Sam Raimi Spider-man spent most of his time saving people from imminent harm and stopping armed robberies. He fought the CEO of a company that developed military technology who was killing people to hang onto his position of power and wealth. He then fought a mad scientist that spent the entire movie putting innocent people in danger, attacking Spider-man and ultimately risking the deaths of millions out of an obsession and the influence his technology had over him. In the third one… he turns into a bit of a dick for a while because he’s being partially controlled by an alien, and the theme for all three villains is revenge. At no point in the trilogy does he target anyone who is trying to make a political or social change, just people that are attacking him personally and/or putting innocent bystanders in harm’s way.

In the Amazing Spider-Man movies he pretty much just fights a guy who is trying to turn everyone into lizards, his own stalker who just happens to get electricity powers, and the rich brat that blames him for not giving him blood samples which he thinks will cure his disease (they won’t, but the reason for the refusal is still poorly defined).

MCU Spider-man gets recruited to fight half the avengers, which might play into this if the civil war was about a larger societal issue, but it wasn’t. As far as the movie presents it, the entire issue is about the rules governing the avengers themselves and the fate of Bucky. Arguably the Captain America side is presented more favorably, but that too would go against the point the comic is making because they are the ones resisting the status quo and sticking it to the man.

And in his actual movies, MCU spider-man fights a guy who is flooding the streets with high tech weapons just for the money, a con man that’s willing to kill innocent people to make himself look like a superhero, and all those villains from the previous continuities who is actually just trying to send home.

Maybe spider-man was a bad example. Surely the rest of the MCU must be pro-government propaganda, right?

Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call, realizes that harm he’s done by filling the world with weapons, immediately exits the arms industry and dedicates his company to developing peaceful technologies to help the world. Uses the technology he developed to intervene in conflicts where civilians are getting massacred and no one is willing to do anything about it. Defies the US military to do it. The villain is a greedy executive that tries to kill Tony to seize control of the company and continue building weapons.

Iron Man 2: Tony is continuing his policy of protecting people in war zones, in defiance of an angry US government. The government tries to steal his suit for the military, and works with a rival company to develop drone versions which Tony destroys.

Iron Man 3: Wouldn’t you know it, another company developing military tech is run by an evil guy and is killing innocent people.

Captain America: Literally fighting Nazis.

Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.

Captain America 3: Fighting to save his friend in defiance of a government that would rather kill him than bring him in peacefully.

Thor: Shakespeare in space, plus Thor learns humility.

Thor 2: Blowing up the universe is bad.

Thor 3: Thor literally helps start a revolution to overthrow a dictator.

Thor 4: The gods are assholes who should care more about people.

The Incredible Hulk: Science man good, military guy bad. Smashy smashy.

Ant Man: An ex con who went to jail for hacking a corrupt corporation gets recruited by a scientist who helps him take and an evil CEO of a corrupt corporation.

Alright, I’m not listing any more, there’s a million of these things, you get the idea.

You’re right, the Ukrainians should just give up on all these uppity notions of national sovereignty and self determination. They are in Russia’s sphere of influence, their place is to do what Russia says. It’s their fault if they don’t listen and Putin has to give them a black eye, that’s just him correcting them and showing he cares.

They should welcome their Russian liberators, so they can finally see how wonderful life under Russian rule is. Just ask the people of Bucha and Mariupol, they’ll be happy to tell you (if you can find a Ouija board in Cyrillic).

Do you think they know that you need two line breaks to make a paragraph? Or is it just hard to find the enter key on a Cyrillic keyboard?

Can someone explain how you are supposed to get Russia to leave? Sanctions didn’t work, lethal aid didn’t work, F-16s didn’t work, and striking Russia itself isn’t either.

These things haven’t won the war, but they most definitely are working. Russia’s economy is crippled, their military is running out of old equipment to cannibalize, and they lack the capability to produce the kinds of advanced military equipment they need. They’ve been throwing bodies into the meat grinder trying to overwhelm Ukraine, but despite the high cost they are making very little progress. This is not a great long term strategy, but it’s the one Russia has been stuck with.

You can argue for the war to continue I suppose, but Ukraine isn’t winning and I’m not seeing anything here that would change that fact.

But what’s the alternative? Right now Ukraine can only fight or surrender. While they fight, they can try to negotiate a peace deal, but so far the only deals Putin and Trump seem willing to consider are nearly indistinguishable from surrender. Give Russia everything they want, give up on everything you want, stop the fighting for now but put nothing in place to ensure that Russia won’t just rearm and invade again later.

In an order issued by a Texas federal court last week

Ah, say no more.

My first car had some faulty wiring or might have been possessed. The radio didn’t work, the front passenger window had to be disabled because it rolled down but not up, and it locked the doors any time you opened or closed the front driver side door. Hell, sometimes it would lock the doors for no apparent reason, just because you looked at it funny or something. I carried three keys in different pockets because I learned the hard way that only having one backup isn’t enough, and also just how easy it is to not notice a hole in your pocket.

The entire lower half of the body had been rusting out, so the previous owner patched it with fiber glass screen and driveway patching material then spray painted over that with a bright silver that didn’t even remotely match the dark grey of the rest of the car. There was also a hole in the trunk that had been partially covered with some plywood and foam insulation.

The muffler fell off and dragged behind me while I was driving. I replaced it but kept the original on the floor of the back seat and before giving anyone a ride I’d pick it up and ask if it looked important to them while they were still taking in the sight of my car’s exterior and wondering if they just made a huge mistake.

