[Just a very minor point, but...

The Rethugs are the "aristocrats"? (boggles briefly)  On one side of my family they were farmers, on the other side, a long line of some kind of minor aristocracy stretching back to the Crusades.  I'm somewhat familiar with aristocrats in their selfish, inbred, and idealistic versions.  The Rethugs are not any kind of aristocrats.  They're just thugs.  Successful thugs are where aristocrats originate, but they're not the same thing any more than conquering a country is the same as governing it.]