Posts and discussion about the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Hugo Award-winning author Zach Weinersmith (and related works)
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New comics posted whenever they get posted on the site, and old comics posted every day until we catch up in a decade or so
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/joke-5
Alt text
Do they still do this? When I was a kid, villains were constantly dangling from buildings and being saved.
Bonus panel
And here we see the failure of Kantian style ethics. Batman's intent is moral and just, for him... But overall the outcome results in greater tragedy for everyone else.
Yeah, but that's a point routinely highlighted in Batman, namely that Batman is deeply troubled and isn't strictly doing this for the good of Gotham. Batman having very strongly held ethics isn't meant to show that they're good ethics.
I believe Batman would have disarmed the Joker first, or at the same time, as punching him.
That would have been the smart thing to do!
Too bad that's not what happened here.
This is what happened next, for those who are curious:
Ah, the old "Batman should play judge, jury and executioner" argument. Which is bullshit for so many reasons:
I think you're reading something in the comic that isn't necessarily there. You see someone ridiculing Batman's vigilante justice and interpret it as them supporting a different kind of vigilante justice.
Killing someone to reduce loss of life when you have no better options is good. Trying to get yourself or others in a situation where you have to make that call is bad.
Batman is morally repugnant for being a billionaire vigilante rather than not exploiting the poor and spending his labor making systemic improvements. But if someone gets in the situation where they can kill the Joker to prevent the Joker from killing others, they should take the shot.
Killing someone to reduce loss of life when you have no better options is good.
The key element being the lack of alternatives. Batman is capable of apprehending the Joker. At the beginning of the comic he has better options than letting him fall to his death. Once the Joker goes for his gun the scenario changes and lethal force is reasonably justified. But that's also when Batman stops acting like Batman and does nothing to stop the Joker in order to make the joke work.
The moral argument here assumes that if the Joker is alive he will inevitably kill again. That only works if you assume that he can't be stopped by anything short of death. But the Joker is only human and can be arrested and locked up.
We know he'll kill again because we know he's a fictional character that will be back in future stories. But without that meta knowledge he's no different than any other serial killer. We do actually arrest those guys and keep them locked up.
Strip away the assumptions that come with the comic book / cartoon / movie characters and play this scenario out with a cop or EMT or firefighter refusing to help save the life of a convicted murderer who is not an active threat. Does it still sound morally justified?
You are being very particular in which elements you're stripping away, which elements you aren't questioning, and which elements you are. This is particularly clear with your reference to the Punisher, where you have no problem drawing from fictional consequences.
Cops rely on this sort of recontextualization to get away with murder and corruption. They put people in psychologically harrowing situations and then 'fear for their life' when that person lashes out so they can kill them. They tie up investigation of cops and rich people with investigation of other matters so it becomes a trolley problem where they can justify letting cops and rich people continue.
Imagine if they investigated homeless people with the same kind of "let's not tip them off, maybe we can catch the bigger fish" attitude with which they handle fraud, how much nicer it would be for homeless people to be able to shoplift some food or get a good night's sleep.
Should a cop with a conscience report a colleague for sexual intimidation, or wait to gather proof of the police chief taking bribes? False dichotomy, they shouldn't be a cop.
Should batman with a conscience kill the Joker or try to arrest him? False dichotomy, he shouldn't be Batman.
Putting people in prison is as useless as killing them at changing the systemic issues that got them to act the way they did. Batman's no-kill policy is absurd not because he should kill, but because it is just as arbitrary as any other red line would have been. Presenting the no-kill policy as some kind of heroic code deserves to be lampooned.
Here is a guy spending billions to beat up homeless people and drug addicts committing petty crimes to get through the day, putting them in medical debt and a sexually and physically abusive prison system, but then he doesn't kill the cartoonish mass murderer because ethics.
Zach Weinersmith has made other comic posts about Batman examining different parts of this, so I know I'm not just projecting my own politics here. I don't know if he agrees precisely with my politics, but with posts like Iron Sociopath he does point out the sadism inherent in vigilanteism and policing in general.
Bruce's mental state is also questionable, at best. In most continuities he's pretty convinced that he wouldn't be able to stop killing if he started.
I would be more than ok with cops killing a major terrorist like Joker.
Or at least actually securing him so he can't escape.
The average serial killer moron is not that much of a threat.
Every time I suggest we kill billionaires and people tell me to “be civil”
"Please kill all billionaires?"
Reminds me of Dexter getting his wife killed by saving Trinity
I should send this to people who keep telling me how I'm encouraging the wrong way to go about things.