Team Cap, because a) he’s right b) I’m just more politically inclined toward Steve Rogers and his New Deal America than Tony Stark’s Great Man schtick c) he’s right d) morally, “your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth” > “I didn’t stop because I didn’t want to stop” e) HE’S RIGHT.
ok can you please explain to me how cap has the moral and political upper hand in his belief that he, an american soldier wrapped in the american flag who doubles as the public face for american defense, doesn’t have to justify his presence in other nations, doesn’t have to answer to any kind of authority – national or otherwise – and doesn’t have to face any kind of consequence if he leaves the nations he visits devastated, especially considering the us’ already very uncomfortable history with marching into other countries and causing deaths and ruin in the name of peace and freedom?
i mean idk if you’re american or not but the idea that cap can outright ignore the wishes of 117 countries and its people because he Knows What He’s Doing strikes me as arrogant at best and blatantly imperialistic at worst. i mean, cap has reason to mistrust authority, but a group of representatives from 117 countries is way more likely to act in the people’s interest than a group of superpowered people with no legal obligation to actually do the right thing.
correct me if i’m wrong, but the avengers in the mcu appear to be comparable to a type of military branch more than anything else, considering their job (to protect the people) and their access to military
personnel, facilities, equipment, etc. steve in particular is a person with military training, superhuman abilities, access to resources with offensive purposes, and seemingly a lot of legal and political leeway to do what he wants with all of these things.
you don’t get to “plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth” and tell everyone else to move when you are in such a position of power; you have to listen to the people you’re serving. and as far as we’ve seen a lot of civilians – particularly non-western ones – are afraid of cap or see him as a fascist or want him to pay for the damage he and the other avengers have done to their homes.
even the things that are genuinely questionable about the accords – the lack of trial and severity of the prison come to mind – are details that could most likely be negotiated, because un legislations generally are amendable. but it’s pretty obvious that steve opposes oversight and authority over the avengers on principle; i mean aside from the fact that we know very little about the extent to which ross followed the accords – the raft wasn’t even mentioned in them iirc – take his “the safest hands are still our own,” or his “the un are people, they make mistakes.”
incidentally, these quotes also highlight another major flaw in steve’s reasoning: his point of view (and his plant-yourself-like-a-tree philosophy, for that matter) hinges on the assumptions that he is always right and that he will always act in the public interest. you don’t have to go any further than cacw to know that neither are true: he acts in bucky’s interest a majority of the film and some of his decision-making – such as not relaying the knowledge of the leftover winter soldiers or zemo being the vienna bomber to anyone else iirc – causes a lot of trouble that otherwise might’ve been avoided.
i mean i only saw cacw once and it was already over a month ago so it’s possible i misremembered some things but i’d seriously like to know how you came to the conclusion that cap being wrong is absolutely out of the question, like hmu with that logic
That the Avengers need oversight doesn’t change the fact that the oversight proposed was fatally flawed, and would make the situation worse. This, to widen the lens, is an issue I take with many of my fellow liberals: the idea that more gov’t oversight over private actors is an inherent good, without questioning whether that oversight is trustworthy given gov’t corruption and heinous agendas (including unjust wars, racist policing, etc.)
I generally incline toward more gov’t regulation and oversight, but you have to watch the watchmen. Indeed, Watchmen showed us what happens when you do this wrong, and the Sekovia Accords is doing it wrong. You think it’s too dangerous to empower Captain America? Then why in the world are you advocating for empowering Thunderbolt Ross?
Since when are human rights like habeus corpus “details that could most likely be negotiated”?
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