They just sit and talk: Senator Armstrong and MCU Thanos

[MorphyVSFischer]

Discounting the fact that there is almost certainly a subset of people who are in love with the concept of eath in the real world, and the fact that falling in love with Death had happened in myths, poems, novels, movies, games, etc...

How many are metaphorically in love with Death, versus literally in love with a woman who is Death? Because the first isn't the same, and the second is still a pretty silly motivation in my opinion.

The people who believe MCU Thanos' philosophy aren't existing in a universe with cosmic artifacts and cosmic beings that enslave/take over entire universes, or somehow managed to convince an entire planet-overthrowing army into fanatic loyalty with their weed-fueled ramblings on inane resource and population management philosophies.

Dude people in real life believe the Earth is flat and that there's a gigantic conspiracy among all the world's goverments hiding it from us, the fact that cosmic artifacts exist isn't going to stop some dude from going crazy due to his insane belief system because that's kinda how being a fanatic that's convinced you're right works.


Second, the barely coherent ramblings of a homeless wannabe artist convinced an entire nation that a particular religious subset was behind all there troubles and needed to be exterminated and launched a world wide conflict over it, and he didn't even have the benefit of being one of the most powerful beings in the Universe to really talk people into it. People will follow lots of things.

[Nik Hasta]

As an aside to those watching at home, I want to note that the above is a big simplification of Hitler's rise to power. It wasn't like he just rocked up, gave a neat speech and then was made chancellor. There were an awful lot of highly specific factors to that situation that were less dependant on Hitler specifically.

Just want to make sure historical clarity is observed.

[Nik Hasta]

given the world he lives in, i can understand of the things he said and thought. think about it. the world of MG has been controlled by shadowy cabals for nearly a century: the philosophers and the Patriots. for so long, armies have fought in wars dictated by these groups, manipulating the masses into what they believe is right and wrong. and because of this control, the world fell into prepetrual war, via the war economy. now, 4 years after MGS 4, the world is free of such control but still has some vestigates of the old order. the war economy is on the downslide but it's still around in pockets and america still rely on it to a degree.

hence where Armstrong's logic comes in. he loves america but hates what it currently is, all because of the patriots and what they created. so his solution? burn it all down and rebuild the country free of any influence from the patriots, creating a stronger america where everyone can fight and kill and die for what they believe in and not what someone tells them to.

keep in mind, i'm not excusing armstrong's actions. dude is a monster. but i can understand his logic and reasoning for why he does what he does.

I mean, that's a very generous interpretation of what Armstrong said. He specifically said he wanted America to adopt what amounts to Ultra Libertarianism, "where the law changes to suit the individual not the other way around,"

That's not really logical because what that actually leads to is either dictatorships and the like or literal anarchy. He has the remarkable view that only the strong would survive /and not try and change the system to suit themselves and oppress people./ If you establish a """""system""""" of government that specifically rewards the strong and allows them to just do literally whatever they want, shockingly some of them might want to force people into fighting wars for them to consolidate their power.

His ideology is ultimately pretty self defeating because Ultra Libertarianism/Anarchy isn't sustainable.

I mean Raiden literally says in the text: "You're bat-**** insane!" which is a pretty fair assessment.

[Nik Hasta]

The thing that bothers me most about MCU Thanos is that the 50/50 thing was his whole plan.

When your plan to "save the universe," contains a magical wish granting artefact of limitless power and killing half the population is the best course of action you can come up with, you are objectively stupid.

I mean, halving the population of the earth now, would put us back to the frankly prehistoric era of the... early...1970s...

Scale that up as a rough guide to population density model for the entire universe and you will note that this solves literally zero problems and (this is key) Thanos had the ability to do /literally anything/.

Him being a fuccboi for Death has more logic to it and doesn't require a reputedly genius villain to be an actual moron for him to arrive at his plan.

[big_adventure]

The really stupid thing about Thanos is not that his solution was to kill off half the population as if that was some kind of lasting solution. Any fool knows that if you don't address the root problems, the same thing comes back in 30 years. Being one of the universe's-easiest-but-most-costly lottery winners doesn't make you intelligent enough to correct **** on your own, and the colossal structural and economic damage done by killing trillions or more doesn't exactly make it likely that people are even going to try to fix problems: they are going to try to survive, for one, and get a piece for themselves, for two.

No, the really stupid thing is that he has the crazy cosmic power bedazzled handwear, and doesn't just FIX THE DAMN PROBLEMS with that finger snap. If "not enough resources to go around" is the problem, whip up those resources. If bad leades is the issue, change them into good leaders. Get rid of pollution and make a magic plant that slurps up waste and craps out vibranium. You have the INFINITY GAUNTLET. Use it well, not like a petulant child who read half of an Ayn Rand novel.

[TheLastDalek]

The thing that bothers me most about MCU Thanos is that the 50/50 thing was his whole plan.

