Holy shit

Well, a lot of people got what they asked for.
All it cost was Allison being anywhere near a decent human being.
Even if she doesn’t go through with it, she’s now already forever on the level of people using “advanced interrogating techniques”.
Looks like she won’t get that A+ in Gurwara’s class after all.

Watch that first step. It’s a doozy

Okay… Allison just confirmed Prof Gurwawa’s opinion that she’s a tyrant. She didn’t learn anything from that. There’s no justification for what she’s doing. Any aphorism of your choice applies: “Might doesn’t make right”, “The end doesn’t justify the means”, etc. Very disappointing. Max is a jerk and an idiot, but he doesn’t deserve this. And the consequences… if there are no serious consequences for her after this, I’m not sure I can continue following this comic. I can’t endorse the message this is sending.

It’s a pity, because I’m losing webcomics left and right these days. It’s not just entertainment if it sends the wrong messages. It’s okay to make people think. But there’s too much of the wrong kind of regard for tyrannical and unjust means in today’s culture, and too little appreciation for the consequences.

Hell yes! God, I hope she breaks his wrist. I wanna hear it snap.
I’ve read every page and I’ve never flat-out cheered her on before now. Just wanted to get that in before somebody starts in about how this one moment and choice will now inevitably turn Alison into a fascist dictator. Slippery slope, my ass!
All we know now is that a ton of lives are at stake. Is it great to coerce others physically? No, it sucks. But isn’t that particular moral lapse in this particular instance with this particular dickhead worth it in order to save a ton of lives? I’m thinking yes. She’s a human being, not a saint or an angel. The point of her life is not to lead a perfect existence above reproach with an immaculate conscience. Striving for moral perfection, just for your own smug satisfaction, seems pretty amoral to me when the stakes are that high. I’d argue people in this flawed, difficult world have a responsibility to get a little blood on their hands from time to time when there’s no other choice. And you just try better next time.
Snap it, Alison! Just one! He can afford to see a doctor later.

Huh. Well… I guess Heel Turn, it is. Moral high ground = forfeit.

This also appears to answer the question of whether Max’s powers are active or passive.

Aaaaand I don’t like Alison now.

Well, this was the exact opposite of where I was expecting/wanting this to go.

This is going to culminate in a dramatic realisation, isn’t it?

Holy shit, Allison…

Part of me thinks this is slightly wrong but a bigger part is CHEERING, whoops.

Holy shit. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT.

(In an extremely Joel Hodgson voice) “Our Hero, Ladies and Gentlemen….”

Jesus Christ, I did NOT see that one coming.

I’m admittedly surprised (and disappointed) about Alison’s route.

Reminds me a bit of this scene from Avengers, although Alison seems to be Loki now.

Loki: “Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”

Old Man – the only one who gets up: “Not to men like you.”

Loki: “There are no men like me.”

Old Man: “There are always men like you.”

And there’s no Captain America (ie, Feral) to stop her from doing something that goes against being a good person and doing the right thing instead of the expedient thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dapip0EHYMI

Because I am bored, a gender-transposed tale of “Malison and Fax” that, like the comic, lets Malison’s needs and use for Fax be mostly up to the reader’s imagination.

—-

“It was a valiant effort, and I have to respect…” Fax began.

Seething, Malison had had enough of her reticence.

Sure, he’d broken up with her and harsh words had been said, but he HAD apologized and he NEEDED her now. What did she expect of him?

Why would Fax so unreasonably refuse his need? He had explained to her, time and again, why she should agree, why it was for the greater good, and how by her very nature she was made for this.

And it would be safe, he’d told her that. Hadn’t he promised her that he’d do his utmost to protect her? That he wouldn’t let any harm come to her? That nobody would have to know? That all she’d have to do was to follow his instructions and all would be good? All that, and more, so why would she not comply with his reasonable request? Some people close their eyes to the world, living in their own small realities. Could that be it?

And that hateful quip, that even if she might otherwise have been inclined, and might do it with somebody else, she wouldn’t do it just because he, Malison, was asking, just to deny him his will. Her body, her very soul, was made for this, and she’d reject his need, the need of the greater good. Sharing her bounty was practically an obligation to society, and yet she rejected it. Who did she think she was? Nobody refused Max and the greater good and got away with it. Enough was enough.

It was time to open her eyes to reality.

“I wish I could have convinced you”, Malison sighed, and threw her down, forced by a necessity that would not be denied.

Shocked by aggression she had never feared to suffer at his hands, Fax’s thoughts ran wild as she cried out in fear and anguish. This couldn’t be happening.

But it was.

Acting swiftly, Malison grabbed her from behind and held her body tight to his own. The skin he had longed to caress trembled beneath his fingers and the body he had desired to possess reacted to the touch of his with repulsion, but he had never been one to shrink from doing what was necessary.

She struggled but it was futile, her weakness conquered by his strength.

Malison lowered his head to her ear: “Don’t cry”, he whispered, “it won’t hurt as much if you don’t struggle. We are going on a small trip to happy-land, you and I. Just think happy thoughts of pixies, or whatnot, and satisfy my base needs for the next four hours as I make use of you the way you were made for.”

Immobilized in his strong arms, Malison’s hateful voice ringing in her ear, Fax cried for help but there was nobody to hear.

“My needs are very reasonable,” Malison breathed heavily, “and if you perform well I’ll make sure nobody knows what happened to you and return you unharmed rather than killing you. How does that sound to you?”

“Never, monster!” Fax valiantly refused to submit to his will, choking a refusal through her tears as she hoped beyond hope for the nightmare would end.

But it didn’t.

“Well, sweetheart, I was really only asking as a courtesy”, answered Malison, regretting the necessity of what was to come. He’d really hoped it wouldn’t come to this, preferring a willing partner, but some never learn and must be broken to the bit.

While it might hurt her initially, surely she’d feel some pleasure from doing the right thing when he forced her unwilling body and broken spirit to act the way nature intended.

In fact, she’d probably come to appreciate his actions in the fullness of time, her eyes opened to the benefits of cooperation. Perhaps she’d even become a willing partner.

But for now Malison put thoughts of the future aside, shut out her desperate complaints, and got down to business.

—-

At which point we draw the curtain and leave Malison and Fax to the mercy of your imagination, so long as you recall that if your mind ended up in the gutter, that’s on you, not on me… said Deliverance.

