[saurik]

> Meanwhile hollywood will churn out another hundred films about how Captain America would never let something like this happen because murdering innocents is not a line America would ever cross.

FWIW, Captain America's character arc throughout the MCU, at least (which is what I'd assume we mean by "Hollywood"), has largely been to realize that he can't actually trust the government and that not only is the government now corrupt (becoming so during his time skip), but it has always been just as bad: the "good government" he believed in from WWII was propaganda, it turned out SHIELD was a so deeply infiltrated with enemy spies that it was effectively an arm of HYDRA... even the UN's attempts at diplomacy inherently result in moral compromises that he refuses to accept, and, by the end, he ended up as a fugitive. I think you'd be hard pressed to watch these movies and think that Captain America's existence demonstrates that America would never cross such lines.

[pmarreck]

A lot of people bash the Marvel content for essentially having the depth of an arcade beat-em-up, but the character arcs of Cap and Iron Man alone through the movies is something to behold IMHO

[fluoridation]

That's not much an arc, at least as described. He starts with one set of principles, and he stays with those same set of principles, but just changes his methods. A more interesting (IMO) arc would be to realize that principles should be guidelines, not strict rules, and that those guidelines can sometimes be bent in order to accomplish goals. "I can't trust organizations anymore" is not character growth; the character is not learning anything about how his decisions affect the world.

[serf]

yeah, it's great writing -- it's a total coincidence that the Iron Man origin was conveniently re-written to implicate the middle east with arms trade, energy smuggling, and human trafficking for the movie. It's also great writing that it gets to show off the F-35 , a project that was hugely failed at the time economically, to the public as something with on-par agility to a super hero.

it's also a total coincidence that the original origin had Stark demonstrating his weapons in Vietnam, and being captured by communist war-lord Wong Chu.

It's so strange that all this great writing seems somehow connected to the current affairs of the United States at the time.

The fakey Lockheed Martin logo and typescript for Stark Industries is also a nice fuck-you, but the fans think it's endearing.

Any kind of semblance of "Oh the superhero now mistrusts authority" is there simply to make the actual propgadandized bullshit more palatable and believable, and you'll be damn sure that after the traitors are ousted in the movie it'll be good old Uncle Sam and the US whatever-corp waiting for the real super heroes when it's all through.

The DoD sure puts out some great fiction writing.

[pmarreck]

Hooo boy. I barely have time for this but...

1) First of all, you're talking about an imaginary universe with a character literally named "Captain America". Just to put this in the right perspective.

2) A single Google would show you that the Middle East often engages (AND has historically engaged) in all of that, and lots of other bad-actordom (please do not tu-quoque me here about the sins of the United States, I know about its meddling consequences). Do you know why? It's because the Quran endorses it. Do you want the quotes they use to justify it to this day? It's the same quotes that the Barbary Pirates quoted at Thomas Jefferson and John Adams when they traveled to Morocco to ask why their peaceful trade ships kept getting attacked... which shocked them... and which ended up in them forming the US Navy. So yes, the US military was literally created to fight the Islamic terrorism of its day. That is not propaganda, that is historical fact. (Source- This is wild, btw, if you weren't aware of it: https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php... Find the paragraph that begins with "We took the Liberty...") Just to give you an idea how deep the rabbit hole goes here, and that it's not all just "durr hurr brown people bad" (I mean... that might be some of it, but it's absolutely not ALL of it). In short, the "Middle East trope" was largely earned, not applied... and the US was founded on good principles by good people (who, uh, owned slaves sometimes. Yes, it's complicated. I know.). (Related side note - the Crusades were largely a response to Islamic jihadic conquests. But I digress.)

3) F-35 criticism- No contest. I didn't realize that, actually. And I'm a 4 year USAF vet, so... I should have.

4) Regarding "choice of enemy"... funny story I read about this lately related to that is that the lead designer of the Call of Duty games is having trouble traveling overseas without a security attache because of the enemies he picked in his past games, lol. If you're curious, I can find the link. But the unfortunate truth is that the dramas set up in these media have to have SOME plausible semblance to reality. (I will return to this in a moment.)

5) "Any kind of semblance of "Oh the superhero now mistrusts authority" is there simply to make the actual propgadandized bullshit more palatable and believable" This is not a falsifiable claim, and I'll demonstrate why: A) If the movie depicts the US as flawless, you will see it as propaganda. B) If the movie depicts the US as flawed, you... Also see it as propaganda? See the problem yet? If there are no conditions under which a Marvel movie is not "United States propaganda" to you, then it is not falsifiable, end of story. It also completely misses any satirical elements, which were surely present.

