Grrl Power #1024 – A squeaky clean leader
To quote Agent K, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” I assume that line is paraphrased from some ancient philosopher or sociologist, because I think it may be the single smartest sentence ever committed to film.
Deus believes there are good persons, smart, selfless, and/or wise, but realistically, the selfish, hateful, short-sighted persons outnumber them when counted as individuals, and when counted as people, well, people are easy to manipulate with fear, hate, greed, self-interest, propaganda, and tribalism. The larger the group, the more inertia it has, and the more likely it is to subsume the good ones and fall to humanity’s baser instincts.
And that’s why he firmly believes that Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others, but mostly except for a benevolent dictatorship headed exclusively by him.
The Benevolent Dictatorship sounds like straight up science fiction, but they have (arguably) existed. Wikipedia only lists three, which is a little depressing, and most have some contention and none of them lasted more than a few decades. That’s really the biggest problem with any sort of dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise; legacy. Maybe it’s possible to really have a truly benevolent ruler. But what about the next guy? In a world with magic, maybe you could concoct some sort of test that ensures a positive destiny, (but be very careful how you define “positive”) but without magic, probably the best you could hope for is a generation or two of benign results before selfish and ambitious parties begin manipulating things to a degree that the primary thing being served is greed and ego.
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I do believe in the Benevolent Dictatorship. My History teacher in high school was one. If you play Civilization-type games, you arguably are one. And yeah, legacy is the real problem with it.
Wonder if Deus has figured out how to be immortal (or at least extremely long-lived in prime health) yet…
I don’t believe you can truly build a just society on a foundation of bones
Oh you can, sometimes you don’t even have to have actual bones. As such, but everyone can believe those are the actual bones. I mean the choice is up to them entirely. Go through the door or work for me. New name etc. Mind that is a limited time offer and like any other deal there are strings attached. Honestly, it’s a wonder civilization lasts with a fundamentally unimaginative way of thinking like yours.
You can even let them drop a pencil
exactly.
Then no currently existent society is truly just. Which arguably might be true anyway, but still. Every country and major governmental body currently in existence (to my knowledge) has at least one genocide, war of expansion, or major violent upheaval under its belt
ALL societies are built on a foundation of bones.
Considering that the authority of a government is based on the question of “Who can command and deploy the most armed enforcers?”
The authority of issuing laws and levying taxes is rooted in the threat of punitive penalties for disobedience, which are enforced by the police force.
If too many people refuse obedience, military will be deployed to *restore order*.
Whenever a different individual, group or organisation aquires a larger armed force than the government has, the old government looses its authority to the new force.
Originally a Dictator was simply an emergency legal appointment in the Roman Republic and the Etruscan culture, the term did not have the negative meaning it has now. A Dictator was a magistrate given sole power for a limited duration and at the end of the term, the Dictator’s power was returned to normal Consular rule. Of course not all dictators accepted a return to power sharing, but this often was not seen as a bad thing either IF the guy did his job right.
Even in more recent history, most, if not all, dictators that are now rightfully considered evil monsters for the attrocities they have caused, tended to do quite well for their country during their first 4-5 years. Even Hitler did very well for the german country and people at first before starting his attrocities. If there is to be any chance for a benign dictatorship, the term must be limited to no more than 4 years, with no option to getting reelected…and there needs to be a strict ban on anybody leaving the military at rank Corporal entering politics…
Deus seems to be quite surprised by this statement. One of the reasons he’s been so successful is that he never assumes anything,so I genuinely think he’s never actually thought about a tryst with Max.
Oh no, he’s ABSOLUTELY thought about it. He also knows that Max could EASILY crush him like a gnat in the throes of passion (Deus is talented like that…)
Yeah, that would be along the lines of “Woman of Gold, Man of Tissue Paper”, in a role-reversal from the earlier (1972?) Larry Niven work. She can crush concrete in her bare hands. Imagine what that would do to some normal person’s bones.
Link to the original for reference. It’s a great read. http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html
Did they ever make one like that for Supergirl?
I remember there was a Saturday Morning Breakfast Club comic about something similar with Wonder Woman though. Let me find it.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1363
Enjoy!
I’m sure he has considered it, or at least had it flash through his mind, but he’s also smart enough to know it will be a long term slow burn plan before getting to that point.
Deus and Max had a thing at one point, it didn’t last because Max isn’t one to overlook megalomania or anti social personality disorder
They never had a thing.
It was one work-related, open-to-interpretation “date”. He bought her boots, and a necklace.
I don’t think that Deus has “never actually thought about a tryst with Max”. What I do think is that her denial of Dabbler’s baiting caught him by surprise, and he may now be listening to see which way that conversation goes. Doth the lady protest too much?
When it comes to the real world I’m with Churchill.
“No one pretends that Democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Democracy isn’t the best form of government, it’s just the best that we have available.
And that includes benevolent dictatorships.
That leaves me to wonder, what better methods there is that aren’t available at the moment?
Nobody’s ever sincerely tried to implement Dennis’s anarcho-syndicalist commune, the best we’ve managed is a town council. And nobody has figured out how to protect a council from being coopted by a power bloc.
Asimov’s Great Machine administrators.
No one has tried selecting the legislature by lottery and having them select the executive (UK House of Commons but by lottery instead of election). Give them ~6 months after the election to get their act together before taking over.
Throw in some safeguards like a second House (elected/appointed) and a Head of State with Veto Only (Referendum can overturn the Veto; Referendum always includes option to reselect legislature).
A well set-up meritocracy comes to mind. One with plenty of routes for public opinion and expert guidance to be taken into account, but where the decision-making ultimately rests with those who have a long record of proven competence at increasing levels. It is eminently available, it just hasn’t been tried.
This proposal takes the UK’s Parliamentary system as the bones of the model, replacing large parts of the flesh on those bones. Partly that’s because it’s a useful skeleton structure, partly because it’s the one with which I’m most familiar.
– Keep the House of Commons as an elected* House of Representation, but return the role of MP to its primary basis as ‘someone to speak for this community’. Remove the secondary aspect of ‘score-counter in electing the Prime Minister’ that has largely usurped it.
– Keep the House of Lords as an unelected House of Consultation, but change the mode of nomination. Instead of ‘PM of the day nominates for life, effectively at will’, have appointments be based on specific expertise and for fixed terms, renewable only so long as that expertise is still required.
– Make the actual Government a completely separate and equal branch from the two Houses, and require those seeking advancement in it to show capability at lower levels before being considered for higher. I mentioned the Roman cursus honorum principle in a previous page’s discussion.
That takes the current two imbalanced branches and makes a balanced three, each of which is distinctly different in its role and methods. Any two can therefore act as a check upon the third.
– Keep the existing monarchy in a minimal and purely ceremonial role, and keep it completely separate from the actual Government. Any other dignitary must have been deliberately (even when justifiably) favoured over others to reach that role and/or must have made decisions which favour one group over another, whereas a non-Governing monarchy has a good argument to represent the country as a whole and equally.
* There is a lot of room for improvement in the method by which MPs are currently elected. There are numerous campaigns for different and often contradictory ways to do so, and that is a whole different rabbit-hole that this structural proposal doesn’t pretend or need to address. I’m focusing on sketching out how the blocks fit together, what happens inside each block is a separate question.
“Make the actual Government a completely separate and equal branch from the two Houses …”
Doesn’t the UK have a Public (nearly missed the “l” there!) Service? Which I thought was (supposed to be) the Executive arm of Government?
“There is a lot of room for improvement in the method by which MPs are currently elected.”
Whatever you do do, DON’T use Compulsory Voting. People in Oz show up mostly to enjoy the sausage sizzle and get their names ticked off. As a mini-census it’s wonderful, but for interest in who is best? Are you joking? And when voting is only voluntary you can forget all about Preferential elections since those depend utterly on a minimum 95% turnout, but are badly skewed by the aforementioned voter apathy. Thus, First-past-the-post wins, but run-offs can be provided for.
Another Good Thing to do would be a Constitution Document with similar protections to the Australian Constitution*, and in THAT you can:
Mandate that NO political office can have executive powers. Those are reserved to the Public Service.
* But DON’T use ours as a model. The Oz-Con is suitable ONLY for Freedom of Trade, which is what it was designed for.
UK has the Civil Service which are the supposedly neutral administrators and implementers of policy.
The UK Executive is taken from the MPs and Lords and headed by the Prime Minister who is the leader of the Party that won the election. UK PM is more powerful than the POTUS (within respective nation).
O-O-Okaaaay. So Civil Service ~ Public Service, tick.
Personally I’m not happy with elected *anything* having Executive Powers, it’s too difficult to hold them to account. It is a fact that Oz-pollies gave themselves executive powers because the Public Service was unhappy about some things they were asked to do. In my book the reservation of executive powers must be one of the checks in the system. Pollies set Polly-sees, and Public Service implements them within the law. It may be slower, but it is arguably safer.
Elected executives have merit. What the executive does includes many things that require political choices so it’s not something that would sit well with the public if done without any democratic input.
The UK system is far too built up on what is effectively gentlemen’s agreements, now we someone who is anything but in charge it’s really showing the flaws.
“… if done without any democratic input.”
And there lies the problem. Too many elected members think the electing vote is all the permission they need to run rampant.
all “meritocracy” are jokes because merit is not a objective real thing, its a meaningless subjective one. in fact the term “meritocracy” was coined in a story showing how stupid the idea was
a direct hive minds would be the best as it would allow all members to have a have a say and be heard
A benevolent, intelligent, dictatorship is theoretically better. The problem is developing any method to guarantee benevolence over time. “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely”.
