"Ain't no kill like overkill." -- SilverRey
When there is no diplomatic recourse. When trade restrictions fail. When there are no other alternatives... they send in the humans. A small team, an individual, an army... Humans are sent in to deal with the problem.
Pinpoint accuracy is preferred, but there are other times... regrettable times, when one despot will simply be replaced with another. The revolution comes full circle with another power-hungry iron fist in charge, promoting those who agree with them, and otherwise making certain that all good things flow their way, and all the bad things flow to everyone else.
It was not a problem of people. It was not a problem of power. It was a problem of culture. There was only one way to kill a culture - and it wasn't in the killing of people. It was in creeping in via cool things and changing the culture by sinister osmosis. Humans are experts at this.
They began with material goods. Cheap, easily created material goods. They introduce cool bits of technology that begin to render the reins of power moot. Food printers and molecular reassembly meant that the powerful could no longer control the supply chain. Other printers subverted other things.
Small, mobile, and easily made units that could self-replicate with some minor interference, but also make other things that the people needed. They were everywhere. They were passed on faster than the forces of law and alleged order could confiscate them. There were even those in the corrupt forces who took those confiscated units and used them for themselves, further corroding the power held over them.
With convenience, came memes. Humans have had millennia to perfect memetics. The seemingly harmless, yet appealing thought forms that slowly and surely changed perspectives against the current cultural patterns. The memes did what memes did best. Spread between minds like virii, as deadly to a culture as a highly-infectious pathogen was to a population unprepared for its introduction.
In one generation, less than one generation, the majority of an entire world was thinking in another direction. The Humans didn't need to kill the egotistical leaders. They killed themselves, in the depths of their bunkers, with none to witness their demise but the vermin who would pick the flesh off their bones.
Leaders left unremembered, their mansions put to better use, their bunkers become tombs also became buried underneath parking lots. Nobody paid them a second thought.
The Humans would be coming with even more interesting things. Even more interesting thoughts. They were, after all, a species who loved to share.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / iqoncept]
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