I mean, really, Caneghem has three modes: contemptuously silent, contemptuously contemptuous, and hiding under a contemptuous veneer, so Syr’Nj is not wrong to shrug him off right now. Despite how things are eventually going to work out in the Heads of Houses, I’m on Syr’Nj’s side here; nothing in international relations will ever get better if we don’t allow ourselves to hope for better.

Now, Caneghem is an isolationist. Isolationism is the dominant strain in his personality. But if he were as purely isolationist as he likes to think, he wouldn’t be bothering to talk with Syr’Nj at all, even if it is to piss in her leaf flakes. He’d just be another Jarvis with pointy ears, voting when he has to, speaking next to never, and getting the hell out as soon as he’s no longer obligated to attend this farce of a government.

There’s a spark of compassion in him that his culture, possibly more racist than even Gastonia’s, has not entirely silenced. “Poor Reynolds.”