DAGGERS
IN DARKNESS gradually shows us how Luz and Ciara were coming into
usually violent contact with increasingly senior agents of "The Mad
Baron," Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a real, historical person who in our
timeline briefly succeeded in making himself ruler of Mongolia in 1921.
In the Black Chamber universe he came to rule Mongolia earlier and
succeeded in staying in power. His ambitions of gaining chemical
weapons and the steps he took for achieving that were what drew the
attention of the US and the Black Chamber to him.
DAGGERS
IN DARKNESS opens in 1922, after WW I ended in a drastically different
way from the Great War of our timeline. The US had conquered Mexico and
annexed Canada; a Greater German Reich overran France and vast parts of
eastern Europe and Russia; the British Empire was forced to evacuate
Great Britain and relocate to India; Japan seized eastern Siberia,
Manchuria, and chunks of China.
In
the US, Theodore Roosevelt's "Progressive Republican" policies were so
popular and seemingly successful that he had become virtually President
for Life, easily winning every election since 1912. One of the things
that first caught my eye and which I thought deserving of comment was
this bit from Chapter 1, pages 8-9, about TR's eldest son Theodore:
"Organizing the American Legion for veterans in '18 had shown he could
move men to action in peacetime by his words and force of personality.
The job in Manila [as Governor General of the Philippines] was a chance
to show what he could do as an administrator. If he did well in it,
there was no reason he couldn't be President himself someday, perhaps
after a stint in a Cabinet post... Secretary of State or War, say... or
nomination as Vice President in '28, and in either case in '32, when the
young man was in his prime."
The
US had become so vastly more powerful and larger that it was more an
empire than anything else. What we are seeing here, whether TR himself
understood it, were the old institutions coming to seem too small and
inadequate for managing the demands of ruling an empire. We see TR
coming more and more to think in dynastic terms, of his eldest son
eventually succeeding him as President. If the younger Theodore governed
as successfully as his father and was also blessed with an able son,
would that son be proclaimed Emperor of America, instead of being only
President?
Next, on page 27, I saw this: "Luz and Ciara's theoretically and
legally adopted orphans were in biological fact half-sisters who now
unmistakably resembled their mothers AND their sire, a man named Sven
Lundqvist, who'd met her and Ciara under carefully arranged false
circumstances. With the expectation that he'd soon be five thousand
miles away and under the impression that his extremely entertaining
weekend at a hot-springs resort in West Virginia had been just good luck
and charm on his part; in fact his ship had disappeared on the way back
to Stockholm; possibly a U-boat, probably a mine."
In many ways, I found Luz and Ciara's behavior here open to
criticism. They wanted children, but refused to get them by either
marrying men or honestly asking a man to knowingly become the father of
their children. I did not like the obvious implication that Luz had no
intention of ever telling Sven that he had become the father of four
daughters. He too had rights over those children!
It was too convenient, to have the hapless Sven Lundqvist
disappearing on the way home to Sweden. It meant there would be no
awkward personal and legal difficulties in the future if Sven found out
about his hitherto unknown children. It also meant there would be no
trouble when the twins started asking questions why there was no father
in their lives when other children they knew had fathers. And these
children might want to know about Sven's parents and possible brothers
and sisters. Which again could be awkward for Luz and Ciara. His too
convenient death made that less likely, at least for a long time!
Candidly, I thought Luz's treatment of Sven callous and cynical, he
was a mere sperm donor for her and Ciara. An impression which this bit
from page 161 (Chapter Nine) did not lessen, after Luz learned of how
the Swedish ship carrying Sven and other diplomats had been sunk by a
German mine or U-Boat early in 1918: "...sinking a Swedish flagged
merchant liner not far off the Kattegat, while carrying diplomats back
to Stockholm in the spring of 1918. She'd been mildly sorry to hear that
via naval connections, and hoped it had been quick at least..." A
casually used and discarded sperm donor!
I also thought it very implausible that both Luz and Ciara would
have twins, and that ALL of those children would be girls. it's far more
likely that either Luz or Ciara would have had only one child, not
twins. And I thought it very unlikely, even granting that, that none of
them were boys. It was far more likely that at least one or two of them
would have been boys. It was too neat and schematic, for Luz and Ciara
to both have twins and that all four children were girls.
Despite my distaste for the methods Luz took for her and Ciara to get children, that does not mean I am hostile to those children! Colleen, Mary, Patricia, and Luciana are thoroughly likable, bright, active, and energetic. I did wonder if they seemed too ideal, too perfect to be entirely convincing. But, I can see how if, the parents were healthy, intelligent, and free of any overt disabilities, that kind of selective breeding would maximize the chances of any children they had also being intelligent and healthy. But I continue to have my doubts about the plausibility of all four of them being girls.
And here is as good a place as any to state frankly I did not like
the lesbianism of Luz and Ciara. Because I believe homosexuality is a
distorting, a warping of the sexual and reproductive drive. So I read
through the more lesbian parts of DAGGERS with resignation.
And in Chapter Three, page 66, I saw this: "...plenty of Jews but
not as many since the Germans and Austrians plagued them now far less
than now-defunct Russia and Romania had before 1914." The question I
had being: what happened to the rest of Russia? I would expect a
victorious Germany to annex Russian Poland, the Baltic States, and much
of Ukraine, but not ALL of Russia (I assume Austria-Hungary annexed
Romania). Because I read of how, in the earlier Black Chamber books,
Nicholas II abdicated as Tsar in 1916, with his son succeeding as Alexis
II, under the regency of their respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas.
While I would expect the Regent to often be compelled to yield to German
demands, I saw no mention of Germany deposing Alexis II and annexing
all of Russia at least as far east as the Ural Mountains. But DAGGERS IN
DARKNESS seems to clearly indicate that was what happened by 1922. Did
Germany seize all of Russia east of Ukraine or not? Was there a Russian
remnant state in western Siberia? We see no mention of what happened to
Alexis II and the Regent.
I don't think Wilhelm II and Paul von Hindenburg would have
tolerated a gruesome massacre of the Romanovs, of the kind ordered by
Lenin in our timeline, which occurred at Ekaterinberg and Alapayevsk on
July 17-18, 1918 in our universe!
I especially loved the Chinese parts of DAGGERS, because of how I
went through a Chinese phase earlier in my life, leading me to read a
lot about Chinese history, including translations of parts of historical
works such as Ssu-ma Chien's RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN. But I do
have one quibble: Stirling's use of Pin Yin for Romanizng Chinese names
and words jarred on me, felt like a false note. Because, in OUR timeline
(and presumably the Black Chamber's), the Wade-Giles system for
Romanizing Chinese words and names is what was actually being used a
century ago. Lastly, I simply don't like Pin Yin, "Beijing" strikes me
as inelegant and poor English compared to "Peking."
Next, a minor point. In Chapter Five, on page 96, I read this: "A
big Marine marching band in smart dress blues and billed saucer hats
cane first..." It was a mistake for Stirling to say Marines wore HATS,
because the Navy (of which the Marines are a part of) insists on calling
head wear "covers." A US Navy officer I used to know online made a
point of stressing Navy personnel wore COVERS, not "hats."
Mr. Stirling is a scrupulously careful writer. After showing so
many of the seemingly beneficial things brought about by the New
Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt's so called "Progressive" Republicans,
he was careful to show us some of the darker things underneath the
glossy surface. For instance, in the same Chapter Five, on page 103, I
read this: "...San Francisco had always been a strong union town, and the Party heartily approved of labor unions, as long as they were safely Party-affiliated."
"SAFELY Party-affiliated"? I don't like that. It sounds all too
ominously like the puppet "unions" controlled by the Communist Party
both in and out of the USSR. It looks menacingly like the United States
becoming a de facto one party regime ruled by TR's so called
"Progressive" Republicans. The text quoted below came from the same page
103 of DAGGERS.
