Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by akimball 1215 days ago
That's not how democracy works. That's how sheep farming works.
1 comments

No, that’s called immature ideological purity. Like it or not, state secrets are a necessary function of any civilization.
I’m pretty sure Dana Scully said the same thing in one of the early seasons of X-Files.
If you don't tell people the truth about something like this, they will cheerfully make something up and accept it as truth.

That's not a "necessary function of any civilization," that's dereliction of duty to the people who elected the leaders.

And if you do tell the truth your enemy has a nice cheap information gathering network at their disposal. Hell, they'll likely just make up their own bullshit and post it online anyway and say our government is lying.
Even if you do tell people the "truth", they'll cheerfully make anything up that gets more clicks.
People do that when you do tell them the truth.
Be that as it may, I don't see how I can be expected to make good decisions as a voter in a democracy without good information.