Grrl Power #1051 – Crime and monologuing
And just when some of you started coming around on Deus. Of course, some of you might like him more now as well.
BTW the conversation in the post beneath the previous comic was totally canon.
I started off this post with some thoughts on the death penalty in general, but there’s just no way to talk about that without it turning into a political shitstorm. I’ll just say that while I think some crimes completely deserve it, I’m personally against it because the legal system in the US is incredibly, incredibly flawed. People* are lazy, biased and racist, and our legal system does very little to mitigate that. The number of convictions being overturned due to DNA evidence that they didn’t have the tech to test for a few decades ago is really embarrassing, and should tell you that we haven’t figured this shit out yet. I mean, honestly, if I had to give aliens a tour of the US and they started asking questions about our legal system, I would be really embarrassed to describe the current state of it.
As far as the legal system in Galytn goes, citizens are in pretty good shape. The entire legal system is free, because as soon as it’s not free, IMO, it stops being about justice and becomes hugely dependent on who has more money. There’s no death penalty for Galytn citizens except for extreme circumstances, like war criminals, but at the moment, if you’re caught doing some big no-no’s and you’re not a citizen? For instance if you’re a mercenary hired by a foreign power to blow up hospitals or something, welllllll… Then you get to see Vale, and she’s been armed with long winded speeches about why you’ve been a naughty boy.
*”Some to most,” depending on how cynical** you are.
**And/or realistic.
I recommended “The Vixen War Bride” a few weeks back, and the fourqual is out. The, uh… 4th book. Repatriation. I follow the author on Amazon, but Amazon has yet to fire off an email informing me of the fact, even though it’s been out for several weeks now. But it’s been a long time since Amazon was thirsty, so it’s not really reasonable to expect them to care about being good at what they do. But I digress. Anyway, the book is good, go get it.
The May Vote Incentive is up! This month it’s Warsyl, from Tamer: Enhancer 2! I’d say “spoilers,” but the book has been available for 5 months now. Anyway, this pic doesn’t have a zillion outfit variations, partially because her armor took longer to draw than I thought it would, but mostly because she just has an armored form, and an unarmored form. The latter being available over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
The hot and eldritch personal assistant has a Hello Kitty smartphone.
Don’t forget about her pure evil taste in cartoons
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-663-executive-class/comment-page-1/
If ANYTHING would make me think Deus does anything evil, that’s so far the only good argument so far that I’ve ever seen to show that he employs people who like Teen Titans Go.
Unless she’s watching Teen Titans Go to the Movies, which was actually really funny.
Yes she does.
Is there a problem with that?
Yes. That detail is critical to her character. Plus, it’s insult to injury for those she’s effortlessly defeated and restrained…”I’m being killed by a female with a hello kitty phone. I’ll never live this down in Valhalla!”
Uhm, i know this almost 6.9feet (209cm) tall and pretty buff russian who sounds and looks like some grumpy thug if you meet him in the street… but if you visit his home you might get blinded by the fluffy pink madness of something that looks like a hello kitty+my little pony paradise…
So better don’t let him find out your adress after talking bad about his fav. Franchises
No matter what form she’s in she addresses as female and likes cute things heck my kid sister is tough as nails and loves baby.. anything she started a “microfarm” because of that I’ve helped her many times caring for chicks, delivering calves, goat kids, piglets, etc… you name it she’s even had a black empirer scorpion at one point (she thought it was cute until it stung her). As kids at one point she had 38 hamsters, 32 white mice, 16 rats, 5 guinea pigs, 6 cats and so on hardly anywhere in the house that didn’t either chirped, squeeked or meowed lol
Per Dave down below, one of those three is a female missionary being executed for spreading the word that using condoms is evil, because recreational sex is evil, and so she’s being killed for helping spread AIDS.
The others are rapist mercenaries. They are all being fed to the soul-eating dagger.
Yep, Deus is a nice guy, all right. Vale, of course, doesn’t care, although she’s passing up a good chance for existential torture by monologuing the whole bit. Deus should have just made an audio recording, right?
O right, that knife that needed to be recharged with 99 souls.
How much of a soul does a rapist/mercenary (or U.N. “Peacekeeper”) have? Is it enough to count as a full charge?
It depends of the contest of the soul force.
Some sistems play as a soul is worth as much as it has helped others.
Other sistems play as a species trait.
My favorite places a soul as it’s destiny changing capabilities. The more it could change the world for a set objetive, the more precious the soul is.
So, being an extra, a human and a rapist, it wouldn’t count much in either.
Souls could be stronger based on their potential for influenceing the world (still makes evil souls as strong as good) but they might still have a floor value
All souls are worth X, and go up from their based on potential
The quality of a soul isn’t a factor?
And reckon that knife is going to recharged in no time, given the part of the world they’re in.
I’ve always liked the idea of a concept where the power of a soul comes from a hybrid of the intensity of their emotions/willpower, multiplied by their magical potential. Thus a zealot would have a more potent soul, making cultivating fanatics (particularly those with any magical potential) more desirable to gods/etc.
Souls exist in everyone if you’re “evil” it’ll rot in hell if you’re “good” it’ll go to heaven… Personally a “soul” is the energy of life that exists regardless of your actions and it’s that energy that powers the knife the older you are the more energy it has potential of having due to memories and experiences
I have to wonder if the knife Cthillia is wielding is on it’s first or second recharge as Chhillias’s hands look a lot different from the last time we saw them. Of course that “could” just be the lighting ;)
I’m thinking it’s the fifth. They’ve been busy. Also, there’s a few Galytn citizens who are *very* enthusiastic about the miraculous nature of the health care Deus has brought to their country.
So after blowing up a hospital, those minor mercenaries get to waste Vale’s time? Sounds like they’re hitting Galytn with a double whammy. Arguably the time Vale is wasting giving these speeches is worth more than their lives.
Eh, we don’t know if she can only occupy on ‘shell’ at a time. Wjen not doing bodyguard stuff and not expecting to fight supers, Vale could likely (if possible) split herself and still have power to spare
If Galytn has a higher than baseline rate of super powers, Vale’s probably expecting to fight some supers.
oh boy the comments section going to be fun…….
having recently watched Person Of Interest the show touches on this idea. one of the the things about it- both warring AI’s (spoiler) have their own brands of ethics, neither one entirely comfortable to watch.
I’m in agreement that the US legal system needs some real reform. I hesitate to imagine the resident lawyers reaction to the idea expressed. lets just say fixing the US legal system is complicated.
The Machine doesn’t really go for the Rule 0 route until the episode where it sends them the SSN of the corrupt congressman who will enable SPARTAN’s pogrom and we find out where Finch falls on the “Batman should just kill the Joker” argument
that’s the first time its fully obvious that rule 0 applies. I suspect Root was doing Rule 0 work off screen before that. The machine used the Northern lights people to kill everyone (other than Finch) who knew where it was originally, as well as the people who moved it the second time, and anyone who looked too close at those boxes on the poles..
And Texas had no problem executing a guy that DNA evidence exonerated because the judge panel just shrugged and said ‘he just wore a condom while his partner didn’t’ despite ALL evidence INCLUDING the dying woman’s words that ONE person assaulted her. Why yes the innocent man they murdered was black.
Probably the only good out of the otherwise corrupt administration in Illinois was the governor putting a permanent ban on executions because too many people ready to be executed were coming up innocent after DNA tests were done (and God only knows how many that were executed were completely innocent).
That’s the biggest problem with death sentence. Once it’s done, it cannot be taken back or compensated for.
My thought on the death sentence: It should only be applicable on the third offense of the same kind. You would have to have been born under a truly unlucky star to be falsely convicted of rape, or murder, or human trafficking, or whatever heinous crime on three separate occasions. In the vast majority of cases where someone gets to the third strike, at least one of those would have been legitimate. And bear in mind, that for the first two cases I’m not suggesting a lenient sentence. For the third offense to even be possible, the individual would need to not have been assigned a life sentence without parole, on each former offense.
Committing the same crime over and over and over, I think it’s safe to say that if you COULD be rehabilitated, you have no actual interest in doing so. At that point, you’ve proven that there’s no salvaging you; you are and always will be a burden on and a danger to society.
With a three strike rule, you could consider levying the death sentence as a deterrent against lesser crimes, as well. So, you’ve been convicted of embezzlement three times, now? You really didn’t learn your lesson the first two times you went to jail? Well, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you…
You assume a justice system that’s not actively malicious.
I believe we have that some places, but certainly not everywhere. I’d think the judge panel Nightmask mentioned probably exist in a jurisdiction where they don’t have a justice system that’s not actively malicious.
Well I did say it was Texas…
The poor innocent black guy was just walking along a road when police drove up, grabbed him, took him back to the dying woman and said ‘is this the guy?’ The all white jury promptly convicted him despite there not actually being any evidence he was guilty. The judge panel is a trio of judges that decide on pardons as Texas decades prior had taken pardoning power from governors because they had a particularly corrupt one selling pardons and the like. Then Governor Jeb Bush wanted to pardon the guy but couldn’t because the power was taken from him, the judges not caring in the slightest that the guy was innocent just shrugged and sent him to his death because not like THEY were going to suffer after all.
If someone has already been falsely convicted once, perhaps the conviction itself was a result of malice, and not happenstance, and thus may be likely to happen again.
Here’s my opinion about executions:
If there is an undeniable set of evidence against someone, like a half hour of video from a go pro set to stream the entire thing, then execution should be the ONLY punitive option on the table.
No deals, no life without parole, no re-trials, whatever.
Guilty verdict?
The bus goes from the sentencing hearing directly to where the verdict is handed out.
Perfectly clean and very, very much the moral route, since people like that are very much not going to be worth reforming.
In my continuing quest the fall just short of being funny. (so far in the opinion of many I am well short.)
I will provide a tall glass of puns.
drink up, its good for you, even if it isn’t your cup of tea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDHxTEDbNE4
this is based on a game- one of many I have not played. how well doe this song capture the game’s spirit?
I’m with Vale on this one
…Well I wanted to hear the speech…
Also this lets them recharge the knife thingy they got from the vault.
Waste not.
If a magic object requires 99 lives, and those lives have to be human lives… might as well be for executions of people who are guilty of horrific crimes like ‘mercenaries-turned-rapists.’ Assuming it’s known for absolute sure that they did it.
I certainly don’t think Deus is taking the moral high ground here, but certainly the realist approach to problem solving.
His action while brutal are also turning the tacticts of the enemy on them directly. You want to rape pillage and kill? A slow and painful end awaits you, no courts, no outreach groups, not attempts at understanding. You kill/hurt people, he will do the same to you.
It won’t work in the real world and its certainly not fair, but in this story and reality it gives him some depth as an enemy that is also a friend.
Hes not against the world, but if they saw what he was doing he would be labelled a terroist/ mad man.
Deus probably thinks he has the moral high ground, since he decided to add a bit about consequentialism in the monologue lmao
Dave’s sure doing a good job making Deus fit the ‘rationality bro’ stereotype. Kinda makes Deus seem like more of a dumbass but I guess not everyone like that is arrogantly ignorant.
I like the idea that he knows exactly how it’ll go down, and just wants to preach before they die. Also maybe troll Vale.
This headcanon makes me like him even more. I have no trust whatsoever in him, but I simply can’t not like him. He makes me laugh.
Yeah, it turns out my main objection to the death penalty is that it’s 1) permanent, and 2) mistakes happen. (And those mistakes sometimes get discovered.)
Yes, and if this was real life, in a flawed justice system where they cannot tell for sure if they committed the crime of rape, I’d be a lot more inclined to agree with you about the death penalty. Because I do think it should be the absolute last resort after all possible chances at exoneration have been used. There are too many cases in RL of people being in prison for years or decades based on a person lying, or shady prosecutions, or incompetent defense attorneys for me to want the death penalty to NOT be difficult to get done. You have to be absolutely certain because it’s so FINAL a judgment. However, it still should be a possibility for the worst crimes.
Agreed with the shitstorm thing. (My biggest personal reason for being against death penalty is that once in a while, the wrong people get convicted (or people even get framed) and you can’t undo an execution or compensate the delinquent for an execution that erroneously happened to them.)
Apropos shitstorm: What about the zombi Alari, how long until they get found out?
How long until the zombi Alari even get another panel in comic?
I suspect it’ll be a few arcs down the road. They’re building something, and we won’t get to find out what until it’s built.
those individuals are in south America. that’s a long way down Dues’s list and US tends to get nervous about other people playing in the sandbox they let the cat use.
The actual evil thing here i think.
Is going through the process of torturing them with long winded speaces while they wait for execution.
Instead of just stabbing them in the process of taking them down.
The moment you decide to kill another human being is when you decide they are not in fact a human, but a rabbid animal. And then the most humane thing is to do it as quickly and painlessly as possible.
