If he stops being my comrade, then he can fight against me.
No, I wouldn’t buy him off. He can leave with whatever he can carry, not including the women. That’s the best deal I’d offer. Ok, if he has a wagon, he can load up the wagon too.
Are you willing to stake the survival of your community that he STAYS bought off?
Killing the Brigadier reduces the odds of the town’s survival. He has unique and extremely valuable skills, and probaby a lot of allies that will be angered at his summary execution.
Buying him off involves his commitment to stay loyal to the town. He’s been loyal for qq\uite some time. .The greater danger is to Anne and her daughter; if he breaks his word, it is more likely to be try to reclaim or abuse them.
If he won’t agree to a settlement, then I will probably try to kill him. Sending him into exile without his gear or horse is likely (though not certain) to kill him anyway, and if it doesn’t he will be furious and certain to betray us. No, scratch that . He won’t be betrayg the town at that point, because all commitments will have been ended.
This is a moot point. Skills are not the only factor in the survival of the community.
For me, the motivation for killing him is not that it’s in any way deserved or just. It is precisely that I believe killing him would improve the odds of the town’s long term survival. Acceding to the demands of a slaver with possible megalomaniac or psychopathic tendencies and excessive political influence fundamentally destabilizes the community.
This doesn’t seem to me to be an answer to @slash2k’s question. YMMV, of course.
I doubt the Brigadier thinks of himself as a slaver. There is historical precent for his attitude, and some men and even women today would agree with him.
The Brigadier has skills no one else in the town currently has, and possibly unique talents. HIs abilities have saved the town in the past. If he is willing to abstain from odious BEHAVIOR and remain in the town as a loyal, contributing citien, it is foolish todo so.
Note that I didn’t say give up his BELIEFS. Youcan’t police those. But you can say, “You’ve agreed to no longer treat Anne and her daughter as property in exchange for a double ration of meat each week for the next six months. Honor rhat promise and we’re golden. Break your word and you’re out.”
To me that seems both morally and practically a better idea than killing him, and practically a better notion than sending him into exile, which gets you nothing.
It IS a better idea/notion. But again, that brings us back to this:
Alternatively, what happens if you make the deal with the Brigadier, and then he spends the next year and change expanding his influence within the community, and strengthening his power base… perhaps even turning the rest of the community against you… And then, eighteen months later, he changes his mind and goes CloudCity!Vader: “I am altering the deal; pray I don’t alter it any further.”
I think you’re attributing too much Machiavellian cleverness tothe Brigadier. It doesn’t seem to me that he wants to be leader, because being the unquestioned top badass and biggest brain in a post-apocalyptic community, his uber-competence would have given him the job long ere this. He obviously didn’t scheme to bring Anne & Co. to the town; that was just serendipitity (for him, not them). Being very smart, he realizes that, while he could probably do a lot of damage if he allied himself with a gang of bandits or with the hostile settlement, he must first (a) survive to get there alone, and (b) survive the initial meeting. By contrast, in the town he already has resourceces and allies.
Now maybe the Brigadier is fixated on Anne above all else. That’s possible, since he passed up on offers of sex with other women. But he may not be. A rational calculus may tell him that it’s not worth the effort to retain her if he can get something else from the town.
Check first
And now a related question. Let’s say the Brigadier says “Screw it, I don’t need Anne, I’ll take the settlement.” And soon afterwards there’s an outside attack and he does his usual heroics, so everybody trusts him again. And then some woman in the town decides she can tame him, or that his extra rations are worth the risk of being with him, or that she likes being submissive and so won’t earn a bad beating from him, or simply doesn’t believe Anne’s story. For whatever reason, she makes an advance, and now he’s receptive. Do you interfere in any way?
Doesn’t matter. It’s not trying to enforce the claim that makes slavers the enemy. It’s making the claim in the first place.
And I don’t care if he thinks he’s a slaver or not.
So the community buys his slaves from him? What does that make us? Oh, right … slavers. No, thanks.
And as an aside, since you’ve decided I should answer this as me-me, not a character, I’d love to know what unique skills the Brigadier has that no-one else, including myself, has. Because I don’t mean to brag, but when it comes to pre-industrial and primitive skills, I consider myself quite the polymath.
