The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Simon_Jester]

You need someone the angels will at least listen to, unless your plan is to massacre them to the last little flappy cherub. And if that's justifiable, then we really ought to have started doing it to the demons, because by any reasonable standard they're even worse.

[GrayAnderson]

One thing to remember is that the electronics industry is going to be pushed as much as possible into making electronics for the military. All those R&D people who specialize in designing microchips? I'd expect them to get sucked into the defense industry, likewise.

Think about what happened to auto manufacturing in WWII: it stopped dead, because there was so much demand for military vehicles. Something similar will probably happen here.

Yeah. My guess is that Chrysler and GM got "bailed out" by big contracts coming down from the government, plus...er...a sudden reduction in pension commitments from the Message (and former workers being brought back to work). I think I described the whole war spending at one point as a large Keynesian stimulus to the economy (albeit one that's unsustainable in the long run and is likely to lead to a lot of inflation-type trouble at the end). This is basically what we've been seeing played out in the story.

Odd aside: How is it that people get claimed with the Hellmouth by either Heaven or "somewhere else"? i.e. is there a "Heavenmouth" or an "other bubbleversemouth"?

[xthetenth]

I'd say Michael sees us as a bunch of very angry and very deadly individuals who get to decide whether angelkind lives or stops existing in a recognizable form, and that if he wants to live to keep his power and his race alive he'd better do his best to integrate angels into human society even if we are useful for his immediate purposes. Sure he sees us as tools in his scheme, but he knows that he's playing with nuclear hellfire and that alone makes him in many ways the best angel to be humanity's puppet for at least the immediate future seeing as he knows enough of humans to know how angry we are and what we want, how screwed he and angelkind are if he doesn't do it, and is smart enough to make it happen. The list of angels who fill those criteria seems depressingly short, so I'd say Michael would likely be the best leader for them in the immediate future, and if he hands us heaven after the first battle, I'd be inclined to let him have it.. and watch him like a hawk, of course. I don't like that he's the best candidate we've seen so far, but as far as I can tell he is.

Why not put Nanael a 2nd Lifer in charge, though? One that's already in Heaven (Heavenite?)
Honestly, I'd rather have Julius Caesar, as much as I dread him, in charge than having Michael.

That's half of the advantage of an angel over a second lifer. They aren't human. Everybody hates them. Those are excellent ways to keep whoever we put in control under control, especially when you consider that you need somebody who can appeal to the angels enough to get them to follow (and so understands their rather historical mindset) who also understands humankind well enough to integrate the angels into our society. Really, only Michael fits the criteria without being somebody as potentially destabilizing as Caesar, who would be a lot more threatening as a leader because he isn't an angel and would therefore be able to integrate himself into human power structures more easily, whereas Michael's limited by his angelic stature until he's done his job. Plus, it's not like humans have any difficulty coming up with bastards on his scale who would find it much easier to parley ruling the angels into an actual position of power. The only real power he has to make our lives difficult is by screwing up, and he's not incompetent.

[Nematocyst]

That's half of the advantage of an angel over a second lifer. They aren't human. Everybody hates them. Those are excellent ways to keep whoever we put in control under control, especially when you consider that you need somebody who can appeal to the angels enough to get them to follow (and so understands their rather historical mindset) who also understands humankind well enough to integrate the angels into our society. Really, only Michael fits the criteria without being somebody as potentially destabilizing as Caesar, who would be a lot more threatening as a leader because he isn't an angel and would therefore be able to integrate himself into human power structures more easily, whereas Michael's limited by his angelic stature until he's done his job. Plus, it's not like humans have any difficulty coming up with bastards on his scale who would find it much easier to parley ruling the angels into an actual position of power. The only real power he has to make our lives difficult is by screwing up, and he's not incompetent.

Good points.

You need someone the angels will at least listen to, unless your plan is to massacre them to the last little flappy cherub. And if that's justifiable, then we really ought to have started doing it to the demons, because by any reasonable standard they're even worse.

We tried, but then they surrendered...

[Simon_Jester]

You need someone the angels will at least listen to, unless your plan is to massacre them to the last little flappy cherub. And if that's justifiable, then we really ought to have started doing it to the demons, because by any reasonable standard they're even worse.

We tried, but then they surrendered...

If you're willing to try, you don't take surrenders. We did, which was a remarkable decency.

I'm sorry; I just can't make myself think it's funny. No offense meant.

[Night_stalker]

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

[Nematocyst]

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

That was Memnon.

If you're willing to try, you don't take surrenders. We did, which was a remarkable decency.

