PolarPhantom
Since: Jun, 2012
May 30th 2014 at 3:44:43 PM
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I take it this page is for really exaggerated examples of well-run villain organisations versus poorly run heroic ones (as well as aversions, subversions etc.), since listing every example of a well run villain group would be kinda pointless and make this page far too long.
Edited by 139.222.201.189
PhillyDom
Since: Jun, 2010
Dec 2nd 2013 at 10:43:41 AM
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Jonah Goldberg calling anybody incompetent (see page quote) is the most massive case of projection in history. The man is the prime example of succeeding through nepotism instead of talent.
Can't we find a better page quote?
Edited by 76.124.23.129
Kalaong
Since: Jan, 2001
Jul 30th 2012 at 7:23:51 PM
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Preserving a folder for future reference. It got big because plenty of editors added to it.
Truth In Television
- Media piracy, full stop. Pirates get what they want, now, with a few clicks of a mouse. Paying customers need to go to a store to pick up a physical disk, or wait several days for it to arrive (CDs); put up with an inferior product (MP 3 stores); or both (DRM; region-locked discs).
- Seems to be happening with movies on DVD and Bluray as well. The handy chart here
shows you why...
- Seems to be happening with movies on DVD and Bluray as well. The handy chart here
- Many of the real-life conspiracy theories that tend to spring up around significant, earth-shattering world events (such as those around the assassination of John F Kennedy or the 9/11 attacks) often seem to hinge on this principle, relying on the belief that those involved in them - regardless of how many people by necessity would need to get roped in to them, or how apparently incompetent or inept they have previously seemed in the past - suddenly become both incredibly competent AND immune to any kind of likely twists of fate or chance that would see the whole conspiracy blown apart (regardless of how likely or even inevitable they would be), and are incredibly committed towards keeping the conspiracy quiet. Specific examples are both too numerous and, often, bitterly contentious to be expanded upon here.
- Of course, there are often very few consequences for conspirators; Tuskegee, MKUltra, Nazi war criminals working for NASA - even when the conspiracy is breached, it doesn't really change anything.
- The most pathetic must be the 1947 Roswell crash. Original claims that it was a weather balloon is now confirmed as a coverup. What it was covering up was apparently a balloon with a fairly inept apparatus for detecting Soviet nuclear tests, which was replaced by a better system almost immediately. The de-classification of these files has been largely ignored, even though it's more damning than half of the conspiracy theories. On the other hand, quite a few UFO believers have dismissed the idea of it being an alien crash on unrelated grounds.
- Except we know about all those and none of them are comparable in the slightest to the audacity of assassinating your own President or intentionally blowing up thousands of your own citizens, your own military command center and whatever the plane that went down was after.
- Common consensus is that the PA crash was going for the White House.
- Or possibly the Capitol Building. (But the White House is more likely.)
- And spending 40 years watching nearly 400 of your own citizens suffer from a treatable disease is pretty audacious.
- The Green Run was even more so.
- And let us not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that your typical conspiracy theorist is the sort of person who hates the government because it can never do anything efficiently. Your witness.
- Then again, the mere fact that we're talking about it means they messed up somewhere.
- And finally, the Scotch Tape that could account for everything - Refuge in Audacity. If the government really did an appreciable number of the things they've been accused of, the only people who'd believe it would be Conspiracy Theorists.
- You would be surprised how much people will refuse to listen to evidence of a conspiracy. Denial grows more intense the deeper the event is. If only as food for thought, I highly recommend people read Michael Parenti's article on conspiracy phobia and Peter Dale Scott's article on deep events.
- Then again, the mere fact that we're talking about it means they messed up somewhere.
- Of course, there are often very few consequences for conspirators; Tuskegee, MKUltra, Nazi war criminals working for NASA - even when the conspiracy is breached, it doesn't really change anything.
- Ironically, this trope played straight is referenced by anti-Zapaterans in the Spanish government and far-right, whether or not it was true for their own city/district/province. Meaning that if it IS true, then Mussolini flubbed his own simplest promise, but not his Spanish ally.
- Claimed in real life on occasion, and this trope was formerly named for Mussolini's supposed claim that he, unlike previous Italian governments, would make the trains run on time. In fact they were as late as they ever had been, something that nothing short of divine intervention could change right up to the present, it's just that governments operating under this trope may just stop people complaining about delays.
- In point of fact, Mussolini did get the trains running on time... for his own cronies, that is: his arbitrary fiddling with the train schedules caused absolute havoc for the entire rest of Italy. There is something very typical of fascism in that anecdote.
- Similarly, despite the popular image of Nazi Germany as a hyper-efficient clockwork-fascist state (see the Star Trek example above), it's widely argued that it was actually one of the most inefficient states ever seen (or, at very least, was not as clockwork efficient as everyone was led to believe). Whilst their armies were undeniably efficient in combat (at least initially), the argument goes that when it came to social and financial management the Nazis were merely very good at generating the illusion of prosperity and efficiency rather than the reality. Hitler was notoriously lazy and vague, providing hazy suggestions for policy rather than concrete proposals, and tended to encourage in-fighting and rivalry between his underlings (often by assigning them overlapping responsibilities) with the result that they usually spent more time undermining each other than getting the job done. A lot of contemporaries (both pro- and anti-Nazi) who marvelled at Germany's apparent efficiency during this time were fooled by endemic propaganda showing off the 'efficiency' of Germany whilst ignoring the chaotic, bureaucratic reality. Without the Second World War providing access to resources and a boost to armaments manufacturing, it's believed Germany would have gradually stagnated and perhaps even imploded.
- Only Henry the Seventh can get away with that sort of thing.
- And yet Hitler managed to build a whole bunch of infrastructure, get the economy going, raise the public's standard of living, and turn a country ravaged by poverty and inflation into a threat to the whole of Europe. Boy, talk about chaos and inefficiency.
- But the depression was coming to an end when Hitler became Fuhrer. All he did was be in the right place at the right time.
- Before the thing came crashing down, certainly. The USSR just beat Germany's own system to the punch.
- Hitler actually gravely worsened the economy, to the point where his own advisers — most notably Hjalmar Schacht — were resigning before they got blamed for the economy utterly collapsing, which it would've if the Axis didn't have so many conquests to plunder from. The idea that the Nazis "raised the public's standard of living" or whatever else is a complete myth created by the Nazis themselves. They took jobs away from Jews and women, and forced everybody else into the Wehrmacht; there's your "miraculous" employment boom.
- Despite the exaggerations, the trains ran mostly on time: this troper knew a man who was an artillery spotter in WWII, and he said that shelling German trains was easy because of their punctuality.
- However you feel about them, it is undeniable that China is an authoritarian country. And part of the Chinese social contract is that the system is tolerable as long as living standards are good. Meaning? The Party has a direct interest in making sure the utilities (including trains) run as efficiently as possible. And run they do, at least in big cities. For now, China has the Human Resources to staff (overstaff in fact) the utilities to ensure that things run in peak efficiency and the riches to keep the system in good shape.
- There is also another facet to the efficiency: In a country whose cities are as populated as China's, the smallest glitch in the system can overload the whole grid. The government knows that if they don't make the trains run on time, the pileup will give them a massive headache.
- That said, averted with China's rural underdevelopment and its ginormous bureaucratic corruption.
The part on 1984 seems unjustified, as seen in real life in Soviet Russia under Stalin's rule and in North Korea - it's possible for a specific part of the governmental apparatus to work very well if enough resources are devoted to it and if it has "self-healing" abilities (like the constant replenishing of the secret services with new blood after every purge).