From: Wire_Geek (Wiregeek@hephaestus.fen)
To: nttp://fen.current-events.disc
Subject: Politics, Government, Drugs, Really Wild Things.
Date Posted: May 17th, 2013
Ladies and Gentlebeings, and the rest of the Fen populace, I find myself concerned and alarmed.
I am not a political animal. If I can't build something, hit something, or eat something, there's really one major use that I can put something to, and I've never hear anyone recommend the Reavers for that in a _serious_ manner.
However, bad sex puns aside, I'm not a very politically aware person. I write these rambling missives because I read the Ender series too damn many times. I think there's a little bit of Locke or Demosthenesin all of us, yearning to shape the sociopolitical atmosphere or just look smart.
And up here, we bring the atmosphere with us in a VERY big way. Smart comes with the territory, with the flipside being dead.
To digress from my digression, I've been hearing rumblings and rumors against the personage of Haruhi, specifically against her tyrannical management style and lack of 'personal touch'. The rumblings then express displeasure at the eponymous Operation For Great Justice, comparing the case of Thionite to the pre-Launch case of Prohibition, or the American folly of the War On Drugs.
There are, indeed, some similarities, and they provide us with a simple example, in the case of Prohibition, and a current example, in the War On Drugs, of what we can do wrong. However, there are many differences as well. The armed conflict between the drug cartels and the populace never escalated as brutally on Earth as it did here in space. Really, it's the nature of the place - there is no half-way in space battles.
The assorted abductions and slavery, genetic mutilation, tortures and various atrocities we can lay at the feet of the Boskonians are another major difference between Now and Then. The Colombian drug cartels may have traded in sex slaves, true, but they were still at least recognizably human if they were recovered..
Thus we come to my first point, one I have thought long and hard about before stating.
The Boskonians are bad people, period, and must be stopped.
Boskonian Redemption, while a nice idea, is not plausible in anything more than an individual scale. Ask what's left of the kids from Hogwarts - there is such a thing as Unforgiveables.
And on to the drugs in question. At the beginning of the twentieth century, we saw the rise of Crystal Meth, displacing all other drugs in the earthly illicit drug market as the most detrimental and destructive substance available. Still, it doesn't even begin to compare to Thionite. A single dose of Thionite is powerful enough to be addictive, in the face of all but the most absolutely powerful and focussed willpower - and even then, it's iffy. There is no known counter, there is no known palliative or counteragent, there is no protection.
I can think of no other drug, save perhaps LSD, that has military applications. Which leads me inexorably to my second point, which is problematic in execution, but I feel, necessary.
Thionite must be eliminated, Thionite use must be stopped
Yeah, the actual execution of that is left up to the reader.
An astute reader, perhaps one with the mythical patience of Job, will have noticed that I opened with mention of Miss Suzumiya, and have not returned to that subject.
I agree in essence with the concerns regarding her leadership style, it is authoritarian and tyrannical, and she does not take advice which is not immediately relevant to her interests and/or supportive of her plans.
Save for one factor, I would be more than willing to see her deposed, and some other poor fool cast into that role.
That factor being - she's almost always right.
Name three major strategic or tactical decisions that have come down from Haruhi that have worked out badly, or caused unnecessary loss of life?
Yeah.
We're riding a tiger, sure, but the tiger's going where we need to go, and I, for one, am not ready to get off yet.
Yours in discord.
Wiregeek.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
To: nttp://fen.current-events.disc
Subject: Politics, Government, Drugs, Really Wild Things.
Date Posted: May 17th, 2013
Ladies and Gentlebeings, and the rest of the Fen populace, I find myself concerned and alarmed.
I am not a political animal. If I can't build something, hit something, or eat something, there's really one major use that I can put something to, and I've never hear anyone recommend the Reavers for that in a _serious_ manner.
However, bad sex puns aside, I'm not a very politically aware person. I write these rambling missives because I read the Ender series too damn many times. I think there's a little bit of Locke or Demosthenesin all of us, yearning to shape the sociopolitical atmosphere or just look smart.
And up here, we bring the atmosphere with us in a VERY big way. Smart comes with the territory, with the flipside being dead.
To digress from my digression, I've been hearing rumblings and rumors against the personage of Haruhi, specifically against her tyrannical management style and lack of 'personal touch'. The rumblings then express displeasure at the eponymous Operation For Great Justice, comparing the case of Thionite to the pre-Launch case of Prohibition, or the American folly of the War On Drugs.
There are, indeed, some similarities, and they provide us with a simple example, in the case of Prohibition, and a current example, in the War On Drugs, of what we can do wrong. However, there are many differences as well. The armed conflict between the drug cartels and the populace never escalated as brutally on Earth as it did here in space. Really, it's the nature of the place - there is no half-way in space battles.
The assorted abductions and slavery, genetic mutilation, tortures and various atrocities we can lay at the feet of the Boskonians are another major difference between Now and Then. The Colombian drug cartels may have traded in sex slaves, true, but they were still at least recognizably human if they were recovered..
Thus we come to my first point, one I have thought long and hard about before stating.
The Boskonians are bad people, period, and must be stopped.
Boskonian Redemption, while a nice idea, is not plausible in anything more than an individual scale. Ask what's left of the kids from Hogwarts - there is such a thing as Unforgiveables.
And on to the drugs in question. At the beginning of the twentieth century, we saw the rise of Crystal Meth, displacing all other drugs in the earthly illicit drug market as the most detrimental and destructive substance available. Still, it doesn't even begin to compare to Thionite. A single dose of Thionite is powerful enough to be addictive, in the face of all but the most absolutely powerful and focussed willpower - and even then, it's iffy. There is no known counter, there is no known palliative or counteragent, there is no protection.
I can think of no other drug, save perhaps LSD, that has military applications. Which leads me inexorably to my second point, which is problematic in execution, but I feel, necessary.
Thionite must be eliminated, Thionite use must be stopped
Yeah, the actual execution of that is left up to the reader.
An astute reader, perhaps one with the mythical patience of Job, will have noticed that I opened with mention of Miss Suzumiya, and have not returned to that subject.
I agree in essence with the concerns regarding her leadership style, it is authoritarian and tyrannical, and she does not take advice which is not immediately relevant to her interests and/or supportive of her plans.
Save for one factor, I would be more than willing to see her deposed, and some other poor fool cast into that role.
That factor being - she's almost always right.
Name three major strategic or tactical decisions that have come down from Haruhi that have worked out badly, or caused unnecessary loss of life?
Yeah.
We're riding a tiger, sure, but the tiger's going where we need to go, and I, for one, am not ready to get off yet.
Yours in discord.
Wiregeek.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979