[Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

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Deacon Blues
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[Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Hi gang,

In light of Mark's recent exploits from the Zeta Gundam novels (although some are pushing 7 years now), I thought I would expound on a post of his that mentions a speech from Zeon Zum Deikun that Sunrise asked him to translate for the Origin series. Seeing that the complete speech (much like the one from Unicorn that the prime minister gave) will never see the light of day, I though I'd step in with a spin on it. I don't really think he's as maniacal as one would seem, but I can't quite see how this plays off as attempting to win independence for Side 3...

Mobile Suit Z Gundam Volume.04
The Second Coming of the Zabi Family


Part 5 Clown (or Drollery)
In response to the question of why humans have begun to explore space, it can only be said that this is the inevitable result of mans need to stay alive. Humans started out as animals living at one with nature. It is only relatively recently in their long existence that they began to transform and dominate their surroundings through technological progress. The instincts cultivated while living at one with nature are the same ones driving them to explore space.

However, human-specific high intelligence has led to isolation from nature and has dominated and configured society as a whole. Until the end of the old century the undeveloped countries still had a social structure that was influenced by nature. As that dissipated, nature became nothing more than something to be enjoyed as a leisure activity. If you think about nature and human beings, it was a peculiar development.

What's more, as undeveloped countries advanced, their cities all began to face the same problems of pollution, poverty and chaos that early 20th century cities faced. These problems became worldwide problems. Furthermore, as cultures become more technologically advanced, people tend to become "specialists," as they are not force by their environment to develop many of their innate abilities.

New types of religions form to fill in for this distortion, and people pursue enlightenment. Unlike primitive religions, which tended to encompass all of nature, these new spiritual pursuits were just another form of narrow specialization. The adverse effect of specialization wasn't that they no longer lived in harmony with nature, it was that it encouraged the principle of individualism. Civilization up until the 19th century involved a constant battle with nature, disease, and despotism represented by royal authority. This situation forced people to have a self-cleansing nature.

That is, people were forced to find ways to evade the oppression of the planet.

They had the humility to be happy with their lives if they could only manage to avoid illness. Wars and other such man-made disasters could only be faced in the same manner that one would face the violence of nature. The best one could do was to try to survive as long as possible. However, in modern times, even the victims of a nation's wars demand compensation. That is to say, the rights of the individual have come to be seen as equal to those of the nation as a whole. This is another form of individual specialization.

Members of a nation are not supposed to place themselves at the same level as the nation itself. Individuals who sing of their sovereignty threaten to crush the nation. If a group of such individuals attempted to manage a country, the general arbitrariness of their governance would render the endeavor hopeless. In the past, when people were involved in a showdown with nature, they didn't live with the idea of individual sovereignty in the forefront. As the structure of society moved further away from nature, people gained more ability to influence that structure. Since then too many people have brandished their own self-consciousness.

Because of this, people have tired of other people and become obsessed with preserving their own lifestyle. They have forgotten that they originally lived together with nature. This intentional existence is what caused the destruction of the planet. Nature, which produced humans, is tremendously large. It is the instincts of those who felt that without conquering nature they would be unable to survive that led mankind to turn its eye to space exploration.

If humans were to become too comfortable and forget their need for self-preservation then it would be their downfall. This insight, intuitively held by people, is correct. That is why it is called an instinct. It is that instinct put into practice that led to space exploration. After confirming their intention to explore space and gaining the ability to live there, humans found that nature had placed them in a severe environment. When forced to live in a harsh environment, no one has the free time to commit themselves to trivial theories of self-preservation.

For example, if a child is in a public park and falls into a pond with no fence, the responsibility would clearly lie with the municipality charged with maintaining the park. In space there is no time to insist on such things. Humans will find this cruel, but there is no time to listen to people chanting about the logic of their personal circumstances. At the very least, isn't it narrow-minded to try to blame the municipality?

Why?