I'm sorry; I just can't make myself think it's funny. No offense meant.

It isn't funny. No offense taken.
Also, we had to accept their surrender because we were stretched to our limits. Our ammo depots were dangerously low.

[Simon_Jester]

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

It's still a stupid argument; we already know that the Hellgate drops people in Hell anyway. All we have against the angels is that they wouldn't let in refugees because they didn't give a crap.

I mean sure, regime change, sure blow the crud out of the place in the process, but genocide? If we didn't do it to the demons there is no sane way it can be justified against the angels.

"At least I'm honest about being the most monstrous evil in the multiverse" is not a sufficient excuse for being the most monstrous evil in the multiverse.

[CaptainChewbacca]

We can't wipe out the angels without killing every human in heaven. That's a given. Those humans were lied to, deceived, and then enslaved for a thousand years or more. How can we possibly justify killing them just to even the score with the angels?

Sure we're pissed. We should be. But to let our rage doom so many innocents when it could be avoided is equally as monstrous as what they did to us. As I've said before, the BEST CHANCE of taking down Yaweh and heaven's power structure is to work with Michael, at least for a while. He can open the gates to the city and stand down the angels. I am imagining a decapitating strike similar to what we did to Satan, but I doubt Stuart is so unimaginative as to do the same thing twice.

[xthetenth]

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisfy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

Very very good point. It's important to remember that in-universe we think that an angel did it. It really speaks to an absolute disdain for humans that's pretty repugnant, and rather more offensive than the baldricks' straightforward hatred, at least to my sensibilities. I'd much rather be considered an enemy than a mere inconvenience to be disposed of, the latter is just demeaning, smug and haughty.

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

It's still a stupid argument; we already know that the Hellgate drops people in Hell anyway. All we have against the angels is that they wouldn't let in refugees because they didn't give a crap.

I mean sure, regime change, sure blow the crud out of the place in the process, but genocide? If we didn't do it to the demons there is no sane way it can be justified against the angels.

"At least I'm honest about being the most monstrous evil in the multiverse" is not a sufficient excuse for being the most monstrous evil in the multiverse.

Too true, but at this point the baldricks have had a lot of time rehabilitating their image, firstly by dying enough to make us feel somewhat sorry for the foot soldiers, then by having a society where most of them were forced into it to compound that and then by working really hard to integrate themselves into our society, whereas the angels have been really hurting us without reprisal and we liked them less to begin with. It's understandable if we're more angry than determined against the angels, even if it isn't strictly the best way to feel about it from an objective perspective. Plus, it's less like they weren't letting in refugees because they didn't give a crap and more that they deliberately lied about letting people who fit their criteria in, willfully delivering them to hell in what amounts to a celestial fit of pique while still merrily masquerading as the good guy. It's the betrayal that's galling more than the whole hellfire thing.

We can't wipe out the angels without killing every human in heaven. That's a given. Those humans were lied to, deceived, and then enslaved for a thousand years or more. How can we possibly justify killing them just to even the score with the angels?

Sure we're pissed. We should be. But to let our rage doom so many innocents when it could be avoided is equally as monstrous as what they did to us. As I've said before, the BEST CHANCE of taking down Yaweh and heaven's power structure is to work with Michael, at least for a while. He can open the gates to the city and stand down the angels. I am imagining a decapitating strike similar to what we did to Satan, but I doubt Stuart is so unimaginative as to do the same thing twice.

Yeah, we can't wipe out the humans, that's what Michael's counting on, that we'll stop rather than slaughter the human levies, and give him time for the coup, and I'm willing to bet that Michael has some plans for dealing with Yahweh, considering what he thinks of us. I'm pretty sure that he feels that he needs for yahweh to have been done in by angels for them to not still be loathed when everything's done to a degree that they wouldn't be worth ruling over they'd be such second class citizens (and citizens might be stretching it). The lesson he learned from the curbstomp war is that he needs to seperate the angels (and their top lieutenants) from Yahweh in the minds of the humans, and the best way is by taking out Yahweh in large part if not exclusively with angels, otherwise he'll be sidelined like all the dukes of Hell. And watching Mikey take down Yahweh wouldn't be much like satan getting two ASMs upside the head, and would likely be quite entertaining. Otherwise he's just going to be categorized another loyal duke and cast aside.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I could be the minority here, but since Yahweh's pretty much going to get taken down anyways, the fish I wanna see caught is Michael-lan, by FAR. The smug dweeb isn't nearly as clever as he thinks he is; he's just a relatively larger fish in a pond full of smaller ones, with respect to scheming ability.

