I agree that it’s human nature and always will be. But that doesn’t mean it’s ok or that we should shrug and say oh well.

Agreed.

It means that we need to always be guarding against it and condemning it when it happens.

Agreed, in principle, but i suspect our definitions of what qualifies as "it" will differ greatly.

There are times in history where ideological violence has gotten way out of hand, and i believe we can avoid that if we try.

I think that's naively optimistic, though having it as a goal isn't the worst thing we could be doing.

Also there are times in history where blind optimism has let toxic and harmful ideologies fester and take root.

Think "Paradox of tolerance".

And if we instead encourage it then we will have another cultural revolution or holocaust like in China or Russia or Germany.

That's a hard, giant leap in logic, you'd need to at least have some evidence of direct causation before I'd even consider that as a reasonable line of thought.

But that is only my opinion, with all that entails.

You can argue that it’s a better place with him gone

I wasn't arguing that, but that is my subjective opinion.

but it’s a much worse place because it happened and because people are celebrating

That's more complicated, i partially agree but I'll reserve final judgement for a while to see how it pans out.

because it implies that society accepts murdering people who express differing opinions.

I'm not sure how to tell you this, but open pretty much any historical book of any era and you'll find the same.

I'm not saying it's ideal and each to their own but i am saying i think it's naive to ignore the entire history of humanity (and pre-humanity) and expect this current society to be different for some reason.

A large part of the entire history of our species is built on murdering the "other".

This society and all almost all societies, past and present have accepted/encouraged murdering other groups for stuff and power.

In fact, I'd argue we are better at it than ever.

Society cannot allow or justify murdering someone for free speech.

That's a nice soundbite.

Op implied that murder was a response to speech, and I am saying murder should not be allowed or considered as a response.

So those are two different things you have right there.

"Op implied that murder was a response to speech" , indeed he got shot because someone thought he deserved it.

"Murder should not be allowed or considered as a response"

This is where is goes off the rails a bit.

OP wasn't saying (or implying) he should have been shot for talking , just that it seems reasonable to assume he had.

"I don't care that this person is dead" isn't the same as "this person deserved to die"

If you can't see how those two things are different i can see why you're struggling.

It shouldn’t be hand waved away like “ah well what did you expect”, or fafo or whatever. It should be condemned unanimously.

Subjective but you're entitled to your opinion.

"He's dead and the world is a better place overall" is also an opinion to which people are entitled (unless you've been arguing some other kind of free speech? )

And as it seems you are having a hard time with this i'll add the explicit context:

" He's dead and the world is a better place overall ( this doesn't mean i wanted him dead, but i'm not sad that he is ) "

Whataboutism was is a reference to your suggestion that Superman is also a war criminal. In the universe of the first movie we as the audience are essentially told by the text that Superman is good and Lex is bad. In introducing the idea that “Superman is also” as a reason to excuse teaming up with Lex seems to fit the bill for that.

Hmm, i see what you mean and i hadn't considered it as a whattaboutism as i wasn't using it as a foundation of another argument, merely using it to illustrate the weakness of using the term "war criminal" in a context where that term is hugely subjective.

But i concede that it could be considered as such.

As far as no true Scottsman, there’s potentially a fallacy that fits better, and no true Scotsman may not even really fit the bill at all, but essentially this concept that you cannot portray someone as universally good. I just think that’s not really relevant in this context and I disagree with it. I’m not saying that Superman has to be perfect. I just don’t think it’s good to team up with Lex. The idea that some people might not see it as a negative doesn’t change the fact that some people would. And conceptually I understand that where I’d draw the line might differ from where other people draw the line, but the suggestion that where I draw the line is somehow unreasonable to the point of bringing up the idea that nobody could be perfect seems strange.

I'm not sure where i was making the argument that superman has to be perfect, but that was not my intention, i was merely pointing out that the term "War Criminal" is subjective to the point of being useless in my opinion, because it's a term that comes from the in world corrupt and broken systems.

The term "Criminal" is used to assign a negative status to whomever the current regime deems it to be so.

In this film specifically superman is considered a "War Criminal" by Boravia.

I'm not disagreeing with your subjective moral position, i'm saying the term you are using is weak.

I wasn't suggesting your subjective opinion was incorrect (or unreasonable), i was just positing that alternative positions are possible.

A difference of opinion.

I’m not suggesting that Superman is held to some high minded unrealistic standard. I think most people would agree that Lex is a bad guy and from a moralistic standpoint would prefer if Superman not have to work with him. I’m not saying it would necessarily make better media, just that we probably don’t need to watch war criminals have a redemption arc at this moment in history.

