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
no subject
My library book is still missing. I'm afraid I might have accidentally sold it to a used bookstore.
no subject
I used to buy former library books from used bookstores, but I had a tendency to forget they were mine and hurriedly return them to the library, convinced that they must be overdue. Now I try to steer clear of the former library books, even though they must need good homes too.
no subject
These were great--thank you SO MUCH for writing them up.
no subject
And there may be more after that; a couple of people mentioned they were considering donating and then disappeared into the ether, so perhaps they will return. (Actually I'm tempted to just keep going, ACLU donations or no, but that seems sort of at odds with meeting my fund-raising goals. Also I think interest has fallen off? Perhaps I'm just repeating the same points about President Snow's flaws in different and more elaborate ways.)
In any case, I think President Snow has to have spies. Surely he has at least a few? He can't be relying entirely on listening devices, can he? And Katniss just hasn't noticed them because... reasons... I mean honestly, I think she would notice them. She's not observant about everything, but she is laser-focused on things that are related to survival, and "are my neighbors spies?" surely falls in that category.
Maybe he just didn't bother having an appropriate concentration of spies in District 12 because he thought it was too poor to be any danger to him. The Capitol could be teeming with them for all we know.
no subject
I don't think you're saying the same thing repeatedly at all, although I do think there's a tension between talking to President Snow just generally about how to be a better dictator and tailoring your comments to the progress of the story--but either way, or both ways, I like it! I'm glad you've got one more coming.
On a semi-serious note, I was thinking about the other side of the hope coin. On the one hand, keep people clinging to the shreds of hope. On the other hand--like Trump--scare people that they're going to lose something they have. Make them tight-fisted and flint faced.
no subject
Plus, of course, when people are eyeing each other in mutual hostility, convinced that the other group is just waiting to steal their things and their privileges and everything else they can lay their hands on, they're definitely not banding together to rebel. President Snow could do a lot more with the ethnic differences between the Districts; all that potential animosity is just going to waste right now.
He never should have let the Districts see each other as potential allies. That, just as much as his fixation on Katniss Everdeen, was his big mistake.
no subject
no subject
But noooo, instead he emphasizes their differences from the Capitol. DOES HE WANT TO BE OVERTHROWN?
no subject
Anyway, who knows, if the rebels think they have the moral high ground there's a chance they'll try to prove it by letting him chill in a nice relaxing prison cell after they relieve him of the Burden of Leadership. Whereas he knows perfectly well his own senate is just going to make a holograph of his image and keep on keeping while he gets tortured or turned into a hallucinogenic werewolf or probably BOTH, if he tries to step down at this point, or even to institute much-needed reforms like the President For Life Monthly Vacation Initiative.
So to hell with it. He sees an opportunity to rile up the plebs while appearing to do his duty as cackling villain, and he's going to milk it for all it's worth. Anything's better than sitting through another press briefing session, am I right?
(I think this version of Pres. Snow gives him too much credit as a strategist, but you never know).
no subject
He hoped that taking the course would bring back his enthusiasm for dictatorship, but reading the Society's recommendations just makes him feel so, so tired. He doesn't want to institute reforms. Either he's riling the rebels on purpose to get out of this whole dictatoring business, or he's just too tired to think through his decisions and realize how poor they are, and doesn't really care anyway.
no subject
Maybe he can join, IDK, the Society of Bond Villains or something. They're pretty incompetent!
no subject
Oh, burn. President Snow would totally have you arrested for that, if he still had the power to arrest anyone, instead of being overthrown by rebels like a total loser.
no subject
DO YOU NEED COAL OR DO YOU NOT NEED COAL?
FIGURE IT OUT SNOW. What the hell is this economy anyway? Were they just keeping 12 around as some kind of reverse Potemkin village or is it actually producing energy? And if it IS a major energy producer, how are you powering your USELESS PROPAGANDA MACHINE? GET IT TOGETHER, SNOW.
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!
Seriously, this is this silliest damn thing. Even sillier than deliberately stoking the Cult of Katniss for no reason. District 13 is The Scary Technology District! It's like it was tailor-made for fearmongering, and they're just letting it go to waste! Snow, you just don't think, do you? I'm glad I'm not your dictatorship tutor. :|
no subject
District 13 really is tailor-made for fearmongering. It's the nuclear power district! It could literally wipe Panem off the map! Well, maybe. I'm not sure how much nuclear anything they have left. But President Snow could always say they have the capacity to wipe Panem off the map, and therefore the residents of Panem must band together in solidarity to stop them and therefore conveniently distract everyone from rebellion, etc. etc.! I mean really. This isn't even dictatorship 101; it's just plain politics 101 at this point.