Chapter 534: Supreme Authority
The attack in the Philippines had largely gone unnoticed by the world at large. But those who played their hands at geo-politics, and grand strategy had noticed it was a major diverging point in world affairs.
Generally speaking, there were two ways the public would respond to the kind of violence that the United States garrison in Manila had enacted upon the rural village outside the city center.
And it depended entirely on whether the violence was committed as a reaction, in the heat of the moment, against agitators, terrorists, revolutionaries, or rioters, or whether it was done afterward, as an act of brutal retaliation.
If, for example, a group of armed officers opened fire on rioters throwing bricks, Molotov cocktails, improvised explosives, and even engaging in gunfire themselves. Then most of the country wouldn’t care.
Some might even find it comedic in a cosmic sort of way. Only the most radical of citizens would take the agitators’ side; and those were already the types likely to join the revolution in the first place.
In such a case, whatever civil strife was caused could usually be contained; provided the government forces were willing to commit fully to the violence from that point on and were halfway competent at their jobs.
The opposite scenario, however, occurred when violence was committed as retaliation, indiscriminate and brutal, against innocent people, either wholly unassociated with or only loosely connected to the agitators.
Even if there were real ties discovered later, the media could always conceal the truth and frame the victims as martyrs—turning the hammer of the state into the villain of the narrative.
The media was seldom on the side of the people; or the state, for that matter. It was always on the side of itself, and its own interests.
If they weren’t exactly pleased with the powers that be, and had the freedom to publish as they pleased, they would twist, distort, and mutilate the story into whatever form best suited their agenda.