There was an episode of In The Heat Of The Night where the old white cop is telling how being merciful or humane or something to that effect to do things was to tell the condemned he’s been freed, pardoned or something similar then put a bullet into his brain during that happy moment. This of course completely shocked the young black cop that was the counterpart to him.
I remember that episode. Chief Gilespi had gone to witness an execution. I think the reason I remember it is because for some reason he had to rent a suit.
I second this.
I think there might be some issues with draining souls, hence why they kept that dagger locked up. So even if they “deserve it” there might be consequences that are worse.
Another comic I follow addressed this issue in that case 5 guys were found not only had raped and beat to death 8 girls from the ages of 8 to 13 but they video taped each one which was found the judge ruled the death penalty but in order to settle the opposing opinion he let them watch the videos… no one could finish… and shut up and agreed…
that’s almost as bad as the story that started with a guy turning himself in, then dying of cyanide poisoning. there was film then too.
Can I start by saying thanks to Sir Alec Jeffreys for discovering DNA profiling at the University of Leicester, and the Leicestershire Constabulary for using it to solve a case.
As for Vale, I think it’s good she didn’t read out Deus’ speech as it would probably be defined as cruel and excessive punishment.
Also, she should get him to record it himself so she can just play it back to anyone unfortunate enough to make her that mad!
Does “Hnnnng” translate to “just kill me now!”?
“What would you prefer – that speech or your soul being sucked out by that knife?” – “Tough choice.”
Well I’m not too surprised about this turn of events. Deus is kinda supposed to be the or at least one of the major antagonists of the comic.
I am still trying to figure why people think Deus is evil because he believes in the death penalty for foreign mercenaries-turned-rapists operating in Galytn after repeated warnings.
I don’t think it’s the death penalty that makes this evil. There’s two bits of evil here.
1. That speech.
2. Soul-sucking dagger.
1. I’ve read internet comments in many places. we got no room to complain.
2. see 1.
“1. That speech.”
The speech is evil, I guess. But it’s being inflicted upon foreign mercenaries-turned-rapists who have been warned multiple times, so I still have a hard time with figuring he’s evil from that. More like he has a very cruel sense of justice inflicted ON evil people.
2) Again…. if the soul sucking dagger has to be used on humans to work, might as well be used on the most evil people imaginable, who under any judicial system in the region would have been executed anyway. I guess it depends on if you think a soul itself can be evil or if it’s inherently neutral. If souls can be evil, then I’m fine with taking that group of souls out of the ‘soul pool.’ Heck, if you believe in reincarnation AND evil souls, then he might have scooped up Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or Mao out of the well of souls/afterlife. If you believe in evil souls and a standard western theology with heaven and hell, having your soul sucked out is probably not worse than eternal damnation in some layer of hell forever. And if you don’t believe in souls at all, there’s no big deal.
the speech is irritating yes. but as I’ve said I read/scanned far worse. much of it was not sarcastic as near as I can tell. I’m currently not really in the mood for morality. too much stuff from the cattle fields is ‘justified’ by it.
souls? since I’ve soured on morality I’d suggest that we don’t really know if souls exist, and have absolutely horrible sources for how they work. so get DaveB to admit what that knife does to souls, and what normally happens with them and then we can debate it reasonably. for all we know most souls end like that atheist in On A Pale Horse. this is his world and so far he hasn’t said much.
reincarnation is either a horror show; there’s a short story somewhere where there is only one soul doing every life on this planet in some demented time independent serial/parallel thing. or there’s a way to create and ‘destroy’ souls because when I was in school they were telling us 1 in 5 people who had ever lived was alive then. at which point I will again point out the utter failure of humanity- we cant even perfect our souls!
“much of it was not sarcastic as near as I can tell. I’m currently not really in the mood for morality. too much stuff from the cattle fields is ‘justified’ by it.”
Considering you heard a few words out of apparently pages and pages of a speech, I’m not sure you can tell if it’s meant to be sarcastic, mindgames, rubbing salt in the wound of the enemy, dead-serious, or just something to tick off Vale to make her have more satisfaction from her job.
“so get DaveB to admit what that knife does to souls, and what normally happens with them and then we can debate it reasonably”
Since he hasnt, I’m forced to give multiple possible answers for multiple possibilities.
“reincarnation is either a horror show; there’s a short story somewhere where there is only one soul doing every life on this planet in some demented time independent serial/parallel thing.”
There was a twilight zone episode where a person was brought to an Earth where everyone remembered their past lives, and this one woman does NOT remember her past lives, and because everyone else does, they treat life as trivial – if you die, no big deal you’ll just come back in a new body with hopefully a better life. But also old feuds keep going on after death. At one point they wonder if maybe her soul is one of Hitler or Stalin or Genghis Khan since they havent seen that one in a while. Then she figures ways to use hypnotism to help people FORGET their past lives (her original job on Earth was being some new age hypnotist to help people KNOW their past lives). Good episode.
“at which point I will again point out the utter failure of humanity- we cant even perfect our souls!”
1) If souls exist, we don’t create our own souls. They predate our body’s existence.
2) IF you want to go with the theory from The Good Place’s last season, Earth might be the trial run to TRY to perfect our souls through constant retries on Earth until we ‘get our souls perfected’ at which point we get to go to the Good Place.
context is key…
‘but as I’ve said I read/scanned far worse. much of it was not sarcastic as near as I can tell. I’m currently not really in the mood for morality. too much stuff from the cattle fields is ‘justified’ by it.’ I was talking about the crap on the internet I’ve read. as a lawyer you knew that….
‘1) If souls exist, we don’t create our own souls. They predate our body’s existence.’
I never said we create them I said there has to be a way to create them.
‘2) IF you want to go with the theory from The Good Place’s last season, Earth might be the trial run to TRY to perfect our souls through constant retries on Earth until we ‘get our souls perfected’ at which point we get to go to the Good Place.’ if this is true that means I’ll have to do this crap again!?!?!?! I wanna go push Harvey’s button. having the world destroyed by a stuffed animal model of Cthulhu wearing a Fez seems like a better fate.
“I never said we create them I said there has to be a way to create them.”
I’m not a particularly religious person, and never really have been, but depends on how you define a soul. If you can define it adequately enough, you can conceivably create it. Sort of reminds me of that episode of Star Trek TNG where Data’s on trial for whether he is or is not a person. The Measure of a Man. Where they were able to define Intelligence and Self-Awareness but never actually defined ‘Consciousness’
” if this is true that means I’ll have to do this crap again!?!?!?! I wanna go push Harvey’s button. ”
On the plus side, you wouldnt actually remember your past lives, you’d just have a very general ‘feeling’ about stuff lingering in your soul which would nudge you in the right direction. Slowly. Over millions and millions of tries. Evolution is a slow process. Why would evolution of the soul be any faster?
I’m not sure that it’s a soul sucking dagger. The only reference I can find to its power source references ‘lives’, not souls. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-566-surprise-billionaire/
True. Nothing specifically said ‘souls.’
I wonder what Deus’s thought are regarding retributive vs restorative justice.
My guess? He doesn’t care about that. He wants to not have the crime in the first place.
As such, he prefers to excise those who are perpetrating evil, going so far as to even keep them from reincarnating at least for a time, when they’re caught in the act by someone he trusts or he’s absolutely certain that they actually did the evil. And, past that, work out how to avoid the thing in the first place.
If Grrlpower secretly has trigger events ala Worm, he’s trying to reduce their incidence rate as much as possible to avoid 50% of humanity being supers. Otherwise, he’s trying to make a world in which someone who finds out they have superpowers doesn’t automatically think revenge or conquest.
I therefore suspect that instead of doing restorative justice, he restores from his own pocket when his citizens are victims of crimes and settles with the perpetrators when he can. That this strategy allows him to skim a bit off the top without it being apparent to any is a feature.
So, I’m assuming the first bit with Vale is her looking up their manifesto or whatever… on the internet? and then reading her instructions from Deus. There wasn’t quite enough transition in my opinion.
Not too terribly upset about Vale murdering terrorists/mercenaries hired by/for terrorists.
I searched the archive for cthillia02 and noticed that page 531 doesn’t show up because there’s an l missing in their name.
Fixed.
Hey, Dave, just wondering. Can you put the page 1 2 of the comments section at the top of the page, as well as at the bottom? It defaults to the last page when you click on Comments in the comic, so I always have to go to the bottom to read page 1 first.
Also, I totally expected that was what the dagger was going to be used for! :)
Seconded. When I start reading the comments, I want to know right away if I’m reading from page 1, or falling into the middle of the discussions.
I would like this as well. I’ll have to find a guy to figure out how though.
I’d be willing to take a look, if you’d like.
This is the plugin I used to use, but I think something in WordPress or possibly ComicEasel replaced the functionality so I deactivated it, but it’s still installed. It used to have page navigation at the top of the comments as well as the bottom, but I think I’d gotten someone to add that functionality in. I don’t know if it got removed during an update or why I deactivated it. It’s possible some WordPress update borked it.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-paginate/
Honestly I don’t know what’s paginating the comments at the moment.
Dave, based on how you described the Gatlyn Justice System, it’s likely to be even more flawed than the American Justice System, cause it means that the more rich and politically connected are likely to get away scott-free
For instance, say a high-ranking bureaucrat breaks several major laws and screws alot of people over, if he can sweet talk Deus into accepting that it’s overall beneficial to him in the long run, then the case is as good as dropped, as every Gatlyn lawyer preety much works for the guy
I don’t think it’s possible to sweet talk Deus like that
Agreed. He seems like the type who would see through that kind of manipulation, and understand the long-term problems allowing it would cause.
Even if it involves giving him something he really wants?
Deus has very clear ideas about not only what he wants but it should be obtained. If the bureaucrat feels any need to sweet-talk Deus about it, he presumably used methods that line his own pocket more than Deus’ plan called for, and that’s pretty much guaranteed to mean those methods deprived others more than Deus’ plan called for.
Deus is a good enough Chessmaster to be angered when his subordinates diverge from his plan because they aren’t thinking as many moves ahead as he is.
Kinda think so, yeah. He reminds me quite a bit of some of the versions of Doctor Doom and Latveria. He will get what he wants but will do what he thinks appropriate, regarless.
The problem isn’t that Deus isn’t corruptible. The problem is, what Deus clearly most wants is in opposition to what said bureaucrat did and there’s nothing said bureaucrat could really offer that would counter that.
I mean, it’s possible that Vale’s already gotten into such an agreement with him. Cthillia seems to be in such an agreement with him. But they’re directed to perpetrating their acts in accordance with his plans rather than in opposition to them.
To be clear, I feel like the scenario you gave could work if the bureaucrat did their violations prior to Deus having jurisdiction. We saw that he at least spoke as if he would do that with Indinge. But once he considers an area his jurisdiction, he’s really not going to be open to people who are doing things that will hamper his plans.
If his plans were just about making money, or just about ruling a country, fine. But he has bigger plans than that, and that corruption puts those plans at risk.
I think that Deus ordered the speech so ensure that Vale was as angry as their crimes deserve when they get killed.
Deus loves to talk and hear his voice so of course he’d have a long speech I agree with Vale just do it and walk away. Serial rapists/killers do not deserve a second chance much less many.
I suppose in a world without supers, and a country without the 4th amendment, you can use telepathic interrogation, and be fairly certain of somebody’s guilt. Or at least that they’re nasty enough the telepath is going to tell you they’re guilty…
Yes, which is why I have less of a problem with this than I’d have in real life. Because I’m assuming the people who are executed are people who Deus is able to determine, with 100% certainty, are guilty of the horrific crime which they’re being executed for (ie, in this case, foreign mercenaries-turned-rapists operating in Galytn after repeated warnings to stop).
Is the monologging not a challenge, or not an enjoyment?
For Vale, it’s a huge challenge because she doesn’t enjoy it. For Deus, it’s a huge challenge because he knows he really shouldn’t but he enjoys it so much.
Imagine Archon has someone who is a shapeshifter and can impersonate ANYONE…including Vale!
This shapeshifter knocks out Vale,drags her into a wooded area (or some other area),strips off her clothes and walks off to infiltrates Deus’s latest operation.
Just before leaving the shapeshifter would be confronted by the real Vale(clad in only her underwear)…!
Vale says to the shapeshifter, “I’ll teach you to impersonate me!”
“This shapeshifter knocks out Vale”
I’m not entirely sure that it’s physically possible to knock out Vale.
Given that Vale seems more like a immaterial being in a physical, non-human shell, I don’t think it’s a given that she’s actually wearing clothes.
Or she’s wearing clothes on the physical, non-human shell. :)
Remember on the plane as she was coming back to Galytn with the Sky Breaker, she was in a robe. Then when meeting up with Deus she was in her clothes again. So that seems like a given that she does wear clothes on the shell, and the shell itself can look like a naked woman by default.
oh i like him even more now. and i do take it that he would have proof of how low these “mercs” are. and thus deserving of both the clean up and the torture of one of his speeches.
