Both ideas are also deeply ingrained in science fiction and fantasy

If I hear
"with great power comes great responsibility"
one more time, I'm gonna hurl.

I think rape in US jails, and US media acceptance of rape in US jails is an issue which should be examined carefully in the US after you GET THOSE FUCKING CARRIERS THE FUCK AWAY FROM IRAN.

The Second Foundation and the X-Men—and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry—are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we’re assured) merited and just.

That is a really interesting thought, and I have to wonder just how much genre fiction doesn't at least have some hint of extrajudicial violence. After all, genre fiction grew up as boy's fiction, and boy's just adore violence.

So, is there genre fiction about people we know are dumber than us refusing to be violent? Or relying on the justice system? Marxist genre fiction?

"With great power comes great responsibility" is, by itself, an accurate and admirable admonition. It's certainly not an invitation to use said power for extralegal justice - even if that's essentially what Spider-Man winds up doing. (Though it's also worth noting that he only fights those who fight first, and he doesn't kill or maim - or rape - but trusses them up for the police afterward. His safety record in that regard would be much harder to maintain in real life, of course.)

I'm not sure the pervasive meme is that violence is a necessary evil, so much as that it's to some degree inevitable. There's a subtle but important difference in attitude there, even if the end result is the same (acceptance due to fatalism being acceptance nonetheless).

Also, regardless of how prevalent rape actually is in prison, its threat certainly adds to the deterrent value. Having the CSI guys capitalize on that is thus natural and realistic . . . which are two adjectives that don't come up often in conjunction with that show. :)

This is a great topic. I think it gets to something fairly basic in the great divide, which isn't discussed much (as opposed to the need to control what other people do in their bedrooms, apparently felt by certain types of conservatives, which *is* discussed a lot).

I see, and am appalled by, the massive acceptance of prison rape, yes. The fact that innocent white guys "don't go to prison", yep. Idiots.

One important aspect you haven't mentioned -- lots of those people feel that prison had become "too easy"; it's supposed to be punishment, after all. So the occupants turning it into hell all on their own is perfectly appropriate, in that view.

On unaccountable violence as such, there's another issue -- the laws were never intended to define the edges of acceptable behavior. There are supposed to be consequences to bad, but not so bad as to be illegal, behavior, and those must occur socially rather than officially. Many of us would agree that, except for the case of necessary self-defense, violence shouldn't be involved there, but I can see getting frustrated with the damned bully and just wanting to pound the crap out of him. Punishment fits the crime, etc.

Then there's the fact that the police have been put on full-time drug patrol, so they don't have any time to waste on unimportant stuff like assault and rape.

With great power comes great responsibility is not a license to torture. The whole point of that tag is that Spiderman cannot ignore injustice. Can you?

If our society requires extralegal violence to hang together, then I say let it crumble, let it collapse, let it die out. It's not worth it. Such a society does not deserve to survive; its collapse MIGHT pave the way for a better society arising after a period of chaos.

I do not, of course, believe that society has any such need.

Assuming you mean the original Scooby Gang (Scooby, Shaggy, Velma (hi Velma!) et al), and not the Buffy Scooby gang, they very seldom commit crimes any worse than trespassing. Sometimes they tie up the villain, but they always turn hir over to the police ("And I would have gotten away with it too, if..."), which to my mind gives it more the quality of a Citizen's Arrest.

If you DO mean the Buffy gang, they're much more violent, and they definitely cross the line by beating up informers and so on. But this post of yours is the first that made me realize what their vampire-slaying ethos is: a reification* of the dehumanization of real or alleged criminals. Vampires are not human, and they're dangerous to human life; therefore it's always OK to kill a vampire. That's a fantasy version of the phiosophy of every lynch mob: pedophiles are "monsters," so it's OK to kill them, or faggots are monsters, so it's OK to kill us.

Even if I thought this way, I'd like to believe I'd see what a slippery slope it is. Like the Thirty Tyrants crossing names off the Citizens List, all the powerful have to do is convince a couple of dozen people that a certain person or class of people is not entitled to human rights, and lynching them becomes acceptable.

Prisoners are already in that class. They're "animals," after all (not that some of these same people believe animals should be treated this way). There's no real consituency for prison reform because prisoners aren't allowed to vote. I think that's a good place to start; there's absolutely no justification for that. Having committed a felony doesn't make your opinion invalid, especially on the topic of prisons. Thus we have a system controlled solely by people who have never experienced it.