When your plan to "save the universe," contains a magical wish granting artefact of limitless power and killing half the population is the best course of action you can come up with, you are objectively stupid.

I mean, halving the population of the earth now, would put us back to the frankly prehistoric era of the... early...1970s...

Scale that up as a rough guide to population density model for the entire universe and you will note that this solves literally zero problems and (this is key) Thanos had the ability to do /literally anything/.

Him being a fuccboi for Death has more logic to it and doesn't require a reputedly genius villain to be an actual moron for him to arrive at his plan.

I think one thing people overlook is that the MCU Infinity gauntlet isn't what you described it as, the snap made it unusable. So it's not hard a stretch to say it wouldn't be capable of alternative solutions or more specific things on such a wide scale. It had pretty big limitations on it's use.

Plus as was stated Thanos is operating more like a religious zealot than someone who acts on pure logic. He devoted his life to going round planets wiping out 50 percent of the population and leaving and he treated it like some kind of religious deutey than a political ideology or logic based action. To him the snap was taking his religion to the ultimate extreme.

[Nik Hasta]

I think one thing people overlook is that the MCU Infinity gauntlet isn't what you described it as, the snap made it unusable. So it's not hard a stretch to say it wouldn't be capable of alternative solutions or more specific things on such a wide scale. It had pretty big limitations on it's use.

This is entirely conjecture on your part. It might have been only good for one big super powered thing perhaps, but we have no reason to assume that it's powers were in any way limited in what said snap could have accomplished. The lore of the films was that the gauntlet in its complete form gave you absolute power over reality itself, trying to say it was only a kill weapon is to pretend otherwise.

Plus as was stated Thanos is operating more like a religious zealot than someone who acts on pure logic. He devoted his life to going round planets wiping out 50 percent of the population and leaving and he treated it like some kind of religious deutey than a political ideology or logic based action. To him the snap was taking his religion to the ultimate extreme.

It still makes him incredibly stupid and the text does not acknowledge how dumb he is.

You can say that he wasn't acting in a rational way, which is true, and you can say that is motivated by his... I don't know... fuggin messiah complex or whatever. However, the crux of the matter is that Thanos, in text, stated he was doing this to save the universe and tried to take the moral high ground and had been, apparently, doing this stuff for a minimum 15 odd years based on Gamora's aging.

In that time, we are expected to believe that Thanos, an alleged smart person, /never/ did anything even remotely approaching basic mathematics and /never/ considered any of the other innumerable potential things he could have done with the gauntlet when he got it. In 15 entire years, he never even remotely speculated for a second about what other choices there might be.

This makes him stupid and the text tries to present him as not that. For me, it robs Thanos of the gravitas they are trying to instill him because I can't get past how dumb his plan is, it breaks the immersion of the film because I don't believe that an even half intelligent person would come up with this bad plan especially when the film is treating him as a not really stupid person and it particularly grated in the wake of the film when there were a lot of really bad think pieces about how "Thanos had a point,"

Like, by all means enjoy that version of the character. I don't want to harsh anyone's enjoyment of the film but I find people's attempts to try and justify him having a really dumb plan without pointing out how stupid he must be rather niggling.

[master of read]

I mean, that's a very generous interpretation of what Armstrong said. He specifically said he wanted America to adopt what amounts to Ultra Libertarianism, "where the law changes to suit the individual not the other way around,"

That's not really logical because what that actually leads to is either dictatorships and the like or literal anarchy. He has the remarkable view that only the strong would survive /and not try and change the system to suit themselves and oppress people./ If you establish a """""system""""" of government that specifically rewards the strong and allows them to just do literally whatever they want, shockingly some of them might want to force people into fighting wars for them to consolidate their power.

His ideology is ultimately pretty self defeating because Ultra Libertarianism/Anarchy isn't sustainable.

I mean Raiden literally says in the text: "You're bat-**** insane!" which is a pretty fair assessment.

i never said he wasn't insane. dude is off his rocker.

[Beadle]

The thing that bothers me most about MCU Thanos is that the 50/50 thing was his whole plan.

When your plan to "save the universe," contains a magical wish granting artefact of limitless power and killing half the population is the best course of action you can come up with, you are objectively stupid.

I mean, halving the population of the earth now, would put us back to the frankly prehistoric era of the... early...1970s...

Scale that up as a rough guide to population density model for the entire universe and you will note that this solves literally zero problems and (this is key) Thanos had the ability to do /literally anything/.

Him being a fuccboi for Death has more logic to it and doesn't require a reputedly genius villain to be an actual moron for him to arrive at his plan.

Even without applying any understanding of population growth, surely it is better for the universe if you use your phenomenal cosmic power (minus the itty-bitty living space) to, instead of halving the universe’s population, just double its resources...?

I mean it’s no less short-termist, but it does achieve your goal of temporarily balancing resources and population without the need for trillions of murders.

