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For Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden
Dedication.
She’d imagined a future of melted-looking automobiles and streetcars, of flying machines and towers, but the small differences were far more disturbing. An infant pranced by in shoes with soles that flashed blue at every step, its hand held by a mother dressed in a Hussar’s jacket and tight trousers. A brightly lit advertising sign on a passing tram flared an incomprehensible message at her, then dissolved before her eyes into a picture of toothily smiling people. The unfamiliarity everywhere she turned her gaze was exhausting.
This looking-glass America resembled the GDR in so many tiny ways that it was felt more familiar than the home time line he’d just left.
My country, Major, takes a lot of stick because we’re big on high ideals and often fall short on follow-through. We talk the talk better than we walk the walk. But at least we have ideals, even if we sometimes fail to live up to them. Our enemies have no such handicaps. They’re hard men who are utterly unafraid to stab us in the back. The threat they pose to my people right now, and for the past seventeen years, is very great indeed.
Reminds me of the Emerson quote,“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
MITI had set up an entire spacesuit factory under conditions of military secrecy, run by an experienced manufacturer of women’s undergarments—again copying the Americans. (The Apollo moon suits had been made by Playtex, after the traditional aerospace suppliers failed dismally to come up with anything light enough and flexible enough to do the job.)
Nothing is as dangerous for the state as those who would govern kingdoms with maxims found in books. —Cardinal Richelieu
But cowboy games like this crap about a runaway princess isn’t helping. And neither is gaslighting the people we need to sign treaties with.” She paused again, then looked at Irving: “I expect to have your resignation letter, signed but undated, on my desk within the hour. I’ll decide whether to act on it once the current crisis is resolved, or as soon as I think it will make a positive contribution to improving relations with my counterpart.” She looked at Dr. Scranton: “yours too, and whoever is running this idiotic destabilization scheme—” “—Colonel Smith—” Irving chipped in, to Eileen’s
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In thie book's Time Line 2, the USA has a tough, smart president.
Angmar’s children prospered, and after skipping a generation the family trade re-emerged: the Hive bioweapon had damaged the jaunt trait badly enough to render it recessive and lethal if over-used, but not to destroy it.
He’d seen a lot of politicians in his time, and the current POTUS was both brilliant and smart—which in his opinion was a bad combination, as it made her hard to second-guess and prone to seeing three sides to every black-or-white issue.
If you shoot me out of hand, then you grant your successors a license to settle politics by the privilege of the gun. Which makes you an enemy of the revolution—my revolution, the one I’d be happy to die for. If you want to shoot me, lay charges in front of a judge and hold a trial first. Otherwise you’re a fucking traitor.”
Elon Musk says he can do it with rockets if NASA just gives him that ISS re-supply contract he’s been lobbying
Battlestar Galactica
