Re: A lurker's comments on the NAC

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, thurvin wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> If in 1740 someone would say that USA would even exist never the less
be
> large global spanning power, they would probably be laughed out of the
room.
> I agree that canon history seems unlikely in many places but stranger
things
> have had in real life. Like the internet, like the automotive, for
example.

Thank you for a badly need shot of historical perspective for this whole
sorry, overblown arguement.

Heck, 20 years ago everyone was saying the USSR was a huge, implacable,
and eternal threat to the universe at large. Most 'experts' were caught
pretty flatfooted by the events of 1989/90/91...

Give the Yanks 50 years, and who knows where they'll be? Or forget the
US;
the rest of the world will be even more different.

Providing you keep people fed, clothed and generally equiped with
creature
comforts, you can spin nearly any broadly fair system to them.
Especially
if the previous system has just blown apart messily and had been
noticably uncomfortable or unfair before. If you keep it fair and
comfortable people will keep going along with it, until you get people
howling on mailing lists that the present system is 'the only natural
order of the universe' and declaring it sacorsanct & immune to change...

It's a bit cynical, maybe, but workable. Especially to explain the
NAC...

Brian - yh728@victoria.tc.ca -