Transparency, not Secrecy

Been picking a bit through Dreaming 5GW. Lots of thoughts that I haven’t been keeping up with, so I latch onto the margins. This bit, for example:

If a natural defense against potential 4GW character assassination campaigns has naturally arisen, i.e., secrecy — which we have also seen much of in the George W. Bush administration, to preempt potential 4GW campaigns against the White House — then we must wonder if attempts at secrecy to combat 4GW in politics are early examples of an emergent 5GW tactic arising to combat the more prevalent dynamic of 4GW.

While secrecy may be a natural response, it does not prove a successful defense against 4GW style threats. A stronger defense would be radical transparency, an idea that Robb explored last month. Secrets will be found out, and even if they aren’t, opponents could attack one’s character with lies and distoritions. The only way to truly evicerate such attacks is to already be transparent, allowing third parties to independently varify the absurdity of the attempts to pillor your record. After all, the problem is rarely the actual act that precipitated the scandel, it is the resulting cover-up that turns wrong-doing into a full-blown scandel.

New Links

Folks may notice a few new additions to the rolls. I’ve been reading Matt’s work at Mountainrunner ever since this great post on 4GW and it was long past due to add a link. Same goes for Shloky and Henrik’s Draconian Observations.