At least they were not made to watch a PowerPoint.
OH THE HORROR! NOT A POWER POINT!!! lol don’t remind me I hated those one of my collage teachers INSISTED every paper had to be power point gah….
The only thing worse than having to view PowerPoint documents is having to make them.
dues- next time have vale deliver the speech via PowerPoint. in memory of the innocence of all the engineers who have had to live with PowerPoint engineering on their conscience.
arguing about the morality of the death penalty is a luxury only a wealthy advanced culture can engage in. Locking up a dangerous sociopath is expensive and manpower intensive, not to mention the way it tends to poison the character of the gatekeepers. It is incredibly hard to incarcerate an intelligent person for life.
I’m against the death penalty for two reasons. One is the one you listed about how flawed the justice system is. And the other is because it bothers me to kill a helpless person.
The first could be dealt with by fixing the system, and putting in safeguards, saying for instance that any one facing the death penalty has their case reviewed by a panel of experts, after a jury has brought in a guilty verdict.
The second matter has to be weighed against the good of society. What is morally correct for an individual might not be morally correct for a society that has to consider the rights of everyone.
Looks like super intelligence comes with the monologue weakness as a mandatory.
Seriously, she’s performing a mercy on them as much as herself
jesus christ my guy monologes WHEN ISNT EVEN THERE WTF that is glorious he my favorite character now im sorry
Is this arc going to wrap up soon? I feel like the comic has been “Deus monologues” for entirely too many pages.
Wait, they’re RAPIST, mercenaries? A quick death is too good for them: Kill them slowly while you force them to listen to the full monologue!
Just give them a quick death, torture demeans the torturer.
Probably I would give everyone a chance doing something for the community with forced labour (slavery).
And if you try to flee or do another crime you had your chance.
you forget, there are people on this planet and possibly in comic who need to hurt people around them as part of their life. its kind of like dung beetles, if you have to eat it- it ain’t demeaning.
Not just rapist mercenaries, but rapist mercenaries who have been given REPEATED warnings, apparently.
Someone had far too much fun with this page.
the commenters too.
the kind of fun being had in the Potter universe, where Harry’d ‘go to’ spell is Expelliarmis, because Hermoine told him being expelled was a fate worse than death.
“but there’s just no way to talk about that without it turning into a political shitstorm”
Implying the dozen or so page-comments haven’t been political shitstorms?
Hmm, everyone is focused on the mercs-turned-rapist part, didn’t notice that the first part of the speech is clearly targeted at missionaries?
Those aren’t missionaries, they’re the far right evangelical extremist sort. The sort that only care about the unborn. Right up until they get born, at which point they become another minority to hate and hurt.
I’m pretty sure people who are against abortions of the unborn do not suddenly say it’s okay to kill the babies once they are born. Before of after birth they tend to be mainly concerned about the ‘not killing’ part.
The people who are against abortions are all too accepting of letting the baby starve to death, be poisoned, or die of preventable medical issues. The anti-abortion, anti-contraceptives people tend to be the same people who are anti-food stamps, anti-environmental safety, anti-affordable healthcare, and most recently, anti-fixing the baby formula shortage. They abandon the fetus they supposedly care about as soon as it is out of the womb.
“The people who are against abortions are all too accepting of letting the baby starve to death, be poisoned, or die of preventable medical issues.”
I don’t think people who are against abortions are at the same time okay with neglecting an infant to let them starve to death or be poisoned after birth. That whole thing with Ralph Northam seems to heavily imply that they do not want babies dying either before or after they are out of the womb. Plus they are against Title 18 of the USC which allows a health care practitioner to fail to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an attempted abortion. There’s also the Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2001 and the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, both of which involve babies after they are born so that the health care practitioner or mother can’t just let the baby starve to death or withhold medical aid so the baby dies.
“The anti-abortion, anti-contraceptives people”
While this might sometimes overlap with people who are against abortion ENTIRELY because of certain religious reasons, I think most people who are against abortion are not against contraception. In fact they often are pro-contraception so that the act of sex does not result in an unwanted pregnancy, which creates the possibility of the woman getting an abortion. Because the general scientific argument is that sperm and eggs on their own is not life (if there’s no fertilization, the sperm and the eggs will never become a human being if you do nothing to stop them from existing), but a sperm-fertilized egg is human life at a very early stage (and will become a fully formed human being if you do nothing to stop it from existing).
“anti-food stamps,”
I’m confused as to what food stamps have to do with abortion.
“anti-environmental safety,”
I’m also confused as to what environmental safety has to do with abortion.
“anti-affordable healthcare,”
Unless the healthcare happens to be abortion procedures, I’m not sure what this has to do with abortion.
“They abandon the fetus they supposedly care about as soon as it is out of the womb.”
I think abandoning an infant that has been born to die is a crime. Murder. Or at the very least Depraved Indifference to Human Life. Which is different than, say, giving up a child to be put up for adoption or given to someone else who will care for the infant. The argument is that intentionally ending the life of another human being, at any stage of life at which the being is a human being, should not be legal. Which tends to then get to the whole question of ‘at what point is a human being a human being’ which is the heart of the debate.
Let me summarize: The same people most strongly against abortion also work to create a world in which many people suffer and die for fully preventable reasons. The same people against intentional killing of fetuses are often in favor of intentional killing of adults, whether by individuals or the state.
“The same people most strongly against abortion also work to create a world in which many people suffer and die for fully preventable reasons. ”
1) And you think the people who are pro-abortion work to create a world where people do NOT die from preventable reasons?
2) I think there’s a rather major difference between the direct killing of a person, and the more esoteric ‘creation of a world where people do not suffer in general from the daily grind of life. If I fire a person as a bad employee, or even just because I can’t afford to keep them as an employee, which means they might not be able to afford to buy food if they don’t get another job, it’s not the same as me stabbing them in the back of the neck at the brain stem and sucking out their brains like the Smart Bugs in Starship Troopers.
“The same people against intentional killing of fetuses are often in favor of intentional killing of adults, whether by individuals or the state.”
Again, this is apples vs oranges. The difference being that the intentional killing of adults (and I am assuming you are talking about the Death Penalty) is based on people who have been found guilty of a crime worthy of the death penalty. And pro-death penalty advocates are not pro-kill people who are NOT guilty of the crimes they are accused of. Whereas there is no such thing as a fetus/baby who has committed a death penalty crime. They are not capable of the mens rea to commit a death penalty-worthy criminal act, so the argument is that when you abort a baby, you are by necessity killing a person who has NOT committed any crime. Which is as wrong as knowingly murdering an adult who has also not committed any crime. There are no anti-abortion advocates who are pro-kill innocent people. If the Death Penalty results in the death of an innocent person, that’s NOT something they approve of for the same reasoning as they have against abortion.
1) Absolutely. They work to create a world in which people are free to make their own choices, live their own lives, and are not subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. They work to create a world that maximizes need fulfillment, and minimizes suffering, rather than one that leverages both as a means to control people.
2) You may think so, and many other people may think so, but that doesn’t make it true. Indirect harm may be less predictable, and may rely on factors outside the person’s control, but harm through inaction is not necessarily any more moral than harm through action. If you make a choice with knowledge of the outcome, it doesn’t matter how indirect the harm is. You still caused it, even if it’s hard to trace back to you.
Capital punishment falls under intentional killing by the state, but I also mentioned intentional killing by individuals, by which I am referring to people who believe they have a right to kill others who they feel wronged by, without due process.
“1) Absolutely. They work to create a world in which people are free to make their own choices, live their own lives, and are not subject to the whims of the rich and powerful.”
I think your opinion is not indicative of the facts, and seems to be a ‘my side is the side of angels, the other is evil.’ The pro-abortion advocates are obviously NOT trying to work to create a world where people are free to make their own choices, since an infant cannot make their own choice about being aborted, unless your view is that they are not living human beings. Because the whole point of abortion seems to be to kill someone where it is preventable. Even if the mother does not want to keep the baby, would it not be a better choice to remove the baby as soon as it’s scientifically viable, WITHOUT killing the infant? Either way, it would end the pregnancy, but one way, both individuals get what they want – the mother gets to not have to keep the baby, and the baby gets to not be killed (which I am assuming most life forms want to do, rather than wanting to die).
I also think it’s a problem to treat pro-abortion or anti-abortion advocates as a monolith group. There are pro-abortion people who might also support the death penalty, and ones who are against the death penalty. There are anti-abortion people who likewise might support the death penalty or oppose it. The same people who are pro-abortion may also be war hawks when it comes to sending American soldiers to foreign lands to die in a war in which the US is not directly threatened, and the same people who are anti-abortion might be rabidly anti-war on any circumstance outside of where the homeland is directly threatened.
“You may think so, and many other people may think so, but that doesn’t make it true.”
It actaully is true. One is a direct act of killing another. The other other is a very esoteric concept where death of another is not remotely a certainty. Again, take the scenario I made as an example. If you think I’m guilty of murder for firing a worker who did not do a good job, because they might kill themselves out of depression, or might not find another job, that’s not on me – that’s on them. I am not REQUIRED to hire someone. Or if I cannot afford to keep hiring an employee and have to let them go, I’m not guilty of murder there either. I am under no requirement to go into debt in order to keep hiring someone who I cannot afford to hire. It’s COMPLETELY different than if I stab them with the intent to kill them.
Heck, take you and I for example. We argue (quite civilly) but what if I’m actually massively depressed, and your arguments cause me to spiral into a depression in which I take my own life? It’s not your fault that I would do that. You are not under an obligation to tip-toe around my feelings when you disagree with my arguments. You would not be causing my death, even if there’s some causal linkage, however shallow. There has to be some significant link. If the cause and effect are too distant, then it’s basically like the Palsgraf case and it’s unlikely to be a proximate cause (Proimate cause increases as the cause becomes more direct and necessary for the injury to occur, and likewise decreases as the cause becomes less direct and less necessary for the injury to occur).
” If you make a choice with knowledge of the outcome, it doesn’t matter how indirect the harm is. You still caused it, even if it’s hard to trace back to you.”
You’re mistaken. This scenario that you’re proposing would fly in the face of the very concept of proximate cause. The more steps there are between cause and effect, or the more difficult is it to substantiate that my cause directly created the effect, the less likely that you can show proximate cause to show that I’m liable.
You’d basically be using the Butterfly Effect to blame almost anyone for almost anything. You voted for a certain politician, who voted yes for a war, which causes another person’s son to be drafted, which causes him to go to war which causes him to die when an enemy soldier shoots them. By the logic you’re proposing, you are responsible for that person’s son’s death, just as if you had shot them yourself. It’s sort of ridiculous.
Btw I think I’ve posted the Palsgraf case in the past but if you want I can describe it again? It’s pretty much the go-to case for explaining proximate cause.
“Capital punishment falls under intentional killing by the state,”
Yes. Although I admit there’s an argument that just having the state do it does not mean it’s never murder. A prosecutor who lies and hides evidence to convict someone, who then is executed, for example. Or a state which commits genocide or mass deaths of another people (ie, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the Hutus and the Tutis, Pol Pot, the Uyghur persecution in China, the Armenian Genocide, etc). It’s an argument that 216,000 – 346,000 infants killed each year could be similarly unlawful, even if technically it was part of the law. Which… actually with Roe vs Wade it would not be, since Roe vs Wade is not a law, and never was (judicial branch doesnt make law, only the legislative branch does, which is one of the primary rationales for why it was overturned and sent back to the states, so that the states could make their own laws on abortion instead on a state-by-state basis, since there isn’t a constitutional right to an abortion, and if there isnt, then based on the 10th amendment, any right not granted to the Federal Government revert back to the state or the people).
“by which I am referring to people who believe they have a right to kill others who they feel wronged by, without due process”
I’m a little confused about this part of your post and how it fits into the thread argument we were having.
I think the main disconnect is you keep trying to perceive the math via the lens of whether or not the person would be found guilty in a murder case. Law is pretty terrible in this regard, as it is not suited at all for finding to what degree you’ve *saved* another person’s life. Nor really for indirect consequences.
Like yeah, it flies in the face of proximate cause… which is a legal concept dude. It exists within the framework of law for the application of law. It isn’t some universal truth that everything abides by. The physical process of cause and effect gives exactly zero shits about legal concepts.
But in plain terms, if a healthcare bill is passed, which allots more funding to mental health, and as a result after accounting for other factors the rate of suicide and self harm falls, it seems pretty evident that the healthcare bill ‘saved’ those lives. you can qualm all you want, but in that circumstance the healthcare bill would’ve been responsible for preventing those suicides.
