Is it wrong to be Pro- Alliance ?

POSTED BY: Booksword
UPDATED: Sunday, March 28, 2010 01:34
VIEWED: 35713
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BOOKSWORD

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 7:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zisker:
Yes, it is wrong. It is very wrong. And what's more, you're a bad person for thinking it. In fact, you're not really a Browncoat. You're not even a Beigecoat! You're . . .I don't even know the words for you but you'll certainly be in the anti-Christ's legion for thinking such a thing!

Nah, it's shiny. The Alliance is flawed, but it does seem to have its positive aspects as well. We also do get the show from Mal's PoV for the most part and he ain't got no love for it, so our view is a little skewed*. And from a "Hey, guys, this is a TV show" it's a grand creation because it's REALISTIC. There are no utopian governments (just look at the root latin)and it's nice to see a non-Utopian government that still isn't the Evil Empire of Star Wars (not that I didn't enjoy the hell out of that story).

That's a good question about the nature of the Independents - did they want to form a confederacy of their own should they have won? Or did they all want to do their own thing as individual planets?

* Yes, they cut River's brain in Serenity, but in Firefly it was probably Blue Sun doing the cutting. I'm more into the "evil business" than "evil government" theme because I find it more relevant to our world situation as of now.

One day.
One plan.
One army of Browncoats.

On June 23rd, we aim to misbehave.
http://www.serenityday.org/

Little or no free time, but want to help?
Help Spread the Signal: http://www.geocities.com/browncoatsignalcorps

Thanks for the input, just to make it clear.

Browncoat forever!!!!

In the end it is a matter of perspective, in the age of Rome a legion of soldiers bearing down on me and telling me how to live in my own home would be labeled as agressive foreign asshole.

To the Soilder it would just be him doing his job out of belief, pay or other factors.

To the Ceaser who looks at a map and sees either conquest or possible threat to the stablity to my world vis a via the Empire. The person whose rights and lands I am taking is a number in the equation.

I believe that the Alliance is needed, because I belive in checks and balances.

Necessity demands and we obey.

INDIGOSTARBLASTER

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 8:25 PM

I'm going to have to say I'm more pro-Alliance than not. I'm sure part of the reason is that I'm not very big, and I can't handle a weapon. I couldn't possibly survive outside of civilization, and I think that would be true of many people nowadays.

One example that comes to mind is Inara's socioeconomic position versus Nandi's. Inara has the backing of a guild and of the Alliance in general; she can enforce her property rights and her right to choose her own clients. Nandi had to find a way to bring in guns to match Burgess's to keep what she had worked for, and it sounds like, before she arrived, the "girls" didn't really have much choice about how they conducted their business. So the Independents grumble about losing their freedom, but the Alliance actually permits Companions to have theirs.

Also, think about Liberty(?) settlement, where Saffron supposedly came from. She made up her identity, but I doubt she made up the whole business about there being Maiden Houses where females orphans were kept until they could be married off for trade purposes. I doubt they'll be able to keep that system going, once the Alliance has the resources to intervene.

The way the Alliance gives the BDH's grief over their illegal salvage operations seems petty from the BDH's point of view, but it's just part of enforcing property rights. Someone paid for all that stuff on those ships, and if the ships' occupants have died, it's only fair (it seems to me) that what remains go to their surviving kin.

And it seems to me that the Alliance does strive to be benevolent in other ways (aside from the enforcement of property and civil rights, I mean), rescuing stranded ships and transporting medicines to the border planets, funding hospitals and schools at the Core, etc.

There is this business about their treatment of River. But I suspect that her parents consented to it. There's no way else to explain their reaction to Simon's concerns, I'm thinking (how many parents send their 14-year-old daughters off to boarding school and don't try to visit them or bring them home for a family vacation even once in three years?). So the operations and tests are against River's consent, but not against the consent of her legal guardians, who supposedly have her best interests at heart. The idea that the Alliance would allow citizens to forcibly "donate" their offspring to the nation's greater military good is still offensive; but the fact it was kept secret indicates to me that they knew that it was outrageous and wrong... and allows for the possibility that the Alliance would self-correct this situation once it got out.