"The International Workers of the World hadn't been. The Wobblies had tried
to call strikes during what they called the capitalist-imperialist Great War. Many
of the Wobbly leaders and militants had been summarily shot in the back of
the head for that under the Espionage Act, as de facto enemy agents, so estab-
lished in nice fair fifteen minute executive-court hearings. Others had been
lynched by local patriots on a free-enterprise basis; one group had been
locked in boxcars and left in the Arizona desert to die of thirst and heatstroke
just to drive home the neighbors disapproval.
"Most of the remainder were still repenting their sins in Federal Bureau
of Security corrective-labor camps in very remote places doing very hard
work for very long days in very unpleasant climates on a diet of just
enough scientifically enriched and fortified corn-and-soy mush to keep
them going; it was also scientifically designed to be absolutely tasteless.
You didn't die of starvation on that, or of scurvy or pellagra, and the
profoundly unsympathetic FBS guards didn't beat you to death with their
lead-weighted rubber truncheons or shoot you or lock you in a small iron
box to broil or freeze... unless you tried to escape or shirked or disobeyed
orders... but after a while you might not want to live very much."
The understated sarcasm in the passages I quoted above makes it
plain Stirling himself did not approve of how the Wobblies were
treated. And I agree with him! However much I would disagree with the
views of the so called International Workers, they had every right to
their own ideas and beliefs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the
US Constitution. They should never have been treated so brutally and
any trials of the Wobblies should have been in the regular state or US
courts, with all the protections granted to accused persons in United
States law. AND only for charges based on actual crimes allegedly
committed by the Wobblies. Not for mere political opinions.
In Chapter Seven, page 136, I saw this: "This is Universal Imports," a voice said at the other end." As all readers of Ian
Fleming's James Bond stories should immediately see, Stirling was having
a little joke with the "Universal Exports" used as a cover by 007 and
other agents of the British Secret Service.
Here I digress to touch on a minor misprint I noticed on page 276
(Chapter Fourteen): "Beds of chrysanthemums glowed gold and white and
red in the dusk against the green LAWS...." Of course I realized at
once this was simply a misprint and Stirling had meant "lawns."
Some of my comments above, especially of Luz and Ciara, were
critical. But I don't want readers to think I did not enjoy reading
DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. I did! So much so that I stopped taking as many
notes as I should have for writing a really satisfactory article about
this book. I loved the story and it was a true page turner.
DAGGERS is very much an action/adventure novel, and not all readers
might care for that, especially the more violent incidents to be found
in the book. But Stirling, like Poul Anderson, always added so much more
than simple blood and thunder and derring-do to his stories. Many
times, through out the tale, readers will find historical and
philosophical asides adding richness, depth, and nuance to the plot.
The example I quoted below, selected almost at random, came from Chapter
Thirteen, page 268 of DAGGERS, Luz speaking first.
"What I've heard is that the Red Gang...the Honghang...and a faction within the
Green Gang...don't want to cooperate with Mr. X. Partly it's a regional thing; the
Red Gang are linked to southern China and the Canton triads, and so are some
elements within the Green Gang. Politics are involved too; the Green and Red
gangs were allied for a while to support Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang a few
years back, before and during the war...they called it the Mutual Progress Asso-
ciation of the Chinese Republic. The Honghang want to revive that."
"We heard about that," Tommy said. "Didn't come to much, after Yuntai's Dad
declared himself Emperor."
Here Stirling shows his knowledge of Chinese history, in particular
of how Sun Yat-Sen's base of support was mostly limited to southern
China, with the northern provinces either indifferent to or hostile to
his aspirations of founding a Republic of China after the fall of the
Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911-12. And "Yuntai's Dad" was none other than the
treacherous Yuan Shikai who, after deliberately not fighting as hard as
he could have for the Ch'ing, made a deal with the naive Sun that in
return for forcing the abdication of the last Ch'ing Emperor, Sun would
agree to Yuan becoming President of China. In our timeline Yuan tried to
secure his grip on power firmly enough that he could proclaim himself
Emperor, but failed. In the Black Chamber timeline, he succeeded, but
only at the heavy cost of becoming a puppet of Japan. To quote some more
from page 268:
It's ever so common, just being a President," Holly said, with an ironic quirk
at the corner of her mouth, as she glanced sidelong at the Americans. "Even a
President for life with a son being groomed for the job."
"As opposed to being Lord Protector," Ciara said, her tone equally pawky-dry.
The fact that he'd chosen Cromwell's title didn't endear Viscount Milner to her,
and she hadn't liked him to begin with. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had
sympathized with the Boers during the South African War and its guerrilla after-
math, and she'd heard a good many stories--some even true--of Milner's and
Kitchener's cruelties when she was an impressionable child.
In the Black Chamber's timeline Theodore Roosevelt had become de
facto President for Life and was grooming his eldest son to eventually
succeed him. And in our history the British had been harsh in breaking
Boer resistance to their rule, including the use of concentration camps
as a means of doing that. And anyone knowledgeable in British history
understands at once what "Lord Protector" means! All these are good
example of how much Stirling could "pack" into his stories.
99 comments:
Sean,
Thank you for your "Critical Look."
In the bond books, the cover for the Secret Service is "Universal Exports" so Stirling inverted this as "Universal Imports."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Many thanks for uploading this article of mine. And, dang, I made a mistake there, in that paragraph about "Universal Imports." Would you correct the second sentence, changing my use of "Universal Imports" to "Universal Exports"?
Also, I now think my first quote from page 103, the bit about San Francisco being a pro-union city, should have ended the immediately preceding paragraph, with double quote marks, of course. Would you do that?
Again, many thanks! Sean
Sean: good essay! Detailed comments to follow.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Many thanks! Esp. since I'm not totally satisfied with my article. And I'm very flattered that you think my essay is worth getting detailed comments from you!
I did take a quick look at what other readers thought of DAGGESRS IN DARKNESS. Some thought there should have been less conversation or dialogue in the book. Because that slowed down the action/adventure parts. Others complained there was too much stuff about how people dressed, or what they ate.
I mostly disagree with such criticisms. I certainly did not mind the lengthy conversations!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I hope I have made the changes that you requested?
I am inclined to leave your article at the top of the blog for two or three days so that it gets max coverage. (This fits with me being busy elsewhere certainly tomorrow and meanwhile catching up with rereading PA.)
Stirling certainly imagines some harsh treatment for enemies of the state. I am sympathetic to the IWWs but would not want to see that kind of treatment dished out to anyone - Nazis, Kluxers, Draka etc.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
You did! Except that the "Universal Imports" paragraph should have "Imports" in the first sentence.
Thanks for thinking you would like my article to stay at the top for a few days!
Unfortunately, the harsh punishment Stirling shows us being meted out to the Wobblies is all too plausible. Because that is how real people and real nations have too often treated their opponents. And is happening right now in places like Sinkiang, where the Peking regime is crushing the Uighurs. And many other places around the world.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
OK. I hope it is right this time.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, you did. Many thanks!
And I'm still excited by what Stirling said about SpaceX in the combox for "Another Technicality." I had not quite realized how successful were the Falcon 9 and Starship rockets/space ships being built by Elonn Musk's company!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We might have some real life sf events to discuss on the blog.
Paul.
There was a dispute in a workplace in Lancaster and the union representing the workforce was - the IWW!
There is still a Sheriff of Nottingham and a while back he broke a strike.
Legends live.
OK:
The IWW: about 75% of the stuff described in DAGGERS actually happened, including the bit about locking Wobblies in a boxcar and leaving them in the desert with no water.