“You voted for a certain politician, who voted yes for a war, which causes another person’s son to be drafted, which causes him to go to war which causes him to die when an enemy soldier shoots them. By the logic you’re proposing, you are responsible for that person’s son’s death, just as if you had shot them yourself. It’s sort of ridiculous.”
And yet that’s how cause and effect works. If the person voting for the politician voted for them with the intent that the politician would vote for/declare war, than the moral blame for the deaths that would result can be lain at their feet, though it is somewhat muddled as there two layers of votes, the civilian’s and the politician’s. If the person voted for the politician, who then unexpectedly voted for war, then it would of course not be the civilian’s fault, as they didn’t want to go to war and couldn’t have known it would lead to war. If the politician expectedly went to war but the civilian didn’t know/intend, then it would be more or less negligence, lesser, but if the conclusion that the politician would’ve voted for war was reasonably clear, then blame can still be assigned to the civilian.
To simplify it to just the politician’s decision, they are the tiebreaker or such. The politician has a choice, if they vote yes, then people will be forced to go to war. A certain number of those people will die. While abstract, that is the weight of the choice. That is what is being weighed when the politician makes the choice. If they vote no… not sure what happens, the hypothetical isn’t specified.
The closest legal concept, if you insist on looking at it from that angle, would be negligence. You make a decision, it is applied throughout the company, whether it is the Ford Pinto or serving coffee above safe temperatures, you did the math, knew that people would be harmed by the decision, and went ahead with it anyway. In such a case, even though your decision didn’t directly cause any deaths, it did still lead to death and injury, and the company will be held liable, and the company can then hold the decision maker’s responsible and penalize them.
“Heck, take you and I for example. We argue (quite civilly) but what if I’m actually massively depressed, and your arguments cause me to spiral into a depression in which I take my own life? It’s not your fault that I would do that. You are not under an obligation to tip-toe around my feelings when you disagree with my arguments. You would not be causing my death, even if there’s some causal linkage”
Ok, to start, your ‘but what if I’m’, wouldn’t that mean from the start that the other wouldn’t know? Whereas with a healthcare bill, the Pinto, or the Coffee, they don’t know who specifically, but the decision makers know that some percentage of people *will* be affected, for the better in the case of the healthcare bill, or for the worse in latter cases.
Norman Borlaug saved a billion lives, he created enough food that a billion people who would’ve died to starvation didn’t. That is pretty clear. He created food that wouldn’t exist otherwise, and people were able to eat who wouldn’t other wise. Assuming that is clear, and you agree, what if it went the other way, if for instance it was one of the companies who destroyed food during the great depression. If someone who creates food that wouldn’t have existed otherwise can be reasonably credited with saving lives, than someone who destroys food and causes people to starve to death who wouldn’t otherwise can be reasonably credited with causing those deaths. More historically, the famines in Russia and China. They used bad science, planted crops wrong, and led to millions of deaths. They are blamed, rightly, for those deaths.
“I think the main disconnect is you keep trying to perceive the math via the lens of whether or not the person would be found guilty in a murder case.”
How else would I judge morality on a wide scale? Morality is often VERY subjective. If you have any hope of using an objective means test for it, you need to base it on something with consistent rules. And since I’m not religious and don’t really like using religious dogma in my reasoning, I use the law. Which helps because I’m a lawyer and it’s something I’m well-equipped to argue. :)
I also do tend to use science as well when arguing about if abortion makes sense or not, since scientifically it makes sense to consider the fetus to be a living human being, simply at an earlier state of development in the human life cycle, just like a 2 year old is in an earlier state of development than a teenager or a 35 year old. Heck, psychologists and the texts on the subject have shown that the average human being does not form a full personality until they’re around 6 years old, well after they’re born. A person with a fully formed personality is ‘more a person’ from a psychological standard than a person without one, but that does not justify killing anyone under six years old. There’s simply no ‘cut off point’ at which we can definitively claim ‘this is not yet a human being’ vs ‘this is now a human being’ because the term that was used in Roe vs Wade (viability) is not consistent and changes based on geographical location, technology, and time. Currently, a fetus is viable as early as 20-21 weeks (Curtis Means in Germany, who is now 16 months old, and only gestated in the womb for 132 days). A few years ago, that would not be considered viable because of technology. Eventually, it’s likely they’ll be able to have the infant out of the womb even at the pre-fetus stage, like they currently can with a chicken embryo. So the term ‘viability’ would not work as a requirement in a law. Although Roe was never a law in the first place, despite some people’s claims who do not understand how laws work or are made.
“Law is pretty terrible in this regard, as it is not suited at all for finding to what degree you’ve *saved* another person’s life. Nor really for indirect consequences.”
Law is good in one important respect. If you do not know you make the assumption that causes the least amount of overall harm to everyone involved.
If a statement in a contract is ambiguous, vague, or unconscionable, remove the ambiguous, vague, or unconscionable statement and see if the contract can still work. If it can, use that as the contract.
If a person’s testimony is hearsay, have it stricken as evidence and produce more direct evidence. If you can’t, then your case is weak.
If you do not know for sure when a baby is a living being, you go to the earliest possible time when you can DEFINITIVELY scientifically tell there’s a difference – ie, the difference between a sperm and an egg separately with separate DNA strands, and once they join and form new, unique DNA (conception).
“Like yeah, it flies in the face of proximate cause… which is a legal concept dude. It exists within the framework of law for the application of law. ”
If you want to have any sort of consistency when dealing with issues of morality, you’ll need some sort of legal definitions. Otherwise every outcome will be different, even if the variables are identical, and will result in MASSIVE unfairness. And yes, proximate cause is found in the law. But it’s also found in science, as well as in philosophical concepts that predate modern legal structures.
Law just codifies the concept so that it can be used consistently with multiple different people when they meet the same subject matter and scenarios.
“It isn’t some universal truth that everything abides by.”
The four fundamental forces of the universe are an example of the LAWS of the universe.
In the scientific method, there’s one thing above a scientific theory, and that’s a scientific law, like the Laws of Thermodynamics, Hook’s Law of Eleasticity, Archimedes’ Principle of Buoyancy, Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures, Fourier’s Law of Heat Conduction, Bernoulli’s Law of Fluid Thermodynamics, Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, Hubble’s Law of Cosmic Expansion, Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion, or the Universal Law of Gravitation.
We are all subject to laws by necessity, whether legal, scientific, or religious, in order to have a coherent society or universe.
“And yet that’s how cause and effect works. ”
I read the following 3 paragraphs after this sentence and I’m not certain that you understood what I was saying, or possibly I did not explain what I was saying well enough, perhaps.
i’m saying that the more distant the cause is from the effect, the less acceptable it is to blame me, the initial cause, for the action that befalls you – the eventual effect. Because the less likely it is for there to be a PROXIMATE cause. Otherwise, why begin at me voting for a politician? Why not start earlier – blame my 3rd grade teacher for being an important influence on my life. OR blame my mother for giving birth to me. Or blame President Garfield for making sure that Hawaii became a state, snice I wouldnt be an American then who can vote. Or blame Kamehameha the Great for uniting all hawaiian islands back in 1810, or his ancestors who first arrived on the islands. It’s a never ending line of blame to the point of complete insanity and irrationality if you ignore proximate cause being a factor. Which is why, in the law, proximate cause is important when establishing liability.
“More historically, the famines in Russia and China. They used bad science, planted crops wrong, and led to millions of deaths. They are blamed, rightly, for those deaths.”
The difference between your historical example and my example to Torabi is that there’s a direct, proximate cause between what Russian and Chinese officials did in passing a law, and the effects of that law causing starvation. I cannot blame, say, a person who had an opportunity to kill Mao for the starvation, just because his failure to kill Mao led to starvation. Or I cannot blame the person who produced the paper on which Stalin wrote his decrees which took land away from private farmers to give it to inept state-chosen people who did not understand the basics of farming and caused famine. There’s no proximate cause there. The less involvement the initial person had with the ultimate result, the less reasonable it is to blame that person for the result. And speech alone is a REALLY bad reason to blame someone for a result happening, since there are a LOT of causes and effects, and a LOT of choices and other people involved, between speech and a result.
‘While this might sometimes overlap with people who are against abortion ENTIRELY because of certain religious reasons, I think most people who are against abortion are not against contraception. In fact they often are pro-contraception so that the act of sex does not result in an unwanted pregnancy,’
the anti contraception is being proudly spoken by the same people who are most proud of (and have accomplished) outlawing abortion. those ‘religious’ people form the backbone of the pro-life movement.
in my opinion the abortion debate in this country was a brilliant bit of misdirection. its being used to cover up/drowns out a lot of ugly positions on other issues. the fact that it subjugates women and effectively makes them responsible for sexuality is just a bonus.
Most of what I’m writing is just a history of the standard abortion debates that both sides use. Especially from an intellectually legal and scientiific aspect. Please don’t get angry if possible – don’t kill the messenger:
“the anti contraception is being proudly spoken by the same people who are most proud of (and have accomplished) outlawing abortion”
This is incorrect. It refers to a small minority of people who are anti-abortion ENTIRELY because of an ultra-religious reasoning. And even then, it’s usually not all of the ultra-religious who think that – it’s people who follow strict dogma about contraception bans, which I think is not based remotely on science at all. It’s definitely not the majority – it’s not even a particularly large minority, and it’s probably the least effective or persuasive argument because a LOT of people who are agnostic or atheists are against abortion, and are not going to be swayed by ‘God says so.’ Also, the idea of tying anti-contraception with anti-abortion implies that sperm and eggs are alive, which they are not by ANY scientific argument, whereas after conception, the resulting zygote (and then fetus) is a living organism. Whether it’s human or not is another question that is debated, as well as ‘at what point can we legislate that the fetus is human, at which point you cannot kill the fetus, because that would be murder – ie, the intentional killing of another human being’).
And no, that does not make up the bulk of the anti-abortion/pro-life side. The overwhelming majority of pro-life/anti-aboriton advocates use a scientific reasoning (that you cannot tell at which point a person is a living human, so the earlier in the pregnancy, the less likely the fetus would be considered human, or if you still can’t tell, in the absence of proof that someone is NOT a human, you have to go to the earliest point where you can definitely tell that there’s a difference between life and non-life – conception) or a more generalistic moral but not religious reasoning (that it’s just wrong to kill human life in general, which
– according to atheists like Sam Harris have said in his debate with Alan Keyes – even the most die-hard atheist can think, because being moral does not REQUIRE being religious).
“in my opinion the abortion debate in this country was a brilliant bit of misdirection”
If you’re talking about Roe vs Wade, it was poor law in the first place because it was NOT a law. Both conservative judges like Scalia and liberal judges like Ruth Bader Ginsberg agreed that it was NOT based on the Constitution, and it should have just been left to the states like any other right that is not defined as belonging to the Federal government in the Constitution or its Amendments. Not to mention Roe vs Wade was based on a lie, according to Roe herself. If the government wants a federal abortion law, that is something the legislative branch needs to do, not judges. Or even create an Amendment allowing it, at which point it would be taken out of the hands of the individual states in a constitutional manner.
The whole ‘viability’ standard was not based on a scientific standard though, because viability is a moving scale based on the wealth of the parent(s), the location in which the baby is being born, the time during which the baby is being born, and the technology involved, since a baby being prematurely born in the US has a higher chance of viability than a premature birth in a third world nation, or a baby being born today can be born earlier and be viable than a baby that was born 80 years ago. A person does not ‘become’ human at an earlier point in life just becaue they happen to be born in a different location on Earth, or at a different time on Earth, or with the help of technology they otherwise would not have had, or having access to resources they would otherwise not have had. So it was a faulty bit of scientific reasoning which really needed to go through the legislature and argued and debated and compromised to pass a law on the subject.
“and effectively makes them responsible for sexuality is just a bonus.”
In general, people should be responsible for their actions if it’s a self-aware and knowing action of their own volition. And if someone says ‘what about in cases of rape’ then 1) that’s not of their own volition, and 2) ask if they would be okay with being responsible for the results of sex in all cases EXCEPT rape. If they agree, then that still is about 99% of what the pro-life side wants. If they disagree, then their argument is disingenuous, and they are using a fringe rare example to try to have an in on the majority of abortions which are not from rape.
If you are saying that the subjugation is a woman being forced to share their bodily nutrients until the infant can be removed from the mother ALIVE, then you have to do a balancing test, and this is just harsh facts. On one hand is someone temporarily giving up some of their nutrients for a limited period of time, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is due to their own actions (along with the father, who should be required to be financially helping since they cannot be biologically helping). On the other hand is killing a human life. You are essentially balancing convenience of one person vs life of another person, unless you try to argue that the baby is not a life. Which brings us back to step 1 of the abortion debate of ‘when is a life a life’ (see above paragraph).