Space is originally nothing more and nothing less than a place for people to live. Of course it's an environment where one must put technology to good use, but once one has command of that technology then space becomes a habitable area. If not, space would be filled with a substance that would make it uninhabitable for humans, would it not? So now, why is the environment in space more severe than it is on Earth? The intelligence that humans developed on Earth was a self-righteous intelligence. It might be better to describe it as "narrow" rather than "self-righteous." It's easy to believe that the area set aside to swallow that intelligence is outer space itself.

If there were an accident on a colony, although it could well be that the responsibility might lie with the Space Corporation, the first priority of the Spacenoids must be to preserve the integrity of their environment. This definition of justice is not something new. In an extremely harsh environment, before worrying about individual sovereignty, all financial and material resources must be devoted to environmental protection. It is only with a surplus that attention can be diverted to the security of the individual.

Preserving an environment capable of sustaining life is the primary concern. The idea of accommodating individual sovereignty originated in an era before scientific civilization had advanced. Nature provided a new environment for those people who were not interested in environmental pollution if it wasn't right before their eyes and who eventually exhausted the Earth. This is why humans were once again forced to feel humble before nature, much like animals.

This is the meaning of space exploration.

After making full use of their technology, it was space that taught the animal known as "man" about humility. However, there are few who recognize this fact. Many see the movement of mankind into space as nothing more than a technological victory. That is, as to the thesis of why humans pursued space exploration, they are unable to answer.
The chapter continues on with Char interrupting the Assembly with his speech, which is interestingly enough, quite different from the one we see in the television series.

Anyways, something for you all to digest.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

So basically what Deikun is saying "Individualism is bad and responsible for Earth being polluted and everything would so much better if humanity only cared about simply surviving like we doing in space." How very.... totalitarian.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Yeah, I thought so too. This take on Deikun's philosophy certainly gives us a more direct connection to Zabi-style space fascism.

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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Zeino wrote:So basically what Deikun is saying "Individualism is bad and responsible for Earth being polluted and everything would so much better if humanity only cared about simply surviving like we doing in space." How very.... totalitarian.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

What was it that Benjamin Franklin once said?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
That being said, I completely disagree with what is said in that speech, though it becomes much easier to see how the Zabis co-opted the name of Zeon and turned it into the Spacenoid supremacist doctrine with which we are familiar, if this stuff is really what Zeon Deikun espoused as his own philosophy.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

And here I'd always thought the story was that the Zabis took Deikun's philosophy and twisted it into something unrecognizable for their own benefit. It almost sounds like they were just taking it to its logical conclusion, instead. (Well, except for the part where they murdered him and usurped control of Side 3. I'm pretty sure Deikun wouldn't have supported that.)

Between this and his recent depiction in The Origin, Deikun is seeming less and less like an enlightened political philosopher and more and more like an unstable maniac.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Brave Fencer Kirby wrote:(Well, except for the part where they murdered him and usurped control of Side 3. I'm pretty sure Deikun wouldn't have supported that.)
I though it was ambiguous on whether Deikun was murdered or not. It probably doesn't help that the the guy who insists he was murdered also is a bit of a nut.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

I always thought that Deikun was a little too enthusiastic and hasty with his ideals and methods and should've given it another couple years to fully think things through. As for the whole murder idea, while I don't know if he was truly murdered or just overworked himself to death, I had gotten the impression that his last words were just mere gibberish and Zabi took advantage of that to make himself the leader of Zeon.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Firstly, thanks to Deacon Blues for the translation, which is done with great skill. It reads very well as a speech when spoken aloud, as I have done to get the full transmitted meaning. A good speech is like a good play; if you read only with your eyes you are missing half the message. :D

It's a magnificent speech in terms of a 19th century political ideologue, such as I learned about and admired as a student too many years ago. :) That is to say, it is involved in an idealized future resulting from collective societal progress through group sacrifice and struggle in an environment that once again forces humans to be collectively productive and interdependent in a way that had been increasingly left behind on Earth. It's definitely the sort of speech that the Zeon Zum Daikun that we met in the new Gundam The Origin OAV would make, the sort of speech that would make an audience of various Spacenoids all sit up and pay attention.

