SNAFU: Lie to Me, Baby

I don't hate us. I love me, and I'm part of us. I like (fnord) you, too, and I consider you part of us.


The problem seems to be that our planetary civilization is organized on many levels, but that there is a lack of transparency between these levels, no accountability between many of them, and so they function with incomplete or erroneous information about these interactions. I would say "except at the top", but for the pesky phenomenon known as SNAFU: Situation Norma All Fucked UP, as elucidated by the brilliant Robert Anton Wilson in his "Illuminati" books (no, I don't consider them textbooks, thank you very much).

SNAFU results because those at the bottom of a power structure are reluctant to report accurately to those "above" them in the heirarchy, since their reports are likely to be used against them. If your job is to mop a floor, and it looks spitshined to an inspector, reporting that you did nothing is likely to result in your not being paid. Reporting that you mopped the floor results in your being paid, and the floor is clean anyway. Since you want to be paid, and not hear a bunch of shit from the manager about how lazy you are, how you could have been "facing the aisles" instead of having a wank in the public restroom, etc., you could (and many people DO) false report. Their reasons are legion, but it boils down to "fuck that motherfucker, he don't mean shit to me, and the fucking floor is clean". Then, this manager is likely to report to his supervisor that his store is clean, his employees are happy (though they would happily tear his throat out if there were not social restrictions on that sort of behavior), etc. The falsehood is never detected, perhaps, or it might be overlooked, because hey, the fucking floor is clean, and the manager doesn't want to have his throat ripped out, or get the district manager involved (undermining his position) with disciplining his employees. This would be no big deal (though it's fucked up), except perhaps some bacteria got on the floor while you were coming back from your wank, or whatever, and because it wasn't mopped (looked clean), it grew. Maybe someone gets sick. Maybe someone dies. Maybe the health department figures out what happened, and when (through a miracle of forensic science and people caring) they trace it back to the store, the manager gets fired, and the mopper is clueless. This error in reporting is endemic to heirarchical organizations, and between layers of organizations, and between countries (where it is called disinformation when it is acknowledged at all). So we have SNAFU, all because people would rather not mop a apparently clean floor when they could be having a wank, and they don't want to say this to their manager.

Multi-national corporations don't report accurately or honestly to local governments, or to anyone, really, except maybe their own internal auditors (where that auditor probably runs into SNAFU within his organization). The Federal Government doesn't receive accurate reports from sub-organizations, or from the entities they are supposed to regulate (and fail utterly). State governments have the same problem. So does your local McDonalds. So does your family, most likely, especially if Mom or Dad won't let you have the car, access to a trust, or in any other way holds compulsive power over you, or you with your own children. This problem is compounded when Multinationals have ulterior agendas, as do government agencies, individual agents, moms, kids, anyone in the system.

Getting mad at the US Government is fun for most people. We all know they're lying. It's interesting to see what the lies are, what they lie about, when they are lying, and to try to fathom WHY.

Ultimately, it's human nature. To fight our tendency to lie to each other constantly for fun and profit, we have social moral values like "perjury", "fraud", etc., which are perpetually at war with "I don't recall", "knock before entering", and my personal favorite "fuck you". Corporations won their right to be considered "persons", and therefore are given the right to privacy, the right to express themselves during elections (read: pay the right people off), and the right to silence their critics with bullets, smear campaigns, batons, fences, lawsuits, etc.

What can we do about it? Fight for transparency and accountability at every point of contact between people, businesses, governments and other human organizations. I doubt it will work, though. This fight will be fought by people and their organizations, and they WILL lie to each other about their progress, their agenda, and every other property. It's amazing we can ever get any access to any true information at all, or that any of us relay it.