To add my own thoughts on this? Based on the number of immoral black ops projects the protagonists are tangled in in their backstory, along with blatantly stating the assassins were, or thought themselves, the 'power behind the throne' and got upset at the President throwing off their strings and stop being their unknowing patsy?
A dictator knowingly playing his subordinates off against each other for his favor is one thing. Focusing their backstabbing on each other rather than him. And even that is a metastable situation at best over the short term. The guy notionally at the top being completely out of the loop of this level of backstabbing and not flying apart before this? That is straining my credulity.
This wasn't totally a response to the OCP of a Clan Wolf warship arriving in orbit. It is the continuation of multiple per-existing conditions. And no Super-tech "Asteroid Defense System" or confiscated villain super-weapon that can have people trying to repurpose it into a ground to orbit system? Or is government deals with supers stupid along with being evil? The later certainly seems backed in from the background given so far.
I admit missing a few good beats here, like
where are the genuinely powerful/supersmart villains and
what about techno-heroes? and I admit digging a little too deep into certain cultural traditions regarding rumours of deep state and government conspiracies and the like. I grew up like a lot of people on X-files and Art Bell.
not that real life didn't have its share of questionable government actions and programs, but those in real life got shut down real quick and the perpetrators were at least dragged in front of congressional committees or court rooms (or both).
the existence of superhumans creates a warping effect-if someone out of the blue can shoot explosive rainbows out their ass, it makes it really difficult to maintain a monopoly on the means of violence (which is one of the keystones for 90% of human civilizations going back to Hammurabi).
It also makes Oligarchial control kinda difficult where monopoly can't be established.
It also creates another problem that is a fundamental attack on one of the basic precepts of
American culture: That all men are created equal. It's really hard to say that when some men can rearrange atoms at fifty paces at will (or seemingly at will), or can dress up in spandex undies with a bedsheet on their shoulders and fly as fast as a jet fighter, only without the jet, or the fighter.
The answer for a lot of people would be to make efforts to minimize that randomness and make the people with powers into something predictable, and more important,
controllable.The relative success or failure of this will tend to influence how your society develops, and the organizations and agencies put together to try and keep a lid on the incipient chaos may tend to drift in their mission ("Mission Creep") into ranges that border on being a separate government in and of itself.
One that might not take kindly to the 'regular' government not following recommendations from the "experts" placed specifically to influence said regular government into policies that make their jobs easier. These 'experts' are, after all, people who aren't elected, and often can count on keeping their position regardless of who
is elected (within reasonable restraints).
the historical precedent here (yes, there is one!) is the Imperial Eunuchs and the Mandarin systems in Imperial China, more than one Emperor 'lost the mandate of heaven' for defying his civil servants too overtly.
The case here is more extreme, because the conditions are far more extreme. They don't have a solid means to control who gets powers, and only a moderate mechanism for dealing with those who do get them, even through the one or two means the government
does control.
the threat everyone in every government on earth, in this timeline, is coping with and facing, is the potential that someone will get the right combo of powers and decide to make themselves dictator.
and in this timeline, there are at least two examples. Baba Yaga, who is basically a hands-off type dictator allowing Russia to operate as it will within certain guidelines, and the man who claimed to be the Mahdi, who tried to re-establish Islamic dominion from central Europe to Africa and took the combined efforts of several western nations to stop.
Nations that insist they're 'free nations' are having the hardest time coping with the existence of superhumans, since no arms control law or treaty really applies, and the power imbalance isn't predictable, and universal surveillance with fast reaction forces are really hard to justify to taxpayers who want good roads, schools and regular mail service.
in such situations, manipulating or compelling public sentiment ends up being in the hands of covert agencies, because you
have to get that consent or you don't have a nation anymore (or at least, that's what the people in charge of those agencies tell themselves.)
When the morality ends up being "the ends" (societal stabiity long term) "Justify the means" (bankrolling domestic terror to frighten the voters into supporting additional restrictions on civil liberties to prevent some jerkass who can launch nuclear explosions out his ding-dong from making himself emperor.) well, you get some pretty nasty deals and compromises in the name of 'stability'.
addendum: A world with superheroes is in and of itself absurdity. part of the fun is that absurdity, but I can think of very few situations where the existence of superpowers on an individual level doesn't lead to some serious societal warpage if not total breakdown. I'm kinda trying to avoid the natural consequences of that with this, because I want it to be
fun, not depressing.
Unrest? Chaos? Sure. But here's the thing: Clan tech isn't unbeatable, even for the militaries in question and literally the only two government officials presented thus far that aren't utterly evil backstabbers or collaborators are a superhuman sheriff who got captured and a president who got assassinated.
We've also encountered no information at all about what happened in engagements between the militaries of the world and the Clanners, or discussion of using nukes against their Warship, or even deploying superhumans against them.
I get that Lisa may not have all that information. But we aren't seeing everything from her perspective, either.
Which is another thing...we seem to have shifted from first person perspective for Lisa to third for other characters and back. It can be a bit jarring at times.
You're making fair points here. I haven't gotten much into the deeper notes from my actual
book/setting, believe it or not, this wasn't supposed to last 2 forum pages, but there's SO MUCH GROUND to cover.
There
are decent people in government, even at the local and state level. I just haven't found the 'voice' for them yet, with so much of this being from Lisa's POV.
sorry about the shifts in perspective, but some things I can't do from Lisa's-eye-view and her internal monologue comes so
easily.