That’s a much quoted saying but there’s no reason to actually believe it.
What definitely does happen is that power *attracts* the corrupt and the corrupt have a major advantage in gaining power (in almost any conceivable system -especially without magic).
Absolute Power has never been achieved since that would presuppose absolute *security*. Autonomous Weapons platforms coming soon to a military-industrial complex near you!
“Autonomous Weapons platforms coming soon to a military-industrial complex near you!”
I get the spirit, but fortunately it won’t be in my lifetime or my granddaughter’s lifetime, It’s all techy stuff, but it boils down to getting a powerful enough (read: positronic) computer into a sufficiently energised mobile platform (read: Rottweiler/Mastiff or human size). Aaaaand a sufficiently secure comms channel with at least 5 kilometers range… Sorry, but current mobile/cell tech doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Please don’t waste time talking about quantum computers. Ouside the grrlverse quantum computers are roughly as developed as the venerable ENIAC, and likely to stay that way for several decades. Remember they must be brought down to current laptop size before being useful.
I didn’t mean sentient: I meant what Boston Dynamics is working on and the plutocrats* are counting on to see them through the upheaval they expect accelerating the Climate Crisis they aren’t bothering to address to precipitate .
Quantum computers are advancing rapidly but indeed a long way from sentience. We have no idea what’s even required for sentient AI but plain old algorithms will do just fine for what I was talking about: think Elysium (not a good film) not Terminator (a great film).
* my definition for these is somewhat circular
“I didn’t mean sentient …”
No problem, we’ll just go with semi-Autonomous, as in “loitering capability with human control somewhere”.
These are certainly doable, but the comms problem remains, as it’s one of the easiest ways to defeat the weapon. We do still have a range/time limit, but definitely not critical inside the comms distance limit, unless we have satellite relay comms, which then DO make fuel loads VERY important… Naturally we can get airborne refuelling, but I can see difficulties associated with land-based systems, probably also water-borne. Let’s just make that “surface weapons” and be done with it.
Don’t forget that the Terminator franchise totally envisaged *sapient* (fully autonomous) humanoid weapons systems.
We need to put Churchill’s words back in his time. England had just bankrupted itself leading the worst war in history, including 3 years doing it alone with only tenuous help from an un-committed notional ally. At the time, with victory ringing in everyone’s ears, any string of words disparaging dictatorships would have been given a major literary prize.
But even then, the signs should have been obvious. A person alone can make sensibly assertive decisions. A pair of persons need to negotiate a compatible outcome. A committee cannot adress a solution to the immediate problem until every members’ problem has been adressed first.
And, what, exactly, is democracy? “The rule of the people BY the people FOR the people.”
“Government by the people, system of government in which the sovereign power is vested in the people as a whole exercising power directly or by elected officials; a state so governed,” 1570s, from French ‘démocratie’. (Online Etymology.)
“Democracy implies that the man must take the responsibility for choosing his rulers and representatives, and for the maintenance of his own ‘rights’ against the possible and probable encroachments of the government which he has sanctioned to act for him in public matters.” [Ezra Pound, “ABC of Economics,” 1933] Quoted from Online Etymology.
Can — or should — all people in a nation take an active part in their own self-government? Probably, no. There is work to be done, families to be minded. Maybe a civic duty, perhaps as Town Councillor. Maybe volunteer work, as the Volunteer Fire and Rescue Service in Western Australia?
So. What do we do? Representative democracy? Really? Who ya gonna call? Who can you trust? Why sir, obviously ME, sir. I am honest, as the day is long. I have YOUR welfare at heart, as my own. And if you believe that, I have this bridge I need to offload, in Sydney.
What’s left? How about… “oligarchy (n.) “form of government in which supreme power is vested in a small exclusive class,” 1570s, from French ‘oligarchie’
”
“Aristotle, after some preliminary remarks, concludes by defining a democracy to be, when the freemen and those not the rich, being the majority, possess the sovereign power; and an oligarchy, when the rich and those of noble birth, being few, are in possession of the sovereign power. This definition of an oligarchy necessarily implies that the majority are excluded from participating in the sovereign power.” [“Political Dictionary,” London 1845] Quoted from Online Etymology.
The reality is, there are very few democracies in this world. Myself, I cannot bring even one to mind. But we can fill a sheet of paper with those nations governed by an oligarchy. But… Who can you trust?
I do sympathise with the peculiarly American concept of personal self-defense against all manner of bad behaviour. I don’t condone it, as too many others have the same idea, but pointed in differing directions.
So. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I can answer that. But I also conceed that the list of people capable of it is so vanishingly small as to be less than 100 on the planet, alive and mostly functioning…warts, PTSD, bad attitude and more piss and vinegar than a night soil collection point. But to whit the answer is ME. I watch the watchmen and I’ve got my own personal one watching over me.
..those of weak will think ill. But, like a certain fictional coppr. I know you all are bastards and just waiting for a chance to not be caught. And, I’ll thank you to put that back where you found.
the problem with this theoretical “benevolent dictatorship” imo is that no person is perfect or perfectly informed and even if their intentions are good they can make bad decitions and since he has absolute power then the problem becomes that no one can stop him from making said bad decitions
we have seen this play out irl plenty of times, i think the best example is that time the chinese almost collapsed their own ecology because they tried to kill all sparrows because they where considered pests that ate their grains, the intentions where good if misinformed and where ordered by the absolute dictator of the time and as such no one questioned it or those who did where, you know, silenced
result, millions of death and again huge ecological damage
simply speaking people are biased, even the best of us have our biases and eventually if youhave absolute power you will fuck it up in some way and many will suffer
by comparison democracies are slower yes but every decition is taken after carefully analysing every eventuality and making sure that it atleast doesnt kills half the population of your country, and again its not perfect specially because this decisión making can become polluted by corruption and indecisión but we arent searching for perfect we are looking for the best of a bad situation and in that regard having many people giving their opinions and analysing the facts before making a choice that will affect millions is better than one confident idiot with good intentions making said decisión on a whim and ending with the lives of said millions
this right here
there is no one person that can make the choice everyone would be happy with. the only way to have peace between different groups of people is by having them all work together as equals
The real problem with Democracy is its inherent need for upkeep: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance but the cost of eternal vigilance is complacency. The key to keeping a country a Democracy is to keep the public informed, educated, and engaged.
And being engaged means doing more than voting once every 4 years in a national election. The real power in a Democracy is at the local level. That’s why conservative Christian activist Ralph Reed (way back in 1996) declared, “I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members.”
+1. Very high mainteance costs.
He may be a megalomaniac with dreams of world domination, but he doesn’t want to harm anyone (needlessly) in the process. Honestly I’m kinda expectimg the whole “he’s actually the true bbeg” thing will actually be a red herring, maybe it turns out Lorilei was actually pretending to be subservient
Keep in mind that you’re doing this from a perspective when everything is going his way.
Most of the monsters in history don’t start out as monsters. They (usually) gradually start making the easy or quick choices as things become harder and harder.
If things start falling apart, and Deus has a choice between letting all his ambitions (and himself) come to a violent and bloody end to the point where his named is cursed in history with the worst genocidists and mass murders, or if he could get everything he wants by blowing up a bus of school kids, what choice do you think he’d make? Because all signs point to the latter.
Make no mistake, the plot armor is what’s saving Deus’s character now. He doesn’t *have* to make those decisions, because everything works out and he’s awesome and super amazing at everything. But traditionally, when the going gets tough, the people in power either crumble or turn into (non benevolent) tyrants.
Given that “letting all Deus’s ambitions come to a violent and bloody end” would inevitably include that bus of schoolkids as collateral damage, can anyone honestly argue that bombing the bus is not the better decision overall? You’re presenting a choice between ‘the lesser evil alone’ and ‘the lesser evil plus a lot more’ with no third option.
it would be better to say that he don’t care if someone get hurt, and I mean it litteraly, nobody got hurt? good, somebody got hurt? good, EVERYBODY got hurt? good. as long as he get what he want. The reason he try (not really hard) to hurt less people possible is the same reason armies went “pillage, THEN burn”. It is just more efficent.
also the same reason modern armies go “nor pillage nor burn” because in the long run that is even more efficient
acting like an evil maniac is stupid, unironically being good and helping others is the best choice 99% of the time, win win, the 1% is when helping others would end up harming even more people
Everyone in politics has at least a story about why their ideas will make the world a better place and most even believe it. Hitler truly believed that killing people over things they couldn’t help would make Europe a better place and he wasn’t alone either more and less extreme versions of this idea were hip everywhere in the west, Mao at least claimed to believe that taking the rights of the “reactionaries” as he called them and killing millions of people helped making China better, both the democrats and the republicans claim that their ideas improve America, while those of the others destroy it.
Benevolent dictators can work great. The problem is the fact that the dictator can die, or otherwise ousted from power.
Oh that’s manageable when 99% of the groups trying to oust you were created by you.
That is a fantasy entertained by many dictators, it hasn’t really worked out.
Ah limited thinking and narrow minded. Got it. The thing is most people don’t have the ability to watch themselves as tightly as they watch the watchmen.
Daniel here. I guess a Benevolent Dictatorship could work if everything works smoothly (nobody in the ranks slowly gathering power for a hostile takeover), but finding trustworthy successors or even followers would indeed be a problem. However, since there is magic in the GrrlPowerverse, there might be a solution…
Anyone hear a story about a sword in a stone?
