Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was a country ruled by a small number of rich and evil men and women. The rulers led the country into one evil war after another. To get The People of the country to go along with the wars, the rulers told them Big Lies. Some people believed the lies and some didn't. But whether they believed the lies or not didn't matter very much because The People were not in power, only the evil rulers were.

One day, some of The People who did not believe the lies--"dissidents" they called themselves--got together to figure out what to do. They didn't like the wars for a lot of reasons. The wars killed innocent people without any moral justification. The wars strengthened the power of the evil rich rulers and made things worse for The People.

One dissident said, "I know. Let's educate The People so they won't believe the Big Lies." Another dissident replied, "What good would that do? Opinion polls already show a majority of The People oppose these wars but the rulers wage them just the same." The first dissident replied, "The opinion polls only ask if people support this or that war, but they don't ask if people believe the Big Lies. I think a lot of The People do believe the Big Lies, and so their opposition to the wars is too shallow to make the rulers end them. I stand by my proposal to educate The People so they won't believe the Big Lies."

Then a third dissident said, "Refuting the Big Lies that justify the wars is an important thing to do. But it's not the MOST important thing. The most important thing is removing the rich and evil rulers from power. I'd rather have The People believing the Big Lies but in power than have the people not believing the Big Lies with the rich and evil rulers still in power."

"How come?" the other dissidents asked. "Because," said the third dissident, "The People have no reason or desire to believe Big Lies and if they were in power they would quickly discover that the Big Lies were lies and decide to stop waging the evil wars those lies justified. But until The People are in power, the evil rulers will keep waging their evil wars no matter what The People think."

"OK," said the other dissidents, "we can educate people about the Big Lies and urge them to make a revolution to remove the evil rulers from power so that the evil wars will end. What do you think about that?"

The third dissident replied, "You still don't seem to get it. If The People ever make a revolution, it will be for lots of reasons, and disagreement with the evil wars may, for many people, be very low on their list of reasons if it is even on their list at all. We should be urging people to make a revolution for every reason that they are concerned about, whether that reason is about the evil wars or not."

"Hmmmmm," replied the other dissidents.

I would like to tell you what happened. I would like to tell you if there ever was a revolution in the country. But I don't know what the dissidents decided to do, or what eventually happened. Only time will tell.

ENDS

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