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Comment by babesh | Hacker News Reader

A pawn has value to the state as a tool. One such example is to be used as cannon fodder.

The US democracy is fake. Entrenched interests hold virtually all power.

You have 6 trillion dollars and thousands of lives lost over fake wars. Where are those WMDs? Why didn't we pull out after getting bin Laden in Pakistan?

Go back a generation to the Vietnam War. 50k American lives lost.

History keeps on repeating itself and people are oblivious.

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Even tools have value; better to be a tool of the state than an obstacle of an adversary.

I'm not American, and I'm rather proud that my elected representatives voted against joining the USA in the Iraq invasion. Americans voted for the Iraq invasion. It was popular[0]. It still remains reasonably popular, with slightly more Americans opposing it than supporting it in 2018[1]. Despite two decades of expenditure, pain and suffering.

0: https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-america...

1: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/19/iraq-war-co...

The second invasion was on a false pretense of WMDs. The government in concert with the media manipulated and deceived the public.

You are a pawn. Pawns have NO value in of themselves. They are used solely to advance the cause of a side. They will be sacrificed to do so.

You can take solace in identifying with an entity that cares for you not one iota.

Waitbutwhy writes extensively about this phenomenon. It is called tribalism and delusion.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html

us vs them, good vs evil

It has all the hallmarks.

"A superglue story also jacks up the Us > Them values. The story needs to be all about good guys and bad guys, with a crisp, clear distinction between the two. The good guys must be good in every way—in knowledge, talent, motivation, and virtue. They’re good now, they were always good in the past, and they’ll continue to be good in the future. The bad guys are the opposite—they are and always have been stupid, ignorant, malicious, and morally backwards. Strife between the good guys and bad guys is always the fault of the bad guys"

There were plenty of media outlets that doubted the WMD story. There’s no widespread collision between media and government.

Yeah, it's not as though there weren't protests against the invasion, and widespread media coverage thereof.

And all the protests accomplished jackshit. Can't you see that that is the point? Your opinion and protests have no effect. Your protests are just plausible deniability.

https://youtu.be/UqMaYuVvqGo

Weapons of mass destruction

LOL

The protests failed to invigorate change, not unlike anti mask protests today, because the message wasn't persuasive enough to sufficiently many people.

That's democracy. It's not great, but it's better than the alternatives.

Entrenched special interests driving policy is what the US is. Even an erstwhile democracy can fall into a stuck state.

Democracies can be perverted and also have a history of destroying themselves. See Greek history.

Still better than totalitarianism or fascism.

Nope. All the major outlets were pushing it. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox. Also go find out how many representatives were for the war.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190823053520/https://www.cbsne...

296-133, 77-23

There's nothing shocking about that many representatives voting in favor of something that had over two thirds public support. In fact, it looks appropriate.

As for the media, the foreign and public press weren't so in favor. But I'll be the last to suggest that American media isn't terrible. It is.

That adversary is that of the state that you identify with. Neither state cares about you one iota.

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