From the mindset of a turn-of-the-millennium Earthnoid such as myself, very much engrossed in individual effort, interest, and demands on Government, this is a strange message indeed. A little off-putting too, since it smacks of the wide-eyed and driven revolutionary of the type that we all learned to distrust in the 20th century with good cause! The cynical political era of the 21st century has no time or place for visionaries and messiahs, it prefers instead a series of comfortable reliable, interchangable public figures with committee-approved soundbite speeches and a pledge of government indulgence that come across as flat as day-old Diet Pepsi. Such leaders as we have known since the end of the Cold War could never give such a speech and be taken seriously for a minute.

But the Universal Century is not our time, it is a different time with a different set of priorities, which have as their collective basis the greatest transformation of human society since the glaciers receded for the final time, permitting a growing season for the sowing and harvesting of grain. All the past social transformations and upheavals of terrestrial history pale to insignificance against the deliberate immigration of half of all humanity to life in space, all of them to live in an artificially constructed environment!

Given that sweeping social movement as a backdrop, I am rather amazed that there was only one noteworthy ambitious Colonial leader with fire in his eyes and a dream in his heart, and a vision of a future life in space that he could give to his beloved children with no regrets. Side 3 seems to have been the one place where all the elements came together to build up a true revolutionary movement behind a charismatic & visionary leader. If I was a Side 3 colonist in UC 0068, a young man who had grown to manhood watching my parents work themselves into an early grave (or at least an unhealthy old age by the looks of the Daikun-Degwin generation) in constructing the Munzo Republic from nothing, I would have been greatly moved by it. A couple more speeches in that vein and I would certainly have been out waving a placard at the Feddy garritroopers and pledging to support the Zabis in continuing to pursue the dream of Zeon.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Remember also that Tomino's original setting notes described Degwin as "The man who instituted the monarchial system in order to realize Zeon Zum's ideals." Degwin says something similar in First Gundam - "I imposed a monarchial system as a means of hastily unifying the Zeon people, in order to realize Zeon's ideals." Without the endorsement of the setting notes, one might take that with a grain of salt, but it does rather depend on what Zeon Deikun's ideals actually were.

In this account, part of Deikun's philosophy is that humans have erred by elevating individual rights above the wellbeing of their nation and society. The harsh environment of space, by reintroducing humans to the idea of humility, provides a chance to reassert the natural order in which individual human lives are relatively worthless.

It's pretty brutal, anti-democratic stuff. But if this is the political agenda that accompanies Deikun's much-touted spiritual one, then the dictatorship of the Zabi family could be seen as a good-faith attempt to put it into practice.

Almost a shame, really, that Sunrise eventually opted not to use this speech for the dummy text in The Origin, going instead with the airy-fairy Newtype one from the First Gundam novels. This would have made a good sign of Deikun's gradual descent into darker realms of ideology.

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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

It is a particular conceit of representative governments (particularly the original ones of Churchill's "English-speaking peoples" that they have the best governments of the world for ensuring the good of their constituent citizens. As an American citizen of republican and Republican sentiments I freely express this particular bias on a near-daily basis. (I beg the pardon of the Admins in advance for this bit of smug patriotic posturing. :P) But as I have already said, one should not confuse the Universal Century with any past or present situation for popular government as we know it. We should also consider those circumstances in the forming of Zeon Zum Daikun's revolutionary ideology that sought "democracy" in a collectivist mindset, rather than the social contract-among-individuals mindset that originated in England and developed to the fullest in the USA.

There was always a certain amount of "embrace the suck" in Zeonism, and it's not just rhetorical agitprop. If the Moon (as Heinlein famously said) is a harsh mistress, then the cold vacuum of space is a demanding dominatrix. The effort to build the fully enclosed colonies at Side 3 was a further step of hazard than the semi-enclosed O'Neill cylinders on or inside the Lunar orbit. Earth's bulk and Van Allen belts provided no shield, neither did the Moon, and so the generation of builders paid for their efforts in the fashion depicted by Yaz's pen, in addition to the other direct losses to accident. Here we find the digression from the pursuit of the individual self mentioned in the speech. Everyone had to work together for the greater good, to build the colonies that were the only place for home and family. The needs of the many did outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Every accident that was the result of individual error or negligence brought the cost to the whole home in spades, since in low-gravity labor in space suits there was no margin for error.