Who knew “I’m creating an incentive structure.” could be so scary.

Seriously, this pretty much what every sjw, which I count myself as, wants to do deep down. To hell with reasoning, respectable dialogue, and respecting your stupid worldview. This is the right way to do things, so please just do it and stop being stubborn because you want things.

hahahaha this made my morning

Looking back at the chapter, I really wonder at what point Alison started thinking “ah, yes, this is a good sentence to throw back at him while making death threats”.

Damn! She’s doing the thing! She “making” them! Soft tyrant! Man, I’m so conflicted, on one hand I agree with alison. What shes asking isn’t even a flipping hard or dangerous thing. It’s a “no-brainer” I mean what are we supposed to do? Let every selfish asshole who doesn’t want to do even the smallest things to help countless people get away with it???

But at the same time, she’s forcing him, through threat of death, to do what SHE thinks is right. And that feels like a slippery, super-villain slope to me.

:O

That’s literally the only response I can form…

Welp Alison, you’ve now officially become just like Patrick.

BENEVOLENT DICTATOR

Social Justice and its Warriors in a nutshell, “We have the moral highground and the moral imperative, do what we have decided you must do, or we will destroy you”

That’s was my reaction.

“I can’t wait to see how the Alison-apologists cheering on her behaviour vs. Max will spin her actions. Is this a step too far?”

One word: never. That’s the thing with extremism in all it’s forms, there is never going to far. Now increasing a few supers powers in a large area same like a “good idea”.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

For all we know, she’s already murdered his security?

Alison snapped? Alison always snaps. Alison snapped at those people trying to stop Feral from doing her thing, Alison snapped at Menace after she realized he has no real ability to know himself. Alison snapped at Gurwara for showing her the truth of her actions. Alison only doesn’t act in anger when she pre-determines that she wont or faces no real opposition.

i can’t seem to put a picture in the comments but allison’s fist in the first panel mirrored to properly mimic the arthur meme with caption “when the privileged man won’t boost your superpowers”

Seize the means of augmentation from the bourgeois pig who hoards all surplus enhancement! Implement the tyranny of the proletariat! All hail FULL ☭ COMMUNISM General Secretary Allison (it’s mandatory)!

I have no idea if I would be able to do that. I personally can’t even dissect a rat without feeling horrible, so whether I could bring myself to torture a human being is something I can’t know unless I’m in that situation.

I do think that it would be the right choice, if that was the only way to get cures to all cancers within a reasonable timeframe. If I’m presented with that choice and I choose inaction, I’m choosing to allow everyone with cancer to continue to die until all cancer cures are finally found. My feelings don’t change that reality; no matter how sad it would make me to inflict harm, if I don’t do it, those people are just as dead.

I can’t really put a number on how much harm is acceptable for “the greater good.” That would completely depend upon what the alternative outcome was.

My personal belief is that breaking certain moral principles is harmful in and of itself, so the alternative outcome has to be dramatically worse in order to justify it. In this case, the two choices are “one person’s autonomy is violated for a few hours” or “countless people die forever,” so it’s an easy one for me.

A good point.
Another point: How out of date are they, some 5-7 years later?

I would certainly accept dying for a guarantee of curing all cancers right away. I would be terrified, but I would also be honored. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never do as much good in my life as my death would accomplish in this hypothetical.

Well, I wouldn’t say that’s exactly Max’s philosophy. Max seems to have a kind of libertarian/Randian thing going on where no one should ever use force against anyone, personal autonomy and property rights are paramount, altruism is not a moral imperative, etc.

It’s not that Max thinks that power trumps all, it’s that he fails or refuses to recognize the power dynamics enforced by the social/economic system he lives under–power dynamics that he himself benefits from in a variety of ways. For example, he wouldn’t support forcing his gardeners to work late on blatant threat of death, but he doesn’t acknowledge that the nature of their situation means they’re not really able to make that decision freely.

If Feral saw this, she’d tell Alison to stop.

I don’t think it was about being special, because Max has shown no desire for attention so far. I think it was about empowerment. I think Max as this time was basically Taylor Hebert, suffering from some kind of abuse he wouldn’t want to talk about, that would seem minor to an external observer, but still bad enough that he was ready to jump from a roof to get powers that would get him out of it. And he ended up with powers that made him more vulnerable and dependent on other people, and probably let him in the same shitty situation.

If this bad situation was “overbearing parents want to control everything he does”, it would explain why he’s so defensive when he feels like Allison is forcing his hand, and why he got angry when she talked about the migrant workers.

Yeah, I really, really like this pet theory. I hope it’s either confirmed or denied at some point.

I have to admit that the writer DID do something I totally did not even remotely expect.

I’m not sure she “did something stupid” out of anger. This looks chillingly premeditated to me.
Also walls, human beings’s consents, eeeeh

Because you aren’t the one making people die of cancer, but you are the one torturing five innocents.
And this isn’t a selfish matter of keeping your own hands clean, it’s a question of how far we’re willing to go for solutions to the world’s problems, but you aren’t personally to blame for those problems just because you refused a particular solution.

Well back there she was understandably emotional where she doesn’t seem to be now and realized next page that this was the most awful thing to do. Plus, she didn’t actually act on these threats (well one dude died but he was burning a hospital, screw him), which, matters?

But to tell you the truth she lost all chances of redemption the day she threw a mug in someone’s face. Fun fact: we have yet to see Patrick’s face, ever since.

I predict a luscious “THIS IS THE SCREAMING, BLINDING PHYSICAL REMINDER OF YOUR TERRIBLE MISTAKES YOU CAN NEVER TAKE BACK scar.

This seems like ‘Out of character moment,’ ‘What the hell Hero?’ and ‘Idiot ball’ in one colossal mess.

First of all, you don’t even know what I’m studying; second of all, having super strength and invulnerability does not make someone capable of erasing war. The fact that the great enduring problems like war can’t be resolved via punching is kind of the entire point of the comic.

I’m waiting to see a post where you don’t use the words ‘countless lives.’

Do you mean Daniel?

They won’t get paid yknow….

Heartily agreed.

Alison, you live over CapeCakes now! Take advantage of the therapeutic benefits of your chosen homestead!

. . .Heck. You could have at least brought Max a CapeCake as a peace offering. Tasty delicious food can do wonders for putting someone in a more agreeable mood. Yeah, he’s a complete (insert expletive here), but helping countless people is worth the cost of a CapeCake for someone you dislike!