[TheLastDalek]

This is entirely conjecture on your part. It might have been only good for one big super powered thing perhaps, but we have no reason to assume that it's powers were in any way limited in what said snap could have accomplished. The lore of the films was that the gauntlet in its complete form gave you absolute power over reality itself, trying to say it was only a kill weapon is to pretend otherwise.



It still makes him incredibly stupid and the text does not acknowledge how dumb he is.

You can say that he wasn't acting in a rational way, which is true, and you can say that is motivated by his... I don't know... fuggin messiah complex or whatever. However, the crux of the matter is that Thanos, in text, stated he was doing this to save the universe and tried to take the moral high ground and had been, apparently, doing this stuff for a minimum 15 odd years based on Gamora's aging.

In that time, we are expected to believe that Thanos, an alleged smart person, /never/ did anything even remotely approaching basic mathematics and /never/ considered any of the other innumerable potential things he could have done with the gauntlet when he got it. In 15 entire years, he never even remotely speculated for a second about what other choices there might be.

This makes him stupid and the text tries to present him as not that. For me, it robs Thanos of the gravitas they are trying to instill him because I can't get past how dumb his plan is, it breaks the immersion of the film because I don't believe that an even half intelligent person would come up with this bad plan especially when the film is treating him as a not really stupid person and it particularly grated in the wake of the film when there were a lot of really bad think pieces about how "Thanos had a point,"

Like, by all means enjoy that version of the character. I don't want to harsh anyone's enjoyment of the film but I find people's attempts to try and justify him having a really dumb plan without pointing out how stupid he must be rather niggling.

What are you talking about? Several characters in the film call Thanos out on his bullshit, he just ignores them because he's so caught up in his own idea of a grand quest. As for his motivations, frankly makes sense for him to have such a skewed view on things after what he went through.

The story absolutely presents Thanos' actions as religious zeloutury and someone who soa laser focuses on one goal that he dosn't even consider weather he's wrong. It explicitly shows that when all is said and done and that he no longer has that goal to focus on, that he's not so sure he was right anymore.

[Nik Hasta]

What are you talking about? Several characters in the film call Thanos out on his bullshit, he just ignores them because he's so caught up in his own idea of a grand quest. As for his motivations, frankly makes sense for him to have such a skewed view on things after what he went through.

The story absolutely presents Thanos' actions as religious zeloutury.

Like I said, I don't agree. Thanos doesn't make sense to me because his actions are predicated on the idea of him being a stupid person to an unthinkable degree.

If it works for you, by all means enjoy but as far as I can tell the plot requires him to be stupid.

I also don't feel anyone pointed out how Thanos' strategy literally doesn't solve anything in the manner I'd like. I'll agree that's anal retentive as all hell on my part but this was my take on the movie.

[Nik Hasta]

Even without applying any understanding of population growth, surely it is better for the universe if you use your phenomenal cosmic power (minus the itty-bitty living space) to, instead of halving the universe’s population, just double its resources...?

I mean it’s no less short-termist, but it does achieve your goal of temporarily balancing resources and population without the need for trillions of murders.

Halving the population has all that and has the amusing byproduct that all resources that were consumed are still gone.

A fingersnap that granted "untold masses of generic resources," to the universe would have been more long term focused.

[BitVyper]

I don't believe that an even half intelligent person would come up with this bad plan

This is where we differ, because I absolutely believe there are people self involved enough to believe they already understand everything and mentally wall out any facts that don't support their ridiculous worldviews, while being well spoken enough to amass a cult and convince you that they're some level of intelligent.

I will agree that Thanos as a villain in the movie is pretty meh, though. The thing is, regardless of whatever is more realistic, if his views WERE more thought out, he could have been having way better, hammier scenes where he actually expresses an ideology. He's lacking in personality, and I don't like villains who can't monologue.

[BitVyper]

A fingersnap that granted "untold masses of generic resources," to the universe would have been more long term focused.

I mean, artificial scarcity is a thing, so you'd probably just get the same group of complete monsters ruining everything for everybody because they literally cannot exist in a universe of plenty for anyone but themselves. I don't think any one fingersnap is going to fix everything. Thanos is probably just intellectually lazy and wants to satisfy his own ego but doesn't have the stamina to actually commit to a real, organized, long term plan. Because then he'd have to listen to other people.

[master of read]

This is where we differ, because I absolutely believe there are people self involved enough to believe they already understand everything and mentally wall out any facts that don't support their ridiculous worldviews, while being well spoken enough to amass a cult and convince you that they're some level of intelligent.

I will agree that Thanos as a villain in the movie is pretty meh, though. The thing is, regardless of whatever is more realistic, if his views WERE more thought out, he could have been having way better, hammier scenes where he actually expresses an ideology. He's lacking in personality, and I don't like villains who can't monologue.

i wouldn't say he lacked a personality. he had more than step-wolf. that's for sure.