Rig up a magical test of some sort to work out if someone is worthy of a position. Give them a ring, badge, something as a symbol of their office, make sure you enchant it right, rig it so while they play nice nothing happens, but if they try deliberately attempt gathering power greedily, the enchanted item warns those in charge. I’m not talking “nanny state” constant watching over their shoulders, just something along the lines of “XYZ has started blackmailing ZYX in order to take over the division” kinda deal…
Let’s see. Give rings to your allies and underlings to show your appreciation, but really to keep an eye on them. That reminds me of some other rings:
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”
Hmm, would that be appreciation or appropriation, as suggested by my spell checker?
WHAT?! WOULD I DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?! >_> <__>
Never!! >_> <__>
Here’s on to me! Yeah, the usual…
Alright, fine, I’LL get the flamingos…
Feel free to freak out when you realize those 4 numbers in reverse order is the year Tolkien died.
I like how despite Max and Dabbler’s different, opposite often, opinions on sexuality and promiscuity that they can still sass each other like that.
ok, this is terribly unsubtle. If fact I suspect that normally, Max would demur and let the man shower alone. its not like she has a commercial flight to catch.
I will reluctantly point out that Max is wrong. a Youtuber (I’ll let someone else name him) confessed to having a double headed shower, and that many times the only time he gets to talk to his spouse is in the shower. He claimed to have had a deep discussion on work and his relationship to it while in the shower.
as a boob man I find this difficult to believe, because boobs. also I don’t hear for crap in the shower. 4K electronics and shower water do not mix.
Well I guess he’s sure enough in his plan he doesn’t need to hide the intended path from them. Even with it known its highly unlikely anyone would act.
Surprisingly, however. If the alien news networks are to be believed, a planet not under some kind of global rule is considered rather backward and unruly, so they’d likely view this as a good thing… if it succeeded… and didn’t result in Deus simply looking to expand from global dominance to inter-planetary… Which he would.
There was a case of a king in my country that followed that filosofy. He once said “For the people, without the people” (rough translation).
So far, there is a shocking lack of Vetinari and Ankh-Morpork in this discussion of benevolent dictatorships.
Oh really? Honestly it’s shocking how unread they appear. Not to mention, athens was never that large. And if people think it was a pure democracy. :) well then I guess the graft worked well.
Classical Age Athens was a true democracy … as long as you weren’t female, a slave, infirm or a foreigner.
I like Vetinari’s style, and I agree with him, somewhat: “One man, one vote” is a fine system as long as I’m the man with the vote.
The problem is that you can’t very well pick yourself a Vetinari. The mindset required is rather alien to most people. Cold, calculating, as Pterry puts it, “naturally knurd”, and with a long-term vision quite different from what the average politician and the ideologies that make up his identitiy can muster. If Vimes is “naturally knurd” and therefore prone to drink, Vetinari would have to be more than that: He’d have to be comfortable in that state. This sort of person is rather hard to come by. Nevermind get to rule the country. They might well not see the point of all the bother.
And the people that do pick themselves for the post tend to be interested in wielding power for power’s own sake. As do their cronies. And then you get infighting. Niccolò Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ is the classic, Antony Jay’s _Management and Machiavelli_ adds useful commentary and examples.
Deus is a bit of a subversion in that he’s not interested in ruling or power for its own sake, but he enjoys running a successful enterprise and what bigger, better, more successful enterprise than turn the entire world into a single economic polity and be the captain of all that industry? In that he’s much like a run-of-the-mill dictator but substituting “material success as a businessman” for “ruling the country”. He just looked at Ford’s methods and agreed that making things better for everyone, taking care of the workforce, educating it so it can add yet more value, and so on, gives ultimately better business results than making things better just for the immediate inner circle. That makes the persona rather preposterous, to be not oblivious to power, but so focused on business success that the wielding of power becomes uninteresting and nothing more than a tools to fulfil his real need.
We have had a few more Benevolent Dictators, of sorts, usually as monarch. Among their many styles of leadership. One in particular is worth noting, where the job of head of state is to “embody the country” and provide stability. Someone like Bhumibol did that splendidly. But he didn’t run the country. He just sat there “Being Thailand” even though the country might currently be run by a military dictatorship.
Vetinari himself didn’t do all that much, but he’d get others to do whatever was needed. He figured out the needs and plotted the courses. To make the city function, which ultimately exists for the people to be people and do people-y things. Vetinari is a ruler with all the folderol stripped off. Deus is much more executive than ruler. His benevolence is a side-effect of running the business.
Pure democracy doesn’t last long. Once the people learn that they can vote themselves largesse from the public coffers it’s simply a matter of time.
What has worked is a democratic-republic. You still get plenty of people who want only to enrich themselves, but there are always opposing factions to keep this more or less in check.
If that was so, then Athens would have died millennia earlier than it did – and it didn’t die, it was conquered by Rome.
Popular political quips are seldom to never accurate. Usually, they’re just wrong. People make them up to bolster a position, not to reflect reality.
Athens wasn’t a pure democracy either: women and slaves weren’t allowed a vote.
but I get your point about the democratic-republic quip made by “Oy!”
No such thing as a pure democracy anywhere. Even if women and out of favor groups are allowed to vote, those under a “almost randomly selected but universal” age are always left out.
Now people will try to argue that elections for school boards/superintendents are not of interest to, say citizens of 16 years of age who are actually going to the school.
(Usually expressed as “people under ‘randomly selected age’ have no interest in/no stake in political decisions.)
Please to take note that this age has been as low as 12/13 in the past, and now is tending towards 21 everywhere. (Yes, Jewish boys declaiming “today I am a man” used to mean something.)
well yeah for millions of years we had no idea how basic human biology actually worked, we knew that we have some weird stuff inside our bodies and if that stuff gets spilled out we die, but aside from that knowledge about how a human actually worked was rather… limited, hell for a while people through that there where only two states you where either a child or an adult “teenager” as a concept is a very recent creation
and the concept of being an “adult” was also pretty nebolus but basically once you where able to work and have children you where considered an adult, if that happens when you where 12 then congratulations man
now a days we have far more knowledge about how both the human body and the human mind works and develops and as such we can pin point an age more correctly, that being said the trend upwards is kind of a problem i agree, specially when some people seem to believe that anyone bellow the age of 18 is ignorant, stupid and can think for themselves and every decision that they ever make was because someone else made it for them, children are smarter than people give them credit for they are just inexperienced (this is a scientific fact btw, the human brain evolves to 90% of its full capabilities by age 6, by age 12 that is 99%, there is almost no diference between a 12 and a 30 year olds brain the bigger diference is that age experience… and that the region that controls emotions does take a little while longer to mature but that actualy takes until you are like 40)
Ook, quips,
Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you.
Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
George Carlin
“Once the people learn that they can vote themselves largesse from the public coffers it’s simply a matter of time.”
Depends on who you consider “people.” Because that quote is only true if you restrict “people” to “the already wealthy and influential, who proceed to steal everything they can while the people starve.”
In reality the public coffers ALREADY BELONG TO THE PUBLIC. If the people want to spend that money on libraries, or schools, or anything other than “legitimate” expenses (i.e. weapons and fun things for the aristocrats who see themselves as the only real “people”), then that’s their right.
“If the people want to spend that money on libraries, or schools, or anything other than “legitimate” expenses (i.e. weapons and fun things for the aristocrats who see themselves as the only real “people”), then …” we can have a civil war?
Ummm. OK, I got it, wars ain’t civil.
Have you looked at USA lately (or indeed *ever*)?
IF we put aside the question of what he will do to ensure his coalition has a functional legacy when he’s too old or too bored to administrate it all, how does he ensure his new faction is resistant to himself being injured, or that his own faculties aren’t affected naturally or unnaturally to become a despotic tyrant in the face of political pressure?
Even if he somehow thinks he can guarantee his own safety in the long term by means of some kind of modernized lichdom ritual or something like that, the question of how he ensures his own values don’t deviate too far in a negative direction is an open and important one.
We’ve already seen Vehemence and Dabbler be able to affect people’s ability to trust their own minds and he’s dealing with factions that have access to the same or similar abilities.
And even if he upgrades his body to be invulnerable and unkillable, and managed to find a way to make his mind unassailable, how does he stop his own values from drifting too far naturally as a result of his political environment? The single point of failure of a benevolent dictatorship is an especially serious threat in a setting like Grrlpower where immortality is on the table but guaranteed wholeness of mind is not.
he is the villain, he a good villain specially when he awakens this kind of discusion that is always a win, but at the end of the day he is the bad guy
Leaving aside the idea of if he could be manipulated via magic, as societies and populations grow or age their moral values change.
What would work for:
1. the post World War 1 population and the Baby boomers;
2. the Tibetians prior and post Chinese involvemant;
3. US college age people pre and post Vietnam;
are completely different, yet the people themselves remain the same.
Their views and life have changed, and how they think and react become different.
What worked pre or post US Civil War is completely unacceptable now.
What worked for the French post WW1 in Vietnam didn’t work post WW2.
What people thought in 1980 in the US is considered racist or at best naive now.
In 2003, while I was overseas, my mother sent me a bunch of books because I was dying for new reading material to stave off the boredom. One of those books was titled Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. I had never heard of it but seeing as I had nothing else to do, I read it and honestly changed my life. If you haven’t read it, I seriously recommend it. If you have, you know where I am going with this….
Wizard’s First Rule was the first book in the Sword of Truth series, and usually in each book was a Wizard’s Rule. Rather than be some kind of hocus pocus type thing that would cause magic, it was more of a philosophical observation. It stated “People are stupid. They will believe a lie to be the truth because they either want it to be true, or are afraid it is true.” To me, that speaks to me as much as Agent K’s quote. People can be convinced something to be false just for those reasons. It speaks of human nature which is what Deus plays off of.
