Governments deceive and hide information and activities from their populace. This is a given. They do so for a lot of reasons - some of them legitimate and others less so. National security is typically invoked for the governmental deception. Once an issue has been labelled like this, it becomes difficult if not impossible to debate it in any rational manner. Nationalistic emotions and fervour is quickly whipped up to stifle debate and discussion.
Every form of deception has costs associated with it. For individuals, these are to a large extent non-monetary but they are borne by the individual alone or by a relatively small number of individuals many of them unwittingly. Unlike individuals, the costs of government deception are borne by the entire society. Thus the US was sucked into the quagmire of Iraq on the basis of lies and fabrication. The trillions that have been spent and the billions that continue to be spent come from US citizens. Similarly, the entire Vietnam war was triggered on false pretences and accusations at the cost of a large number of deaths, traumatized survivors, large amounts of money and severe setbacks in US global standing. Infact the US continues to incur Vietnam related costs as it struggles to re-integrate traumatized survivors into the general society. More recently, the full extent of the banking bailout was hidden from the US population. Much more money has been spent in a so far futile attempt to shore up the banks than was publicly revealed. Again the cost of this is being borne by US citizens in both financial (in the form of enormous indebtedness) and non-financial (in the form of dilapidated infrastructure, lack of jobs, general rise in lawlessness etc.) terms.
The story is very similar elsewhere. In China, pollution data that affects the health of millions has been concealed. In India massive corruption takes place under the table. Large government contracts in developing countries are routinely signed not on the basis of national interests but because of corruption that is then hidden from the population. The effects of government deception are the same everywhere. A suspicious citizenry that no longer trusts its government, greater and to a considerable extent unnecessary impoverishment as resources are sucked into individual and corporate coffers, gradually rising tide of lawlessness and over time, a weakening of the state as important and necessary institutions are (often deliberately) hollowed out.
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