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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Reader mode
I hope that the source of the Nth Metal is revealed to be some kind of revolutionary group that is motivated by a desire for equality or the pursuit of other liberal values. Having Orange Lantern choose between following the status quo by supporting Authoritarian and Racist regime or making the government of Thanagar an enemy by supporting revolutionaries seems like it would be a lot more interesting than another fight with generic monsters.

I also hope that the willingness of the League to accept to people who are essentially soldiers of a Fascist regime as members is discussed. This always seemed like an interesting contradiction to me considering the otherwise extremely liberal nature of the Justice League.
 
Ct613hulu said:
I also hope that the willingness of the League to accept to people who are essentially soldiers of a Fascist regime as members is discussed. This always seemed like an interesting contradiction to me considering the otherwise extremely liberal nature of the Justice League.
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Yeah, no. The league is not liberal. While they appear to support the ideas of liberalism, they actually maintain the status quo by punching criminals. They're almost never shown helping the primary causes of criminal behavior, poverty and abuse.
 
Ct613hulu said:
I also hope that the willingness of the League to accept to people who are essentially soldiers of a Fascist regime as members is discussed. This always seemed like an interesting contradiction to me considering the otherwise extremely liberal nature of the Justice LeagueOliver Queen.
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Fixed it for you.

Also "we don't like your politics, so no League for you" is pretty close to bigoted thinking itself and a very good way to create supervillians.
 
I realize that they are not particularly effective at promoting Liberal values but I think that all of the American members and Wonder Woman would consider themselves as champions of Liberal Democracy in its perceived state the "good ideology" and opponents of Fascism in its perceived state as the "bad ideology".

I would also say that the Justice League and its members are Liberal in the sense that they consider upholding the values of Truth, Liberty, and Justice to be a core part of their mission. They do a rather poor job of this but that seems like a failing of methodology and understanding rather than intention.

BR549 said:
Fixed it for you.

Also "we don't like your politics, so no League for you" is pretty close to bigoted thinking itself and a very good way to create supervillians.
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That is a good point but there has to be a line drawn somewhere in order for the Justice League to retain its morality. Would the Justice League be willing to accept a White Nationalist or Nazi supporter into their ranks if they agreed to adhere to the rules of the Justice League? The very idea seems ridiculous and counter to the entire purpose of the Justice League. The problem is that if you will not accept human who simply support Fascist ideology than why will you accept aliens who actively support a Fascist government? It seems like the only answer is either double standards for human and non-humans or gross incompetence in investigating the suitability of members.


PS: I would also like to avoid confusion by saying that the definition of "Liberal" that I am using is a more general and historical definition rather than the version used in contemporary American politics that primarily serves to differentiate between Republicans and Democrats.

Key ideas of "Liberalism" would be that government exists to protect and serve the people, the government must guarantee human rights and liberties, and that legitimate power ultimate derives from the consent of the governed. From a historical standpoint even the most far-right modern Republican would be considered an extreme Liberal.
 
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Ct613hulu said:
I hope that the source of the Nth Metal is revealed to be some kind of revolutionary group that is motivated by a desire for equality or the pursuit of other liberal values.
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DC did that storyline.

It was Hawkman inspired by the revolutionary war.

"We hold these truths to be self evident that all sapients were created equal..."

I could just see Paul's reaction to that. Blink, blink. "Who plagiarized the Declaration of Independence on Thanagar?"

Presuming Paul hadn't read that storyline, that is.

And a link to Lyla.

Empireths are a quite powerful species. Empaths and telepaths, able to make psychic constructs that apparently are capable of being solid ala a green lantern ring. And their greatest power, the cistern- The biokinetic ability to rewrite their own physiology to give themselves the power of another species. Like say the kryptonian powers.

The response aliens have to these rather powerful species? Burn the witch!

So Lyla grew up knowing that if people knew what species she was they would murder her, and on some level, believing she'd deserve it.
 
I always thought it would be amusing if with that type of name was a good guy. What would it be like if Superman was named Vi-El instead of Kal-El? It seems like that would change the tone of his introductory interview with Lois.
 
Mr Zoat said:
o-."

Mr Pul makes a negative gesture with his wings. "Such a forge would be impossible to disguise. If it existed, we would have found it."

"Alright. How about we go somewhere a little more civilised and you fully brief us?"
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I mean, even really basic scry wards have shown the ability to block many an advanced means of detection, and it isn't like you couldn't substitute magic for any given part of the physical manufacturing process or discover a way to transmute it magically. I'd totally believe that someone like Balewa could transmute Nth metal, though I suspect it's probably more on the 'magic aided tech' angle.
 