Deus has only succeeded thus far because he has plot armor. There have been numerous points in his current path that would have caused China, Russia, The US, or the EU to drop on his little venture like a small neutron star. He doesn’t have the political or economic pull to fight one of those entities without protection of being the villain.
Make no mistake, he’s a lecherous Lex Luthor on his best day.
Let me know when the first world gets around dropping on Myamar “like a small neutron star.”
Myanmar isn’t a threat to the major powers.
Neither is Deus little venture in Africa. At some point in the future it may be, and interest is being taken now, but as long as he’s a major supplier of cheap goods, and doesn’t compete with anyone important, then he’s not a threat.
(Example: Chinese oppression of Uighurs dates back many decades. It’s only an issue now that they are competitors.)
he actually kind of is, for once maybe not the us but china has vested interests in africa and would not take likely of deus plan
Well it took a while for Vietnam to gut the Khmer Rouge, but they got there in the end, and a job well done I say
And look who was doing their damnedest to stop them.
Yeah the khmer are raiding vietnam at Ba Chuc and Phu Quoc while the PRC mediates peace talks.
The Vietnamese wipe Kampuchea in two weeks, the khmer leaders flee to thailand. The UN still recognises Pol-Pots regime as Cambodia (wuh?) Then the PRC invades northern Vietnam and fails miserably, hah, hah.
Meanwhile the UK SAS are training khmer insurgents, feckin poms.
A hell of a lot of countries are against Vietnam then, but they held their own. Good onya Vietnam.
Kinda like what the yanks were doing with the Taliban in the 80’s, that worked out well, didn’t it
Yeah, what IS that thing that turns around and bites you on the butt?
A politician?
Them too. I was thinking of karma.
He has several dozen combat capable supers, an entire demonic army trained for the sole purpose of taking over planets, and a bodyguard that seems to be on Max’s level.
The larger countries would have to weigh cost vs reward, and that would most likely be in the negative. They would also have to get over their own corruption, which wouldn’t happen given Deus’s bank account.
Agreed. Him acquiring advanced alien tech, usurping a foreign nation, and beginning to annex other nations would be enough for the world super powers and larger regional powers to take notice. Conspiring with a literally demonic extra-planar entity should be enough to unite the vast majority of humanity on that alone, if only because the religious wackjobs would start foaming at the mouth.
As for Deus’s plan, yeah, so far he’s had everything handed to him. Let’s see how far those ideals go when things get tough and frustrating. It may be slow, but it’s an inevitable slope in an authoritarian dictatorship from “I want to help the people (and maybe me, just a little, but mostly the people!)” to dropping the proverbial barrel bomb in civilian neighborhoods because you think there might be some people in there that disagree with you.
That look on his face in the last panel is hilarious. Looks like even the hyper competent Bond Villain can still be caught flatfooted.
Not that ancient, the closest original quote is by the Austrian economic philosopher Joseph Schumpeter, on the first half of the 20th century. His point was that individuals could be heavily rational when acting in their self interest in the market, but when it comes to politics, collective feelings get involved and they act more like a flock than as rational decision-makers.
Quite honestly, things like market bubbles and ponzi schemes prove that the point is not economics against politics, but rather a healthy scepticism against hype and identification.
“You can’t build a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Anything else is a cage.”
The difference between a protective barrier and a cage is where the tigers are and who holds the key.
Did anyone watch Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist”?
Ofttimes, the Tigers are preferable to the Humans, the Monsters less fearsome than the Mob. Tigers and Monsters don’t think about your sins, only your taste.
Overagressive anthropomorphized hookup app… That has to be the best insult ever laid at Dabbler. Which knowing her she took as a compliment. Also that last panel priceless.
It helps that she knows Maxima respects her and regards her as a friend. If a random stranger made derogatory remarks about Dabbler’s sexuality, Dabbler would know it was an insult and Maxima would be pissed.
There is really art in such a good insult.
“Deus believes there are good persons, smart, selfless, and/or wise, but realistically, the selfish, hateful, short-sighted persons outnumber them when counted as individuals”
Realistically the hateful, selfish short sighted people are a vast Minority. they just shout the loudest. we are living in this now,when moderation and a politically middle of the road stance become dirty words we are all in trouble.
Perhaps the truly “selfish, hateful, short-sighted” are indeed a minority. But then so are the truly “good, smart, selfless, wise”. The majority are relatively neutral and easily swayed, at least for long enough to influence the abstract-looking choice of which box to mark on a ballot paper. And given that Democracy is essentially about who can secure the support of the best propaganda networks, a ‘bad’ leader whose only concern is how to get themselves elected will always have an advantage over a ‘good’ leader constrained by such things as respect and truth.
The neutral, easily swayed majority just become the tools of those most motivated to manipulate others: the selfish, hateful, and short-sighted. And, in that way, become the more difficult enemies to fight, because it’s harder to justify the tactics one might use against their leaders.
Popularity is a specious proxy for good or correct. And yet it has the advantage of being more readily measurable.
A solution would be an immortal, highly flexible ruler. An AI would fit the bill.
Also, if Deus is lonely I would be perfectly happy to shower with him. Just saying.
Dont fall into the trap of assuming an AI as a perfect being. Read up on the paperclip maximizer thought expiriment, and then imagine a “Happyness maximizer”
Why would you assume the literally dumbest form of AI imaginable. To think an AI would be unab
e to reflect on it’s goals makes no sense.
Please read virtually ANY of Asimov’s books for a treatise on why this is not necessarily a good thing either. And I do mean the books, not any movie adaptations. For a more likely and problematic example, see also: Skynet.
The problem is that humanity often IS its own worst enemy. Which means any AI tasked with managing humans will need to find a way to curb that tendency, and any means of improving success rates of this will necessarily end up draconian and oppressive.
The true problem with an AI management is that they are going to clearly see what the problem is, and seek to remove that problem. Unfortunately, that problem is inherent in the human condition.
Another good book on the subject of AIs in society is James P. Hogan’s ‘The Two Faces of Tomorrow’.
I am not normally a violent person. I prefer to keep that side… at bay.
But seeing Xuriel Tantalis’ behaviour at what is supposed to be a frank discussion of motives and goals, her permanent immolation on a rogue planetoid headed OUT of the Galaxy becomes a very desirable goal.
Or permanent imprisonment in one of Sossogoss’ decorations. Some people become extremely desirable when they are absent, and the longer the absence the more desirable they become.
Ashoka was probably the only dictator that gave the poor better lives, not just making the country rich.
Last panel, to quote the great Barney (Stinson, not that purple freak): “Challenge… accepted!”
You just know SmugD will work extra hard to ‘nail’ Maxi now: how DARE she not succumb to his douchey charms!
Honestly, I kind of hate when Deus shows up. The pacing grinds to a halt and Deus would be a Mary Sue if he were around more often.
Regardless of his ideals, the way he’s been portrayed is that everything always works out for him in the best possible way. And that’s kind of boring. There’s no tension or mystery–whatever the world is not going to warp itself so he gets what he wants, he has enough superpowered, extra-reality, and conventional military to brute force his way, and he’ll get what he wants anyway.
Compare that to say Xanatos from Gargoyles, a charismatic and devious rich guy along the same veins of Deus. But unlike Deus, his goals are clear, he’s not overly egomaniacal, and he makes plans and gains allies in a fairly logical way. Most importantly, he suffers setbacks and several times his plans have come back to bite him in the ass. Heck, he actually goes to jail and spends a number of episodes until his (very minor) sentence is complete.
Feel the same way
A lot of people directly compare Xanatos and SmugD
I thought David Xanatos was one of the best written, most three dimensional characters in cartoon history, honestly. Especially after the heel turn during the war with Oberon to protect his son from being taken.
Although Iroh and Zuko from Avatar were pretty three dimensional as well.
“And that’s why he firmly believes that Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others, but mostly except for a benevolent dictatorship headed exclusively by him.”
Er….he thinks all the other forms are worse than democracy, and he thinks that himself in a benevolent dictatorship is *particularly* worse?
As you say, the Wikipedia article “Benevolent dictatorship” has only 3 *modern* examples (mid-20th century and later). The article “Enlightened absolutism” has 9 examples from the 18th and early 19th centuries.
“Insanity in individuals is something rare–but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Aphorism 156, by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
“I love mankind… It’s people I can’t stand.”
Linus Van Pelt (character) in Peanuts (comic), 12 November 1959, by Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)
Funny, I’d reverse that. I have people I love, but I really despair of mankind at times.
If you can give most people a comfortable secure life that is all they want. A warm bed, a full belly, no worries someone is going to kill you and your family in some random manner.
Then there are the people who for some reason can’t be happy unless they are in charge and on top of the heap. And some of those people are perfectly willing to burn the world down to get it, or just because they can’t get it.
I would have no problem with Deux if he gave me and mine a comfortable life. I would worry about how long the party could last. And some people would not be able to stop looking for the catch, and if they don’t find it, still being sure it was there, and the only way to be safe would be to tear down that Benevolent Dictator, even if it meant the world is now safe.
Far better we have freedom than full bellies is the rallying cry, usually from those who have never had empty bellies.
Monarchies are “supposed” to be benevolent dictatorships. The problem has always been that the King’s son, or grandson, tends to run astray and begin serving his own purposes. If you have read “The Expanse” series, you know that one “benevolent” dictator tried to solve the problem by making himself immortal. It seemed to have a good chance of success until the “unincorporated” people found a way to take him out.
“Monarchies are “supposed” to be benevolent dictatorships.”