And as for the all-encompassing Federation, the big bosses at Dakar didn't seem to be too worried about individual hardships among the colonists. There was always a new draft of emigrants available to replace losses. One might remember the scene from Gundam Unicorn where Merida showed Banagher the chapel in Papua and told of the long labors and dreams of the future held by the miners. So the fuel for revolution of the radical sort was in place, and it required a spark to light it. That spark was an idealistic man who was worker, teacher, and public speaker without equal in Munzo, Zeon Zum Daikun.

Daikun's speeches are very much in the 19th century to me, since they do call on the projected ideal that is worth the sacrifice of the self to help all achieve the greater good. His ideals were good and proper and worth pursuing, and as UC history told us attracted a following beyond Side 3 itself. The big difference compared to our current post-world war, post-cold war political squeamishness would obviously be his willingness to resort to force to get what he wanted. Lots of ideologues of the 19th century had no trouble resorting to rifle and cannon when the pamphlet and ballot-box failed to deliver their desired form of societal change. American fans who want to see Abraham Lincoln in Zeon Zum Daikun will always be disappointed. I see John Brown, Henry Ward Beecher, Eugene Dubois, and Nat Turner as the sort of Americans of the time who had parallels to Zeon. The European parallels are many, especially since the Europeans had more of the collectivist mind set and more of a desire to overthrow the existing order rather than modify it from within.

I have no doubt that Degwin Zabi considered himself to be following a path that he believed would be best for bringing the new "Zeonism" to Side 3. Gihren was even more certain of it. Jinba & Ranba Ral would disagree of course, along with the series of plotters seeking to assassinate Gihren. But in 0068 Degwin acted with what he considered the best of intentions, presuming he had his leader's dying blessing. In this action he was no different than many of the "strong men" in past history who decided that they alone could save the Revolution/Republic, and so replaced one oppressor with another, albeit more popularly supported one. If that was Degwin's sin of hubris, then he has a lot of famous company.

Degwin was chagrined when he faced tardy internal opposition and the Federation doubled down with a military buildup instead of conceding sovereignty and obligingly withdrawing inside the orbit of the Moon. He could seize the ultimate power, but in wielding it he was at a loss for strategic direction. Not so with Gihren, who was a more deliberate leader who knew exactly what he wanted to do, and how to go about doing it. The game of Go was a most subtle hint of a determined ideologue preparing for the long game of Zeon versus Federation. It's a good detail of the difference between father & son in interpreting and implementing the ideals of Zeon.
Last edited by Zeonista on Fri Mar 06, 2015 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

You know, we tend to reach for the Nazi allegory when we're talking about Zeon, but it seems like a better model for the early days of Zeon might be the birth of the Soviet Union. If we think of Deikun as a blend of Marx and Lenin (part academic theorist, part politician), and Degwin as halfway between Lenin and Stalin (Gihren would be 100% Stalin in this model), then Jimba Ral is obviously playing the role of a buffoonish Trotsky.

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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

The real problem with the whole "space as a harsh unforgiving environment" thing is that life in a Island 3 isn't all that different from life on Earth. Indeed, that's the whole point of an Island 3. Sure, various disasters and unpredictable acts of God might lead to a quick and messy death in an Island 3 if something breeches the hull, but the difference between "killed by meteor impact blowing a hole in colony wall and sucking you out into space" and "killed by earthquake demolishing the building you're in and crushing you under tons of debris" is fairly academic.

