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Kinda' reminds of an argument I had with a self declared  'left wing radical' way-back-when. We went round& round & then finally he stated to me that "you're just brainwashed"! To which I replied, "actually it's just that you've been brainwashed to believe that someone like me has been brainwashed". To which I added, "in any case, how could either of us tell the difference?"...

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On Thu, 11/19/15, Jim Vassilakos <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Thursday, November 19, 2015, 6:25 PM

 “I
 don’t know how to thank you for this,” Ty said, putting
 down the playback unit that showed him the revenge his heart
 so badly needed.
 I’d
 just killed the man who’d raped his daughter. I made the
 man beg for his life on the promise that I’d let him live.
 Then, after he’d confessed at length and in detail, I
 pointed the body pistol squarely between his
 eyes.
 “You promised
 you’d let me live,” he looked at me, somehow incredulous
 that I’d break my word.
 “I did let you live…for an extra
 five minutes, and now it’s time to die. Any last words,
 m’lord?”
 Baron von
 Grukiigarii began to make the usual noises that people make
 when they’re being shown the black door of death. I
 wasn’t recording it for my pleasure. I was recording it
 for Ty’s. After what this son-of-a-bitch had done, I knew
 it would soothe his soul.
 We’d been mates since boarding
 school. From the very first day, we had each others’ backs
 against the other students, the dorm captain, and even the
 headmaster. Later, we’d both gone into the Imperial Secret
 Service. I became a sniper and eventually a general
 assassin, while Ty wormed his way into the administration.
 As he rose through the ranks, I eventually transferred to
 Imperial Army Special Forces, but we kept in
 touch.
 We’d meet up
 maybe once every two or three years. There was always a lot
 of catching up to do, and there was a lot that neither one
 of us was supposed to talk about to the other, but we’d
 always drop a few tidbits about what we were doing. It made
 for some interesting conversations.
 Although the stove-piping was so
 strict that we knew this might jeopardize our careers, we
 had a level of trust that we didn't care, so when Ty
 told me about how his daughter had been raped by this
 well-connected baron, and there would be no justice because
 of the other nobles in the judiciary, well, I just knew what
 I had to do.
 “This… what you did… this goes
 beyond friendship, Jake.”
 “You would have done the same for
 me,” I replied.
 He
 seemed at a loss for words, so I took the liberty of opening
 his liquor cabinet.
 “How can I ever thank
 you?”
 “Let’s get
 drunk.”
 So we drank.
 And we drank some more. And we talked about old times. And
 we drank still further. And we talked about topics that were
 off-limits, operational stuff, the sort of stuff we'd
 always share. And we drank past the point that we should
 have stopped. And then we were drunk, and all that was left
 to talk about was politics and history, the two never-ending
 subjects, stuff that Ty knew a hell of lot better than me
 given the sort of intelligence he had access to, stuff that
 would make your hair stand on end, though even with me he
 would circumscribe his words, no doubt skipping over areas
 that were far too sensitive even for the very closest of
 confidants.
 Not
 tonight, however. Not tonight.
 “History?” Ty snorted as if the
 word itself were a sick joke. “History is nothing more
 than a pack of lies,” he slurred the last few words
 together. This time, he’d really had too much to drink.
 His face was beet-red, and he teetered on the edge of his
 chair like he might fall off.
 “A pack of lies? What part is a
 pack of lies?”
 “All of it; all of it,” he said
 it twice as though I might have missed it the first
 time.
 “I realize
 that you’re not supposed to talk about these things, so…
 I won’t ask again.”
 There was a moment of silence, and
 then he looked at me and said, “You think you can keep
 your mouth shut?”
 “Sure, I guess.”
 “You’re sure or you guess?” he
 asked, his tone suddenly sharp.
 “Okay, I’m sure,” I leaned in.
 “Anyway, who the hell would I talk to?”
 “Nobody,” he replied. “Anyone
 who doesn’t already know the truth will never believe it,
 and anyone who does will kill you on the spot. I’m not
 exaggerating. Do you understand?”
 I nodded.
 “There’s so much… so much
 disinformation,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes.
