NAC: Will it ever stop? :)

This will be my last post on this subject I think. 
Whereas I don't agree with some of the 
Listbroderbund that it is overdue to die (quite 
frankly, with the debate going on it, it is 
arguably one of the more active debates in a 
while) or that it is OT (I find it far more 
interesting than the mathematical mechanistic 
debates on WotW, no offense intended), out of 
respect for their sensibilities, I'll conclude after 
this reply. And suggest everyone consider my 
reply with the "Seal of Atkinson" (75% Tongue-
in-cheek, your guess to the 75%). 

Brian replied to me:  (My replies ot him are 
[Tomb])
>this would probably only be an attitude 
that the
>NAC powers-that-be would work around.

I seriously doubt it.  Sadly, it's so popular 
to lampoon
Americans these days, no one really takes 
time to pay
attention to what we're really like.

[Tomb] Without rancor, I think that is also 
true of many Americans. 

 I wonder if anyone who
holds to the American NAC nobility line 
actually understands
just how deeply ingrained in the American 
psyche is the
resistance to any sort of imposed 
perrage/nobility/monarchy.

[Tomb] I did suggest that there would be 
dissidents. I also humbly submit that the 
US is an extremely varied country, in terms 
of popular attitudes, so I'd resist making 
such patriotic and simplistic generalizations 
about what "Americans" think anymore 
than I (as a Canuck) would feel 
comfortable speaking for "Canadians". 
Thirdly, I finally submit that after a 
crushing conflict like a civil-war fought with 
the kind of weapons available in the day, I 
suspect many of the "patriots" on both 
sides will be dead and many of the 
remaining people will show a weariness for 
war and a fondness for _ANY_ power that 
can restore stability. I'm not sure what the 
raw population losses are, but I'd guess in 
the tens of millions perhaps. 

And from where is this land acquired? 

[Tomb] Existing royal estates, perhaps 
existing federal lands (which cease to be 
federal once the federal government 
ceases to exist), and on colonies mostly.
I'm not going to recite the entire logic, but 
Traveller(TM) used a nobility system to 
help hold together an empire where instant 
communication was infeasible across 
interstellar distances and it was felt that 
having people in leadership positions with a 
strong personal stake in things had a lot to 
do with maintaining a good quality of 
governance. 

 Try taking someone's
property to give it to Lord Fauntleroy of 
Denver, and see how fast the buckshot 
flies. 

[Tomb] Arguably, most of it already _flew_ 
in the 2ACW. 

 Try annexing it from a national forest, and 
you have a whole different set of
protesters.

[Tomb] This happens in any event. 

for public
>service (always a good thing to 
encourage and
>no different than granting land for military
>service, a time honoured tradition).

One not used in America in a LONG time.

[Tomb] You guys wanted pioneers, you 
granted land. If you guys needed motivated 
soldiers and it was thought a land grant 
would help, you'd probably do it just like 
anyone else. Land grants for service were 
awesome in the days when 
land==prosperity==power. Nowadays, 
that relationship isn't so great so it might 
be of lesser, but still not zero, utility. 

I'm not talking about insurgent movements. 
 I'm talking about us ever accepting the 
arrangements in the first place.

[Tomb] Let us take a worst-case 
projection, unsupported but not 
unsupportable, that the US 2 ACW is very 
violent. You have a nation with lots of NBC 
weapons, heavy conventional military, and 
lots of armed groups. High casualties 
perhaps? What if the US was reduced (as 
Afghanistan has been) from a 
technologically advanced culture (I've seen 
pictures of Kabul pre-invasion of the USSR 
and today... same streets but that is barely 
discernable since bits of it are nothing but 
rubble) to a sub-subsistence level situation. 
This is admittedly worst case. But in that 
case, people want to eat and not die. 
Those concerns FAR outweigh arguing over 
the non-existent intricacies of the non-
existent government. 

 Unless of course, the "Invitation" to come 
help end the Civil war was the same kind of 
"Invitation" the Afghans gave the Soviets. 

[Tomb] Historical note: It is referred to as 
a "Pacification". 

 In which case, it would be interesting to 
see the reception for the first Brit troops 
that attended the party they were "invited" 
to.  SAS putting down US insurgents is one 
thing.	It would be interesting to see the
SAS put down insurgents that included 
Rangers, SEALS, Spec.
Forces, etc.