The only environment I can think of in UC Gundam that fits the "pull together or die" thing that Deikun talks about is Axis before they completed the Moussa habitat add-on -- by all accounts, the living conditions were miserable, with disease and death common.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

You definitely reached out for the more obvious European examples! :lol: I must say there is something to the idea of Zeonism and the Zeonist Revolution as "Bolsheviks in Spaaaace." The Bolsheviks had a really incendiary mix of pie-in-the-sky collectivism, deprecation of individualism as per the needs of the Revolutionary State, and a desire to get things done regardless of the cost, because the ends definitely justified the means.... And the oppressed people, not to mention the people who desired to be saviors of the oppressed, ate it up with a fork and spoon. And then when the Big Man (sic) died, there was a knives-out struggle for power masked by polite speeches and appointments that ended with one ruthless SOB calling the shots.

Drat, now I want to write a crackfic of Gundam the Origin as a parody of Doctor Zhivago. :P
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

There is something I feel that should be pointed in all this, a bit of a recurring theme that Tomino has about the leaders of his Gundam series enemy forces. It that they tend to be hypocrites who don't believe in their movement's stated ideology and are just using it for their ambitions of gaining even more power (Gihren, the Titan leaders, Fonse Kagatie) or as a means for settling personal grudges (CCA-version Char, Carozzo Ronah, Crux Dogatie, maybe Haman)

What has this to do with Deikun? Well, I seem to recall that background materiel mentioned that he was originally a member of The Federation Assembly and that he emigrated to Side 3, after his ideas gained little traction down on Earth... Which would mean that he may have actually been born as member of the "Earth Elite". I think Mark even once speculated that he could have been a carpetbagger out looking for a more receptive audience.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

That may be overruled by The Origin, though. (I don't have time to look through the script right now, but I think they mention somewhere that Deikun's a second-generation space colonist.)

There definitely are a lot of cynical opportunists in Tomino's Gundam works, but there are also a few who seem relatively sincere. Meitzer Ronah, for instance, actually lives up to his "Cosmo Aristocracy" philosophy by refusing to take shelter when a Federation ship is bombarding the Frontier colony. Interestingly, if we conditionally include Degwin in this group, it seems like most of these sincere believers are old men.

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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Brave Fencer Kirby wrote:The real problem with the whole "space as a harsh unforgiving environment" thing is that life in a Island 3 isn't all that different from life on Earth. Indeed, that's the whole point of an Island 3. Sure, various disasters and unpredictable acts of God might lead to a quick and messy death in an Island 3 if something breeches the hull, but the difference between "killed by meteor impact blowing a hole in colony wall and sucking you out into space" and "killed by earthquake demolishing the building you're in and crushing you under tons of debris" is fairly academic.
Plus the original series pointed out that it takes the force similar to a nuclear blast to get through some space colonies and that a hull breach won't suck all the air and people out.

Honestly I can't help but think the Belters from James S. A. Corey's Expanse series would laugh their asses off at the Zeon since unlike them they don't have to have air and water shipped to them (the Belters) to survive as well live in asteroids that don't seem to have a lot of open space and most of their food is of the synthetic processed variety.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

I think we're glossing over something when it comes to space colonies in the earth sphere, and this is illustrated by the Jupiter Empire. The Jupiter Empire practice population control, not because they want to, but because its essential to there own survival. Everything is rationed offed from food, water and even air due to it all being a finite resource. This makes logic sense when your looking at an enclosed environment like a space colony.


There is only so much food, water and air to go around. If an agricultural pod gets taken out, or is down for whatever reason. It means there is less food to go around to the people in the colony. Even if a hole in a colony won't suck out all the air. It still means there is less air in the colony for everyone. Life in a colony becomes less about the individual, and more about the entire colony as whole. Considering that whatever happens to the colony effects everyone that lives inside of it.
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Evex wrote:There is only so much food, water and air to go around.
That's not really true either. Food can be grown, air can be processed, and water is actually relatively plentiful in space -- there are comets, asteroids, and even entire moons that are basically giant ice balls. Those limits are true in the short term (see: Axis after the refugees arrive), but in the long term, as long as you have the basic chemical building blocks you need (most of which you can get in space), you can expand virtually indefinitely (see: Axis after attaching Moussa).
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Re: [Zeta Novel] - Zeon Zum Deikun's Speech