Loranna

Solid catch. This might be necessary, but it’s unlikely to be Good even with a positive outcome. And we still don’t actually know what mission put her on this path. I doubt it’s backing, I doubt it’s Valkyrie, and I doubt it’s just money or influence.

Allison is complex. People are complex. I say let’s hang around and watch this play out.

Vindication, you are the sweetest wine.

It’s disappointing in the sense of that the plot (or at least Alison’s character development) is going around in circles because she’s ALWAYS LOSING IN EVERY MEANINGFUL WAY.

Issue 1: Yes, she stopped Cleaver’s rampage but it resulted in her getting emotionally smacked down for being wrong about fighting because of the collateral damage it inevitably causes. On its own that one might be okay because it is an issue that does come up.

Issue 2: She lets a mass murderer, who outright said she gives not a single care about the fact she will have/already has innocent blood on her hands because The Cause(tm), who also orchestrated the almost torturous murder of a college (if a jerky one with Problems), stroll away scott-free because the scene is framed in such a way that it comes off as Alison Does Not Understand Moonshadow’s Pain And Is Wrong. This one is a little more than a little less excusable.

Issue 3: And now we have the White Male Power Structure being proven to be right because poor emotional Alison can’t handle being in a position of authority like they can. Because remember, Altruism = Tyranny given the logic of the Professor’s arguments and now he’s being Proven Right(tm) because, for whatever reason, Alison feels she needs to strong-arm Max no matter what.

It’s reaching Ash Ketchum levels of the world contorting in ridiculous ways so that the protagonist fails in any major situation. And that can be both frustrating to a reader and disappointing as a narrative regardless of if we are supposed to be agreeing with her or not.

Well that’s what I meant, ‘please tell me you’re not in favor of actual ones’.

Yeah, he’d have to be really spiteful to hit someone who threatened to murder him in the ocean. How shocking and out of line that would be. How villainous and cruel.

Also a valid interpretation. Either way it boils down to forcing Alison to confront the unpleasant reality that she can’t have the world she wants without coercing someone.

Go reread issue 3, please. Focus on page 74.

I’m afraid I have to walk away from Omelas. I will confess, however, that this is as close as a trolley problem has ever come to getting me in the lever pulling camp.

Dude is just such a jackass, and would be put out so little…

Anyway, thanks for writing this comic, authors. Despite the fact that it is free, I enjoyed it more than several of my pulls.

Again, the reason I’m operating as if Alison’s claims are true is that I am talking about a decision Alison made, and Alison believes it will work. Her decision was based on the information she has.

My argument is not “Alison is definitely right about everything always and therefore her choices are infallible.” My argument is that Alison made the correct decision based on her understanding of the situation. From her perspective, the choice she had to make was between Max’s autonomy and countless lives.

I believe that saving countless lives is more important than preserving four hours of one person’s autonomy; therefore, I believe Alison made the right choice given her understanding of the situation. Others think that it would never be okay to coerce Max regardless of how many lives would actually be saved, and I disagree with that.

It’s pointless for me to talk about the moral choice Alison made from the perspective that she’s delusional or lying. This story arc is about Alison grappling with a conflict in her values, and deciding where her priorities lie. My opinion is that she made the right choice about where her priorities should lie.

If it makes you feel better, feel free to imagine “Assuming that Alison’s understanding of the situation is accurate in all respects” as a prefix to any statement I make about her choice being the right one. I’m not gonna type it out every single time, but it’s been implicit in my arguments all along.

I concretely concur, and by the inverse of that principle endorse the destruction of the Filibuster.

And I also I make the excuse that these wretched, pathetic rules of engagement weren’t chosen by me. I wasn’t eager to see the Bush Presidency engage in an all-out corrosion of reason and rationality as means of obscuring it’s foibles. I have principles and I try to hold at least some reasonably above-sea-level moral and intellectual ground.

But I also can tell when they’re not being valued, and being used against me. Politeness encourages reciprocity, but if it’s not returned it’s worth is diminished. Rules without consequences are merely quaint, and if there’s one thing I think is indisputable about modern America it’s that perverse incentives and workarounds rule the day.

And I’m pretty damn sick of it.

None of it is incurable. None of it is irreconcilable. What’s our excuse?

I don’t actually disagree with any of this. That’s why I said I don’t support any real-world dictators, or expect a truly benevolent human dictator to show up. The only way it could happen in the real world is with a friendly AI, which would be capable of perfect adherence to a benevolent moral system and which would be able to live for an extremely long time.

I personally prefer to see her making decisions according to what she believes will do the most good, compared to seeing her making decisions according to her emotions in the moment.

Haha, it’s no trouble. I could always stop replying but I do enjoy discussing this stuff.

Even just making her as weak as a normal human would be enough to put him at a huge strength advantage. Men are so much stronger than women, physically, that’s it’s scary.

Good god, I hope she’s not buffing Patrick. Buffed Patrick sounds terrifying. Also, Patrick already knows about Max, so that raises the question of why he hasn’t already taken advantage of his ability (or has he?)

So, you expect me to believe that Alison’s target(s) has an anomaly that isn’t capable of saving the world, at X strength, but it suddenly will at X^Y?

Sorry, to quote the ’90s rap group, Double XX Posse, I’m not gonna be able to do it!

not going after her family. but once the government decides that she is a threat, each place she could go becomes an ambush point. are you going to tell me that they won’t be waiting for her to show up at her parent’s house? thus she looses access to them. plus to- i wouldn’t threaten them but i might try to convince them to convince Alison to give up and turn herself in.

I’m pretty sure it’s because whenever you’re doing something good you don’t use that justification, you just say it’s because it’s a good thing to do.

You can volunteer at a soup kitchen because it’s a good thing to do. People don’t say “I’ll donate blood /for the greater good/” or “I’ll volunteer at a charity event /for the greater good/”, they just do those things because they are worthy goals in and of themselves.

But you can’t kill Nicolas Maduro because it’s a good thing. You can’t bomb a country because it’s a good thing. You do it “for the greater good”, as in “the positive consequences of doing this outweigh the negative ones, so despite it BEING A BAD THING, I will still do it”.

That’s why “for the greater good” is the epitome of “ethically ambiguous”. Because if there is no ambiguity, you don’t need such a justification. The very idea that you are doing something for the greater good implies that you’re committing a comparatively lesser evil. Otherwise… you would just be doing something that is “a good thing to do”.

