Why and How is History important to our project?

It matters to my argument in several different ways. And because it’s partly an evidential/epistemological argument, the impact of the union of these ways is greater than the sum of the parts.

Point 1: There are a lot more old spook leaks than recent ones because: a) spook is more okay with leaking old info, b) spook grew more powerful & protective of info & silencing of leaks over time. Not using old material would really cut into the volume & quality of the total.

Point 2: Current perceptions, laws, & policies all came from somewhere. How we got to the present is extremely relevant to understanding it & to understanding public perceptions. Analyzing and altering perception is extremely relevant to our project.

Point 3: There is an inductive argument to be made: spook fooled the public and manipulated event 1 at time t1, spook fooled the public and manipulated event 2 at time t2, …. spook fooled the public and manipulated event N at time tN….”Wow…spook has basically fooled and manipulated me about most of the big. Post-WWII, historical state-related events I know about. No serious reform or punishment ever happened to spook. The media did not do any kind of successful job of correcting this. That does make me a lot more suspicious of what’s happening now and what I’ve been told about it.”

Point 4: Perceptions of the benefits of current policies, their lawfulness, their execution, and their legitimacy need to be completely reexamined in light of completely false presumptions about what happened in the past. Let’s talk seriously about that and not have another BS story about wiser heads in DC knowing what’s best.