba or Tuskegee in relation to (much larger quantity and impact from) positive things the government does, like international aid, or emergency services provided by the Coast Guard. Responses to earthquakes in poor countries, our military is there. Vaccinations, food drops, all kinds of things that the gov't does that are good.
You have to consider these things holistically to get a good picture, otherwise I agree it's very easy to rabbit hole down a conspiracy path. And it's attractive -- it means "you get it" while other people dont -- but it's not an accurate representation of the whole, which makes it a bad model to allow to fester in your mind.
But I think that it’s pretty clear that they’re not running the show, where it really matters.
We are, for better or worse, cruising on a giant ship with limited steering, and all we can do is try to control how much fuel we shovel into the engine.
But the direction of the boat is controlled more like an Ouiji board; our direction is an emergent behavior.