Comedy/Tragedy of Errors: Stupidity in the Honorverse

Suggested by my niece.

How did we miss, arguably the stupidest, most asinine, self-destructive (her words) things in the Honorverse...

Pierre and St. Just killing off their own, top-notch officers, during war time, and alienating the rest. St. Just and Pierre were acting as if they were under nanite compulsion. They were fighting the war for the Manties.

That's a stupid check drawn on a stupid bank, deposited in a stupid account!

(My niece, hilarious.)

cthia wrote:Suggested by my niece.

How did we miss, arguably the stupidest, most asinine, self-destructive (her words) things in the Honorverse...

Pierre and St. Just killing off their own, top-notch officers, during war time, and alienating the rest. St. Just and Pierre were acting as if they were under nanite compulsion. They were fighting the war for the Manties.

That's a stupid check drawn on a stupid bank, deposited in a stupid account!

(My niece, hilarious.)

It may have cost them in the short term, but in the mid term, they got McQueen, Theisman, Giscard and Tourville. As a Manty(Hamish?) quoted Napoleon, "there is a field marshal's baton in every knapsack" and doing away with the legislaturalist officers opened the field for everybody else.

The CPS' problem was, they kept killing those who failed(and in some cases, their families) after the Legislaturalist purge. They did discontinue that policy, but Saint-Just was obviously about to bring it back when Theisman shot him.

cthia wrote:Suggested by my niece.

How did we miss, arguably the stupidest, most asinine, self-destructive (her words) things in the Honorverse...

Pierre and St. Just killing off their own, top-notch officers, during war time, and alienating the rest. St. Just and Pierre were acting as if they were under nanite compulsion. They were fighting the war for the Manties.

That's a stupid check drawn on a stupid bank, deposited in a stupid account!

(My niece, hilarious.)

It's hard to get off a tiger once you're riding the thing.

The officer corps was a Legislaturalist institution: Legislaturalist in the persons of its senior officers, Legislaturalist in the assumptions, ambitions, and probably loyalties of its junior ones. So the Revolution demanded purges.

They didn't have a government with legitimacy to be a locus of loyalty for the survivors, so they could cross their fingers against coups, try to do it themselves ("Hey Kevin - can you run a fleet?"), or keep the new flag officers in line with fear. Fear demands remaining a credible threat, so threats are made good, and it gets ugly.

They were in a bad situation - their options were make it worse or make it much, much worse. So they made it worse. They were trying to get off the officer-shooting train but then there was that unfortunate... miscommunication between McQueen and St. Just and that effort was derailed.

Revolutions are hard. Kids, do not try this at home!

cthia wrote:Suggested by my niece.

How did we miss, arguably the stupidest, most asinine, self-destructive (her words) things in the Honorverse...

Pierre and St. Just killing off their own, top-notch officers, during war time, and alienating the rest. St. Just and Pierre were acting as if they were under nanite compulsion. They were fighting the war for the Manties.

That's a stupid check drawn on a stupid bank, deposited in a stupid account!

(My niece, hilarious.)

Just look at what the Soviets did before the Second World War, ANY high ranking military officer could be taken out, if he was seen as a threat to the Party Leader. (Stalin was very paranoid)

Rob the Fiend wrote:

cthia wrote:Suggested by my niece.

How did we miss, arguably the stupidest, most asinine, self-destructive (her words) things in the Honorverse...

Pierre and St. Just killing off their own, top-notch officers, during war time, and alienating the rest. St. Just and Pierre were acting as if they were under nanite compulsion. They were fighting the war for the Manties.

That's a stupid check drawn on a stupid bank, deposited in a stupid account!

(My niece, hilarious.)

Just look at what the Soviets did before the Second World War, ANY high ranking military officer could be taken out, if he was seen as a threat to the Party Leader. (Stalin was very paranoid)

Very true, IIRC Stalin's purge of the Red Army officer was to say dramatic. IIRC the breakdown was as fallows;

23 of 25 Field Marshals
37 of 42 Marshals
87 of 112 Division Commanders

The only troops to not go through the purges were the ones stationed in the Far-East.

saber964 wrote:

Rob the Fiend wrote:
Just look at what the Soviets did before the Second World War, ANY high ranking military officer could be taken out, if he was seen as a threat to the Party Leader. (Stalin was very paranoid)

Very true, IIRC Stalin's purge of the Red Army officer was to say dramatic. IIRC the breakdown was as fallows;

23 of 25 Field Marshals
37 of 42 Marshals
87 of 112 Division Commanders

The only troops to not go through the purges were the ones stationed in the Far-East.

Over 82%? I didn't think it was THAT bad. No wonder the germans just walked straight in with Operation Barbarossa.

According to V. I. Leonov, Combat Engineer and Partisan trainer, the Soviet Officer Corps Purges coincided with a re-organization of the army and those who opposed the re-org. were purged. The focus was shifting from infantry to cavalry tactics with armor (applying lessons from Spain). Barbarossa hit at the time of maximum confusion.

The one point of cosmic (almost comedic) justice in those purges was the next round of purges after the army were the NKVD personnel conducting the purges. The purges never really stopped, They just changed targets from round to round.

To nominal topic:

My nominee would be Denver Summervale.

He "researched" his target. Grew up in the Sphinxian Bush, Father was an Ostermann Cross recipient as a Marine and she is a heavy world Genie. None of this raised any flags? He was a professional! Not a gambler! He should have shot her from cover and at a distance.

kenl511 wrote:To nominal topic:

My nominee would be Denver Summervale.

He "researched" his target. Grew up in the Sphinxian Bush, Father was an Ostermann Cross recipient as a Marine and she is a heavy world Genie. None of this raised any flags? He was a professional! Not a gambler! He should have shot her from cover and at a distance.

I can board this train.

What he should have done was turn this job down. Do they not have reruns of good olé classic western movies in the 'Verse? Josey Wales... "Dyin' ain't much of a living boy."

https://youtu.be/Pk6AqCT6eRE

kenl511 wrote:To nominal topic:

My nominee would be Denver Summervale.

He "researched" his target. Grew up in the Sphinxian Bush, Father was an Ostermann Cross recipient as a Marine and she is a heavy world Genie. None of this raised any flags? He was a professional! Not a gambler! He should have shot her from cover and at a distance.

I disagree with the last. His MO wasn't out and out assassination, it was technically-legal lethal dueling. So yeah, he should have known his target better, and then passed on the commission.