What if she’s bluffing to prove her point about how much danger he’s really in? I don’t think she is, but it’s a nice thought…

…uh oh.
uuuuh oh.

That last line is chilling. It’s a rape revenge fantasy, and in the scheme of things, not that long after Moonshadow’s run. I can’t imagine it’s far from her mind. Al’s too powerful to have ever been victimized herself, and while this great white douche carelessly harms people by not helping them, he probably isn’t a rapist and doesn’t appear to be a violent offender of any other sort. I think she’s going to have to face the fact that she likes being violent and she’s contending with what that means. This asshole is going to face his moral flaccidity, or dig in and become the popular supervillain that plays on fear.

Where is Moonshadow? Would she trade serial killing for working for Valkyrie? Would Feral find Valkyrie worth living for? What the hell is this going to do THEIR powers, also holy shit what if Daniel’s cancer is cured and how would that change his anomaly, how are Al’s anomalies going to be affected, I have too many questions.

I think I have my Halloween figured out now though

It seems like the crux of a lot of the discord in the comment section stems from the fact that we have essentially no information on Allison’s ‘countless lives’ situation.

Holy sh*t Alison, this is waaaaaay over the line. :/ I was generally ok with her lashing out at the hospital because people had actually died and she was very emotionally overwrought. Now, I think she is still very stressed out here (she needs to take a long break from ‘saving the world’ stuff for awhile, IMO, and take time to just listen, learn and learn patience) but this feels way more calculated and, well, evil, for lack of a better word. Not cool.

Well, of course what she’s saying is vague and she hasn’t given us absolute proof yet. That would be a crazy amount of exposition for a comic book and really bad writing! Would ruin the tension of the plot. As a character, Alison doesn’t know she’s being watched and commented on, thank god/the author. But until I see proof otherwise, I have no reason to doubt her.

Ok. Well, right now, she inconveniencing one dickhead, after trying every other option, for one lousy night to save a bunch of lives. Can you really judge her for that so very harshly without any understanding?

Not that I buy this as an excuse for this behavior, but Allison could easily claim divine mandate based on her natural abilities.

Most Americans can’t even remember half the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, what makes you think they’ll remember you?

Besides which, still doesn’t change the fact that no one volunteered until AFTER I asked why we do not have any volunteers.

::dons his black pajamas and headscarf and waggles his ears violently before fading into the all concealing shadows::

Let’s get dangerous!

If I had the boxed-up, stocked-up and locked-up guarantee, I’d be there too. And this is why I’m questioning Alison’s actions here.
1) We only have Alison’s word this will happen, and her judgement regarding actions and their consequences has been shown to be sketchy, at best.
2) I’m volunteering of my own choice, knowing the full consequences. This is not analogous to Max’s position at the moment.

As a side note, I don’t care if history remembers me for such an action. I’d prefer it didn’t, to be honest.
As another side note, I say that sitting in a Lazy-Boy chair. I’m not sure if I would “in the moment”. I’d like to think I would, but context matters.

On the other end of the spectrem, what if the 5 people to die were going to die of cancer if they aren’t vivisected first?

That sounds so… past tense. I miss one summer visit – one! and in a context where I visit twice a year! – and I’m relegated to history.

You all could come visit me, maybe January, when the farm is slow? I have a lot of guest space as well as training space.

Yeah, seconding this. Regardless of any entrapment on Patrick’s part, the current scene represents something genuine about Allison and she’ll have to live with it either way.

And if your principles approve of assaulting, kidnapping and threatening to murder people based on the hunch they might be able to selectively save lives, I respect your right to hold those principles and I’m very glad I have the freedom to do so.

The problem is you are trying to say that just because I agree that it was good that Germany didn’t win the war. I have to agree with every method that was used to ensure the victory or even to wage the war.

In war there are war criminals that rape and murder civilians even though they are no longer a target. This is a fact in every war on every side. Would you call that just, because you believed the war was just?

A war is more than a single action. It is a very complex beast with many people in it of different moral fibers. Judging the war as a single thing is an excersise in futility.

So, no, I would not say that soldiers that knowingly bombed civilians, men, women and childeren that got caught up in the storm, were doing a moral thing. I would not call them monster either, because I realize the difficulty of their situation and the innacurate tools they had at their disposal. But they were not just.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Pith: 1.

Accuracy: 0.

Alison also doesn’t hold “save lives where possible” as an ultimate principle (though I’d agree that she seems to hold it as a hobby), based on the death of Marcus Houston in the Rogue Temple Drones conflict, everyone thinking that she was going to kill the wannabe rapist at the party, not attempting to stop Patrick when he says he’s going to kill his old criminal network, trying to dissuade Feral[0], killing Feral’s attacker, threatening to kill the crowd protesting Feral, and even deciding to no longer be a Guardian. Quite a few of those are fairly neat inversions of this vignette in that she holds someone’s autonomy (mostly they’re her, or her friends’) to be more important than the possibility of saving lives.

[0] “give a man a fish, feed him for a day, give a man a heart, and then what? Watch him get obliterated in the next ethnic cleansing or natural disaster, or just sink into poverty and disappear? If saving the world means preserving it just how it is, then saving the world is not for me.”

The hold of those who are blinded by their own ideals!
Also known as the Half Nelson hold.

No. The only way is to ask them in advance. Asking them after the fact means they had no input in whether to torture anyone.

Why? By walking away you haven’t saved the person being tortured. Surely they die (or become otherwise unqualified, since the victim is always described as a child) eventually, and someone new must be chosen. By walking away you have only ensured it will not be *your* child.

It’s a quote from Superman Vs The Elite. The titular group are brutal antiheroes who murder anyone they deem a criminal with no remorse. Superman finally turns the tables on them by using their own tactics in an utterly terrifying beatdown.

Oh, so far at least – and maybe Friday there will be a giant twist! – Max is being treated horribly, and I hope he gets some kind of shot at justice, though hopefully not of the daytime television variety.

I’m not saying what is happening is remotely okay. But… so you know how I talk about how much I’d like to see the world slapping Patrick upside the face a whole bunch? I feel like we’re seeing a set up for Alison’s version of that. This can’t possible end well for her – because of her own values, and because of the values of the people she cares about. She’s pretty much painted herself into a corner. It’s just a question of how bad it gets before she starts having to come to grips with that fact.

