Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Daenerys however has plans of expanding her rule even beyond Westeros tho. And she has shown a level of apathy to casualities at comparable levels to Tywin Lannister and with far more resources

Isn't that Completely Missing The Point? Why I bring up the issue is not WW 2 but the War on Terror. ISIS is bad. It is full of rapists, murderers, slavers, and genocidal assholes. However, war crimes have been committed by Americans in their fight against ISIS. What exactly is an "acceptable" amount of war crimes to commit in the pursuit of the destruction of ISIS? It doesn't have to be America if that makes the conversation more acceptable. What should be, say, the amount and treatment of discussion of war crimes of the Nigerian government in its destruction of Boko Haram?

Does changing the players change the argument in any way for you? Does it make it more clear what is being argued? What are the acceptable The Laws and Customs of War when opposing pure evil? Is your argument there are none because ISIS is that bad or is it literally the well is so poisoned that the argument cannot be discussed?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 18th 2019 at 9:47:35 AM

Perhaps, but their claims against her were either 1) actually fine (such as being "self-righteous") or 2) in no way unique to her (being a conqueror who felt owed the throne, i.e every major figure in the war).

This isn't rocket science.

When people are talking about the war crimes of a specific side (especially the worse side) and someone rushes in to bring up the other side's war crimes then it's going to look like equivocation or an attempt to downplay the accused party.

If someone says "the Axis were the only ones to engage in war crimes" then yes, bringing up Allied war crimes is legitimate. But if people are talking about how awful the Axis were then bringing up Allied War crimes is unnecessary and just makes you look like an apologist.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 18th 2019 at 9:51:24 AM

I'm confused at when, "Popular dictator who improved the lot of their subjects" became equivalent to "Good Man." The point of dictatorship is that it is itself a bad thing. However, the point of people like Caesar and Napoleon are that they can use their authority to improve the lot of their subject. They could also invade other people and steal their shit to give among their subjects which is bad for the invaded but good for the people inside their empires.

While I know this isn't a history chat, there is an excellent little booklet by historian John Dower called War Without Mercy - Race and Power in the Pacific War that talks about racism in the Pacific Theatre among both Japanese and American soldiers, and how propaganda and stereotypical imagery on the homefront actively contributed to the dehumanization of the opposition in the eyes of the soldiers fighting the war, going at least some of the way towards explaining the brutal campaigning that took place there.

Rather, I suppose, like pop cultural treatment of Arabs and other Muslim cultures in the Middle East, when the authors even bother to make a distinction. If the opposition is subhuman and incapable of governing themselves, obviously someone needs to apply a firm hand to guide them towards the light.

And of course, since we do discuss politics in media, I'd be remiss not to mention the seminal work Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq, which remains a masterclass in the analysis of war propaganda.

Edited by math792d on Aug 18th 2019 at 6:57:16 PM

I think your heart is on the right place here but the sad reality is that many people isn't. Using American crimes to downplay ISIS is a common thing, sadly.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 18th 2019 at 11:53:13 AM

Well, it seems the whole thing cannot be spoken of without it being taken as an attempt at moral equivalence versus, "Don't be like these assholes we're fighting." and "How do we make sure we don't become anything lik them."

So its useful in noting it's a pointless way of arguing that yields no good.

No point in continuing that avenue.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 18th 2019 at 9:58:40 AM

Yeah, if every time someone was discussing ISIS someone else rushed in with “but what about the US” it would start to look a little suspect.

And yet, the alternative is things like Trump talking about how awesome Gallaghar was and that son of a bitch getting off for what he did.

Argghh...I need to let this go.

Re: Daenerys It just occurs to me that I think a large part of my distaste for the show is the fact that it was suddenly trafficking in Black-and-White Morality when the show was at its best when tracking in Black-and-Gray Morality. Some people have pointed out alternatives to the way the show was set up on other forums I frequent that I like. One of them would be where Jon Snow isn't killing Daenerys because she's the Mad Queen but simply because she's broken one of the rules that Jon Snow has determined is absolute.

Jon killed Daenerys because she executed Lannister prisoners or Jon Snow killed her because Sansa is declared an enemy of the state (for you, know know, committing actual treason). Jon does what he does not because she's a villain but because he's Lawful Good.

It took me awhile to figure out what my problem was and that's Daenerys arc is Stannis Baratheon's. They want us to absolutely have her cross the Moral Event Horizon when it's not necessary for the story to proceed and worse for it. Let Jon kill her (for all the problems it causes) but for a reason that is personal not universe.

