cthia wrote:Annachie wrote:Hate to say it Cthia, but even the Mandarins know they were going way beyond the constitution when they launched Raging Justice.
What was the quote, "It means what we want it to mean"
I think I remember textev corroborating your statement. Yet they went ahead and did it anyway. I would wager that it was not unfamiliar territory to the Mandarins. Par for the course even. With the kind of power that they wield, it is much easier instead of asking permission before the fact, they ask for forgiveness after, for adding the lucrative fees of the MWJ to the Solarian economy.
Just so's we're on the same page, it wasn't way beyond
their [C
c]onstitution.
Cthia,
It has been kind of fun watching you twist tails, a bit, and I was going to go looking for infodumps and text to refute your arguments. But it has actually been a worthwhile exercise in some ways. Not in your roleplay--you get a bit excessive, which got responses, but not always to your point. But in looking at the Mandarins from the inside of their environment. Here are a few starting points.
1) The current Mandarins are in a political system that has existed for over 900 years--they didn't invent it, or attempt to change it. While they didn't have a Constitution anyone was
looking at, they did operate based on traditions, customs, and expectations (including expectations of graft) that derived from that history (ok, a history of evading responsibility, and foiling attempts to rein in their abuse of power, but it's still their history)
2) They are not as incompetent as they appear, when faced with more familiar challenges--or they wouldn't have made it to the top of their political food chains.
3) Although it is more obvious in the "First Families of the Navy," the entire bureaucracy is riddled with nepotism. In that way, the agencies of the League are very like the Verge hereditary oligarchies they sneer at.
4)I think the only one of them portrayed as truly stupid enough to embrace the "treason" argument would have been McCartney; but in their reality NONE of them expected the actions Tsang took at Beowulf. What had been a political maneuver of manipulating the public debate(as a contingency to deflect post-operation criticism from League Members) blew up in their faces with the destruction of 11th Fleet; but their maneuver's consequences (Beowulf's secession) never even occurred to any of them as a remote possibility. ]It
did occur to the Malign, which is why the clause was inserted in Tsang's orders.] And, at least so far, only Kolokoltsov is even seriously aware that they might not win.
Oh, and as an aside--the "marriage" argument doesn't work for me, as Beowulf has had the same government --popularly elected and supported--for a thousand years longer than the League has been
avoiding having real elections. Beowulf was
by far the senior partner. Or, if you must put it in terms of intimacy, she left an abusive, but adult, child.
Rob