CrazyNoVa
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Yeah, poor Barry. First, he had to deal with The Sheeda and PTSD, and then the Anti-Life back-to-back. He definitely didn't catch a break.
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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)
- Thread starter Mr Zoat
- Start date
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- self insert young justice
Yeah, poor Barry. First, he had to deal with The Sheeda and PTSD, and then the Anti-Life back-to-back. He definitely didn't catch a break.
Benisapersonbmiller
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Maybe Batman found a very subtle form of mind control that worked on orange lantern. It would seem in character for Batman to work on something to pacify orange lantern because he's the kind of person who would notice and question something like this.
Shotiegun11
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I would like if this prompted the SI to take a more direct role and stop worrying about society becoming dependent on him if he introduces technology or help directly too much. The other option is apparently societal collapse.
I imagine it won't though.
But if this is a 'Earth Societies have to change / evolve and can't return to the status quo', might as well go for a good overhaul.
And That's Okay (part 13)
New
Mr Zoat
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20th July 2013
18:51 GMT -5
I sit on the steps of the Hall of Justice, frantically reviewing the data and comparing it to… Literally any source I can beg, borrow or steal.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
I remember joking that… Governments aren't as essential as they like to think they are, after… The Netherlands, was it? Went without one for over a year. And the Northern Ireland Assembly has shut down for longer than that without the I.R.A. arming up again. But… I… Suppose that only works because governments in Europe aren't responsible for everything. If the board of Tesco is incapacitated, then Sainsbury's or Asda will happily take the initiative, capitalism working reasonably well as long as the market participants are actively competing with one another.
But in an autocratic state-. No, not 'autocratic'. Adom is doing fine; Batman's only concern there is that his expansion might be outpacing the capacities of his civil service. Totalising, that's the word. I remember listening to an interview given by a British civil servant who'd escorted a soon-to-be ex-Soviet delegation around London just prior to Russian market deregulation. They'd asked him who was responsible for ensuring that London was supplied with bread, and he'd thought about it for a bit and then said 'well, no one, really'.
If hundreds of bakeries are buying wheat from hundreds of farms, then it doesn't matter if people lose faith in one farm or one bakery. Bread will still get baked and sold. But if you focus things though one authority and it turns out that someone there was up to no good… There's nowhere else to go.
And things under pressure tend to explode.
In America, we've mostly dealt with that by de facto replacing the dollar with the medallion, the government's monopoly on currency provision being an active impediment to economic recovery. I knew that the American and European economies had major underlying issues, that was why I used to have that issue with destroying currency whenever I touched it. But with that taken care of, it really doesn't matter if the government collapses so long as communications and currency are preserved. People can organise themselves if the basic tools exist, and they can recreate a government if they want to.
What I didn't appreciate was… How it was working in other places. Take Chong-Mai for example. Lovely place. As far as I can tell it's where the people who on Earth Prime would have been North Korea's communist leadership ended up while the militarists took 'North Rhelasia'. I got the impression that the Russians thought that the local communist cadre was pretty useless and so backed a military coup that would ally with them whereas the Chinese backed the ideologically pure communists… Doesn't matter.
The point is that they ended up combining the worst aspects of centralisation with the worst parts of the free market. If you're connected, you can do no wrong. If you're not, you can do no right. So they've got towns made of bricks made of sand and spit held together with dreams and I'm not sure if it's corruption, resource availability, incompetence, or… I don't know. And because all of the production centres belong to 'the people', there's no way to get anything else and I'm not sure that the expertise to make good bricks actually exists there. The collapse of buildings was getting blamed on 'enemies of the people', but now…
I mean, I don't think anyone believed it, but with the deaths in the security services and government during the Anti-Life period, the whole place is regressing. The government that's left can't be made to work. They're looking at a famine as well as deaths due to freezing weather once we reach winter because, oh yes, the people responsible for the electricity and gas supply aren't any more capable than the brick makers and they could cover that up when they were in total control…
And now they can't. Batman wasn't putting faceless Peace Agents in charge because he was making a political point. He did it because he will need to take over the country before too long and it can't look like a foreign occupation. And if that's a sign of the situation in the area more generally…
We can't stop China collapsing if the situation is similar there. As in, literally can't. And they've got the same control structure, only larger.
And the only reason that Russia is doing better is that the mafia were already effectively a second layer of organisation anyway.
I raise my head, looking out across the plaza…
It's all so brittle.
Calculations provided match behaviour of stellar polities with 93% regularity.
Which doesn't mean that it will happen, just that about 19 times out of 20 it observably did.
And our efforts to fix things aren't helping the stability that's left, because that's coming from the fact that the people there are accustomed to an apparently omniscient state, and we're actively undermining that belief.
Every part of South America that Hugo doesn't control was heading in a totalist direction in response to the threat he posed. In the case of Brazil it was necessary… Well, coming to terms with Hugo would have been better, but that's an unrealistic idea. Everywhere else…
On the plus side, the cartels in Mexico are doing even worse than the government, so…
So Peace Operatives are already dealing with what's left of them, and then we can sort of roll it into the United States effort…
Because even if my concerns about Batman are valid… It's like Lex Luthor. And the reason why I haven't even tried to detect Vandal Savage, who's almost certainly regenerated by now. He wouldn't want to conquer a collapsed world. Even if he imposed a harsh police state… That's what they had, and at least his would be functional.
And yes, we're bypassing governments, but-. We're not stopping people re-establishing them.
I don't like this. I don't-.
The only good thing I learned is that it doesn't look like Batman is establishing order through fear in a Sinestro-approved manner. And it doesn't look like he's aiming this at me in particular. He said too many things that Diana would have reacted to if he was lying. He's carrying on not because he's not concerned about Tetch but because… He's rolled the dice, betting on the best chance we've got to avoid seeing half the world Year Zero itself.
And the Peace Agents are going to de facto take over governments. And if I could come up with a better idea, I'd have said it, but I can't.
In the long run… This might be good for the species. But-. Yeah, we are going to take over the world.
We are actually going to take over the world.
The avalanche is already in motion. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
"It's a lot, isn't it?"
Alan sits down next to me, and I… Nod.
"Yes."
"I gotta say, I didn't think it would hit you quite so hard as it did me."
"How long have you known?"
"Few hours. So?"
"So?"
Alan shrugs. "I couldn't check his math."
"It checks out."
"Well." He nods sombrely. "With any luck, it won't be for all that long. And he did agree to take his ring off for a while, just in case."
"Yes, and that assuages one of my big worries. I guess-. I guess it.. comes back to housekeeping. If you let bad governments fester, eventually a limb will drop off. I knew… In theory, that things could get this far, but I didn't think it would actually happen."
He nods companionably. "If we're lucky, we can still pick up the pieces."
I snort. "How lucky do you feel right now?"
18:51 GMT -5
I sit on the steps of the Hall of Justice, frantically reviewing the data and comparing it to… Literally any source I can beg, borrow or steal.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
I remember joking that… Governments aren't as essential as they like to think they are, after… The Netherlands, was it? Went without one for over a year. And the Northern Ireland Assembly has shut down for longer than that without the I.R.A. arming up again. But… I… Suppose that only works because governments in Europe aren't responsible for everything. If the board of Tesco is incapacitated, then Sainsbury's or Asda will happily take the initiative, capitalism working reasonably well as long as the market participants are actively competing with one another.
But in an autocratic state-. No, not 'autocratic'. Adom is doing fine; Batman's only concern there is that his expansion might be outpacing the capacities of his civil service. Totalising, that's the word. I remember listening to an interview given by a British civil servant who'd escorted a soon-to-be ex-Soviet delegation around London just prior to Russian market deregulation. They'd asked him who was responsible for ensuring that London was supplied with bread, and he'd thought about it for a bit and then said 'well, no one, really'.
If hundreds of bakeries are buying wheat from hundreds of farms, then it doesn't matter if people lose faith in one farm or one bakery. Bread will still get baked and sold. But if you focus things though one authority and it turns out that someone there was up to no good… There's nowhere else to go.
And things under pressure tend to explode.
In America, we've mostly dealt with that by de facto replacing the dollar with the medallion, the government's monopoly on currency provision being an active impediment to economic recovery. I knew that the American and European economies had major underlying issues, that was why I used to have that issue with destroying currency whenever I touched it. But with that taken care of, it really doesn't matter if the government collapses so long as communications and currency are preserved. People can organise themselves if the basic tools exist, and they can recreate a government if they want to.
What I didn't appreciate was… How it was working in other places. Take Chong-Mai for example. Lovely place. As far as I can tell it's where the people who on Earth Prime would have been North Korea's communist leadership ended up while the militarists took 'North Rhelasia'. I got the impression that the Russians thought that the local communist cadre was pretty useless and so backed a military coup that would ally with them whereas the Chinese backed the ideologically pure communists… Doesn't matter.
The point is that they ended up combining the worst aspects of centralisation with the worst parts of the free market. If you're connected, you can do no wrong. If you're not, you can do no right. So they've got towns made of bricks made of sand and spit held together with dreams and I'm not sure if it's corruption, resource availability, incompetence, or… I don't know. And because all of the production centres belong to 'the people', there's no way to get anything else and I'm not sure that the expertise to make good bricks actually exists there. The collapse of buildings was getting blamed on 'enemies of the people', but now…
I mean, I don't think anyone believed it, but with the deaths in the security services and government during the Anti-Life period, the whole place is regressing. The government that's left can't be made to work. They're looking at a famine as well as deaths due to freezing weather once we reach winter because, oh yes, the people responsible for the electricity and gas supply aren't any more capable than the brick makers and they could cover that up when they were in total control…
And now they can't. Batman wasn't putting faceless Peace Agents in charge because he was making a political point. He did it because he will need to take over the country before too long and it can't look like a foreign occupation. And if that's a sign of the situation in the area more generally…
We can't stop China collapsing if the situation is similar there. As in, literally can't. And they've got the same control structure, only larger.
And the only reason that Russia is doing better is that the mafia were already effectively a second layer of organisation anyway.
I raise my head, looking out across the plaza…
It's all so brittle.
Calculations provided match behaviour of stellar polities with 93% regularity.
Which doesn't mean that it will happen, just that about 19 times out of 20 it observably did.
And our efforts to fix things aren't helping the stability that's left, because that's coming from the fact that the people there are accustomed to an apparently omniscient state, and we're actively undermining that belief.
Every part of South America that Hugo doesn't control was heading in a totalist direction in response to the threat he posed. In the case of Brazil it was necessary… Well, coming to terms with Hugo would have been better, but that's an unrealistic idea. Everywhere else…
On the plus side, the cartels in Mexico are doing even worse than the government, so…
So Peace Operatives are already dealing with what's left of them, and then we can sort of roll it into the United States effort…
Because even if my concerns about Batman are valid… It's like Lex Luthor. And the reason why I haven't even tried to detect Vandal Savage, who's almost certainly regenerated by now. He wouldn't want to conquer a collapsed world. Even if he imposed a harsh police state… That's what they had, and at least his would be functional.
And yes, we're bypassing governments, but-. We're not stopping people re-establishing them.
I don't like this. I don't-.
The only good thing I learned is that it doesn't look like Batman is establishing order through fear in a Sinestro-approved manner. And it doesn't look like he's aiming this at me in particular. He said too many things that Diana would have reacted to if he was lying. He's carrying on not because he's not concerned about Tetch but because… He's rolled the dice, betting on the best chance we've got to avoid seeing half the world Year Zero itself.
And the Peace Agents are going to de facto take over governments. And if I could come up with a better idea, I'd have said it, but I can't.
In the long run… This might be good for the species. But-. Yeah, we are going to take over the world.
We are actually going to take over the world.
The avalanche is already in motion. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
"It's a lot, isn't it?"
Alan sits down next to me, and I… Nod.
"Yes."
"I gotta say, I didn't think it would hit you quite so hard as it did me."
"How long have you known?"
"Few hours. So?"
"So?"
Alan shrugs. "I couldn't check his math."
"It checks out."
"Well." He nods sombrely. "With any luck, it won't be for all that long. And he did agree to take his ring off for a while, just in case."
"Yes, and that assuages one of my big worries. I guess-. I guess it.. comes back to housekeeping. If you let bad governments fester, eventually a limb will drop off. I knew… In theory, that things could get this far, but I didn't think it would actually happen."
He nods companionably. "If we're lucky, we can still pick up the pieces."
I snort. "How lucky do you feel right now?"
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Thundersmight94
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I think that this chapter really reflects how in a perfect comic book world, somehow the world just instantly bounces back from every existential crisis with the snap of a finger. In a world slightly more bound to reality, that's not what happens.
Personally I don't have a problem with Batman taking over the world. To me it's honestly felt weird how the heroes don't take control after such a crisis considering most space stage species in comic series practiced monarchies, ruling council or some form of mixture of the the strongest and most intelligent people ran the world (Warrior King type), especially when many of the heroes fight said beings and makes such world spanning decisions daily, then hand the reins back to the UN or some other government or group. I think the only presidency I can think of for a space faring empire was the Legion's time of Earth and the United Planets.
But back to the point, most of the species that Paul interacts with follow the Warrior King model, that it's weird how hung up he is on maintaining the status quo than trying to change the system into something better by reshaping things after this crisis.
Personally I don't have a problem with Batman taking over the world. To me it's honestly felt weird how the heroes don't take control after such a crisis considering most space stage species in comic series practiced monarchies, ruling council or some form of mixture of the the strongest and most intelligent people ran the world (Warrior King type), especially when many of the heroes fight said beings and makes such world spanning decisions daily, then hand the reins back to the UN or some other government or group. I think the only presidency I can think of for a space faring empire was the Legion's time of Earth and the United Planets.
But back to the point, most of the species that Paul interacts with follow the Warrior King model, that it's weird how hung up he is on maintaining the status quo than trying to change the system into something better by reshaping things after this crisis.
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Slake Mothman
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That Batman made such a thorough analysis and study justifying his approach might make it an easier pill for someone like Anarky to swallow. He seems like a fairly data driven boy, and if he comes around having another super-genius (especially one coming from a place of skepticism) in the room with Batman to keep an eye on things couldn't hurt. I'm less confident about Question, though. Even if given the data from OL, it still might be a bit too insane for him. A Global Totalitarian Regime led by superheroes sounds crazy, but if Batman says it's not, Orange Lantern says it's not, and Superman says its not, is it really?
Chojin Patriarch
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Well, looks like Earth Sixteen is headed straight up Ship Creek without a paddle, and it looks like the League are having to be the ones to build that paddle. And if OL is running the numbers this hard then things really are that bad.
The problem being that governments aren't usually built to perform competition with their own population. By their nature, anyone not on board with the majority are considered rebels or revolutionaries. And when the majority aren't coping, then the minority starts to look a batter option...
A concept generally synonymous with totalitarianism. And naturally, capitalist nations found the idea troublesome for various reasons. Let's not argue too much about them here, shall we?
...I'd say something about flour explosions, but really, the system does have its weaknesses. Mainly the fact that it has to work through humans, with our selfish desires and beliefs.
It's a function of the human mind, honestly. We can deal with a few hundred people as a group. A hundred thousand? It's harder to see all of them as 'our people'. A hundred million? It's too big a number to comprehend. Nu our nature, we're built for village-scale communities, not vast civilisations...
And from context, I get the feeling the place isn't doing too hot right now, and the people might be reconsidering their choices.
Especially as cultural indoctrination forces out traditional knowledge. Even if they could get the good materials, it's probably a lost art for them to create old-style constructions.
Easy to hide those things when the government is the one who says 'this is fine'. But when people are cold and hungry, 'this is fine' starts to look like far less than enough.
At the local level, if they can overthrow or work around political overseers, they might improve. But in the end, the country as a whole would dissolve into city-states... Or so I'm gathering from the grim outlook.
'What is whole must be divided.' So, this China would simply collapse back into the hundreds of provinces it tends to.
Such is the fun of being involved in the world at a level where you can see the cracks and crumbling foundations, isn't it?
And you never know, in this case, the one-in-a-million chance may come up golden. But you can't depend on that, so...
Having a good chunk of the country being controlled by shamans, mystics and demigods will do that.
Amusing that it took that to break the Cartel system.
If Vandal's around, he's probably sitting back, waiting for things to stabilise before he comes in to try and gain control.
Yeah, by any standard, all of this is madness. But the world stopped being sane when a God of Tyranny stuck his metaphorical shadow into the waters.
And once things are stable, they can begin to dismantle what he's set up. Hopefully before things settle into a new normal.
And really, less than a thousand years from now, Earth would be run this way anyway. The world is changing, and hopefully, it changes in a good way.
All you can do is ride it out, dig what's left out of the mess and put things back together.
Ah, Alan. Just when you need a sensible mentor to shore up failing beliefs.
At least he can hope things turn out well. Even if he's got to put the work in to make it happen.
Unsurprising. Alan's not a scientist.
Ah, he won't be wearing the Yellow Ring 24/7? Good to know.
To some degree, this is preventative care, to keep that medical analogy going. You don't let rot set in if you can see it coming. And while cutting the damaged parts out can hurt, it allows for healing afterwards.
So, then. What will this Earth look like in a year's time, I wonder? Cultural inertia will stabilise some countries, but others... The bigger the unstable system, the worse the crash when it crumbles. Some nations will be unrecognisable quite soon, I suspect. At least with the Global Peace Agency stuff in place, the loss of life and humanitarian crises can be minimised...
Vaermina
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I can think of five, so try harder, because you're one step away from being the bad guys.
1) Bring in Alien humanitarian aid.
2) Kryptonian Robots.
3) Alt Universe Lex Luthor.
4) Call up the Asian gods.
5) Call up the Silver City.
Darko
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"even worse"
What's to stop them from agreeing that in order for the planet to function a dictatorship needs to be installed?
They can bring food and other things, but Earth is going to need to start making it themselves.
They already have robots in the form of Atom and technically the Peace Agents.
Kryptonian robots may honestly be worse if they have Eradicator programming.
The only good versions they know about have their hands full with their own universes.
Why?
Realistically there's not a lot they can do.
Again, why?
If they haven't intervened then they probably can't really help when it comes to what happened.
The last two suggestions you gave basically replace a secular dictatorship with a theocratic one.
DAT_NOOB
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I imagine anarky would look at the data and say, "Well Fuck"
But the question would just find his conspiracy theory confirmed.
Wivk
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Isn't that warrior king model approved by The Source itself? The nature of their world seems to create conceptual divinity and Imbuing it into the worthy is a law of nature every bit as fundamental as gravity or electromagnetism.
Vaermina
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They didn't demand that when Orange Lantern worked out how to save Vega.
No, the hundreds of Kryptonian robots that are manning that moon Orange Lantern brought back from Krypton that Zoat continues to forget about.
Yes, but he also owes them multiple favors and is smarter then all of the Justice League combined.
Under Zoat's system of worshipers = power the Asian Gods should have enough power to solve the food and weather problems long enough for those countries to get back into a semibalance of order.
That's not how it works, you don't assume a group who provably has the power to help just can't.
You knock on their front door and ask.
Orange Lantern hasn't asked, in fact, he's utilized none of his higher order contacts since the Anti-Life ended. Many of which could have solved this storyline in a functional afternoon.
Mr Zoat
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While well-intentioned, Lonnie is massively arrogant. He doublethinks in his own book and doesn't notice. It's extremely unlikely that mere evidence would convince him, whereas the Question might be prepared to put up with it for a while as long as he could correct specific abuses of power.
Yes.
Thank you, corrected.
Ngamer11
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Now I hope something will shatter Anarky's delusions and force him to realize he's an arrogant child who thinks he knows better just because he's more intelligent that the average person.
Slake Mothman
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But, like, the good kind of crazy that's rational, well-intentioned, and considerate of long-term consequences, right?
Duke Long
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Missing full stop.
'who'
or
'who'd'?
'dealing with'
Didn't Alexander Luthor-16 (?) immigrate to universe 16 during the Anti-Life, because he felt that protecting the people of -16 was pretty much hopeless? Or did he fuck off to somewhere else and I don't remember that?
