They just sit and talk: Senator Armstrong and MCU Thanos

[BitVyper]

Two men who each read exactly one book (or possibly just one book jacket) before deciding they knew how the world worked have a bad philosophy jam. How does it go?

[master of read]

they'd actually find quite a bit of common ground. both are a bit nuts but understandable from their overall experiences, given the worlds they come from.

[The Chou Lives]

Yeah. These guys I picture as pals. All things considered.

[Nik Hasta]

I'm not sure how you guys arrive at that view.

Armstrong would kind of hate Thanos from an ideological standpoint.

He believes in a Darwin-esq meritocracy with zero government oversight and prizes, in a warped way, the absolute freedom of the individual. Thanos' is kind of the opposite of that, he's shooting to become an absolute god and randomly wipe out 50% of the population without caring whether he's preserving the truly strong or not. That's not what Armstrong wants at all.

Armstrong would likely try and get Thanos to give him the IG so he can use it to realise his vision instead.

Thanos also doesn't really have much of a philosophy because he's not a very well thought out character, the most coherent thing we see is his "50/50 or bust," thing which isn't actually a view on a system of government. Based on how he acts, he's a dictator who just conquers people based on trying to kill half of them, he doesn't actually try and change any systemic problems in that society.

Armstrong would find him intellectually lazy, antithetical to his omega-libertarian worldview and would likely just speech at him in a bid to get the IG.

[master of read]

well fine, if you had to be all.............smarty words about it. :P

[BitVyper]

because he's not a very well thought out character

To me, this really depends on how he's portrayed in Endgame. His extremely brief conversation with Tony gives me some hope that the writers actually do know what they're doing and weren't just going for some bullshit "maybe he's kind of right? Eeeeeeh?" Thing, which.... ugh god. I'm hoping it just came off that way because they were making a movie where he gets to win, and that they knowingly made him an exemplar of the stupidly persistent myths about population, and that he is intentionally extremely egotistical and self-serving in his stupid views. I'm probably wrong though.

But yeah no, Thanos is a complete idiot, and I pretty much totally agree with your post. But I think it'd be a funny conversation.

[Nik Hasta]

To me, this really depends on how he's portrayed in Endgame. His extremely brief conversation with Tony gives me some hope that the writers actually do know what they're doing and weren't just going for some bullshit "maybe he's kind of right? Eeeeeeh?" Thing, which.... ugh god. I'm hoping it just came off that way because they were making a movie where he gets to win, and that they knowingly made him an exemplar of the stupidly persistent myths about population, and that he is intentionally extremely egotistical and self-serving in his stupid views. I'm probably wrong though.

I just want someone to call him out properly and be like "Hey, your plan was bad, waaay lacking in scope and imagination and will not work," in Endgame. It really bugged me how no one really actually pointed out to Thanos that his plan was just bad and stupid in Infinity War and it actively made the character less interesting to me.

At least comic Thanos is, by design, an egomaniac fuccboi who just wants to get all up in Lady Death's pelvic regions no matter what the cost. There's no attempts to portray him as ambiguous or making #IMPORTANTDECISIONS. Him killing half the universe wasn't framed as the execution of some grand plan, it was the petulant selfish act of manchild god demanding that someone notice him in the worst way possible. There was no pretension about "mAYbE hE HaS a poINT," and that made Thanos actually scary.

Dude will kill untold billions just because a woman won't pay attention to him. He's as intimidating as he is pathetic. That's what makes Thanos work.

But yeah no, Thanos is a complete idiot, and I pretty much totally agree with your post. But I think it'd be a funny conversation.

The idea of someone with Armstrong's bombast talking to MCU Thanos would be hilarious because he'd have no real way to deal with it.

[TheLastDalek]

Thanos is more akin to a religious fanatic than a political ideology in his view of thing. He dedicated his whole life to a single idea and thus he can't live with the idea that he might be wrong. Several characters do point out how insane his plans are and he just flat out ignores them.

In the end he actualy does seem not so sure about his own righteousness, one of the last things we see him do in Infinity War is pondering weather he really did the right thing and weather it was really worth it.

[Dark Soul # 7]

Thanos also doesn't really have much of a philosophy because he's not a very well thought out character, the most coherent thing we see is his "50/50 or bust," thing which isn't actually a view on a system of government. Based on how he acts, he's a dictator who just conquers people based on trying to kill half of them, he doesn't actually try and change any systemic problems in that society.

I don't think dictator is the right descriptor for this version of Thanos. From my understanding he doesn't actually rule over the worlds he assaults. He just pops up with his massive army, kills half the population and leaves to let the survivors fend for themselves. Cosmic extremist terrorist with a really narrow and single-minded idea as his dogma seems to be a better fit for him IMO.

Thanos is more akin to a religious fanatic than a political ideology in his view of thing. He dedicated his whole life to a single idea and thus he can't live with the idea that he might be wrong. Several characters do point out how insane his plans are and he just flat out ignores them.

In the end he actualy does seem not so sure about his own righteousness, one of the last things we see him do in Infinity War is pondering weather he really did the right thing and weather it was really worth it.

Or that, that also works as a way of describing Thanos.

Also, doesn't Gamora basically call him out and says that he's just murdering people on a massive scale out of self-righteous nonsense?

[BitVyper]

I suspect it’s all just a real convenient way of diverting blame for the end of his world onto “everybody” where it most likely belongs to him and whatever other social and economic elite were there (he obviously was up there, since he could address the leaders of his world). Because that’s pretty much how “overpopulation” rhetoric works.

Now he just needs to do this so that he can keep his personal heroic illusion going and feel like he has power. This all amounts to giving him parallels with aspects of Thorand Tony that have been fairly relevant to their arcs (hero of his own narrative like Thor, something completely insane as a final solution, like Ultron)

[The Drunkard Kid]

My impression is that he is a guy who suggested killing off half the population of Titan (presumably not the plants or the livestock animals) as a last resort during whatever crisis it was that caused their civilization to just collapse entirely within his original lifespan, and when they didn't listen to him and got wiped out, it broke him and he ended up fixated on the idea that it could have been averted if they just followed his plan, ending up with him passing a Messiah complex and trying to fit his solution to their special problem to all problems.

That same Messiah complex led to him focusing on making the culling as fair, impartial, and impersonal as possible, rather than as effective or logical as possible, which is why he was focused on erasing half of every living thing (even those that would count as vital resources, meaning that the overall situation was just as bad as before, from a purely numerological perspective, and much worse from every other perspective), without evaluating whether the people being called were those hording/wasting/abusing resources or those who were conserving/renewing/expanding then, to try and absolve himself from any sort of actual personal responsibility for his action.

"Sorry Ma'am, I'm not the one who decided that your son the conservationist was executed by my adopted children while your neighbor who only derives sexual satisfaction from starting forest fires was spared, I'm just the prophet through which Fate acts."

[BitVyper]

Ultimately, I think we can all agree that he’s real dumb

[The Chou Lives]

Grimace is a dumb ass, found Armstrong dumb too.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Without chess pieces to chew on, I fear MCU Thanos will attempt to nibble on Armstrong.

[master of read]

i wouldn't call either dumb. just very committed to their ideas, no matter how insane they may be.

also, i can kind of understand armstrong's P.O.V.