The Salvation War is, to my mind, an object lesson in playing to, and playing, the politics of your audience. It wasn't originally written for his own forums. (Even alternate history has a history of its' own).
It came about as a writing challenge on, of all things, a Star Wars fan site, run by a social- libertarian militant atheist engineer with pretentions, ambitions, whichever, of putting some science back in science fiction; which I also happened to be a member of at the time.
The audience were mostly university educated, large minority of STEM, mostly Dawkinsite, and covered the political spectrum from the left wing of the Democratic Party to the Fifth International, and it is them that it was aimed at- with a fair bit of reverse top spin, by an English Tory expat who had since become a Reagan Republican.
Large parts of the politics of the story are to all intents and purposes a wind up; gradually pulling the ground out from its' audience's feet, starting in deep blue land and ending with getting them to applaud an essentially conservative message.
As I recall it, we only twigged when someone looked him up as a contributor on NavWeaps and asked "Why on earth would this person write this story?" Never mind Rick, we got Slade- rolled, trolled, on a fairly epic scale.
It took on a life of it's own, of course, later, which is not bad for what was essentially a Republican outreach project. Oh, and never assume that the author is playing it straight. Especially not if they show signs of a puckish sense of humour.