I think that's unsubstantiated opinion, but it's not like i have reams of data to prove otherwise so again, a difference of opinion.

Additionally, I don’t care very much about what was and was not the case in the comics. My understanding is that in the comics his parents never suggested he form a harem. I think that each reboot should be considered as its own incarnation, and I think Lex in this incarnation is an objectively bad person. I do not think that the movie left any real room for interpretation there. He’s not misguided, or misinformed. He’s a bad guy because fundamentally at the core of his being he has these flaws that affect the way he sees the world and treats others.

The comic were used as a point of reference to support my subjective opinion that it's possible to have a plausible redemption arc with lex, i then used that as a basis to provide a situation in which it could occur.

I fundamentally disagree that objectively bad exists, but i agree he was an across the board arsehole in this one.

Like I said, I will have to reserve ultimate judgment for when we know more about the actual content, but I just don’t think it’s a good premise.

Fair enough.

Nowhere( in response to your post ) did anyone say murder was an acceptable response, just that if you murder someone , nobody is charging you with a violation of free speech because that would be nonsensical.

And the only reason they had to say that much is because your argument was incorrect.

If you want to argue proportional response, have at it, but you didn't, you argued :

no because that would be murder

Murder isn't a violation of the US definition of free speech, unless the government does the murdering.

Still a crime, but not a constitutional free speech violation.

There may be fallacies in there that I haven't spotted and there is certainly subjectivism and relativism to a degree, but there is no whataboutism or true Scotsman.

Lex as a character has gone through this same cycle a few times in both the comics and the animated series, he's the big had one day and a reluctant team member the next.

Laundering mass murderers is also common. That you don't approve is clear.

I wasnt trying to say a team up was a good story, only that it was possible to make it narratively feasible with the given personality we've seen so far.

A signal to whom ? Genuine question.

I agree, as a full-throttle textbook narcissist he would think it was be a problem because he couldn't control him.

An opportunity to gain partial influence might be a reasonable stepping stone until he can get full control (or remove him entirely).

I'm not sure it's that far fetched an approach for someone so intelligent.

It might not be the story they go with, but it's not implausible to fit his current personality in with a team up.

I’m sick of the good guys having to compromise and give in to literal war criminals.

I agree that with that kind of power, working within the bounds of corrupt/compromised systems is stupid so I'm interested to see what you think is a viable alternative.

I'm pretty sure a few of them have been done as actual comic runs.

Media does not need to portray war criminals as allies of good. They are not.

Firstly , this is a fictional space, so they can pretty much do what they want, whether or not that's something you enjoy is a different matter.

Secondly , as a premise it's really *really hard to portray absolute goodness to the satisfaction of everyone because good and evil are subjective constructs, unless you're a religious fundamentalist i suppose, then reason doesn't generally apply in any meaningful way.

A "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter" or a "trolley problem" kind of subjective.

Also i'd suspect that to at least a few of the countries in this fictional setting, superman is a war criminal of the highest order, it might not be the fictional US but other fictional countries exist, with their own laws.

If you are using "War Criminal" as a benchmark you are using the definitions of the same systems of which "Boravia" is a part.

Evil is easier in general because there are common things that people will mostly agree on, but even then it's hard to get something objectively evil (outside of supernatural entities i suppose).

A fictional space is a perfect place to try though precisely because it isn't bound by as much realism.

That's the standard , "we can't track you on a VPN" error as well fwiw.

Because he was envious and afraid humans would be irrelevant/replaced.

If a bigger threat shows up that makes superman just as much a chump as the rest of humanity, I'd imagine this lex would absolutely step in to help out, even if only to prove his continued relevance and give a big fuck you.

This superman, giving zero fucks about lex's inferiority complex, would accept the help to get the job done.

It's doesnt have to work, it just has to be convincing enough to get the bean counters and/or incompetent/sociopathic upper management to buy in to the idea that they can save money.

Same as always, if the shitstorm created by a decision isn't immediately devastating or can be incontrovertibly tied to said decision then that's just BAU.

but the time the shitshow starts playing the preroll trailers the golden parachutes and bonuses have been claimed.

For them, this isn't broken, this is how the game works.

I like to think of it as a large list of granular, contextual rpg stats.

"You get an average 6 for concentration while in a quiet room between 15-20 deg c. Assuming you've not taken more than 10 points of psychic damage in the last 3 hours and are well rested."

They are, in theory, comparing your scores in a set of somewhat defined contexts to see if , overall, it's causing you problems that might be helped in someway by a treatment that has worked for other people who have similar scores in the same set of criteria.

That sentence being so full of caveats is why I think diagnosis is hard for this sort of thing.