On Hermes, this is:
"...a time of crisis - domestic as well as foreign, with more and more of the Traver class in an uproar -" (p. 145)
If the class that works but cannot vote is in an uproar, then give them the vote. What possible argument can there be against this? Remember South Africa, where neither the miners nor a bishop had a vote. The Travers are happy as they are? Then why are they in an uproar? They should be happy that, although they cannot vote, they are not taxed? But they are not happy with this. Telling someone that he should be happy, or even that he really is happy although he doesn't know it, has to be a non-starter as an argument! Benoni Strang is right to want political reforms but wrong to try to impose them through an alien invasion. To say this is, of course, neither to support nor to apologise for but to oppose the Baburite invasion of Hermes.
Again we commend Poul Anderson's creation of a complex and realistic social crisis.
6 comments:
It doesn't say -all- the Travers are in an uproar. People who make noise tend to get more attention (positive and negative) than those who don't.
And indeed all the Travers would not be in an uproar. Societies are always uneven with the widest possible spectrum of opinions and attitudes. When I mentioned opposing racist political movements, an Asian work colleague asked me, "You feel strongly about this, do you?"
I think that universal suffrage should be guaranteed even if no one is campaigning for it!
I don't have universalist convictions about franchise arrangements; not really my business, in any case. As a poet said back a quarter of a millennium ago:
"For forms of government let fools contest;
What'er is best administered, is best."
For example, there are places where universal suffrage is likely to produce intercommunal violence on a large scale. Or elimination of minorities, or both.
Well, ok. In extreme conditions, a mere formal declaration of universal suffrage will not solve anyone's problems. With deeply entrenched conflicts, everyone - individuals, groups etc - has to decide which side to take or at least what to do about it. A lot just get out and are made unwelcome elsewhere.
Leaving a country is voting with your feet.
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