Seems to me you’re criminalizing thoughts and beliefs rather thanactions. If the Brigadier says “I believe that the laws of Zeus and nature make my wife my property, but we are living in parlous and delicate times, and I’d rather maintainmy alliance with people who help me stay alive and vice versus rather than exercise that right, so I am abandoning the claim,” how is he a threat.
The Brigadier’s claim to own Anne is based on he fact that they’re married, If he accepts a divorce, he is abandoning the claim.
I am not trying to defend the Brigadier. I said early on that my first impulse is to kill him; if he does not abandon that claim, does renounce his allegiance, and tries to leave, he’s gotta be killed. But if he DOES abandon that claim (even for selfish reasons), does not renounce his allegiance, and has a history of honoring his word, then imprisoning him as you suggest is an immoral assault. It would not be substantially different from my deciding to kill people from Westboro Baptist Church on sight.
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Apart from being hte best melee fighter, strategist, and tactician, the Brigadier has mad technical skills. He’s the one who knows how to build a water purifier, construct a wall, and so forth. His breadth of knowledge and his cleverness are greater than anyone else’s. It’s the combination of badassery and brains that makes him unique,
Dibble, let me recast the hypo in a way that may make my point cleaerer.
The OP states that there are other towns. Let’s say that, rather than Anne & Co. being brought to your town as refugees from the wild, they were encountered as citizens of another settlement on a trade mission. Again she makes her accusations; again the Brigadier denies nothing, claiing that marriage makes her his property and any man who fucks her without his consent is a thief.
But he also says that doesn’t matter. He’s a practical guy. The trade and mutual defense alliance with Anne’s town are more valuable than his claim on her, he says. It would strategically foolish for him to try to take her; that would just start a war and make his town more vulnerable to the roving bandits and the hostile settlement. Thus, though he feels he is morally entitled to Anne and their daughter, though he does not consider fucking her against her will to rape nor beating his daughter to be abuse, he says that he will never try to exercise “rights” unless both towns fall and he meets them in the wild, and he’s committed to seeing that his own town – also YOUR town–doesn’t fall because, if it does, he’ll be one of the people who dies.
Is he still your enemy? Do you imprison, exile, or execute him because of his evil but beliefs?
I’m not Dibble, but yes, I would see him dead somehow. Because I wouldn’t believe him, he’s a clever dude and may be lying about his intentions.
His initial meeting and reaction showed his true self. He just can’t be around people and be trusted now.
When the (voiced) belief is “It’s OK to treat people as personal property”, yes, yes I am.
Am I supposed to feel like that’s wrong? I get the impression you think I should. I don’t.
His beliefs make him a threat, just as much as if he were, say, a racist.
The OP seems to indicate he won’t accept a divorce.
I’m not wanting him to abandon his claim. I want him to acknowledge his belief in owning people is wrong - only complete disavowal and abandonment of his retarded belief system will satisfy me.
Wesboro idiots would have no place in my refuge, either.
I also know how to do all those things. So the only distinction here is his fighting prowess.
Well, yeah, by author fiat.
He hardly sounds irreplaceable, though. I’m sure he’ll be missed, but … if this is my settlement … not so much.
I think you’re missing a word after “but”, there, but yes, yes I still exile him. I thought I made it quite clear it’s the ideology of slavery I won’t tolerate, not just the exercise of it.
What are you fearing?
He has been a trusted and valued ally for years. He’s saved your life both directly, and by the use of his talents, indirectly. He has no reason to hold any animus toward your town, as Anne and her daughter are not living in your town. He has hardnosed, pragmatic, logical reasons not to attack the other town, reasons he himself has articulated and acknowledged as correct. He has not made any threats in the modified scenario, either to Anne or the town. The nearest thing he has made to a threat is saying “If both towns were to fall and I were to somehow survive and I met Anne in the wildnerness, i would probably try to reclaim her, bt it’s in my logical self-interest to see that my town at the very least does not fall, because I am extremely likely to die if that happens.” That’s basically saying :“I things were different, I would behave differently, but things aren’t different.”
How is he a threat in the modified scenario?
Actually I’m missing a PHRASE after but; it should have readd “evil but for all practically purposes renounced beliefs.” (I was goiing back and forth between “execrated” andn “abnegated,” decided neither was right, and then left to eat a donut.)
