I have written about this fatal scale error several times before and I think it’s time to revisit it.
Fatal scale error is frequently occurs with children, and is referred to as “fatal” because the child attempts a task that is impossible, like trying to fit a beach ball in his mouth, or sit on a tiny doll chair. That’s what we are seeing now.
It is not as if there isn’t historical data to look at. The USA dropped more bombs on Vietnam and its neighbors than all of WWII combined. Israel dropped 70,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, making it per square meter the most bombed place in human history. And yet these efforts failed to even make a noticeable dent in the enemy’s ability to gather and deploy weapons. As it turns out, using indirect means to defeat the enemy without fighting them yourself is actually really hard.
The main reason westerners don’t get this is because of deliberately induced fatal scale error.
Western propaganda is different than any other regime in history, as the purpose and nature of propaganda has evolved since the 1940s. Even a radio broadcaster in Nazi Germany would be striving to inform his audience, though naturally he would exaggerate the regime’s successes and downplay its failures. If you told that broadcaster he needs to tell the inverse of the truth at all times he wouldn’t understand what you mean, or why that’s important.
Modern western propaganda serves no other purpose except to deliberately confuse and disorient the audience. The goal is to leave westerners so hopelessly muddled and isolated from the real world they cannot reach a correct conclusion about anything regardless of topic. Orwell described this method well in 1984, and his essay Politics and the English Language.
Western journalists today are actually worse and more contemptible than in Nazi Germany. Their compulsion to lie and distort everything regardless of context is greater than ever beforenin human history.
Even the most propagandized 1940s German would understand that 100 men can’t beat a million men, and 10 tanks can’t beat 10 thousand, but that’s not true anymore. The modern westerner truly believes that the “good” team will always win regardless of how stacked the odds are.
If you don’t believe me, ask people on Quora who would win in a fight, 4 US Navy SEALs or a hundred Iraqi insurgents. Your comments will be full of westerners breathlessly insisting that the SEALs would win and not accept any argument or historical evidence to the contrary.
And that’s why you see so many people absolutely convinced that the Russian economy can be collapsed by a few drone attacks. It is no different than the baby trying to fit a ball in his mouth or sit in the doll chair.
Ian Kummer
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Quite so.
But there’s also strategy which is something that we in the West lost since the first gulf war or whereabouts.
End of History someone?
The locals rising up to welcome the American liberators has been a large part of the American plans since before the war of 1812 against Canada (Capitol was razed). They have repeated the error for over two centuries, hundreds of times.
That’s because the American soul is not based in history or culture; it’s all deliberately nurtured mythology about getting a mandate from God, manifest destiny, the exceptional and indispensable nation (no wonder they like Israel so much), and general ahistorical delusional grandiosity, always starring as the outside hero with perpetual title to the role of the “good” guy.