#compromises

Im curious as to how long the blockade lasts in your au? How would pike be taken down?

Thank you 🥹

(Heda Lexa herself^^^)

As for your questions, logistically the blockade would last about as long as it takes Pike to realize that people were leaving, so a handful of weeks at best. After returning, Clarke would immediately shift the route of the rations, and in doing so not only would Pike and his followers slowly start actually starving themselves (leaving them to assume that the rations had been cut off), but the others would actually begin to eat more again (albeit in secret.)

In that time, Clarke and Octavia (to a lesser degree, and begrudgingly 🙄) would spearhead a massive underground campaign on the coalition's behalf. Clarke would plant the thought of active dissent by spreading the information and knowledge and proof that not only is the commander and her peace-seeking coalition willingly sending rations to the people of the thirteenth clan for no other reason than to keep them alive, but that she's doing it because she still very much views them as exactly that: the thirteenth clan of her coalition. She still sees them as her people who she is ultimately responsible for taking care of, because that is what the commander and the coalition does for each other 👀. That this blockade is a cold war being fought against their leader who issued the orders to murder the grounder army sent to protect them, not them as civilians who played no part in it (which is... partially true. Clarke had always done her best bullshitting when she can play with partial truths 🥴) She reiterates that the only way forward is to let go of the past and Pike and their life in space, and to realize the ground is their life now.

Some hear her message.

Some refuse to, instead intent on clinging to the idea thag somehow they'll eventually win this (though shockingly, they never really seem to be able to name exactly what "winning" means in this instance...)

The ones who do listen are smuggled out in accordance with the instructions that Indra herself lays out. She really has nothing to go on but faith in Lexa's word that they'll be taken care of, but by that point, some people are ready to put their bets a prayer rather than what life inside the boundary line has become.

Of the roughly 1000 skaikru within Arkadia, she only gets about 30 out before everything falls apart.

Because as Pike and his men start actually feeling the brunt of the blockade, they'd slowly become more agitated and more paranoid. More desperate. And desperation leads to aggression, that would slowly build until all it would take is one person realizing their numbers were off, or one person snitching on the escapees, and all hell would break loose.

Obviously, he'd immediately go after Clarke. Because it's always fucking Clarke (re: Bellamy's wise input.)

Charges of conspiring with the enemy. Espionage. Planning and attempting to execute a coup.

Which to be fair.... yeah, all those charges would be legit.

What can I say?

She's a bad bitch

Thomas Sowell's greatest insight | Konstantin Kisin

Konstantin Kisin: The single line that has made the greatest impact to my understanding of the world is from Thomas Sowell who, to me, is one of the greatest modern thinkers. "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

You're not going to solve climate change you're not going to solve anything. You can make adjustments and - you know this much better than I do from being in government - every policy has a trade-off and very often, I think always actually, the reason that issues become difficult and controversial is precisely because the trade-offs are as bad as the solution, quite often. And you have to pick very carefully how exactly you calibrate your solution to avoid causing a lot more damage than you're trying to prevent.

And we've completely lost the ability to see that nuance. Everything now is seen as-- you know, we have this conversation in this country all the time. If Labour are in, the reason the NHS is broken is because Labour's broken it. If the Conservatives are in, it's because the Tory, Tory Cuts or whatever. No one seems to understand that like all of these problems are eternal. They're gonna go on forever. They're not solvable. No one's going to solve the NHS. No one's going to solve climate change. No one's going to solve anything.

What we can do is tinker at the edges and improve certain aspects of it, at the cost of others. At the cost of others. This was exactly - and you and I talked about this last time - what happened over COVID. People forgot that safety has trade-offs. That freedom has trade-offs. This is what no one wants to say. No one wants to say, "yes, freedom of speech has the consequence that some guy is gonna be insulting to someone else online, and someone might get upset." But that is the price we're willing to pay because we want to live in a free society.

Yes, not locking down the country may, may, we don't know, may have caused more people to die, but locking down the country also caused more people to die. So, which one of those do we want, how do we calibrate that policy.

We've completely lost the ability to have those conversations, which is why I think it's really important that we we try to bring that idea back. There are no solutions. There just aren't. You know this. Am I wrong about this John?

John Anderson: No, you're absolutely right. And the other great problem though, is that a good government reflecting a good society recognizes, not just that there's no absolute answer to anything, but that you actually have to be able to manage many difficult issues at any given time. You and I have to do that in our own personal lives. And so do governments. And so, what we're reducing politics to is sort of a series of one-trick pony shows where there's a crisis here and that's the only thing we'll talk about. It's not just that there are trade-offs, we're ignoring a whole lot of other problems which will swamp that one if we don't pay them attention as well.