Annotated 47-38
I feel like humanizing the guards as in panel 2 here might be a more controversial move than it used to be, but this is a hill I’m prepared to defend.
I feel like I’ve probably said this already, but the best way to sell a fake act is to put some real feeling into it. So Lia and even Chrissie end up airing their real grievances as they protest. This could’ve led directly to them being jailed, and it wouldn’t have even affected the plot much, but I think it’s fairly reasonable that they escape. They went in with an exit strategy, and those guards can’t pursue them for too far.
FB: “Eight years at Hurricane! Here’s your award [SPLAT]!” This one was topical at the time, though I forget the details…something about an award Blizzard offered in recognition of years of service that highlighted their troubling and wildly sexist office culture. Had we known more about that culture when we started Guilded Age, we probably would’ve played some office scenes differently.
> controversial
Why, because of “All Cops Are Bastards”? I think I’m with you: if your movement for compassion and against dehumanization can’t also cope with cops and Nazis being humans with families and pets and even beliefs that what they do is somehow right or necessary, then your movement has a flaw in its philosophy.
And these are private security guards, not cops. Poorly paid chumps with little privilege.
Resounding +1.
Hear, hear. +1
1: Complete agreement
2: I didn’t think it was controversial now. My perception is that it was simply not done in 1980’s action movies, became a thing in 1990’s parodies of 1980’s action movies, and then turned into something that you should do every once in a while unless you’re actively trying to produce worthless rubbish.
»And these are private security guards, not cops. Poorly paid chumps with little privilege.«
+ they can’t have any idea of what’s going on in Hurricane’s basement. They think they’re protecting a happy games company from angry gamers, competitors and thieves who’d like some gaming hardware and/or game cheating hack crack leaks things. You know.
…which Chrissie and Lia actually play into nicely.
I would have been quite upset if they had started properly hurting the guards and cracking jokes about it later.
These guys depicted are just folks with a day job.
Cops and Nazis, though? Seriously? You’re seriously asking for empathy/sympathy for
1. A group of authoritarians repeatedly proven to have neither sympathy nor empathy for those their credo (dishonestly) claims to protect, are murdering people in staggering numbers, and are getting away with it.
2. A political philosophy which holds, as its central basis, the principle that all who are unlike themselves are undeserving of sympathy, empathy, or even life.
Paradox of tolerance. The “bastard cops” and Nazis are not just intolerant but _dangerous_, and so must not be tolerated in turn. It’s like arguing for the fundamental humanity of a serial killer.
Why can’t it be both? The point is, a lot of people were forced to “play the Nazi” even if they didn’t like the idea, because they couldn’t affort to leave Germany at the time, and as with any other extremist ideology, you were either with he Nazis or against them. You can judge others however you like, but I don’t understand that tendency to think that because one thing/person has one “positively perceived” characteristic then you can’t judge it. Or rather, that anything you reject morally or otherwise must be “wrong” in every conceivable way. Just as an example, Hitler was suposedly a vegan, and liked dogs, right? That’s “good”. Does that mean you can’t judge him for all the monstrous things he’s done? Hell no. But all of it is true. You can judge something decisively and still tske into account sll about it, and it doesn’t mean you’re being “tolerant”. (I’m writing this on a phone, and English is not my nstive language. Therefore, the message might be poorly translated. So if it offends or comes across as rude I apologize.)
First – you didn’t come off as offensive or rude to me.
Second – I guess the judgement comes from figuring out the level of culpability of the individual. There are good cops and “Nazis” whose only commitment to the ideology is a scrawl of ink in some register. Each of us decides at what point from those starting positions the individual loses the presumption of sympathy.
What you’re saying doesn’t have any relevance. You are missing the point, and I can’t tell whether or not it’s intentional.
Each of these groups has a “negatively perceived characteristic” that I should hope anyone with a functioning brain, conscience, or self-preservation instinct, can recognize as being so dangerously heinous that to call it a “negative characteristic” is hilariously downplaying it.
There are cops who are willingly choosing to destroy people and then hide behind their badges.
Do they have good family lives? Statistically no, but I don’t care.
