BrianWilly said:
"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right." -Mark Twain
And...? Several heros went both ways. Many siding with Tony, others not.
BrianWilly said:
Morever, I hope I never make the kinds of friends who will manipulate and turn others against me "for my own good." Why, exactly, wasn't Captain America invited into the Illuminati to discuss the future of their entire country? Why wasn't Spider-Man informed of the fact that, in revealing his identity, he was also signing up as a member of a hit squad designed to stop his former allies? How far back has Tony Stark been planning this, exactly? What if he had trusted Steve and Peter and had been open with them about his plans from the start? We'll never know, will we? The problem with not trusting anyone is that no one can trust you either. Of course it must be okay, 'cause Tony feels really bad about it and stuff.
Cap wasn't invited into the Illuminati because why? Because Tony needed a representative from each of the respective cliques in the metahuman affairs. And Peter knew about all of this. You know, when Tony told him how the Act was going to work. Pete's definitely not so dumb as to not watch the news, or to not read a paper, or to not read a fricking document he had to sign.
BrianWilly said:
Perhaps some people can live with friends like that, friends that they could never trust out of fear of what else they're hiding. If I ever did something so bad that I needed a friend to force me into jail, on the other hand, I at least hope that they would do it to my face.
I think you, and Vanguard take this one wrongly. I have friends I deeply trust, but if one of them is doing something deliberately wrong, like let's say...murder, or intention to commit murder, or rape, or anything along those lines, I wouldn't just let it sit back and happen. Perhaps some people can live with the guilt on themselves that they let these things happen when they could've helped.
BrianWilly said:
Captain America didn't kill an entire family. Prodigy didn't kill an entire family. The Young Avengers never hurt a fly. And yet they're all being hunted down like dogs. It's a flimsy enough show of scapegoating to blame the New Warriors for Nitro's crime, but to hold Captain America and every other superhero in the world accountable for it too, now?
I never said they did. Once again, like Vanguard, please do not put words into my mouth.
However, tons of innocents do get hurt as part of their actions. Don't like it? Too bad, it DOES happen.
Flimsy to hold the New Warriors accountable? They AMBUSHED a highly dangerous team in the middle of suburbia. A lack of planning, execution, and thought caused a lot of problems. Should Nitro and the others be taken down? Hell yes. In the middle of a populated area full of kids while one of them is a heavy exploding type? I'm definitely not going to say hell yes. Nitro is known as an unstable person who's willing to kill ANYBODY to get out of problems. It's like poking an alligator with a stick, and blaming the alligator for getting pissed off and eating you.
BrianWilly said:
In America, we have a little system called "innocent before proven guilty." That's the whole problem with this registration act in the first place, it treats innocent people as if they were criminals. If you want to put a bad rap on Speedball for what he did, fine; no one's saying that what he did was right or smart. But to then impose that exact same sort of attitude onto every single other superhero no matter their history and disposition and the fact that they are not Speedball? It's inane. It's a kneejerk, reactionary, paranoid line of thinking that does nothing to solve the real problems at hand.
Once again, people are not understanding the point of the Registration, or any of the arrests made thus FAR by the Registration. None of the superhumans are being arrested for crimes commited per ce. They're being arrested because they're unregistered physically violent vigilantes who are actively going against the law. Daredevil breaks people's bodies like crazy. If you want to go with the innocent until proven guilty, Daredevil should NOT do anything to them, help them get arrested, let them get processed, and then have them face punishment. NOT him doling out justice his own way when all he can say is, "I saw him beating up someone" with no proof since he probably can't operate a video camera. Hero's don't do the "innocent until proven guilty part" they just dole out justice as THEY see fit. And believe it or not, they're sense of justice is human, like the rest of us.
In many ways, the registration was something coming. Do I think villan attacks wouldn't happen without heros? No. I'm sure they'd happen, probably not as much since revenge motives wouldn't come into play anymore, but yes, they'd still happen.
So are they being treated like criminals when they don't register, go out, and beat some people up because they think it's the right thing to do? Yes. It would be like me, in the real world, going out, and beating up the drug dealer on some corner because I thought it was the right thing to do. Did it solve a drug problem? Temporarily, yes. But was it in my jurisdiction to play judge, jury, and executioner to some guy who didn't see it coming? Hell no.
BrianWilly said:
In other words, "Do what I say or suffer the consequences." That hardly seems like a choice at all. These aren't children. These aren't criminals. What gives anyone the right to treat them like they are?
Umm.. The law? Since it works that way in the real world too.
People aren't seeing this. In the REAL world, people can't do just what they want. In the REAL world, people do work by the, "do as we say, or you're arrested" ideal. If you want to pick up a gun, and kill people, join the army. Don't go out and do it as you see fit. If the law believed ONE person had the correct amount of clout to make this judgement, there would NEVER be a trial by peers for a jury. A judge would make every single decision there is to make. A judge, who's job is to, day in and day out, JUDGE people. Superhero's, seeing how their lives are usually muddled crap puddles, usually have much more clouded judgements.
