- cross-posted to:
- flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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“You’re right, killing you would mean I’m just as much of a monster as you! Too bad I didn’t realize that before indiscriminately slaughtering dozens of your disposable henchmen on my way here.”
I HATED this when watching Arrow.
Like dude, you narrowed that dude in the hallway. Your two main sidekicks BOTH use regular guns.
Just fucking kill Raz Al Gul/Damien Dahrk, That Gang dude/EtcEtc
You spent the first two seasons murdering rich people, intentionally, killing this dude trying to BLOW UP A CITY is not a moral gray area. All your friends are like, “Bro, just kill him.” And you are all “We must be better, we must be heroes.”
The Batman way.
“I don’t use guns, I just throw people out of high rise windows”
I liked in Black Adam that they called out heroes just protecting the elite. Too bad that one line was enough for them to all change their minds.
This is exactly how I feel every time I suggest the correct way to deal with conservative fascism is with violence. Some commenter will always come along with, “that makes you just as bad as them” and “you’re part of the problem”.
Part of the problem? Bitch, resisting force with force isn’t the fucking problem. It’s the solution.
It’s eliminating the problem. But there’s a little more to the solution, generally speaking.
It’s a sad part of the solution. Kicking them out of power and making impossible for them to ever have their way ever again (in absolutely any context- up to removing their ability to participate in any legal process, up to having any legal rights at all) is really more important, but unfortunately eliminating them is the easiest way to do that.
There are certain figures I would be uncompromisingly happy to see suffer for their actions- up to and including assassination. And others I think only need to be politically neutered.
The real complication (in a lot of the smaller cases) starts issues with false positives and such. If we could get perfect identification and prosecution to happen, then my tolerance for extreme measures goes waaaaay, way up.
I just don’t give a fuck what every dumb shit thinks. YoUrE jUsT aS bAd As ThEm dumbfuckery.
One of the biggest problems with violent revolution, is that it almost always seems to end up putting violent people in charge of the next regime.
“Almost always violent” is a decent upgrade from “definitely always violent from now on”.
Conservatives are violent fascists by nature. History proves this. They should not be in charge of anything at all. Ever. The moment they hold any kind of authority, they become an infestation of pests.
If you cut out a tumour, you’re also killing live tissue so aren’t you also cancerous hmm?
This is an apt analogy. Conservatism IS cancer. It spreads and brings with it only sickness and death. There is no way to change cancer. Letting it live will kill the patient. The only cure causes pain and suffering for the survivor. Treatment is painful, messy and dangerous, but is absolutely required for survival.
No one wants to talk about the cure for conservatism. Even the topic is uncomfortable.
Ok how do you cure it then? Specifically
Oncologist:
Removes tumor
What have I become?
“If I am killing these cells, who can say that I am better than cancer”
You may have caused millions to suffer. But if I kill you, I’d prevent suffering of more people. I am a murderer of one that might have continued to torture millions. I’d be a murderer for some but a hero for millions.
Great example of our time - Luigi Mangione. Sad to hear him confess 😭
I dont like being conspiritroal but if I was a evil government that wanted to get away with murdering people or even just qwell the masses when something disruptive happens Id pay people off to take the fall. Seems like an easy solution for a really complicated problem.
Just saying.
Oh, and being super evil and super manipulative it’d probably be very cheap. Like ROI’s through the roof.
With what is happening in the world for the last 35 years (my age, not related), I’d also would like to wear tin foil hat from time to time. Especially today with the dawn of generative Ai.
Especially when you couple it with the fact that if you leave him alive he is very likely to cause more harm even if hebgoes to prison or such
Luigi! <3
There’s a counterexample in the Overwatch backstory. Overwatch goes to arrest this guy after he had a bomb planted that killed a bunch of their staff. The guy brags about how with his connections he’ll be released within days. One of the Overwatch agents says, “He’s right”, and shoots the guy. So that guy’s not going to be planting more bombs. But that leads to Overwatch getting disbanded. They aren’t around to respond immediately when the bad guys start acting up again. When Overwatch does get back into operation, that bad guy’s daughter escalates the violence against Overwatch in her quest for revenge.
