Posted on 01/26/2007 8:34:38 PM PST by george76
Who knew.
/s
by zarf
In general, trust creates power whether the power is for good or evil. America gets much of her military might through type A trust and the Soviet Union got it through type B trust. They enforced the loyalty of their captive nations through implied threat. We were allowed military bases in friendly countries because those countries knew we would withdraw if asked to.
This is obviously a semantic argument but not unimportant. Words carry meaning and it is important to have a mutual agreement on what those words mean. I think the problem is that we tend to unnecessarily attach moral weight to words. Trouble is, when that happens we lose the use of the word in moral discussion and that tends to hamstring debate.
But this is power created without trust. Look at the people you list that have "type B" trust, Castro has put a spy on every single block of Cuba to report any potentially treasonous citizens so they can be arrested and often executed. Trust does not involve spies and executions.
It's not a moral weight issue, it's a simple concept issue. Trust and paranoia are mutually exclusive concepts, and all the people you've listed as having type B trust over some population are (or were) paranoid, and rightly so, that said population is going rise up against them, depose them and probably kill them. That's not trust.
If you want to define it that way, then you are right. But your first definition, "confidence in future performance" had no exclusions regarding the tactics used to create that confidence. Again it's just semantics. Using your new definition, Castro creates confidence that his people will not oppose the state when he uses tyrannical tactics.
No that definition still applies. If you have to constantly spy on your people and execute some of them to ensure their future performance doesn't include overthowing you then you do not have confidence in their future performance.
A pilot continually inspects his airplane and replaces worn parts on a regular basis to make sure it doesn't crash. Does that mean he does not have confidence in his plane's future performance? Would you say he doesn't trust his plane?
Given that my father-in-law was a test pilot the answer to that question, inspite of the fact that it's a rather pathetic red herring with vastly different circumstances (planes can't conspire against you after all) is a resounding HELL YES. Pilots understand that their machines are grossly overcomplicated with many thousands of part and the failure of anyone of them could mean instant death (if they're lucky). They love their planes, some of them probably love their planes better than they love their wives, but they don't trust them, not if they're smart anyway. Trusting the plane leads to a "milk run" mentality, "milk runs" kill more pilots than anything else. Never trust the plane, never trust the weather, never assume this will be an easy flight that goes smoothly.
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