He met young Sam coming the other way as he headed for the cells. The boy's face was white in the gloom. "Found any?" said Vimes. "Oh, Sarge..." "Yes?" "Oh, Sarge...Sarge..." Tears were running down the lance constable's face. Vimes reached out and steadied himself. Sam felt as though there were no bones left in his body. He was trembling. "There's a woman in the last cell, and she...Sarge...oh, Sarge..." "Try taking deep breaths," said Vimes. "Not that this air is fit to breathe." "And there's a room right at the end, Sarge....oh, Sarge...Nancyball fainted again, Sarge..." "You didn't," said Vimes, patting him gently on the back. "But there's--" "Let's rescue who we can, shall we, lad?" "But we were on the hurry-up wagon, Sarge!" "What?" said Vimes, and then it dawned. Oh, yes... "But we didn't hand anyone over, lad," he said. "Remember?" "But I've been on it before, Sarge! All the lads have! We just handed people over and went back to the Watch House for cocoa, Sarge!" "Well, you'd had orders..." said Vimes, for what good that did. "We didn't know!" Not exactly, thought Vimes. We didn't ask. We just shut our minds to it. People went in through that front door and some of the poor devils came out through the secret door, not always in one box. They hadn't measured up. Nor did we.

...to be continued...

---

Part 5 - "A firm hand"
Jan.20.2005

---

"Well, at least we can agree on Truth, Freedom, and Justice, yes?" There was a chorus of nods. Everyone wanted those. They didn't cost anything.

Following, after regretted delay, the previous Lessons, we return to Cable Street, where mopping-up is ongoing. --It was, of course, Captain Swing of the Particulars who said the lines, "History needs its butchers as well as its shepherds, Sergeant," though I will not give away under what circumstances and spoiler it.

We left off just as young Sam Vimes has realized his own moral complicity in torturing and disappearing prisoners, and the horror of it compounded by realizing how it never sunk in what he was doing, how he laughed and joked and went on break with his buddies. Reaction sets in, the way it does around here a lot: by externalizing the guilt and blame onto the primary perpetrators, which is classic part of denial.

He heard a low, visceral sound from the boy. Sam had spotted the torturer in the chair. He shook himself away from Vimes, ran over to the rack, and snatched up a club. Vimes was ready. He grabbed the boy, swung him round, and twisted the thing out of his hand before murder was done. "No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call" "You know he did those things!" shouted Sam, kicking at Vimes's legs. "You said we had to take the law into our own hands!" Ah, thought Vimes. This is just the time for a long debate bout the theory and practice of justice. Here comes the shortened version. "You don't bash a man's brains out when he's tied to a chair!" "He did!" "And you don't. That's because you're not him!" "But they--" "Stand to attention, Lance Constable!" shouted Vimes, and the straw covered ceiling drank and deadened the sound. Sam blinked through reddened eyes. "Okay, Sarge, but--" "Are you going to snivel all day? Forget about this one. Let's get the living out, right?" "Hard to tell with--" Sam began, wiping his nose. "Do it! Follow me!"

This is not something that you usually see in what I call "Robin Hood Syndrome" movies - you know, the ones where the Plucky Heroes topple the Tyrant against all odds and free the Grateful Peasantry - whether "realistic" or SF alike -- battlefield cleanup and people being permanently fucked in the head after injury, losing friends, and/or torture tend to be only found in book fantasy, and not so often at that.

He knew what was going to be in the dark arches of the cell tunnels, but that didn't make it any better. Some people could walk, or maybe hop. One or two had just been beaten up, but not so badly that they couldn't hear what was going on just out of sight, and dwell on it. They cringed when the gates were opened, and whimpered as he touched them. No wonder Swing got his confessions. And some were dead. Others were...probably dead as far as Vimes could tell. If they weren't, if they'd just gone somewhere in their heads, it was as sure as hell that there was nothing for them to come back to. The chair had broken them again and again. They were beyond the help of any man. Just in case, and without any feeling of guilt, Vimes removed his knife, and...gave what help he could. There was not a twitch, not a sigh. He stood up, black and red storm clouds in his head. You could almost understand a thug, simple as a fist, being paid decent money for doing something he didn't mind doing. But Swing had brains... Who really knew what evil lurked in the heart of men? ME. Who knew what sane men were capable of? STILL ME, I'M AFRAID. Vimes glanced at the door of the last room. No, he wasn't going in there again. No wonder it stank here. YOU CAN'T HEAR ME, CAN YOU? OH. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT, said Death, and went back to waiting.

This has more significance ifwhen you know that Death is typically visible only to the dead, and to wizards and witches - that is, those who can stand to look at the world as it is, not the comforting illusions. (And to cats.) Now that Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle have been accepted on Discworld, and as he is an obliging Anthropomorphic Personification, Death recently has taken to manifesting in situations where someone might die, as he explained to Vimes in the previous book.

Vimes helped young Sam bring Nancyball around. Then they half-carried, half-walked the prisoners out along the passage up into the warehouse. They laid them down, and went back and dragged out the clerk, whose name was Trebilcock. Vimes explained to him the advantages of turning King's Evidence, as it was still known. They were not major advantages, except when they were swiftly compared with the huge disadvantages that would follow swiftly if he refused to do so. At that point, Trebilcock, entirely of his own free will, volunteered. And Vimes stepped out into the early evening. Colon and the squad were still waiting; the whole business had taken only twenty minutes or so.

It is rather a relief to get back to the normal chaos and grimth of battle and mayhem as the insurgency spreads through Ankh-Morpork. Earlier, when young Lord Rust replaced Captain Tilden, Vimes tried to explain how he was trying to defuse the local situation, rather than exacerbate it:

"Do you know what I saw on my way here, Sergeant?" "Couldn't say, sir," said Vimes, staring straight ahead. "People were building barricades, Sergeant." "Sir?" "I know you heard me, man!" "Well, it's to be expected, sir. It's happened before. People get jumpy. They hear rumors of mobs and out-of-control soldiers. They try to protect their street--" "It is a flagrant challenge to government authority! People can't take the law into their own hands!" "Well, yes. But these things generally run their course--" "My gods, man, how did you manage to get promoted?" Vimes knew he should leave it at that. Rust was a fool. But at the moment he was a young fool, which is more easily excused. Maybe it was just possible, if caught early enough, that he could be upgraded to idiot. "Sometimes it pays to--" he began. "Last night every Watch House in the city was mobbed," said Rust, ignoring him. "Except this one. How do you account for that?" His mustache bristled. Not being attacked was definite proof of Vimes's lack of moral fiber. "It was just a case of--" "Apparently a man attempted an assault on you. Where is he now?" "I don't know, sir. We bandadged him up and took him home." "You let him go?" "Yessir. He was--" But Rust was always a man to interrupt an answer with a demand for the answer he was in fact interrupting.

This is something very common IRL - insecure parents do it all the time. I hadn't expressly connected it with workplace bullying or a sense of aristocratic entitlement before this, though.

"Why?" "Sir, because at that time I thought it prudent to--" "Three watchmen were killed last night, did you know that? There were gangs roaming the streets. Well, martial law has been declared! Today we're going to show them a firm hand! Get your men together! Now!" Vimes saluted, turned about, and walked slowly down the stairs. He wouldn't have run for a big clock. A firm hand. Right. Gangs roaming the streets. Well, we sure as hell never did anything when they were criminal gangs. And when you've got madmen and idiots on either side, and everything hangs in the balance...well, trouble is always easy to find when you have enough people looking for it. One of the hardest lessons of young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.

We Americans are at a distinct disadvantage, historically speaking. We don't have this long tradition of civil disobedience, home-grown anarchy and DIY civic defense that European cities have. For some reason, the idea that when you have cobblestones, you have a free supply of convenient weapons for the taking, with the application of some elbow grease and a crowbar, and that anything can be cover, and that a vehicle is only a vehicle so long as it's right side up, and then it becomes cover, never seems to have taken hold the way it did in the Old World.

For all our talk about Freeeedommm and guns and minutemen and, we haven't a clue as to how real resistance operations work, and why urban warfare is a lose-lose proposal. (Sun Tzu explained it very patiently and clearly in short sentences, but people tend to get stuck at "In death ground, fight," and miss all the bits about how not to get stuck in a situation where you have no other options.)