Zeino wrote:There is something I feel that should be pointed in all this, a bit of a recurring theme that Tomino has about the leaders of his Gundam series enemy forces. It that they tend to be hypocrites who don't believe in their movement's stated ideology and are just using it for their ambitions of gaining even more power (Gihren, the Titan leaders, Fonse Kagatie) or as a means for settling personal grudges (CCA-version Char, Carozzo Ronah, Crux Dogatie, maybe Haman)

What has this to do with Deikun? Well, I seem to recall that background materiel mentioned that he was originally a member of The Federation Assembly and that he emigrated to Side 3, after his ideas gained little traction down on Earth... Which would mean that he may have actually been born as member of the "Earth Elite". I think Mark even once speculated that he could have been a carpetbagger out looking for a more receptive audience.
The OYW-era Zeonists are very idealistic, if only because nearly all the adults can remember Zeon himself as a living man. It's something of a transferred cult of personality, but it's also a heartfelt reaction to the message of the leader they still think has a message and a vision that suits them best in life. The Federation is all about co-existence, but it's co-existence with no purpose in life beyond maintaining that existence. yeah, yeah, the Earth is saved, the Lorax is happy, people are living in space....now what?

Zeon Zum Deikun (I should try to be current. ;P) is the man who steps up and says there is a purpose to the enforced communal construction of the enclosed Island III cylinders, and then the enforced communal life inside the same. (A Side 2 colonist could try living outside the big cylinders or converted asteroid mines in a smaller environment, but no one seems eager to bet their lives on it being a success.) And it is a purpose that involves a positive advancement to their lives and society, at least according to him. In the absence of any similar message or counter-argument from Dakar, the colonists are more than happy to elect Zeon to high office in the Federation-created Republic so he can end it and bring about something better. Too bad it falls to the Zabi family to attempt to realize his dream, but Dame Fortuna is real bitch sometimes...

As toysdream has stated above, Gundam the Origin has set aside previous past exposition to create a new origin story, and that is not a bad thing. If Zeon Zum Deikun is supposed to be a political leader that the Side 3 colonists can relate to and admire, then it makes the most sense from a narrative perspective if he is one of them, a fellow colonist who's been there from the beginning and has a shared experience that gives the passionate rhetoric a weight that a similar speech from an ivory tower academic or elitist politician with uncalloused hands could never achieve. Yaz also shows in the Origin vignettes how the man and message do coincide at a certain point. After all, Zeon the man can help deliver his son, and be at home to hug his daughter at night. So he is not afraid to get his hands dirty for a good result, and he's looking ahead to the next generation of Spacenoids, not the next election or the next poll.

The succeeding generation of Zabi leaders Gihren & Kycilia showed that something went wrong in the translation of values and ideals from Degwin to his children. It might have been a simple case of applying Lord Acton's proverb, but Yaz just followed Tomino's sage observation that any political movement could only be as good as its leaders. Gihren was an emotionally detached super-genius who liked the ideals of Zeonism but missed the human connection while he mentally crunched the numbers. Anyone who has watched an episode of Scorpion and seen Walter stumble over the human factor in his calculations would know the problem here. Not that Gihren was 1005 removed, since his funeral speech showed he could reach the public when he made the effort, but as a rule he had a quite different style from his father and his mentor Deikun.

Kycilia was good at emulating her father in building a power base, but she missed the broad appeal necessary to whip the troops into final push mode...and gain a personal loyalty that wasn't solely personal & wouldn't terminate at a convenient moment. ;) In a like vein Haman Karn, Full Frontal, and even Char Aznable himself kept missing the unification of the personal and public devotion, even though they wee able to keep attracting followers who welcomed the Zeonist message. That's painting the UC history of 0085-96 with broad strokes, but for the successor warlords of Zeon that would suffice for a general description of their chief obstacle to success.
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