In OTL it was mostly "private enterprise", if you include groups like the American Protective League, who were self-organized vigilantes who worked closely with local and Federal law-enforcement. The Espionage Act that we actually had was very sweeping, and its powers were used by the Wilson government like a sledgehammer.
In the Black Chamber history, the federal government is already stronger and the response is more channeled through official action, but it's also more drastic for the reasons listed above.
Feelings at the time were running very high; the general consensus was that once war was declared, the only legitimate discussion was how to win it as efficiently as possible - TR certainly thought so. The decision of the national government settled the question and was binding on everyone, including those who'd disagreed.
In the Black Chamber TL, America is not only at war with Germany, the Germans just destroyed three cities with V-gas (London, Paris, and Bordeaux), killed millions of civilians, look likely to dominate at least Europe and possibly the world...
... and -tried- to do the same to the US by destroying all the big east-coast cities with V-gas as well, and did launch at Savannah and killed over a thousand American civilians.
Furthermore, they did it with the help of some domestic extremists.
I calculate that the population would go totally rip***t in those circumstances, in a combination of terror and killing rage.
So something far more radical than the (quite brutal) crackdowns and censorship that happened in OTL's WW1 would be very likely.
The unions:
It's not a matter of the Party making the unions puppets. The PRP is corporatist and somewhat authoritarian, but it's not totalitarian.
It's more of a symbiosis.
The Party wants a smooth-running economy with a degree of planning, though they're (mostly) not in favor of wholesale nationalization -- the railways are an exception (as they were temporarily in OTL, by the way) because the rail companies screwed up the business of mobilization and moving troops in both histories; in the Black Chamber one it happened earlier and the response was more drastic. For reasons I'll go into if you want, railroads are something of a "natural monopoly" and do better than most industries under centralized management.
The PRP isn't exactly anti-business. TR thought that big corporations were inevitable under modern conditions, but that they needed to be supervised for the public good lest their concentrated, monopoly power be abused. He'd thought that since the early 1900's, and had become more convinced of it later -- his speech on the "New Nationalism"in 1910 is the foundation I used for what his policies would be if he had the power to implement them, along with the Progressive Party platform of 1912.
He thought the "trust-busting" variety of Progressives who wanted to break up the corporations were nostalgic dreamers, actually a sort of ultra-conservative "sincere rural Toryism", trying to bring back a small-town, small-business shopkeeper-and-workshop paradise that was actually lost forever. That was one of the differences between his wing of the Progressive movement and Woodrow Wilson's. In this TL, Teddy wins.
He and the PRP want the unions as genuine partners; and the unions get substantial influence inside the tent, the price being accepting a degree of discipline. And of course supporting the Party politically!
The members -- and the number of unionized workers expands vastly -- are mostly delighted, because they get better pay, more job security, and improved working conditions. Schools, housing and medical care all get better too. And they don't have to worry much about strikes; remember that those were usually fairly traumatic experiences for the strikers, too.
(And wages and working conditions were often abysmally bad at the time, in ways that make an Amazon warehouse today look like paradise on earth.)
There are also psychic rewards; the PRP's propaganda arms tend to idealize the "workingman" as a heroic Builder of America.
And the PRP is fanatically devoted to education, including vocational education, and what we'd call "human capital formation", so there are big increases in opportunities for working stiffs to build skills and qualifications. The PRP-affiliated unions are heavily involved in this.
America gets a system (partly modeled on the German though this isn't acknowledged publicly) that combines apprenticeship with formal technical-school training to increase the skills of the workforce, and gives the brighter sparks subsidized access to higher technical education in engineering and so forth.
There's also a much earlier version of the post-1945 "GI Bill" for veterans, and since there's universal national service, that has broad implications.
About Sven: I see your point, Sean, but you do have to admit that "impregnate and run" has been a common male trait since time out of mind, usually only constrained by female objections and social customs, which Luz took care weren't involved. She picked Sven for his genes, on a eugenic basis; as an individual he's irrelevant.
IIRC, it's mentioned that Luz spins Sven a tale about how she and Ciara were engaged to each other's brothers who were then killed in battle, and that they want children who are blood-relatives but are too grief-stricken to think about marriage. (Luz muses: "Perhaps I should have been a novelist...")
Luz is a spy; her job involves spinning deceptions and manipulating people with them.
She just wants Sven's "germ plasm", and then him safely out of the way.
He has no idea of her and Ciara's real identities, and he's returning to his own country far far away, so between the one and the other he's unlikely to ever be a nuisance.
However, when he's killed, she's only mildly regretful.
The world is in the middle of a catastrophic war, millions of both soldiers and civilians are dying all over the planet in an orgy of bloodshed, famine, plague and chaos.
Why should she be overly concerned about one more?
She did know him slightly, and rather liked him, so she thinks it's a pity, but this is a ruthless professional killer we're talking about, and not a person who wastes much empathy on those outside her bounds of kin and comradeship.
He's not even an American, which means she doesn't have any burden of duty towards him either.
About TR and Ted JR.:
Ted was a very capable man; not quite a "stupor mundi" of TR's type, but those are extremely rare.
He was very smart, very forceful and very brave: he won the Congressional Medal of Honor in WWII, and was the only man of general rank who came ashore in the first wave, despite being middle-aged and with a bad limp from his injuries in WWI (he'd been both shot and gassed, nearly to blindness)
The Utah Beach landings were a complete shambolic mess -- the first wave was put ashore 2 miles from where they were supposed to be, scattered up and down the beach and pinned under heavy enemy fire.
Ted Jr. limped ashore from a Higgins boat in the first wave, realized what had happened, and went from one battalion to another (he used a cane) and got them organized, off the beach and then took the German defenses of the original objective from the rear just in time for the second wave to not get massacred. It's nearly a miracle that he wasn't shot again, since this involved exposing himself to enemy fire repeatedly, at close range, and this a man who couldn't exactly dash from one bit of cover to another!
He -did- organize the American Legion in OTL, by the way. And he held senior positions in both Puerto Rico and the Philippines; besides a successful career in business, and he had political ambitions -- but FDR was very hostile to him, and that put the kybosh on that.
So it's very credible, I think, that he'd do better in the Black Chamber timeline, winning distinction in the Mexican Intervention and the Great War, organizing the Legion, and then being given a chance to shine.
As TR notes, there had been a father-and-son pair of Presidents in the 19th century (the two Adamses) so it's not without precedent.
In point of fact, as I've written the TL, he does become President in 1932, and holds that office until the 1950's.
More future info!
Russia: I didn't want to go into detail, because there's already a lot of exposition... 8-).
What basically happens is that Nicholas abdicates in 1916 as the Russian state and army collapse, his first cousin (once removed) the Grand Duke is a German puppet for a while in a rump Russian state minus the Brest-Litovsk boundaries, roughly, and also eastern Siberia, seized by the Japanese in 1916-17, after Russia drops out of the war, ostensibly to keep the Germans out.
Japan, as in OTL, had been formally at war with Germany since 1914.
Nicholas starts getting ideas of being an actual independent ruler, so he has a convenient accident
The Germans then rule the whole of Russia ("to restore order) as far as Irkutsk, divided up into a series of "Governments-General" minus some parts like Galicia and Bessarabia under Austro-Hungarian rule, also minus large chunks of Central Asia (which is chaotic and judged not worth bothering with for now by Berlin) and parts of the Caucasus; the Germans get a puppet kingdom under a German monarch in Georgia, the Turks get the rest with a German enclave around Baku for the oil.
At the Armistice, the Germans de-facto recognize Japan's gains and Siberia is divided roughly along the Lake Baikal/Irkutsk boundary; Germany sees Japan as a very useful way to keep the English-speaking powers distracted in the Pacific and slips them a lot of under-the-table help.