The shortest summary of it I have come up with, applies to a lot of other engagements as well, and not just military: What would "winning" look like, then? And what realisitcally would you have to do to get there? If the second part isn't feasible, and/or either part is unacceptable, then don't start, 'kay?

Still earlier in the course of events, after arresting the Unmentionable spy, Vimes describes a probable situation which was chillingly like what Fallujah, when first under our occupation almost 2 years ago, would turn out like (remember this was written as/before it all got going.)

"Y'know," said Vimes, "it turns out that after the riot this evening we've been warned to expect revolutionary attacks on the Watch Houses. Now, personally, I wouldn't expect that. What I'd expect is a bunch of ordinary people turning up, you know, because the've heard what happened. But -- and you can call me Mr. Suspicious if you like -- I've got a feeling that there will be something a bit worse. You see, apparently we've got to be mindful of the curfew regulations. What that means, I supposed is that if we get people coming to complain about unarmed citizens being attacked by soldiers, which, personally, I would consider to be Assault With A Deadly Weapon, we've got to arrest them. I find that rather--" There was a commotion from above. Vimes nodded to young Sam, who disappeared up the stairs. "Now that my impressionable assistant has gone," said Vimes quitely, "I'll add that if any of my men get hurt tonight then I'll see to it that for the rest of your life you scream at the sight of a bottle." "I haven't done anything to you! You don't even know me!" "Yes. Like I said, we're doing it your way."

Young Rust, just as much then as he would demonstrate later in life in Jingo, believes that use of force will cow anyone into submitting to authority - as strongly as he believes that he is on the side of legitimate authority, and the reverse unthinkable.

For some reason, neither the policemen under his command, nor those commanders who actually have seen action before this, have the same simple faith...

"Tidy yourselves, lads," said Vimes. "Captain'll be down in a few minutes. Apparently it's time for a show of strength." "What strength?" said Billy Wiglet. "Ah, Billy, what happens is, the vicious revolutionaries take one look at us and scuttle off back to their holes," said Vimes. He was immediately sorry he'd said that. Billy hadn't learned irony. "I mean we just give the uniforms an airing," he translated. "We'll get cheesed," said Fred Colon. "Not if we stick together," said Sam. "Right," said Vimes. "After all, we're heavily armed men going on patrol among civilians who are, by law, unarmed. If we're careful, we shouldn't get too badly hurt." Another bad move. Dark sarcasm ought to be taught in schools, he thought. Besides, armed men could get into trouble if the unarmed civilians were angry enough, especially if there were cobblestones on the streets. He heard the distant clocks strike three. Tonight, the streets would explode...

(Victor Hugo fans will of course recognize this as rather a familiar scenario: it's all there in Les Miserables, too - along with the insanity and brutality of Waterloo, and the nearness of it to Hugo's generation and its effects on everything that happened after, which is something that somehow got left out of the musical.)

Inevitably, "John Keel" ends up commanding a barricade in this timeline as well, remembering the things that the Watch overlooked in that past life and not overlooking them this time:

The trooper opened his mouth to speak, but the third horseman raised a white-gloved hand. Oh dear, thought Vimes, focusing on the sleeve of the red jacket. The man was a captain. Not only that, he was an intelligent one, by the look of him. He hadn't mouthed off until he'd had a chance to assess the situation. You got them sometimes. They could be dangerously bright. "I note, Sergeant-at-Arms," said the captain, enunciating the rank with care and wihtout apparent sarcasm, "that the flag over the barricade is the flag of Ankh-Morpork. "It's the one out of our Watch House," said Vimes, and added, "sir." "You know that the Patrician has declared that the building of barricades is an act of rebellion?" "Yessir." "And?" said the captain patiently. "Well, he would say that, sir, wouldn't he..." The faintest hint of a smile skimmed across the captain's face. "We can't allow lawlessness, Sergeant-at-Arms. If we all disobeyed the law, where would we be?" "There's more coppers per person behind that barricade than anywhere else in the city, sir," said Vimes. "You could say it's the most law-abiding place around." Now there was the sound of raised voices from behind the barricade. "--we own all your helmets, we own all your shoes, we own all your generals, touch us and you'l loooose...Morporkia, Morporkia, Morpooroorooorooooorrroorrr--" "Rebel songs, sir!" said trooper number one. The captain sighed. "If you listen, Hepplewhite, you might note that it is the national anthem sung very badly," he said. "We can't allow rebels to sing that, sir!" Vimes saw the captain's expression. It had a lot to say about idiots. "Raising the flag and singing the anthem, Hepplewhite, are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason," said the captain. "And we are urgently required elsewhere." He saluted Vimes, who found himself returning the salute. "We shall leave you, Sergeant-at-Arms. I trust your day will be full of interest. In fact, I know it." "But it's a barricade, sir," the trooper insisted, glaring at Vimes. "It's just a pile of furniture, man. People have been spring-cleaning, I expect. You'll never be an officer if you can't see straight. Follow me, if you please." With a last nod to Vimes, the captain led his men away at a trot.

Not all the city security personnel besides Sam Vimes are corrupt, cowardly, apathetic or bloodthirsty. The question, as always, is are there enough who are not? and as always, the answer is - no, not compared to the rest combined.

Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast stared blankly at the map in front of him, trying to find some comfort. He was, tonight, the senior officer in the field. The commanders had gone to the palace for some party or other. And he was in charge. Vimes had conceded that the city's regiments had quite a few officers who weren't fools. Admittedly, they got fewer the higher you went, but by accident or design every army needs, in key if unglamorous posts, men who can reason and make lists and arrange for provisions and baggage waggons and, in general, have an attention span greater than that of a duck. It's their job to actually run things, leaving the commanding officer free to concentrate on higher matters. And the major was, indeed, not a fool, even though he looked like one. He was idealistic, and thought of his men as "jolly good chaps" despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, and on the whole did the bet he could with the moderate intelligence at his disposal. When he was a boy, he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and had looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands, and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unnacountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

For some reason when I first read this it reminded me of Kipling's The Light That Failed, whose protagonist is driven round the bend by the fact that the public doesn't want realistic war pictures, they want inspiring, romantic, sentimental, idealized "patriotic" pablum, with nary an intestine in sight.

The major hated the map. It was the map of a city. A city wasn't a place for cavalry, for heaven's sake. Of course, there had been casualties among the men. Three of them had been deaths. Even a cavalry helmet is not a lot of use against a ballistic cobblestone. And a trooper had been pulled off his horse in Dolly Sisters and, bluntly, mobbed to death. And that was tragic and terrible and unfortunately, inevitable, once fools had decided to use cavalry in a city with as many alleys as Ankh-Morpork. The major didn't think of his superiors as fools, of course, since that would follow that everyone who obeyed them were fools. He used the term "unwise," and felt worried when he used it. As for the rest of the casualties, three of them had been men knocked senseless by riding into hanging shop signs while pursuing...well, people, when it came down to it, because with the smoke and darkness who could tell who the real enemy was. The idiots had apparently assumed that anyone running away was the enemy. And they'd been the luckier idiots, bcause men who rode their horses into dark alleys, which twisted this way and that and got narrower and narrower, and then realized that it had all gone quiet and their horse couldn't turn around, well, they were men who learned how fast a man could run in cavalry boots. He totted up the reports. Broken bones, bruises, one man suffering from "friendly stab" by a comrade's saber...

Again, try the exercise I recommended a few weeks ago: imagine what would happen if someone had tried to invade the US and pacify Chicago in the Roaring 20s, largely oblivious to the gang wars of the era, - you don't imagine that Capone et al would have just closed up shop for the duration, do you? But very few, if any, American cities these days have "closes" of the sort described in the Shades district - streets where I, short as I am, can touch both stone walls on either side as there are in Oxford still.

Sun Tzu knew what he was talking about.

to be continued...

---

Part 6 - "This isn't war!"
Jan.21.2005

---

By sunset, a uniform would automatically be a target. Then it wouldn't matter where a watchman's sympathies lay. He'd be just another man in armor--

Back in Ankh-Morpork's past, a beautiful spring day in the Year of the Dancing Dog is about to slide into the night from hell.

