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I mean, that’s a pretty neat example right up until you claim it means something. There’s such a giant chasm between being in a war zone and a life and death situation, and the kind of everyday often trivial political shit that I think the analogy doesn’t work at all.
I disagree; I think that increasingly describes the average Afghan soldier's thought process from 2001-2021.
As you know, in 2021, the people who were silently nodding along (in this example) ultimately laid down their arms, because as it turns out, Orc rule was actually better for those men (they do respect strength and capability, after all; it's generally what grants victors their victory). Sure, it had deleterious effects on the rest of the population, but that population wasn't getting killed on the front lines, so who were they to make demands?
Anyway, the people doing the actual work, once they see this sort of thing happen, rationally and understandably "check out" and start following the OSS Sabotage Manual- as the people giving the orders, if corrupted like this, are generally both incapable of realizing this and don't get that "following closer to objective reality" is a form of payment.
Remember, the trick for the elite ("elite" as the captain in that example- someone who dictates luxury beliefs that those beneath them must elevate regardless of objective cost or truth- and "don't shoot an unarmed man" here is quite a luxury) is to pay their soldiers as little as possible while still remaining in control of said soldiers: every deviation from the reality the soldiers observe that makes their jobs harder, every stupid management decision, is a pay cut as real as a smaller sum of gold would be (and it is notable that we evidently only require aspiring business ru[i]nners to notice the second for the corresponding accreditation).
If the elite refuse to pay, soldiers mutiny, and this is something despotic leaders tend to understand better than those that [claim to] paean freedom (as despotic leaders tend to be in far more unstable positions). Fortunately for the elite, it takes a lot of small paycuts for this to happen, salami-slicing can be persistent across generations such that no soldier really remembers what they used to be paid, technology (and slave labor, to a point) can obsolete soldiers thus lowering their bargaining power, and it can take hundreds of years for an elite to face an event where mutiny would be relevant.
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I dunno, if it's a battle for civilization you should probably use guns, instead of anonymous comments on an obscure message board.
I do think that what happens in online discussion/debate spaces like this is consequential in that it is a part of the process that produces our culture's priorities and values and beliefs, but it's a very small part of a very big process. The stakes are correspondingly much smaller.
You are glowing.
From 1984 by George Orwell:
I have no idea what you're trying to say.
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