Sunday, March 24, 2024

Fun Theory of Dead Boeing Whistleblower

 Suppose it's a double-backcross, the guy wasn't reporting any real engineering problems, and he was suicided - by Boeing competitors. 

 John Barnett was rather obviously a massive Karen. He was reporting regulation violations, not structural problems. If you've ever worked a job you know following the rules is rather hit and miss, and most of the time it's because the rules are stupid. Indeed the tyrant likes it this way, as they can prosecute anyone at any time by suspending the blind-eye policy. 

 (Ever noticed when someone 'dodges' inspections for years, it's never assumed to be regulator incompetence? They are never held accountable.)

 If you're suitably pedantic or disgruntled, you can find endless reams of things to report. In industries like aviation, you can report them directly to bureaucracies which hold police powers, making everything very dramatic. (Just like Karens like it.)

 Barnett made the news - which is always a bad sign - which tipped off a rival, who realized they could Streisand this fake news by suiciding Barnett. Elite infighting. 

 The dangling thread with this theory is that Boeing planes really are falling apart. However, Barnett was quit-fired seven years ago, plenty of time for Boeing to live up to the image in Barnett's head. 


 There's also the angle where Karens are mentally unstable. Defectors are defective. Yes, it makes absolutely no sense for him to have killed himself with this timing - but, I dunno if you've heard, madmen are crazy. Irrational behaviour is to be expected.

 That brings me to yet another angle: he deliberately suicided himself because he knew it would be suspicious as all fuck.

 If Boeing was in fact not guilty, they could have simply won in court. The FAA clearly doesn't want to prosecute Boeing - unlike Bear Stearns, Boeing is unmistakably up to date on its bribes and grovelling. However, since Barnett found genuine policy violations, the FAA would have felt pressured to fine Boeing or whatever, and they just wanted the issue to go away. You can't exactly tell a judge that a policy isn't a real structural policy, "Oh yeah planes can fly just fine when they violate that one, we only have it on the books for selective enforcement." Sure the assassination looks bad, but who cares what the peasants think?
 Then there's the 'who cares what the peasants think' angle, but it turns out they're mistaken, and it matters for whatever reason.

 Now consider this one: Barnett was incompetent and couldn't find any real violation, but Boeing is now committing serious violations and can't stand up to any novel scrutiny. Assassinating Barnett does the Streisand on his lame accusations, which draw attention away from finding new issues.


 The only thing we can be certain of is that the story is the news is not the real story. Journalists are not experts at any kind of investigative field, they don't even know what they need to rule out. They're the avatars of the peasants, just as they claim: they see the same parochial, knee-jerk superstition that their audience would see if they were there in person.


 Another Revenge is Sour incidence: yes, in America, you need to put whisteblowers on suicide watch. Automatic protective custody. Not to mention ""suicide"" watch: 24/7 surveillance by independent Russians AND Chinese. Because America, that will never happen. To get this common*-sense preventative measure, you first need to have the kind of country that doesn't regularly use assassination as a policy tool, and thus doesn't need it.

 *(Sense common to nobles, not to commoners.)

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