--Oh, and I'm dead serious about thinking seriously about What would "victory" look like? when people say "we should do X," where X usually involves quantities of napalm (or napalm-substitute) or nuclear weapons, or massed machine-gun fire. One way of doing so is to examine history, but a plausible Alternate History is far better than the sterile, sanitized, and Politically Correct* histories of the schoolbooks, in this regard.

One relevant question on the list should be, Are you planning on living with these people in the future? Or their surviving relatives? If so, you might want to rethink that. Doubly, if you're planning on depending on them for critical components of your empire...

(*using Politically Correct in the historically-correct sense, btw. I thump people who misuse it, which is most people. Metaphorically, of course.)

Returning to our young but already-disillusioned-by-entrails commanding officer, who doesn't want to be responsible for more atrocities and an escalation, but isn't sure how to help it:

He totted up the reports. Broken bones, bruises, one man suffering from "friendly stab" by a comrade's saber... He looked across the makeshift table at Captain Tom Wrangle of Lord Selachii's Light Infantry, who glanced up from his own paperwork and gave him a weak smile. They'd been at school together and Wrangle, the major knew, was a lot brighter than him. "What's it look like to you, Tom?" said the major. "We've lost nearly eighty men," said the captain. "What? That's terrible!" "Oh, about sixty of them are deserters, as far as I can see. You tend to get that in this sort of mess. Some have probably just popped home to see dear ol' mum." "Oh, deserters. We've had some of those too. In the cavalry! What would you call a man who leaves his horse behind?" "An infantryman? As for the rest, well, as far as I can see only six or seven of them went down to definite enemy action. Three men got stabbed in alleyways, for example." "Sounds like enemy action to me." "Yes, Clive. But you were born in Quirm." "Only because my mother was visiting her aunt and the coach was late!" said the major, going red. "If you cut me in half, you'd find Ankh-Morpork written on my heart!" "Really? Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that. Anyway, getting murdered in alleyways is just part of life in the big city." "But they were armed men! Swords, helmets--" "Valuable loot, Clive." "But I thought the City Watch took care of the gangs--" Tom looked at his friend over the top of his paperwork. "Are you suggesting that we ask for police protection? Anyway, there isn't any, not any more. Some of the watchmen are with us, for what good they are, and the rest either got beaten up or ran away--" "More deserters?" "Frankly, Clive, everyone's drifting away so fast that by tomorrow we'll be feeling pretty lonely." The men paused as a corporal brought in some more messages. They thumbed through them gloomily.

Vimes, reminiscing unfondly about the future, notes the inevitability of it, given all the prior things that had gone wrong, and the unreasonableness of people who want to place the blame on the victims for being in the way of the juggernaut:

He heard the distant clocks strike three. Tonight, the streets would explode... According to the history books, it would be one shot that did it, around about sunset. One of the foot regiments would be assembled in Hen and Chickens Field, awaiting orders. And there would be people watching them. Troops always drew an audience...impressionable kids, the inevitable Ankh-Morpork floating street crowd, and of course, the ladies whose affection was exremely negotiable. The crowd shouldn't have been there, people said afterward. But where should it have been? The field was a popular spot. It was the only vaguely green space in that part of the city. People played games there, and, of course, there was always the progress of the corpse on the gibbet to inspect. Besides, they were troops, ordinary foot soldiers, people's sons and husbands, taking a bit of a rest and having a drink. Oh, that was right - afterward, it was said that the troops were drunk. And that they shouldn't have been there. Yep, that was the reason, Vimes reflected. No one should have been there. But they were, and when that captain got an arrow in his stomach and was groaning on the ground, some of the crossbowmen fired in the direction of the shot. That's what the history books said. They fired at the house windows, where people had been watching. Perhaps the shot had come from one of them. Some arrows fell short, some did not. And there were people who fired back. And then, one after another, horrible things would happen. By then it was too late for them not to. The tension would unwind like a spring, scything through the city.

Now it might be thought that this doesn't have so much relevance to what is going on in Iraq right now, and has been for the past two-years-less-a-bit. After all, we aren't Iraqis, we're not involved in a civil war - except we're using Iraqi troops, so yes, we are, only with more disadvantages.

In one sense, our military is in the position of the Patrician's troops, while the Iraqi forces we are trying to work through are in the position of the Watch Houses, coming from the same classes and neighborhoods as those they are supposed to put down, and either getting killed or going back to their own original alliegance, because when it comes to Family vs Strangers From Over Yonder, usually most people choose Family, whether Over Yonder is across the river or the other side of the tracks or the other side of the ocean...

"Well, it's gone quiet, anyway," said the major. "Suppertime," said the captain. The major threw up his hands. "This isn't war! A man throws a rock, walks around the corner and he's an upstanding citizen again! There's no rules!" The captain nodded. Their training hadn't covered this sort of thing. They'd studied maps of campaigns, with broad sweeping plains and the occasional patch of high ground that had to be defended. Cities were to be laid siege to, or defended. They weren't for fighting in. You couldn't see, you couldn't group, you couldn't maneuver and you were always going to be up against people who knew the place like their own kitchen. And you definitely didn't want to fight an enemy that had no uniform.

And some things don't change, whether you're from the same country or the other side of the world, and whether you're in temperate or tropical zones. Urban warfare, and trying to use conventional weapons and tactics against a peasants' revolt, are among them. (Remember, if you have forgotten, that the current "young turks" of the pentagon are willing to take anticipated casualties in excess of what Sun Tzu predicted in urban warfare, and think this just fine and dandy, believing that most warfare in this century will be urban, seeing as how most people live in cities nowdays. Because they think Gen. Sun outdated - not erroneous, mind you, outdated - just like those Geneva Conventions. He wasn't tough enough, you see.)

"Where's your lordship?" said the captain. "Gone to the ball, the same as yours." "And what were your orders, may I ask?" "He told me to do whatever I considered necessary to carry out our original objectives." "Did he write that down?" "No," said the major. "Pity. Neither did mine." They looked at each other. And then Wrangle said, "Well...there's no actual unrest at the moment. As such. My father said all this happened in his time. He said it's best just to keep the lid on it. There's only a limited number of cobblestones, he said." "It's almost ten," said the major. "People will be going to bed soon, surely?" Their joint expression radiated the fervent hope that it had all calmed down. No one in their right mind wanted to be in a position where he was expected to do what he thought best.

It isn't clear now, and won't be, odds are, until at least two-three years after this war ends, going by past wars, at the bare minimum, how many of our field officers are of the live-and-let-live, don't push on things till they break mind, like Gen. Petraeus was. But in the AU that isn't the whole source of the problem, because there are all those other people pushing and pushing back and thinking that casualty figures are a sign of keenness and involvement, no matter whose they are.

(I didn't say it, I didn't say it--)

This time, we have a "Sgt. Keel" on the other side of the city who remembers what went wrong last time, and is trying to avoid it. But--

He isn't the only time-stranded stranger in the Big Wahooni right now, is he? And when a psychopath has been elevated to head-of-state, it follows as the night the day that other psychopaths are going to get promoted, too.

I'm not saying anything, mind you. And very loudly, too.

to be continued...

---

Part 7 - "All the little angels"
Jan.26.2005

---

The major looked into Carcer's eyes, and wished he hadn't. Mad. He'd seen eyes like that on the battlefield.

What happens next is that we get to see a fictionalized, but accurate, depiction of what happens when you let bloodthirsty psychopaths, and particularly, bloodthirsty psychopaths with no tactical skills, training, or the foresight that comes from either study of history or personal experience (or best yet, both) run a field operation. --Remember, all this was written back in 2001 - early 2002.

[waves to loyal Odd Lots partisan ES]

While the Monks of History are working furiously behind the scenes (and along the scenes) to try to get the timespace continuum straightened out again, there isn't much they can do in point of fact, because it comes down to individuals making decisions, moral or immoral, practical or impractical, stupid, selfish, both or neither. No waving of magic wands and fixing everything, not even in Discworld.