Michael is fighting to protect his species from the destruction it was hurtling into due to the insanity of a power-mad dictator. Michael is no peach, but he's certainly not as big of a scumbag as you seem to think(EDIT: At least not anymore.) Yes, he's been responsible for attacks on humans, but to act in any other manner would have resulted in the genocide of his species. What would you do?

So Michael, arguably Heaven's leading expert on humanity, takes us for systematic, ruthless killers who wouldn't accept a surrender from a broken enemy lacking a plausible, competent advocate. How did demonkind survive, exactly? I don't believe for a minute that Michael fears for the survival of his kind, he just wants to seize Yahweh's throne out of an arrogant sense of entitlement and some resentment over being blinkered by him in the past.

[Edward Yee]

So Michael, arguably Heaven's leading expert on humanity, takes us for systematic, ruthless killers who wouldn't accept a surrender from a broken enemy lacking a plausible, competent advocate. How did demonkind survive, exactly? I don't believe for a minute that Michael fears for the survival of his kind, he just wants to seize Yahweh's throne out of an arrogant sense of entitlement and some resentment over being blinkered by him in the past.

I know it's basically repeating the aforementioned word regarding his power base, but without other angels his power base diminishes -- seeing as how so many of those he's co-opted are loyal to him personally -- so he has quite the incentive to keep as many angels alive as possible.

[xthetenth]

So Michael, arguably Heaven's leading expert on humanity, takes us for systematic, ruthless killers who wouldn't accept a surrender from a broken enemy lacking a plausible, competent advocate. How did demonkind survive, exactly? I don't believe for a minute that Michael fears for the survival of his kind, he just wants to seize Yahweh's throne out of an arrogant sense of entitlement and some resentment over being blinkered by him in the past.

I know it's basically repeating the aforementioned word regarding his power base, but without other angels his power base diminishes -- seeing as how so many of those he's co-opted are loyal to him personally -- so he has quite the incentive to keep as many angels alive as possible.

Not just numberwise, it's of vital importance for the angels to be tolerated enough that they're allowed to stay an entity worth ruling. If they manage to get the self-portrayal of being forced into it by a power-happy madman like the demons did working, it'll allow angels to maintain the potential to become a powerful political entity, one that would actually be pursuant to Michael's ambition to rule. Not to mention that in the process of destroying angels as a political entity, it'd probably include all the top level angels getting killed, a prospect Michael obviously isn't fond of, and he's right to worry about us trying to destroy angels in their current political form, in fact if justification for only going after Yahweh isn't provided then the only sane thing to do is to blame the whole ruling class and try to install our own. I'd say it's this kind of response in all the myriad ways it would get angels killed is what Michael's trying to stop, although his worst paranoia and imminent death-fueled fears may include genocide, I bet that when he's thinking things through he realizes it wouldn't happen.

[Simon_Jester]

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

It's still a stupid argument; we already know that the Hellgate drops people in Hell anyway. All we have against the angels is that they wouldn't let in refugees because they didn't give a crap.
I mean sure, regime change, sure blow the crud out of the place in the process, but genocide? If we didn't do it to the demons there is no sane way it can be justified against the angels.
"At least I'm honest about being the most monstrous evil in the multiverse" is not a sufficient excuse for being the most monstrous evil in the multiverse.

Too true, but at this point the baldricks have had a lot of time rehabilitating their image, firstly by dying enough to make us feel somewhat sorry for the foot soldiers, then by having a society where most of them were forced into it to compound that and then by working really hard to integrate themselves into our society, whereas the angels have been really hurting us without reprisal and we liked them less to begin with. It's understandable if we're more angry than determined against the angels, even if it isn't strictly the best way to feel about it from an objective perspective.

Suffice to say that I think that an act of genocide against the angels would be an existential threat to civilization. Not to humanity, to civilization, because I don't believe that a culture which conducted itself that way could reasonably expect to be civilized afterwards.

The Nazis wouldn't have been, for instance, if they had somehow won and not gotten flattened; they'd have been a filthy misgoverned totalitarian mess. That's the best illustration I can come up with of the concept: crimes against humanity sentience on that scale warp the criminal. Look at the demons for another illustration, look at what they've become. Same thing.

Plus, it's less like they weren't letting in refugees because they didn't give a crap and more that they deliberately lied about letting people who fit their criteria in, willfully delivering them to hell in what amounts to a celestial fit of pique while still merrily masquerading as the good guy. It's the betrayal that's galling more than the whole hellfire thing.

