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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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To be clear, the Pentagon has dusty filing cabinets full of playbooks and wargaming scenarios ranging from plausible to outrageous that various think tanks have cooked up over the years. There is almost certainly a plan to fight an extraterrestrial invasion. I recall one being made about a zombie outbreak during that pop culture craze. We've had plans to invade Canada and Mexico wholesale for decades at least. Their existence doesn't inherently mean that anyone at the Pentagon takes the possibility of the scenario seriously. They're thought exercises as much as they are preparation for the unlikely.
Machiavelli had some useful points.
like the whole, "if you rule through fear to keep people in line, they'll take your head off the moment you're weak" observation.
oh. he was a total asshole. But even he respected the need for representation and to constrain the elites from doing shit. At least, he was later on. (See Discourse on Livy)
I'm just saying, assholes like trump being all Machiavellian seem to forget the whole "we know how behead" aspect of being an assholish monarch.
Was he an asshole? Or was he writing a commission with malicious compliance? For a historically verified asshole?
One interpretation is that he was commissioned to write a bland moral guide for a young prince, but got all satirical and close to the bone.
Machiavelli wanted a Republic, another inyerpretation is he put in a bunch of bad advice in the hopes of them taking it and being overthrown.
Not to be too pedantic, but "The Prince" was intended as a sincere operating manual for governing (not a satire in any way).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
The shocking lack of morality in the book is what made it rather infamous. It was not a joke at all.
This part's interesting
Agreed. I think we only need to really worry when they make their way up the pile and the dust is brushed off. Are we there yet? I dunno. Maybe? The existence of the plan isn't the issue, though.