According to who? The word “monarch” means simply “one ruler”. So in Oz (for example, the UK is the only other one I know about), we can have a Queen whose spouse is a (royal) Consort. Liz excercised her prerogatives and made Phil a Prince Consort, since he had been a Prince in the Greek Royal Family. When or if Charlie ascends to the throne, he will be King Charles III (IIRC) in England and SHOULD be Charles I in Oz, and *may* grant Camilla an honorary Queenship. There does seem to be a gender issue here, but given the English language is default masculine, I can live with it (the girls need all the help they can get).
I’m vaguely amused that Deus is planning to re-create the African Union, which has twice as many member states as the European Union, and more than twice as many people, and almost nine times more territory.
Yes but from a citizen of one of the big dadies of european union unity is not great in EU- betwen misers , far rigth states and US atempts to destroy EU- US even sent betwen 1973 and 2020 one of his colonies – UK – as trojan horse.
A colony is a country with a foreigner at his head , Boris Johnson was an US citizen who took UK nationality to trick brits… And UK is the sub in US UK relationship…
Well bugger me. Just looked and your absolutely right, Johnson was born a yank. Hmm, explains a lot actually.
“… was born a yank.”
Only because of US greed. Can anybody think of a *good* reason to {grant|confer} citizenship {to|on} the child born in the USA to parents NOT holding US citizenship? Because I’d like to hear it.
When you take these things to their extremes, you find all sorts of unpleasant consequences. Many of these are foreseen in law, and I’m thinking of Rupert Murdoch, who needed to become a US citizen so he could own and manage his holdings in the USA. However, in order to secure Murdoch’s accountability to the US, he was required to surrrender his Australian citizenship.
So, what’s good and desirable about multiple citizenship? From ANY point of view.
The thing about Benevolent Dictatorships is that Lord Acton thing. (“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”) Sometimes it takes a generation, but it’s pretty much inevitable.
It’s very quotable but just as unfounded as many quotes.
Power *attracts* the corrupt and the corrupt have an advantage in gaining it.
Absolute power requires absolute security which is not possible (though autonomous weapons systems will bring it a lot closer).
“Misinformed xenophobic morons” are considerably less of a threat to such a scheme than the well-informed and historically aware.
Utopian power grabs end in mass graves.
Lots of pocket fascists here, imagining what it would be like to be the leader in a “benevolent dictatorship.” You’ve been playing too many RPGs where you get to be the hero with superhuman powers. In fact, y’all would just be more NPCs.
i fail to see the point of your comment here…
what are you trying to say here? what motivated your words?
I’m guessing he thinks his preferred imaginary utopia’s doesn’t have its own drawbacks or unrealistic aspects, so it’s safe for him to denigrate anyone pondering the pros and cons of other notions (while not putting his alternative up for critique, hmm…)
Deus, as presented, is an improvement on the typical African kleptocracy. He is not, however, an improvement on the typical First World welfare state – the benefits he’s brought to Galytn are things the First World already has. So he won’t, in fact, be able to extend his rule beyond sub-Saharan Africa. And he’ll have to use his army at every step – the countries that would benefit from his rule are precisely those ruled by corrupt dictators, who wouldn’t accept the restraints Deus would put on them.
And, by conquering Mozambique, Deus has revealed his true intentions to the public. Nobody is going to be fooled by his claim that Mozambique is still “independent” when he’s taken over most of the state’s functions after invading the place. The response from First World states will be legal and military, and it will start immediately, before Deus’s coalition has a chance to become the economic superpower he’s aiming for.
i mean im sure his original plan was to use the technology gained from the portal to improve his country beyond even the scope of modern first world nations and then make his power grab posible, this went out of the window the moment the fel ship was destroyed by maxima and the US goverment buyed a ftl ship of their own with the money from the downed wreckage and stablished comunications with interstellar organizations
I am reminded of the Squadron Supreme limited series from the 80’s. The Squadron asks to be allowed to rebuild American after bad stuff had caused it to breakdown, with the promise to give up control after one year. They implement a series of reforms, the most controversial being behavior modification for criminals, changing their behavior to line up with society. One of the Squadron, the team’s Batman, Nightowl, leaves the team at the beginning and aquires some allies to resist the other Squadron members. The last issue has a large battle, but the team’s Superman, Hyperion, is incapacitated early on, and the Nightowl tells him the basic problem with the Squadron’s changes for the world, namely that the tools they provided required good people in charge to prevent them from being misused into tyranny.
The definition of a dictator is someone who exercises power over people without answering to them. It doesn’t take Machiavelli to figure out that such a power imbalance is necessarily unstable, and the longer you keep it up the more disastrous the release. Like lightning. It doesn’t matter how benevolent you are – you can be the galaxy’s #1 dad for real but if your kids turn 40 and you’re still acting like you’re the boss of their lives that’s not going to make them happy.
Democracy means an equitable distribution of power in a society means freedom from tension and fear. That’s what I believe. Deus wants to give the people of Africa a bigger voice to equal their global neighbors, that’s well and good, even if he thinks the magic of neoliberal economic reform is all it takes, even if he’s ultimately enriching himself personally more than anyone else. It’s still furthering democracy on a global scale.
But, um.
This is quite literally the end premise of Isaac Asimov’s body of work. Eventually Earth is ‘ruled’ by a machine that has such broad access to data and such ability to manipulate things that it basically locates the potential tyrants and slowly edges them out of society, exposing them to the humans, and letting things proceed from there.
(Just one more reason I hate it when Hollywood decides to ‘adapt’ classic fiction without bothering to read it)
The recently departed P. J. O’Rourke wrote, “Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.”
You think someone as smart as Xuriel would realize that if Max is a snapper, and she clenches, her partner’s penis will come back out as a steam explosion.
A phreatic eruption?
Can’t say I agree with his sentiment. Especially in the situations where it matters most, panic and disorder generally comes from the top, as those at the top tend to be more concerned with disruption of their control than the wellbeing of the people, and the panic of those who are supposed to be in charge turns things like the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire into true catastrophes. And this kind of elite panic is often the cause of the oft-feared crowd panic, rather than a reaction to such already existing.
The perpetuation of dictatorship will always take precedence over the perpetuation of its continued “benevolence”.
Bingo! You are 100% correct. Every time I’ve seen a panic in my lifetime, it has been the elites, the “best and brightest,” who have panicked and made stupid decisions and made everything much, much worse.
Every time I’ve seen a major incident involving a large group of people, it has involved them making good decisions to the best of their ability. When they’ve made bad decisions, it always, ALWAYS derived from the elites lying to them, causing people to act under flawed assumptions.
Back in the bad old days, electricity became problematic on the roads during storms and downpours. So we’d lose a bunch of traffic lights especially on major urban routes.
Bu-u-t… within a very few minutes all the traffic would sort itself, ceding space at intersections so cross-traffic got a fair go, and (wouldn’t you know it!) traffic actually flowed faster and more smoothly. Until the police arrived. Not content with watching how smooth like buttah it was, they HAD to interfere. So we were back in “normal” chaos…
Okay Deus just admitted he’s going to rule the world whether or not everyone’s on board. That’s no different then the New World Order. *Cock’s anti-super gun*
your apostrophe is out of place there, it truly changes your phrasing.
Apologies, but there’s no correction option on this site so I can’t fix it. I would like to, however… That, and I do sometimes get confused by ‘everyone’s’ or everyones’. Spellcheck here is also kinda bad.
Ewwww :(
He literally said the opposite of what you just said.
“Deus just admitted he’s going to rule the world whether or not everyone’s on board. ”
No, he said, and I’ll quote:
“Eventually, I expect countries to petition to join on their own.”
and
“My administrative outreach will build a coalition of countries and develop them into an economic superpower, like the European Union.”
Admittedly this is the one place where I’m going to…. gasp…. disagree with Deus.
You heard it here kids. Pander has disagreed with Deus about the reasoning for why Britain left the EU. It was not because the leavers were ‘Xenophobic morons’ – it’s because the EU was horribly managed and was making idiotic economic decisions. And I would point out to Deus, were he real (more’s the pity that he is not) each of the idiotic economic decisions that the EU had made over YEARS, especially in the last few years before Brexit that led directly to Brexit, so that his glorious union would not repeat the same mistakes.
Fortunately I don’t think Deus would be making idiotic economic decisions in the first place, based on his past performances, so he would be unlikely to have the same problems.
PS – I would be happy to explain my arguments while washing his front with my front in the shower.
“… reasoning for why Britain left the EU.”
That Thatcher woman had graciously adopted the policy because she figured it would re-establish Britain’s holy pupose of dominance over France and control of Europe without the unholy cost of another war of invasion.
Naturally, of course, it didn’t play that way, all the Europeans invaded Britain instead. So, in order to not look completely ridiculous, post-Thatcher England decided to resume its proper place outside the edge of the playground. It took longer than expected, but that was probably just the French rubbing another defeat in Britain’s face. But Britain once again is peopled (mostly) only with British (subjects).
Here endeth the lesson.
Did your Deus-vision blind you to his “membership will be compulsory” bit?
Basically, join willingly or be subjugated forcefully (like Mozambique: destroy all the machines of opposition ie weapons and soldiers and then station giant demons on the border until there is more piss in their pants than in their bladder and they ‘voluntarily’ join)
Technically, he didn’t make them join, but he made damn sure they understood what would happen if they didn’t!
Just like Deus didn’t “force” the former king to either accept his offer, or to order an attack his person – he just backed the king into a corner until there were no options left but to capitulate or forcibly drive out the invader. Deus came in as an outsider, demanded the keys to the kingdom, and refused to take no for an answer. The king’s acceptance or rejection, and his personal detestable history, were both conveniences for Deus’s narrative but ultimately irrelevant – the only outcomes Deus was willing to accept for the king were his submission or his death.
