The thing is, climate change is one of the those problems that effects almost every area of policy. And policy is going to be driven by the most radical environmentalists imaginable, who have an absolute disregard for human life on the individual level. You don’t murder hundreds, if not thousands, of people to take power just to pass a bunch of carbon taxes.
Start with things like foreign aid. There’s a famine in Africa. The butterflies have total control of the US government. Do we send aid? Or is letting a few millions die a reasonable sacrifice in the cause of reducing global population to a sustainable level? Or, in domestic policy, we need to get off coal power entirely. Do we offer government assistance and retraining as we gradually transition away from coal? or do we shut down the entire industry by fiat, throwing thousands into poverty, and if they start making too much noise, send in the army to settle them down? Would abortion be a subject they leave alone? Or is there a sudden push for more liberalized abortion laws, to keep population growth down? Do they start introducing mandatory blackout periods to keep power consumption down? What consumer luxuries get banned in the name of energy conservation? Chinese style “family planning?”
And they’re not just taking over the US. What do the butterflies do once they control the governments of, say, India and Pakistan? Is there a sudden upsurge in cooperation and brotherhood? Or do the butterflies see a limited nuclear exchange as a good way to cull the herd? Is a war in the middle east that destabilizes the oil market considered a good thing, in the long-term health of the planet? Is a little ethnic genocide okay, so long as the techniques are carbon neutral?
I accept the apology, except then you go on to say,
I’m not “throwing around terms”, I’m using what I think are accurate terms to describe actions that are entirely relevant to the discussion.
But, frankly, I miss discussing how much fun the opening credit sequence was. And this discussion has gotten pretty contentious (and that’s at least partially my fault), and I’m really not interested in continuing it.
Sorry for the sidetrack.
We all agree that opening credit dance number is awesome, though, right?
The Butterflies plan was completely unworkable because they kill their host. People lose elections and get kicked off company boards for trying to change things. What then? if those people keep ending up dead your plan is not going anywhere. Maybe if they went after the worlds top billionaires all at once instead of politicians.
One thing I don’t think anyone else has mentioned is how casual that Green Arrow name drop was. He’s not some third/fourth stringer like Kite Man or Matter Eater Lad you can just pretend have always been around because they don’t matter. He’s one of the most important members of the Justice League, damn near their Captain America equivalent. So far he has not been a part of the DCEU, but I guess he’s been around and everyone knows about him?
To speculate - my read is that they are really only concerned about the existential threat to our species and saving us from completely offing ourselves, like they did to themselves even if they had bought a hundred years here. Wars are typically simply bad for the environment.* Hard to build alternative resource when things are blowing up and forests burning down in conflicts is not useful. They’d be much more about global multilateralism to accomplish goals as the most effective way to leverage their power.
*Typically. I do note however that green energy stocks (along with nuclear mining stocks) are up with the Ukraine war. Apparently Russia’s action is expected to accelerate any and all alternatives to natural gas across the EU as it has proven that dependence on Russia for it is foolish. So maybe some wars might be ones the Butterflies would want?
To mostly change the subject, I think the contrast between Peacemaker and Vigilante is interesting. Both at least claim to have a “I will stop bad guys from doing bad things, by whatever means necessary” ethos. But for Vigilante, he clearly gets off on the violence. And he seems to have almost zero moral or ethical compunction about what he does. As far as we know he doesn’t just randomly walking around killing civilians for the jollies, but if he thinks he’s killing a criminal but screws up, it clearly doesn’t make him lose sleep.
Peacemaker, superficially, is very similar. And in fact at the beginning of the series you might almost say he aspired to be as uncaring as Vigilante. But… he actually DOES care, and the show is at least partly about his coming to grips with his decent side.
And I think the fact that Vigilante is such a hilarious and entertaining character is a bit of a nod to the audience… “yeah, it IS fun having protagonists who just mow down anyone in their way without caring, and then quips. They CAN be funny and appealing characters, can’t they. We know that, you know that… now, where does that leave us?”
So the whole series dropped at once here in the UK, and I’ve gone through it all and loved it. Not sure what I can add to what’s been discussed so far, other than to mention watching Peacemaker feed the stray butterfly at the end rather than squashing it was weirdly moving. Cena absolutely rocked this.
BTW, unless I’ve missed it, nobody seems to have mentioned the after-credits outtakes in each episode. If you didn’t hang on until the very end, you’ve missed some hilarious shit.
