may we live forever

“I hate how they don’t incorporate into the beautiful tapestry of my city. They have different social norms and I expect them to assimilate immediately and completely.” Do you hear yourself?

“This is not the same as anti-immigration sentiment I swear.” Uh well you’re wrong.

I want to fucking scream.

I was working on an essay about how states within the US have open borders with each other, and how this makes us an economic powerhouse, but apparently I was thinking of directing my essay at the wrong fucking group. God damn.

To summarize: Immigrants are good. “Transplants” (e.g. immigrants from another jurisdiction who have no legal barriers to said migration because they’re from the same country) are good. People being able to move to new places and live their lives there is good. I fully support people being able to move house wherever they damn well please. Always and absolutely. (Caveat: as in, buy a house in an existing settlement, not build a house in whatever random ass place they choose. Just in case anyone was misunderstanding.)

@isaacsaphire We do need more housing. I wasn’t trying to say that people shouldn’t build houses. I was saying that houses need to be in appropriate places. Individual families are not typically constructing their own homes. Builders construct subdivisions, and then regular people buy one of those houses. I accidentally overemphasized preexisting housing and that wasn’t my intention.

we know Aral's "green silk rooms" line, of course, excellent paragraph:

"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real."

on the one hand, yeah, very true observation, but I think given the context of what else is going on at that point (that Cordelia and by extension the reader don't find out about until later), I think there's another layer to it.

because that describes the whole Escobar war pretty much exactly. Death wholesale, by the shipload, all for the sake of killing Serg before he can become a nightmare of an emperor and destroying his political allies' popularity so they don't become a problem afterward. sound familiar?

And at the time he says this line, making sure all that happens according to plan is Aral's job. Because Ezar ordered it, and (more importantly) because Ezar convinced him it was necessary. He phrases this in general terms, but I don't think he's actually talking abstractly here, and I don't think he's being a hypocrite given everything else we see of him as a character. He seems to believe - after trying to exhaust other options - that the Escobar plan is necessary, but given how he handles it afterward (drinking, downward spiral, basically suicidal), I don't think he views it as forgivable.

If you start with a book that has literally any other character's perspective when talking about Cordelia's career, you get the additional context that the Astronomical Survey is insanely dangerous, involves jumping blind through wormholes, has a highly prestigious reputation, and being a genius daredevil is pretty much a requirement to get in.