Perception is everything!
That's the favorite saying of the Black Dot Queen. I think I'm beginning to understand what she means by perception. I always thought of perception as meaning seeing, recognizing, maybe even understanding. I don't think that's quite what she means. In her terms it's not what we see or recognize. It's what we are willing to admit to seeing in public. We can all see that this Queen has no clothes. We can all see that the whole Duchy library infrastructure has been badly broken. A telling symptom is that most of the communication about issues is clandestine rather than open. As long as there is no little or no open discussion, the Black Queen can say "See, it was just a few complainers. Everyone is settling down now."
On another note, Gold suggested today that the level of chaos right now is not just a sign of mismanagement but of interference by the forces of Evil, KAOS! Is the Black Queen secretly an agent of KAOS? Where is Maxwell Smart when we need him?