Don't get me wrong -- there's lots to quibble with as to whether the Alliance has got this or that policy right, but overall I think I'd rather have the Alliance than not.

Just my two cents,

Indigo S.

ZISKER

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 8:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Booksword:
Quote:
Originally posted by Zisker:
Yes, it is wrong. It is very wrong. And what's more, you're a bad person for thinking it. In fact, you're not really a Browncoat. You're not even a Beigecoat! You're . . .I don't even know the words for you but you'll certainly be in the anti-Christ's legion for thinking such a thing!

Nah, it's shiny. The Alliance is flawed, but it does seem to have its positive aspects as well. We also do get the show from Mal's PoV for the most part and he ain't got no love for it, so our view is a little skewed*. And from a "Hey, guys, this is a TV show" it's a grand creation because it's REALISTIC. There are no utopian governments (just look at the root latin)and it's nice to see a non-Utopian government that still isn't the Evil Empire of Star Wars (not that I didn't enjoy the hell out of that story).

That's a good question about the nature of the Independents - did they want to form a confederacy of their own should they have won? Or did they all want to do their own thing as individual planets?

* Yes, they cut River's brain in Serenity, but in Firefly it was probably Blue Sun doing the cutting. I'm more into the "evil business" than "evil government" theme because I find it more relevant to our world situation as of now.

One day.
One plan.
One army of Browncoats.

On June 23rd, we aim to misbehave.
http://www.serenityday.org/

Little or no free time, but want to help?
Help Spread the Signal: http://www.geocities.com/browncoatsignalcorps

Thanks for the input, just to make it clear.

Browncoat forever!!!!

In the end it is a matter of perspective, in the age of Rome a legion of soldiers bearing down on me and telling me how to live in my own home would be labeled as agressive foreign asshole.

To the Soilder it would just be him doing his job out of belief, pay or other factors.

To the Ceaser who looks at a map and sees either conquest or possible threat to the stablity to my world vis a via the Empire. The person whose rights and lands I am taking is a number in the equation.

I believe that the Alliance is needed, because I belive in checks and balances.

Necessity demands and we obey.

. . .um, I was being sarcastic. Very, very, very, very sarcastic. VERY sarcastic. I thought the follow-up would make that clear, but apparently I was wrong. I wasn't actually questioning your loyalty as a Browncoat and if you took it that way I apologize.

One day.
One plan.
One army of Browncoats.

On June 23rd, we aim to misbehave.
http://www.serenityday.org/
http://forum.serenityday.org/

Little or no free time, but want to help?
Help Spread the Signal: http://www.geocities.com/browncoatsignalcorps

BOOKSWORD

Tuesday, May 16, 2006 8:33 PM

Oh I know you where kidding, no offense taken.

BROWNCOATS FOREVER !

CAVALIER

Saturday, July 29, 2006 6:03 PM

I can't help but think of Kipling:

Take up the Multi-Ethnic Cultures burden--
The savage wars of post –unification peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

...

Take up the Multi-Ethnic Cultures burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Independant night?"

BOOKSWORD

Wednesday, August 2, 2006 11:01 AM

The price of free will is choice.

The price of choice is consequence.

Our need to be able to choose defines us.

Our need for Order shapes us.

We accept little sins for a safer tomorrow.

We step over moral lines so frequently until they no longer exist.

And in all this, Chaos waits.

---------------------------------------

In the end I belive both sides of the equation need each other. The resources of the Independents and the Order ( flawed) of the Alliance.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Wednesday, August 2, 2006 11:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Booksword:
Necessity demands and we obey.

uuuuuuggggggh...... sheeple!

I'll let Ben Franklin do my talking for me.