Now, to my last point...

Ich sprech fliessend Deutsch. My mom is from Heidelberg and my dad is from Bremen and they emigrated to the US and I am a firstborn American with some particular German sensitivities that we likely share (couldn't help noticing your gmx.com email address). And so we get to the problem of Every Single US-Produced Historical Videogame using Nazis As The Enemy. Contributes to negative German stereotypes. I feel that. As a US citizen who is also German (100% German ancestry, actually), I want to apologize for that. There's gotta be some part of you that this pains, because it does me. Germans should be known for waaaaay better things they've contributed to the world, than that (Ordnung über alles! lol). So, I'm sorry. Perhaps that fed into some of your rage here. If so, I'd understand... possibly more than most. (I've also been called a Nazi more than once.)

[fluoridation]

>So yes, the US military was literally created to fight the Islamic terrorism of its day. That is not propaganda, that is historical fact.

I mean, you're bending the truth a little. The US Navy was created to fight thieves and murderers on ships, who happened to be Muslim. There was no ideological component to the conflict. That someone can cite a passage from a book to justify robbing you doesn't mean that his robbing you is inspired by the book.

>funny story I read about this lately related to that is that the lead designer of the Call of Duty games is having trouble traveling overseas without a security attache because of the enemies he picked in his past games, lol.

Sounds extremely dubious. For one, there's not a designer. It's always been at least two different companies working on alternating titles; right now it's three or four. Second, who would even recognize him, by either face or name?

>B) If the movie depicts the US as flawed, you... Also see it as propaganda? See the problem yet? If there are no conditions under which a Marvel movie is not "United States propaganda" to you, then it is not falsifiable, end of story.

For example, if the US government wasn't a player at all (it's not aware of the conflict, it's totally powerless to do anything about it [for or against], etc.), it would not be propaganda. Or it could depict a realistic US government, as not a monolithic entity, but a massive swath of people with different motivations, principles, and knowledge. Hell, imagine this: two different branches of the government want to help with the problem but they refuse to cooperate out of mistrust and their solutions work against each other, cancelling each other out, and a third, smaller branch makes a small but key contribution to the heroes' effort.

[pmarreck]

> That someone can cite a passage from a book to justify robbing you doesn't mean that his robbing you is inspired by the book.

I'm sorry, what? I literally don't follow. If someone robs my home because of what it says to do in an unquestionable book that they've been raised on, how is that not literally inspired by the book? This is nonsense. People do things all the time (good and bad) because of what they believe is true in books. Would you not fault those books if they state something wrong that causes people to commit harm? I mean... Trepanation? Bloodletting? Countless other things that were believed to be true, were acted on because of that, but were actually wrong?

Have you actually read the relevant passages?

(I more or less agree with your other statements.)

[fluoridation]

>If someone robs my home because of what it says to do in an unquestionable book that they've been raised on, how is that not literally inspired by the book?

Yes, if I beg the question, I also can reach any conclusion I like. But someone doesn't rob because of what any book says. They rob you because they want what you have and they think they can get away with it. I assure you, if you put a sign on the front of the house saying "beware of the leopard" and the robber hears growling noises coming from inside, he will not rob you, no matter how righteous his unquestionable book says robbing you is.

(If he does, then I'll grant you in such a case there's an ideological component to it.)

>People do things all the time (good and bad) because of what they believe is true in books.

That's not how human nature works. It's not like before Muhammad came around pillaging didn't exist. What do you think vikings were, or the sea peoples? I haven't read the passage, and I don't need to. It doesn't matter what it says. The Old Testament says that Hebrews could take slaves from their neighboring nations. Leviticus didn't invent slavery. All the book did was condone a practice that already existed. At the most what the passage did was let people feel better about what they were doing (and we know they knew slavery was awful, because they had different practices for the in-group than for the out-group), if nothing else because their own countrymen would not punish them for it.

Take everything I said about the Hebrews and apply it to the Muslim pirates.

>I mean... Trepanation? Bloodletting? Countless other things that were believed to be true, were acted on because of that, but were actually wrong?

Now you're just conflating things. Trepanation and bloodletting were performed because it was mistakenly believed they would help the patient. Someone who enslaves you, robs you, or murders you because his holy book tells him is the righteous thing to do is under no mistaken impression that he's doing you a favor.