I don't think you know enough about hellfire to say that. I know I don't... but I'm not saying that.

No disrespect intended, but things like that really bother me. Betrayals are ethereal; they hurt inside the head. Burning pitch? That hurts everywhere.

So Michael, arguably Heaven's leading expert on humanity, takes us for systematic, ruthless killers who wouldn't accept a surrender from a broken enemy lacking a plausible, competent advocate. How did demonkind survive, exactly? I don't believe for a minute that Michael fears for the survival of his kind, he just wants to seize Yahweh's throne out of an arrogant sense of entitlement and some resentment over being blinkered by him in the past.

Oh, nonsense, that makes no sense at all. ON THIS THREAD, in a world where none of the horrors Stuart invokes happened as he invoked them, we've got people baying for the blood of every last angel down to the flappy little cherubs. If Michael thinks his species is in danger of extermination at this point... I'd say he's called it right on the money.

[Edward Yee]

Suffice to say that I think that an act of genocide against the angels would be an existential threat to civilization. Not to humanity, to civilization, because I don't believe that a culture which conducted itself that way could reasonably expect to be civilized afterwards.

Like I think I alluded to earlier -- there's simply being that lethal, and then there's making a conscious decision to go down a long and damning road, even moreso than our real-world arguments regarding the War on Terror concept... GEN Petraeus and CPT Stevenson got it when Abigor's "army" of his veterans, his mates, and his kidlings appeared on their optical feeds...

Hokay, I guess now is when we find out what sort of people we really are

[TithonusSyndrome]

So Michael, arguably Heaven's leading expert on humanity, takes us for systematic, ruthless killers who wouldn't accept a surrender from a broken enemy lacking a plausible, competent advocate. How did demonkind survive, exactly? I don't believe for a minute that Michael fears for the survival of his kind, he just wants to seize Yahweh's throne out of an arrogant sense of entitlement and some resentment over being blinkered by him in the past.

I know it's basically repeating the aforementioned word regarding his power base, but without other angels his power base diminishes -- seeing as how so many of those he's co-opted are loyal to him personally -- so he has quite the incentive to keep as many angels alive as possible.

Yeah, and since angelkind isn't in all likelihood facing extinction as per the argument earlier, it should be a simple matter to tell his supporters to squirrel themselves away and do his best to contact earth for terms of surrender, rather than obstructing human entry efforts to the maximum possible extent. Michael isn't anything like the members of the July 20 plot to kill Hitler; he's more like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, biding his time and inflicting misery willy-nilly before he expects to be elevated by invading powers.

Oh, nonsense, that makes no sense at all. ON THIS THREAD, in a world where none of the horrors Stuart invokes happened as he invoked them, we've got people baying for the blood of every last angel down to the flappy little cherubs. If Michael thinks his species is in danger of extermination at this point... I'd say he's called it right on the money.

Yeah, on the same website where there were outraged choruses of armchair generals crowing for RDA to smash Pandora to bits with rocks. In real life, there's bound to be some dissenting voices who will put two and two together, realize that not every angel has willingly conspired to torture humans just as not every demon in hell did, and argue for restraint in academic and public circles which Michael would be able to see. Besides, if there's anything this story ought to prove, it's that we don't become fucking Huns without the guidance of God - OR the scheming of one of his lieutenants.

[JN1]

Domestic auto manufacturing in the US effectively stopped on 10 February 1942, according to Overy. Just 139 cars were produced thereafter for the duration.

Although conversion from consumer vehicles to military goods was not easy, the nature of auto making in the US (mass production, adaptabilty through frequent model updates and changes etc) was such that once those industries picked up steam they produced in copious quantities. The Ford Motor Company for instance ended up producing more than the entire Italian military/industrial complex.

Same sort of thing happened to the British car industry. Just look at the cars that were built immediately post-1945 and they were basically the same as those from 1939.
Our car manufacturers, such as Vauxhall, Austin and Rover all got into war manufacturing. The majority of the Shadow Factories were, IIRC run by car firms.

In TSW what car factories we have left have gone over to war production; we saw a bit of that in Armageddon. Land Rover are probably the only firm not to see too much of a change, though Range Rover and Discovery production will have slowed to a trickle, if they haven't stopped completely.

[xthetenth]

Suffice to say that I think that an act of genocide against the angels would be an existential threat to civilization. Not to humanity, to civilization, because I don't believe that a culture which conducted itself that way could reasonably expect to be civilized afterwards.