This is basically how it works. In the real world, you cannot kill someone, or you face the consequences. You cannot steal, because you will face the consequences. In the registration, if you get in a costume, hide your identity, go beat someone up, who probably deserved it, but couldn't be proven as a deserving party, and declared it in the name of justice, when you have zero authority to do so, you face the consequences.
What gave THEM the right to make these decisions? Hell, to have judges in America, they have to be elected by a public. Nobody ever elected Spider Man to being Spider Man, or Daredevil into being Daredevil. Nobody. They became superhumans and decided for themselves they could do this. What gives them the right to act above humans, and make ethical decisions for us?
BrianWilly said:
I agree, Prodigy got up there to intentionally force Iron Man's hand, and that's exactly what ended up happening.
However, that doesn't mean that every word he said wasn't still true.
Totally possible.
BrianWilly said:
Wait a minute there..."actively seeking dissention?" Steve Rogers was ambushed and fired upon by his own peers before the act even passed into law!
And then started a group seeking other superhumans, usually using force to liberate them.
BrianWilly said:
If you don't like Vanguard07 comparing Iron Man to Red Skull because it's not an exact fit, then you have no call to compare Captain America's resistance to the sort of bomb-wielding, gun-totting extremists who regularly harm and kill innocent civilians, because they have done no such thing even remotely comparable. You're doing the exact same thing that Captain America was so afraid in the first place that the government would do, that they would start deciding for us just who exactly the "terrorists" and the "supervillains" are. That they would start deciding for us what is right and what is wrong, who the bad guys are and who they aren't.
Aside from attacking people who are doing thier job for their ideal. The difference between Iron Man and Red Skull is deep and vast. Red Skull killed and tortured for a master race. Tony is simply just trying to get superhumans to register.
Captain America and his merry crew goes out and actually attacks vans of people who are trying to contain superhumans acting out of code with the law. That would be considered dissentist, and terrorism.
BrianWilly said:
I'm not okay with the idea of a world where those kinds of labels -- "terrorist," "villain," "evildoer" "criminal" -- are so loose and mutable that they could be referring to some people in one moment and a whole different sort of people in the next. I'm even less okay with the idea of a world where we have no right to decide for ourselves who we fight and who we admire, needing to be "informed" and "told" so by governmental authority. Tomorrow some government official that I've never met in my life might tell me that my best friend of umpteen years is a criminal, a terrorist, a potential threat against the country...and I'm supposed to just nod politely and smile? 'Cause that's pretty much exactly what Tony is doing here.
Terrorism is a group or faction that incites terror through usually violent means. This applies to a vast variety given interpretation, and guaranteed, they'll probably be labelled terrorists for it. I agree it's very abused as a term, but I'm sure it's the term they'll use.
Now if they told you your friend was some being murderer or some sort of conspiritor, and had no proof, then I wouldn't expect you to believe them. If they DID have proof, and literal obvious proof that could be shown on the news and in papers and such, then I'd hope you'd actually go along with it. Rather than harbor a murderer.
As for the hero's. Again, the public didn't choose. The hero's chose that they were right. That they somehow had the moral authority to do what they felt was justice. Like Wolverine. He thinks he's right when he kills his enemies. Does it mean he's right? Hell, I think he's unstable at best.
That's not what Tony is doing here. Tony didn't declare every single unregistered hero as a criminal. He labelled them as unregistered, and illicit to conduct "hero" work. If they go out and continue it AGAINST the law, THEN they're criminals. And even then, he doesn't seem to arrest them. Like with Prodigy, he just told him to stop. The Young Avengers were arrested, but probably because, knowing them, they resisted authority.
BrianWilly said:
What's more interesting is that Tony doesn't even really agree with the act at all; when it was going through the paperwork, he actively fought against it. He doesn't actually, truly believe that such a law is necessary for the world. But as soon as he figured out that there's no way to stop it from coming to pass, he turned side, flip-flopping if you will, and started to tout the horn for the registration. Yes. Interesting.
That's actually a good point. In the Spider-Man books, he seemed to be against it, despite the fact he was paying Titanium Man in the same issue to attack Spider-Man. He might have always agreed with the Registration, but wanted to make it look like he was always out for the hero's, and had some sort of revelation that this was a good idea. Tony's hardly the type to roll over and just go with something when the odds are heavily against him.
This is the guy who from death's door, was shocked back to life, crudely, and got back in his armor and took off after Mandarin while his body was basically dead. If losing his life doesn't phase him, something tells me Registration wouldn't either.
What gets me about all this, is that people who are against Registration seem to be the types who despise the current portrayal of Tony Stark, and are seemingly against all that he has to offer. Like they hate Tony Stark so badly that they just cannot agree with what he's doing simply because he's on it. Not saying Brian here, but tons of people who seem to be against Registration, are heavily against Tony Stark.