The Romanovs are given a nice country palace with a generous stipend and every comfort, and a considerable German "guard" and told to keep their mouths firmly shut, both there and on occasional carefully supervised spells in Berlin.
The Czarevitch dies young of natural causes despite good medical care (he was had hemophilia) and his sisters are encouraged to marry suitable German nobles -- their mother was German, after all. Nicholas gardens and gets very religious; his wife goes quietly nuts. (She was... eccentric... as witness Rasputin.)
The rest of the Russian nobility get to keep their titles and estates, -provided- they swear allegiance to the Kaiser and Germany, which most are willing to do.
The deal includes learning German and their children serving in the German military, attending German universities, and so forth.
A lot of the Russian nobility (especially in the western provinces) had some German in their background anyway. The Baltic Germans are assimilated seamlessly into the Greater Reich.
The Governments-General are gradually and eventually made into Grand Duchies and whatnot and incorporated directly into the Greater Reich, after intensive settlement by Germans (and Netherlanders and Scandinavians), during which period a lot of Russians end up as laborers in other parts of the Reich, mixed thoroughly with other East European nationalities in a way intended to "denationalize" them.
German policy is to gradually assimilate the other nationalities, leading to eventual German citizenship. To that end, all education is in German, printing and publication in other languages are forbidden, German names are plastered on everything, etc.
Oh, and here's the citation for Ted Jr.'s Medal of Honor at Utah Beach on D-Day:
“His valor, courage, and presence in the very front of the attack and his complete unconcern at being under heavy fire inspired the troops to heights of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Although the enemy had the beach under constant direct fire, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt moved from one locality to another, rallying men around him, directed and personally led them against the enemy. Under his seasoned, precise, calm, and unfaltering leadership, assault troops reduced beach strong points and rapidly moved inland with minimum casualties. He thus contributed substantially to the successful establishment of the beachhead in France.”
Incidentally, his own son -- Quentin II -- was a 2nd Lieutenant and came ashore on Omaha Beach; they were the only father-and-son combo to go in with the first wave.
A Tale of Two Time Lines.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Real world SF events? Absolutely! Just think of the Falcon 9 and Starship rockets/space ships being built by SpaceX!
So there are still some real world Wobblies? I thought the IWW was an American thing, not that there were some in the UK.
While I agree people have a right to organized into cooperative bodies, unions, to protect and defend their interests, I don't agree they are always in the right or that all strikes are legitimate. So there will be times when a Sheriff of Nottingham should rightly break them up.
Mr. Stirling: MANY thanks for your lengthy and fascinating comments, which I've already read twice. I'll need time to think about them before I feel ready to offer more detailed remarks of my own.
Ad astra! Sean
And I am just about to turn in. I will have a fascinating day trip to our Lake District tomoz.
Kaor, Paul!
Have fun! And I will be interested in knowing what you think of DAGGERS, assuming you have not already read that book.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: by the way, how did you like the younger generation?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Do you mean the four children who were the daughters of Luz and Ciara? At three or four years of age they certainly seem to be bright, active, energetic, and very likable children. But, perhaps just a bit too IDEAL to be quite plausible? I mean, I wondered just now if they seemed just a bit too "perfect." Many children in the real world might have disabilities, even if only fairly minor vision flaws. Or major ones such as soon developing juvenile diabetes, which is what happened to a late brother of mine.
Maybe I should have thought of a paragraph like this for my "Critical Look" article! And I did not think it plausible for all four of these children to be girls, if they were only fraternal, not identical twins.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, their father was picked for robust good health, including good eyesight, high intelligence, and good looks - he’s sort of a Nordic Adonis, amateur athlete, scholar, etc.
Luz also checked that his parents, siblings and all four grandparents were alive, had no disabilities and had good medical status. It helps to be a member of an espionage agency…
As she thinks to herself, Secretary Davenport (of the Department of Public health and Eugenics) would have approved if he wasn’t such a prig.
Luz is a fine specimen herself, and while Ciara isn’t so outstanding physically she’s healthy and has genius-level intelligence.
Selective breeding does work; it’s just usually too difficult and awkward for human beings.
As to the gender, I’m the youngest of four boys - I was a last try for a girl, since my father wanted daughters. I know other families with all girls. The genders balance out but only over large averages.
Oh, and Colleen and Mary are identical twins; Patricia and Luciana are fraternal.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Understood, what you said about how Luz picked the luckless Sven liked a prize stud horse! But, even so, there can be no absolute guaranteeing that even children with so carefully selected parents will not have any disabilities, no matter how minor.
So, IMO, it still would have been more likely if either Patricia or Luciana had been a boy.
And I still think Luz may face trouble in the future from some of these children, once they find out how carefully she arranged matters to make sure Sven would have no role in their lives as a father. Because, in the real world, that kind of trouble is what has happened.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If you remember, I was involved in the proofreading of DAGGERS but have not yet read the published edition.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Oops! I did forget! That was a great honor, being one of the proof readers. I am sure you caught some mistakes, misspellings, and awkward turns of phrase, and suggested corrections.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Re the brutal treatment of the IWW/Wobblies: while I agree the passions and fury aroused by the German V gas attacks on London, Paris, Bordeaux, and the attempted attacks on those US cities makes it understandable why it happened, I would still deny it was RIGHT. So, while the US was perforce of necessity now at war with Germany, merely SAYING that should not be so is not an act of treason. It would have been enough to just fire IWW people who tried to start antiwar strikes.
I have heard of how nasty the Wilson Administration, with VASTLY less provocation from Germany, were to those who opposed the US intervening in WW I. And the Espionage Act should have granted the Gov't only narrowly defined powers, applicable only to persons who actually engaged in espionage.
And as regards the policies of the "Progressive" Republicans both as regards the unions and as a whole, I can agree they had many good ideas. What makes me uneasy is how those policies still ended with expanding the power of the US Gov't. Concentrated power in the gov't, any gov't, WILL eventually be abused, considering how flawed and imperfect human beings are. And I have no confidence that "Progressives" a century later would be as cautious as TR himself was.
As regards Sven, it would have been less repugnant if he had survived to be a "nuisance" as regards the children he had begotten. Yes, Luz was a ruthless professional killer and an expert at deception, as a spy has to be, but that does not excuse her from behaving with ordinary decency when not "on the job."
And I was impressed by what I read up about TR's eldest son, Theodore Roosevelt III. A man of undoubted courage and very real abilities. I can easily see how a de facto President for Life like TR would want him to succeed him as President. And if the younger Theodore's own eldest son Theodore IV, was also a man of ability, I can see it being possible that he would not be merely President, but Emperor!
And D Day, in OTL was not a disastrous defeat for the Anglo/Americans BECAUSE of TR's son Theodore? That is truly impressive! What surprised me was finding out there was no intention, at first, of having any officer of general's rank going ashore with the first wave. It SEEMS to make sense to me that a general should go with the first wave, for an officer with the AUTHORITY needed to handle the more than likely possibility of facing crises and emergencies being on the scene.
If Gen. Roosevelt had been killed or seriously wounded very soon after landing on Normandy, I can see the Germans, despite their surprise at where the long expected Anglo/American attack occurred, defeating the invasion attempt. That would certainly have meant the war dragging on much longer than in OTL, with incalculable consequences. We might even have seen Stalin deciding to make a deal with Hitler and ending the war in the east at the 1940 German/Soviet borders.
Next, Russia. I still find it difficult for a victorious, but seriously strained and war battered Germany being able to seize all of Russia, both vast and populous. I can see Germany going beyond the gains won in the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Lenin in OTL, but not that much further. It would look like a German shepherd trying to eat a Russian bear!