Sam Vimes isn't even in control of things, even though a lot of people think he is. It turns out while he was busy in Cable Street and getting stitched up afterwards, that his neighborhood barricade to keep cavalry and crossbowmen out of their street has a) expanded to cover all the grungy working side of the city, and b) become a magnet for ex-cavalry and crossbowmen, most of whom were born on the grungy, working side of the city:

"It started with Billy Wiglet's brother, sir," said Colon nervously. "A few of his mates came with him. All local lads. And there's a lad Nancyball grew up with and a bloke who's the son of Waddy's next-door neighbor who he used to go out drinking with, and then there's--" "How many, Fred?" said Vimes wearily. "Sixty, sir. Might be a few more by now." "And it doesn't occur to you that they might be part of some clever plan?" "No, Sarge, it never did. 'Cos I can't see Wally Wiglet being part of a clever plan, Sarge, on account of him not being much of a thinker, sir, they only allowed him to be in the regiment after he got someone to paint L and R on his boots. See, we know 'em all, Sarge. Most of the lads join up for a bit, just to get out of the city and maybe show Johnny Foreigner who's boss. They never expected to have old grannies spitting on them in their own city, Sarge. That can get a lad down, that sort of thing. And getting cobblestones chucked up them, of course." Vimes gave in. It was all true. "All right," he said. "But if this goes on, everyone is going to be inside the barricade, Fred." And there could be worse ways of ending it, he thought.

Now I have noticed here, and all over Left Blogistan, and been saying so for months, that most people regardless of your politics tend to have an utterly Holy Wood idea of warfare. You lot mostly think of it as being an all-nothing, blow-the-bastards-up, they surrender or die, and - then what? Nobody ever wants to think about the logistics, or why escalation and pushing back are not always the best ideas, and yet those who were insisting that, back when, way back in Spring and summer, that even if it was stupid and shouldn't have been started, we should have kept on going and flattened Fallujah, that Conway was a coward or a pawn or a fool to not do that and not want to do that, because it would make us look weak if we didn't.

Well, you got what you wanted - "bolder" REMF commanders back in DC who were willing to escalate, bomb and bomb and bomb and then go in and blow more stuff up, until Falluja delenda est. It worked really well, didn't it? Johnny Klatchian really respects us now, and is properly grovelling and submissive, right?

And that's the choice right now, back in A-M's past, before the junior officers left in charge while the generals party at the White House Patrician's palace. Try to keep things calm, avoid confrontation, and let the situation defuse, let people cool down on both sides from the outrage of civilian demonstrators killed by troops and police killed by civilians.

This is after all the estimate of older, wiser heads, like Captain Tom's father and Sgt. Dai Dickins of the Watch, who quit with his men when they were told to shoot into crowds: the Sergeant, who before he was a copper was a soldier, (and a puritan - he belongs to "some druid religion so strict that they didn't even use standing stones" and frowns on swearing, which would be a real handicap, "if sergeants weren't so good at improvising") is making their barricade the sort of place that the army will think twice before venturing into:

"Fair enough. But I don't want a war." "Oh, it won't come to that, sah," said Dickins. "I've seen a few barricades in my time. It generally ends peaceful. The new man takes over, people get bored, everyone goes home, see." "But Winder is a nutter," said Vimes. "Tell me one that wasn't, sah," said Dickins.

Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before, Vimes is not the only visitor from the future, even if he's the only one old enough to remember how it went from personal experience.

There was a commotion outside the tent, and then a man stepped inside. He was bloodstained and smoke-blackened, his face lined with pink where sweat had trickled through the dreadful grime. A crossbow was slung across his back, and he'd acquired a bandolier of knives. And he was mad. The major recognized the look. The eyes were too bright, the grin too fixed. "Ah, right," he said and removed a large brass knuckle-duster from his right hand. "Sorry about your sentry, gen'elmen, but he didn't want to let me in even though I gave him the password. Are you in charge?" "Who the hell are you?" said the major, standing up. The man seemed unimpressed. "Carcer. Sergeant Carcer," he said. "A sergeant? In that case, you can--" "From Cable Street," Carcer added.

Note the dynamics here, closely. Col. Karen Kwiatowski would recognize this situation, I think.

Now the major hesitated. Both the soldiers knew about the Unmentionables, although, if asked, they probably wouldn't have been able to articulate exactly what it was that they knew. Unmentionables worked in secret, behind the scenes. They were a lot more than just watchmen. They reported directly to the Patrician; they had a lot of pull. You didn't mess with them. They were not people to cross. It didn't matter that this man was only a sergeant. He was an Unmentionable. And, what was worse, the major realized that the creature could see what he was thinking, and was enjoying the view. "Yeah," said Carcer. "That's right. And it's lucky for you that I'm here, soldier boy." Soldier boy, thought the major. And there were men listening who'd remember that. Soldier boy. "How so?" he said. "While you and your shiny soldiers have been prancing around chasing washerwomen," said Carcer, pulling up the tent's only vacant chair and sitting down, "the real trouble's been happening down in Treacle Mine Road. You know it?" "What are you talking about? We haven't had any reports about any disturbances down there, man!" "Yeah, right. Don't you think that's strange?" The major hesitated. A vague memory bobbed at the back of his mind...and there was a grunt from the captain, who pushed a piece of paper across to him. He glanced at it, and recalled. "One of my captains was down there this afternoon and said everything was under control." "Really? Whose control?" said Carcer. He leaned back in his chair and put his boots on the desk.

Carcer is a civilian - but a civilian in a very loose sense, since he is a veteran at violent crime, not a middle-aged burgher or a middle-class housewife, the way that calling ex-Special Forces guys like Joe Ryan the winger radio-show host-cum-torturer, or that guy Idema with the private jail in Afghanistan, a civilian - and not officially in their chain of command. But because he's KGB Stasi from the Particulars, the regular military don't dare cross him.

This is politics.

Yes, it's ugly. There's a reason - and this has been verified by a military blogger - that it's only retired generals who are criticizing the administration. "Courage" if only physical, is, frankly, fucking worthless. It doesn't matter if you're willing to go out and get shot at while being shot at by others, if you're too scared for your own skin and career to stand up and say "No, this is wrong," to those who have power over you. Or might have power over you, or who have friends who have power over you.

"Martial law, gentlemen, means that the military comes to the aid of the civil power," said Carcer. "And that's me, right now. O'course, you could send a couple of runners up to the ball, but I don't reckon that would be a good career move. So what I'm asking is for your men to assist us with a little...surgical strike." The major stared at him. There was now no limit to the distaste he had for Carcer. But he hadn't been a major for very long, and when you've just been promoted you hope to stay that way long enough for the braid to tarnish. He forced himself to smile. "You and your men have had a long day, Sergeant," he said. "Why don't you go along to the mess tent while I consult with my fellow officers?" Carcer moved with a suddenness that made the major flinch. The sergeant stood up, and then leaned forward with his knuckles on the desk. "You do that, Sunny Jim," he said with a grin like the edge of a rusty saw. Then he turned and strode out into the night.

And this is just as true of people herenow, in the "real world," who shut up and don't think about what they're doing because they're scared shitless of looking stupid, losing their jobs, looking stupid, and being criticized by family, friends, and strangers (e.g., looking stupid) and so go and shoot and incinerate and crush other strangers to death.

And look the other way when their government is torturing people - be it in Cable Street or Gitmo. --And go on and vote for the torturing bastards, telling themselves that somehow it doesn't count, doesn't matter, they're not voting for torture, they disapprove of it, they're just voting for A Strong Defense or Being Loyal To The CIC or whatever other comforting lies they tell themselves.

In the silence that followed, the captain said, "His name is on the list of officers that Swing sent us yesterday, I'm afraid. And, er, he's technically correct about the law." "You mean we have to take orders from him?" "No. But he's entitled to request assistance from you." "Am I entitled to refuse?" "Oh yes. Of course. But..." "...I'd have to tell his lordship why?" said the major. "Exactly." "But that man's an evil bastard! You know the sort. The kind that joins up for the pillaging? The kind you have to end up hanging as an example to the men?" "Um," said Captain Wrangle.

Major Clive and Captain Tom are nice guys, decent men, honorable soldiers and sound tacticians. The plan they come up with on their own, to take down the barricades with a minimum of, what's the euphemism - "collateral damage" and casualties to their own side no less - worked in the other timeline. It would have worked in this one, if Vimes hadn't been there as Keel this time. But they never get the chance to use it...