Dude, In real time, the anti abortion people are trying to pass an anti abortion bill that would include several forms of birth control, such as the day after pill, IUD’s, and other methods that prevent implantation defined as “abortificants”, leaving pretty much just condoms as ‘acceptable’ birth control.
And dude, you are either a real idiot, or a troll.
You have missed the point entirely, that the anti abortion people will make a huge fuss about making sure the baby is born, but then not care at all about the child growing up. They are against food stamps, prefering to let the mother and child starve. They are against environmental protection, preferring to let them be poisoned by lead. They are against affordable healthcare, preferring to let them die or suffer from preventable illnesses. And yet, even though these issues directly affect the health and safety of the child, you see no connection.
“1) And you think the people who are pro-abortion work to create a world where people do NOT die from preventable reasons?”
Yeah dude, the same party that votes for abortion also votes for healthcare, environmental safety, and general quality of life. Meanwhile the anti abortion party is the same one who votes against all those issues.
“Dude, In real time, the anti abortion people are trying to pass an anti abortion bill that would include several forms of birth control, such as the day after pill, IUD’s, and other methods that prevent implantation defined as “abortificants”, leaving pretty much just condoms as ‘acceptable’ birth control.”
Show me the law that is making IUDs and birth control illegal. Seriously, I’d like to see the law making IUDs and birth control pills illegal, unless you’re just making this up. The only thing I could find even remotely similar is the Missouri legislature trying to make it so Medicaid will not pay for IUDs as a form of contraception in Missouri. IT DOES NOT MAKE IT ILLEGAL. The only other thing I found was Louisiana which is wanting to make Plan B drugs illegal, because they want to pass a law that makes abortion illegal at the point of conception. Plan B is not birth control though. Plus you can still have an abortion by going outside of Louisiana, even if that law was to be passed.
If a state was to try to pass a law outlawing birth control (and the only thing that even comes close is Missouri, which again is NOT making IUDs illegal), it probably would fail because of a case that set precedent called Griswold vs Connecticut in 1965 which stated it was unconstitutional for the state to prevent a married couple from using birth control (and unlike Roe, this DOES have a basis in the Constitution under the 14th’s Amendment’s substantive due process doctrine) and later on in 1972, Eisenstady vs Baird, which said that if it’s unconstitutional under Griswold for married couples, because of the 14th Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause would also extend that protection to single persons (“the rights must be the same for the unmarried and married alike”). Anti-contraception laws have not been a politically viable idea since the Cornstock laws in the early 20th century.
Also, at the same time that some states are making laws to make abortion illegal past a certain point in time (examples like the Heartbeat Bill in Texas, which would make abortion illegal as soon as the infant’s heartbeat starts), there are other states which are making abortion LEGAL all the way up to the point of birth, or at various points after the infant is viable OUTSIDE of the womb, but would allow the infant to be killed anyway (New York, California, and Arizona), while othr states that allow late-term abortion in the absence of Roe vs Wade with no state-imposed thresholds include Alaska, Colorado, DC, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont. In several states, abortion can be allowed at any stage, including up until birth, if the mother’s life is in jeopardy, including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachussetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Virginia, and Washington. Even though they could sidestep the entire controversy by saying ‘end the pregnancy’ instead of ‘abort the infant’ – since both ways would end the pregnancy, but one way would end the pregnancy while keeping both the mother and child alive. But that’s what the states did, which has more legal backing than what Roe was doing at least.
Plus the Democrats just tried to pass a law allowing abortion at any point in time until birth on a federal level (Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act (aka Women’s Health Protection Act) – which is actually the legal way to try to pass a law. They failed because they did not have the votes to pass that law. Which is ALSO how the law works.
“And dude, you are either a real idiot, or a troll.”
Could you for once argue without ad hominem attacks? It makes you look very immature and makes any arguments you make seem worthless, because you cannot back up your views with facts … or at least well thought out opinions.
The rest of what you write is just fearmongering without any basis in reality, where you can actually point to a law or policy on the books. Or even a bill that has a chance of passing within the state. And even if I was to grant you that by steelmanning your horribly, poorly formed arguments based on nothing, it still wouldnt stop abortions – it would just mean they’d have to do it in another state where it is legal, since every state is going to wind up making different laws on abortion, since there’s no overarching federal law (the Democrats tried to pass a federal law on abortion and failed two weeks ago on May 11th, in a 49-51 vote).
But hey, I’m sure you’ll just respond to this by calling me a troll again or using various expletives, which seems to be more your speed. Despite that everything I’ve said is completely accurate.
Oklahoma HB 4327, which defines the start of life as fertilization, and bans any abortion after that point unless the woman is about to die. Because of the wording of the first couple of drafts, it would’ve also banned contraceptives that work by preventing implantation, such as the day after pill and IUD’s. And dude, the day after pill is an emergency contraceptive. Though it does look like they did fix the wording by specifying that it doesn’t criminalized plan b and such.
Also dude, you don’t understand how ad hominem attacks work. Ad hominem is “you are an idiot, therefore your argument is wrong”, whereas my stance, has and continues to be “your argument is so wrong I believe you are an idiot”.
“several states, abortion can be allowed at any stage, including up until birth, if the mother’s life is in jeopardy”
So this bit, seriously why doesn’t this list include every state? If the woman’s life is in danger, then it should be allowed.
“Oklahoma HB 4327, which defines the start of life as fertilization, and bans any abortion after that point unless the woman is about to die. Because of the wording of the first couple of drafts, it would’ve also banned contraceptives that work by preventing implantation, such as the day after pill and IUD’s.”
https://legiscan.com/OK/text/HB4327/id/2587278/Oklahoma-2022-HB4327-Enrolled.pdf
Here’s the bill. Please read it. Then show me where it makes contraception illegal.
In fact, the bill specifically says it does NOT include contraception as part of the definition of what’s banned by banning abortion in Oklahoma.
Page 2:
“It does not include the use, prescription, administration, procuring, or selling of Plan B,
morning-after pills, or any other type of contraception or emergency contraception.
Also page 3:
“The prohibition in Section 2 of this act does not apply to an abortion performed at the behest of federal agencies, contractors, or employees that are carrying out duties under federal law, if a
prohibition on that abortion would violate the doctrines of preemption or intergovernmental immunity.”
So no, Tempo. You are wrong or you are lying, and given your past posts, I’m not that likely to think you aren’t just lying and assume no one would read the bill.
” And dude, the day after pill is an emergency contraceptive. ”
1) The bill does not ban the morning after pill.
2) The morning after pill is NOT contraception. Contraception means preventing conception. Once conception already happens, it is, BY DEFINITION, not contraception. Contraception aims to prevent pregnancy. A woman can get pregnant if a man’s sperm reaches one of her eggs (ova). Contraception tries to stop this happening by: keeping the egg and sperm apart or stopping egg production.
LEARN. DEFINITIONS.
“Though it does look like they did fix the wording by specifying that it doesn’t criminalized plan b and such.”
So you finally read the bill and saw that you were wrong, and trying to make an excuse for you being wrong. Just admit that you were wrong.
“Also dude, you don’t understand how ad hominem attacks work. Ad hominem is “you are an idiot, therefore your argument is wrong”, whereas my stance, has and continues to be “your argument is so wrong I believe you are an idiot”.”
You really, really, really need to learn how to debate. And you need to learn definitions.
The ad hominem fallacy is when, instead of addressing someone’s argument or position (WHICH YOU NEVER SEEM TO DO WITH ME), you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. You think that calling me a troll or an idiot somehow actually strengthens your argument, but it just makes you look incapable of bolstering your own counter-argument, because you do not have a good counterargument. So instead, you attack my character, my intentions, or my intelligence. Whereas I keep a cool and level head when arguing with you, despite your arguments being sparse or angry diatribes without logic or consistency, or sometimes completely fabricated, so it looks a lot better for my argument. I’m even polite to you when describing the many, many, many ways in which you are wrong, despite that you’ve never given me the same courtesy of politeness.
Yes, I understand how an ad hominem attack works. I’ve been in debates. I understand all the debating fallacies. I’m an attorney. I know how to make a coherent argument which won’t piss off a judge. Most of your arguments, if in a court setting, would likely have you charged in contempt of court because you can’t keep your temper in check or quit with the namecalling. The only reason I’m even bothering to say all this is because it’s in response to you thinking I don’t understand ad hominems, when I was stating that you MAKE ad hominem attacks regularly.
“So this bit, seriously why doesn’t this list include every state? If the woman’s life is in danger, then it should be allowed.”
Because:
1) Each state has its own right to make its own laws if those rights are not listed within the Constitution, due to the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that any rights not specifically given to the Federal Government are left to the states or the people.
2) The definition of ‘the woman’s life being in jeopardy’ differs in definition in different states, or the wording tends to be more nebulous as being described as ‘the health of the mother.’ Which has been interpreted in several states by lawmakers as ‘including the mental health of the mother, which includes depression or an altered emotional state.’ Which is NOT the life of the mother anymore, and basically allows for abortion up to the point of birth, and in one case, even after the point of birth after an unsuccessful abortion attempt where the baby is delivered alive anyway. Which is the complete opposite of the intent of that bill.
3) I cannot think of almost any example where the woman’s life is in jeopardy where they must kill the baby in order to prevent the woman’s death. In any situation where the baby would need to be removed, it can be removed alive, rather than killed then removed, with ONE exception – when the woman has aggressive cancer and needs chemotherapy to survive, but chemotherapy will kill the unborn infant. This is EXTREMELY rare…. cancer-related maternal mortality only occurs in 1.23 out of 100,000 births, and in 85% of those examples, they just induced early labor labor instead or had a C-section before chemo took place. But even here, if the baby is not removed from the mother and die during chemotherapy, this is not an abortion. The goal of chemotherapy is NOT to kill the child – ie, it’s NOT meant to be an abortion – it’s an unfortunately side effect of the chemotherapy and in laws dealing with chemotherapy, it’s an incidental death, not an abortion. Also, in most cases where this is a possibility, the mother tends to voluntarily withhold chemotherapy until the baby can be removed ALIVE, according to a study done by the National Library of Medicine.
4) If Congress wants to, they can try to pass a federal law like what you propose. They tried once already but it was WAY too much, to the point that a few Democrats refused to go along with it because it would invalidate about 500 state laws. They could have just scaled it back and tried again while they still have a slight majority in both Houses of Congress and a Democrat in the executive branch to sign off on it afterwards, but they refused to do so for reasons that completely bewilder me, as if the concept of compromise in lawmaking was too difficult to fathom. Either that, or they knew that the bill as written would never pass and they just wanted to use it as a campaigning device for the mid-term elections in 2022 and later in 2024, which is also a possibility because… well… they’re politicians.
“So no, Tempo. You are wrong or you are lying, and given your past posts, I’m not that likely to think you aren’t just lying and assume no one would read the bill.”
Upon reflection I think this was mean of me to say. Because it occurs that you might not be lying and you might genuinely not have understood the bill or never actually read it, but might have heard someone inaccurately describe the bill to you, in which case, THEY lied to you instead, and you’re just passing on false information without an intent to lie.
In regard to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s thoughts on Roe vs Wade, you are wildly mischaracterizing it. She preferred that abortion be handled incrementally, but that doesn’t mean left up to the states, it meant that a series of court cases, all about specific facets of the birth control/abortion, adding up to the final thing. Instead Roe vs Wade did everything all at once, creating a single ‘opponent’ for objectors of abortion to rally against. Which also made it much, much easier to take down, as we are now seeing the consequences of. And again with the ‘Ginsburg said it wasn’t based on the constitution’, what? Where are you getting your information from? The closest I can find is that she criticized where in the constitution it was based, that being the Physician’s right to privacy rather than any equal protection basis. I’m getting my info from Nytimes and wikipedia, so please answer where you are getting your info.
Also what lie by Roe are you talking about? All I can find is that the anti-abortion people paid her to become an anti-abortion activist.
“In general, people should be responsible for their actions if it’s a self-aware and knowing action of their own volition. And if someone says ‘what about in cases of rape’ then 1) that’s not of their own volition, and 2) ask if they would be okay with being responsible for the results of sex in all cases EXCEPT rape. If they agree, then that still is about 99% of what the pro-life side wants. If they disagree, then their argument is disingenuous, and they are using a fringe rare example to try to have an in on the majority of abortions which are not from rape.”
The ‘what about rape’ argument is more of pointing out that the pro-life argument is being disingenuous. They base their argument in personal responsibility, yet don’t allow for cases when the consequence is out of the women’s control, either because birth control failed, or rape.
The argument is roughly as follows:
Pro life: pregnancy is a matter of personal responsibility and liability to consequences.
Pro Choice: what about rape? If *you* believe that women must carry a child to term because of a choice they made, what about cases where they didn’t make that choice
Notice here that the Pro Choice isn’t basing the rape exception out of their own reasoning, but critiquing the pro life reasoning, that, in the pro life’s own logic of basing it in personal responsibility, there should be an exception for rape.