…missed a spot.

She’s a super-powered Kaepernick.

First of all, wow. This scene. Very powerful, very very gray in terms of conventional morality. I love the discussion it has spurred on, and the fact that this comic is so willing to make risky story decisions like this. This single little page packs so much in it, and this comic overall I love for its ability to address issues like this, and its willingness to do so, but most of all for the incredibly mature and nuanced way it does so. I started writing here to just mention a few things but there’s so much to unpack it snowballs. I told myself I wasn’t going to write a damned essay for SFP but woops here I go again

To anyone thinking this is a positive portrayal, look at her lines, and read between them.
“I wish I could have convinced you.” “Calm down.” “Stop squirming,” or HE will dislocate his arm. Notice that she says he will do it – not that she is forcing it to happen. See the parallel between “you made me angry,” and “you made me hurt you” to this.
How she explains what is going to happen – whether or not he wants it to happen. To paraphrase: “Nobody will know.” “It will only take a little while.” Then the threat: “I will kill you if you give me what I want.” Her mentioning of obligation; like he OWES this to her.
Look at how she forces him down against the table, her positioning and his. He insults her but quickly jumps into calling for help, turning red, and crying.
“Now how does that sound?” “Fuck you!” “Well, sweetheart, I was really only asking as a courtesy.” Particularly those last two lines – the mention of sex, the dismissal (sweetheart), and the denial of their being ANY choice in the matter for him. That he is obligated to say yes because she asked; and if he says no, well, then this is deserved. He is a bad person; he must be punished.

How can you look at this scene and not see anything but rape? Switch their genders and strip the context from it and I guarantee that’s how you would see it; hell if you showed it to someone who wasn’t aware of the story behind it, they’d probably see her as a rapist, even if they were confused by some of the lines.

I would also like to draw another parallel between this and the punitive rape that is common in some stories and legends and (unfortunately) still practiced in some places of the world. You can see this in two ways: in the stories and legends, it wasn’t terribly uncommon for “uppity” women to be raped and “see the error of their ways” a la Taming of the Shrew. Disagree with the social structure and seek to impose your right to your own body on the world (fathers, husbands, etc) and you were wrong. Max disagrees with Al’s concept of morality and ethics. She is not punishing him because he will not help her; she is punishing him because he challenges her ideas, and wrapped up in those his ideas is a high value on the right to make your own decisions, regardless of consequences – something which in practice we can see is not a positive thing all of the time, but which in theory is hard to argue against as a value.

Compare this to a woman in those stories who is punished because she does not submit, because she does not give over her rights to a man. She would be seen as as immoral, cruel, cold, “a bitch” in more modern terminology, but most importantly, as selfish because she did not give away her being to man. To being his maid and his cook and the mother of his children, and then giving all that to the children as well; to being his slave, and his sex object, in some cases.

I am not arguing in any way shape or form that Max is really alike those women; as a person I think he would sympathize with their desire for freedom, if he could see it, but otherwise I doubt he’d have much empathy or similarities – after all, by almost every possible measure, he is the powerful in society. But in this single moment of time, it is impossible not to see the trope turned about here.

The second way it can be interpreted is less symbolic and rather than just a trope being turned about is – well, at the risk of offending those who might object to my use of the words, this is in a literal sense a rape all in its own. Alison is asserting her “right” to a part of his being which is completely and totally his in every way, and which she nor anyone else has any right to. Looking at the way she is holding him it’s clear she is also asserting her power and strength over him, and in the way she is demanding he use his superpower, she is also in a way “stealing” it.

You could make the argument here that she does this for the right reasons, at least – if what she says is true, this single act could save millions. I would counter the argument by bringing up utilitarianism’s faults, particularly utility monsters and derivatives.

Utility monsters are a thought experiment which I suggest you look up if you don’t know about them since my definition will be lacking; they are theoretical creatures which derive a higher pleasure than another creature, meant to show some of the flaws in utilitarianism as a philosophy (greatest good for the greatest number of people, typically meaning happiness). For example, let’s say Cookie Monster raids your pantry. Well, that’s okay because the pleasure he gets from eating your chocolate chip cookies is ten times more than the pleasure you get from eating them. So you should give him all your cookies.

Continuing the rape comparison – and although this is a despicable example and I’m rather ambiguous about typing it, but I feel I must continue for the sake of the argument – let’s say a rapist is a utility monster in a similar circumstance to the Cookie Monster example. Even in this hypothetical situation I would doubt that I’d find anyone who would take the position that the previous examples solution be the solution here as well.

The point is, if you hold that her action is right on the basis of the common good you must therefore hold that someone who helps the utility monster rapist is also right.

I understand it’s unpleasant example, and not terribly tailored to Max, but I think it shows the flaws in the idea. I think the point of this page here is to ask what right Max isn’t entitled to that a victim of rape is and should have been. That he has as much right to his powers as any man or woman has to their body, regardless of the choice he makes. After all, people choose poor partners all the time – yet despite being the “wrong choice” we still hold to that right to their own body.

And I’d just like to end with, that as much as I defended Max here, and even sympathize with his ideas and feelings, I don’t think he is in any way a good person. Neutral, I would call him – he doesn’t seem to actively hurt people, though I would admit he probably would if it brought him a benefit as he would see it as his choice. But so far he just never helps them, even when it would require almost nothing of him. Honestly, Max has got no real redeeming features – he’s immature, he blows up a small comments, he’s selfish, and inconsiderate and rather arrogant and ignorant and the list goes on and on. He doesn’t even have any sort of reasonable excuse for it – he’s a pretty, rich, white, and straight guy whose mommy is powerful enough to pull political strings for him. The biggest trauma he had was realizing that he couldn’t always be #1 and it made him cry just to talk about it – at 14 that could be a blow. Years later and you should have dealt with stuff like that, especially when you’re rich enough to afford legions of pills and therapists.

Yet I would personally say that matters as little as what clothes he’s wearing on this page.

In the comics, this kind of villainy is typical of characters like Doctor Doom. Disregarding the will of the “little people” for the greater good.

thank you for sharing, I value your input and I haven’t banned anything from the comments except for offensive/aggressive posts.
-Molly

We sort of know his power because he told Alison, he can augment other biodynamic’s powers though we do not know the extent of the boost or how long the effects last.