He sat down with his bowl, and his back against the wall, and looked up at the barricade. People had been busy. In truth, there wasn't much else to do. The one here, from side to side of Heroes Street, was fourteen feet high and even had a crude walkway. It looked businesslike. He leaned back and shut his eyes. There was a hesitant slurping sound beside him as young Sam tried the stew, and then: "Is it going to come down to fighting, Sarge?" "Yes," said Vimes without opening his eyes. "Like, really fighting?" "Yep." "But won't there be some talking first?" "Nope," said Vimes, trying to make himself comfortable. "Maybe some talking afterward." "Seems the wrong way round!" "Yes, lad, but it's a tried and true method." There was no further comment. Slowly, with the sounds of the street in his ears, Vimes slid into sleep.

...to be continued...

--Oh, and you do realize the implications of all this in the news about Rumsfeld having his own private armies, essentially, "off the books" units of "information-gathering elite troops" answerable to no one but themselves, right - Cable Street, here we come. Actually, it's worse than Secret Police, I think. It's Junta Time, folks--they're not planning on going gently in 4 more years.

---

Part 8 - "How do they rise?"
Jan.26.2005

---

Without anyone really noticing, The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road now occupied almost a quarter of the city.

Notice that nobody on either side really wants a fight.

Major Mountjoy-Standfast knew what would happen if he sent a message to the palace. "What do I do now, sir?" was not something his lordship wanted to hear. It was not the sort of question a major was supposed to ask, given that the original orders had been very clear. Barricades were to be torn down, rebels were to be repelled. Grasp the nettle firmly and all that. He had, as a child, grasped nettles firmly, and had sometimes had a hand the size of a small pig.

Well, no. That isn't quite true.

There are some wild-eyed zealots on the barricades. But most of those pushing for an escalation - even on the barricades and among the rioting crowds - are of the Establishment party. There are agents provocateurs, "Unmentionables" disguised as workers, just as the CIA had such folks in place in Iran pretending to be communists. That was an old dodge even in the '50s.

There were deserters behind the barricade. Deserters! How did that happen? It was a huge barricade, it was lined with armed men, there were deserters on it, and he had his orders. It was all clear. If only they'd, well, rebel. He'd sent Trooper Gabitass down there again, and by his account it seemed very peaceful. Normal city life appeared to be going on behind the barricade, which was more than you could say for the chaos outside it. If they'd fired on Gabitass, or thrown things, that would have made it so much easier. Instead they were acting... well... decently. That was no way for enemies of the state to behave!

Notice how in the runup to our war, the Story had to be told to us, (and had been for decades before it, at least since the mid-80s) that the Enemy were not only vicious, but mad for our blood, just insane to be at our throats, irrational and willing to risk anything for the sole purpose of destroying us. There are also people who believe this, as a religious faith, about China, just as they did when it was still Russia too. Beware such portraits: they are either propaganda, or self-portraits.

This is how the world collapses, thought Vimes. I was just a young fool, I didn't see it like this. I thought Keel was leading the revolution. I wonder if that's what he thought, too? But I just wanted to keep a few streets safe. I just wanted to keep a handful of decent, silly people away from the dumb mobs and the mindless rebels and the idiot soldiery. I really, really hoped we could get away with it. Maybe the monks were right. Changing history is like damming a river. It'll find its way around. He saw Sam beaming among the men. Hero worship, he thought. That sort of thing can turn you blind.

The thing is, that when the system falls apart - even if it falls apart because people are kicking hard at it, as now (and yes, I mean "now" in NW and "now" as in now) that what happens is you have people who want it all to go away and close their eyes in hopes this will work, and you have people who are decisive and become formidable, those who become leaders because they are willing to take charge.

This does not make them smart or good. But the natural passivity of the most of us means that we will follow them, often, simply because they are there.

"Ye gods, Tom, I need some help here!" said the major. "Then send out some gallopers right away. A little informal patrolling, perhaps. Get some proper intelligence. You can afford to wait half an hour."

The real military officers, who aren't out-of-touch Pentagon types nor bugfuck crazies, stall and stall and stall as long as they can. But they've got a Gestapo Cable Street man there, and even though Cable Street's been burned to the ground now, Winder is still in office and they cannot afford (or dare not afford which is not quite the same thing) to diss him.

We also get a little Comic Interlude at this point, Discworld-style: Carcer's team has grabbed one of the street kids who's been running errands for Vimes, son of an ex-soldier himself (and as we learned in an earlier Watch novel, probably of decayed aristocratic family as well) and brought him before Major Mountjoy-Standfast and Captain Wrangle:

"But I'm thinking of going for a soldier if I grow up," Nobby went on, giving the major a happy grin. "Much better pickin's, the way things are going." "I'm afraid you'll never be tall enough," said the major quickly. "Don't see why not, the enemy reaches all the way to the ground," said Nobby. "Anyway, people're lying down when you get their boots off. Ol' Sconner, he says the money's in teeth and earrings, but I say every man's bound to have a pair of boots, right? Whereas there's a lot of bad teeth around these days and the false-teeth makers always demand a decent set--" "Do you mean to tell me you want to join the army just to loot the battlefields?" said the major, completely shocked. "A little...lad like you?" "Once when ol' Sconner was sober for two days together he made me a little set of soldiers," said Nobby. "An' they had these little boots that you could--" "Shut up," said the major. "--take off, and tiny tiny little wooden teeth that you could--" "Will you shut up!" said the major. "Have you no interest in honor? Glory? Love of city?" "Dunno. Can you get much for 'em?" said Nobby. "They are priceless!" "Oh, well, in that case I'll stick with the boots, if it's all the same to you," said Nobby. "You can sell them for ten pence a pair if you know the right shop--" "Look at Trooper Gabitass there!" said the major, now quite upset. "Twenty years service, a fine figure of a soldier!" He wouldn't stoop to stealing the boots of a fallen enemy, would you, trooper?" "No, sir! Mug's game, sir!" said Trooper Gabitass.* "Er...yes. Right!" said the major. "You could learn a lot from men like Trooper Gabitass, Master Nobbs. By the sound of it, your time with the rebels has filled your head with very wrong ideas indeed." [*And this was true. Don't bother with the boots, would have been Trooper Gabitass's advice, had he been inclined to part with it. You need to bribe someone on the baggage carts to build up stock, and when all's said and done you'll only have made a few dollars. Stick to jewelry. It's portable. Trooper Gabitass had seen too many battlefields up close to use the word "glory" without wincing.] ..."And what do they talk about beyond the barricade, my little lad?" "Um...well, Justice an' Truth an' Freedom and stuff," said Nobby. "Aha. Rebel talk!" said Carcer, straightening up. "Is it?" said the major. "Take it from me, Major," said Carcer. "When you get a bunch of people using words like that, they're up to no good." He looked down at Nobby. "Now, I wonder what I've got in my pocket for a good boy, eh? Oh, yes...someone's ear. Still warm. Here you go, kid!" "Cor, thanks, mister!" "Now ruin a long way away or I'll gut yer." Nobby fled.

You know, one of my grandfathers, who was in the Pacific in WWII, used to talk about cutting off ears all the time to scare little kids. He never said that he cut anyone's ears off in particular, or associated it with WWII. It just seemed something random and freaky in that normal way that you don't question, when you're seven.

But you know, we didn't invent the taking of 'souveniers' in 'Nam. That was one of the hard truths I had to learn, studying the unsanitized history of the Great War. --And no, I've never asked that grandfather about the ears, either.

Carcer glanced at the map spread on the desk. "Oh, you're planning a little sortie. That's nice. Don't want to upset the rebels, do we? Why aren't you bloody well attacking, Major?" "Well, they're not--" "You're losing your troops to 'em. They hold a quarter of the city! And you're gonna sneak around the back. Across the bridge, I see, and up Elm Street. Quiet-like. Like you are frightened!" Carcer's hand smashed down onto the table, making the major jump. "I'm frightened of no man!" he lied. "You're the City right now!" said Carcer, a little speck of white foam appearing at the corner of his mouth. "They sneak. You don't. You ride right up to them and damn them to hell, that's what you do. They're stealing the streets from you! You take 'em back! They've put 'emselves beyond the Law! You take the Law to 'em!" He stepped back, and the manic rage subsided as quickly as it had arrived. "That's my advice," he said. "Of course, you know your own business best. Me and what's left of my poor lads, we're going to go out and fight. I'm sure their lordships will appreciate anything you feel you can do." He strode out, the Particulars falling in behind him.