““the anti contraception is being proudly spoken by the same people who are most proud of (and have accomplished) outlawing abortion”
This is incorrect. It refers to a small minority of people who are anti-abortion ENTIRELY because of an ultra-religious reasoning.”
The overlap of anti abortion and anti contraception is more like 22% according to Slate, with pretty much all anti contraception people also being anti abortion. So not really a small minority. Still a minority, but a pretty significant one. And personally it seems pretty logical that the people with the most extreme views would be the ones most inclined to get legislation passed along those views.
And in your case, you believe that the zygote is a fully living being, which would be agreeing with the logic that implantation prevention contraceptives would be considered abortion, even though the anti implantation contraceptives are the ones that the woman would actually have control over. Those being the pill and such.
““the anti contraception is being proudly spoken by the same people who are most proud of (and have accomplished) outlawing abortion”
This is incorrect. It refers to a small minority of people who are anti-abortion ENTIRELY because of an ultra-religious reasoning. And even then, it’s usually not all of the ultra-religious who think that – it’s people who follow strict dogma about contraception bans, which I think is not based remotely on science at all. It’s definitely not the majority – it’s not even a particularly large minority, and it’s probably the least effective or persuasive argument because a LOT of people who are agnostic or atheists are against abortion,”
And this bit, so the crossover between anti contraceptives and anti abortion is a small minority, but the crossover between anti abortion and non religious people is “a LOT”. Im curious, have you actually looked at the data? Because the crossover between the first two is 22% according to slate, and the crossover between the second two is 23% according to pew research. And I will freely admit that 23 percent is indeed larger than 22 percent, but is it really so much different that one is a small minority but the other is “a LOT”? Methinks someone is mischaracterizing the data.
“absence of proof that someone is NOT a human”
And this bit, this bit is just laughable. You are demanding proof of a negative, which is impossible. You fundamentally can’t prove a negative, that isn’t how science works. Your arguement here is the same as the people who argue that “you can’t prove god doesn’t exist, so we should act as if he does”.
Personally, the full development of a brain seems like a good place to put the viability standard, since being brain dead is also when you can take someone off life support.
Since that happens around the end of the second trimester, it seems like a good place to put it, especially since the vast majority of abortions happen before that point, with the main exceptions being:
1) Cases where the life of the woman is in danger or her health would be affected, which would also be a clear exception to your “On one hand is someone temporarily giving up some of their nutrients for a limited period of time” argument that it’s a balancing act.
2) People who were misled about abortion laws, usually by Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which are Pro-Life organizations who try to present themselves as organizations similar to Planned Parenthood in order to manipulate women into keeping the pregnancy, including outright lying to them about the laws.
In conclusion, Abortion is perfectly moral and ethical in the vast majority of cases where people are getting abortions. If you really want to qualm about the 1% of cases of abortion in the third trimester when the baby is more or less human, most of which are due to health emergencies which should trump your “nutrients vs human life” argument as it becomes “extant human life vs nascent human life”, we are well into the weeds and would need to be specific about what we are talking about.
“In regard to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s thoughts on Roe vs Wade, you are wildly mischaracterizing it.”
RBG considered Roe v Wade to be a faulty decision, NOT based on law. When a case is decided not based on law, you overturn it, and let it go back to the states so the states can handle it themselves via the legislature. And yes, that WOULD be slower to deal with the question of abortion. But it would also be CONSTITUTIONALLY VALID.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s thoughts on Roe vs Wade, in her EXACT words:
“Roe halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.”
“Roe isn’t really about the woman’s choice, is it? It’s about the doctor’s freedom to practice…it wasn’t woman-centered, it was physician-centered.”
“She preferred that abortion be handled incrementally, but that doesn’t mean left up to the states,”
She literally said it should be handled incrementally BY leaving it up to the states.
“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,”
Which is how you get laws to go from state to state until it gets enough support to be able to GET Congress to pass a law with enough support. Like they did with gay marriage.
Another quote by RBG: “I would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts.”
“Mary Hartnett, a Georgetown University law professor who is co-authoring an authorized biography of Ginsburg, told the New York Times in 2020 that the justice thought the Supreme Court made a mistake in Roe by relying on the right to privacy. Ginsburg “believed it would have been better to approach it under the Equal Protection Clause,” said Hartnett, who spent 17 years interviewing Ginsburg with her co-author, Georgetown Law professor emerita Wendy Webster Williams.”
Ok you keep saying “NOT based on law”, as if Ginsburg believed that the right to abortion didn’t exist in the constitution. It seems pretty clear that she thought it was based in the wrong *section* of the constitution, by basing it on the doctor’s right to privacy rather than the woman’s rights.
Though also, as to your opinion that it doesn’t matter if abortion is banned in a state, as they can just go to a different state to do it, there are cases where the states are attempting to ban leaving the state to get an abortion, like in Missouri. Though that is also ignoring the financial and logistical obstacle that leaving the state entails, as it can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, multiple days, and be hundreds of miles. Which is already assuming they have a means of transportation and have the spare days off work it would take.
“Ok you keep saying “NOT based on law”, as if Ginsburg believed that the right to abortion didn’t exist in the constitution.”
Yes. She did not think the right to abortion existed in the Constitution, and that in order to make it legal to have it on a federal basis, it should be done more gradually, passing state laws until there were enough states supporting it to pass a federal law allowing abortion. Ginsberg, on record, many times said that the use of the right to privacy as a way to shoehorn abortion into the Constitution was flawed reasoning, and she wanted it to be based on women’s rights (something I’ve mentioned elsewhere several times about how the best argument that pro-abortionist advocates use tends to be ‘forcing a woman to give their nutrients’ argument, which has nothing to do with privacy either of the woman OR the doctor). While RBG was pro-abortion, she was of the ‘safe, legal, and rare’ mentality of it, and wanted it done in a way that would pass constitutional scrutiny, which Roe did not do.
Judges. Do. Not. Write. Laws.
They’re not supposed to. When they do make a law, they are violating their own oaths of office and are themselves doing something inherently unconstitutional. Legislators are the ones who are supposed to write the laws. Congress writes the laws for the Federal government, and state legislators write the laws for the states. Executive branch signs those laws and enforces them. And the judicial branch says if those laws are supported by the Constitution (US or state or the statutes, depending on what type of judge they are).
ANY right that is not spelled out in the US Constitution is NOT a right governable by the federal government, and has to be instead under state laws. If the Federal government wants to change that, then they have to actually WRITE A FEDERAL STATUTE. They can’t just have the Supreme Court make up the law for them. This was RBG’s opinion as well, and she felt that Roe vs Wade harmed the ability for pro-abortion advocates to get their point across in a way which could be constitutionally valid and not eventually blow up in everyone’s face.
“Though also, as to your opinion that it doesn’t matter if abortion is banned in a state, as they can just go to a different state to do it, there are cases where the states are attempting to ban leaving the state to get an abortion, like in Missouri.”
It’s a very poorly-thought-out attempt which would fail if it ever gets to anywhere beyond a bill stage. It’s currently stuck in committee (HB1987) and has been stuck there since February. Although it also does not actually seem to make it illegal – it tries to add penalties to out-of-state abortion clinics… it doesnt do anything to the Missouri citizen. And I have no idea how they’d EVER collect on those penalties if it was to pass, which it does not look like it will.
A state cannot ban someone from leaving the state, (unless they are a prisoner for a crime where they had due process, and are on parole or something). The proposal in question isnt even out of committee or able to come up for a vote after months in committee, with no hearing scheduled even by the end of May, and if it was to ever become a law it would almost certainly be fought in court and declared unconstitutional. The very few arguments I’ve seen trying to defend it are monumentally stupid and not even remotely on point (ie, claiming that states can prevent the transportation of minors across state lines) – you cannot extend that to adults as well, at least not based on any precedent that exists.
Btw, here’s the bill so you can see that it’s progress is stalled.
https://www.house.mo.gov/Bill.aspx?bill=HB1987&year=2022&code=R
Ironically, there’s an attempt by California to tax Californians who leave the state. If California loses (which they almost certainly will because it’s an idiotic bill), that could be used as a precedent against Missouri, should the Missouri proposal ever get out of the proposal stage and become a law which would then be fought against in the courts because of the massive constitutional problems involved in its implementation.
Also I should reiterate that particular proposal is not against the mother, it’s trying to sue out-of-state abortionists financially. Yet another reason the proposal is doomed for failure.
“Though that is also ignoring the financial and logistical obstacle that leaving the state entails, as it can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, multiple days, and be hundreds of miles.”
It does not cost thousands of dollars just to go out of your home state. Why you think this is true? Have you never gone out of your state for a few days? I mean I know gas prices are high right now but still…
“Which is already assuming they have a means of transportation and have the spare days off work it would take.”
I’m sort of concerned that you might think that a medical abortion is an in-and-out procedure that doesn’t require any any time off as it is. Mainly because I think that you’re arguing about something which you havent done the research on. It usually requires anywhere from 2 days to 1-2 weeks of no intense labor afterwards. If a person is going to have an abortion, they are going to need to take off from work whether it’s in state or out of state.
” It seems pretty clear that she thought it was based in the wrong *section* of the constitution,”
Btw I’m re-reading this and i’m curious….
What section of the Constitution do you think that RBG thought it would fall under? Obviously not the 14th Amendment because she clearly did not agree with the penumbra theory that the 14th Amendment extended to a constitutional right to abortions. Which part of the Constitution do you think she WAS pointing to? Everything I’ve ever heard of or read of hers was pointing to a legislative solution instead of judicial solution, since it was not the court’s place to create a federal right where one wasn’t shown in the Constitution.
In other words, RBG did not think the Constitution had a section in any existing Amendment which would allow for abortions, which is why she took the more intelligent approach of saying that this is a job for the legislature (writing a statute, or passing a new Amendment), not the courts, since that would be a way to defend what she believed were women’s rights.
The point of abortion isn’t to kill. Any death that results is only a side-effect of the mother no longer providing the use of her blood, organs, and “nutrients”. We currently afford women more rights to their organs when they’re dead than when they’re alive.
“The point of abortion isn’t to kill.”
That’s the exact point of abortion. To kill the infant. If it wasn’t, they could just say ‘ending the pregnancy’ instead of ‘aborting the fetus’ or ‘aborting the infant’ after the point of viability. One way to end a pregnancy is… to induce premature birth. Another is a Caesarian section. Both ways end the pregnancy. One way ends it without killing anyone. Or at the very least without the INTENT to kill anyone, even if as a result the infant still dies. The difference is the intent involved, which is a large reason for the controversy that a majority of people on the anti-abortion side.
“We currently afford women more rights to their organs”
The infant is not any of the mother’s organs. It’s a distinct living human being at an early stage of development with it’s own distinct DNA separate from the mother. At that point you have to do a measuring test of which is more important – on one hand, a person’s (the mother’s) inconvenience to carry the child until a point at which you can end the pregnancy by inducing labor or doing a C-section; on the other hand, another person (the infant) being killed.
And that’s the point of conflict, which I feel should be easy to resolve. For almost all pro-choice people, the goal is for the mother to no longer be pregnant. If we had the technology to safely remove the developing blastocyst/fetus/infant and either allow it to survive in an artificial womb, or transplant it to a willing host, almost all pro-choice people would be in favor of it. Their concern is for the woman’s right to her own body, which overrides anyone else’s right to survive, just like how we don’t force people to donate organs or blood in order to save another person’s life.
Anti-abortion people appear to focus entirely on the potential human being’s right to life, and don’t give the mother any consideration, even if her own life is at risk by continuing her pregnancy. There’s also a strong element of believing that there should be consequences for actions they disapprove of, and want to maintain those consequences and risks as a way to control behavior.
I wasn’t suggesting that an infant was an organ, but it does make use of the mother’s organs to survive. It resides within her womb, it uses her blood, her heart, her kidneys, her liver, pretty much everything. Again, we can’t force someone to allow someone else the use of their body, can’t force them to donate blood, can’t hook them up to someone as an organic dialysis machine. Carrying a child is not just an “inconvenience”. It causes permanent, irreversible changes to a woman’s body, and carries a risk of injury or death. In no other circumstances would we find such demands reasonable. What makes pregnancy so different that all the normal rules go out the window?
Only if you do not consider the unborn child a human being.
To me, contraception and abortion are two entirely different things. Before conception, there is no child, merely the chance that a child may be conceived. Left to nature, most sexual contact doesn’t result in conception. Using contraception does not kill a future human being.
At the moment of conception, a unique genetic code is generated and the fertilized egg begins the process that will normally lead to the birth of a baby nine months later. Yes, at first the embryo doesn’t look very human. Yes, an embryo or a fetus can’t live outside the mother’s nurturing body. But an infant can’t live without constant care from her parents either!