Pander loves to refer back to this incident and claim Deus did no wrong in “defending” himself, but it’s not self defense to forcing your will on someone until they have no recourse but to attack you. That can’t be rationalized away as anything but coercion and blackmail (given that ultimately he was also extracting money). There is no scenario, regardless of the king’s choices, where he was able to leave that room alive and in control of the country, and his despotism didn’t give Deus the right to be judge, jury, and executioner just because his subsequent
reignmanagement would be more benevolent.yeah, and its not like the king even attacked deus first, he rejected his offer and asked him to leave, then deus pulled the invisible super assasins
If we’re being very pedantic, the king didn’t “ask” him to leave, he ordered him to leave and the second time there was a threat attached. Of course, you’re completely right that Deus made the first threat, the king made the second and last, and Deus attacked first.
King: You can donate directly to me if you want. Otherwise, leave.
Deus: I have plans for this nation. You can benefit from them…or not.
King: You insult me, then threaten me? Get out before I have you shot!
Deus: Cthillia, kill the king.
How is ‘You can benefit from them… or not’ a threat?
Deus did insult the king. With the truth. The truth is actually pretty insulting to Indinge. That he uses money that should be for his people in order to enrich himself. That he is a corrupt tyrant. All true. All on video. But threaten? Nope. Deus did not threaten.
Also Deus did not say kill the king. He said ‘kindly abdicate the king’ before Cthilla was even visible, and the king had no idea what the hell Deus was talking about at that point, since Cthilla was NOT VISIBLE AT THAT POINT. But what the king did do, before he even had an idea that he had a problem, was to order his men to shoot Deus. THEN he saw Cthilla.
Don’t be hatin’ on Deus because Deus knew what Indinge was about to do. He’s been surveilling him for a while and knew how Indinge thinks.
Btw Eaglejarl, I hope you don’t take that last sentence of mind as being hostile to you. You’re a neat fellow and you make good arguments. I’m just being fun with the ‘don’t be hatin” line.
Pander, I get it. You like Deus and want to talk him up. I’m right there with you. He’s making life better for a lot of people, I agree that he is on balance a virtuous man. (He’s also smug and a huge troll, but that’s not the point.)
That said, you really need to stop overstepping with the bit about the king. You have repeatedly claimed that he threatened to throw Deus off the roof. That is not true. You have repeatedly claimed that Deus was defending himself when he had the king killed. That is not true. Here you claim that the king ordered his men to shoot Deus. That is not true. The king said, AND I QUOTE: “Leave now before I have you shot!” Page 389, panel 3. He did not say “Shoot him”, he said “Leave now before I have you shot!” He was ordering Deus to depart and making it clear that there would be consequences to disobedience. Again, he was not ordering Deus to be shot. If Deus simply walked out the door then no one would have died.
As to whether Deus ordered the king killed…come on, really? Stop playing word games. Deus prepositioned a superpowered mercenary in the room, said “Cthillia, please abdicate the king”, and Cthillia promptly killed the king. Deus was not surprised by this because he was ordering Cthillia to kill the king but using fancy language in order to be dramatic. Yes, Deus shot first. Yes, it was murder. No, it was not in self-defense.
There is so much evidence that you can use to show that Deus is a good guy, but trying to spin this one just makes you look dishonest and undermines your other arguments. Admit that Deus is good but not perfect and that he did in fact, with malice aforethought, order the king murdered.
Indinge literally did command his soliders to throw Deus from something, before it became clear that Deus had asked Cthillia to kill him. Indinge’s actions can’t reasonably be interpreted as self-defense either.
It’s funny that both of you recognize one veiled threat, and refuse to recognize the other.
“It’s funny that both of you recognize one veiled threat, and refuse to recognize the other.”
Oh I recognize there was one veiled threat (abdicate) by Deus, but his veiled threat was after Indinge’s definite threat. :)
Plus there’s plausible deniability in what abdicate means. It doesn’t mean kill. :)
From https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1023-one-nation-under-new-administration/comment-page-2/#comments
Responding to @ eaglejarl
“And, I must correct Pander. Indinge was NOT about to order that Deus be thrown off the roof. That order was attempted AFTER Cthilla was asked to kindly abdicate the King. Indigne had actually threatened Deus with being shot. Very different.
”
“So, in short, Deus ended a time-wasting arguement with only one casualty. I am reminded of a Saint novel from far too long ago, where he forgetfully orders Hoppy Uniatz to “take him for a drive” which in Hoppy’s US gangster experience means “shoot him where he won’t be found”.”
It is indeed possible that Deus failed to remember* Cthilla’s earlier training/job experience, with tragic results.
Unfortunately, due to limitations of WordPress, I cannot give a URL for this comment, it’s beyond the “Reply” limit.
* “failed to remember” /= “forgot”
Indigne said “Throw him from the–” right before Cthillia murdered him. Given the context of the previous conversation, the most likely completion to that sentence would be “room” or “palace”. He had already threatened to have Deus shot if he didn’t leave, so the fact that he didn’t simply say the much shorter “Shoot him!” means that he didn’t intend it to be a lethal consequence.
“Throw him from the room” sounds like a weird thing to say. “Palace” is a little better, but simply “Throw him out!” sounds much more natural than either. “Balcony” would be my bet for the next word.
“Pander, I get it. You like Deus and want to talk him up”
While I do like Deus as a character, it’s just pretty easy to talk him up because he’s written in a way that MAKES it easy to talk him up. All the people he actually is adversarial against have SO many faults and are usually outright villainous, and Deus himself is not actually villainous at all, despite wanting to give off that persona.
“(He’s also smug and a huge troll, but that’s not the point.)”
I agree with that too. But that just makes me like him more because he can back it up. :) Sort of the same reason I like M from Generation X and X-Factor Investigations. The woman is incredibly arrogant, and annoyingly is almost always able to back up the reasons for her being arrogant.
“That said, you really need to stop overstepping with the bit about the king.”
There’s enough wiggle room in the bit about the king that I don’t really see a reason to stop with that. It’s admittedly my weakest area of support, but it’s still quite arguable. Because while you point out I might have a bias, you do tend to ignore the stuff Indinge says which brings me to my rationale, every time you quote the dialog. Each time, you always ignore the parts of the sentences that Indinge says and the context in which Deus says his sentences.
I understand it’s because you’re trying to be more measured, which is why I find you to be able to make a good argument, but I feel that the greater context of the interaction shows that Deus realized that Indinge was going to try to murder him for not just giving a blank check, and Deus is very good on preparing for such things.
“The king said, AND I QUOTE: “Leave now before I have you shot!””
In response to a non-threat said by Deus. Deus said ‘you can profit from them alongside me or not.’ Indinge automatically took that as a threat. And Deus knows what Indinge does to people who oppose him. He makes it as if they were a threat, then murders them.
“Deus prepositioned a superpowered mercenary in the room, said “Cthillia, please abdicate the king”,”
The point of self-defense is if the King realized that he was in danger in the first place. He did not. He had no idea what Deus was talking about regarding Cthilla, because Cthilla was invisible at the time when the King was already ordering Deus to be thrown from the roof (panel 5).
So no, the King tried to murder Deus. And Deus had already realized he was going to, even before the King realized he was in danger.
But lets say Deus did try to kill the King. It’s arguably accurate. But it was still self-defense WHEN Deus did it.
Person A goes into a situation assuming that he might have to kill someone – Person B.
Person B then decides, without knowing he is in danger from Person A, thinking he is in control, to kill Person A.
Person A’s bodyguard, who Person A was, even at that point, unaware of even existing, then DOES kill Person B.
The intent may have originally been for Deus to murder Indinge, but the actual effect is Person B did try to murder Person A, and Person B acted in self defense using the bodyguard as his proxy (or we can just say Defense of Others).
Had Deus actually TRIED to murder the king before the king tried to murder Deus? No.
Was he planning on it because he knew Indinge’s psychology and knew that he was going to try? Yes.
Even at BEST, the BEST you can possibly argue is that both tried to kill each other in self-defense, oddly enough, if you make a ‘intent follows the bullet’ argument for Deus’s intent. But Indinge’s intent is a LOT more direct.
“and Cthillia promptly killed the king.”
He did not ‘promptly’ kill the king. He waited until the King was ordering his men to throw Deus from the palace roof/window. That’s my entire point of my argument.
“There is so much evidence that you can use to show that Deus is a good guy, but trying to spin this one just makes you look dishonest and undermines your other arguments.”
I don’t think it makes me look dishonest because I’m giving a plausible rationale. And my arguments individually speak for themselves. Even if I was to steelman this argument for you and say you are right about it not being self-defense, it does not ignore that Deus is still the good man in the scenario, not Indinge. It becomes a ‘would you kill Hitler if given the chance’ scenario. Still makes Deus the good guy.
But since there is still a decent argument that this was self-defense, based on Deus’s knowledge of Indinge’s willingness to murder people who anger him, and Indinge actually beginning to give that order, and Deus’s well known ability to know what’s going to happen, I don’t see why a self defense argument isnt a good one.
“Admit that Deus is good but not perfect”
Depends on what aspect of him not being perfect you’re talking about.
“and that he did in fact, with malice aforethought, order the king murdered.”
He didnt have the sole intention to kill the king necessarily though. He just realized it was likely that it would have to happen, because the king was a monster of a man and he knew that the king would likely want him dead when he did not do what he wanted, instead of just enriching the king ALONE.