I'd also like to call for an end to the for-profit prison industry. Corporations are accountable to their shareholders: no wonder we have the highest percentage of our population in prison of any nation in the world. They're hardly motivated to set people on the path to a productive life on the right side of the law, are they?

*I'm not 100% certain I'm using this word correctly...

Xopher, you used "reification" both correctly and cogently. Thank you.

A. Nakama, the original Foundation series is based on the notion that Psychohistory is better than violence.

Mind you, given who ends up in charge, it's no wonder that Asimov tried to fix it decades later.

Given who ended up in charge of the fix-up, I'll stick with democracy.

The whole idea of rape in prison is part of a larger issue: that weaker prisoners are under the domination of the stronger, hard-core criminals. They must pay the latter for their safety in some form or other.

Curiously, in The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn spends considerable time exploring the equivalent problem in Soviet prisons, whereby the political prisoners were ruthlessly dominated by the "thieves" (i.e., a hierarchical organization of career criminals). This is not exactly the same as in U.S. prisons, but it's more or less analogous: "organized crime" (Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood, Bloods, Crips, etc.) dominates ordinary criminals, who dominate everyone else.

According to Solzhenitsyn, this whole concept comes directly from the writings of Lenin, who considered hard-core criminals "socially friendly elements" who could be (and were) used by the Party to dominate "counterrevolutionaries." Eventually, in many cases the guards and the criminals were so inn cahoots that they werre more or less indistinguishable.

Although most U.S. prisons aren't as bad as the Gulag, they seem to be heading more and more in that direction. And given the creeping Stalinism of the people who send more and more people to within their walls, unless something is done to reverse the trend, it will only increase.

I wonder if Americans fully understand how depraved they are making their society seem in the eyes of the rest of the world, when American TV shows and movies routinely treat (American) prison rape as natural, unavoidable and an "extralegal" punishment...?

This from the world's self-appointed moral arbiter?

Comparing the X-men and other comic-book characters to the Klan...

There is a fantasy element to comics. No, I'm not talking about the science-fictional fantasy of someone who can do all the things that Superman can do.

I mean 'fantasy' as in 'I know this would NOT be a good thing to have in the real world, but, hey, I'll ignore the negative aspects for the sake of... well... fantasizing...'

Whatever.

Both ideas are also deeply ingrained in science fiction and fantasy, including some of the genre’s most intelligent work; indeed, much of the genre works by appealing to our wish that the world’s extra-legal violence be under the control of the kind of smart people we admire. The Second Foundation and the X-Men—and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry—are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we’re assured) merited and just.

I'm reminded of a certain fantasy series I read as a young teen. (Actually there may be several series with these events, but I'm thinking of one in particular, which was very popular at my junior high back in Utah.) In this series, the protagonists regularly threaten to torture their prisoners or opponents. They kidnap, threaten, or outright remove various political opponents. They fix an election. They use propaganda to start a war. They very often espoused the ideas that certain races and nations in their world were better, kinder, gentler than others. Their gods are better too. They got away with it because they were the Good Guys, capital G, and it was obvious that the Bad Guys were into nasty things like ritual human sacrifice. At the time, I loved these books, but eventually as I got older, I couldn't help noticing the weird discrepancies: the "do as I say, not as I do" attitude.

I have vague memories of a comic about a cleanup crew who followed superheroes around, cleaning up the messes made from their extra-judicial behaviours.

The X-Men compared to the Ku Klux Klan is interesting as

a. both groups believe themselves to be part of a persecuted minority; and

b. both groups have the ability to act and react against the perceived persecution.

This sheds some light on what (probably) goes on in a secret society/terrorist cell - they believe they're heroes, fighting to protect their way of life. With secret identities and costumes.

Superman, of course, fought the Klan both on radio and in real life.

Robert; that makes the Allied backing of organized crime to prevent Communist power (in Italy and Japan, e.g) an even stranger event. Perhaps the two actions are explainable if violence has more glamour in itself than do "the kind of smart people we admire".

Gwyneth Jones, linked from the main page, has an excellent essay on SF and love of violence.

I think that there is a sizable segment of the population that believes that rape in prison is an appropriate and necessary part of punishment (necessary inasmuch as they believe that punishment should be long-lasting, painful, and humiliating). They thus see nothing wrong with it.