After all, the Regent, Grand Duke Nicholas, would be doing his utmost, as far as it was possible for him to do, to save something of Russia. And that would have included moving the gov't from St. Petersburg to Moscow, to get beyond immediate reach of Germany. Which, btw, is what Lenin did. I still have my doubts Germany could have seized Russia as far east as Lake Baikal. Not if Berlin was also busy grabbing all of France and fighting the US!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I was forced to truncate some of my remarks into two parts.
I am glad the Germans did not massacre the Romnanovs. But I thought it was too neat and schematic for you to say Alexis II, in the Black Chamber timeline, died young because of his hemophilia. Not all hemophiliacs die young! It would have been interesting, plot wise, to have Alexis surviving to become a nuisance, even a danger to Germany. A natural rallying point, as the rightful Tsar, around whom the Russians could unite.
The scheme outlined of how the Greater German Reich would assimilate and Germanicize non Russian peoples as far east as Lake Baikal was bold and audacious. But it strikes me as too complex, too dependent on everything working just right, for me to think it likely to completely succeed. The Poles, for example, would stubbornly resist that, because that is exactly what they did to both the Germans and Russians in OTL. So, I would expect both Russian and Polish revolts. And I think some of the leaders of those revolts would be Polish and Russian aristocrats refusing to become Germanized.
You mentioned the Greater Reich using Scandinavians to help "colonize" its eastern conquests. Does that mean Denmark, Norway, and Sweden more or less willingly fell under German domination?
Yes, I can see Georgia again becoming "independent." But would the Georgians accept a GERMAN king when their old royal family, the Bagratids, still existed? I think it would be more prudent for the Germans to set up a Bagratid as king who accepted their "advice."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
A bit.
Paul.
Sean: In re the Wobblies: as my father said to me once, being "right" is sort of a meager consolation if you're lying on the ground bleeding while someone kicks your face in.
Trying to start a strike in the circumstances of our 1917 was stupid; trying to do it in the aggravated ones of the Chamberverse TL is so stupid you deserve to die for the capital crime of intense idiocy. Assuming more people agree with you than actually do is a common human failing, but it can get you killed -- that's one instance of it.
Also, there's a good argument that tolerating dissent in a serious war is a bad idea. It's like the "broken windows" theory of policing; things tend to unravel from the edges in. Letting people get away with small violations of the rules makes violations more common and bigger.
If everyone thinks everyone -else- is fully committed to the war effort, they'll act that way too because they're afraid of the neighbors' disapproval/hatred, and if you get people to -act- in a certain way, after a while they'll (mostly) start thinking that way too, which reduces cognitive dissonance.
If there's "space" for those opinions, they may grow.
Note how in both the US and Britain in our WWII a lot of propaganda was directed against people spreading "defeatist rumors" and identifying them as -de facto- enemy agents.
Incidentally, the comment by my father was in the course of some advice on fighting, the gist of which was that you should never pick a fight you didn't think you could win; but if a fight looks inevitable anyway, hit first without warning, keep on hitting until they're down, and then hit them some more with any heavy objet that comes to hand. It isn't over when they're down, it's only over when they can't get up.
It's extremely good advice. Most men puff and threaten and push and circle before they actually get down to hitting. If you skip the preliminaries and bore right in with fell intent, you're much more likely to win.
Luz makes this point when she's talking to the Scelhams in their pub in DAGGERS: she's not a rooster and isn't interested in crowing from the top of a dungheap.
On fighting and politics:
Andy Jackson was in a duel once with a man who was renowned as being very quick with a pistol. Jackson was a good shot, but not as quick, so he decided to stand edge-on with his left arm over his heart and let the other man take the first shot.
Jackson was hit in the chest, breaking two ribs and lodging the pistol-ball close to his heart.
He then took slow deliberate aim, held it for twenty seconds so the other guy could see death coming and nobody could be in any doubt as to what he intended, and then shot him dead. Then he walked over the doctor and sat down on the stool to be bandaged.
Now, -that- took icewater in the veins.
Andy was what they called in those days "a killing gentleman".
Later, in the 1830's, when South Carolina threatened secession and Jackson was President, Andy was asked what he'd do if they carried through on the threat.
He replied that he'd muster an army, march into South Carolina, kill anyone who tried to resist, and when he'd chased down the political leaders of the secession movement he would just "hang them high as Haman" after a short drumhead court-martial.
(Biblical reference, btw: Esther 3-6).
Absolutely nobody doubted that he'd do -exactly- what he said he would, and the South Carolina fire-eaters backed down. Nobody was afraid of President Buchanan in 1860.
But in Jackson's day, those would-be secessionists were mentally in the shoes of that man in the duel, watching Andy taking aim and then waiting so they could look down the barrel of the pistol and see their own death coming.
Sean: about Alexis -- sure, hemophilia alone isn't always fatal (though it was more often in those days).
But Alexis had been ill to the point where his life was feared for multiple times. He had hemophilia B (not that they knew it then) and the prognosis for children with a bad case of that is, to put it mildly, not good. Clotting problems, increased vulnerability to infection, all sorts of other stuff.
(That was why his mother was in thrall to Rasputin, btw.)
Sean: as regards Russian revolts, it's mentioned in DAGGERS that when someone in their sphere revolts against the Greater Reich, they spray V-gas from the air on every town, village, hamlet and farm in the affected area.
And on any other concentration of people they can spot from the air.
(The Japanese use the same technique.)
This doesn't take much -- 20 pounds is a million lethal doses, if perfectly distributed. Which isn't possible, of course, but you get the idea.
It's like crop-dusting with DDT, only with an insecticide for people.
Spray, wait for the chemicals to decay, send in death-squads to kill any survivors, labor-gangs to bury the remains, then move more docile settlers in to the echoing void.
After that happens once or twice, it isn't necessary to do it very often.
Given a choice of Germanization or extermination, most people will pick Door A, I think.
Sean: about the kids... "orphan of the Great War" or "your father died in the Great War" is a really convincing explanation in this universe, since there are probably over a hundred million people in that position.
Sean: Scandinavia is a group of pro-German neutrals in this TL (Sweden at least -was- a pro-German neutral in OTL's WW1, something they tried to forget afterwards). As Greece and the Latin League are pro-Oceanian neutrals.
As more Scandinavians move to the Reich (which pretty much replaces the US as a destination for emigrants) this becomes more so.
Also, Germany is now the main market for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish exports and the main source of imports.
In this TL, as in ours, Finland becomes nominally independent under a German king. In OTL, they dropped the king once Germany was defeated; in the Chamberverse they keep him, and Finland is a sort of semi-autonomous quasi-part of the Reich. They don't try to Germanize the Finns -in situ-, apart from making German the common second language, but Finnish emigrants to the rest of the Reich blend in, which in the long run has backwash effects in Finland proper.
As to Andrew Jackson Thomas Hart Benton who had once shot Jackson, and later was a firm political ally of his, summed up the man well during the Nullification Crisis:
"When Robert Hayne ventured, ‘I don’t believe he would really hang anybody, do you?’ Thomas Hart Benton replied, ‘Few people have believed he would hang Arbuthnot and shoot Ambrister . . . I tell you, Hayne, when Jackson begins to talk about hanging, they can begin to look out for ropes!’
