You have to believe evidence when you have it in front of you, or else the universe is just too fantastic. - Robert A. Heinlein

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

Don, have you been dealing with a booklegger?

The attack should not have happened, of course. The rice farmer sergeant had been perfectly right; the Federation could not afford to risk its own great cites to punish the villagers of Venus. He was right—from his viewpoint.
A rice farmer has one logic; the men who live by and for power have another and entirely different logic. Their lives are built on tenuous assumptions, fragile as reputation; they could not afford to ignore a challenge to their power—the Federation could not afford not to punish the insolent colonists.