Stsword said:
DC did that storyline.

It was Hawkman inspired by the revolutionary war.

"We hold these truths to be self evident that all sapients were created equal..."

I could just see Paul's reaction to that. Blink, blink. "Who plagiarized the Declaration of Independence on Thanagar?"

Presuming Paul hadn't read that storyline, that is.
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He hadn't when he started writing this story.

And his response would actually be: "You know that those guys were slave-owners, right?"
 
Jirachi said:
I mean, even really basic scry wards have shown the ability to block many an advanced means of detection, and it isn't like you couldn't substitute magic for any given part of the physical manufacturing process or discover a way to transmute it magically. I'd totally believe that someone like Balewa could transmute Nth metal, though I suspect it's probably more on the 'magic aided tech' angle.
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If Paul admits that even the most basic of scry wards can spoof power rings, will that make the thanagarians think that hiding a deposit of Nth metal is possible? Bleez is aware of Imperial Intelligence's shadier deeds; will they actually try anything on Paul? I would be interested in an attempted assassination or frame up, just because they think he's too dangerous or something. He has proven able to make Nth metal, the thing that makes Thanagar powerful.
 
Mr Zoat said:
He hadn't when he started writing this story.

And his response would actually be: "You know that those guys were slave-owners, right?"
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Not all of them ever owned slaves, and the one in particular who actually wrote it had long since freed all of his slaves and had been speaking out publicly against slavery for quite some time.
 
Mr Zoat said:
doesn't appear phased by the accusation
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I wouldn't expect an accusation to cause someone to slip out of contact with standard physics. It might perhaps have fazed him if he were less unflappable, though.

Mr Zoat said:
forment
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Try again: foment.

Ct613hulu said:
From a historical standpoint even the most far-right modern Republican would be considered an extreme Liberal.
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And from a modern European standpoint, most modern Democrats are at most only considered slightly left of conservative. (EDIT: Stricken as this is a subject we needn't be discussing here. I would remove it entirely except it's been replied to, so there's little point. The remainder is a definition from historical politics, not any discussion of modern politics.)

The problem is that "liberal" and "conservative" are relative terms and you can't meaningfully use them to describe policies outside of their contemporary context. In a world where freedom and justice are considered the norm, preserving those as ends of their own is a conservative platform, and allowing aspects of those to be diminished in order to achieve greater goals is a liberal platform.

The only truly constant aspect of the definitions is that conservative policies focus on people keeping what they have (they "conserve") while liberal policies focus on giving people what they lack (typically social or economic mobility, that is, "liberty"). When what people already have and what people lack change, so do the policies associated with these terms.
 
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It's important to remember that, for all that most League members are relatively liberal, the League itself is extremely conservative. And for a somewhat good reason: if the Justice League got into the habit of regime change, their powers would make them kingmakers the world over. That way lies the Justice Lords.

That doesn't mean there aren't some obvious missteps made by the League, but they're trying very hard to promote the idea that superpowers do not give the superpowered the right to rule those without, and I think that's a pretty important sentiment.
 
Vaermina said:
because he will no sell your everything.
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So...basically like every other threat OL has faced. Oceanus no sold his everything. As did the Angel of War. Ditto for the Dragon yes?

Jacen said:
Yeah, no. The league is not liberal. While they appear to support the ideas of liberalism, they actually maintain the status quo by punching criminals. They're almost never shown helping the primary causes of criminal behavior, poverty and abuse.
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Well...it's kind of hard to combat the root of the problem when your in a universe powered by sales which in turn are powered by stories of villains that you punch.
 
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Siskulous said:
Not all of them ever owned slaves, and the one in particular who actually wrote it had long since freed all of his slaves and had been speaking out publicly against slavery for quite some time.
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Thomas Jefferson owned a substantial number of slaves all the way through the day he died, and did not free many of them in his will, either. He was not a terrible person, and was fully aware that slavery was a great wrong, but he was a distinctly complicated and flawed one.
 
If such a forge is merely the size of a mountain then hiding it in an asteroid must be rather easy, considering how big the galaxy is. For power you could probably tap a star or something.

And that Not-Chthulhu thing is no issue, as long as Paul gets it to say his name :D
 
(Having taken some good advice, I'm removing this post, as it is wholly off-topic.)
 