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin

You sir, are not a browncoat. It's cool that the alliance likes the show too though.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." myspace.com/6ixstringjack

BOOKSWORD

Wednesday, August 2, 2006 11:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Booksword:
Necessity demands and we obey.

uuuuuuggggggh...... sheeple!

I'll let Ben Franklin do my talking for me.

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin

You sir, are not a browncoat. It's cool that the alliance likes the show too though.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." myspace.com/6ixstringjack

I consider myself a Browncoat even If I do see the Alliance point of view.

Like the qoute by the way.

\

' To survive is to adapt, to adapt is to sacrifice. Let others have their high ground, I will stay on the low ground where it's safer'

\

There are over Five billion disorderly humans on this mudball. You really think spreading them across the stars isnt going to turn nasty.

Take away a mans security, his sense of checks and balances and everything structured however unfair. And you no longer have a man.

Considers challanging you to a duel at dawn but remembers that 1) swords aint my thing and 2) most of the time pretty much the practical coward.

**Goes looking where he stashed that Browncoat**

Um is Sheeple a bad thing?

MYCROFTXXX

Friday, August 4, 2006 5:04 PM

Personally, I think we'll never know the 'true' nature of the alliance because of the show's cancellation. In the words of Wash "there are so many twists and turns and cul-de-sacs it's crazy!" Before picking "sides" as seems to be what's going on here, I think a better history of how the alliance got to where it is today is needed. Afterall, the original settlers of the new 'verse came from two very different social-political systems, the 'West' and 'China/Asia' and as everyone knows the belief systems between these two human cultures have some serious differences. So, given this starting point, just how did they arrive at a government called the Alliance? We have only a few sketchy details. It has a parliament which infers some attempt at a semi-democratic approach to resolving differences. We've got some proof that there is an enforcement of laws and rules that apply to their military as much as they do on their citizens. Afterall, in the two direct encounters with Alliance cruisers they were treated with proper military decorum versus their reception from Niska and gang? We know ther is an the existence of a judiciary but not the nature of that branch of government. For all we know, there is a "president for life" or some such at the top of the government even though it didn't get mentioned in the short lifespan of the show.

Next, to judge the entire alliance as 'evil' for what happened on Miranda and to River leads down a slippery slope to condemming an entire culture based on the actions of maybe a few rogue individuals who have abused their status within the government (I'm thinking of the operative's line about "just as this facility doesn't exist, neither do I"). The "key members of parlament" also doesn't necessarily mean "all members of parliament", just those bent on doing some aweful things. For all we know they have been rooted out already and the operative was just sent to clean things up (a theme repeated in several other movies).

So, this long-winded response is not really to say that one side or the other is right or wrong, just that when you are dealing with literally billions of people that started from a very different set of cultures, things are bound to be very grey not so black and white as we like it.

One last thing... although I am squarely on the side of our BDH, they _do_ get away with criminal acts that if they occurred in even the least civilized part of our world it would lead to some form of governmental retribution (you just don't go round killing people no matter how justified it seems at the time unless you are in a sanctioned war).

Still, let's not forget this is a TV show / movie and if everyone played by our 'civilized' rules it would be very boring viewing.

I like the 'verse just the way it is. As far as which side I'm on? Definitely BDH just cause they have all the fun!

--

Given a choice between the earth-that-is and the 'verse-that-will-be I'll take the latter.

宁静

WYTCHCROFT

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 1:28 AM

bumped into a similar thread on another site - a few minutes ago (while making the rounds - i like to keep an eye on folk)...

to get back to the 'Verse. It strikes me that the real interesting thing is the eternal 'what next'?

if the Alliance/Parliament 'falls' at the end of the BDM (yeah yeah i know, but IF) then the situation would be a bit like the berlin wall/fall of the soviet thing...

and i can imagine a sequel where things are even scrappier - more grey and complex and where the allegances onboard Serenity would really be tested.

an interesting flux state...

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