Right out the gate, 50% hate her because she is from a different political party as them. Hell let's imagine that the Arkies are 100% American. Because if you do, the notion of all these people falling in line behind a powerless US president, after they've committed a supreme act of cowardice in violation of space law and an insult to the human race, is beyond comical. No, just imagine backwards, 'savages' to act as blank slates for what my plot needs. people when thinking about the arkies, people whose views and motivations you can conceptualize. He can't have you thinking about Russian, Chinese, Iranian, French, British, Japanese, German, Brazilian, etc. Because that is what Stevenson needs you to imagine when the arkies start following JBF. In hindsight, it was a very intentional choice to have Doob go to Bhutan (Tibet? I don't remember anymore) so the arkies, or at least our mental image of them, could be depicted as simplistic, ignorant, superstitious tribespeople.

I stopped reading right around when the narrative switches to Doob saying 'somehow Palpatine returned JBF controls the arkies', though I was mentally checked out shortly after her arrival. Which is to say, if you're going to go the hard science/hyper-realism route, I'm going to hold you to a higher standard for the aforementioned flaws. However, not all literature spends page after page pontificating about both how smart it is as well as the super geniuses ( or the super genius femdom lesbian mommy who has to regularly strip for us and fuck everyone) held therein. I'll start by saying that all literature is riddled with plot contrivances, characters acting stupid to advance the plot, plot holes, etc.

Seveneves book 2