The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only la… - Kim Stanley Robinson

Their thinking clashed radically with Western thought; for instance the separation of church and state was wrong to them, making it impossible for them to agree with Westerners on the very basis of government. And they were so patriarchal that some of their women were said to be illiterate—illiterates, on Mars! That was a sign. And indeed these men had the dangerous look that Frank associated with machismo, the look of men who oppressed their women so cruelly that naturally the women struck back where they could, terrorizing sons who then terrorized wives who terrorized sons and so on and so on, in an endless death spiral of twisted love and sex hatred. So that in that sense they were all madmen.

If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to change.

Friendship was just diplomacy by other means, after all.