Oh! Another counterexample is in the TNG episode, The Most Toys. The bad guy is doing the thing, gloating to Data how Data is too moral to kill him. Data does some calculations, says “I cannot allow this to continue”, and tries to shoot the guy. But he’s stopped at the last moment. So kind of a narrative copout.
In such hypothetical situation, it may be a bit more ethical to do like in the Alias series finale. Don’t kill the vilain, let him to starve in a remote place. If he happens to be immortal for some reason, ensure he’s burried deep.
buttt isn’t knowingly putting them in a position where they’ll starve to death just (just) murder with extra steps?
A much less humane form of it, in fact. If you must kill someone, have the decency to do it quickly.
“Hello! but I’m going to be worse than you”
Pours gasoline, lights him on fire, then starts throwing wooden sticks hard enough to impale him
What’s happening with his arm in the first panel?
I think it’s supposed to represent being cut off or something
I’m ok with that. I can live with it. I won’t try to twist the justification like the people in power. I will be committing sin and I will be a hypocrite if it means getting rid of the filth causing millions to suffer.
This comes up with Batman a lot, but we know he’s a severely traumatized man and it makes sense that he would believe it.
I’ve never understood this logic. Can someone please explain it to me like I’m five?
The logic is about a battle of ideologies. When the villain, or the hero sometimes, says they’d be just as bad as what they’re fighting, what they mean is that they’re succumbing to their baser instincts, allowing “might makes right” to win out against the spirit of democracy. “Democracy” in their view, the author’s I mean, is mostly about letting people coexist, and using only official channels to punish the most obscene offenders. The hero is rejecting “an eye for an eye,” essentially, in favor of the perceived fairness of The Law.
This framing kind of doesn’t work because we all know who the villains are. We all know the world would be better off without The Joker in it. And worse, letting him go through the prison system to get the outcome we all want for him anyway isn’t really different from just shooting him yourself. It’s marginally different, maybe; probably better than enabling a bunch of vigilantes. But even so, it is an action that merely defers the pulling of the trigger to the state. Someone will be pulling it regardless, because as we all know, the world would be better off without The Joker.
This framing about due process works a lot better with villains who are not The Joker because it leaves open the possibility that the law might not actually punish them, and that the vigilante hero is a bad person for trying to kill someone who does not actually deserve death.
Sorry, but I really like your explanation and am hoping that we can perhaps discuss a little bit more. Would this therefore be setting up the contrast between the “vigilante justice” dispensed by Batman and the Punisher?
If I understand correctly, yes. The idea is that the “just hand of the law” is a better executor of justice, even if it’s the same justice, than “some guy” with “some guy’s opinions” on things.
And to be clear, I don’t think that view is without it’s merrits, of course, I just think a lot of goodguy / badguy media really under explores it. Certainly they often ignore the view that good outcomes may sometimes be worth more than the process.
Also, I don’t actually watch / read much Batman. I think there are times when his refusal to use guns is more about his personal adjacency to the crime of his city, and how he feels that if he indulges too much in the call to violence, that he would just become another mafia kingpin. In a literal sense, like as if he were an addict refusing a drug.
So what I’d take from that is Batman knows what he can become and also knows that since he’s teetering on the edge, he absolutely has to hold to that one line. Otherwise he can no longer rationalize his actions/existence as “good”.
The Punisher, in contrast, is 100% A-OK with being a villain and embraces it. He doesn’t even try to rationalize his actions or existence and more or less sees himself as an inevitable consequence to circumstances.
I’d guess too that the real world is somewhere on between the two. Your take as well?
Well, it does depend on which particular Batman comic run and author we’re talking about, but I have heard that this is sometimes the reason.
I probably consume even less Punisher, but my understanding is that he’s sort of like if Batman did kill people. They’re operating under the same moral framework. One that views The Law as civilizing and a world of Punishers as barbaric. Animalistic. A world of selfish kings fighting over the same throne.
This is different from what’s being expressed in the OP. The OP rejects the idea that this act is barbaric at all and instead focuses on the outcomes. They and the villain can’t be the same because they and the villain never do anything for the same reasons.
The villain in the OP has made billions suffer, and probably for money. But the hero is stopping the suffering, and because they like joy. The fact that they both kill, maybe, is immaterial. It doesn’t actually matter.