The hood latch broke while I was on the highway, causing the hood to pop up and try to kill me. Had to make an emergency stop and duct tape the thing down. I did eventually fix it.

Back when I worked in an office I would put up badass president pics Fourth of July. Too lazy to find them, but stuff like Kennedy riding a robot unicorn on the moon, FDR in wheelchair themed power armor, Roosevelt gunning down big foot in a forest fire, etc.

At home, the only significant decorating I do is for Christmas. There’s enough misery out there, and I choose to embrace the joy and the appeal to the better side of our nature. So we have lights, fake candles, and so on, and we put up a tree that gets a new ornament or two every year which fills it with memories. And as a finishing touch we hang a banner declaring “All creatures will make merry under pain of death”

Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.

Rockets are literally on fire.

Also pretty sure that creating a voter registration site that only appears to register voters in swing states (while gathering their data so you can follow up with only the ones you want to target) could also lead to criminal charges if the matter were to be pursued.

Hawaii

And for something similar in its insanity, there’s also Santa Claus, a product of Mexico that I can only assume was fueled by product from Columbia.

“I wonder if there’s beer on the sun”

The Canada Song lives rent free in my head.

“We put our faith in BLAST HARDCHEESE.”

Final Sacrifice.

And then everyone making the criticism ignores that passing reference.

Superhero stories are usually well aware of how people might abuse super powers. Those people become supervillains. The only way this criticism makes sense is if you think that no one would ever try to use their powers for good.

Internet troll criticizes comic book fans with chart pointing out that women prefer comic book fans to internet trolls by a 3 to 1 margin.

This video is dumb. It’s making contradictory criticisms while having no alternative of its own to suggest.

The heroes don’t use their powers to radically alter the world because, first and foremost, then it wouldn’t be our world, it would be a very different one. Once you actually apply all the innovations that should be possible, the setting starts looking more like Star Trek, and it becomes a very different story. This is the same reason that Batman will never keep his villains off the street, whether he captures them or kills them. It’s the same reason the Doctor always makes his way back to current year earth somewhere in the UK. The status quo they are maintaining is the one that let’s us continue telling this kind of story.

Second, things like time travel and reality altering magic, things which can fundamentally change our world in an instant have to be kept limited, or we have no more stories. This goes beyond just the status quo of the setting and gets into the basics of storytelling and having tension. Make your heroes too powerful with no limitations, and you can’t maintain a conflict without gigantic plotholes.

Second and a half, fundamentally altering the world with time travel or super science or magic is a concept that should be terrifying in its implications. Maybe time travel could alter the timeline for the better, but who gets to decide what is better, and what trade offs are worth it? Who gets to decide that it’s worth unmaking millions of lives to alter history into something you think might be better? And how many ways can it go wrong? The world is a complicated place, you can’t make sudden drastic changes without inflicting a lot of harm, even if you think the good it does will outweigh the harm. And doing so with forces that we may not fully understand or control is reckless. I mean, fuck, Ultron is the example they give of something to change the world, and would you trust the people making AI today to put that in a self-aware army of iron man robots?

Third, what kind of message would it send if the heroes used some bullshit super science or magic solution that quickly and easily solved environmental issues or social problems? Is that really addressing the issues in a way that’s helpful for us in the real world? Is it setting an example for us to follow when they aren’t faced with any of the real difficulties that come with solving those problems? it seems like that would just be dismissing the problem and implicitly endorsing the kind of vaporware solutions that polluting industries often try to hype up to avoid real change.

Fourth, do you really think the world would end up better if a small group of super powered individuals tried to overthrow governments, destabilize economies, and transform civilization by force? We’re not just talking about intervening in a specific conflict like Ukraine or Palestine here, the video makes that clear. If at the end of the day, they aren’t radically altering society, they are just defending the status quo. But, how do you think that would actually play out, especially in a world where there are other super powered individuals who will oppose them? World domination by benevolent dictators imposing their will on society while tearing the current order down by force is not going to be pretty, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare. And let’s be honest, none of our heroes have shown the capacity for building back the world they would be destroying, which is the much harder part.

Well, actually, no, despite criticizing the heroes for not using their powers to single-handedly institute radical change the video goes on to argue that change would actually require larger movements lead by the public, and condemns the idea of an elite few hogging power (should iron man be flooding the streets with military hardware? And how the fuck is the hulk suppose to share his power?). So, what then is the right thing for them to do? I guess they should engage in peaceful activism and support the people when they aren’t called away to stop some murdering asshole from killing a bunch of innocent people. So, basically what we have now, but with a few more scenes of them making political statements and doing volunteer work that doesn’t actually contribute to the plot.

Fifth, the villains are sometimes given sympathetic motivations because we want some nuance and complexity. The world is complicated and most conflicts are not just black and white. The lesson isn’t that change is bad and evil, it’s that you can’t just view the world in such simplified terms. The alternative of making the villains all bad and the heroes all good is actually far more dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that we can just see the world in simple us vs them terms, with no need to understand other points of view or to question our own.

Sixth, they do fight the status quo, just not the parts that the video wants to address. Daredevil can’t solve all the world’s problems but he can and does fight both organized crime and corruption. Captain America isn’t going to overthrow the government, but he will fight SHIELD when it crosses the line. Iron Man changed his own company to address its role in the world, and uses it to innovate to make the world a better place, that’s just not the focus of the story.