My brother loaned me the latest Honor Harrington novel, so I've been reading that and had some thoughts.
For those who have never heard of this series, it's military science fiction. 14 books in the main series, as well as a number of spin-offs and anthologies. I have to admit, it sometimes goes a little bit into the 'science fiction' side of things for my taste - given that wormholes, faster than light technology, and various other things are all fiction I don't actually care to read in depth technical reports on things that don't really exist. And yet, I do find it fascinating how he uses those things to create rather plausible military scenarios.
14 books, well...it's a very looooong series. It's also fascinating if you know your history, because there's some very clear parallels (and differences). David Weber also does a rather excellent job of showing both sides of the story, with both sides having their talented and incompetent people.
Regarding that history... the main character is an officer in the navy for a star nation - Manticore - that has many similarities to England. A monarchy, parliament, etc. (Not exact, by any means!) It begins just before they wind up in a very long shooting war with a neighboring star nation that has some similarities to, well...at one point they had something like the French revolution (including a character, Rob S. Pierre, which is rather obviously similar to Robespierre)
At other times, the history of that star nation was more like the Soviet Union.
There was another, much larger star nation that was mostly irrelevant for the first, I dunno, 10 books or so? The Solarian League, which also has striking parallels to the United States.
Except, well...in a series that spans this much history, things change quite a bit. The Manticore and Haven war had it's ups and downs, the war pushing both sides to make all sorts of technological innovations that changed the nature of the war. While I didn't need too many of the technical details, I could see clear parallels to...well, 'wet-navy' warfare. In particular the development of a space equivalent to aircraft carriers.
And after decades of fighting, things started to finally settle down between Manticore and Haven, and a new enemy appeared. Now, I haven't been as interested in the later books in part because the new enemy is... I dunno. I guess it interrupts my 'suspension of disbelief', which seems funny when referring to science fiction in the first place, but this new opponent is almost too sneaky to be real. Or at least, I sure as heck hope there's never a real world group like this!
Anyways, this new opponent is stirring up trouble and helping lead to war between Manticore (now in a tenuous alliance with their long-time enemies) against the Solarian League.
And that sort of gets at why I decided to write this post. The Solarian League...
Well, it originally had good intentions, I guess you could say. The original systems are centered around Earth, they've got a constitution and democracy, and all that. This Solarian League, though, has grown rather corrupt. Particular with systems on the fringe, 'neo-barbarian' frontiers, places where certain bureaucratic organizations have had free reign to do what they want.
I suppose, in some ways, the Solarian League is also more reminiscent of the Roman Empire, as the fringe systems have various governors who generally enrich themselves... one way or another. The governing class is pretty much a techno-bureaucratic class (labeled the 'Mandarins') and there's all sorts of bureaucratic infighting, corruption, connections to various businesses, etc. I know I said there's some parallels between the Solarian League and the United States, but I sure as hell hope that our system isn't nearly as bad as the Solarian one.
So one of the themes, you might say, with this new scenario is 'when has a system become so corrupt that it's irredeemable?' The Solarian League were the first proponents of some various rules of warfare that our original combatants respected (in part out of fear for how the Sollies would react.) In particular, the Eridani Edict, laying out restrictions on attacking a planet's surface.
Part of what we are seeing is the Solarian League, the creator and enforcer of the Eridani Edict, is now setting themselves up to be the biggest violator of their own edict.
When a system stops standing for what it used to stand for, becomes blatantly self-interested to the point where they're now justifying things they used to vociferously oppose...
What does that mean? And when various members decide it's gone too far and decide to leave (consider that Texas stipulated their right to secede when they joined the United States, and just what a disaster it would be if they ever seriously wanted to do so) where do you stand?
'You' being the fictional characters in the series, many of which choose different stances, most of which are believable. There's the ones who worry about the end of the existing Solarian League, who don't think it's as bad as people think, love their star nation and bitterly resent the people trying to leave... and there are the ones who are fed up, don't see any other way of fixing things, and are pretty much done with it all.
And, of course, the whole point of reading the book is to see how it all plays out.
I do like how we get to peek inside the various decision-makers meetings and councils, in part because you can see how otherwise intelligent people wind up making horrible choices. That happened a lot with the Havenites, as you see the pressures leading towards decisions. Things tied in to maintaining public support, economic pressures, and so on and so forth. And now we see something similar with the Sollies.
Of particular interest, to me at least, is the role that information plays in all this. Coming from an American background (and the First Amendment which values free speech, and the desire for 'truth, justice and the American Way' for all), I almost immediately think 'bad idea' every time one of these organizations decides that they need to 'spin' events by outright lying to their people in order to...
Well, they always sugarcoat it with some sort of unselfish reason, like preserving their government, but honestly the government would probably survive if they were honest about what happened, so it's really about them not wanting to face the consequences of their bad decisions. It's just, well, as Upton Sinclair apparently said - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Or rather, in this case you could rephrase it to say 'it is difficult to get people in power to understand that the nation/government/party will be fine when their ability to stay in power depends on not understanding it.'