Pretty ironic that a cop-killer is defending the Majesty of the Law in such absolutist language, isn't it? But we've seen far stranger than that, these past four years. Such unprincipled ideallism is the hallmark of conservative realpolitik, and why we have an administration that is made up of pardoned felons, in large part. (The other part is that Lawful Good rolled over for them, playing the part of the movie hero who has to spare the Bad Guy when he says "mercy!" even tho' everyone knows he's lying.)

Remember what I said - in the alternate timeline, the boring, undramatic, sneak attack worked. By insisting on doing the "shock and awe" thing, Sgt. Carcer is going to turn what in this timeline would have been a useless foray with minimal casualties, easily repulsed by this "Keel's" precautions, into a spectacular equipment-eating grade-A clusterfuck.

And the regular army guys know it.

And what do they do?

"Er...you all right, Clive?" said the captain. Only the whites of the major's eyes were showing. "What a horrible man," said the major quietly. "Er...yes, of course. On the other hand--" "Yes, yes, yes. I know. We have no choice. We have orders. That...weasel is right. If the damn thing is there in the morning, I've got no career and nor have you. Show of strength, frontal attack, take no prisoners...that's what our orders are. Stupid, stupid, stupid orders." He sighed. "I suppose we could disobey..." said the captain. "Are you mad? And then what would we do? Don't be a fool, Tom. Muster the men, get the ox teams hitched up, let's make a bit of a show for the sake of it. Let's just get it over with!"

Why is this important to think about? It isn't as if you or I can do anything about the CF our REMFs are making in Iraq, after all. Though if you are in the UK, which is a much smaller country, you have a somewhat better chance of making your voice heard as an individual, and your vote counting, perhaps.

But it's important to understand this sort of thing, and to not be blindly herded along, with all your impressions of reality coming from movies and liars. You can, after all, very easily go and read history of such events in Europe's capitals as are the inspiration for Night Watch. You can think about the Watts Riots and labor battles in the last century, and why, while the US corporatist-hegemony wasn't afraid of public opinion enough not to slaughter veterans or workers in the streets, still even with tanks out patrolling said streets in the 60s, they didn't act like the invading armies in WWII, at home.

Folks out in Left Blogistan talk a lot about getting guns and holing up, and revolution. They don't understand how revolution works, and what doesn't, and why if it turns to a Red Dawn scenario, you've already lost the civil war. Vimes seeks to fight a holding action, not to destroy the Death Star (which didn't anyway destroy the Empire, you'll recall) and not to carry out some Robin Hood fantasy of overthrowing the Evil Ruler and then everything will be peace and harmony and flowers in the streets. He - and the best people on both sides - are just trying to get things back to the normal level of disfunctionality, so that people can live with only the regular craziness and everyday fears, not the orwellian nightmare of Cable Street and Lord Winder's paranoia Disappearing them.

We're not quite there - yet. The time to defend democracy is now, in the courts of public opinion and the courts of law. To the last cobblestone. (But then the question arises, like the smell from a drain: But why? Is it worth it, really? Are we worth it? - the ancient temptation of the revolutionary to nihilism--)

Vimes was shaken awake. He looked up into his own face, younger, less lined, more terrified. "Wha'?" "They're bringing up siege weapons, Sarge! They're coming down the street, Sarge!" "What? That's stupid! The barricade is highest here! A couple of men could defend it!" Vimes leaped to his feet. It must be a feint. A stupid feint, too...

to be continued...

---

Part 9 - "They hadn't measured up"
Jan.27.2005

---

No, I'm not going to spoiler how Vimes & co defeat Big Mary, for those of you who haven't read it yet, except to say that the medieval version of the armoured bulldozer is just as vulnerable to the low-tech version of the grenade-in-a-tar-dipped-sock (poor man's limpet mine) as Soviet tanks were to partisans back in the day, and it's an expensive mistake on the part of the PTB.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

The temptation endemic to revolutionaries, as I have noted, is to Give Up.

Some give up on their ideals one way and some another, some "grow up" and sell out to The Man by becoming "moderates" and joining the System (like the children of the '60s); others start purging and killing those they claim to be representing (as everyone knows the original Communists did). Some, like certain of the Neocons, switch sides. It's all the same thing. It's all despair.

"You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favor," said Vimes. "And to protect the innocent. That's all they put in. Maybe they thought those were the important things. Nothing in there about orders, even from me. You're an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government." One or two of the men looked longingly at the other end of the street, empty and inviting. "But I won't stop anyone who wants to walk," said Vimes. They stopped looking.

Let's revisit that moment when the Watchmen are realizing the abyss they face, and Vimes challenges them to "go all the way." They do, we know that. And yet, they're a bunch of selfish, unthinking, not-very-nice folks differentiated from the official criminals in most cases by the fact that they're wearing badges. The idea of making a statue to them, suggested at one point in the book, seems almost obscene.

They're not the right sort of heroes at all. They're not even charming scalawags on the wrong side of an unjust Law. Nobby Nobbs will grow up to go for a soldier, as we know from Jingo, and pick up some personal profit with boots and gold teeth. Fred remains a speciesist bigot, long past integration. The art of beating suspects up and taking bribes never gets lost, any more than the prudent policy of arresting the easy criminals and leaving the serious ones (whether the scarily violent or the scarily rich) alone...

And you know, there's always the temptation to think that after all, this is no more than Ankh-Morpork deserves:

"That's right," said Sweeper. "You'd pawn your clothes in the pawn shop, but you'd never buy clothes from the pawn shop, 'cos there were Standards, right?" Vimes nodded. When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder, the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren't the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have standards. There might be nothing behind the front door worth stealing but at least the doorstep could be clean enough to eat your dinner off, if you could've afforded dinner. And no one ever bought their clothes from the pawn shop. You'd hit bottom when you did that. No, you bought them from Mr. Sun at the shonky shop, and you never asked where he got them from...

The poor, in AM, aren't charming and pathetic, by and large. They're ignorant and nasty and apathetic, instead. One of the reasons Vimes is so caustic is that he remembers perfectly well the selfishness of the neighborhoods, which lead the mindset that looks the other way as the black wagon drives off with your neighbors in the night - and goes and steals their furniture after they've been taken away.

Of course, the upper classes in AM are also ignorant and nasty and apathetic. And way better at stealing.

And Pterry's just as hard on the Left, in its absolutist, rigid, and inhuman manifestations, as on the Right. It isn't just Reg and his zealotry:

He didn't make a very good revolutionary. People as meticulously fervent as Reg got real revolutionaries worried. It was the way he stared... "Well, you said you don't know about them," said Vimes. "So...do they know about you?" He wanted to add: you're a cell of one, Reg. The real revolutionaries are silent men with poker-player eyes and probably don't know or care i fyou exist. You've got the shirt and the hair cut and the sash and you know all the songs, but you're no urban guerrilla. You're an urban dreamer. You turn over rubbish bins and scrawl on walls in the name of The People, who'd clip you round the ear if they found you doing it. But you believe.

Lord Winder's financial oppression, the provocations of which led to his paranoia, is a weird (but ancient) combination of "right" and "left" financial attitudes, taxes are raised on everything and everyone, with crippling results - by privatizing tax collection; Captain Swing's brilliant idea to clean up crime was to ban the carrying of weapons after nightfall, thus creating an instant criminal class where there had been one before.

Some arrows fell short, some did not. And there were people who fired back. And then, one after another, horrible things would happen. By then it was too late for them not to. The tension would unwind like a spring, scything through the city. There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called "The People." Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men and fools, and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People. People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed in any case. The found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when all the machinery of a city faltered, the wheels stopped turning, and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them.

This theme, that revolutions are revolutions, going round and round but never getting anywhere, comes up a lot in the Discworld books, as well as in Good Omens, the comedy of the Apocalypse co-written with Neil Gaiman - that the problem isn't with this one or that one, system or soul, it's us, the human race. And what are you going to do about that?

Well, some people Have Ideas. We're seeing the consequences of ignoring the people with Grand Ideas and no ethics, no principles, cynically willing to promise anything and do anything else, and justify it to themselves, and to the world when caught out, by pointing to the Noble Ideals they claim to serve.

