Peg in the Machine

Complete and total truth. It’s the one thing society doesn’t have, and for the most part never will. Unless, of course, women really want to know that “yes, that dress does make you look fat — your butt’s sticking out like you’re smuggling a ham”, and unless someone really wants to know what gift they got for their birthday, there will be some lies. But these aren’t the areas where there needs to be complete and accurate truth. I’m talking about the government.

Name one good reason why there needs to be classified anything in the government. Why does the government need to lie about anything? Aren’t they the ones elected by the people that are supposed to do what they want?

If something is so secret that it needs to be covered up — it shouldn’t have happened to begin with! It’s quite simple. Declassify everything. Every little bit of government information — make it public. Have a TV station, website (central, easy to use, easy to find, easy to navigate, easy to search, etc — with live help) all available that someone just turns to a channel and sees all the wonderful things going on. Click a link and get live webcam feeds to all the offices (well, some privacy for people — like the same that the people get) with sound so everything going in can be seen and heard in real-time. Make all the laws and such done in a simple English that even a kid in sixth grade can understand on the first read.

And don’t go putting in little clauses into bills, “all congressman to get a 500% pay increase, oh, and 50million to alternative fuel research”, so that if someone says “no” they’re bashed for not wanting alternative fuel research, but if they say “yes” they don’t get bashed for wanting a pay increase (that example is fictitious). Keep to the absolute truth behind things. Make it so the people can see exactly what it is the government is doing. The more you classify, the more you keep hidden — the more it seems obvious that the government is doing things that it isn’t supposed to be doing. If there’s a conspiracy theory — the complete truth hasn’t been revealed; or it has, and the people just refuse to believe – just until there’s no classified information, there’s no way to know.

It’s time for the truth to come out, for the government to tell the people what it’s really been doing. Senator have sex with a prostitute while his wife was pregnant so it’s covered up? Who really cares? Politicians are human (unless a classified document shows that aliens landed, had sex with humans, and the offspring are now in office) — and humans do weird things such as *gasp* have sex! And sometimes drink! And make bad decisions! And they aren’t perfect! If the government is told that every day they have to report everything it did to the people with nothing held back it’d be better. Conspiracies would die out, nothing shocking would ever happen. If someone says “death to America” — you’ll know why they think that way.

It’s when a politician holds a meeting and you see them talking and getting ready for the meeting that it makes you wonder: “what aren’t they saying?” The unknown — it’s what can make the truth a complete lie.

Governments need to be completely 100% honest and truthful to their people. They shouldn’t have any classified information. Trade secrets for development of things, that’s a bit different as corporations can have them as well; meaning that if they’re creating a new submarine, I wouldn’t expect them to publish the design plans, but I would expect them to tell the people what they’re doing — and give details once it’s done.

What would happen if the military recruiters had to be completely 100% honest (and not in a “car salesman” honesty) to all perspective applicants?

Would people really want to sign up if they were told:

• You might lose a finger, leg, eye, arm, hand — and maybe your life
• You might be squished by a bomb, accidently blown up, crushed by a forklift or burnt alive — and that’s in basic training
• You’ll be sent to a war. You might even have to look a man, woman or child in the face when you kill them — and you’ll see them every night in your dreams after
• People will want to kill you, beat you up, trash talk you, and insult your entire being — to say nothing about the enemies

It seems like every day you see people (whether true or not is hard to tell) that claim they joined the military for only one reason: to go to college. Most times they say it’s because they couldn’t afford to go otherwise. You rarely hear someone say they join to kill another person. Of course if you know someone just wants to kill another human…. Perhaps a psyc ward would be a better bet. I sure wouldn’t want some trigger happy “kill to see them die” person in the military if they’re only someplace in a non-violent way — well as non-violent of a way a shipload of people with guns, bombs, tanks and missiles showing up on your doorstep can be.

Kind of makes one wonder… if people were recruited with complete 100% honesty about everything (maybe even a demo day or two [not sure if it already exists] just to try out) — would we even have people joining the military? Would any country? And if the countries can’t get a military… would there be wars? Just makes a one wonder.