In other words, it's the classic fallacy of inflating what's good for you with what's good for everyone else. And so these organizations justify editing video to make it look like the other side was lying, setting out a narrative that makes them look good, and doing all sorts of other various things that essentially demonstrates just how much they've lost their way.
If you need to lie about what's going on in order to maintain your grasp on power, then maybe it's a sign that you shouldn't be in power. But good luck getting anyone in that position to admit that.
Anyways. Reading this book has been especially interesting in the current political climate, especially Donald Trump's latest claim of being a 'nationalist'.
There are quite a few people who want him to be a nationalist, and yet I can't help thinking that it's like the exact opposite of what America always stood for.
Hmmm. Let me back up a bit. I was actually thinking about that in a different context, namely Trump's love of various dictators. The Philippine President Duterte, cozying up to North Korea, and his flat out refusal to speak anything bad about Putin. (You can add in the current situation in Saudi Arabia, if you want.)
I won't outright say it's a bad idea, in that I'm sort of a believer that whatever works, works. He's definitely thrown out conventional wisdom on foreign policy, and shaken things up...and the situation in North Korea has been sort of an ugly stalemate for decades. Honestly, his policies remind me of Nixon's madman theory, and while I don't really agree with that policy, I understand intelligent people believe in it and it's the sort of thing we probably won't know whether its a good idea until decades after the fact. If even then, since people are masters at finding evidence to support their take on things.
I mean, we could learn sooner if he lands us in World War Three, of course, but for now that hasn't happened. And it seems silly to alienate all sorts of long time allies, kind of reminds me of Wilhelm Kaiser II before World War I, but again... we probably won't know the real fallout until decades later. Or unless World War III breaks out and we're left high and dry by those former allies.
Anyways, I digress. He's been speaking highly of dictators, which seems the exact opposite of what America has always stood for. It's a far cry from Ronald Reagan, who firmly stood against the Soviet Union.
And when Trump, and the Republicans, now stand for the exact opposite of what previous Republican greats (like Ronald Reagan) did...
What does it mean?
When someone claims to be a 'nationalist', and throws out all the things that made America great. Throws out the ideals we always stood for (at least in part... there's definitely been some self-interest in our foreign policy)...
Well, what makes America any different from Russia, or the Philippines, or North Korea any more?
For those who have never heard of this series, it's military science fiction. 14 books in the main series, as well as a number of spin-offs and anthologies. I have to admit, it sometimes goes a little bit into the 'science fiction' side of things for my taste - given that wormholes, faster than light technology, and various other things are all fiction I don't actually care to read in depth technical reports on things that don't really exist. And yet, I do find it fascinating how he uses those things to create rather plausible military scenarios.
14 books, well...it's a very looooong series. It's also fascinating if you know your history, because there's some very clear parallels (and differences). David Weber also does a rather excellent job of showing both sides of the story, with both sides having their talented and incompetent people.
Regarding that history... the main character is an officer in the navy for a star nation - Manticore - that has many similarities to England. A monarchy, parliament, etc. (Not exact, by any means!) It begins just before they wind up in a very long shooting war with a neighboring star nation that has some similarities to, well...at one point they had something like the French revolution (including a character, Rob S. Pierre, which is rather obviously similar to Robespierre)
At other times, the history of that star nation was more like the Soviet Union.
There was another, much larger star nation that was mostly irrelevant for the first, I dunno, 10 books or so? The Solarian League, which also has striking parallels to the United States.
Except, well...in a series that spans this much history, things change quite a bit. The Manticore and Haven war had it's ups and downs, the war pushing both sides to make all sorts of technological innovations that changed the nature of the war. While I didn't need too many of the technical details, I could see clear parallels to...well, 'wet-navy' warfare. In particular the development of a space equivalent to aircraft carriers.
And after decades of fighting, things started to finally settle down between Manticore and Haven, and a new enemy appeared. Now, I haven't been as interested in the later books in part because the new enemy is... I dunno. I guess it interrupts my 'suspension of disbelief', which seems funny when referring to science fiction in the first place, but this new opponent is almost too sneaky to be real. Or at least, I sure as heck hope there's never a real world group like this!
Anyways, this new opponent is stirring up trouble and helping lead to war between Manticore (now in a tenuous alliance with their long-time enemies) against the Solarian League.
And that sort of gets at why I decided to write this post. The Solarian League...
Well, it originally had good intentions, I guess you could say. The original systems are centered around Earth, they've got a constitution and democracy, and all that. This Solarian League, though, has grown rather corrupt. Particular with systems on the fringe, 'neo-barbarian' frontiers, places where certain bureaucratic organizations have had free reign to do what they want.