Snapcase is the man to save us, he thought glumly. Yeah, I used to believe that. A lot of folk did. Just because he rode around in an open carriage occasionally and called people over and talked to them, the level of conversation being on the lines of "So, you're a carpenter, are you? Wonderful! What does that job entail?" Just because he said publicly that perhaps taxes were a bit on the high side. Just because he waved.

A number of years ago, struggling with the cognitive dissonance in my mind of "us" and "Them" I came up with the shorthand definition of Idealistic Cynics vs. Cynical Ideallists. "Cynical Idealists" - I also call them now the "Unprincipled Idealists," riffing off something that Orcinus and I have both noticed in re historical fascism and its present resurgence - believe in certain abstract Ideals like Truth, Beauty, Justice, Liberty &c &c. But only in an abstract way.

They know their classcial scholars inside and out and can logic-chop with the best of them and they talk endlessly about The Good and Community and The Eternal Value of the Human Person; but they don't believe in the things themselves. They aren't willing to make the jump from Platonic Form to imperfect Aristotelian incarnation of the things, and so in their pursuit of their Absolutes, they are willing to violate all of them. This makes no sense. But it is a real phenomenon, and it is the MO of the people at the top - or rather at the back at the top, the shadows behind the throne. This is the mindset of Buckley and Russell Kirk and Viguerie and Weyrich, and of their students and acolytes. You can do anything in this world, any material evil, commit any sin, break any rule or law, because you are bringing about a greater Eternal Good.

And it doesn't have to be a religious end to be mystical. Most of these guys, at the top, if not all of them, don't believe in The Gods. That's the secret of Straussianism which finally makes it all click. They believe it's a good thing for people to be sedated by Faith - be it faith in God, or faith in a Nation-State - because they look at the mess of snobbery and selfishness and utter stupidity that Vimes sees all around him every day, the hilariously-horrible perpetual Ankh-Morpork mob - and they recognize it's hopeless to try to turn these people into scholar-saints.

So, they conclude, we will force them to be Good and Just and Orderly, by deception, and when indoctrination doesn't work, we'll force them by force. And this will give us clean streets, no porn, and happy smiling faces in our Magic Kingdom...

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

Vimes is otoh what I call an "Idealistic Cynic." These are not absolute terms, categories to be fought over - I never made it to grad school, I'm not keen enough on fighting to the death over distinctions (well, outside fandom at least) and this is as I said only shorthand for clarifying my own thoughts: but it expresses a truth.

Keep the peace. That was the thing. People often failed to understand what that meant. You'd go to some life-threatening disturbance, like a couple of neighbors scrapping in the street over who owned the hedge between their properties, and they'd both be bursting with aggrieved self-righteousness, both yelling, their wives would either be having a private scrap on the side or would have adjourned to a kitchen for a shared spot of tea and a chat, and they all expected you to sort it out And they could never understand that it wasn't your job. Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a couple of lawyers, maybe. Your job was to quell the impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy self-justification, to get them to stop shouting, and to get them off the street. Once that had been achieved, your job was over. You weren't some walking god, dispensing finely tuned natural justice. Your job was simply to bring back peace. Of course, if your few strict words didn't work, and Mr. Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed fence and stabbed Mr. Jones to death with a pair of gardening shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the notorious Hedge-Argument Murder. But at least it was one you were trained to do...

The Idealistic Cynic recognizes that the world is a mess, and the problems inherent, and that any effort to eradicate evil from the world will only result in breaking everything as you try to get the evil out. Whether it be by killing all the "evildoers" (as defined by you and your friends) or locking them up or by insidiously propagandizing all the youth of Athens, trying to force the world into perfection is a road to disaster.

And yet, clearly, ignoring it and only trying to take care of number one is wrong, too. And yet often trying to fix things on a small, moderate and humane scale also either causes problems, or serves to perpetuate the evil systems that cause the problems you're working on in your own neighborhood.

--No wonder Vimes drank, and is still tempted at times. No wonder so few of us Progressives are serious about it, and why so many of us so-called Progressives find it so much easier to buy into the lies of The PTB.

"What's been happening?" "Big riot in Sator Square, Sarge. And they say people've broke into the Dolly Sisters Watch House and thrown the lieutenant out the window. An' there's lootin' all over the place, they say, an' the Day Watch are out chasin' people, only most of 'em are hidin' now 'cos--" "Yeah, I get the picture," sighted Vimes. Carcer had been right. Coppers were always outnumbered, so being a copper only worked when people let it work. If they refocused and realized you were just another standard idiot with a pennyworth of metal for a badge, you could end up as a smear on the pavement. He could hear shouting now, a long way off. He looked around at the hesitant watchmen. "On the other hand, gentleman," he said, "if you are going to leave, where are you going to go to?" The same thought had clearly occured to Colon and the others. "We'll get the carts," he said, hurrying off.

This is the secret, encapsulated here - the snook cocked at high seriousness, making it all the more serious.

Very few can do it, mock their own heroes and make them more heroic; Dickens managed it more than anyone else. Usually authors who try to write "flawed characters" fail badly.

There are novels where by the end I don't care what happens to any of the characters, "good guys" or not, and just want everyone to have some awful fate befall. Some of them are beautifully written, others not. But what they all have in common is that I can't tell the good guys from the bad guys, except that the bad guys "kill puppies," in Usenet argot - they're even more atrocious than the heroes, and they torture prisoners, kill bystanders, and generally abuse their powers for the wrong reasons, unlike our lads. [q.v. The Belgariad, The Architecture of Desire, and Terry Goodkind.]

It isn't that they're flawed heroes. People pretend that this is the distinction, but it isn't.

It's that there's no recognition that these things are serious flaws, that, in the end, the only difference between the heroes we're supposed to cheer for and the villains whose deaths we're supposed to cheer is which side the Author picked and is anxious to exonerate morally, as his/her avatars, one way or another.

Discworld is more edgy than that. Just as in A Hat Full of Sky, when pre-teen heroine Tiffany is possessed by an evil a dangerous spirit and turned into a conservative gives in to her worst impulses, Pratchett holds a mirror up to the world and dares us to laugh at ourselves...

to be continued...

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Part 10 - "Without fear or favour"
Jan.27.2005

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We come at last to the end, a few readings longer than I had planned, (but when do plans ever go according to plan?) and ... the moral of the story? You've already had them, all the morals anyone could ask for. What's left is understanding the point of it all. And that's when it gets really metaphysical, as Nobby would say.

"It's going to be a heirloom," said his wife. "Be so kind as to send your young men to collect our furniture, will you? And be careful with it. Put it at the back somewhere, where it won't get shot at."

For me, personally, it ties in with years' previous meditations and studies: my Taoism, my fandom, my obsession with history-via-ephemera of pop culture, and the problem of the sense we have of The Glorious Past and this messy, useless Present we're stuck in. It's always jarring when you pick up a book that says all the things you've been thinking.

One thing about Night Watch which is odd, which makes it feel different from the rest of the Discworld books even before you realize what it is about it, is that there is very little that is fantasy in it. Not in the story proper. The only thing which partakes of the fantastical is the device of the rift in Time that forms the mechanism of the plot, and Time's caretakers, all well established from earlier volumes.

Otherwise - and all for internally-logical reasons - there is none of the Pterry usual: no magic, no non-human beings, no superheroic warriors of legend, neither wizardly nor divine intervention for ex machina aside from the core machinations of the Continuum. The danger is not to the fabric of the universe, chthonic monsters and demon invasions unleashed by human hubris, but a far more mundane, and terrible, menace. The problems, and the solutions, of the dilemma of tyranny are, on Discworld as in the Primary World, in our own hands all along.

A vertiginous thought, when you think about it, really. (And yes, I did get a discount on commas-in-bulk this week.)

Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed... ...and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions, and ideas, and interesting vices, songs, and knowledge, and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That was what civilization meant. It meant the city. Was anyone else thinking about this?

GK Chesterton (of whom Neil Gaiman happens to be a fan, by the by) once said something which stuck with me, (I suspect it was in The Everlasting Man): that we do not love our hometown, our homeland, because it is perfect, because it is powerful and strong and beautiful, if we truly love it at all - that such a "love" based only on success (which he chastised Kipling for proclaiming) would be as empty as loving some one because of what they could do for you - but rather that if we really loved our cities and countries, we would do everything we could to make them beautiful, places that we want to live in, not just places that we happen to live in.