Do they like dogs? I don’t care. How could anyone care?
Are there cops that are fully virtuous and perfect? Neat. I’m not talking about them, they’re not relevant.
A subset of cops exist that are straight-up jackbooted murderers. Any cop who is aware of these murderers and doesn’t act to have them reported or removed, is just as culpable.
Suggesting sympathy for these killers is grotesque.
Nazis exist. Today. People who willingly and happily identify themselves as Nazis.
Are they vegans? I don’t care.
Do they occasionally perform acts of charity? I don’t care.
Were there people during the Reich who were members of the Nazi party only on paper? Neat. They’re not relevant. I’m not talking about them.
There are people, very real people, TODAY, who earnestly believe “six million wasn’t enough”.
Suggesting sympathy for these literal Nazis-in-every-sense-of-the-word is grotesque.
But apparently, here we are.
The only reason there was any need to “pretend to be a Nazi” was that most people did not do the right thing when the Nazis took over.
The right thing being to join the resistance and start harrassing the Nazis, catch as catch can.
That’s the problem with collaborationism: The Nazis are actually not that many. They are able to wield power only when most people “play along”.
Like, look at the US today. If you actually count the people who show up armed at PTA meetings to shout conspiracy nonsense and threaten teachers, they’re not many.
If everyone else at those meetings just grabbed them and carried them outside (atomic wedgie style) then the whole “movement” would fall apart in an instant.
They are few.
They rule with terror, and only get away with it because not enough people realize where it will lead if drastic measures are not taken, immediately.
The rules of democracy do not apply when following would lead to the death of democracy.
The Nazis always intend genocide.
The moment they get close to getting the power to enact genocide (even if done “legally”), then their intentions cross over from violent fantasies to criminal intent.
And then it’s everybody’s job to knock them down and keep them down until they crawl back under their rock for 50 more years.
These are all just historical facts.
Acknowledging someone’s humanity is not the same as sympathizing with them. Humans can be monstrous sometimes. That doesn’t change the fact of their humanity. Treating your enemy as less-than-human is what *Nazis* do.
Yes. It is. Which is why anyone who does so has sacrificed their humanity.
Like, y’know, the murderer-cops and _actual Nazis_ we’re discussing have done.
And no, it’s not hypocritical to say so, any more than it’s hypocritical to imprison a murderer.
These are people who are actively damaging to society and, much like criminals, must be removed from it.
Are you even paying attention to what you’re defending?
Hint: it’s the Nazis.
Are you even paying attention to what I’m saying? I’m not *defending* anybody. Acknowledging that someone is a human being does not equate to defending their actions. If you can’t see that, I fear for you. Dehumanizing that which you hate is the first step to committing atrocities. We imprison criminals, sure. But we have laws against *inhumane* treatment of criminals. We *need* those restraints. Without them, we get Abu Ghraib.
Again, let me remind you: dehumanizing the Other is what *Nazis* do. They convinced themselves that the people they slaughtered were “actively damaging to society”. Were they wrong about that? Sure! Horribly, *monstrously* wrong. What makes you so certain that you’re incapable of a similar error? The frightening thing about Adolf Eichmann isn’t that he was inhuman. It was that he could be us.
“He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
What makes me so sure I’m not “in error”, is that the people I’m speaking ill about *are the Nazis*. The actual, real, modern Nazis. And murderers, caught on tape.
How is this even an argument?
I am flabbergasted that anyone, anyone at all, could, under the auspices of tolerance and alleged good faith, be arguing that saying mean things about Nazis is Nazi behavior.
You are clearly aware that “Nazis bad” else you wouldn’t be trying to paint me as one, but its shocking to be accused of Nazi behavior for saying (checks notes) “Nazis bad”.
Now replace “Nazi” with “abortionists” or “meat-eaters”.
‘be arguing that saying mean things about Nazis is Nazi behavior.’
You’re arguing in bad faith. No one here said “saying mean things” is Nazi. We said *dehumanizing* them is Nazi.
You’re not arguing in defense of pointing out bad things people do, you’re arguing in defense of dehumanizing them.