[Tomb] Yep. It would be interesting to see 
the Brit troops arrive with food packets to 
feed the starving, to restore the rule of law 
to a lawless land with bands of heavily 
armed thugs (since we all know how much 
'Mericans love their guns!) roaming around 
enforcing their will (whatever that may be), 
etc. I'm not saying this _IS_ what the case 
is, because as Adrian has pointed out it 
isn't really clear, but it _might_ be the 
case. In this instance, I don't think I have 
to imagine that the bulk of the (surviving) 
people would gladly welcome in anyone 
who restored anything akin to law and 
order. 

And the British have a
>certain talent (fails at times, but far 
better than
>their peers in this regard) at maintaining 
a light
>hand in the Colonial power game (

Tell that to Mahatma Gandhi.

[Tomb]: What part of "fails at times" was 
hard to read? There have been some bad 
examples. But contrast the UK's pullout 
from its colonies to that of the French or 
Dutch and one has to give them credit in 
most cases. The French tendency is to stay 
about a decade or two past their welcome 
really coming to a crashing halt. 

Brian said:
Any America so torn down and destroyed 
would be a nuclear
wasteland not worth owning to begin with.  
That's the only
way I see the NAC as canon has it existing.

[Tomb] A few crackpots setting off some 
nukes and NBC weapons could really wreck 
a lot of the US with accompanying plagues 
and whatnot and inter-force conflicts in the 
military plus all the civil forces raging riot. 
But, rather than raging on the Americans, 
why don't we also not rag on Canadians or 
Brits? There is just the chance that, 
although it makes no economic sense, 
recovering and rebuilding a shattered 
America is something these nations would 
want to do out of a kinship for the 
Americans (which we are told we 
constantly lampoon and fail to 
understand....) and basic human decency. 
Add to that having a large destabilized 
region such as the USA might well make 
the present day concern about Afghanistan 
as a terrorist spawning ground seem 
trivial.... so the Brits and Canucks helping 
out probably is both an expedient and 
humanitarian venture. 

>You are, of course, free to toss this out.

Actually, that's a good idea.

[Tomb] And a number of people have done 
so. I don't believe it is plausible in the 
slightest (canon history) and not LEAST 
because of the NAC. The ESU, the IF, etc. 
are all very unlikely. OTOH, I decided it 
was a game I wanted to play with people 
and the most common vector was canon. 
So I now consider how canon might have 
come about, given the premise that it 
_has_. 

All of which merely reinforces my sense of 
urgency in
developing a non-canon universe.

[Tomb] Which is perfectly sensible. Your 
pocket universe may be more realistic or at 
least more in line with your personal 
sensibiities (or both) than what Jon T. 
developed. Frankly, as a businessman, Jon 
T could probably give two hoots what you 
do as long as you buy his games and his 
lead guys. Everything else is trappings. I'm 
not defending the canon history - the 
underlying assumption is that it _is_ and 
after that, the question becomes how could 
it be? And with many people of equally 
strong patriotic anti-monarchist sentiments 
as yourself and John A, there must be 
compelling reasons for something different 
to have been accepted. But never, ever sell 
short history. America was, for some part 
of its time, British. The original rebels were 
mostly former Englishmen. Imagine if the 
Crown had had more foresight and a lighter 
grip? 1775-76 might never have played out 
as it did. Preposterous? Hardly. History is 
made up of a lot of little decision points 
and if a major one had went slightly 
differently, all that follows may have been 
quite different as things build upon past 
things. Canon is _unlikely_ but not 
impossible (now, it is admittedly a 
collection of unlikely events that together 
yield a rather very unlikely end 
combination) and I see making it work a 
thought excercise. 

Tomb
PS - I have some American family (Uncle). 
I have many American friends and I've 
probably taken more American history than 
most Americans have Canadian history, 
despite the fact we're your largest trading 
partner and have fought with you in all the 
major wars after 1776 IIRC. I've observed 
more similarity between Alberta Farmers 
and North Dakota farmers than either have 
with their federal capital's people. If I 
lampoon an American, it is with the same 
spirit I lampoon my Scots ancestors or my 
Canadian fellow citizens or a member of my 
own family - I frankly think most of the 
Western Countries share such similar 
culture and values that it is an excercise in 
sophistry to try to create meaningful 
differences. That is probably why I lampoon 
Scots, English, Irish (but not the Welsh, oh 
no, never the Welsh), French (and French-
Canadians), Americans, Aussies, and Kiwis 
all to about the same extent - I sort of 
think of them as extended family. It is not 
in a spirit of smallness, pettiness or 
jealousy, just good natured amusement 
most of the time. The fact that people can 
be sensitive to these proddings is of 
unceasing amazement. If you can't laugh at 
yourself and your friends, you must live a 
humorless life. :)  YMMV. 

-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304