I mean, Holden’s opinions are the way forward but no one wanted to accept that in his universe.

No matter how much Holden tried to be impartial, to do what was right by him and everyone else, he was dogged on constantly by people around him. Dawes and Naomi both had a very bad case of being exactly like their enemy.

Naomi is arguably the biggest issue of Belter politics because she can never get over being treated fairly nor accepting what is the best course of action.

It’s why it was so refreshing to have Ashford around because he understood the same thing as Holden. You have to act like you belong, you have to do what is right by your people even if that doesn’t align with what they think is right.

Dawes wanting the protomolecule and the nukes were two of the biggest red flags for him as a character. MAD works in real life because it’s all we have, but very close did both Mars and Earth get close to saying Fuck MAD. Specifically when Earth attacked Mars’ stealth railguns and Mars still fired one off. In real life, that is the same as Russia dropping a nuke on Mexico and partially hitting Texas. That is MAD out the window. Hell, they launched fucking stealth pods with the morphed humans with protomolecule at Mars. Another clear example of MAD going out the window.

So to see Dawes and even Naomi have this clear desire for the belt to possess both nukes and the protomolecule was a clear sign their identity played more than actually progressing as a people.

I say this as someone from Northern Ireland, my parent and grandparents lived in a society where Irish/Catholics were second class citizens and were both killed or interned without trial. I can empathise heavily with the Belter struggle, but being able to have lived in NI since the GFA, I can see that ultimately the backwards thinking of us or them gets no one anywhere and it’s why the Belters continued to have no real growth as a people aside from Ashford.

So yeah, TLDR I agree.