This is really ominous. With how they treated Peoria, and their construction of prison camps for civilians it's clear that the NCR government has some very dark plans for the American populace. The NCR radicals seem to have transferred hatred of the supposed ruling elite of the Enclave to the entire populace.
You may note that most members of the NCR Cabinet don't know about this. As you can see, Bishop and Moore want an amnesty of all but E-US top leadership. But Cole has more influence on the President than them.
While I hesitate to think that the NCR is intending to do some mass purge of the Enclave citizenry since most of the NCR are misguided rather than evil, it does look a lot like they're planning to do that.
Is it misguided at all to want to defend your country against an unquestionably hostile foreign power, even if it means a pre-emptive war? Even putting aside that it's a democratic state, E-USA
wants to conquer the NCR and has made that plain on multiple occasions. Is it misguided for the people of the NCR to take any course of action but "roll over and be conquered"?
I mean, putting aside the stuff based on bad data, the argument Dr. Irving presents is quite cogent:
They argue that they are the legitimate government from the pre-nuclear era. As if anything before that watershed matters! To call upon the spectre of a world that reduced itself to rubble is to already admit defeat. A world, we might add, that destroyed itself because of their mistakes. Mistakes that they in their cowardice ran from, abandoning hundreds of millions to die! This abandonment itself destroys any claim they make to legitimacy.
...
America was never a monarchy, and they owe us no debt of allegiance because of who their fathers were.
...
How can we have rebelled against those we never swore loyalty to, or seceded from a country we were never part of? Their expansion into the Caribbean islands also proves the lie that they simply seek to restore order in old American territory.
The NCR PoV is valid, and to a part based on false information. The US PoV is also valid, and to a part based on false information.
I also have a feeling that when the NCR as a whole learns what the new Enclave is really like it's going to make the radicals more crazy, not less.
It will bring more division. But some manner of peace negotiations between the two sides will definitely take place.
On a side-note, to a degree what the "new Enclave" is really like has no bearing on what the northern radicals want. They want revenge for their ancestors murdered in the FEV experiments, enslaved and turned into super mutants at Mariposa, held in inhumane conditions in the pre-War Chinese internment camps etc. They thought they were safe for forty years then suddenly - BAM! The Enclave are back, and they're stronger, they're expanding their rule over the east coast and nobody seems able to stop them! Then the NCR government's special-ops forces fail to stop them both at the Commonwealth and at New Orleans, while the Enclave teams up with the NCR's
other nemesis, the Legion, and then the NCR government proceed to
do nothing about the eastern threat for decades because they haven't got Texas on board and so they don't have all their ducks in a row.
Then the NCR Army goes in to save Texas, and succeeds ... only for the Texans to be
ungrateful that they were saved from the Enclave!
The anger and resentment only grows and grows.
Cole is setting off serious alarm bells.
If Northern Californians all share the same attitude, then when the Enclave launch a counteroffensive and eventually reach NorCal, the Northern Californians will make WW2 Japan look sane and reasonable. Suicide bombings will become very common, along with a “take no prisoners” attitude like in the WW2 Pacific and Eastern front.
You may note that Lighthouser is from Redding. The "NCR North" isn't a hive mind.
