Patriots (Metal Gear)

For other meanings of Patriot(s), see Patriot.

In the Metal Gear video games, the Patriots, A.K.A. The La-li-lu-le-lo (or La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo), is an Illuminati-like organization that controls the United States of America, and is also dedicated to creating a new world order. Although its precise plans and goals are not entirely known, the Patriots appear to be the primary antagonist in the series, due to their acts of blackmail and manipulation on an untold scale. They were originally the American branch of the Philosophers (revealed in Snake Eater), before they splintered off and renamed themselves.

Appearances

The organization's first appearance in the series was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and its origin was further revealed in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Through its main secret agent, Revolver Ocelot, the Patriots are often times implied in the storyline to be the cause of almost all the trials faced by the main protagonists of the Metal Gear Solid series (Solid Snake, Raiden, and Naked Snake), presenting it as the ultimate antagonist of the series.

File:The Patriots.jpg

The Wisemen's Committee, as they were depicted in Metal Gear Solid 2.

The actual members of the Patriots, whose personalities are unknown, are presided over by a council of twelve individuals called the "Wisemen's Committee". There is no further information regarding the organization's depth apart from this in terms of structure and hierarchy. However, the Patriots employ numerous spies and agents spread throughout the government agencies of the U.S.A. It should be noted that typically when one refers to the Patriots, they are referring to the core 12 members of the Wisemen's Committee.

The President of the United States himself is subordinate to the Patriots. To become President, one must first pledge allegiance to the Patriots, which was revealed between a CODEC conversation between Raiden and the President. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Scott Dolph, knew of their existence, having referred to them as the "La-li-lu-le-lo". A man named "Richard Ames," identified as a former colonel, Secret Service agent, and a member of the DIA, was an agent of the Patriots before his death. Revolver Ocelot has been an agent of the Patriots since childhood.

In Metal Gear Solid 3, it was revealed that the Patriots are an offshoot of a larger international group known as the Philosophers. The Philosophers consisted of the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. After the end of World War I, they formed a secret pact for unknown reasons, thus creating the Philosophers. By the time World War II had broken out, all of the original members were dead and the organization ran out of control, focusing on creating a new world order. During World War II, they agreed to pool together their respective countries' financial and military resources in order to defeat the Axis Powers. At the end of the war, a new order would be established with themselves in control. Atomic testing and its subsequent weaponry, rocket technology, and the Cobra unit were the results of this pact. The father of the villain of Metal Gear Solid 3, Colonel Volgin, was assigned to the money-laundering activities of the group, and during the war, stole the money they had amassed. In 1964, the events of Metal Gear Solid 3 explain how the U.S. branch of the Philosophers retrieves the money from Volgin. Upon finally acquiring all the funds from the various banks throughout the world in 1970, the U.S. branch of the Philosophers split from the international group and became the Patriots. With all of the power of the original group now in the USA, the Chinese and Soviet branches seemingly faded over the years. Although Metal Gear Solid 3 explained the names on the disc that Otacon and Solid Snake had at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, it still left the identity or identities of the Patriots at the time of Metal Gear Solid 2 a mystery. However, Metal Gear Solid 3 established that Ocelot was a Patriot spy during that game, and that he was reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence of the United States.

What are the Patriots?

There have been numerous theories about their origin before the release of Metal Gear Solid 3, as the only piece of information available occurs at the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, when they converse with Raiden through his CODEC radio. The Patriots insinuate that they are not quite "human." They appear to have all the characteristics of a disembodied computer AI, but claim to have formed over the past 200 years as a consciousness developed in the "primordial soup" of the White House. Near the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, they appear as a skull-like visage that briefly flashes on and off in the middle of a codec conversation. One of the strongest theories, backed up by the declaration of the themes for each game by creator Hideo Kojima during the E³ 2004, is that they are beings born out of information, and are therefore memes. This is reinforced by a conversation the player has at the end of the game:

Colonel:	To begin with -- we're not what you'd call -- human. Over the past two hundred
	years--A kind of consciousness formed layer by layer in the crucible of the White House. It's not unlike the way life started in the oceans four billion years ago.
	The White House was our primordial soup, a base of evolution--we are formless.
	We are the very discipline and morality that Americans invoke so often. How can anyone hope to eliminate us? As long as this nation exists, so will we.