We may consider an embryo ‘just tissue’ because it doesn’t look human yet, it WILL become a fully grown human being if left to develop naturally – IF we don’t intervene. What today is a fertilized egg that we can’t even see with the naked eye will be a bouncing baby girl (or boy) only nine monthe later, a school girl in five years, a young woman in two decades, with her own dreams, hopes and fears, her own LIFE! – if that life isn’t cut short today.
The rights of the mother are important, but so does the unborn future human she carries.
And here is where that preference for inaction collides with the preference for indirect harm. By forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy, you cause direct, permanent harm to the woman, all to prevent harm to a potential future human being.
If that potential human grows to become a woman, what future do they have to look forward to? One in which their own hopes and dreams can be crushed by an unwanted pregnancy?
“For almost all pro-choice people, the goal is for the mother to no longer be pregnant.”
I actually wish this was the case, and maybe it is for the ones who are not loudly screaming, but for the loud ones, it is not that they just have the goal for the mother to no longer be present. The goal is literally to kill the baby, after dehumanizing it to claim it isn’t a baby in the first place, or a living human being in the first place. If the goal was JUST ‘end the pregnancy’ then the way to do that is wait until the point of viability outside the womb, whenever that may be given technology, and then induce labor or perform a C-section. At which point the mother can abandon the baby which will be a still LIVING baby. But if you tell that to many pro-abortion (sorry, I don’t call it pro-choice when one of the two individuals involved – the infant- do not have a choice at all, and pro-abortion/anti-abortion gets away from a lot of the political rightspeak on both sides) advocates, and they will start screaming at you about a woman’s right to choose. Which means what? The right to choose to kill the baby, not the right to choose to end the pregnancy, since they were just given the opportunity to have a choice which involved ending the pregnancy WITHOUT terminating the child’s life.
“If we had the technology to safely remove the developing blastocyst/fetus/infant”
Except the pro-abortion side does NOT want this, at least not the majority of them. Because even when the infant can be removed ALIVE with CURRENT technology at around 21 weeks, they are still pro-abortion in those cases, as if it’s the right of the mother not just of her body, but of the BABY’S body. Which is the main point of contention. In fact, they tend to double down on the concept as if they ONLY will accept termination of the child even when other options are available.
It’s as if they’ve become so invested in their ‘side’ that it has morphed their mentality. The official talking points used to be ‘safe, legal and rare.’ It’s been changed to ‘safe, legal, and accessible.’ Because rare implies that there are other options to end the pregnancy without an abortion.
“Their concern is for the woman’s right to her own body, which overrides anyone else’s right to survive,”
Again, if that was the case, thn why are any of them EVER pro-abortion at any point after viability outside the womb? And why is the concept of partial birth abortion even a thing?
“and don’t give the mother any consideration, even if her own life is at risk by continuing her pregnancy. ”
This is incorrect for a few pertinent reasons.
1) The majority of even anti-abortion advocates tend to make an exception for ‘if the life of the mother is at risk and saving the baby without risking the mother’s life is impossible. Which tends to be the stance of EVERY anti-abortion (pro-life) advocate in cases of a pregnant woman with cancer needing chemotherapy before the baby becomes viable outside the womb, which will by necessity result in the death of the baby. However, in the majority of cases where this scenario happens, with a pregnant mother, before 20 weeks of pregnancy, needing chemotherapy, the mother tends to CHOOSE voluntarily to withhold getting chemo until viability, because the majority of mothers in that situation seem to want the baby to live. But if the mother was ‘Give me the chemotherapy’ – and present that scenario to an anti-abortion advocate? They will not think poorly of the mother, and would think that should be legal. Because that is not an abortion. There is no intent to kill the baby. The death of the baby is, at that point, an unpreventable side effect of saving the mother’s life. I cannot think of a single other example, however, where the life of the mother REQUIRES killing the baby instead of just waiting until viability and removing the baby, thus ending the pregnancy without anyone dying.
Please, read the scenario, and tell me how this is a bad thing for anyone. It’s a win-win scenario all around. The mother gets to not have the baby in her anymore, without risk of death to herself, and the baby gets to survive.
2) Once again, as I stated above…. there is a difference between killing the baby and ending the pregnancy. Anti-abortion people are focused on the human being’s life (not potential human being – actual human being – it’s already a human being, just at an early stage of development – the DNA is 100% human) because killing someone is a worse and more irreversible option than a few weeks of discomfort or inconvenience. Yes, the right for someone to be allowed to live, if that someone has never done anything worthy of death, is more important than someone else’s convenience. That being said, they do give mother consideration as well – just not the consideration of killing the infant in most cases, because there are other options that do NOT involve killing the baby that still achieves the same goal – ending the pregnancy.
Too many internal service errors to easily finish this.
“There’s also a strong element of believing that there should be consequences for actions they disapprove of”
I don’t think their disapproval or approval of actions has anything to do with it for most anti-abortionist advocates, except disapproval of the concept of killing an infant. And honestly, there should be the concept of dealing with the consequences of ones own actions, if the alternative is murder of a living human being and there are other options available. Abortion should not be retroactive birth control.
“and want to maintain those consequences and risks as a way to control behavior”
While I do agree that’s an element of it, it’s not even close to being the main concern – the main concern being an unwillingness to allow an infant to be killed (and in a rather gruesome manner I need to mention for most abortions) when there are other options available.
“I wasn’t suggesting that an infant was an organ, but it does make use of the mother’s organs to survive.”
A baby that’s already born also makes use of the mother’s organs to survive. I’m not sure how this is different pre-birth, or why inside it’s okay to kill the baby, while outside it’s not. For the record btw, this does not mean I’m okay with killing babies once already born. It means that the stance of anti-abortion advocates tends to be to treat the baby inside the womb the same as a baby who is outside the womb, and counter your argument of it using the mother’s nutrients by saying ‘that is also the case for a baby outside of the womb in most cases.’
“Again, we can’t force someone to allow someone else the use of their body, can’t force them to donate blood, can’t hook them up to someone as an organic dialysis machine.”
This is correct. We cannot, nor should we. But the difference is no one is ‘hooking the baby up into the mother.’ The baby has not been placed into the mother. It occurred from the natural process of sexual reproduction and conception, not by some outside force shoving a baby into the woman and demanding she now carry it to term. And before anyone mentions rape, please remember that happens in about 0.75% of all abortions (with incest being roughly another 0.2%). And if you were to make a law saying ‘No abortion EXCEPT in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother’ (which is a compromise that anti-abortion advocates have made REPEATEDLY in the past 40+ years, the response from the pro-abortion side has always been NO. Because they are using rape as a wedge issue to try to expand to all abortions (including the overwhelming majority of ‘convenience’ abortions, rather than because they consider abortions necessary due to rape to be a genuine issue.
“Carrying a child is not just an “inconvenience”. It causes permanent, irreversible changes to a woman’s body, and carries a risk of injury or death. ”
As does an abortion. The main difference is that a C-section’s or induced pregnancy’s chance of death is actually lower than death during an abortion (approximately 30 for every 100,000 abortions where complications occur in developed countries, according to the WHO) vs a C-section (27 per 100,000 C-sections from complications, according to the National Library of Medicine). It’s literally safer to have the C-section for the mother. And it’s obviously safer for the child, since one way is definitely death, and the other is most likely life.
” In no other circumstances would we find such demands reasonable. What makes pregnancy so different that all the normal rules go out the window?”
Because pregnancy has unique circumstances that are not present in other scenarios.
End of thread guys. I’m not interested in hosting a bunch of pro-life apologetics here. I am reeeeal tempted to remove all this stuff but it feels rude to just come out of nowhere with that since I don’t usually strike stuff.
“everyone is focused on the mercs-turned-rapist part”
Probably because the people being executed are mercs-turned-rapists.
“didn’t notice that the first part of the speech is clearly targeted at missionaries”
And if those people were missionaries instead of mercs-turned-rapists, I’d have a major problem with that and consider what is happening to be absolutely evil. I can’t really get that worked up over the execution of mercs-turned-rapists who have had repeated warnings, though.
Missionaries who have been teaching some objectively *very* harmful BS, and were warned repeatedly to stop. This looks like the “death” part of “exile on pain of death.”
My own take about the death penalty:
If there is an undeniable body of evidence that someone committed a bunch of heinous crimes(Like, for example, some dude decided to stream himself as he shot up a grocery store), then the death penalty should be the only sentencing option.
A mass murderer doesn’t deserve to keep breathing(even if in a cell) while the families of his victims live every day in mourning.
In such cases, the only morally justifiable solution is death.
Additionally, it makes no sense that someone who was handed the death penalty can spend the next 25 years in a prison cell, waste taxpayer money on appeals, re-trials, petitions, and whatever.
In cases where the death penalty is justified, the prison bus should go in a straight line from the sentencing hearing, to the avenue where the penalty is handed down.
Coincidentally, I also believe the criminal justice system needs to be restructured towards reform, but in cases where reform is not possible, punishment should be appropriately stricter.
I disagree with you. And I got this from a comic book, where a bunch of gods were about to kill one of their own for murder. The problem with going through with that is that it makes them murderers too. And so now they stooped to his level, what then is left of their moral superiority that allows them to tell off the murderer?
So they stuffed him in some eternal prison, that eventually got breached, and set the story in motion. But that’s not the point here.
You say “only morally justifiable solution is death”, but that means “the only morally justificable solution is to become a murderer” and that means you have to kill yourself afterward, over having killed a murderer. Even murderers have families too, you know. What about them?
It brings practical problems with it too. What’s the kill count that gets you “murder as the only justifiable option” as a sentence? One? Two? Fifty? That’s arbitrary. Subtract one if streaming? Two if it was a cop? Fifty if combined with a manifesto? Even more arbitrary.
I don’t see what makes “streaming while murdering” makes the killing worse. Judges condemning people to death do that publicly too, and sometimes the execution is as well. After a while the executioner and the judge are liable for that “only justifiable option” legal remedy as well. So they need to keep careful count of people condemned to death, and stop taking cases at the one before last. And hope the rules never get changed to be “tougher on crime” or something.
What about fighting wars? If kill count is the only yardstick, every general and most officers and the soldiers that saw the hardest fighting needs to be put to death at the latest after the war. We generally celebrate those who won the war as war heroes, essentially condoning their killings.
I do get that twenty-five years on death row isn’t very nice. Not to anyone. But the thing about the legal process is that it likes to err on the side of caution, and with the death penalty being an irreversable remedy, you’ve got to be extra damn sure this time for reals. It’s still a fallible process. What would you offer the family of a wrongfully convicted executionee who turned out to not have done the crimes after all? It does happen, and can come to pass even with loads of seemingly incontrovertible evidence available, like a large stack of bodies. It still could’ve been someone else doing the killings. Your well-intended honestly-ment “so sorry”?
If that’s your get-out-of-jail-free card, why isn’t “so sorry” an acceptable substitute for the death penalty for mass murderers? I’m not trying to rile you up here, just saying this is the sort of question your idea brings up so you need a good solid answer.
So I think this idea is a bit problematic. It certainly doesn’t seem like a very enlightened lawmaking strategy.
I won’t disagree with you that the US legal system needs restructuring, but at the same time I don’t think your idea is much better than the ideas it runs on now. So I’m going to say “this idea needs work”.
“Murder” is not a synonym for “kill”.
Murder is a subset of killing: Killing of humans with intent.
Judicial killing of humans comes with deliberated intent, thus is murder.
It doesn’t really matter for the argument that death penalty laws say that murder ordered by a judge isn’t a crime. It’s about the morals of the thing, and I say murder is murder even if dressed up with a court case.
That being the nub of the problem, I disagree that even for mass-murderers, “the only morally justifiable solution is death.”
More specifically, unlawful killing of humans with intent. Hence why capital punishment after due process of law is not usually considered murder. Because it’s not ‘unlawful’ – it’s in compliance with the law.
That still doesn’t cancel out the morality angle. Unless your morality is “whatever the law says is right and proper”. That would conveniently blot out the possibility of “unjust laws”. And that in turn whitewashes quite a few things lots of people fought long and hard against.
I didn’t say it did cancel out the morality angle. There are examples in which capital punishment is so egregiouis that even when it’s carried out by the state, it still is seen as a Crime against Humanity, like the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the persecution of the Uyghurs, etc
I’m just stating what the law’s stance in general is about murder, and that murder is the unlawful killing of humans with intent, not just the killing of humans with intent. I actually do agree with your post. I was just expanding upon it a little to steelman your position a bit.
Thanks for that. I didn’t quite read it that way. Instead I was wondering “yeah but didn’t I already address this?” though sort-of the other way around. The law of course says “yes the government can do this, but you cannot, ha ha”, or at the very least the government would get sued. But this really wasn’t about what the law says. It was about the justification for making the law say such things.
