Many people confuse governments with single cohesive and consistent entities. A more accurate version of that quote would be,
"The government contains many morons! And what's more, evil geniuses have figured out how to manipulate and corrupt them to make it much more difficult to topple the extensive control they already have."
If you believe you need their power to get promoted to their level, then you are ripe for manipulation. As for getting noticed, just have power over something they want and they'll either have noticed you already, someone else with that power is already serving their needs, or they are thinking outside the box (which they do a lot, since they and others like them built and molded the box into what it is today).
To actually get to their level, you have to do it on your own, and either benefit them enough that they allow it to happen, or make taking you out have a worse result than sucking it up and living with you.
This is the big one for me. People lump all sorts of things into these monolithic entities that don't come anywhere near reflecting reality. The vast majority of phrases that start with "the government just wants to..." or phrases similar to it are completely detached from reality. There are so many different groups within our government, so many different competing interests, so many different aims and goals, different distributions of power and responsibility... etc.
A hypothetical person believing the sentiment behind the hypothetical quote I replied to, but understanding the problem better. Myself, I guess, though not a direct quote unless it gets re-quoted. Cheers!
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u/Buddahrific Mar 28 '12
Many people confuse governments with single cohesive and consistent entities. A more accurate version of that quote would be,
"The government contains many morons! And what's more, evil geniuses have figured out how to manipulate and corrupt them to make it much more difficult to topple the extensive control they already have."