|
Guildmaster
|
|
Up your butt and around the corner
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
|
|
Remember that there are always 3 sides of an argument, those for, against, and those in the middle who don't care. Political arguments are often won by gaining the support of the middle third. You can do this by glorifying your cause or by demonizing your opponent's cause. Throughout history we've seen both, and depending on the situation they both seem effective in their own way. When going to war you want to use propaganda most extensively, that's why in Desert Storm the US government showed us soooo many images of a variety of things:
"Iraquis are stupid" Same technique we use in sports to show that our opposition has no chance against us.
"Our soldiers are real people" Giving personal interviews with our own soldiers in Saudi Arabia and letting them show us their war toys brings us closer to them as people so that we can associate with them better, and in turn associate with what they're doing (fighting a war)
"Iraquis are just targets on a screen" This dehumanizes the war and turns it into a video game we can all associate with
"Saddam Hussein is evil" Media payed close attention at every little possible moment to show different ways he was a monster, the use of gas, assassinations, he shot his own brother, torture of american pilots, etc. True or not, he was portrayed as a monster and therefore we were justified in confronting him.
"Kuwait is our weak and benevolent friend" Serves us to further justify our intervention by portraying ourselves as the heros stepping in to stop a bully from picking on someone smaller.
The list goes on.
To use slavery as an example:
Let's divide our little country into 4 provinces... A and B support slavery with a 67% and 39% majority respectively, and the populous is 17% and 15% slaves respectively. Province C and D have a majority opposed to slaves with 42% and 56% respectively and in C there are 4% slaves while in D there is only 3% slaves. In this case most of the people are non-decided, perhaps 25% in A, 50% in B, 44% in C and 32% in D, so there's a big gap inbetween the pros and cons.
Suppose your governer in province D decided since most of the people are oposed to it and there aren't that many to begin with, he was going to outlaw slaves in province D. Perfectly fine. Also made a lot of sense since majority opinion is in support of such a move. This does create one issue, however:
Slaves in A, B, cnd C are going to start running away since they now have somewhere to go. so wht do you do with them? Do you return them to their former masters or do you set them free? Problem: If you set them free and let them stay in D, you're causing unrest in a minority of province C, and serious unrest in A and B. If you turn them back, remember you have a population in D opposed to slavery completely so you're creating a problem in D.
Now prior to the American Civil War, a little book was written called Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was a novel about some of the horrors of slavery. Suprisingly it wasn't written by the government but an anti-slaveist (further idea, your own populace can instigate their own propaganda which doesn't have to agree with your agenda.) I read this book before, it goes on and on about the separation of families, etc. By the time I finished reading it I wanted to end slavery myself.
But say this book changes the opinions of the people in province C so that they are now 66% anti-slave, and the people there push for the same ant-slave law as in province D. This results in the pro-slavers in A and B to make their own propaganda and this results in gaining support for their cause. BTW if your country doesn't have "free speech" which grants a +5 bonus you can outlaw certain kinds of propaganda. But if you like your little +5 bonus you can't do anything about it.
You now have a dividing issue. Before you had just one small little sect only one province way up in D that opposed slavery and that didn't matter much, depending on the importance of that province we'll say for this example that they weren't significant enough to want their own country. But now you have a polarized conflict with most of the people on one side or the other. I would say that when both sides of an argument are greater then the undecided element you have such a situation.
My question is this: How do you decide when an argument warrants civil war as did with slavery?
*Violent demonstrations- any time you have violence in the streets about an issue that violence causes a certain degree of undecided people to go over to the opposing side. There has to be a factor in determining how the violence is responded to and to what extent.
Notice: In the case of abortion, the opposing sides are everywhere. There are "Pro-choicers" and "pro-lifers" in every city, state, and region all across the country so although it's an extremely polar conflict it's not a dividing issue. Slavery was different in that the pro'slavers were mostly in the south while the anti-slavers were mostly in the north. I suppose then that if all the ant-abortion people were in California and nowhere else and most of the people in California are anti-abortion, then why wouldn't California declare independence from the US? Because Cali is just one small corner of the country why not just make abortion illegal in Cali.
Also there were far more differences between north and south than slavery, for example the economy. The Industrial North vs. the Agrarian South, the language barriers, also political views on "states' rights" or the ability of each province to make their own laws
So we also need to decide in our game how much freedom do provincial governers have to make their own laws? Or how can you give them that freedom?
more later
------------------
Peace and trust can win the day despite all your losing
-Led Zepplin
|
02-10-2000 19:39
Also the movie itself was fabulous! I have it on DVD and I have watched it a million times. I still always fall from my chair a couple of times during the movie. It hits the mark so well.
|