Simply put, she can’t. Alison has been completely in the wrong ever since Max told her to scram and she didn’t. Personally, I find the flaws in her behavior make for a more interesting and believable story. The author could have made her a total Mary Sue who was such a beacon of morality and compassion that Mr Rogers would have looked up to her, but that would be boring. A protagonist who’s got superpowers and is trying to do the right thing but still is an imperfect human who makes bad decisions due to emotional responses is far more compelling.

::falls to floor braying and waving his legs around::

If only you could have had that post in two different colors of lettering….

I have mixed feelings about the check thing. One clarification to start with: She couldn’t have put it toward biomedical research, microloans, or medical training. It wasn’t made out to her, it was made out to the Valkyrie Project, so she could only use it for that project. If she could have used it for any of those other things, I’d be 100% certain that it was wrong and hypocritical of her to tear it up…but since she could only use it for Valkyrie, I’m conflicted.

Should she have accepted it for the sake of the good it could do for the population Valkyrie serves? Maybe. My knee-jerk reaction is usually “take the damn money and put it to good use,” but some commenters have raised the valid point that it might be a Trojan horse in some scheme of Patrick’s. It might, for example, have resulted in him gaining undue influence over Valkyrie that he could have exploited later in a way counterprodutive to the greater good (or at least Alison’s idea of it). On the other hand, there might have been ways to prevent that outcome while still taking advantage of the money. So I don’t know.

~clap clap clap~

One could argue that the intent of the mugger’s action is financial profit using violent threat and/or action as the means. In the case of rape, the violent action is the means toward an end that doesn’t involve financial profit, but rather establishment of social/sexual dominance.

Pedantry. 😀

Being disappointed by someone we care about always sucks. 😀

She’s there. I dunno if this comparison holds up, but one time I witnessed a car accident. I tried to help the person bleeding on the side of the road. I was not qualified! I’m a damn EMT. But i was there and the situation was happening and that’s life.

The comparison doesn’t hold up, for two reasons: First, Alison didn’t bear witness to someone being placed in a life-or-death situation, such that it required immediate action. And second, depending on the jurisdiction in which you live, you were at risk of facing real-life consequences if your intervention actually made things worse. Alison has no fear of consequences – because no one could enforce them, anyway – so she has no incentive to consider collateral damage, as has been made evident by the entire history of this webcomic. Like, that’s basically Alison’s whole CV: she runs headfirst into situations, without regard to how her actions impact other people, because she herself is free from the repercussions of her bad decisions. She just expects that everybody will pretty much either “get down or lay down” for whatever it is she wants to do.

In alison’s case her power could very well be the equivalent of proximity. She didn’t ask for her power/this responsibility, but it falls on her anyway

Like hell it does. She didn’t ask for the power, sure; she absolutely asked for the responsibility. She practically grabbed it by the throat. It doesn’t fall on her, she took it upon herself. Which is a problem; she has power, and she’s decided that she knows what’s best for everybody. And she doesn’t. By a long shot.

And a duly-appointed representative?! In what regime? Would you feel the same if she were living in Russia? Or a police state? What gives you this blinding faith in authority? What makes you think that these institutions–congress, police, etc.–are better at handling and controlling such things? Or have a greater moral right? Are they god kings? Were they appointed by some holy authority?

I have a very different relationship to authority than you. It makes me want to take a poll of the people here.

“Blinding faith in authority?” I think I’m offended. And who the hell said anything about police? These remarks make me wonder what, exactly, you think my relationship with authority is?

I do not have a “blind faith” in authority. What I do have is a strong belief that people should be held accountable for their actions. There’s no one in the world who can hold Alison Green accountable for her actions. Someone who does not have to answer to anyone else should not be allowed to make life-or-death decisions that affect other people, no matter what their intentions are.

Well, let’s amplify your example.

You agree with me that Max is not by his actions responsible for the fact that children are going to be burned, right? He did not light the children on fire or order it.

So, you say because he has the ability to help, he has the responsibility to help, correct? He can prevent their deaths after all.

So, now we’ve established, when you have the ability to help other people, you have the responsibility to help. Your personal feelings don’t enter the equation. Seeing as how Max is incredibly against being ordered what to do to the point of incredulity, but that does not matter to you. If you can help you must.

As a matter of fact, if you do not help when you have the ability, it is justifiable to punish, threaten, or force you to help. After all, you are responsible for murdering children now, using force to prevent you from helping them seems logical.

Now see. There are a lot of poor people in the world. You have excess money that can help them. You must now donate all your excess money to the poor people of the world so they don’t starve.

After all. You are responsible for them. You have the ability to help, so you must. If you refuse to do this, you will be punished, threatend, or forced to donate your money. You don’t really need that excess money, your suffering for missing that money is less than the joy these poor people get from getting to stay alive and be fed.

But, let’s take it a different path. The state decides that the best way to help people is to make religion mandatory. It fosters strong bonds in communities and gives people hope. You are selected as the best candidate to be your town priest, unfortunately the religion the state has chosen is not your own. Or you simply disagree with making religion mandatory.

Still, the state had decided that this religion helps the most ammount of people. You are the best candidate to be the priest, so you must help them.

After all. If you are able to help, you must. Even if you don’t agree with the method which is used to help.

So, you see when you make people responsible for things they did not cause, and even are willing to punish them for it, you are making every single person’s free will in the world obsolete.

We are in no position to judge how much pain and suffering Alison is causing Max by doing this. Remember, suffering is subjective and does not have to be rational, but it’s real. What may seem like a tiny violation of his rights to you might mean the world to him.

So, when you are willing to administer an unknown ammount of suffering on a person for something they are not responsible for, remember that you are also being rather chilling.

P.S.

I do not condone the burning of children. Please extinguish all burning children you might encounter. Thank you.

Yeah, on reflection, Alison does seem to rely on “brawling” as opposed to actual martial training.

Regards to Wonder Woman, I often find myself wishing that artists would depict her fighting style in a manner other than “Like Superman’s and most every other flying brick’s, just with more kicks and use of swords and lassos.” – it feels to me like she’s just playing to Superman’s strengths, or worse, that the comics are implying that skill really doesn’t matter against raw power. But, I don’t know as much about martial arts as i wish I did, so I’m probably not in a position to criticize 🙁

Loranna

Actually my first reply is excessively callous, so I’ll make some small concessions here.