 “Politics and history… it’s all built on a mountain of
 lies.”
 “That
 doesn’t exactly surprise me.”
 “You remember last year, when I
 told you that the service was bringing together ancient
 artifacts recovered from all over the
 sector?”
 “Sure.
 You said the eggheads were trying to figure out who this
 ‘grandfather’ character was mentioned in the old
 texts.”
 “Yaskoydray,” he said. “At
 first we thought he was a great scientist… an inventor.
 The texts spoke of him like he was some sort of supergenius.
 But that was a complete fabrication. New evidence shows that
 he was just a businessman and politician of sorts. When the
 Ancients discovered anagathics, he somehow got control of
 the supply, and with that, he was able to bribe all the
 powerful people into recognizing him as their
 king.”
 “Sounds
 reasonable to me.”
 “He became dictator for life, but
 as is often a repercussion of anagathics, he slowly began to
 lose his sanity, and since there was no means to replace
 him, he became a tyrant. Every achievement of his people and
 every discovery by his scientists would be attributed to
 him. Like many tyrants, his need for adoration was a
 bottomless pit. That’s why they wrote that he
 single-handedly discovered the secret to jump space. In
 actuality, he didn’t know the first thing about jump
 drives.”
 “I
 see,” I nodded. “Well, that doesn’t sound too
 far-fetched, but what about this business you mentioned
 before about the Ancients making humans into slaves and
 spreading us all over this area of the
 galaxy?”
 “Yes,
 they did that with many races, not just
 humans.”
 “Many
 races?”
 “Well,
 yes, the Virgoans, the Kithihari, the Namudians,” he went
 on and on, naming ten or twenty others that I’d never
 heard of.
 “Well,
 what happened to them?”
 “We exterminated them over a
 thousand years ago.”
 “What?!”
 “Sure,” he said. “There are
 great wars in our past, wars that nobody ever talks about.
 During the first century or two after the final
 extermination, it was verboten to even mention these events.
 Immediate death. Immediate. Then, as the knowledge slowly
 began to die, anybody who tried to talk about it was
 thoroughly ridiculed as making up nonsense before being
 disappeared. After a few centuries of that, the knowledge
 was gone, at least to the general public.”
 “Why?”
 “Because, Humaniti is prone to
 fits of guilt over its past misdeeds, and as soon as the
 Individualists sink their teeth into this sort of stuff,
 they try using it to liberalize the entire society around
 democratic values. You can understand why the Imperium
 cannot allow that to happen, can’t you?”
 “Sure,” I nodded, not really
 knowing whether I understood it or not. “But what about
 the Vargr,” I said. “You told me before that the
 Ancients created them.”
 “We created them,” Ty shook his
 head. “The Vargr and all their kith and kin, the Animen,
 were genetically uplifted by humans. For centuries we used
 them as slaves and later as soldiers. But the Vargr
 revolted.”
 “Okay…. This knowledge was
 suppressed too?”
 “It was a decision that was made
 early on, and my guess is that it was political. Think about
 it. If the supposedly infallible Emperor ordered a new slave
 race to be created that would eventually revolt and kill
 humans by the millions, then that would be viewed as a
 mistake, right? So what then about that infallibility… you
 get my drift?”
 I
 nodded, seeing the logic. This was a lot to take
 in.
 “Then was it the
 Vilani or the Solomani who created the
 Vargr?”
 “Both.”
 “So they were created after the
 original Solomani-Vilani wars?”
 “There…” he shook his head and
 then laughed. “The Interstellar Wars are pure
 fiction.”
 “What?!”
 “The Vilani realized Terra was
 their homeworld. The Vilani Emperor saw the historic
 importance of bringing it into the Empire peacefully, rather
 than rendering it a nuclear cinder, which was the other
 option, so went to visit Terra himself, to talk to the
 Solomani directly, to pay them the respect of a state visit
 and personally negotiate their admittance into the Vilani
 Empire.”
 “The
 Emperor went to Terra? That’s insane.”
 “He was on anagathics. All the
 Vilani Emperors were. Insanity was usually part of the deal.
