Now, another thought I'd been having (though it's still along Doylist lines) has to do with the distinction between a "legitimate" government stumbling along in the aftermath of a decimating disaster vs. an upstart individual or group making a power grab in an unstable time. Laura Roslin on BSG was Secretary of Education before the forty-some-odd individuals between her and the presidency were killed in a multi-planetary attack -- her authority had a legal basis, her power was legitimate. I am unfamiliar with the chain of command for my own state, as pertains to who would be in charge with the loss of the governor and lieutenant governor...
...And I just scanned back up-thread to check on the specifics and I'm having a *facepalm* moment. If Texas has gone the independent republic route, of course there's no legitimacy to the government (aside from the grassroots consent-of-the-governed thing, with a healthy dose of time-of-crisis doing-what-needs-doing to convince people to just accept it) -- and of course the home of the Alamo becomes the spiritual capital of the republic. (That gives the San Antonio politician a big PR reason as well as the personal-power-base practical reason. In Watsonian terms, it works.)
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Date: 2010-09-15 08:29 pm (UTC)...And I just scanned back up-thread to check on the specifics and I'm having a *facepalm* moment. If Texas has gone the independent republic route, of course there's no legitimacy to the government (aside from the grassroots consent-of-the-governed thing, with a healthy dose of time-of-crisis doing-what-needs-doing to convince people to just accept it) -- and of course the home of the Alamo becomes the spiritual capital of the republic. (That gives the San Antonio politician a big PR reason as well as the personal-power-base practical reason. In Watsonian terms, it works.)