I get what you’re saying in that mental illness is commonly used as an excuse for criminality. IE clinic bombing isn’t terrorism it’s mental illness given an excuse to express itself.

Yes, this is a thing society does. It’s also a transparent evasion of the need to reflect and consider greater things like the tolerance of ignorance reframed as “respecting someone’s faith.” Or gun control, you can pick which you think is more controversial.

I get that.

And maybe you’ll notice I don’t really sweat overmuch about “societal wisdom.” What “society thinks” is usually more like “what society feels,” and feeling > thinking is a trap.

But you get me? That my perspective isn’t about whether or not anyone likes what’s real, but instead to emphasize finding information that can most represent what is real?

That’s my bottom line. I don’t give a drek about if Oscar Pistorius was legless unless it informed his murder of his girlfriend. If it did it’s data, and if it didn’t it’s trivia. Society can “think” what it wants.

Yes, sorry, when I said “your” analogy I should have specified that I meant “general use of ‘you'”.

Agency of cancer sufferers.
Re: Your (“specific your”) question /assertion
“How is it not taking agency from cancer sufferers to decide, on their behalf, that it isn’t justifiable to torture 5 people to save them? .. It seems like you’re only counting anything as harm or as a violation if it’s an active rather than a passive choice.”
This posits a false dichotomy / forced choice wherein you either actively or passively deprive the 5 victims, or the cancer victims of their agency and lives.

Western thought generally sticks to 0 and 1 responses which tends to create a lot of “logic trap” / dilemmas like this^, however Eastern thought has the correct response to this in the Japanese
and Korean term “mu”, or Chinese “wu”, which are roughly equivalent to the phrases: “not applicable”,
“unask the question”, or “this dilemma is obsolete”, or “the axiom
prevents a truthful answer” (i.e. the axiom is incorrect) or “a truthful answer is not available within the (artificially restricted) context of the question”.
Specifically:
The moral limit of your agency extends to your own life, not the lives of the 5 victims, nor the lives of the cancer victims. One individual does not possess or embody the breadth/depth of POV to extend terminal agency over other (mentally competent adults) and thus does not possess moral agency/authority to make this decision either way.
So, it is not that one individual’s decision to make either way, nor is it that one individual’s responsibility. The responsibility actually lies with whatever entity is directly or indirectly with-holding the cure(s) to the ransom of 5 Victims.

Argument from Probability:
(And here’s where we must start to touch on the practicality of the hypothetical example).
If an individual chooses to torture/murder 5 Victims the probability of those 5 Victims death / extinguishing of “qualia” / now and future value is 1.. i.e. this moral wrong / evil is 100% certain.
The probability that any one individual suffering from cancer will die is LESS THAN 1 (less than 100%), because “magic box cures” offered in return for cure(S) notwithstanding, there are thousands of people in multiple teams all across the world constantly working towards cures for the various types of cancers all the time, with a lot of very promising work recently. There are breakthroughs being made all the time, and indeed a number of cancers that might have been deadly a few decades ago now have a high cure rate, and even many still deadly ones have already seen sufferers life expectancy extended by months to years. (I spent my early adult life in biological science, have a PhD in biochemistry, and still keep up with developments)
Thus: It is entirely conceivable that the murder of the 5 Victims would be an exercise in futility, even in the short term.

So what we’re looking at is not actually 5 lives balanced with millions of lives, what we’re looking at is the CERTAINTY of 5 murders versus the UNCERTAIN value of the payoff.

So, because it is clear that other variables proliferate plentifully in all such scenarios, and the value of any one person’s qualia is unknowable; where there is any uncertainty in outcome, it is immoral to err on the side of killing (an)other person(s).

(Practically speaking: Torturing of course has been shown to have NEGATIVE value (even in a utilitarian sense) where information gained by torture is (unsurprisingly) less likely to be accurate than info from those not tortured. Unsurprising, because the main focus of torture victims will often be to do or say whatever will cause the torture to stop)

I was honestly invoking my understanding of what ‘villain’ means, maybe we don’t have the same (I’m not a native English speaker), I think of ‘villain’ as in comics where it is supposed to be obvious to tell good from evil, and where it’s obvious what the ethical choice should be. I love this comic because it breaks that pattern all the time. I don’t think it has neither heroes (not even Feral) or villains (not even Moonshadow or Patrick).

I don’t think he can. I think part of the point of the comic is that Patrick can manipulate her (if he doesn’t shoot himself in the foot), other people she cares about can influence her, but no one but her can actually stop her.

(Here’s praying that I’ve formatted this correctly…)

So… I think it’s safe to say that there have been a few comments on this page. I’m not about to try and insert myself into the debate as to whether or not Alison’s decision is morally defensible, as, clearly, it is for some people and for others it is not.

I will say that, while I tend to agree with the group who find this behavior ultimately unjustifiable even if it does work out- I don’t believe in predestination or fate or any of that crap, which means, to me, our actions in the present are what matter- I also think I understand the point Stephanie, in particular, has made over and over again: whether Alison is right or wrong in the objective sense, she can absolutely be subjectively justified in her own mind.

Having said that, I will instead address what seems like a more interesting problem, one which has been stated several ways, most of which boil down to this: Alison’s actions have made her irredeemable. Because she has taken an evil action, she has become the villain of the piece and any good that she does from this time forward or that results from these actions will be tainted.

I have no doubt that Alison has been wounded by this and, further, that it is her own actions which are making the deepest cuts. Alison cannot go back to what she was before, but that was true long before this page. The thing is, growth is not about going back; it is about going on.

If I could draw another parallel, one of my favorite authors of science fiction space opera is Lois McMaster Bujold. Her method for plotting a story, according to her, is to do the worst thing she can imagine to her protagonist, then go from there. Without giving too much in the way of spoilers, should anyone wish to read the series, in Memory, she basically explodes her hero’s life, destroying everything that he thinks he stood for with one monumentally bad series of stupid decisions. In the process of putting his life back in order, he has the following conversation:

The bugs sang their soft chorus in the woods, a tiny organic moonlight sonata. “Little man” – Harra’s voice in the dark was as sweet and deadly as maple mead – “my mother killed my daughter. And was judged for it in front of all of Silvy Vale. You think I don’t know what public shame is? Or waste?”

“Why d’you think I’m telling all this to you?”