If his sole intent was to kill Indinge, there would have been no point in even making the offer in advance. Deus is basically Batman. Except he’s willing to kill if absolutely necessary. He knows what people are likely going to do. And he plans for those contingencies. That does not make the contingencies definitive.
It’s like the classic buildup in adventure movies, where the bad guy is about to fall over the edge of a cliff, and the good guy has the hand of the bad guy.
“GIVE ME YOUR HAND! I’LL PULL YOU UP!”
Then the bad guy tries to either yank the good guy down, or pulls a gun on the good guy anyway.
Then the good guy lets go of the bad guy’s hand and lets him plummet to his death, or shoots him first.
If the bad guy just went along with the good guy, he would live.
> He did not ‘promptly’ kill the king. He waited until the King was ordering his men to throw Deus from the palace roof/window. That’s my entire point of my argument.
Indigne said “Throw him from the–” right before Cthillia murdered him. Given the context of the previous conversation, the most likely completion to that sentence would be “room” or “palace”. He had already threatened to have Deus shot if he didn’t leave (*after* Deus threatened him), so the fact that he didn’t simply say the much shorter “Shoot him!” means that he didn’t intend it to be a lethal consequence.
Regardless. At this point you’re clearly unwilling to acknowledge the slightest fault in Deus and are willing to twist events to fit your narrative no matter what it takes. I’m done here.
” At this point you’re clearly unwilling to acknowledge the slightest fault in Deus”
I’ve found faults in Deus. Only a few though. And not with this.
“and are willing to twist events to fit your narrative”
I’m not having to twist anything. I’m using complete context. You keep ignoring the parts of what Indinge is saying though.
“no matter what it takes.”
All I require is actual stuff that I can point to in the comic. Sorry if you don’t agree with me but no reason to get angry about it Eaglejarl.
“I’m done here.”
Fair enough. Agree to disagree. At least we both agree that Deus is a good person.
Or at the very least, not a bad person and the things he’s done ARE good.
Forgot to respond to this bit:
> How is ‘You can benefit from them… or not’ a threat?
That’s like saying that “Nice place ya got heah. Shame if somethin’ was ta happen to it” isn’t a threat.
Don’t be disingenuous. Yes, it was very clearly a threat, which is made more obvious by the fact that thirty seconds later Deus ordered the king to be murdered and the invisible mercenary that Deus had prepositioned in the room did the deed.
“That’s like saying that “Nice place ya got heah. Shame if somethin’ was ta happen to it” isn’t a threat.”
That’s your intepretation. Mine is ‘If you don’t want to help me, I’m sure others will, and then you’ll miss out on my help.’ That’s explaining he’s going to miss out on a business opportunity and one of his competitors might scoop it up instead.
Or, as a MOST threatening but still not very threatening way to anyone who would have been NOT evil, ‘If you don’t want to be involved in my plans like a reasonable, rational person who doesn’t murder his own people for fun, I’m sure there are others who oppose your EVIL, OPPRESSIVE, MURDEROUS rule, since most of your population hates and fears you, and you are surrounded on all sides by people who want to destroy your fledgeling despotic nation, who will be okay with my help instead.’
” which is made more obvious by the fact that thirty seconds later Deus ordered the king to be murdered”
Again you’re ignoring that Indinge said things IN BETWEEN ‘or not’ and ‘abdicate the king’ and things were said between ‘abdicate the king’ and Cthilla killing the king. Panels 3 and 5.
It depends on whether “I have plans for this region” refers specifically to Galytn or not. If it does, Deus is challenging Indinge’s rule, saying he’s going to do whatever he wants in Galytn, whether Indinge approves or not. “You can profit from them alongside me or… not.” then becomes “You can subject yourself to my authority, or I ignore your authority”.
The region could be anywhere in the area of Chad/DRC/Zaire. Or he could just wait for the DRC to re-takeover Galytn, then make dealings with the DRC to take it from the DRC instead.
The assumption that Deus will always go to a violent means first is NOT shown in any of his past behavior. Deus has already shown that he’s willing to update his timetables.
Pander, surely you’re aware of the concept of plausible deniability. The existence of an innocent interpretation of something is not proof of innocence, and a system which does not consider this provides a considerable loophole in the rule of law, allowing bad actors to violate it in spirit while adhering to the letter.
“Pander, surely you’re aware of the concept of plausible deniability.”
I am.
“The existence of an innocent interpretation of something is not proof of innocence,”
Actually that’s pretty much the point of plausible deniability. The idea that it’s not clear that someone is not innocent. And in the absence of being able to prove guilt, you should assume innocence.
Indinge, however, doesnt give any sort of plausible deniability in his actions or orders. His entire history is one of bluntness, anger, abuse, ineptness, and murder. Deus’s entire history is one of making win-win deals, subtlety, keeping his promises peacefully, and being PREPARED for worst case scenarios.
I was talking about Deus, not Indinge. “You can profit from them alongside me or… not.” was clearly intended to be interpreted by Indigne as a threat, while giving Deus room to claim that it wasn’t. What defense do you propose against this strategy, if any? How should a society protect itself from people who clearly violate the spirit and intent of the law, while adhering to the letter of it? Increasingly specific and complex laws that nobody can remember? Broader laws that are more subject to interpretation, increasing the uncertainty of whether or not someone is complying?
““You can profit from them alongside me or… not.” was clearly intended to be interpreted by Indigne as a threat,”
If it was CLEARLY interpreted to be a threat, there would not be much plausibility in the deniability.
It was not ‘clearly’ a threat. It could have been that Deus would have just had dealings with the DRC, which still claimed ownership of the area. It’s just cheaper to deal with Indinge directly than to buy the area from the DRC.
Please remember that Galytn was not even formally recognized as a nation at that point in time.
“he just backed the king into a corner until there were no options left but to capitulate or forcibly drive out the invader”
1) He did not back the king into a corner – he made a business proposal. The king was welcome to tell him that he would consider it. It was only when the King started getting threatening that Deus also did, because Deus had been surveilling Indinge for months and already knew how the King would react, because the King was a mosnter of a man.
2) Deus was not coming in as an invader. Although he could have – he had more than enough power to do so without first resorting to trying to negotiate with a king who has enemy nations surrounding him ON ALL SIDES, with whom he was already at war with (including Mozambique). He was coming in as a way OUT of the unwinnable war that Indinge was already in. But Indinge was not only evil, but was an idiot who was more interested in his own personal fortune than his own fortune PLUS the well-being of his people – people who, I have to remind people again, Indinge was systemtically raping, torturing, disappearing, and MURDERING.
“Pander loves to refer back to this incident and claim Deus did no wrong in “defending” himself, but it’s not self defense to forcing your will on someone until they have no recourse but to attack you.”
Indinge clearly had other recourses. “I am interested in your proposal – give me some time to consider it.” Then he can figure out if he wants to take Deus’s proposal, or if there’s a better way to win a war with nations that are all surrounding you, when you have no money, a dwindling army, and citizens who hate and fear you because you get your jollies off by torturing and killing them.
What Indinge did, instead, was exactly what Deus expected that Indinge would do – threaten to have Deus killed, then when Deus does not leave immediately, order his men to have him thrown off the building. Deus just did not see the need to let Indinge finish that sentence. Consider it pre-emptive self-defense if you want, but based on Indinge’s past, Deus would likely have been shot in the back anyway.
But lets steelman this whole argument. Lets say that Deus drew first blood here. Who are we talking about him killing? We’re basically talking about Deus killing a Hitler stand-in. A murderous tyrant who the people hated and feared and were grateful to have dead. A inept leader who had bankrupt the nation, had gotten them into wars by every surrounding nation, with no way to win. A swindler who would take any humanitarian aid and use it to build a palace for himself instead of a road or waterworks for his people. That’s who Deus drew first blood on.
Why defend this guy? It makes no sense to me. Deus didnt have the same interaction with his son. He didnt threaten Indinge’s son. At all. He apologized to the Prince. He shows the Prince the type of man his father really was. Then he made the prince an offer, and the prince was surprised that Deus was actually making the offer and took it. Because if Deus was really the evil villain that people are trying to make him out to be, he could have killed the Prince as well, killed al lthe guards in the room, and set up some sort of puppet government who would not know ANYTHING about what happened in the palace that day. Deus kills only when absolutely necessary. If you don’t want to see what he did to Indinge as self-defense (although I still say it was), then at the very least, realize that killing Indinge was still justifiable to the people of Galytn.
“That can’t be rationalized away as anything but coercion and blackmail (given that ultimately he was also extracting money).”
How was Deus extracting money? Deus’s entire deal with Galytn hinges on the idea that he only gets a portion of the GDP. Galytn’s GDP did not even rate on the World Bank. The only way for Deus to profit is to actually build Galytn’s GDP in the first place. Deus essentially has to act at a loss in the beginning if he wants to ultimately make a profit on Galytn.
“There is no scenario, regardless of the king’s choices, where he was able to leave that room alive and in control of the country,”
“Your offer intrigues me, Deus. Give me a few days to consider it and see what sort of man you truly are, since Africa has a history of having people come in and take advantage of us. I want to make sure that you are the sort of man that you claim to be, with the sort of resources you claim to have, to do the sort of thing you claim that you will do for me and my people.”
Then he could convene with his council to figure out if there was any better way to not lose a war on all sides when his nation had no money, an insignificant military, and a people who hate and fear him because he keeps murdering and torturing them when he’s not embezzling from them or starving them.
Y’know. Acting like a leader, instead of acting like a brain-addled tyrant.
“and his despotism didn’t give Deus the right to be judge, jury, and executioner just because his subsequent reign management would be more benevolent.”