This isn't simply a belief in the necessity of extra-legal punishments, it is a belief that the law cannot ever provide adequate punishment for wrongdoers and that fear of extreme punishments is what keeps you and me from committing crimes, not education, decency, or any other moral cause. In the end, the people who believe this believe that morality is irrelevant to social order. I have a big problem with that.

And Patrick, this isn't just the Klan. It wasn't the Klan that killed Leo Frank (e.g.), it was the respectable bourgoisie of Marietta, GA, who felt that it was necessary to lynch him in order to satisfy the bloodthirst of the crowd. This is something that lies deep in American culture, and needs to be understood.

At least in ~The Punisher~ (what a title!), the creators *sometimes* had the title character reflect on the moral gray areas his work took him into. Unless, you know, he was going after the Kingpin, or somebody *totally* bad like that.

Esquire's February story on Ramsey Clark's dogged legal defense of Saddam Hussein focused on Clark's political naivete, but also revealed how someone as privileged as Clark - someone who could collect a much larger fortune anytime he wanted - is motivated by a genuine, thorough, total belief in the *universal* applicability of due process.

AR Yngve @11:
I wonder if Americans fully understand how depraved they are making their society seem in the eyes of the rest of the world

Not all Americans care. A certain proportion of US public opinion can be divided into:

1. The rest of the world has no right to an opinion on America
2. The rest of the world should appreciate America's good points (American exceptionalism). It is entitled to an opinion if the opinion is favorable.
3. There is a rest of the world?

Note that this does not prevent the same Americans from judging the rest of the world and finding it wanting.

(Extreme example: I was in the midst of a discussion about American foreign policy with a US resident in early September of 2001. On 9/10 she said, basically, "Why should we care about the rest of the world thinks?" She had the good grace to acknowledge that this position was untenable within the subsequent days, but I know plenty more who never did.)

For clarity: there are many Americans who do not share these views, just as there are many people in other nations who have their local equivalents. But the TV programs we're discussing are aimed at a populace that includes this demographic.

clew #111: I don't know about Japan, but I feel like whether Italy has a Western-style democracy or a communist government, the mob will have their piece of it. It's not much different from, say, paying Trujillo to run the Dominican Republic to our liking...

Let's not forget that the (laughably optimistically named) Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed by a Republican Congress, and the one of the leaders of the anti-prison-rape movement is a Watergate conspirator. There are sick elements among the law-and-order crowd, most of whom are conservatives, but I wouldn’t frame prison rape as a conservative-vs-liberal issue. In fact, it could be framed as a law-and-order issue - we need to take control of our prisons! - and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be.

It is not just the US: This comment by Capt. Neil Carmichael of Dundee is typical of much of what I've seen on the BBC talkback from British citizens whenever inhumane conditions in UK prisons have come up the past couple years. Even saw one woman say that once someone is convicted, anything at all may be done to them without moral qualms or wrongdoing on the part of the state and its citizens who support it, and they just should be grateful that they're not being killed. Little Ease and Newgate would be back in play if it were up to the People Who Write Letters, it seems. None of it sounds any different from the Dittohead/Nixonite Tough-On-[Certain Kinds of]Crime talkers on this side of the pond who identify conviction with guilt, and consider all crimes equally evil save those committed by their own friends, family, and fellows.

Or --
"You want to be careful what you say, lad," he said.

"Yeah, but our mum says it's fair enough if they take away the troublemakers and the weirdies but it's not right them taking away ordinary people."

Is this really me? Vimes thought. Did I really have the political awareness of a head louse? (from Night Watch, 2002)

Robert -- I can't remember the book or historian I got this from, but there is an argument that organized crime in Italy was much weaker before the US allied with bits of it to speed the end of WWII.

This is, suspiciously, a US-centric narrative in two ways, first that everything that really matters turns out to have been caused by a US decision; and second that hah! Italy can't produce the best Italian criminals; only the docks of {Chicago|New York} can do that.

I rather like the second for its biological parallel, though, making that particular crime organism something like a disease with reservoirs and vectors.

"What about the Boston Tea Party? What about the spirit of the Lone Ranger? What about all those occasions when men have found it necessary to go masked in order to preserve justice above the letter of the law? Nova Express makes many sneering references to costumed heroes as direct descendants of the Ku Klux Klan, but might I point out that despite what some might view as their later excesses, the Klan originally came into being because decent people had perfectly reasonable fears for the safety of their persons and belongings when forced into proximity with people from a culture far less morally advanced." -- Hector Godfrey, editor, New Frontiersman, Oct 31, 1985

#13: Pixelfish, for the superhero-cleanup team, you're thinking of Damage Control, a very funny trio of four-issue mini-series by Dwayne McDuffie and Ernie Colón.