One you can question. This isn't fucking Star Wars.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 18th 2019 at 10:11:32 AM

No, it's not.

Just because you shouldn't immediately bring up other war crimes when we're discussing one side does not mean that you should never bring them up.

Just understand the context, criticizing US war crimes should be its own thing instead of a response to criticism of Daesh. It's not complicated.

Sure.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 18th 2019 at 10:18:48 AM

ASOIAF and GOT are textbooks Decon-Recon Switch, said this...I really think that even in the books, while Jon's reason to kill Daenerys will be "selfish" (thought you can call trying to protect your family selfish?) but Daenerys will be...very bad for the world

I haven't seen the show but accusing someone of self-righteousness when they've been killing actually bad people sounds like gross bothsidism, if one is actually righteous then acknowledging that trait is not a vice.

Her list of targets she says she wants to "liberate" at the end included at least one foreign nation that not only doesn't practice slavery but was probably the most peaceful place in the world due to their "wars" being essentially tournaments with no civilian collateral damage.

Edited by doineedaname on Aug 18th 2019 at 1:34:06 PM

How is that an alternative? Those are two unrelated things.

The problem isn’t the simple fact of discussing things the US has done wrong, the problem is the way it’s brought up here 99% of the time it’s brought up. It comes off as whataboutism, or worse.

If your first reaction to hearing about atrocities committed by an enemy is to bring up atrocities committed by an ally, that’s not a great look.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 18th 2019 at 10:37:44 AM

Is that from the books or something D&D invented to make her the worst person ever?

Look, the books aren't over and likely never be. So we're discussing the show ending for Daenerys by it's own merits and how it ties in the larges themes of ASOIAF and GOT (the fact that we're dealing with a Broad Strokes version of the books is also a headache).

And "The creators forced them to act inmoral" is a really poor excuse used only in the worse Draco in Leather Pants.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 18th 2019 at 12:58:48 PM

If Superman goes on a killing spree of babies, then you don't say, "Clearly we don't understand Superman."

It's, "The writer did a poor job."

It's from the last episode, where she praises her army for liberating King's Landing from Cersei after they've destroyed and massacred it. She then goes on to say they'll also liberate everyone, "from Winterfell to Dorne, from Lannisporte to Qarth, from the Summer Isles to the Jade Sea."

It's the Summer Isles that was being referred to a few posts above. They don't do slavery and Dany's never had beef with them up until that point.

Except we have Alternate Universe Supermen who are about that bad.

Edited by M84 on Aug 19th 2019 at 2:03:14 AM

Also comic book writers can and regularly do chuck each other's work out the window if they didn't like what the previous person did. It's a lot easier to say Superman eating babies with peanut butter was the writer being horrible and not true to the character if the next writer actually agrees with you. If they makes it so that he was brainwashed, or a robot, or it was a dream, they're essentially saying, "Yeah, the last writer sucked, just ignore that."

You can say many things about GRRM, but that his characters do weird shit for no apparent reason ain't one of them.

If they do something off-the-wall and counter what you think you know about them, it's because a button of theirs got pushed. Readers might not always know about that button when it first got pushed on the page, but eventually... the hint will happen about where on the keyboard it is. If only because another character will try using it.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Aug 18th 2019 at 7:21:40 PM

"If you're going to point out Allied war crimes, you have to make it totally clear that you're not a Nazi apologist"

The problem with this Is that it hold any conversation to a crawl by constantly reafirm you are not a damn neo nazi over and over and over, and the idea of taking about them on their on Is laughable because as Is said, it wasnt Made in a vacuum.

Anyway, about "power reveals" it feel deep but it come as a typical US truism that cater to the idea that bad people are bad because they are bad and power just Sort of exist on Is own, Is throw whatever devoplent one may have for "whatever Is, Is"

In a better world it wouldn't be necessary to make it clear that we're not Axis apologists when saying this sort of thing.

But it is what it is.

Daenerys is a warning about the Slippery Slope and how violencr against a. Acceptable Target can backfire as soon they fight a enemy that isn't as Openly Evil

Daenerys applying the same ruthlessness that she did to slavers isn't the same as she doing it on the Feudal Kings Landing.

Could you clarify that second part? I'm having trouble understanding if you're saying she did the same thing to Kings Landing as she did to the slavers or if you're saying the opposite.