On Jan 19, 2004, at 16:49 , David Silberstein wrote: > On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Philip Hart wrote: > >> By the way, it's Martin Luther King Day, and we should note that he >> and the other leaders of the civil rights movement got a lot of >> people killed. Himself, and hundreds who don't have days in their >> memory. >> > > That's an excellent point. > > The assertions that Kelly is somehow a mass-murderer of all of the > "innocent" Easterners and Teckla ignores the facts that (a) Kelly is > not some cynical manipulator; as best we can tell, he's an ideologue > who truly believes his own propaganda, and (b) the Easterners and > Teckla were not coerced into his movement; they joined because they > believed in his ideas. > > They might be deluded, and it may turn out that Kelly is eventually > going to become so insane that he creates a totalitarian personality > cult, but right now, they are a *movement*, and they *all* believe > that through cooperative effort, they can change things to better > their lives. Maybe so, but Kelly wasn't calling for peaceful methods of resistance or change of government through any rational means of parlay or discussion; he was asking citizens to take up arms and violently resist conscription and gave a list of demands to the Empress, *telling* her that she'd better do what they say or there would be revolt. This would be more along the lines of mass suicide than resistance, if fighting breaks out, as it did in the uprising. The problem with comparisons like this is that they ignore the mechanisms used; as far as I know (and IANACRH: I am not a civil rights historian), but Dr. King was not advocating "By any means necessary"; that was Malcolm X. While Dr. King did want to see equality between races, his methods and the methods of his followers didn't seem to entail blockading major sections of urban areas with armed checkpoints and telling the President that he'd better do what they wanted or there would be a second American revolution. I guess I don't get your parallel, and I believe that you are muddying the waters. Kelly was asking those citizens to do what amounted to suicide; he *knew* that people were going to die, and he didn't do anything to try to make sure that people weren't going to die. There was no "passive resistance", no work-stoppages or strikes, no education that I could see beyond being taught to read so that they could read the literature that he was able to provide them (mainly in the form of propagandist flyers & leaflets), no "Let's go form our own society over here" movements. His solution was armed rebellion, which to me would seem to be the last argument of peasants. I don't really understand why you are defending Kelly so stringently. He was an arrogant ass who thought that he knew better than anyone how society should be run. In my mind, he's a megalomaniac! He's the LEAST trustworthy kind of revolutionist because he's so damned full of himself, and is one step away from creating a cult (if he hasn't already; there are a lot of warning signs of cult-like behavior in a lot of the followers, of which Cawti seems to not be. Remember the scene where Vlad witnesses Kelly verbally smacking Cawti down? Kelly is not reasonable, and he's willing to power over anyone who he feels isn't doing everything they can to follow his vision). Kelly is a contemptible character, and while we're seeing him through Vlad's eyes, AFAICT Steve didn't mean to make him anything but contemptible. Sure, his philosophy has truth in it. I believe that we have nearly as much injustice going on in our country right now as there is in Dragaera during the period that is covered in Teckla & Phoenix. If I had the ability to inspire people like Kelly obviously does, I would NOT use it to incite armed rebellion against the US Gov't because I know that it would get far too many people killed, and I would feel no small amount of responsibility in getting those people killed. I don't think that Kelly gives a damn about individuals. At ALL. He sees everyone as for or against him, and they are apparently born into those roles. If you're a noble, you're against him unless you come to sign on with his campaign. If you're a Teckla or Easterner, you are with him; you may not know it yet, but if you have a few years, he can explain it to you. As I said in an earlier post: I'm not sure that social reform can be enacted within the framework of our current gov't with the current attitudes in our society. There are too many people who have a lot of power who will be damned if they're going to share that power (translation: money) with anyone else. Is armed revolution justified? How could it be? Would you rather die of starvation or kicking at the end of someone's spear? And, if dying, in effect, makes no difference to the society around you, that's even worse. Bah. I guess what's amazing (to me) is that one author's (relatively) short piece of fiction could inspire such hatred in me for a figment of his imagination. Kudos to you, Steve! I guess that's one way to measure success. :) -- Matthew S. Klahn Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc. http://www.codetek.com