I can understand Flask’s way of thinking, but she’s wrong. There’s no future in her approach. Killing every Topsider you encounter will win you the skirmishes but not the war, and certainly not the peace. They can’t wipe out every Topsider on the planet. They certainly can’t think that if they kill all the nasty ones, then only the friendly ones will be left. Underground and Topsider population will collide sooner or later, inevitably. When that happens, both sides will need people with Wally’s and Holly’s moral compass, if any peace is to be negotiated. If no attitudes can change, and if no peace can be negotiated, then there will be continuing conflict until both sides have worn each other down, one side is annihilated or subsumed, and the other remaining will have lost any shred of credential to call itself human. Which, of course, is what this argument was all about in the first place.
I can understand Flask’s way of thinking, but she’s wrong. There’s no future in her approach. Killing every Topsider you encounter will win you the skirmishes but not the war, and certainly not the peace. They can’t wipe out every Topsider on the planet. They certainly can’t think that if they kill all the nasty ones, then only the friendly ones will be left. Underground and Topsider population will collide sooner or later, inevitably. When that happens, both sides will need people with Wally’s and Holly’s moral compass, if any peace is to be negotiated. If no attitudes can change, and if no peace can be negotiated, then there will be continuing conflict until both sides have worn each other down, one side is annihilated or subsumed, and the other remaining will have lost any shred of credential to call itself human. Which, of course, is what this argument was all about in the first place.