Your position strikes e as simultaneously immoral and foolish. The former because you are claiming the rauthority to punish beliefs that have not only not been acted (at least not in your jurisdiction) but which have for all practical purposes been renounced (the Brigadier gave several reasons why he would be foolish to try to reclaim Anne and their daughter and promised that he would not). The latter because you are going out of your way to make an enemy who knows all the tactical secrets of your town.
How is your town better off if the Brigadier, who has served the town loyally, who has harmed no one in the town, who has made no threats aganst either your town or Anne’s town, who has pointed out the reasons he is better off remaining an ally of the town than trying to regain Anne, is sent into exile? Who exactly benefits?
The belief that it’s right to treat one’s wife as property is indeed odious.But it’s also meaningless if it’s never put into practice. In the modified scearnio, the Brigadier ha not threatened anyone and has renewed his commtment to serve the town, a commitment that may or ay not be baed on his honor but certainly is is motivated by his own self-inteest.
You mention racism in the part of your post I snipped out. So let me ask this. I manage a corporate sales office. Say I discover that one of the account execs privately believes in white supremacy. But, because she works in a majority black city and wants to make as much money as possible, she stifles that belief at work. She works as hard as she can to close every deal regardless of the race of the client, because she gets paid more if she does that. She doesn’t try to charge black customers more, because that would help hte competition more than it would help her. She privately thinks that my marriag to an apparently white woman should be illegal, but since there’s nothing she can do to make it illegal, the most she ever does is refuse to associate with the Rhymers socially.
Should I fire her for having distasteful thoughts?
Possibly. To paraphrase another poster in one of your hypotheticals (it could have been this one), you didn’t contraindicate that in your OP. Maybe the Brigadier never wanted to be in charge. Or maybe he didn’t initially want to be in charge, but the confrontation with you over Anne has caused him to change his mind; triggered the Moral Event Horizon that will lead to his Face-Heel Turn, as it were. Or maybe he always wanted to be in charge, but was content to bide his time, and let you handle his ‘light work,’ and Anne’s arrival revealed his true character, subsequently forcing his hand. Your OP doesn’t make it clear, either way.
Personally, I can see a reasonable interpretation of the OP where the Brigadier expresses his odious ideas in a calm, (relatively) rational manner, and leaves your office without making any (overt) demands. And then, as he’s leaving your office, he just continues to get more and more worked up over it, to the point that, by the time he’s returned to his his house, he’s like, “You know what, fuck that guy! Lenore is MY wife: why should I let it be up to HIM whether I get to exercise my rights? I’m claiming what’s mine, whether he likes it, or not!”
I don’t consider those to be mutually exclusive. He could simultaneously feel that it’s in his rational self-interest to stay with the settlement and that it would be in his best interests if the settlement were under new management.
… Because this is what it comes down to for me. I no longer trust the Brigadier. I no longer trust him when he says that he will not act against the authority of the community, so long as he is a member of the community. To paraphrase the great American philosopher Shawn Carter, I don’t believe him; he needs more people.
Let’s be clear here. In the modifired scenario, the Brigadier has made no threats against your town and has no reason to; Anne & company live in a different town. He has specifically repudiated any plans to reclaim her, because he feels that the cost would be too high; it would endanger his both towns for too little profit. He’s said that the only way he’d try to reclaim her would be if both towns fall, but he doesn’t want that to happen because, being a leading defender of your town, its falling probably means that he would be dead, and he doesn’t want to die. All of this is clearly true,
So you’rre willing to punish him – maybe exile, maybe iimprison, maybe kill, I don’t recall where you came down on that – not for being a threat, but for his thoughts. Is that right?
His words and actions tonight have revealed that He Is Not Who You Thought He Was.
Any notions you have of his honor, his truth-telling, his rationality, or any other part of his reputation go out the window. He concealed a pretty major portion of his personality, an ugly portion, from you and your townsmen; you don’t know at this point what else he has concealed. You are starting over with him from ground zero as far as trust goes. You might as well assume he is a complete stranger to you, because he is.
So, how far do you trust the word of a complete stranger as to this repudiation, or his intent to remain a leading defender of your town, or his assertion that the cost would be too high? How far do you trust the word of a complete stranger that he’s not going to strike a deal with the banditos, or the inhabitants of that next town, or some third party altogether, to take over the entire place, turn Anne back into his sex slave / punching bag, turn your wife (daughter, mother, other female relative) into somebody else’s sex slave / punching bag, and leave you and your fellow townsmen dead?