There is no real reason to believe anything the Patriots say, because they consistently deceive everyone they deal with -- including their own agents, such as Revolver Ocelot. It is entirely possible their origin is simply a myth created to mislead the main characters, and dissuade them from pursuing the idea that the Patriots are real men who can be found and killed. However, seeing as how The Patriots do in fact control America, their claim about always existing as long as the US exists may be true. This helps gamers understand the motives of Big Boss, who sought to cause chaos and thus disrupt the current world order. Only by creating this chaos and destroying governments could the Patriots be brought down.

A clue is given in the third installment of the MGS series. At the end of the game, Ocelot manages to retrieve the Philosopher's Legacy so that "the Philosophers can finally be revived" (quoted from the last telephone conversation Ocelot has with the CIA Director). It's impossible to know what Ocelot means by "revived," but if the Patriots are telling the truth and they are no longer human, this means that someone (most likely the CIA) managed to bring the American branch of the Wisemen's Committee back to life, or at least their memories or consciousness in a physical manifestation or digital form (supporting this is also this line, said by the JFK AI Rose on top of Federal Hall at the end of MGS2: "We started with genetic engineering, and in the end, we succeeded in digitizing life itself"). This is still pure speculation. A digital form seems most likely, as the entities that Raiden communicates with look like Colonel Campbell and Rosemary. Though the images of these two people are created by Raiden himself, not the AI. Otacon even suggests that the "Colonel Campbell" speaking to Raiden is most likely a combined form of computer AI and Raiden's own expectations. This supports the idea that the Patriots could also be a memetic of some kind, or they are indeed born out of information. It could also suggest that the Patriots are being metaphorical in an attempt to sound immortal and all powerful, as they are talking about the ideas behind the group and not the actual members. Important to note is that the Colonel and Rose images were suggested to be being controlled by the AI named 'GW' on board Arsenal Gear. As this AI malfunctioned at the end, and as the Colonel and Rose still appear glitchy, it is possible that they are still simply GW-controlled and have not actually been taken over by the 'real' Patriots.

The idea that the Patriots are a particularly strong meme fits well with their self-description of not being human; the Patriots may have once been an organization with agents reporting to one another and to their leaders. However, over time, this formal organization may have deteriorated (or evolved) into an entity whose only central binding element was the original principals and ideals of the Wiseman's Committee. That is, the true nature of the Patriots is no longer that of an organization, but rather individuals who share the ideals, methods, and practices of the original Patriots; they are human, but not entirely, as there is no structured entity to report to.

Regardless of their true nature, the Patriots have a strong interest in controlling the development of human civilization and evolution by way of controlling the information humans accept as fact (in essence, telling them what version of history to believe). Their purpose to create Arsenal Gear is to test the S3 (Selection for Societal Sanity), a system to control and select memes that are supposed to be "good" for the human race, and that natural selection cannot happen in the current information flow in which every piece is kept.

Colonel:	But in the current, digitized world,
	trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.
Rose:	Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...
Colonel:	All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.
Rose:	It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution.

Another interesting theory is that the Patriots, in controlling the human race's development and culture, intend to maintain their own existence, which is the act of self-preservation common when considering memes and/or genes. Because the existence of the Patriots is bound to the society's, it would be in their interest to always spread their values (memes) throughout the society.

It is also theorized that they actually do not exist at all. In MGS2, during a CODEC conversation between Solid Snake and Otacon, Otacon says that he has the names of the Patriots, but that they all died about a hundred years before the plant chapter of MGS2. Some speculate that the Patriots were only an excuse from the government to let Ocelot carry out his own will.

