I assumed you mean “racist” because they took a bunch of the white supremacists in the jail. Unless you mean “human race”.
I suppose you are correct. They are instituting a sort of (presumably) benevolent dictatorship. When I read “totalitarian” dictatorship, I assume the person means the overt fascist-style dictatorship with charismatic leader, goons dressed in black, etc.
Pretty sure he meant the human race.
Technically, they’re speciesist, I guess.
Gunn would be thrilled to know that his creation has us discussing the nature of evil, fanaticism, …dig deeper and whether we have the right to condemn an ‘evil’ species to extinction. (and where there’s ONE individual willing to feel guilt and rebel, there’s others)
…wait a sec. Gunn said via twitter that Goff was doomed cause there was no other food. (yes me, and others said how there had to be some buried in rubble or in transit…) regardless…where did Murn get his food from??
Not even sure that applies.
They recognize that their own species destroyed themselves and are dedicating their last century of existence to stopping us from doing the same thing, convinced, possibly correctly, that without intervention that will be the result. They are committed to saving the human species, recognizing that they themselves are done for relatively soon either way. But we can still be saved. That’s not using humans as livestock or even speciesist, IMHO.
It is arrogantly effed up …with same effed up basic thought process structure that many of the shows other players share.
I’m pretty sure that they figured the fact that we pretty much already do all of that right now was a mitigating factor.
Do any of us as individuals actually feel like we have any control over the people making world-changing decisions? Even in democracies, we see a lot of politicians making promises to win elections that they then turn around and never implement. And corporations are even less under our control. And let’s not even get started on the shit that goes on in countries that don’t have even our half-assed attempts at empowering everyday people to actually influence policy.
If the bugs did take over and start pushing an agenda without regard to the will of the majority of humans, would we even notice the difference?
So you, for one, would welcome our new insect overlords?
My point is, aside from those of us who actually got brain-bugged, we wouldn’t even notice our new insect overlords.
“Why are the CEOs of Exxon and Haliburton suddenly promoting solar and wind power?”
“Fuck if I know man, maybe they figured out how to make another 10 billion dollars by polluting with windmills?”
“Fuck if I know, but they got booted in a vote of no-confidence exactly twenty minutes after suggesting less drilling.”
I apologize. I intended no insult.
You keep throwing around terms like “mass murder” that are irrelevant to the discussion . No one (I think) is arguing in favor of the butterflies’ plan. The only thing I’m asking about is whether what they envision could be defined as “a totalitarian dictatorship.”
I admit, it was never really explained on screen, but my take-away was that they were going to infest senators and House members* in order to get them to pass laws that would end/reverse climate change. I assumed — admittedly an assumption — that they would also have to infest the boards and executives of oil companies, etc., in order to achieve their goal.
And they don’t even have to infest everyone in Congress, just a majority in each house. But who knows if they would actually stop there.
Anyway, all they care about is climate change. An abortion bill comes up; they don’t give a fuck. Raising federal import taxes? Not my job.
Now, obviously, they still have to vote on these bills. Given that they inherit the memories of the people they infest, I assume (again) they would vote the way that person would have voted anyway. Especially if they consider themselves to be benevolent.
So that seems to be the difference between us. You assume they would run every aspect of the entire world their way, and I assume they would deal with climate change and ignore everything else. And only James Gunn can say which of us, if either, is correct.
*ETA: And the appropriate government officials in other countries as well
On a different note, I was thrilled that Harcourt didn’t do the standard comic-book “be close to death and recuperate fully in a couple of days” thing.
Which means, I guess, that season 2 will start many months or more from the end of season 1.
This is going way deeper than a comic book plot needs to go, of course, since the comic book plot starts and ends at “aliens want to take over the earth.” The global warming bit is just an easy device to paint it a little grey.
But the bottom line is this: the butterflies want to enact national (and global) policies without messy things like voting getting in the way. That is the literal definition of a dictatorial government. You might argue that it wouldn’t be a totalitarian dictatorship if the butterflies only murder a few thousand civilians every year and leave the rest of us in ignorance, but a secret dictatorship is still a dictatorship. The single-mindedness of the ruling elite doesn’t really matter.
OK, now we’re just arguing semantics.
" a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state"
I don’t think that’s what they were trying to create, but as I said, we don’t really know.
Amen to that.
One thing about Amanda Waller is that she hates superheroes. They’re demigods who are accountable only to their belief systems, and the only reason Superman hasn’t taken over the world is because humanity lucked out when he landed in a Kansas cornfield.
The Suicide Squad is a way for the good guys (defined by Waller as the US Government) to take care of threats without needing to rely on unpredictable wildcards like the Justice League. Waller’s great tragedy as a sometimes-villain is that if she’d leveraged her abilities to work with the Justice League et al, she might have solved, well, everything.
So if Batman and Superman weren’t involved yet, it’s because Waller was keeping them in the dark. If they’d known about it when it was still a local issue they could have cleaned it up in an afternoon. If the Suicide Squad hadn’t managed to stop the teleportation, they would have dealt with it in the span of one comic book arc.
Again, I agree that the butterfly’s best-case scenario wouldn’t have been a totalitarian dictatorship. Maybe “covert dictatorship” is a good term. Conspiracy theorists probably already have a term to describe the way lizard people rule us from hiding.
Based on how I mis-read the series title every time, it will be a really long time-jump, and will deal with:
Christopher Smith undergoing surgery to correct heart problems.
Pacemaker.
Normal everyday life?
I’ll see myself out.
Ok, so the cameo lineup at the end was cool and all, but here’s my question:
How the hell do all of those guys get to this farm in the middle of nowhere at exactly the same time, just minutes too late?
Batman drove them in the Bat-Van.
Wasn’t there a jet or helicopter or something?
If not, the Justice League has teleportation capabilities in many continuities.
Well, that’s part of what makes them dicks. They waste a lot of time waiting around for The Dramatic Moment to drop by.
They also have two super fast heroes who can bring them.