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Originally Posted by kalos72
NA areas will thrive if left alone and culture in those areas WILL change.
Again, I am talking from a "rebuilding the country" perspective I think NA has the right idea, although the wrong style for going about it can be argued.  |
You seem to be arguing that New America's "triage" system for dealing with human "deadwood" is appropriate for dealing with the current crisis because the goal of saving everyone leads to a complete disintegration of the means to save everyone and then everyone is lost to anarchy, famine and disease.
Well, as far as I can tell, per canon v1 and v2 (I know nothing about TW2013), some of that has already happened. US military units across the United States have been whittled down to mere shadows of their former selves, and most of this has not been because of combat against foreign invaders or domestic separatists. It's been fighting with a their own desperate starving population who are willing to do anything to make sure they and their children starve tomorrow, rather than starve today.
Some units have given up trying to perform the impossible duties of which you speak. Per canon that includes the 43rd Military Police Brigade in New England that pulled out of a huge urban area that it couldn't police and regrouped into a cantonment that it could actually protect. The people left behind called that "abandonment" and "betrayal." I always just saw it as trying to save what they could from a untenable situation.
There is also the CivGov 228th Infantry Brigade that is moving from the Mid-Atlantic area to the Great Lakes. Thousands of people under their care are going to die, unless they can make the migration with them. But if they stay, the unit will remain isolated from CivGov and eventually the population will exhaust the food in that area. So the migration is a form of triage in that the most infirm will be not make it.
The canon mentions that the 197th Mechanized Inf Bge in cantonment in Cairo IL is considering shutting off refined fuel shipments to MilGov because they need to keep it to ensure the survival of their cantonment.
There is also some mention that MilGov and CivGov are only attempting to control areas of the country with critical infrastructure, or places they can consolidate their forces. That process is ongoing during the time the players are in the game and hasn't been completed yet.
In the TW2K universe, people are thinking of that kind of triage.
But New America isn't just a ruthless force that intends to perform triage on a national level in order to rebuild the United States. In fact, they don't want to save the United States. They want to create a new political and social entity to replace the United States. In order to do that, they are using the current catastrophe to enact their social agenda under the guise of rebuilding the nation.
That's what New America is.
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Originally Posted by Raellus
Kalos, you seem to be arguing along the lines of the ends justifying the means.
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That's what I smell here too, but the thing about New America is that they are about ends, not means. Providing food, shelter, medicine and security to a population are not ends. They are means. The end is turning the wreckage of the United States into some kind of racist, neo-Objectivist, dictatorship where a self-selecting elite hold all political power and religion is permitted only where it reinforces state policy.
So, even we remove the racism and you still get a political system that I, personally, would have to throw a bomb at.
Such a system could not get a toe-hold in the United States but for one thing: the lights are out, the cops are gone, the doctor is dead, and the grocery store shelves are empty. Under those conditions people are willing to trade liberty for security.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kalos72
But what about the scenario I described earlier?
How does ANY government expect to deal with a local population of 3 million refugees while keeping to the principles and ideals we discuss here?
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The answer is: they don't.
You'll note that in ver 1 and ver 2 canon there are no MilGov or CivGov units around Pittsburgh, the place you mentioned where all those refugees are. Both governments have given up on that area. Which is why, in that political vacuum Colonel White and his marauder army have risen up. With 3 million refugees to recruit from, he has the manpower to organize ruthlessly and take what he wants. But such a group is like a shark, they are redistributing resources, not creating new ones, so if they ever stop moving forward, they will start starving. Most political systems are only a few missed meals away from a revolution.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kalos72
I suggest that the government would "delay" moving on a situation like that and claim "we dont have the manpower" hoping all along that half die off in the coming year while recruiting every ounce of skill they can from them before hand.
How would WE claim the moral high ground knowing that we left 1.5 million people to die rather then die trying ourselves?
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This is a different argument than the one you began with. Your first question was whether New America's means could be justified in the TW2K world. You wanted to ask that question while divorcing New America from it's racist agenda. Okay fine. There is always a valid argument to be made that ruthless action to ensure the group's survival in the face of an individual's death is justified. It's "Lifeboat Politics."
But now you seem to be getting to the kind of moral relativism that pacifists use to justify their stance that violence in the service of politics is never justified.
To quote Col. Henry Blake: "Horseapples!"
"Bomber" Harris is not some villainous war criminal like Herman Goering just because both men ran organizations that dropped bombs on civilians from airplanes. Herman is a war criminal because he bombed civilians to create a world where democracy is eliminated and all racial, mental, physical, and political "inferiors" are put to death. Bomber Harris killed civilians to prevent that world from becoming a reality.
If you take the political agenda out of the equation then both men are war criminals. But if you do take the politics out of the equation you are engaging in sophistry. You are engaging in intellectual dishonesty.
MilGov and CivGov are performing exactly the kind of triage you suggest. Areas deemed to be too difficult to defend or not worth the expense of resources, are being abandoned after all strategic resources are removed. Look at the scenarios "The Last Submarine" or "Armies of the Night" or "Rifle River" or "The Lima Incident." They are all about military units going into uncontrolled areas to remove strategic assets, but not necessarily improving the lot of the people in the area.
Leaving unsupportable populations to sink or swim on their own is the absolute worst decision someone could make, unless you stop to examine every other decision available. It is the least evil option. It is Lifeboat Politics.
But New America isn't just interested in overcoming this period of social, political and economic catastrophe. They are using it to establish a new political order. If anything New America needs to extend the period of anarchy in order to keep people desperate enough to flock to New America's relative security.
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