Agents of the Patriots

• Revolver Ocelot - Highest-ranked known agent of the Patriots and a sleeper agent within various organizations. Ocelot was charged with supervising the S3 plan in Metal Gear Solid 2 (although he is fed false information, believing that the S3 is totally different from what it actually was) and is sent as a spy under the codename ADAM in Metal Gear Solid 3 where he eventually recovers the Legacy.
• Solidus Snake (George Sears) - Former President of the United States and a surviving offspring from the Les Enfants Terribles project. Attempts to fight the Patriots in Metal Gear Solid 2. Chosen for the S3 plan because his relationship with Raiden bears a resemblance to the relationship between Snake and Big Boss.
• Richard Ames - Ames was killed by his own nanomachines during the Big Shell incident as part of the S3 plan. His death also could have been orchestrated by the Patriots due to the fact that he helped his wife Nastasha escape from them.
• Raiden (Jack) - Though he has no knowledge of it, the Patriots used Raiden to initiate and complete the S3 plan.
• Rosemary - Assigned to spy on Raiden. Became romantically involved with him and was impregnated with his child.
• Jim Houseman - Secretary of Defense during the Shadow Moses Island Incident of MGS1. Committed suicide several days after failing to deploy a tactical nuclear warhead to cover up the situation. Probable foul play on the part of the Patriots.
• Olga Gurlukovich - Because the Patriots have her child, she is forced to cooperate with them. As part of the Patriots' plan, (S3 plan) so to speak, she is Mr. X and helps Raiden with his mission.
• Fatman - Placed by the Patriots to test Raiden's abilities before enacting the Patriots' true exercise. In Ocelot's words, Fatman "was a different story. He's one of our own people, a sort of examiner we hired to test the boy's progress before letting him tackle the exercise proper."

The Sons of Big Boss - Solid, Liquid, and Solidus were originally conceived out of Les Enfants Terribles, a Patriots project, but they later acted of their own accord (with the exception of Solidus who worked with them for a time before developing his own ideals).

Name origin

"La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" represents the hypothetical five syllables and/or characters absent from the Japanese language, gojūon, which translated as "fifty sounds" but only have forty-five syllables (actually forty six in real world). There is discussion in Metal Gear Solid 2 contemplating the control of basic ideas through the manipulation of language. During one conversation between Raiden and Emma Emmerich, Emma uses an example of language to show that the Patriots can control information. She says the Patriots would be able to delete information; for instance, there could be 5 or so characters deleted from the alphabet, and nobody would know. The fact that the Patriots are referred to as these 'absent' characters represents their unprecedented control over information, which they planned to solidify with Arsenal Gear.

It is theorized that some characters, who do not have codeword clearance as mentioned by the President in MGS2, cannot call the Patriots by that name, because their implanted nano machines force them to hear "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" when they are referred to as the Patriots. This will lead people to believe that is their name, with their real name remaining unknown in their mind.

The reason for the choice of these characters is simple: a very long time ago, Japan adopted much of the Chinese language. In the Chinese alphabet they have La Li Lu Le Lo. Japan's alphabet doesn't. In the present Japanese alphabet, they have Ra Ri Ru Re Ro. So, the story goes that for some reason a powerful figure in Japan decreed that La Li Lu Le Lo were no longer to be used and they would use Ra Ri Ru Re Ro instead. From then on, La Li Lu Le Lo became these forbidden "secret" characters that no one used openly anymore, and eventually no one used them at all.

• La - is derived from the Hanzi character meaning "good"
• Li - is derived from the Hanzi character meaning "money"
• Lu - is derived from the Hanzi character "detain, halt"
• Le - is derived from the Hanzi character meaning "benefit, or profit"
• Lo - is derived from the Hanzi character meaning "Backbone"

(Referring to the original Chinese Hanzi, not Japanese Kanji.)

In Snake Eater, Naked Snake was given a password to test if the person was ADAM. The Question was "Who are the Patriots?" and the answer was "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo". EVA had no answer to this question, but shown her proof by eliminating all the enemies who surrounded Snake.