The fact that it took Indinge’s son about 15 minutes of watching videos of his father to turn around 180 degrees seems to give Deus a little of that right. Also the fact that afterwards, the people love and thank him for what Deus did seems to justify Deus’s actions as being the right action in hindsight. That little ash tray girl seemed happy about it. Would you like to tell the little ash tray girl that she should be better off dead instead of having food, water, electricity, school, and TV? :)
gorblimey’s whole post is completely nonsense, don’t quibble over such minor flaws ;-)
No, not “completely”. Apart from the fact you totally missed the comedic, you also seem to have missed out on the history of England and especially the wars against France from roughly 1100AD to sort of 1500AD.
Added to that, Margaret was never the most poular PM the Poms ever had, who missed out on a golden opportunity to rid England of a thorny little problem in the South Atlantic and make it someone else’s.
I have no problem with criticism, but do some homework first.
“Did your Deus-vision blind you to his “membership will be compulsory” bit?”
No. I think if you want to benefit from an organization, you should have to abide by its rules. If you don’t want to benefit from it, you don’t have to. I just think he’s mischaracterizing Brexit as xenophobic morons when it’s actually that the EU leadership was economically inept and NOT making sure every member paid into it what they were supposed to. That’s literally the one thing where I stated I disagreed with Deus, although I suspect this might be because DaveB might not realize this, rather than Deus.
‘Basically, join willingly or be subjugated forcefully (like Mozambique: destroy all the machines of opposition ie weapons and soldiers and then station giant demons on the border until there is more piss in their pants than in their bladder and they ‘voluntarily’ join)”
There is a HUUUUUGE difference between Mozambique, a failed state with a horribly corrupt government that lets its people starve and encourages child soldiers and bribery along the entire government, allows for disappeared people, and has almost no existing infrastructure, with an almost non-existent economy…. and the U.K. which is one of the most powerful economies on the planet, with a very powerful military, a seat on the Security Council of the U.N. and strong alliances with other world powers like the United States.
Deus would not deal with one the same way he deals with the other, because they are VERY different scenarios. The UK isnt an failed state run by evil people while the citizens live in squalor. This is not V for Vendetta in real life.
“Technically, he didn’t make them join, but he made damn sure they understood what would happen if they didn’t!”
They had already lost the war. A war they were in before Deus even was involved. It’s just when Deus got involved, they were no longer on the winning side. He did not take away their independence as a result of losing this war. He just supplemented their military and their economy ‘such as it was’ – because their economy is crap. They got a very good deal for a side that lost a war so completely and utterly. Plus, and I have to keep repeating this because everyone seems to ignore it, the PEOPLE OF MOZAMBIQUE ON THE ZAMBEZI RIVER WANTED HIM THERE.
Huge point here is “if” they want to benefit, SmugD is leaving little doubt they won’t have a choice, and once they join, they can’t ever leave
Now you’re just reading the future. And trying to do so in a worst case scenario only.
I’m basing it on the past and the present in the comic. Everything Deus has ever done has been upfront, and he keeps fulfilling his promises. He went into Mozambique because the people wanted him there. Which is why it was so easy. Every time he makes a plan, he makes sure he has support from the people before actually doing anything. HE has a lot more respect for the people’s wishes than for governments which he considers corrupt, like Indinge or the government of Mozambique, and even then, he tries to give both sides what they actually want (power and wealth for the government people), a good life and a future of upward mobility for the ‘little’ people.
If they want to leave? Who knows. If the PEOPLE want to leave, then Deus would have obviously made a major flaw in his plans. Deus is pretty good at creating a scenario where people DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
That’s not evil. That’s giving people such a good deal that they want to do so willingly. And amazingly without having to have a scapegoat that is the one being punished.
That’s the main reason I had ONE problem with ONE sentence Deus said in this comic. Because he called people’s reasoning ‘xenophobia’ then it was economics. It was a rare example of Deus making someone a scapegoat instead of what he should have done, which is to just blame the leavers desire to leave on the EU government being financially inept and corrupt.
Seriously, you do realize that once a state is part of the United States, the only way to stop being a state is war, amending the Constitution to allow unilateral secession, or the states all deciding this whole ‘union’ thing is done and letting people go at will.
That almost sounds like once you’re a state in the USA, it’s …. compulsory.
gasp.
But check the next page on the forums – I go into detail on how this works, G.
Like you said before, It’s annoying because I’m polite but extremely thorough and knowledgeable in my arguments.
And very, very Deus-y.
Oh dear. Someone’s been reading too much of the dross written by posh idiots in the likes of the spectator.
Meanwhile our government is reduced to asking readers of the sun to find some brexit benefits for them as they’ve yet to find any after 6 years (other than some of them lining their own pockets of course)
“Someone’s been reading too much of the dross written by posh idiots in the likes of the spectator.”
I’m not from the UK and I don’t read the Spectator.
“Meanwhile our government is reduced to asking readers of the sun to find some brexit benefits for them as they’ve yet to find any after 6 years (other than some of them lining their own pockets of course)”
I also don’t get my information from The Sun, which I also don’t read.
Could you possibly give some actual facts in your argument? It would make it easier for me to be able to make a counterargument. Thanks in advance.
Btw SteveK, the point of my post is that the people who did Brexit did so for reasons that had nothing to do with xenophobia. It had to do with economics. Which is where I would disagree with Deus’s characterization of them.
You’re half right. The people who led the Brexit project did so for economic reasons – benefiting their own pockets. But there were almost as many motives among those who voted for it as there were voters, most of them were not at all about economics, and many of them were outright contradictory to each other. Xenophobia was definitely in the mix for some, if not as strong for many as it was in the campaign rhetoric.
Based on conversations with voters in the run-up:
– Some wanted a low-regulation, low-rights economy – the so-called ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ model.
– Some thought the EU ‘captured’ by business interests and wanted to strengthen those same safeguards.
– Some thought that immigration was too high or uncontrolled, not knowing or caring that it was the choice of successive UK Governments not to use the same controls that were routine in other EU countries.
– Some wanted more immigration, just from different parts of the world – specialist curry chefs, for instance.
– Some just wanted to pull up the drawbridge and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.
– Some seemed to think that it would somehow undo 50-odd years of Eastern economies industrialising.
– Some were sure that Brexit could never actually win, so wanted to artificially inflate the ‘protest’ vote for leverage in future negotiations.
– And some just wanted to stick the metaphorical fingers up at David Cameron, and took the first opportunity to do so without looking at what it actually was.
With only one option for “Status Quo” and one for “Change”, all those disparate visions got bundled together as if they were supporting a single prospectus (something we’re still waiting for even now). ‘Change’ got just over a third of the electorate, ‘Status Quo’ got about a third, and just under a third didn’t vote for whatever reason. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
I would suggest that “Status Quo vs Change” is the level at which most people evaluate a policy proposal — not on its merits, or whether it would improve or worsen their particular situation. Just based on whether they are comfortable with their current situation. If they are, they’ll resist almost any change, even if it would improve their situation. If they’re not, they’ll embrace any change, in hopes that it will improve their situation. Optimizing and predicting outcomes requires too much effort. They’ll settle for “Good enough”.
It’s the people making the proposals that never settle, that always want to improve their situation. The question is whether they improve it alongside everyone else’s, or at the expense of everyone else.
‘Status Quo’ versus ‘Any Change’ isn’t necessarily a bad question to ask, provided it’s taken as the first step in a multi-stage process. “OK, there’s a significant amount of dissatisfaction here, let’s see how we can make it better for everybody”. The problem only arises when ‘Any Change’ is falsely assumed to mean ‘This Specific Change’, and nobody bothers (or wants!) to ask whether ‘This Specific Change’ is actually for better or worse.
This doesn’t take any detailed optimisation from the voter’s side. All it takes is the realisation that the same campaign – even the same person! – listening to your gripes and selling you a story tailored accordingly is selling a similarly tailored story to someone who wants something diametrically opposed to you.
Two-stage decision-making is quite literally Business Management 101. First decide whether there’s interest in looking at alternatives to the Status Quo. If so, spend the time and resources to figure out the details of what alternatives might be viable. Then go back and compare those fully-defined alternatives against the fully-defined Status Quo. And only if the achievable reality lives up to the initial hype do you commit to making that change.
I keep trying to tell you people, stop engaging Pander about Deus. You’d have a more productive conversation arguing religion with Jerry Faldwell, he was less of a zealot than Pander. You won’t change her mind, because her beliefs aren’t based in rational reasoning or evidence. So no amount of evidence or reasoning will ever be enough. Just stop engaging. Just let her scream her blind love of Deus into the void and spend your time on something productive.
“I keep trying to tell you people, stop engaging Pander about Deus.”
Oh stop trying to ruin people’s fun, man.
“You’d have a more productive conversation arguing religion with Jerry Faldwell, he was less of a zealot than Pander”
God’s good works are not illustrated as reliably as Deus’s, and do not have as reliable a cause an effect.
“You won’t change her mind, because her beliefs aren’t based in rational reasoning or evidence.”
Actually my beliefs are based on completely rational reasoning. The people who think he’s a villain do not have rational reasoning, actually. And they are also based on evidence since I point out the exact links and panels, constantly.
“So no amount of evidence or reasoning will ever be enough.”
It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. Saying something incorrect 20 times isnt going to be more convincing to me than saying a correct thing once.
“Just let her scream”
I’m typing.
“her blind love of Deus”
My love for Deus is anything but blind. I see the good works he does in the comic constantly.
“and spend your time on something productive.”
There are admittedly a lot more productive things you can do in life than arguing on a webcomic forum, but this is pretty fun at least.