Re Wobblies:
I agree with a lot of what Mr Stirling says above although approaching it from a different angle:
thinking that more people agree with you than do is a very bad mistake;
on the other hand, proponents of alternative ideas need to push their ideas as much as possible and find out in practice how much support they can get;
sometimes, radicals have to acknowledge that they are in such a small minority that their only realistic option is mere propagandizing, not organizing mass action!;
on the other hand, what had seemed radical can become commonplace;
if a country is under attack with weapons of mass destruction (instruments of genocide), then national defense is an immediate priority!;
on the other hand, another, slightly longer-term, priority is to do something about this global system of armed nation-states which get into such conflicts in the first place;
the IWW wanted to bring about a better world system;
I share their aim while thinking that their means were inadequate.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
As regards the Wobblies, I need to stress that I am not disagreeing with you that they were wrong to oppose the US being at war with the Greater German Reich, because the latter HAD attacked the US, after all. Nor do I disagree with you that it was unwise of the IWW, given the passions of the time, in the Chamberverse, to attempt stirring up antiwar strikes. What I regard with distaste was the brutality of the treatment meted out to the Wobblies. Arbitrary, 15 minutes drumhead "trials" followed by almost immediate execution and locking up other Wobblies to die of the heat in the Arizona desert does not fit my idea of justice.
So, breaking up antiwar Wobbly strikes and firing them from their jobs should have been punishment enough.
I have heard of Andrew Jackson being in duels, but not the details you gave. But, as a Catholic I cannot approve of duels, which I regard as nothing but the crime of homicide. Ever since the Council of Trent, the Church has fiercely condemned dueling, with Popes as recent as Leo XIII continuing to condemn and the 1917 Code of Canon Law imposing automatic excommunication on all Catholics who took part in any way in duels.
The decisive actions Jackson took with the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina I do regard far more favorably. And what might have happened if, instead of being so weak and indecisive, President James Buchanan had taken similarly decisive measures in 1860?
I agree that hemophilia nearly killed the unfortunate Alexis more than once, before the massacre in Ekaterinberg, but I still thought it disappointingly anticlimactic that you plan to have him dying young in the Chamberverse. Because it looks too neat, convenient and schematic. An Alexis living to mature years and raising Hell for the Germans would have been more interesting!
I forgot about the Germans and Japanese using V gas to stamp out revolts in their spheres. I agree one or two examples of that would DISCOURAGE rebellions. And that many who had not yet rebelled would resign themselves to being Germanized.
What if Polish and Russian rebels waited till there were thousands of Germans settled among them before rebelling? Would the Reich V gas them if that also meant killing many Germans? I can see that causing trouble and controversy!
I agree with what you said about Denmark, Norway, and Sweden falling more and more under German influence, both politically and economically. And I did know of how the Finnish Parliament elected Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse as king of Finland in October 1918. Germany's defeat the very next month made both the Finns and the Prince agree by December that he would not become king.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Frankly, I'm sick of the very word RADICAL. All we ever got from radicals like Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, et nauseatingly al, has been bloody and brutal tyrannies. And I have no use for the impossible fantasies of socialism and anarchism which were favored by many of the Wobblies.
And your wishful hope about somehow doing away with the nation state and the human inclination to be tribal is another impossibility. Because I believe the potentiality for us being quarrelsome is INNATE.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Radix" is Latin for "root." It has come to mean changing society from the roots up but there are also radical conservatives who want to get back to what they see as the roots of society.
Society has changed a lot and will continue to do so. Stasis is impossible. We can only try to ensure that future changes are not too bad, e.g., if there is mass unemployment, then the unemployed should not be deprived or impoverished but should share in the benefits of the technology that has made their jobs, but not their lives, redundant.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Oh, I know there are radical "conservatives" as well, people I regard with almost as much disgust and impatience as I do the left wing version.
Of course societies will change, no argument there. The problem being, as I see it, is that so many of those changes, from 1914 onwards, has been BAD. Politically, some of those bad changes were an increasingly centralized, burdensome, autocratic, and incompetently heavy handed state. Socially, I have only disgust and loathing for changes like "legalized" abortion.
I certainly agree on the desirability of trying to make sure changes do not have to be too bad for most people. And if something like the situation seen in Anderson's "Quixote and the Windmill" comes to pass, it would be VERY good if the "Citizen's Credit" seen in that story enabled people who lost their jobs due to technological advances, survived in reasonable comfort. The problem, of course, as Anderson pointed out, that won't solve the problems caused by despair, frustration, or sheer boredom, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Transitional generations will have problems of adjustment but people born and brought up in a different culture will have different perspectives and expectations.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I remain skeptical. A society where only a few does any kind of work they find meaningful will still have many, many, many people falling prey to despair, ennui, frustration, and anger. At best, we might get the decadent hedonism on Earth in GENESIS, after AIs and their computers took over all the real work, including the actual governing of society. These people were born into such a culture, and how did they react? With idle hedonism and increasing unwillingness to have children.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
People will engage in what are to them meaningful activities whereas paid work is often anything but meaningful - alienated labor.
Paul.
Paul: the thing about paid work in the private sector is that it can't exist unless someone is willing to pay for it, which means it's always serving some human want.
It may be boring, unpleasant and arduous, but it's never -unwanted- or just digging holes and filling them in again, or drinking to get to sundown quicker.
As an aside, this is why the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in the 1930's was one of the New Deal's best ideas.
Rather than makework or a dole, the CCC gave actual useful work in almost every case: we're still using the roads and parks and schools and post-offices and wilderness lodges and shelter-belts and erosion-control works they built.
I've read a number of memoires by participants, and one of the things they emphasize is that not only did it give the young men participating three square meals a day and a bunk when those things were hard to find, but it gave them a sense of doing really useful work every day.
The stuff they made wasn't only useful; it was mostly handsome too. So were a lot of the projects of the related WPA (Works Progress Administration).
Besides construction and infrastructure (it did most of the Tennessee Valley Authority work, for example), it also employed artists and writers and academics on some brilliantly imaginative endeavors, ranging from murals in public buildings to research compilations.
The WPA State and city guides are still used -- I rely on them heavily for my work, and they give you an tremendous sense of both the physical and social realities of concrete places and times. They're priceless time-capsules! And things like having people collect reminiscences by surviving former slaves in the US South have been providing invaluable raw material to historians ever since.
It was all emergency improvisation in a case of massive market failure, but very well done.
Right on. It shows what can be done.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: The first two paragraphs of your response to Paul's remark about "alienated labor" were far superior to what I had been thinking of saying. Briefly, I was going to say that a man can find meaning even in "boring, unpleasant and arduous" work if doing so at least enables hims to support himself without being a burden to anyone. And even more meaningfully if he's supporting his family.
And the CCC seems to have been one of the few really good ideas of FDR and his New Dealers!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Our discussion about "radical" again brought up in my mind what Dominic Flandry said about politically naive and simplistic extremists. So I will quote what he said about radicals from Chapter XV of THE REBEL WORLDS: " 'Root'--radix--you radicals are all alike," Flandry said. "You think everything springs from one or two unique causes, and if only you can get at them, everything will automatically become paradisical. History doesn't go that way. Read some and see what the result of every resort to violence by reformists has been."
And Flandry was right! The violence caused, started, encouraged, or defended by radicals has so SELDOM brought about anything of any good. All we have gotten from practically all of them has been wars, civil wars, and bloodily brutal tyrannies from the French Revolution onwards.
No, my view is that of Edmund Burke, as exemplified by his prophetic REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. Real reform, if it's to be successful, has to be slow, patient, incremental, built on persuading, not coercing people into accepting reforms.
Btw, I started rereading A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS. And, I'm trying to pay attention to small, but interesting details!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
However, existing regimes make extensive use of violence both in conflicts between themselves and to control their populations whereas many of their opponents campaign vigorously against them without resorting to violence.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I will try again: that is NOT because they are regimes, but because of how flawed, imperfect, prone to corruption, etc., ALL human beings are. A tyrannical regime like that of Putin's Russia or Maoist China could not have been oppressive if the people who run them, or support them, were not flawed themselves. Oppression also goes back to how TRIBAL humans tend to me, to resent those among them who don't "fit in."
