"Tomorrow these tatterdemalion wanderers would open their carnival...and it would draw merrymakers from a hundred kilometers around...though the fist of the Imperium was already slamming forward. I don't understand, McCormac thought."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT Chapter Six, pp. 425-426.
The Pretender cannot understand why all Aeneans are not supporting him! Well, the tinerants, an underculture without the vote, have no reason to care who is Emperor on Terra. As for the merrymakers drawn to the carnival, how many of them have as yet directly experienced the oppression that has started under their new Sector Governor? Or how many want to enjoy a carnival precisely because a war is starting? Unable to understand anyone whose views differ from his, McCormac is indeed blinkered.
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