There are changes that people, individually or collectively, want and implement for themselves and others that are imposed on them. Before the narrator's birth, the US government had tried to modernize, i.e., collectivize, Georgia but, because this was impracticable:
most small farms, stores, sawmills and repair shops were put on leasehold;
schools got taped propaganda instead of trained political educators;
the narrator's grandfather ranted that the black Sheriff was being used.
That grandfather had fought for the imperialist regime, suppressing the Mekong Revolution. The narrator's father was ten at the time of the Sacred War and the subsequent hungry years stunted his growth.
I am doing my best to summarize future historical details as they are disclosed to us. There are three generations here and there is always a wealth of information in a Poul Anderson short story.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
First paragraph: Meaning not everyone in the puppet regime forced on the fallen US were enthusiastic instruments of tyranny. Plainly, some were half-hearted, unwilling, reluctant. Farms were still de facto privately owned, instead of being confiscated outright by the puppet State.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Puppet state" is correct because it was imposed with military force by Russian bureaucrats, not built by the American people.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And the Marxist policies being forced on the US in this story were bad.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Any enforced policies are bad. Change has to become a majority aspiration. Most of the time people who believe in the necessity of radical change have to accept that it is not about to happen. But dissatisfaction remains and sometimes spills over. Then things can change rapidly. "There are decades when nothing happens and months when decades happen." (Or something. I can't find the correct quote.)
Paul.
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