And I am not opposing peaceful, lawful efforts at bringing about reforms, or alleged reforms. I would also urge such people to keep in mind they might be wrong about some of the things they are advocating for.
Ad astra! Sean
Or as the saying goes, “From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can be made”.
This is why political Utopianism invariably and without exception ends in tragedy, farce or some mixture of the two.
If you try for heaven on Earth you get hell; if you try to make people into angels, you get devils.
I think each of us needs to work on ourselves (meditation etc) and join with others to find out what can be done about society. Regarding the latter, much more time is spent on immediate emergencies than on longer term goals.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Absolutely! Political Utopianism ALWAYS ends as you described, either as tragedy or farce, or some mix of both. The grim horrors of Nazism and Communism were wholly tragic (and evil), while the Fascism of Mussolini in Italy was a tragicomedy. Because, when push came to shove, Mussolini and most of his followers lacked the fanaticism and cruelty of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.
Paul: But do you acknowledge that the fault lies not in the state, any state, as such, but in US?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course. And the state is a means by which one part of society controls the rest of society so the state itself is not the primary problem.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I would stress that any person, group, section, or part of a people within that society can be potentially as tyrannical as anybody else. I think we can agree on that as well.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Certainly. People starting out with some very good intentions have done some very bad things.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that is a huge reason why I distrust concentrating too much power in the state, any state, whatever forms those states takes. Most human beings simply can't be trusted with too much power. And that is why I believe the most tolerable states we can hope for, whatever forms they take, are those which accepts limits on their powers (whether or not thru a written constitution or a mix of law, custom, precedent) and respects the rights of the people they govern.
Because of my discussions with Mr. Stirling about the children of Luz and Ciara, I've been thinking I should add a new paragraph to my "Critical Look" article. Would you add, if it's not too much trouble, the text written below immediately after the tenth paragraph?
====================================
Despite my distaste for the methods Luz took for her and Ciara to get children, that does not mean I am hostile to those children! Colleen, Mary, Patricia, and Luciana are thoroughly likable, bright, active, and energetic. I did wonder if they seemed too ideal, too perfect to be entirely convincing. But, I can see how, if the parents were healthy, intelligent, and free of any overt disabilities, that kind of selective breeding would maximize the chances of any children they had also being intelligent and healthy. But I continue to have my doubts about the plausibility of all four of them being girls.
=====================================
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I want to see a fully accountable state in the near future and no state in the further future.
I will add the new paragraph shortly.
Paul.
Sean,
Done, I think.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, you copied my new paragraph into my "Critical Look" article where I wanted it placed. Many thanks!
But what does that even MEAN saying "I want to see a fully accountable state in the near future..."? Easy and quick recall elections for members of a Congress or Parliament? Or something like the "liberum veto" of the last two centuries or so of the Royal Republic of Poland before the Partitions of the 1790's? That was when a SINGLE member of the Polish Sejm could veto any proposed action or law of the parliament. That did nothing but make it more and more impossible for any constructive action to be taken. Poland became increasingly too weak to defend herself and fell prey to her neighbors.
And it's even more of a Utopian impossibility to say you want "...no state in the further future." Because some kind of a state is necessary simply to keep people from killing each other like starving weasels in a cage (to use a Stirlingian metaphor). I see absolutely zero evidence of the need for something, the state, to both keep the peace and defend against outside enemies ever vanishing.
This bit from Chapter XXI of Anderson's OPERATION CHAOS is appropriate: "Freedom is a fine thing until it becomes somebody else's freedom to enter your house, kill, rob, rape, and enslave the people you care about. Then you'll accept any man on horseback who promises to bring some predictability back into life, and you yourself will give him his saber and knout."
NOTHING in past history, current events, or the foreseeable future makes me think the need for some kind of state will disappear.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we are talking about future history, technology and mankind's enormous ability for cultural change. Starving weasels in a cage kill each other but free, well-fed weasels do not.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Amusing, this use of weasels for metaphors!
But I still disagree. My view remains that people are quarrelsome and are quite willing to fight over anything. And will if something like the state does not prevent them.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But there are many things over which people do not fight. Fighting all the time would not make a state necessary. It would make society impossible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe there are or will be at least as many things over which people WILL fight, kill, rob, rape, or enslave one another if the opportunity ever came. A "society," by itself, will not be enough if it doesn't have some means of controlling the human propensity for being violent. And so we get the state, even if it's only as embryonic as a cave man patriarch keeping order among his family and nearest kin.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But people do not rob if there is more than enough to go round and a future can be made where that happens.
Paul.
Paul: the evidence suggests that before the State, people did fight “all the time”.
Not every minute, of course, but there was never a moment when the typical individual didn’t have to be on some level prepared for violence. You took a spear or club with you everywhere; watch had to be kept for raiders at all times; violence was the most common cause of death for adults.
That’s the default, the ‘state of nature’, which Hobbes quite accurately, of intuitively, thought would be “nasty, poor, brutish and short”.
And since it’s the natural state, it’s always there waiting to come back, if the iron hand of the State slackens it’s grip.
Paul: there’s no such thing as enough. We today in the West have almost universally more than the vast majority of humanity has ever had - even the poor mostly have more than the affluent did.
The fact that poverty is now associated with being -fat- would have been considered bizzare and impossible. When my grandmother was a young girl in Lancashire, the upper classes were six inches taller than the poor, because half the population never got the minimum of calories and three-quarters never got as much protein.
That hasn’t made people less likely to steal, if they think they can, much less stop the rape and murder whose motivations are largely no economic to begin with.
Paul: well-fed weasels kill each other too, just not as often. They kill over territory and mates; social animals like us (or wolves and lions and chimps) kill over status and group rivalries, too.
And if you put a weasel in a henhouse, it’ll kill every hen; not for food, but for fun.
The analogy with weasels breaks down! - because, of course, I think that human beings have the potential to transcend the kinds of conflicts that result in violence. Of course a Hobbesian fate awaits us, indeed seems highly likely, if we fall backwards instead of advancing upwards.
Kaor, Paul!
As so often, Mr. Stirling has expressed why I would disagree with you far more clearly than I could have done. Do we have the potentiality to transcend our INNATE flaws, vices, and faults? Yes, but it comes with a cost, accepting the fact we will always need to keep watch on ourselves by accepting the rule of a state.
The ghastly events of the past year and more in the US vindicates, IMO, what Mr. Stirling and I have been saying: the leaders of the state, at all levels, have been failing to do their jobs and to maintain law and order. The BLM riots, the insane "Defund the Police" mania, the inevitably rapid jump in crime and violence, the stunning madness of "Josip" refusing to defend the borders and allowing hordes of illegals to swarm in, all this and more shows us how perilously near we are to that Hobbesian state of nature!
It's amazing, but I'm starting to think the "real" Josip would have been better than our "Josip"!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
What do you think of the inordinate numbers of black deaths at the hands of the police? I think that "bad apples" is an inadequate explanation. There is a culture that sustains such bad apples. They think, on the basis of experience, that they can get away with racist violence, that they are immune to prosecution. This time, a guy was prosecuted because of the extent of the outcry. I would certainly attend a BLM demo, not a riot.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I deny there were "inordinate" numbers of blacks dying at police hands. NOT if those blacks were criminals whose acts brought them to that fate, often enough by police officers who were blacks themselves. I have no use for the BLM rioters, who were killers and looters.
BLM means Burning, Looting, Mayhem! Or Beatings, Looting, Murders!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Anyone who is in police custody has not yet been convicted and should be safe in the hands of the police. I think that it is mainly whites killing blacks.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course people who get arrested should be safe while in police custody. And my belief is that ninety percent of the time, that is the case.