Like I think I alluded to earlier -- there's simply being that lethal, and then there's making a conscious decision to go down a long and damning road, even moreso than our real-world arguments regarding the War on Terror concept... GEN Petraeus and CPT Stevenson got it when Abigor's "army" of his veterans, his mates, and his kidlings appeared on their optical feeds...

Hokay, I guess now is when we find out what sort of people we really are

I'd say that Michael's trying as hard as he can to invoke it by acting to portray Yahweh in as poor a light as he can manage and making the League of the Holy Court act as much like a secret police as he can and generally make heaven look as totalitarian as he can manage and then stage a coup to take out Yahweh so he can take the guy's head to the humans and say something like "Thanks for giving us an opportunity to finally remove that bastard, come look what he did to us," thereby immediately portraying the angels as being victims of Yahweh too.

So Michael, arguably Heaven's leading expert on humanity, takes us for systematic, ruthless killers who wouldn't accept a surrender from a broken enemy lacking a plausible, competent advocate. How did demonkind survive, exactly? I don't believe for a minute that Michael fears for the survival of his kind, he just wants to seize Yahweh's throne out of an arrogant sense of entitlement and some resentment over being blinkered by him in the past.

I know it's basically repeating the aforementioned word regarding his power base, but without other angels his power base diminishes -- seeing as how so many of those he's co-opted are loyal to him personally -- so he has quite the incentive to keep as many angels alive as possible.

Yeah, and since angelkind isn't in all likelihood facing extinction as per the argument earlier, it should be a simple matter to tell his supporters to squirrel themselves away and do his best to contact earth for terms of surrender, rather than obstructing human entry efforts to the maximum possible extent. Michael isn't anything like the members of the July 20 plot to kill Hitler; he's more like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, biding his time and inflicting misery willy-nilly before he expects to be elevated by invading powers.

Why not, if it's in his power, deal with Yahweh himself, making it an angel who kills him, immediately forcing the humans to acknowledge that there is at least a considerable faction that hates him, and quite possibly getting angelkind out of the war intact after one brutal defeat to impress on the angels what could happen if he hadn't mounted that coup? That would quite likely gain a lot of supporters, rather than just conserving the ones he has now.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, nonsense, that makes no sense at all. ON THIS THREAD, in a world where none of the horrors Stuart invokes happened as he invoked them, we've got people baying for the blood of every last angel down to the flappy little cherubs. If Michael thinks his species is in danger of extermination at this point... I'd say he's called it right on the money.

Yeah, on the same website where there were outraged choruses of armchair generals crowing for RDA to smash Pandora to bits with rocks. In real life, there's bound to be some dissenting voices who will put two and two together, realize that not every angel has willingly conspired to torture humans just as not every demon in hell did, and argue for restraint in academic and public circles which Michael would be able to see. Besides, if there's anything this story ought to prove, it's that we don't become fucking Huns without the guidance of God - OR the scheming of one of his lieutenants.

Naturally.

Thing is, we have to decide not to be fucking Huns. Michael may well be wrong to predict that his species is about to be destroyed, but he is not wrong to predict that this is a very real and plausible danger. Compare to the fate of Germany in TBO: whether the TBO Germans knew it or not, they were in danger of being destroyed as a nation, if not (quite!) as a race. And that's exactly what happened. Not because the TBO Americans were unusually evil or cruel, but simply because they decided to be as destructive as could be, since that was the easiest way to end the threat.

This is a threat assessment. Michael is aware that their survival is going to be at humans' mercy at some point, and that humans are not feeling very merciful. Therefore, he is right to judge that his species is in danger of extinction. Not "doomed to," "in danger of."

[GrayAnderson]

We really shouldn't accept Angelic surrenders. We expected nothing but treachery from the demons, but the Angela and Yaw-Yaw did it just to satisy their egos and remember how that angel in Armageddon slaughtered a family then had tea on their corpses?

Uh, as I recall, the demons killed them but we thought the angels did, and the demons understandably didn't correct us when we assumed that it was the angels.

[CaptainChewbacca]

No, there was one angel that killed a family. I believe he took some canister shot to the face.

[Darth Yan]

memnon ate the family, and was in the middle of cooking them when appolyon showed up. Memnon leaves after they talk, then appy gets blown to hell.

[Night_stalker]

Yep, and most of the Angels seem to believe that it is a "gift" to be accepted into heaven, just to serve the Angels. And they wonder why we hate them so.

[Nematocyst]

Well, it really is a far cry from what they say Heaven is about, but compared to the tortures of Hell, slave work is a gift

[Night_stalker]

Well, if they had gone to Hell, they would be free.