I suppose, in some ways, the Solarian League is also more reminiscent of the Roman Empire, as the fringe systems have various governors who generally enrich themselves... one way or another. The governing class is pretty much a techno-bureaucratic class (labeled the 'Mandarins') and there's all sorts of bureaucratic infighting, corruption, connections to various businesses, etc. I know I said there's some parallels between the Solarian League and the United States, but I sure as hell hope that our system isn't nearly as bad as the Solarian one.
So one of the themes, you might say, with this new scenario is 'when has a system become so corrupt that it's irredeemable?' The Solarian League were the first proponents of some various rules of warfare that our original combatants respected (in part out of fear for how the Sollies would react.) In particular, the Eridani Edict, laying out restrictions on attacking a planet's surface.
Part of what we are seeing is the Solarian League, the creator and enforcer of the Eridani Edict, is now setting themselves up to be the biggest violator of their own edict.
When a system stops standing for what it used to stand for, becomes blatantly self-interested to the point where they're now justifying things they used to vociferously oppose...
What does that mean? And when various members decide it's gone too far and decide to leave (consider that Texas stipulated their right to secede when they joined the United States, and just what a disaster it would be if they ever seriously wanted to do so) where do you stand?
'You' being the fictional characters in the series, many of which choose different stances, most of which are believable. There's the ones who worry about the end of the existing Solarian League, who don't think it's as bad as people think, love their star nation and bitterly resent the people trying to leave... and there are the ones who are fed up, don't see any other way of fixing things, and are pretty much done with it all.
And, of course, the whole point of reading the book is to see how it all plays out.
I do like how we get to peek inside the various decision-makers meetings and councils, in part because you can see how otherwise intelligent people wind up making horrible choices. That happened a lot with the Havenites, as you see the pressures leading towards decisions. Things tied in to maintaining public support, economic pressures, and so on and so forth. And now we see something similar with the Sollies.
Of particular interest, to me at least, is the role that information plays in all this. Coming from an American background (and the First Amendment which values free speech, and the desire for 'truth, justice and the American Way' for all), I almost immediately think 'bad idea' every time one of these organizations decides that they need to 'spin' events by outright lying to their people in order to...
Well, they always sugarcoat it with some sort of unselfish reason, like preserving their government, but honestly the government would probably survive if they were honest about what happened, so it's really about them not wanting to face the consequences of their bad decisions. It's just, well, as Upton Sinclair apparently said - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Or rather, in this case you could rephrase it to say 'it is difficult to get people in power to understand that the nation/government/party will be fine when their ability to stay in power depends on not understanding it.'
In other words, it's the classic fallacy of inflating what's good for you with what's good for everyone else. And so these organizations justify editing video to make it look like the other side was lying, setting out a narrative that makes them look good, and doing all sorts of other various things that essentially demonstrates just how much they've lost their way.
If you need to lie about what's going on in order to maintain your grasp on power, then maybe it's a sign that you shouldn't be in power. But good luck getting anyone in that position to admit that.
Anyways. Reading this book has been especially interesting in the current political climate, especially Donald Trump's latest claim of being a 'nationalist'.
There are quite a few people who want him to be a nationalist, and yet I can't help thinking that it's like the exact opposite of what America always stood for.
Hmmm. Let me back up a bit. I was actually thinking about that in a different context, namely Trump's love of various dictators. The Philippine President Duterte, cozying up to North Korea, and his flat out refusal to speak anything bad about Putin. (You can add in the current situation in Saudi Arabia, if you want.)
I won't outright say it's a bad idea, in that I'm sort of a believer that whatever works, works. He's definitely thrown out conventional wisdom on foreign policy, and shaken things up...and the situation in North Korea has been sort of an ugly stalemate for decades. Honestly, his policies remind me of Nixon's madman theory, and while I don't really agree with that policy, I understand intelligent people believe in it and it's the sort of thing we probably won't know whether its a good idea until decades after the fact. If even then, since people are masters at finding evidence to support their take on things.
I mean, we could learn sooner if he lands us in World War Three, of course, but for now that hasn't happened. And it seems silly to alienate all sorts of long time allies, kind of reminds me of Wilhelm Kaiser II before World War I, but again... we probably won't know the real fallout until decades later. Or unless World War III breaks out and we're left high and dry by those former allies.
Anyways, I digress. He's been speaking highly of dictators, which seems the exact opposite of what America has always stood for. It's a far cry from Ronald Reagan, who firmly stood against the Soviet Union.
And when Trump, and the Republicans, now stand for the exact opposite of what previous Republican greats (like Ronald Reagan) did...
What does it mean?
When someone claims to be a 'nationalist', and throws out all the things that made America great. Throws out the ideals we always stood for (at least in part... there's definitely been some self-interest in our foreign policy)...
Well, what makes America any different from Russia, or the Philippines, or North Korea any more?
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