ROFL, no I don’t mean Stargate…
Here’s a quote from Etienne de la Boetie from The Politics of Obedience:
The kings of the Assyrians, and even after them those of the Medes, showed themselves in public as seldom as possible in order to set up a doubt in the minds of the rabble as to whether they were not in some way more than man and thereby to encourage people to use their imagination for those things which they cannot judge by sight. Thus a great many nations who for a long time dwelt under the control of the Assyrians became accustomed, with all this mystery, to their own subjection, and submitted the more readily for not knowing what sort of master they had, or scarcely even if they had one, all of them fearing by report someone they had never seen.
The earliest kings of Egypt rarely showed themselves without carrying a cat, or sometimes a branch, or appearing with fire on their heads, masking themselves with these objects and parading like workers of magic. By doing this, they inspired their subjects with reverence and admiration, whereas with people neither too stupid nor too slavish, they would merely have aroused, it seems to me, amusement and laughter. It is pitiful to review the list of devices that early despots used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible, readily caught in the net as soon as it was spread. Indeed they always fooled their victims so easily that while mocking them they enslaved them the more.
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In this wise a foolish people itself invents lies and then believes them. Many men have recounted such things, but in such a way that it is easy to see that the parts were pieced together from idle gossip of the city and silly reports from the rabble. When Vespasian, returning from Assyria, passes through Alexandria on his way to Rome to take possession of the empire, he performs wonders: he makes the crippled straight, restores sight to the blind, and does many other fine things, concerning which the credulous and undiscriminating were, in my opinion, more blind than those cured.
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Our own leaders have employed in France certain similar devices, such as toads, fleurs-de-lys, sacred vessels, and standards with flames of gold [oriflammes]. However that may be, I do not wish, for my part, to be incredulous, since neither we nor our ancestors have had any occasion up to now for skepticism. Our kings have always been so generous in times of peace and so valiant in times of war, that from birth they seem not to have been created by nature like many others, but even before birth to have been designated by Almighty God for the government and preservation of this kingdom.
That last paragraph has more than a touch of sarcasm to it. The power of the State is rooted in awe. It is because people are in awe of the State - whether that awe is motivated by love, hatred, fear or mystical ignorance - that the State can create, maintain and enforce a moral and legal double-standard between itself and all others. Without that awe, the State is nothing. The more that awe is increased, the more the State can aggrandize itself. This is why War is the Health of the State.
The Moon missions engendered immense awe in a generation of Americans, regardless of whether they were real or faked. This is their true purpose. The hypothesis that they were faked is predicated on a belief that the State is absolutely desperate to create and maintain that awe and will not hesitate to resort to blatant lies if it feels there is a sufficiently negligible probability of being caught… at least, during the lifetime of those directly responsible.
Ask yourself whether the World Trade Center attacks engendered a post-9/11 awe of the State. Anyway, that’s a different subject all unto itself… 
Clayton -