I HATED this when watching Arrow.

Like dude, you narrowed that dude in the hallway. Your two main sidekicks BOTH use regular guns.

Just fucking kill Raz Al Gul/Damien Dahrk, That Gang dude/EtcEtc

You spent the first two seasons murdering rich people, intentionally, killing this dude trying to BLOW UP A CITY is not a moral gray area. All your friends are like, "Bro, just kill him." And you are all "We must be better, we must be heroes."

The most infuriating trope in fiction

The Batman way.

“I don’t use guns, I just throw people out of high rise windows”

I liked in Black Adam that they called out heroes just protecting the elite. Too bad that one line was enough for them to all change their minds.

It's eliminating the problem. But there's a little more to the solution, generally speaking.

It's a sad part of the solution. Kicking them out of power and making impossible for them to ever have their way ever again (in absolutely any context- up to removing their ability to participate in any legal process, up to having any legal rights at all) is really more important, but unfortunately eliminating them is the easiest way to do that.

There are certain figures I would be uncompromisingly happy to see suffer for their actions- up to and including assassination. And others I think only need to be politically neutered.

The real complication (in a lot of the smaller cases) starts issues with false positives and such. If we could get perfect identification and prosecution to happen, then my tolerance for extreme measures goes waaaaay, way up.

Be careful not to use the Nazis as an analogy or some basement dweller will scream "YOU THINK CONSERVATIVES ARE THE SAME AS NAZIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!? GO TOUCH GRASS!!!!!!!!!"

1. It's an analogy.

2. Act like a fascist, you are a fascist. I'm not making conservatives run the fascist playbook. That's their choice.

Are MAGAts Nazis? No. Were Nazis fascists? Yes. Are MAGAts fascists? Yes. Because words have definitions and MAGAt's actions match the definition of the word "fascist".

These aren't people we're disagreeing politically with in regards to where tax payer money should go or even how much we should be taxed or whether this regulation or that regulation is good or bad. These are people threatening us and actively degrading the quality of our lives. They are our enemies because that's what enemies do to you. They are enemies of democracy. They are enemies of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I just don’t give a fuck what every dumb shit thinks. YoUrE jUsT aS bAd As ThEm dumbfuckery.

One of the biggest problems with violent revolution, is that it almost always seems to end up putting violent people in charge of the next regime.

I think an outlook on the future is also necessary. A mass murderer that is not repenting will likely murder again. A vigilante without just cause will likely not. You are saving all the future lives.

'If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world stays the same"

"What if I kill two killers?"

So you are saying that the end justifies the means?

(/s)

It begs the question, what is the 'good' solution.

Or is 'good' even possible?

This is an apt analogy. Conservatism IS cancer. It spreads and brings with it only sickness and death. There is no way to change cancer. Letting it live will kill the patient. The only cure causes pain and suffering for the survivor. Treatment is painful, messy and dangerous, but is absolutely required for survival.

No one wants to talk about the cure for conservatism. Even the topic is uncomfortable.

"If I am killing these cells, who can say that I am better than cancer"

I dont like being conspiritroal but if I was a evil government that wanted to get away with murdering people or even just qwell the masses when something disruptive happens Id pay people off to take the fall. Seems like an easy solution for a really complicated problem.

Just saying.

Oh, and being super evil and super manipulative it'd probably be very cheap. Like ROI's through the roof.

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

— Vladimir Lenin

"When they go low, we go high." - Obama, blissfully leading the country towards Trump

Do we have free will? Did the monster choose to become what he did?

If he still has the power to murder more people, then yes, killing him will be a way to stop it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman is an interesting real world case about free will. His suicide note mentioned that he wants his brain to be autopsied, and it turns out that he had a brain tumor.

He's... grabbing his shirt? His skin? With some sort of... glove...?

No idea tbh

I think it's supposed to represent being cut off or something

The ol' vacuum cleaner attachment routine.

I wouldn't call those "counterexamples" as I understand counterexamples (namely an example that counters a statement or belief). That would mean the examples would have to show that killing the villain did make the protagonist just as bad.

Like, in your Overwatch example, they didn't become morally bad from killing the bomber. They were disbanded; the worsening situation was as a result of other bad people choosing to disband them. It'd be weird to lay it at their feet for killing a villian with political(?) connections.

And Daredevil cuz he's Catholic

Only bad people kill. Therefore you cant kill me. Lolololol checkmate "hero" turns out I can kill as much as I want because you cant stop me because only bad people kill.

Only works on screen.

The logic is about a battle of ideologies. When the villain, or the hero sometimes, says they'd be just as bad as what they're fighting, what they mean is that they're succumbing to their baser instincts, allowing "might makes right" to win out against the spirit of democracy. "Democracy" in their view, the author's I mean, is mostly about letting people coexist, and using only official channels to punish the most obscene offenders. The hero is rejecting "an eye for an eye," essentially, in favor of the perceived fairness of The Law.

This framing kind of doesn't work because we all know who the villains are. We all know the world would be better off without The Joker in it. And worse, letting him go through the prison system to get the outcome we all want for him anyway isn't really different from just shooting him yourself. It's marginally different, maybe; probably better than enabling a bunch of vigilantes. But even so, it is an action that merely defers the pulling of the trigger to the state. Someone will be pulling it regardless, because as we all know, the world would be better off without The Joker.

This framing about due process works a lot better with villains who are not The Joker because it leaves open the possibility that the law might not actually punish them, and that the vigilante hero is a bad person for trying to kill someone who does not actually deserve death.

Plot armor

/Edit: Oh, sorry. You're 5. That's invisible armor!

buttt isn't knowingly putting them in a position where they'll starve to death just (just) murder with extra steps?

Uh, hello

I can forgive many things. People should be allowed to make mistakes.

I also know some people who are not stupid and yet keep doing evil things the moment they have paid back whatever the consequences were of their last bad deed. I really don't know what to do with this kind of people.

I think a society must be built on some kind of trust, more so than laws, but it seems impossible when some people just can't be trusted.

This is more like shooting the trolley.

It's the trolley problem

No it's not, if the single person was a rapist or like a health insurance CEO I'd pull that lever and take all the survivor's out for Margaritas to celebrate lol

The trolley problem is a challenge because there isn't an inherent net positive to killing the singular person other than saving a few more. In this situation, you're killing someone who's actively harming others on a grand scale.