I’m sorry. I’ll make a sincere effort to break myself of the hobbit, I promise you.
Well, once you start playing the “no true Wakandan would do that” card, the more plausible explanation is that the Wakandans aren’t actually human. You may as well lump them in with Attilan or Lemuria.
I’m only going by what we “know” from the comics - they have always had overwhelmingly superior tech, and they haven’t conquered the world. The only conclusions you could draw are they they don’t want to, or want to but are somehow prevented from doing so to the point they never even start.
Occam’s razor says they’ve never wanted to.
Look, I know the standard historical narrative is of the drive to conquer as though it were a natural law, and manifest destiny and all that colonialist crap. But it’s *not *a natural law. Doubly so in the Marvel Universe, that has a whole lot of these isolated Shangri-Las (including Shangri-La!).
No, I’d say they were just *better *humans. Superior men, if you would. Übermenschen , some might say…
Much better, thank you. Apparently it’s not a very libertarian country/culture. (I don’t truck with libertarianism myself as generally defined to mean not caring for the poor or supporting public education and so on; but I do believe in, on the one hand, robustly investing in public health—but on the other, not telling people they can’t use a drug like tobacco, even if it gives them cancer.)
No, it’s definitely not libertarian.
I’d say they’re more like a Nordic-style welfare state, allowing for the difference in actual head of government.
Do they outright ban cigarettes in any Nordic country, though?
Not yet, but it is on the cards for at least Iceland and Finland, that I know of.
Just curious: has a thread ever been moved from the Pit to CafeSoc?
Nah, fuck that. I’m starting to view Ulysses Klaw more favourably since he was clever enough to rob these smug jerks and evade them for decades afterward.
Didn’t really get to enjoy the spoils of his looting, did he, even after he got paid. Yeah, he “evaded” them - by living in a rusting wreck. The high life! So much for Klaw.
I don’t see what’s got you all in a tizzy about this - the Wakandans may be “smug jerks”, but they are correct. Look at how the West uses supertech - Project Insight, anyone? Ultron? Wakandans used it for passive defence and economic independence. They’d have every right to feel superior.
“Smug jerk” - wait, that’s pretty much a spot-on description of Tony Stark. Remind me, how many villages did he light up with his super-tech? Oh, just his own tower? Does New York have a public maglev system powered by arc reactor tech? No? Who’s the smug jerk now?
The CIA is not villified by anyone other than those on the right and left smeared as “conspiracy theorists”. The mainstream condemnation of the Russian trolls and comparisons to Pearl Harbor are the stuff of war propaganda, not legitimate criticisms of a poorly funded Russian program.
Indeed I’ve heard the portrayal of the CIA agent as do-gooder in the film was laughable.
If you can’t stop making holes in everything, your hammer privileges will be taken away permanently.
Here, let me show once again what an ignoramus you are:
My impression was that he was forced in the movie to be a do-gooder. As he was indeed a jerk but changed his mind after his life was saved by the Wacandans that he thought were just going to ruin yet another shady deal to get vivranium for other shady deals.
I’d say that someone should take the hammer away before he puts a hole in his skull but I fear we’re too late…
Stranger
Well, yea, Tony Stark is a smug jerk. I mean, that pretty much defines his character. Still, he does have Stark Industries, and thus trades some of his stuff to others. It doesn’t make him a good person, but it’s still better than withholding everything.
I can’t judge the movie, since I’ve not seen it. I can comment on that one comic excerpt. I know your ethics are different than most, but for me (and I presume a lot of people), having a cure and not doing anything to allow it to spread to those who need it is about as evil as killing the cancer sufferers themselves.
Sure, there can be other concerns, but none given are that great. There’s nothing saying they’d have to give a cure, no-strings attached. And the people who sell cigarettes would be one of the biggest proponents of having a cure, letting them sell more of their stuff. And, sorry, a few examples of discovered tech does not mean that all tech would be used for war. Hell, these are the more technologically advanced people here. Surely they can figure out what could be used for war and prevent that.
The whole “we have all this stuff that could help all of humanity, but we’ll just keep it for ourselves” does not sit well with me at all. It smacks of bigotry, to be honest. (And calling one group “barbarians” doesn’t help. Especially from the guy who thinks revenge is an important thing.) Our tribe gets to have it, but those others have to suffer. Even the system of capitalism and greed seems morally superior to that. Even Shkrelli provided some way to get the medicine he had to offer, and everyone wants to punch his face in. Hell, even Trump would sell a cure for cancer if he had it.
Now, granted, there could be other reasons not stated that actually do rise to the point of making this a true debate. I again am only going by this comic. But I definitely see why this comic page makes them seem awful.
Meh.
I buy the “they’ll weaponize it” argument as a reasonable one, if the “cure for cancer” isn’t shareable without necessarily enabling , say, terrible bioweapons that can be made in a home lab à la CRISPR leading to man-monkey hybrid butlers. I wouldn’t class the threat of impending biogeocide as “not that great”, myself.
And if that Wakandan attitude “doesn’t sit that well with you”, what are you doing to spread the uneven wealth and resources the USA currently sits on, to the undeveloped nations of Africa? You shouldn’t rest until no-one is hungry, anywhere. Apparently.
At the beginning of Civil war (IIRC) Stark funds basically everybody’s tech research. Not quite the same thing, but at least he’s doing something (despite being a smug jerk).
In his defense the reason he needed his life saved was because he’d thrown himself in front of a bullet. My impression was that he was a basically decent person but also a stuffy functionary who wasn’t going to let the Wakandans ruin the US’s access to vibranium. When the bullets started flying, the decent person instinct took over…and once he woke up in Wakanda things moved pretty fast.
That comic page does make them sound kind of awful. But I am assuming it was written by Ta-Nehesi Coates, and he is kind of awful.
I imagine a large part of why they did not allow the world to even taste their superior tech was due to their long history of isolationism, from which they watched the rest of the continent be colonized and oppressed, and from which they learned that there were a lot of people out there willing to kill for just basic raw materials such as gold. What would they do for Vibranium and its associated advances? Nope, better to keep out of sight, out of mind, nothing to see here… I imagine many explorers were killed or captured before they developed their city-stealthing fields. And later on, they would maintain that isolation, because the world views them as nothing, a backwater nation of farmers and herdsfolk, so allowing others access to their advances would be suspicious, and draw unwanted attention to their country. Where did these farmers get this tech? What secrets lie in Wakanda? If any of their tech slipped out, and was traced back to them, how many more people like Klaue would try to sneak in? Would other, more powerful forces try, and force the Wakandans to show their hand even more as they defend their nation? They were not ready to risk the world trying to batter down their doors for their secrets. But by the end, that has changed. The world has changed, the Wakandans are still hella more advanced, but the gap is less so, and hiding is not helping anyone other than their own, and even then… some slip through the cracks, such as Erik.