Harra was silent for long enough for Lem to pass around the stone jug one last time, in the dim moonlight and shadows. Then she said, “You go on. You just go on. There’s nothing more to it, and there’s no trick to make it easier. You just go on.”

“What do you find on the other side? When you go on?”

She shrugged. “Your life again. What else?”

“Is that a promise?”

She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water. The moon-lines bloomed and danced. “It’s an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on.”

This is where I think this arc must, eventually, lead. Or, at least, I hope it does, because it’s one of the most mature approaches to failure I think I’ve ever read.

😀

I think you’re dating yourself by saying Rikki Lake 🙂

http://www.teamvalkyrieftw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/preach.gif

Or to put it another way, you’re speaking as someone who is scared shitless of this decision and has never been in a position to make it, so your opinion is really not the end-all be-all absolute truth of the situation.

Except he’s NOT the bad guy here. How is he the bad guy? Because he did NOT volunteer to be a hero, and therefore he is a villain, as if the universe only has heroes and villains? No. He’s the unlikable (but not bad) guy. That is not the same.

There are more than a few unlikable people in fiction who are nevertheless often correct and NOT the bad guys.

Monet St. Croix (Generation X, X-Men, X-Factor – poster child for this)
Chase Stein (Runaways)
Guy Gardner (Green Lanterns – not always correct but unlikable but good)
(Plus when he becomes a red lantern, he actually starts becoming correct a whole lot of the time)
Booster Gold (Justice Society of America – surprisingly right a lot, mostly because Skeet has a really extensive database, despite Booster being a pompous jerk – one of the best non-Cadmus JLU episodes was The Greatest Story Never Told)
Cyclops (X-Men – total d-bag, but he’s still right a lot of the time)
Damian Wayne (aka 5th Robin, hateful, cocky little kid, but ‘right’ a lot)

Cleaver

So I looked it up, and it isn’t allowed /if and only if there was some restriction on the donation/. Like, if you say “I am donating this to Valkyrie to use to protect abused women” or something, then she wouldn’t be able to do it. I didn’t see any such instructions, so I’d think it was fair game.

But if you just give some money to the place it looks like they can do whatever with it (this actually became a court case in Canada where a charity received money with a restriction, asked for the consent of the donnor to redirect the funds elsewhere, /got it/ and then was still not allowed to do it because of the redirecting instructions in question).

I was a little befuddled there too – I think the strongest argument is in television and movies. I have read all of the ASoIaF so far published, but I haven’t re-read them recently – and honestly, the amount of rape in them didn’t ring huge alarm bells for me, though I have a mental note to keep an eye out for that if I do a re-read. The shows do seem to be a different beast.

For me, the essay was mostly useful as a catalyst for some of my own thinking about the mythology of rape and in particular the gendered nature of rape, and how it plays into a lot of the mythology of gender roles. So much of media is this constant droning repetition of “I am the strong man!” “I am the vulnerable woman…” Some much gets ground into dust between those stones.

Why don’t you explain the nuanced ethical difference between killing in war, and killing outside a war?

Why is it ‘killing’ in your mind in war, and ‘murder’ outside of it? Is a soldier who drops a bomb on a civilian-run factory somehow more moral in his actions than a private citizen who does the same?

If in your ethical system calling something a ‘war’ immediately make a cause just and worth killing for, your ethical system scares the hell out of me. That’s the kind of thinking that leads to War on Concepts.

Oh, that’s fantastic. Suddenly we have common ground based in actual reality. All the thumbs up, mate.

And I’m with you on the politicization of profiling instead of just using the data to analyze what is a real, consequential problem. I don’t like things like domestic terrorism being concealed behind mental illness and I sure as hell don’t like to see innocent people blamed for the crimes of a rounding-error minority of their population.

I am not afraid of Syrian Refugees. I am afraid of fat crackers with guns. I am goddamn bothered that I live in southwest Washington state and drive by Confederate flags on my trip home. I am concerned that damn near everywhere in the US that’s not a city is becoming The South instead of just being rural wherever. The Urban/Agrarian Divide has been a thing since cities were real, but this specific crystallization is different from that historical division.

I’d forgotten about the Shoe Bomber. Right. And I’ll look up Samantha Lewthewaite. Cool, learned something new as well. Thanks for that.

Word up. Glad this came to an actually worthwhile conclusion.

Really? The countless people outweigh the one?

OK, so if that leads to one Max being killed, or having his rights violated that’s fine?

How about if there are two people that would be able to save others? Still fine? 3? 5? 10? 50? 100? 1000?

If you’ve already accepted it for one why not more? There’s 7+ bn people on the planet? So you’re still, potentially, more people that may be saved. When does it become “mass murder”? When does it become a dictatorship? When is it enough for people to quake in fear that they may be next?

To paraphrase Dr Ernst Janning when he confesses in the film, does it matter they only knew about the 100s instead of the millions? And after he’s sentenced (the clip I was looking for), he meets one of the Allied judges. He said that when he sentenced (he was a German judge who went along with things so that he was not one of the victims) a person that he knew was innocent to death, he didn’t think it would lead to millions. The allied judge then replies that it lead to the millions the moment he did that.

How marvelously facile.

Kinda doesn’t matter. What’s with the Che icon if you don’t like his philosophy, anyway?

If it gets him to help other people when he can then it doesn’t matter is she has to fuck him up. In other words: Yes it totally does justify her taking away his autonomy.

Just relax, you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll feel good when it’s over…
“Well sweetheart, I was really only asking as a courtesy.”

I’m late to all this drama, but I think this is grade A storytelling. In reality, most good things don’t get done without some sort of “bad” thing. No good protagonist makes you feel nice about them all the time, and I’m glad to see Allison doing something that makes us cringe. I love morally problematic protagonists. Also I was tired of her only kind of losing her temper. I loved how the use of the f-word went up like exponentially. Anyway, moving forward I’m really excited.

Oh, my mistake, I didn’t realize that the Holocaust was kicked off because German citizens thought slamming one guy’s head into a table was justifiable to save countless lives. Obviously after they did that, they were all like “Well, in that case, we should probably systematically murder millions of people.” That makes sense.

Dropping the sarcasm now–believing “it’s acceptable to do small harms to prevent big harms” does not, in any universe, equate to believing “systematically murdering millions of people will prevent a much greater harm.” You might consider saving your holocaust fears for people who actually believe genocide is beneficial.