No, it is false to say it is mainly whites killing blacks. The statistics in most big cities, usually long misruled by the Democrats, says otherwise. Chicago (yet again!) has become notorious as a city where blacks are shooting and killing each other in truly INORDINATE numbers.
Amazing, how my "Critical Look" article has garnered so many comments! We can imagine how horrified TR would be at how things are in the US. And while I have my doubts about some of the ideas policies the real Theodore Roosevelt, he would certainly take vigorous action!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Sorry, I meant that, in the figures for people killed in police custody, it is mainly black people killed by white cops. I was not referring to the overall figures for killings.
Paul.
Sean,
I know that your "ninety percent" was just a way of saying "in the vast majority of cases." But 10% of people unsafe in police custody would be way too many: 1 in 10.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That's because, unfortunately, all military or quasi military organizations, like police forces, are going to have SOME incompetents, thugs, or brutes in them. If a police force can manage to make sure that arrested persons are treated as decently as possible ninety percent of the time, I would call that pretty good!
And it's not helpful that so many mayors and city councils are bashing and attacking their own police forces! That causes anger, frustration, and demoralization in many police forces. And an increased likelihood of incompetence and REAL brutality.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I don't know if you ever watched it in the UK, but there used to be a police procedural TV series in the US called CSI: NY. And this discussion made me recall what one of the characters, Mac Taylor, said about the proper handling and processing of arrested persons: among other things, always remove belts and shoe laces from the prisoner. To lessen the likelihood of him trying to commit suicide. IOW, secure the safety of the prisoner. I don't know if that is the actual, official procedure in NY, but it seems reasonable.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I responded to the "bad apples" idea earlier in this thread.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And if the madness by the Democrats in praising the "Defund the Police" nonsense does not stop, that WILL increase the likelihood of REAL abuses.
It does make me wonder what Teddy Roosevelt, both in the Chamberverse and OTL, would have done!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't know enough about the "Defund the Police" idea to comment in detail. Obviously, if resources were to be diverted from the police, then they would have to be redirected somewhere else regarded as more beneficial.
I hope that TR would address the basic problems rather than just crack down on anyone protesting about the problems.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I can assure you those funds were/are being used for either pork barrel politics or for Politically Correct left wing bull twaddle!
As for TR: Of course! But he would also have focused simply on restoring order. Without the first, you cannot have the latter.
Ad astra! Sean
The fact of the matter is that even bad, brutal police are vastly better than no police.
As Jerry Pournelle put it, some idiots think of the police as no more than a criminal gang, but don't realize that in the absence of police criminal gangs would rule.
Then we're right back to rule by gangs and feuds and the lex talionis.
"Can't we do better than that?"
Ummmm... no.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely correct! And Poul Anderson shows us an example of ruling gang boss in his novel THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS, where the gang boss Sumu the Fat ruled his district of Kompong Timur. Because Biocontrol was too slack, corrupt, and lazy to do the hard work of really POLICING. Ironically, we see gang bosses like Sumu taking over some of those functions of policing and keeping order!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it”s not an accident that some of the founders of the PPA nobility are gangsters; nor that some of their grandchildren (like Sir Droyn de Molalla) are conscientious and well meaning overlords — like the “bossman” gentry in No Truce With Kings. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.
Or as the poet put it,
“And the fool’s bandaged finger
goes wobbling back to the fire.”
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! And I should have thought of how some of the founding magnates of the PPA began as gangsters recruited by Norman Arminger. And even some of those ex-gangsters turned out to be pretty decent persons.
Yes, some of the Bossman barons of "No Truce With Kings" began as thugs and goons, very unlike their descendants 500 years later.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I forgot to add that I suspect you took the "Bossman" title used by the rulers of the de facto kingdoms which arose in the former Mid West of the fallen US, after the Change, from Anderson's story!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: 8-).
As an aside, if you’re a ruler, it generally makes good -tactical- sense to be a good one. Think of it as saving up a reserve for bad times, when you can’t compel obedience.
Machiavelli wrot a chapter on “Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Or Feared”, but if you can, both is better.
Mind you more rulers -try- to do a good job than succeed.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I thought so, re Bossmen! And I recall how the Bossman of Iowa came to be dissatisfied with that title, calling it accurate but RUSTIC.
As regards kings and other rulers building up a reserve of good will they could fall back on in bad times, I agree!
And I have read Machiavelli's classic THE PRINCE and THE DISCOURSES. Yes, it's better to be both loved and feared, with FEAR being used sparingly and only when necessary.
I think a classic and PATHETIC example of a king who struggled hard to be a good ruler, but MOSTLY failed, was Charles II of Spain (r. 1665-1700). He was literally born with a truly unfair number of strikes against him, at least partly because of the grotesque inbreeding of the Spanish Habsburgs. He was born frail and sickly in body, and with painfully limited mental abilities (possibly suffering from hydrocephalus). Despite which he TRIED to be as good a king as he could. And when it became plain he would never have a child and heir, Charles II strove his utmost to defend the unity of Spain and her Empire, leaving it to a chosen heir. For all this he was long remembered with honor in Spain, even if he still left a prostrate kingdom facing an uncertain future.
Ad astra! Sean
One of the virtues of hereditary monarchy is that it’s at least possible the ruler won’t be power-mad. In any competitive system, including democratic ones, this is virtually impossible.
Simply because you have to want power so badly and be so utterly convinced of your own worthiness in order to achieve it. Otherwise you wouldn’t put up with the horrible toil and boredom and squalor necessary to get it with so many others trying to elbow you out of the way while racing up the crowded stair.
You may have other motives -as well- but that lust is an essential precondition of high office if there’s open competition.
And the more open and genuinely meritocratic the system is, the worse that problem will be.
Eg., compare Lord Salisbury with Lloyd George.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A good point, that hereditary monarchy at least leaves open the possibility that the king won't be a power mad megalomaniac. And I think quite a fair number of real kings were like that.
Yes, you NEED that lust for power, that fire in the belly, to rise to the top in competitive political systems like that of the US. Problem is, that lust for power does not guarantee that the winner will be COMPETENT. The follies and blunderings of "Josip" is showing us exactly that. Albeit, I'm more inclined to think "Josip" is the puppet of the hard left of his party.
Yes, but Lord Salisbury could not have become PM of the UK if his party, the Conservatives, had not won a majority in the House of Commons. So he still had to do some hustling and elbowing of his own, if only by helping Conservative Commons candidates win their elections.
Ad astra! Sean
Oh, and I used Pin Yin simply because it's more widely available -- translation programs, for example. I'm mildly in favor of the older system on aesthetic grounds, but needs must when the devil drives.
Kaor, Sean er al!
I’m behind on the blog, and I haven’t read more than the first book of Mr. Stirling’s current series, but there has certainly been plenty of interesting discussion in response to your look at DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. I would like to respond to one minor point: the chance of four children in a family all being girls is roughly one in sixteen, so that isn’t enormously likely (there are six chances in sixteen of two girls and two boys), but things less likely than that happen quite often. The chance of two matings producing two sets of twins are considerably smaller, but then, some people do win the Powerball lottery.
And so to bed.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Nicholas!
Mr. Stirling: Exactly! I prefer the Wade-Giles system of Romanizing Chinese words/names over Pin Yin for aesthetic reasons. Plus, I think the Wade-Giles gives us a better idea of how to say Chinese words than does Pin Yin.
Nicholas: Welcome back! I had been hoping to see some comments by you, because I find your remarks very interesting.
Correct. I found it a strain to see BOTH Luz and Ciara having twins and that all four of the children would be girls. Not impossible, but a strain.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment