5 ms·
What confuses me is that we all seem to have more-or-less the same moral compass when it comes to fiction. "The bad guy" is often going to extremes to prevent s
by javajosh 11y ago
What confuses me is that we all seem to have more-or-less the same moral compass when it comes to fiction. "The bad guy" is often going to extremes to prevent something from going public - dumping toxic waste in a river, taking bribes, selling a vote, torturing people in secret etc.
Somehow it seems like these days, if someone gets caught doing these things in real life, nothing happens. Dumping toxic waste is pro-business. Bribery is freedom of speech. Torture? Heck, it's not torture, and they're really bad people anyway.
Sometimes I want to grab these people and ask them, seriously, if this isn't evil, then what IS?
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoUnfortunately, what people seem to pick up as "evil" from the fictions isn't the immoral actions, but instead the color-coding of villains as wearing ominous clothes (often dressed for a funeral) and accompanied by certain musical stings. I mean, for God's sakes, the Nazis wore skulls and didn't notice they were the baddies!
- Joof 11y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
- Joof 11y agoI would love a skit on the current NSA. Have an old Russian/Nazi operative on a stakeout with a NSA guy who points out that we don't have to bug phones or do stakeouts anymore. Culminates in reading the e-mail of the operative to him. "But aren't you Americans all about freedom of speech?"; "Of course! My freedom to read your speech."
- grkvlt 11y ago> Nazis wore skulls and didn't notice they were the baddies You mean like the Queen's Royal Lancers [1] (17th/21st Lancers in WW2) maybe? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Royal_Lancers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Royal_Lancers
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoYes, sure, but there's a slightly deeper meaning to the joke: fascism as an ideology has always been built around the glorification of death. If you want to spot capital-E Evil in real life, look for the people loudly proclaiming their devotion to death. Maybe they cover it up with "God is great!" sometimes, but then they pop out, "We love death as you love life!"[1]. Sometimes, rarely, they do you the favor of actually printing the Chaos Star of the occult on their book-covers[2] (and I seriously thought that was a pop-culture reference until I found the link proving its truth). Or maybe they're just cheering, "Let him die! Let him die!"[3]. [1] -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfagPS6490 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfagPS6490 [2] -- http://crookedtimber.org/2015/03/10/who-is-aleksandr-dugin/ http://crookedtimber.org/2015/03/10/who-is-aleksandr-dugin/ [3] -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepQF7G-It0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepQF7G-It0
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- shkkmo 11y ago> What confuses me is that we all seem to have more-or-less the same moral compass when it comes to fiction. > Torture? Heck, it's not torture, and they're really bad people anyway. The use of torture 'by the good guys' is actually pretty ubiquitous in modern TV.