Mal and his people are just low-life thieves...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 14:32
VIEWED: 39973
PAGE 5 of 17
You a libertarian too Tomsimpson? Way to go!
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Maybe but they are fun low life thieves
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
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Yah, but they're OUR low-life thieves.
:D
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Quote:
Originally posted by pinballwizard:
You a libertarian too Tomsimpson? Way to go!
Yip :)
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[URL= http://www.lp.org/issues/issues.shtml]I am libertarian, click here for a brief summary of how I feel on our country's major political issues.[/URL]
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Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
I'm not saying that I would be immune to mindless rage in that situation.
However, that very human response is the reason courts were invented in the first place. The victim (and their friends) are not impartial and will exact revenge rather than justice.
Killing that man was a human and easily understandable response. But it was a wrong thing to do, an immoral one.Quote:
As for whether or not they're heroes, I think they are. They're ordinary people struggling to do what's right. They make mistakes sometimes, sure, because they're not saints. But that doesn't mean they're not heroes.
Why do they need to be heroes for just living, though?
Heroes for getting out the Miranda word, sure.
But heroes for just... living their lives the way they do? That makes the definition of "hero" awfully wide. That means I'm a hero for surviving on a small paycheck, when I think that makes me merely an ordinary person. Hell, I don't even have to steal to get by. Does that mean I deserve an award?
I never said that what Mal did wasn't wrong. It was wrong and immoral. What I'm saying is exactly what you're saying - it's human and understandable. You can't condemn Mal based on that one act. Especially since Mal is a soldier, a trained killer. His first reaction to any situation is bound to be "shoot first, ask questions later" especially when it involves the death of one of his crew. Also, what I'm saying is that Mal found that Alliance guy at a time when he wasn't rationally thinking about letting the law deal with him. Otherwise, he probably would have let the law deal with him. He doesn't always kill people who hurt him/piss him off. (eg. Atherton, Niska, the Operative)
I also never said that they are heroes just for living their lives. I said they're heroes for struggling to do what's right. That's what they do with the Miranda situation: what's right. They also do that in Heart of Gold when they risk their lives for the prostitutes, and even in Train Job. Mal gives the medicine back, which is the right thing to do, even though he knows Niska will come after him. He even ends up dying, if only for a few seconds, because of that action. If all these things aren't heroism, then I don't know what is.
"I'm having one of those things - a headache with pictures."
"Of course I'm right. And if I'm not, may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow."
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Quote:
Originally posted by queenofthenorth:
I never said that what Mal did wasn't wrong. It was wrong and immoral. What I'm saying is exactly what you're saying - it's human and understandable. You can't condemn Mal based on that one act.
Then I don't understand why you replied in the way you did, I suppose. I wasn't condemning Mal as evil. Merely stating that what he did was wrong and immoral.
Quote:
Especially since Mal is a soldier, a trained killer. His first reaction to any situation is bound to be "shoot first, ask questions later" especially when it involves the death of one of his crew.
ANY situation? If that is true of all soldiers, I'd suggest don't let them run loose in public. *g*
It's not Mal's soldier self that shoots first. It's his crook self that has no recourse with the law and chooses a life among immoral and dangerous people. It's the life he chose that often makes it necessary for him to defend himself with violence.
His response to this particular situation, though, doesn't have to be justified by anything other than being human. Revenge. It's natural. Not just, but natural.
Quote:
I also never said that they are heroes just for living their lives. I said they're heroes for struggling to do what's right. That's what they do with the Miranda situation: what's right. They also do that in Heart of Gold when they risk their lives for the prostitutes, and even in Train Job. Mal gives the medicine back, which is the right thing to do, even though he knows Niska will come after him. He even ends up dying, if only for a few seconds, because of that action. If all these things aren't heroism, then I don't know what is.
As I said before, Miranda and the Heart of Gold, I grant as heroism.
But The Train Job? That wasn't struggling to do what's right. That was not going through with doing the wrong thing they had started doing. It's essentially his own fault for entering into business with Niska. That's not heroic, that's suffering the consequences of stupidity.
Most of the time they aren't struggling to do what's right. They merely refrain from doing truly wrong things (when they can), which is simply not heroic. It's common decency.
Heroism involves selflessness and sacrifice. "Not being bad" doesn't count.
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Oops. What I meant by "any situation" was any situation which involves violence and especially Alliance soldiers. I mean, you gotta figure that it's pretty difficult for Mal to encounter these people that he spent so much time fighting against and treat them as normal people. And right at that moment, all Mal's anger towards the Alliance, the Operative, and all the things they'd done to him was bubbling right at the surface. The guy trying to surrender was just a poor, unlucky bastard who took the brunt of that anger.
Anyways, the point that I was trying to make is that Mal still is a hero, in spite of the mistakes he makes that sometimes result in immoral actions. Just because he's human and has flaws doesn't mean he can't be a hero. Heroes aren't godlike figures who do no wrong.
And also, although in the Train Job, they were just reversing a wrong, the point is - they didn't have to. And reversing that wrong was a very dangerous thing to do. Mal ends up sacrificing his life for it, if only for a few seconds. Admitting that you've done a wrong and sacrificing your own life to make it better is still pretty heroic in my book.
Edited to add: Just because they don't do something right every day doesn't mean they aren't heroes either. Just how many acts of heroism does it take to make a hero???
"I'm having one of those things - a headache with pictures."
"Of course I'm right. And if I'm not, may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow."
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Sorry. I can't cotton to the notion the guy surrendering was innocent.
He was an active participant in the unprovoked slaughter of an entire settlement.
Look back to the war trials after WWII, etc... It's up to a soldier to refuse "bad" orders. The soldier is held responsible for his own actions.
If they were in a declaired war and the settelment had attacked first or something, that's one thing. Still a big problem with killing the children and other non-combatents even then.
Simply showing up and killing everyone in town with no better reason than "Well, that guy with no name who doesn't exist told me to!" just doesn't cut it. He aint innocent, no-how, no-way.
Courts are all well and good WHEN they are impartial and there is doubt about guilt.
How bout this:
You are walking down the street with your wife/sister/brother/best friend etc...
A stranger walks up and shoots them dead in front of you and then tosses you their gun and raises their arms...
You honestly would go find a cop and politely ask for this person to be arrested? You hoestly have any doubt of this persons guilt? You are the only witness. It will be their word against yours. By the way, he happens to work as a security guard for said court and you happen to have a record of previous arrests for various crimes.
Sorry. There ARE times when you either take matters into your own hands or walk away and know that justice will not ever be done.
May be hard to imagine in the current US. In the Old West or out on the fringe, not quite so hard...
And o'course history, as always, is written by the victor.
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dc4bs
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Sheriff: “A man can get a job, he might not look to close at what that job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours, well, then he has a choice.”
Mal: “I don't believe he does."
(I don't even have to identify the episode for anyone.)
Coolest 5 word sentence ever spoken. It says what they're all about, what they have to do, and what they won't.
G
Quite like Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich, but without the simmering homoeroticism, and not so much of the giving to the poor going on. At all.
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