I'm pretty sure that's not exactly true, the power of a god is determined at birth and by any power they take for themselves. While I think the number of worshippers at the time of birth matters, the current number of worshippers is mostly irrelevant, I think it just prevents decay rather than providing more power. With that said I do think the Asian gods are strong enough to potentially help. I suppose it would at least be worth asking.
Tangentially, I watched the new Superman movie yesterday and it was fun being able to recognise some stuff because of this story.
Signaller
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Same here
Mr Zoat
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Thank you, corrected.
Validation!Same here
Benisapersonbmiller
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I still feel that Batman's way about doing this is wrong and that eventually Paul is going to realize that.
Silverias
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It is "fun" to consider that this all happened because of OL. None of it happened in original YJ, he set the dominoes for this.
I see a lot of solutions to this problem, but the issue is, story sources seem to be contradicting most of them. The whole "the math checks out" thing is kinda sketchy too.
Right now, my first thought would be to involve something orange. Either orange grandma, or orange snake, or orange smart friend, or all of the above.
The idea that the world needs drastic measures makes sense, but falling into autocracy kinda fundamentally damages the message of a lot of superhero (and especially dc) that doing the right thing works. It is unrealistic sometimes, but Superman isnt the best cuz he is strong, it's due to his existence as the moral bar.
I see a lot of solutions to this problem, but the issue is, story sources seem to be contradicting most of them. The whole "the math checks out" thing is kinda sketchy too.
Right now, my first thought would be to involve something orange. Either orange grandma, or orange snake, or orange smart friend, or all of the above.
The idea that the world needs drastic measures makes sense, but falling into autocracy kinda fundamentally damages the message of a lot of superhero (and especially dc) that doing the right thing works. It is unrealistic sometimes, but Superman isnt the best cuz he is strong, it's due to his existence as the moral bar.
Darko
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They didn't bring humanitarian aid to Vega.
Paul basically got the less objectionable powers to make peace with each other, got rid of the Citadel and gave two power rings to Koriand'r and Komand'r.
That's it.
Why would they be better compared to what they have already?
They may be more advanced, but the chances that they'll somehow be crucial to solve the problems Earth 16 is facing are low to nonexistent.
And why would Paul need to get them to Earth when Superman probably owns that station and could have done that himself.
Atom and Batman most likely rival them in the intellect department.
And this isn't something that can just be solved in an hour or afternoon.
This would probably require years of work.
The -14 and antimatter versions of Lex may not want to put that much effort into it when they have their own worlds to see to.
The fact that they haven't done anything so far is a good indicator that they either can't or don't want to help.
The country Paul mentioned was apparently a dictatorship, so there's a chance that religion was banned there, so their gods may either be dead or powerless, or just don't care about people that don't worship them.
Except they couldn't since this is a massive, massive problem that even an act of God or Gods may not be to fix with just a wave of their hand.
And are you seriously suggesting that someone should just knock on their front door and ask?
Seriously?
A piece of knowledge that I'm sure you don't know.
In times of crisis people tend to pray.
They pray for themselves, their friends and family, their people etc.
People on Earth 16 are probably praying a lot right now to whatever is listening.
The fact that they're not getting divine salvation most likely means that the divines in question either can't help them or don't want to.
If they can't hear the millions of people calling out to them then they're probably not going to hear someone knocking on their door.
And why are you just criticizing Paul for this?
You do know that other League and Team members have higher order contacts, right?
Diana is a champion for Olympus.
Donna is also a champion of Olympus.
Captain Marvel is a champion for a Lord of Order and several different divinities.
Zauriel is an angel who has contact with Heaven's leadership.
Cornwall Boy is a champion for the Celtic gods.
All of these people could have contacted their respective higher order contacts and asked for help.
Heck, they honestly didn't even have to.
Hephaestaean and Susano were both interested in spreading the influence of their respective pantheon.
The current crisis represents a prime opportunity to convert desperate people.
The fact that they haven't done so kinda points to them not being able to do much, or that they will do something but it's going to take a lot more than just an afternoon, so Paul contacting them is pointless.