True: but not enough.

It can lead just as easily to Captain Swing (or to Lilith Weatherwax), that desire to Leave The World A Better Place Than You Found It. And that's where Taoism (shorter Lao Tsu: Never Force It) and/or Idealistic Cynicism is critical. Otherwise, you can end up like GKC, whose syndo-anarchic libertarianism got seduced to the dark side without ever realizing it (he died before seeing what his hero of retro Italianate romanticism was really about) and end up consenting to appalling things done in the name of Goodness.

The spokesman, or at least the one in front, looked almost exactly like the kind of person Vimes had pictured when thinking about the Hedge-Argument Murder. "Erm, Officer..." "You don't have to ask him, Rutherford, it's his duty to protect us," snapped the woman who was standing, with an air of proprietorship, beside the man. ...Rutherford looked up at Vimes. Vimes was aware that he was villainously unshaven, disheveled, dirty, and probably starting to smell. He decided not to load any more troubles on the man's back. "Would you and your lady care to share our barricade?" "Oh, yes, thank you very--" Rutherford began, but was outgunned again. "Some of that furniture looks very dirty," said Mrs. Rutherford. "And aren't those beer barrels?" "Yes, ma'am, but they're empty ones," said Vimes. "Are you sure? I refuse to cower behind alcohol! I have never approved of alcohol, and neither has Rutherford!" "I can promise you, ma'am, that any beer barrel in the presence of my men for any length of time will be empty," said Vimes. "You may rest assured on that score." "And are your men sober and clean-living?" the woman demanded. "Whenever no alternative presents itself, ma'am," said Vimes. This seemed acceptable. Mrs. Rutherford was like Rust in that respect. She listened to the tone of voice, not the words.

You have to remember that not only can't you wave a wand and turn the Rutherfords into angels, you shouldn't. Shouldn't even try, that is.

"...Some of the men said they could hear screaming in the distance. People are just piling in. There's robberies and everything going on out there..." "Lance Constable?" "Yes, Sarge?" "You know when you wanted to swing a club at that torturing bastard and I stopped you?" "Yes, Sarge?" "That's why, lad. Once we break down, it all breaks down." "Yes, Sarge, but you do bop people over the head." "Interesting point, Lance Constable. Logical and well made, too, in a clear tone of voice bordering on the bloody cheeky. But there's a big difference." "And what's that, Sarge?" "You'll find out," said Vimes. And privately thought: the answer is, It's Me Doing It. I'll grant that it is not a good answer, because people like Carcer use it, too, but that's what it boils down to. Of course, it's also to stop me knifing them and, let's be frank, them knifing me. That's quite important, too...

At the same time, you damn well should try to stop the Carcers and Snapcases and Rusts and all from turning the place into a worse hellhole than it already is. And wherever possible, encourage people by moral and licit means to inform and improve their consciences, and then follow them. No, there are no pushbutton solutions or handbooks on how to do this, sorry: I'm making it up as I go along myself.

For a moment, Vimes wondered, looking out through a gap in the furniture, if there wasn't something in Fred's idea about moving the barricades on and on, like a sort of sieve, street by street. You could let through the decent people, and push the bastards, the rich bullies, the wheelers and dealers in people's fates, the leeches, the hangers-on, the brown-nosers, and courtiers, and smarmy plump devils in expensive clothes, all those people who didn't know or care about the machine but stole its grease, push them into a smaller and smaller compass and then leave them in there. Maybe you could toss some food in every couple of days, or maybe you could leave 'em to do what they'd always done, which was live off other people...

This is not a realistic dream. Even if there weren't other forces at work, predating even the iniquitous Carcer ("Innocent words got dirty in his mouth") and conspiring to keep the status basically quo given a change of who's at the top of the Lady's wheel, human beings just don't have the attention span of a goldfish, overall. That's the other reason that revolutions fail (or part of the overall reason, that people are people.) We can't maintain the energy level, the commitment, the enthusiasm and morale, much less agree on what we ought to be doing. We see it here, in Left Blogistan, all the time.

"Look," said Reg. "Everything will belong to The People and everyone will be better off. Do you understand?" The shoemaker's frown grew deeper. He wasn't certain if he was part of The People. "I thought we just didn't want soldiers down our street, and mobs, and all that lot," he said.

But you never know, where you'll end up, once you start getting involved in doing The Job Before You, which also involves Figuring Out The Job Before You, And Its Limitations, I've discovered. (You might think you're just correcting a theological and historical error, for the principle of the thing, for example, as a kind of side-line to your regular fandom job...ye gods, it's been that long, almost a year now?)

In the original timeline, John Keel didn't survive the coming battles. Seven graves in an overgrown cemetery, forgotten by all except their families and the friends who were there.

And Vimes knows this perfectly well.

And he chooses to do the job anyway.

--How far are we willing to go?

"Sarge, did you mean that about helping them others with their wounded?" said Sam, who was standing at the bottom of the ladder. "Well, it makes as much sense as anything else that's been happening," said Vimes. "They're city lads just like us, not our fault they were given the wrong orders." And it messes with their heads, he thought, makes 'em wonder why all this is happening... "Only...Nancyball's dead, Sarge." Vimes took a deep breath. He'd known it anyway, up there on the wobbling ramparts, but hearing it said aloud was still a shock. "I daresay there's a few of theirs who didn't make it through the morning," he said. "Yes, but they were the enemy, Sarge." "It's always worth thinking about who your enemy is," said Vimes, tugging at the barricade. "How about the man who's trying to stick a sword into you?" said Sam. "That's a good start," said Vimes. "But there are times when it pays to be a little less tightly focused."

Part of it - the answer to that difference, the answer to how you avoid the extremes of apathy and insanity masking as virtue - is ultimately humility - which is not incompatible with being an arrogant bastard, whatever the moralists tell you, as well as being the best guide to an informed conscience there is.

It's being aware that you're an arrogant bastard, too, and that you're going to make mistakes and they're going to be dumb ones, too - and going on, not not looking back in the I'm-Too-Proud,Let's Move On, way so often advocated under the guise of Forgive And Forget^TM, but moving on after having figured out what you did wrong, instead of being immobilized by angst. You pick up the broken bits, you stick them back together as best you can, you work with what you've got, and you carry on.

Like Annie Dillard says - another author whose words, when given to me, gave me that shock of deja vu so many years ago, speaking my own mind aloud for me - there's no one here but us chickens. And there never was anyone else, - not even the Great Heroes^TM of the past. John Keel was just a halfway-decent cop looking for a paycheck he could live on, who walked into a job that turned out to be a madhouse, trying to salvage something out of the insanity.

So was "John Keel," as well.

To Sam with love from your Sybil

In this timeline, "Keel" gets offered yet another way out: the chance of joining the System, of being part of the PTB when the revolution comes, instead - from people who really do pull the strings behind the curtain.

He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew...then it was too high. It wasn't a decision he was making, he knew that. It happened far below the levels of the brain where decisions were made. It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn't be Sam Vimes any more. The writing stayed on the silver but it was blurred now because of the tears welling up. They were tears of anger, mostly at himself. There was not a thing that he could do. He hadn't bought a ticket and he hadn't wanted to come, but now he was on the ride and couldn't get off until the end.

We're all John Keel.

"Where is my new Captain of the Guard?" "I believe Captain Carcer is in the rear courtyard, my lord, exhorting the men in no uncertain terms." "Tell him I want to see him now," said Snapcase. "Certainly, sir."

I'm not going to tell how it ends, of the mysterious fate of Lord Winder, or what magic Lu-Tse and the Monks of History are able to work in the end (the beginning) - how the changed timeline whips itself around like a broken steel cable, betraying those who trusted in a new administration just as before, but not quite as before; how the final showdown with Carcer goes - and the one after that; whether the same seven graves are filled this time, and what that does to the present-to-come. You'll have to read that and discover it (re-discover it) for yourself.

And there's more.

We learn, at last, that it wasn't only a few scruffy, mostly-amoral Watchmen who were inspired to become something more than what they had been, what they imagined they might be, for the sake of the man they knew as John Keel...

And the world turned toward morning.

--Here endeth the Lesson.

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PS: Follett, the "Champagne Socialist," does play a mean lute.