SPOILER! A Shadow of Victory Question

Spoiler alert out of an excess of caution

Given the end of the last chapter of A Shadow of Victory, how long will it be before Audrey Hanrahan gets to enjoy having a conversation with a tree cat?

Fox2! wrote:Spoiler alert out of an excess of caution

Given the end of the last chapter of A Shadow of Victory, how long will it be before Audrey Hanrahan gets to enjoy having a conversation with a tree cat?

It won't matter. She's a journalist, which in the SL (like the US) means a professional propagandist. So of course she's hostile and has multiple layers of story going on. As David pointed out on the Bar, the Mesan accusation that Manticore was responsible for Green Pines has the advantage of being true.

If you removed all the security systems on say a stolen B61 nuke and gave it and the ability to detonate to someone you knew was mentally unstable, will the feds be very interested in talking to you after it blows up the Mall in DC on a Saturday afternoon? Are they going to be able to make a mass murder and conspiracy charge stick? Will your claim that he was supposed to just blow up an abandoned mall outside of Baltimore likely to keep you out of jail?

If you were an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Intelligence officer when you did this, are there likely to be consequences when that becomes public knowledge? Might that be considered an act of war by Iran?

If the US was to, as an example, arrange via mysterious means to one sunny day destroy every military and industrial facility in Iran in response to Iran detonating a nuke in Washington DC is the US public likely to consider that a proportional response? Would the world consider that to a more restrained and controlled response than turning Tehran into a series of interlocking craters?

kzt wrote:It won't matter. She's a journalist, which in the SL (like the US) means a professional propagandist.

I'm going to go OT on this one, and then partially back on topic.

I have been a computer industry analyst for 25-odd years, which means I get to interact with a lot of journalists, almost all dealing strictly with the computer industry. Most of these are not professional propagandists -- they are neither aiming to produce propaganda nor professional in the sense of knowing much about the subjects they write about. Instead, they are people hired to replace others moving on because of the low pay and then thrown in the pool immediately. Thus, they are initially all too easily prey to industry propaganda. I have learned over the years that it is best to force them to listen to a short technical explanation before I give them a more accurate "money quote", which because of time constraints is all that they are seeking. It is surprising how much that tends to lower the propaganda count of the resulting articles. My sense from the few interactions I have with NY Times and other general publications is that at least some of their reporting suffers from the same problem.

That brings me partially back on topic to Steven Brust's Laws Number One and Two:

1. Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you.

2. Just because someone's out to get you, that doesn't mean you aren't paranoid.

In this case, I'd suggest Law 2 applies: A lot of journalists aren't professional propagandists but rather clueless relative newbies, so don't generalize from the ones who are PPs. And if you will note, David does provide examples (on Manticore) of journalists who aren't PPs.

Btw, you might be interested in my corollary to Brust's Law 2: In fact, if you are paranoid, people are more likely to be out to get you (because you have turned innocent people you attacked in your "pre-emptive strike" into enemies).

And I am wondering if another Law isn't applicable (yes, I made this one up, but still ...): Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by bureaucracy. That is, in a lot of cases, a bad action is caused not by people sitting down together to plot, but rather by an organization mindlessly pursuing its own goals via rules and procedures. It is this very mindless stupidity in doing evil actions that often distinguishes bureaucracy from conspiracy -- my insurance company is not necessarily setting out to screw me, it's just that their claims handling is set up to maximize profits. And, of course, this kind of problem is easier to fix, because eventually someone inside the organization or outside it wakes up and says what the heck are we doing?

I would suggest that David is giving us in MAlign and the SL examples where both conspiracy and bureaucracy are at work. Note that some examples of rebellion in both come when someone in the bureaucracy gets a revelation about the conspiracy.