Real Life Rorschach wrote:
His conculsions are misguided and misplaced? Look at society today. Abortion on demand, prostition, people still sell drugs and murder is rampant. What is wrong with taking these people down. With them out of society it is a much better place. He undertsood that it was falling apart and his morals was what he used to try to keep it together. I understand he compromises with small issues, everyone does out of necessity. I agree, pure objectivity is absolutely impossible, but striving towards it is not always a bad thing. There are just some things you can not sacrifice, the mass murder of 3 million people for one. Heck blaming these catastrophies on a James Bondlike bad guy in a Antarctic base is actually a fairly rational idea. Also, the Russkies had self preservation in mind. Books like Red Storm Rising talk about a shooting war in Europe and how it wouldnt end with a nuclear exchange because the Russians were interested in self preservation (remember they arent the Iranians.) Its often better to use the small fish to catch the big fish.
Also what is wrong about punishing Veidt. Lets look at the facts. In the last page there is obvious censorship at the New Frontiersman, nobody can say anything bad about the Kossaks (it is misspelled intentionally); so we have already lost our first ammendment rights, fun. Also we are placed on moral equivalence with a dispicable ideal, communism, which during the 1980s had enslaved almost half the world and is responsible for the deaths of over 50 million people. *If anyone believes that the USA and the USSR were moral equivalents I want you to walk into the kitchen right now and drink the stuff under the sink.* Also Veidt's plan to spend less money on defense and more on saving the world is laughable. If we believed we were being invaded by aliens who have wiped out half of the world's greatest city we would spend every dollar we had on making Death Stars and Ray Guns and whatever we would need to fight off aliens. At the very least Veidt should meet some "hooded justice."
Ignore and redirect if it makes it easier for you to drag this into another infinitely irrelevant left vs. right squabble. Sharing the same carbon-copied opinion of society is still not a reason to embrace a character as virulent as Rorschach. It is not his opinions that make him dangerous, nor his opinions that have him as a pariah, but his actions and the philosophy that drives them. It is the same driving principle behind Veidt: I know what society needs, and I know how to give it to them, whether they want it or not. It is the entire theme of the book, [sarcasm]but I obviously don't need to tell you that[/sarcasm]. Rorschach's politics are irrelevant; it is his forcing them down society's throat in a way antithetical to freedom or justice that makes him a thoroughly negative character. But because you agree with the politics, it is suddenly OK to flaunt individual and societal freedoms if they prove to be an obstacle to your righting of society's wrongs. When the scenario is flipped, however, and the politics are suddenly not your own, then this very same principle is conveniently detestable. Veidt and Rorschach subscribe to the same basic idea: I know how to fix the world, I know what is right, and I know what needs to be done. You would deride Veidt's application of it, but applaud Rorschach's. Veidt's presumption resulted in the deaths of millions, but Rorschach's presumption would have resulted in the deaths of millions more. They are the same. The point of
Watchmen is that it is
never acceptable to place yourself above society, never acceptable to presume that you know what is best for it, and never acceptable to act in furtherance of such myopic ideas. The fact that you have taken the opposite of this to be the point of
Watchmen tells me that you have a dilettantish understanding of the overall message, and have only extracted what best fits your own politics.
To which I say, "Good day, sir!"
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
I'm getting a kick out of Real Life Rorschach.