You’re defending dehumanization of human beings.
You can’t make that replacement. Neither abortionists, nor carnivores, nor nearly any other group you could name, dehumanize others as part of their identity.
You cannot replace “Nazis” with a more benign group and cry “slippery slope”. It doesn’t work. And you’re accusing _me_ of bad faith?
I am arguing that Nazis and “bastard cops”, people that are demonstrably in favor of the violent eradication of out-groups, have dehumanized _themselves_ by their actions.
The pro-choice movement doesn’t want me dead. They don’t want you dead.
A Nazi does (unless you are one), and a bad cop will invent an excuse to kill either of us from a routine traffic stop.
You are defending the humanity of people that want you dead.
You are defending Nazis and murderers.
You are defending the indefensible.
We’re not defending Nazis.
Lock them up, throw eggs at them, ridicule their ideas, and never ever let them have a demonstration without a larger counter-protest to make clear that they are never un-contradicted or their ideas were ever tolerable. Use violence if (IFF) nothing else stops their crimes.
…but don’t claim they weren’t human, or human rights didn’t apply to them. Because then you validate their own technique, of revoking/ignoring certain humans’ rights.
You don’t understand what’s happened in their minds, and I can’t claim that I did, but I bet it’s something similar to religious extremists, flat-earthers, climate change deniers, people working at Guantanamo and loving their job, or any other ideology that gets people into very weird states. I’ve no idea if every Nazi could be “cured” of that, but they are, and remain, humans, even if they don’t behave like they were.
To think otherwise is actually to underestimate the power of in-humane ideologies to make otherwise loving people commit atrocities, and simultaneously providing you an excuse to ditch your own humanity. It’s the path to the dark side.
“Cops and Nazis, though? Seriously? You’re seriously asking for empathy/sympathy”
I didn’t even say anything about empathy/sympathy. But it’s a simple fact that they are human beings. They have family and friends and pets, favorite foods and games, lovers and children and parents.
If you’re threatened by that fact being shown, that’s on you.
Pretty sure I already stated, and stated hard, in the comment you’re replying to no less, that I don’t care who murderers are on a personal level. I don’t care who Nazis are at a personal level.
I don’t care.
Willingly being part of a destructive, poisonous ideology is beyond the pale. It strips the humanity from others.
And once you do that, you are undeserving of humanity yourself.
That’s the only way to fight it.
Whether you care or not, they are humans, and if you choose to ignore that fact, then you’re not only ignoring part of the truth (which makes you more likely to fundamentally misinterpret other people’s words and actions), you’re also more likely to disregard their human rights. *plus* it gives you a convenient category in which you can put any human, in order to stop having to care about them.
Similar to the “terrorist” label so eagerly applied by any authoritarian politician, to anyone who disagrees with them.
This is not about agreeing with (or just tolerating) people who do horrible things, it’s about facing the fact that they are still humans, and are not fundamentally different beings from yourself: Whatever ideology they’ve fallen for, your brain has the same failure modes.
It is exactly about tolerating people who do horrible things on purpose.
And it’s about equity.
Remember, this is about Nazis. Self-identified, proud, modern Nazis.
It’s also about bastard cops. The ones who are on tape, definitively and undeniably abusing their power to murder people on the street.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say that stripping the humanity of others means you are not deserving of your own, and if you’re willing to forgive that, then “there will be no one left to speak out when they come for you”.
There are no ‘misunderstandings’. There is no slippery slope. There is no path that leads from here to “everyone I disagree with is also automatically inhuman”.
This is reciprocity.
This is “do unto monsters as they have proven they will do unto you”.
Again, how is this even an argument. We had a literal war over this and the Nazis lost, but they’ve never stopped trying to come back. They’ve co-opted our systems of authority and they exploit our willingness to grant the benefit of the doubt.
And you’ve fallen for the authoritarian’s trap. In your zeal to be nothing like them, you’ll permit them to thrive, unchallenged, until the boots are in the halls.
Yup. “Rent-a-cop” is used derisively but to me it just sounds like “not as bad as a cop”.