okay he can have the punisher for a phone background.

But is the fact he only wanted to do something because the current situation directly impacted him? As though if his wife didn't work there he'd be sitting back laughing at the situation regardless?

Ok. Thanks for the clarification.

The cop story part

Or that he had someone who was in danger that made it personal for him. I may be an asshole, but curious if he would have done anything if his wife wasn't in there

Great point

The idea that "operating outside the law" is inherently something bad is absolutely fucked mentality.

The poor man who steals his bread is "operating outside the law" but is still righteous in his actions.

Stop letting "the law" be your barometer for what is or isn't right or just. It doesn't belong anywhere near the discussion.

Of course there are. You don’t have to value both sides, nor are they automatically equal or even comparable.

In their own minds though, people who supported slavery weren’t all steepling their fingers and giggling to themselves about how they were going to cause generations of trauma. They had reasons, selfish and brutish as they were, and it’s useful to learn what those are so that we can prevent people from dehumanizing others like that ever again.

He is saying they need to be good guys in service to the public, rather then seeing themselves as punishers of a public they now regard as criminal. He suggests switching their idol to Captain America because he is all about self sacrifice for the common good of the citizenry. That by aligning with him, as police, they are bad.

He's telling them what to do, his vision of what the cops should be. If they don't live up to that, well...

Patriotism.

It has been a long time since I have read comics, but he was basically an anti-hero. He did a lot of stuff that was straight just bad, torturing people for information, and just a lot of over the top use of force. He doesn't see himself as a hero, and he regrets getting into the life hie is in, because it's just a lot of killing, and not always killing "bad guys", plus it leads to people he cares about always being collateral damage.

He was a marine, whose exact story shifted, but was basically some sort of black ops, or some sort of special operations, sometimes he's a seal. But his family coincidentally witness a mob hit and they get killed over it. Frank returns and goes into a period of depression and alcoholism, then decides to kill the mafia organization that did it. This just lead him into a never ending path of revenge, turning to people seeking revenge on him, turning to him killing them, and so on.