Ok so Dues is not really a good guy, but i’m still kinda rooting for him
He’s not really a good guy because he is okay with capital punishment for mercenaries-turned-rapists who are repeat offenders?
The version that seems to make the most sense to me based on the phrasing is that not all of them are mercenaries-turned-rapists. The first speech seems clearly directed at a missionary type, to the extent that quite a few people are interpret it as just missionaries being executed, and while missionary turned rapist is believable, missionary turned mercenary isn’t.
So one of them is a missionary, the other two are mercenaries. Especially with the phrasing in panel 5 implying that there are two groups of people, who get separate speeches.
“The version that seems to make the most sense to me based on the phrasing is that not all of them are mercenaries-turned-rapists.”
It read to me quite differently. That a lot of things are not allowed in Galytn, but this particular offense is a death penalty offense, because they are mercenaries-turned-rapists from outside of Galytn, found within Galytn’s borders, after repeated warnings.
If these people are just missionaries who were saying condoms are bad, then I’d agree with you that this is an evil act to do and I would have a major problem with it. I don’t think it’s ‘separate speeches’ btw. I think it’s one very long and irritating overarching speech that was specifically as an additional bit of torture for the mercenaries turned rapists.
But I understand your argument here, and it’s a coherent and reasonable argument if accurate. However, I think this is just bad wording on DaveB’s part. If they were ACTUALLY separate speeches though, she wouldnt be going through the entire speech – she’d just go to ONLY the part which the people were guilty of. And when she says ‘there’s a whole separate speech’ she’s meaning ‘there’s a whole separate section exclusively dedicated to what hese people did which I have to add to the long-winded speech?’
The missionaries preaching about the evils of condoms is something I took from a real story about missionaries (I don’t recall from which subset of christianity, let’s just say Catholic) going into parts of Africa at the height of the AIDS epidemic and trying to dissuade anyone and everyone from using condoms because recreational sex is evil.
I’m paraphrasing. But taken from a consequentialist point of view, if they are successful at their goal, then they become bigger mass murderers than anyone who ever tried to “save all the women (who look like their mother) from the evils of the world” or whatever, especially if you consider the vacuum of alternative education in certain parts of the world.
But to clarify what’s happening in the comic, yes, there’s one missionary in that group who, again, is consequentially a mass murderer as far as Deus is concerned, and two mercenaries who engaged in extracurriculars – and two separate speeches, one for each group.
It took me several readings, and reading the comments as well, to parse through how to interpret “Teaching young girls about the evils of condoms”. It wasn’t clear whose perspective it reflected. My first impression is that the writer of whatever Vale is reading on her phone believes that condoms are evil, or that using condoms is evil, particularly because “teaching” implies truth, and the phrasing doesn’t place it in doubt. “The evils of condoms” suggests belief, whereas phrasing like “teaching that condoms are evil” suggests that the writer is commenting on someone else’s belief.
It makes sense if you already understand what’s going on, but doesn’t communicate it well if you don’t.
““The evils of condoms” suggests belief, whereas phrasing like “teaching that condoms are evil” suggests that the writer is commenting on someone else’s belief.”
I agree. It’s very nebulously written. :/
Okay then I have a major problem with the death of that person. It seems to imply that SPEECH is worthy of the death penalty, which I think would be an abhorrent thing. Trying to dissuade someone with words is different than, say, forcing them to have sex without a condom.
And thus Deus has stepped over the line if he’s ordered the death of someone who’s only crime is to have spoken words which resulted in people making poor choices that could have then resulted in death. Plus it feels highly hypocritical of Deus to do something like that, given that his own words can result in the consequence of death for others as well. Fighting bad speech with violence is wrong. You fight bad speech with good speech instead. Deus could easily flood Galytn with easy access to contraception, including condoms, and then just deport someone who is trying to speak against the use of condoms instead of, yknow, murdering them.
And this is coming from someone who is a die-hard Deus fan.
Pretty sure the person in jeans in the middle is a woman and the missionary.
I think the guy in the stock image I used as reference would be mildly offended by that. (or maybe not but who can tell these days)
> this is coming from someone who is a die-hard Deus fan.
Glad to hear you’re not supporting him on this one, lumping in religious activism with rapist killers as a capital offense is pretty extreme. The argument that someone is actively causing the spread of AIDS (which is quite treatable these days) by proselytizing their views on birth control / celibacy outside marriage is pretty flimsy, but even if you buy it – execution instead of eviction is a massive overreaction. If Deus seriously condones this, what other opinions he disagrees with are worthy of capital punishment?
“Glad to hear you’re not supporting him on this one, lumping in religious activism with rapist killers as a capital offense is pretty extreme.”
Well I do have to be consistent in my reasoning.
Holy shit, you are actually criticizing Deus, and I was a part of making it happen. This has been a very petty victory.
Eh, it was more DaveB’s elaboration that made me criticize Deus, but sure, you were a part of making that happen. Had DaveB not said that, I would have still had a very firm argument. In this particular case with the missionary, I will criticize Deus because he has overstepped the lines between good and evil.
I am always going to be against using physical violence (especially death) to prevent non-violent speech. You’re supposed to combat bad speech with good speech instead, and since Galytn has an infrastructure that includes an educational system, Deus already has the means in place to fight against someone preaching ‘the evils of condoms’ in a way that does not involve killing them. Not to mention he could just deport them.
The missionary has “been warned repeatedly”, presumably told either to stop proselytizing or leave. They apparently didn’t do either.
Fighting bad speech with good speech only works if people actually care about truth or logic, which they generally don’t. Deus presumably has ensured easy access to contraception, considering that he’s boasted about improving access to both health care and education. And he presumably did deport the missionary, repeatedly. And they kept coming back. My impression is that Deus cares more about results than rules.
“The missionary has “been warned repeatedly”, presumably told either to stop proselytizing or leave. They apparently didn’t do either.”
If they snuck back in, then at worst, they could have just given him a jail sentence. Not a death sentence. Not for SPEECH.
“Deus presumably has ensured easy access to contraception, considering that he’s boasted about improving access to both health care and education.”
Then if Deus wants to have an advanced society with a burgeoning and educated middle class, it’s not going to be achieved if it’s based on killing anyone who refuses to stop saying things you don’t like though. Sorry, it’s one step too far for me.
“My impression is that Deus cares more about results than rules.”
That would still be inconsistent with everything we’ve seen about him until this point. In the past, he cares about results, sure, but he ALSO cares about the methods by which he achieves those results, in order to minimize any death or negative arguments against how he got to that result. I cannot in good conscience ever equate a missionary preaching something that is scientifically backwards as being in ANY way equivalent to a mercenary turned rapist, or a person who bombs hospitals, unless the missionary was also bombing hospitals and places giving out contraceptives. In which case he’d deserve what is happening, but NOT because of his speech – because of the bombings.
As it stands, unless DaveB was to further elaborate that the missionary did something more than preaching, then Deus is clearly (and unfortunately) doing something evil here, and I’d consider DaveB to be wrong about the morality AND ethics of what is happening with respect to that missionary.
I can’t give an ‘All praise Deus, amen’ about this.
I believe a Consequentialist (especially one with a time machine) might well do something drastic to Thomas Midgley Jr. And I would have a difficult time arguing about the immorality of the act.
“The Greater Good” is where it seems like where most characters with Super-Intelligence run afoul of good/evil sensibilities. Watchmen’s Ozymandias is the quintessential example.
“if they are successful at their goal, then they become bigger mass murderers than anyone who ever tried to “save all the women (who look like their mother) from the evils of the world” or whatever, especially if you consider the vacuum of alternative education in certain parts of the world.’
And this is why i think this is wildly inconsistent with Deus’s thought processes from what we’ve seen elsewhere in the comic. Because Deus is fully capable of an alternative route of providing alternative education, especially in the nation which he pretty much controls all aspects of infrastructure for.
In fact, it’s highly unlikely that people who have been taught in the schools which Deus has funded would be easily swayed by some guy saying condoms are evil because religion if Galytn is the upwards-thinking nation that Deus claims it to be. So it’s incredibly weird that he’d murder a man who’s only crime is saying ‘Condoms are evil.’ Just deport him if you’re truly not confident in your ability to get out a better message through education.
Agreed, this seems out of character given his other actions. We know he’s willing and able to do bad things to bad people, but I don’t see him wantonly executing someone just for disagreeing with his world view. Or didn’t until now, at least.
And that’s why people can agree on a system, but disagree on the results. Because when it comes to value judgments, like who’s a bad person, there tends to be a lot of unstated assumptions, and interesting conflict when it turns out that people don’t actually agree as much as they thought.
I’m not even going to say that the missionary might not be a bad person. But if all he did was preaching, that’s not evil. Or at the VERY least, it’s not a bad action that is worthy of a response of death. It’s just so massively different than any other time he’s had to engage in violence with another person or people, where I could easily point to that person and say ‘okay, these people are corrupt and/or evil’ because of actual actions they’ve taken that had direct harm on innocents. Something I can’t say about preaching to people who have many alternative sources of education that they can access to make their own informed decisions.
I mean I’m rooting for him too (not trying to be critical, just not sure how this makes him a bad guy) and I get the general idea about the problems with the death penalty but if they are repeat offender foreign mercs-turned-rapists….
There is also the very extra-judicial setting for the execution. Tied to poles, gagged, in what appears to be a random abandoned building rather than an actual execution site or legal building, with Deus’ black ops team handling it rather than Gatlyn officials. Plus them being foreigners, the situation reads as being very unofficial and probably illegal even in Gatlyn
“There is also the very extra-judicial setting for the execution.”
Well by American standards, I’d definitely agree with you that its an extra-judicial setting. Assuming these men were not actually tried prior to this point, which is still conceivable. Or, since these people are NOT citizens of Galytn and are instead foreign mercenaries, this might be a military execution, which might not require the same judicial setting in Galytn. I’d need more information before I decide on this.
” Plus them being foreigners, the situation reads as being very unofficial and probably illegal even in Gatlyn”
Actually, them being foreign mercenaries reads as them attempting to destabilize Galytn in an act of war or terrorism, in my opinion. And Galytn might have particular laws about how they handle enemy combatants who are NOT acting under a specific nation’s flag.
So yeah, especially with the confirmation that one of them *is* actually just an asshole missionary, it seems Deus is doing this extra-judicially and secretly, to avoid potential diplomatic ramifications of him killing someone who might very well be a US citizen (in the belief that the missionary is a Mormon, which seems most believable to me) or otherwise a citizen of some other nation. As well as avoiding the ramifications from the knowledge of his execution method being an illegal and stolen evil artifact from spreading to the Twilight Council.
” it seems Deus is doing this extra-judicially and secretly”
I don’t know if it’s extrajudicially, but it definitely does seem to be secret in order to prevent diplomatic ramifications. I think it’s a stretch to assume he is a US citizen, but if he was, it would be uncharacteristically stupid of Deus, in addition to uncharacteristically evil.
“As well as avoiding the ramifications from the knowledge of his execution method being an illegal and stolen evil artifact from spreading to the Twilight Council.”
That part I don’t consider evil since we’ve already argued about the artifact not being ‘stolen’ (I’d argue it’s salvage). But I do agree with you that he’d keep this secret to prevent trouble with the Twilight Council.
Deus’ official role in the country is a finance minister, and while that is in name only with him having complete economic and political control over the country, he wouldn’t be able to get away with also being in charge of the judicial system officially as well as everything else for people to still accept, on any level, that he is a mere financial minister.
And to repeat, the people officiating the execution aren’t Gatlyn officials, but Deus’ personal black ops team.
So Deus being in charge of the legal system is probably secret. The execution is secret. The executioners are secret. And the execution method is secret. Add on to that, for the execution of the missionary to be kept secret, any trial he got would also have to be secret.
Is there a distinction between it being extra judicial or not at that point? If everything involved is hidden and controlled by Deus?
‘Deus’ official role in the country is a finance minister,”
I think that also involves running all the infrastructure, which can arguably include the prison system?
“So Deus being in charge of the legal system is probably secret. ”
He has admitted on Macroeconomics that he essentially runs Galytn, so it’s not all that secret that he designed the legal system as well. But I do agree that the execution itself is secret.
“Is there a distinction between it being extra judicial or not at that point?”
Extrajudicial means not legally authorized. It can also mean that the sentencing was done through a court proceeding, although the court proceeding itself can be held in secret and still not be ‘extrajudicial.’ The United States has a special court system known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also sometimes referred to as a FISA court) which was esbalished by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which is essentially a secret court. Apparently it’s constitutional (though I do have some problems with this on a personal level but they do have reasoning for it given it’s for foreign intelligence). These executions are also of foreign criminals (by Galytn law), so it would technically not be extrajudicial.