osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2017-02-21 08:06 am
osprey_archer) wrote2017-02-21 08:06 am
I finished Catching Fire
To the soon-to-be-ex President Snow:
We wash our hands of you. Had you heeded our advice in our last urgent letter, your reign might yet have been saved, but instead you stubbornly continued down your wrong-headed path. Everything you’ve ever built is about to tumble down around you and we want you to know that it is 100% your fault.
The faults in your governing style are too manifold for us to enumerate them all in a single epistle, but in the end, they can all be boiled down to two words: Katniss Everdeen.
And not in the way you think. If you had only left her alone, she would have been nothing but what she is: an isolated, poorly-educated, frightened child, much too cowed by the Capitol to rebellion in any meaningful way. You made her more than that when you treated her as a genuine threat. She is the face of the rebellion because you made her so.
You’re a coward, President Snow. A vindictive coward who is incapable of thinking through the consequences of his actions. When Katniss Everdeen nearly committed joint suicide with Peeta at the end of the 74th Hunger Games, that minor act of rebellion frightened you, and in your fright, you lashed out – which only served to show everyone how frightened you were. And of what? Of a little girl and her silly little boyfriend.
It made you look weak, President Snow, and in making yourself look weak, you made Katniss Everdeen look powerful. Everything that has happened since has been your own fault.
It would have been so much wiser to treat Katniss Everdeen’s berry gaffe as the action of a silly lovesick child. You shouldn’t have killed the Gamemaker, Seneca Crane; you should have sent him on talk shows with the two winners! “I suppose it was naughty of us,” Seneca Crane could have said, with a charming smile. “But we just had to see how deep your devotion ran. And I have to say, you melted all our hearts when you showed that you would genuinely rather die than be parted.”
Moreover, keeping Seneca Crane as Gamemaker would have saved you from the truly embarrassing gaffe of appointing Plutarch Heavensbee, only to discover – how it pains us to even say this – that he was actually a rebel himself. We can’t recall the last time a government made such an embarrassing mistake. Perhaps it was when the British government discovered that the head of its Soviet counterintelligence operations was himself a Soviet spy?
But at least Queen Elizabeth II had no aspirations toward great dictatorship. You, on the other hand, ought to have been more careful. Why was this man not more thoroughly vetted? Why is your intelligence agency so incompetent that they couldn’t discover Plutarch Heavensbee’s rebel connections when he had a symbol of rebellion decorating his watch?
Do you even have an intelligence agency, President Snow? The populace seems suspiciously unconcerned about spies. Any dictator worth his salt ought to have his people eyeing their neighbors suspiciously, wondering who is reporting to the secret police. You, sir, are an embarrassment to the name of dictatorship.
Also, what kind of moron destroys his entire coal-mining district? Yes, yes, you wanted to punish Katniss Everdeen – and therefore cement her place as a figurehead for revolution, we might add. Did you give the other consequences of this temper tantrum any thought? How do you intend to generate electricity without any coal, pray tell? Even if the other districts weren’t already in a state of open revolt, how long do you think they’d quietly accept the loss of their electricity?
We suppose it is possible that you have used some of the wide open spaces between the districts to erect wind farms or solar panels, thus freeing yourself of dependence on District 12 and therefore conveniently rendering it superfluous. But frankly, this sounds far too intelligent for us to credit you with doing it. Your predecessors at least were wise enough to ensure that District 12’s coal reserves would provide power for Panem before they wiped District 13 and its nuclear power off the map.
Although they didn’t succeed nearly so well as one might have hoped, clearly, given that the remains of District 13 have been recovering and nursing a grudge against you for the last seventy-five years. Honestly! You had a ready-made enemy that you could have used as a scapegoat, and gone to war against to unite your people at any time, and instead you just pretended they had been utterly annihilated. You fool!
We are ashamed that we allowed you to purchase our course. Your name is a blot on our list of alumni.
The Society for Improved Dictatorship
We wash our hands of you. Had you heeded our advice in our last urgent letter, your reign might yet have been saved, but instead you stubbornly continued down your wrong-headed path. Everything you’ve ever built is about to tumble down around you and we want you to know that it is 100% your fault.
The faults in your governing style are too manifold for us to enumerate them all in a single epistle, but in the end, they can all be boiled down to two words: Katniss Everdeen.
And not in the way you think. If you had only left her alone, she would have been nothing but what she is: an isolated, poorly-educated, frightened child, much too cowed by the Capitol to rebellion in any meaningful way. You made her more than that when you treated her as a genuine threat. She is the face of the rebellion because you made her so.
You’re a coward, President Snow. A vindictive coward who is incapable of thinking through the consequences of his actions. When Katniss Everdeen nearly committed joint suicide with Peeta at the end of the 74th Hunger Games, that minor act of rebellion frightened you, and in your fright, you lashed out – which only served to show everyone how frightened you were. And of what? Of a little girl and her silly little boyfriend.
It made you look weak, President Snow, and in making yourself look weak, you made Katniss Everdeen look powerful. Everything that has happened since has been your own fault.
It would have been so much wiser to treat Katniss Everdeen’s berry gaffe as the action of a silly lovesick child. You shouldn’t have killed the Gamemaker, Seneca Crane; you should have sent him on talk shows with the two winners! “I suppose it was naughty of us,” Seneca Crane could have said, with a charming smile. “But we just had to see how deep your devotion ran. And I have to say, you melted all our hearts when you showed that you would genuinely rather die than be parted.”
Moreover, keeping Seneca Crane as Gamemaker would have saved you from the truly embarrassing gaffe of appointing Plutarch Heavensbee, only to discover – how it pains us to even say this – that he was actually a rebel himself. We can’t recall the last time a government made such an embarrassing mistake. Perhaps it was when the British government discovered that the head of its Soviet counterintelligence operations was himself a Soviet spy?
But at least Queen Elizabeth II had no aspirations toward great dictatorship. You, on the other hand, ought to have been more careful. Why was this man not more thoroughly vetted? Why is your intelligence agency so incompetent that they couldn’t discover Plutarch Heavensbee’s rebel connections when he had a symbol of rebellion decorating his watch?
Do you even have an intelligence agency, President Snow? The populace seems suspiciously unconcerned about spies. Any dictator worth his salt ought to have his people eyeing their neighbors suspiciously, wondering who is reporting to the secret police. You, sir, are an embarrassment to the name of dictatorship.
Also, what kind of moron destroys his entire coal-mining district? Yes, yes, you wanted to punish Katniss Everdeen – and therefore cement her place as a figurehead for revolution, we might add. Did you give the other consequences of this temper tantrum any thought? How do you intend to generate electricity without any coal, pray tell? Even if the other districts weren’t already in a state of open revolt, how long do you think they’d quietly accept the loss of their electricity?
We suppose it is possible that you have used some of the wide open spaces between the districts to erect wind farms or solar panels, thus freeing yourself of dependence on District 12 and therefore conveniently rendering it superfluous. But frankly, this sounds far too intelligent for us to credit you with doing it. Your predecessors at least were wise enough to ensure that District 12’s coal reserves would provide power for Panem before they wiped District 13 and its nuclear power off the map.
Although they didn’t succeed nearly so well as one might have hoped, clearly, given that the remains of District 13 have been recovering and nursing a grudge against you for the last seventy-five years. Honestly! You had a ready-made enemy that you could have used as a scapegoat, and gone to war against to unite your people at any time, and instead you just pretended they had been utterly annihilated. You fool!
We are ashamed that we allowed you to purchase our course. Your name is a blot on our list of alumni.
The Society for Improved Dictatorship