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Ct613hulu said:
That is a good point but there has to be a line drawn somewhere in order for the Justice League to retain its morality. Would the Justice League be willing to accept a White Nationalist or Nazi supporter into their ranks if they agreed to adhere to the rules of the Justice League? The very idea seems ridiculous and counter to the entire purpose of the Justice League. The problem is that if you will not accept human who simply support Fascist ideology than why will you accept aliens who actively support a Fascist government? It seems like the only answer is either double standards for human and non-humans or gross incompetence in investigating the suitability of members.
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The answer to that, I think, is to deconstruct the scenario and look at it in more detail.

The main objections I have to this argument is that the actions of the Justice League aren't quite as simple as striving to follow a single morality, and secondly that a Fascist is not directly exchangeable with a Nazi in this situation.

For the first point, I doubt that the Justice League even has a unified morality that they try to follow, beyond the most basic of principles anyway. You aren't dealing with a unified body carefully considering if X is permissible, you have a bunch of individual members viewing things from their own perspective according to their own morals (which do overlap to a degree), and raising objections if anything violates it.

They're like-minded enough that you still get general support for truth, freedom, etc, but there are still major deviations. Things like Batman, Superman, etc being extremely opposed to killing in general, while people like Jordan or Captain Atom (who are/were in the military) are much less opposed to it in general, even if they abstain in their specific circumstances.

This model of individuals acting with loosely coordinated morals also explains things like why requiring unanimous votes for increased membership isn't viable in the long run. If they were completely unified and acting as a cohesive group, there'd be no issue; their membership requirements are strict, but not so strict that they'd quickly run out of people who are admissible. But with a increasingly large number of individuals with varying morals who all have to approve a new member, it's ever more likely that someone will object. It's like trying to find a key that fits a dozen completely different locks.

So, now we've reduced the question to "why did none of the League members have enough of a issue with the Hawks to object?". That, I would say, probably varies a lot too. Some of the members probably didn't strongly object to the Hawk's government from whatever brief description they got of it. It's not obviously horrible until you look at some of the less publicized bits like the slums and xenophobia, and a lot of people probably wouldn't even apply the term Fascist unless they took time to stop and think about it. For others members, they probably just glossed over it a bit; things like "the Hawks are my friends, they seem like good people, surely it's not that bad". And so on.


And for the second point, I object because Nazis and Fascists are not directly interchangable in this scenario. Obviously the League would immediately object as a whole to anyone that they knew was a Nazi, or anyone else who isn't from the early 20th century who for some reason goes by a different name. But I doubt they'd immediately object to a Fascist quite as hard, for a few reasons.

First, if the Hawk government is Fascist, that means two League members are too. So they probably wouldn't object quite as much. Secondly, there is a lot less disgust at the concept of Fascism than there is towards Nazis; no one except them will support the latter nowadays, while you can find a fair few people who don't particularly object to, or even want the former.

And building on that, Nazis are... weird. Not in a Jetpack Hitler sense, but in a sense of how they've lingered in the public consciousness. They killed millions like cattle, relatively recent too, and nested in one of the largest conflicts in human history... and Stallin wasn't and didn't? Or Hong Xiuquan? History has little shortage of mass murderers. Hitler has a unique flavor in that he sought people out who were part of specific minorities using a guise of racism and pseudoscience, instead of using the more publicly-permissible excuses of 'civil war', or "they just starved, I dindu nuffin". But, still, it seems disproportionate; the other mass murderers are a footnote for a lot of people.

I would argue that the visceral disgust people feel at Nazis (or other various political-entities-who-are-at-least-20-years-old) are not based on rationality or magnitude(in it's entirety, they've still killed quite a lot of people), but a complex set of social factors. At the very least, if disgust was rational then you'd probably have more people who'd even realize what you're talking about when you mention Taiping. So substituting a Fascist for a Nazi wouldn't make much sense, because a Nazi will always evoke massively more disgust than a Fascist all else being equal. And I even doubt they're equally dangerous in the at-least-20-years-ago political world; have the entire world forget about them both, and then see how far a outdated ideology based on proven-wrong pseudoscience and racism (in a climate of essentially anti-racism) will spread, vs Fascism, which many people 20 years ago would earnestly argue for even though they remember history.
 
Maxx Crowley said:
Well...it's kind of hard to combat the root of the problem when your in a universe powered by sales which in turn are powered by stories of villains that you punch.
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I think it would be more accurate to say that the sales are powered by a combination of fanboyism, brand loyalty, and quality storytelling. And that last one has been increasingly rare of late.
 
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