 Anyway, quite naturally he was captured, but since he was
 still alive, he was still able to issue orders as Emperor,
 so Terra became the new seat of government, and he basically
 did what the Solomani told him to do.”
 “But… all that shit we had to
 memorize about the Interstellar wars back in boarding
 school?
 “All
 lies,” Ty said. “I told you, history is a pack of
 lies.”
 I sat back in
 my chair and stared at the wall for a long moment, trying to
 take it all in.
 “What about the Zhodani?” I
 finally said.
 “What
 about them?”
 “Well, the Frontier Wars happened,
 didn’t they?”
 “Uh… well, yes and
 no.”
 “I don’t
 suppose you’d care to expand on that?”
 “Well, it’s on a schedule, you
 see. It’s all planned out in advance.”
 “What!?”
 “It’s a long story. Trust me,
 you don’t what to know.”
 “I want to know,” I
 counted.
 “No, you
 don’t. Your brain will explode.”
 “I’ll be fine,” I
 insisted.
 Ty sighed
 and then rubbed his face.
 “Well,” he said, “it’s sort
 of like this. The Zhodani, long ago, were part of the
 Empire, but then the Emperor had a great idea. Being that he
 was on anagathics, it wasn’t actually so great an idea,
 but he thought it was, so who’s going to argue with him,
 right?”
 “Uh-huh.”
 “You see, back then, he had
 everyone thinking that his secret police were telepathic so
 that everyone would be afraid to think bad thoughts. The
 idea was that this would enhance social and political
 stability.”
 “Like
 the Zhodani,” I said, “who are ruled by psionic
 adepts.”
 “Except
 that they aren’t,” Ty replied. “There’s no such
 thing as psionics.”
 “What?!!”
 “Keep your voice down. You’re
 going to wake up Margaret.”
 “Sorry.”
 “This is what I was trying to
 explain,” Ty lowered his voice. “The whole thing was
 social manipulation at its finest, but people were beginning
 to figure it out, so the Emperor’s great idea was that
 there should be this Zhodani Consulate which would be an
 outright, bullshit-based society, a sort of meritocracy
 based on a talent that doesn’t even
 exist.”
 “So nobody
 could argue with it,” I was beginning to see the big
 picture.
 “Right. How
 can you argue with it? All your life you’re told that
 there is such a thing as psionics, and you know you don’t
 have it, so then… no point trying to be a big hero… no
 point trying to be a leader. Even think about it and
 you’re going to jail. It’s a masterpiece of social
 manipulation.”
 “But then why not do that with the
 whole Imperium?”
 “Because the Imperium has to be
 the good guys,” Ty said. “We’re the open society,
 comparatively, or so everyone is made to think. That’s why
 we clamp down on psionics. Because we don’t want to become
 like how the Zhodani supposedly are.”
 “But what about the Frontier
 Wars?”
 “Oh,
 that’s the best part,” Ty grinned. “So the Emperor
 puts the loudest dissidents and all the other people he’d
 like to get rid of along the Imperial-Zhodani border, and
 the Zhodani high counsel does the same thing. And then boom,
 oh my gosh, there’s a border incident, and all these
 people are dead. How sad. My, how unfortunate that was. Both
 sides rattle their sabers, but behind the scenes, we
 cooperate with them all the time. I mean, they serve the
 Emperor just like you and I, except for them it’s a
 secret.”
 I stared at
 Ty for a long moment, suddenly wondering if he was pulling
 my leg. I’d just killed a guy, a baron, no less, for him
 and his daughter’s honor. Was he deliberately messing with
 my mind? We’d known each other so long there was no
 disguising this impression. He could read the doubt on my
 face as easily as the morning headlines.
 “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t
 it?”
 “I… just…
 you better not be fucking with me.”
 “If that’s what you think, then
 yes... I’m fucking with you.”
 “What!!?!”
 “I already told you, keep your
 voice down.” He sighed. “Look, I honestly couldn’t
 give a bwap’s ass what you believe, but this I will say:
 don’t ever repeat any of this. Not to anyone. Not ever. If
 you want to think it’s all bullshit, you be my guest. I
 can only lead you to the truth. Whether or not you believe
 it is up to you.”

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