2008-11-24 "What were you thinking?!"

[proudhon]

Did I miss something
why would Anita want to wipe out the elves anyway?
I mean it may just be her nature or something to do in her spare time
She sure is overreacting to what "might" be a threat
She's going on very little intellegence.
maybe she;s dick cheney in drag...
Plus as someone pointed out she';s not going to be in "charge"
though I'm sure she'll think of some back handed way to
try and control Ian..
Damn she overrates herself..
ego. hubris. greek tragidy. go hand in hand
jd

[mindstalk]

Wiping out a criminal organization like the Gewehr would not normally be considered GENOCIDE!. One might plot the former, and even a smackdown of "the elves", while balking at wiping out an entire culture or species.

We don't know what Anita's thing is. Sarine ended up in the trap they had for Jon, and Anita seems spooked about that, plus the Ensigerum may have passed down some deep-time (hah) grudges against their former masters, but that's about all any reader can say.

[RubberBandMan]

Killing all the elves would stop the "Church is working closely with the elves" problem Anita thinks she has, but I think it would open up a bigger can of worms, and she knows it would shake things up more then she would want.

I suspect Anita wanted to use Ian as more of a small tactical nuke, taking out selected targets with force, without making people think she was a total loose cannon who could not be talked out of diplomatically. (And by diplomatically, I mean "Hey, we'll give you tribute if you don't nuke us" kind of thing).

But Ian wants to do things differently. Anita is a "Beat the problem into submission" type person, maybe pick up and use whatever broken pieces are left over. Ian is "Delete the problem from existing" kinda problem solver, which really fucks with things since it 'unbalances the equation', if I can use a stretched analogy.

[KurtDunn]

Is it just me or are 'normal' Ian's ears alot bigger now?

[Boss Out of Town]

Sadly, nothing that Ian is doing here is evidence for a lack of sanity. His actions in back in Sanitarial suggest it, but this is arguably a cold but perfectly rational solution to his problem. If he exterminates the Elves, he has saved the half-elves. If he is destroyed trying to take out the elves, he is rid of the burden of a destructive power that is causing him and the people he wants to help nothing but false hopes and grief.

GENOCIDE! is rarely perpetuated by the insane. It is usually triggered and executed by people who have decided, for personal or cultural reasons, through strong emotion or rational decision, that extermination of a human group is the best solution to a problem. The group being disposed of is in a lesser moral category than "normal" humans like themselves and the local situation would be improved or at least less complicated if they were no longer around.

Thus, the Serbians exterminate their Croat population and talk about opening McDonald's franchises as their economy stabilizes and recovers when the job is finished. Thus also the Croats, the Hutus in Uganda, the American 49ers in California, the English in Tasmania, the Iroquois in the Ohio valley, etc. The banality of evil.

[Graybeard]

Sadly, nothing that Ian is doing here is evidence for a lack of sanity. ... The banality of evil.

This is wisdom.

[Slamlander]

But her reaction would be better if she really wanted it I think. I don't think she's a person who normally aims for the final solution of GENOCIDE!!!.

Quite the contrary; she's entirely willing to wage GENOCIDE!! against the Gewehr, after all. The problem here is that when Ian blasted off, SHE wasn't in control of it.

The Gewehr are an organization and not a species or race. Ergo, that wasn't GENOCIDE!. Jews, Serbs, Croats, Huttus, and Tuttsis, are all sub-races, aka autonomous sub-racial genotypes.

[davester65]

Sadly, nothing that Ian is doing here is evidence for a lack of sanity. ... The banality of evil.

This is wisdom.

Can't say I disagree. Wish I could, but I can't.

[Sareth]

I spent time in Bosnia when I was in the army, and I have to reiterate how sane the people who commit GENOCIDE! are. The people I met there were intelligent, friendly, pleasant people who were really rather neat to interact with. But only a few years earlier they had been quite busily committing murder, rape, and acts of horror in the name of ethnic cleansing and religious strife that stemmed from events that took place almost a thousand years ago.

Truly, humanity is a terrifying species...

Ian doesn't have to be batshit insane to want to exterminate the elves. Given their history, it's actually a shockingly rational answer to a question no one should ever have to ask.

[RubberBandMan]

After reading those comments, a sane Ian is starting to scare me more then the ADHD-on-god-juice Ian. The difference between a force of nature and an alien invasion.