It’s been a few days since Stephen Paddock allegedly slaughtered almost 60 people and caused injury to more than 500 additional in Las Vegas. It’s difficult to make sense of the situation given the information that we have available. While many have offered some of the typical knee jerk reactions that we would expect, some others have presented some nuanced explanations. One of these is Vin Armani’s drone theory.
Armani made the case on his program, The Vin Armani Show, that Stephen Paddock was not the person who killed the concert attendees. He offers the idea that it was a weapons test of a small drone, likely Duke’s TIKAD, that the US government is interested in using in urban warfare. He does a good job of laying out the reasons why his theory would be plausible but given the current information that is available, I am not convinced.
I’m not claiming that I can prove Vin Armani’s drone theory to be wrong, but I have reservations that come from some implicit assumptions that just don’t quite add up. I don’t think that I could prove Armani wrong based on the information that I’m aware of, but since he doesn’t appear to be using Occam’s razor, then the burden of proof is on him anyway. It is only the further revelation of information that will prove one theory over another.
And remember, just because I disagree with Armani does not mean that I agree with the government’s narrative. They have proven time and time again that they ought not be trusted, so there’s no reason to start accepting their accounts of what happened now. There is a whole lot of missing information, so it is important to dig and search for data and to question those who can use events like this to their advantage.
So that brings me to what I wanted to talk about. The assumption that I don’t agree with Armani on is that the government has a significant enough incentive to test these drones on American citizens. They certainly have an incentive to capitalize on these tragedies. Rahm Emanuel said it best: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Just because the government uses a tragedy or any other situation to advance their agenda does not mean that they must have been the cause of the tragedy. Unfortunately, there is still enough evil in the world for the government to sit back and wait for something to happen and be ready with the next round of legislation “to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
That does not mean that the state wouldn’t conspire against its own people. Members of the government were okay with allowing a target like Pearl Harbor to be attacked if it meant an excuse to enter World War II. They even injected black people in Tuskegee, Alabama with syphilis under the guise of providing them with free healthcare. But to send some drones into the air to outright massacre unsuspecting people at a concert is a totally different level of depravity. It’s just completely grisly.
I don’t doubt that some people high up in the government ranks would be willing to do it, but wouldn’t an operation such as this require the buy-in of people on much lower levels? While it is certainly wrong to kill for the government in other countries around the world, most soldiers don’t do it simply because they’ve been given the orders to do so. They’re human beings just like the rest of us. They’ve been convinced or have convinced themselves that the targets deserve it in some way. This is done through a process of dehumanizing the enemy and rationalizing that the end justifies the means. It would take a lot to convince people that the those they took an oath to protect deserve to die.
Yes, it is true that soldiers throughout history have killed their fellow citizens (see just about any communist country), but unless there’s some huge conspiracy that the former soldiers I know are all perfectly capable of hiding their true feelings, the average soldier does what he does because he wants to protect the people of his homeland. The circumstances around the willingness to kill your fellow countrymen in those other places are very different.
But even if there were enough people willing to carry out the mission of Vin Armani’s drone theory, I’m not sure it makes much strategic sense. If the TIKAD drone is to be used in the Middle Eastern theaters, why not test it over there? The US government has gotten away, virtually scot-free, with attacking funerals with Hellfire missiles from drones. If most people in the United States don’t care about civilian casualties in these wars, why cause civilian casualties where people really do care? While the people at the top of the federal government are evil, they’re not stupid. Would it be worth the risk of having their authority come crumbling down if they were found out?
These are important questions to answer and shouldn’t be overlooked when thinking about explanations of what happened in Las Vegas. If my questions can be answered, I want to hear them! We’re all trying to find the truth, so let’s bounce our ideas off each other.
Update: Vin Armani responds on Twitter.
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