Over the coming days there would be considerable controversy in Uan aa Boa regarding the subject of military cooperation, even in something as limited as blockading slave ships. Clips of George Sery speaking the words "libertarian, capitalist, imperialist nation" clocked up many views and 60% of communes debated emergency motions condemning the idea of a joint enterprise with Allanean forces. The arguments would be orthodox and therefore lend themselves to virtue signalling - slavery is implicit in and inseparable from capitalism, opposing slavery while not challenging capitalism is akin to putting a sticking plaster on a cancer, cooperating with a nation such as Allanea is undoubtedly a failure to challenge capitalism. Even Keilersmoor and the Cat Herders would be subject to criticism regarding their suitability as partners.
A commune is not generally permitted to undermine previously established policy, but this new venture was an executive decision that hadn't passed through the communes in the first place. Rules and their interpretations would be wrangled over in a display of resolutionary socialism at its most convoluted. It has been said that in the final seconds before an asteroid strike wipes out civilisation a Boani commune will be raising a point of order.
Realists (or revisionists, depending on one's point of view) would argue that it was possible to strike a significant blow against the slavers, whose victims would hardly be helped by waiting for Allanea and the rest of Forest to embrace socialism, something likely to happen shortly after the mighty River Uan froze over. And in the end 85% of these condemnations would be outvoted, for while the Party has carefully dismantled the old tribal power structures memory and folklore run deep, and the slave galleys of past centuries cast a long shadow across the soul of the nation. The new ways teach the equality of everyone over and above ties of blood but still, who can help but wonder how many distant cousins they have across the sea whose forebears toiled on the sugar and cotton plantations? The revolutionary movement has from the beginning been eager to draw the trajectory from those plantations to the contemporary Western companies logging the rainforest and drilling for oil, and onwards to the likes of Construction Enterprises. Perhaps the average Posteastan would spit in the street on passing a black person, but perhaps too there is a kindred of oppression.