OK, so Glen Reynolds linked to the articles, and some of his followers seem to be commenting on the "More On Prison Rape" post. They're *not* the usual Ezra Klein posters.

As far as I can tell, the Instapundit fans who dropped in are pro-torture racists.

Anyone surprised?

The Second Foundation and the X-Men—and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry—are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we’re assured) merited and just.

This sounds familiar ... where have I heard it before? Ah, that's right: here:

What's more, the X-Men look to me a lot like a private paramilitary group or militia. Prof. X. talks the talk of a moderate liberal, but he walks the walk of extremism. The real difference between Prof. X and Magneto lies in some of the details of the execution of their programs.

I think the idea that “society requires extra-legal violence in order to hold together” is pretty much fundamental to the conservative outlook.

As an extension of that, the generally ingrained idea that 'soldiers preserve our freedoms by fighting wars' is really disturbing to me.

If I hear that spouted by some ignatz in a comment thread one more time, I'm gonna hurl.

I can't be the only one here thinking of _The Watchmen_. The whole issue of extralegal punishment, power corrupting, etc., is a big theme there, with some of the implications of "with great power comes great responsibility" and a willingness to act outside the normal rules of decent civilization playing a big role in the ending.

Holy crap, now that I've looked at those Ezra Klein posts, I'm sorry this thread is getting taken up with all the talk about superheroes.

"I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, He suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening." Jeezus.

I notice no-one's mentioned the arch-exponent of extra-legal violence, everybody's hero, Dirty Harry Callahan...

Patrick:

This seems more of an American thing than a right-wing thing. I've certainly seen and heard plenty of happy-sounding speculation from more leftish voices about extralegal punishment. Think of the discussions of what was going to happen to the LA cops in prison after the Rodney King beating, or the justifications for race riots you sometimes see, or the violent protests and death threats against some right-wing speakers (Arthur Jensen, Charles Murray, and Edward O Wilson are the examples that come to mind, but there are more). I've often heard people speculate about how some accused child-molester was going to have several years of hell on earth in prison, and I don't recall those comments being skewed left/right in any obvious way. More recently, there was certainly plenty of talk about what was going to happen to the Enron guys in prison that didn't sound especially right-wing, and that seemed to be quite happy with the idea of prison rape.

I think there's something intuitively appealing about the idea of some horrible person getting paid back for his evil deeds by fate--whether that's the cops beating him, the other inmates raping him, the prison guards beating him, his wife leaving him, his family disowning him, etc. And it's frustrating that the real world isn't built like that. But prison rape, or beatings by the cops, or whatever, isn't about justice, it's about power. The 6-5 250 lb sadistic serial rapist is unlikely to get raped in prison; instead, he'll be continuing his hobby inside, on the 5'9 150 lb drug dealer who got caught with a gun and some crack.

Similarly, there's something appealing about being able to bypass all those tiresome safeguards about law and courts and such, and just clobber the bad guys, beat answers out of terrorists, blackmail the evil people into doing the right thing, etc. But those are fantasies. If we put humans in the position of being able to bypass all those safeguards, they will almost inevitably misuse them. Failing to really understand this *does* seem more a failing of the right than the left, though it's certainly not a monopoly of the right.

As somebody who enjoys reading comic books (well, once they're compiled into graphic novels -- I don't have the time to look for them issue by issue, and I like big books), I'm immediately defensive. But as somebody noted above, a whole lot of what superhero comics are is fantasy wish-fulfillment, and wishing that the line between good and evil were clean and easily discernable is, I think, completely fair. (Trying to apply that particular fantasy to real life is not.)

I'd also differentiate between heroes who fight evil because normal law enforcement is clearly outclassed, heroes who fight evil because normal law enforcement isn't competent to do so, and heroes who fight evil because normal law enforcement is possibly corrupt.

Superman is pretty easily the former -- if he's fighting Darkseid or whatever giant robot Luthor just flew in to terrorize the city, he's essentially slaying dragons. That's a fantasy of a big hero to write unwriteable wrongs.

Batman is (in many versions of his very long history) the middle version, and that's the one I find troubling. The hero who's fighting people that the police COULD fight, if they'd just get their acts together and not be so constrained by procedure. (And yeah, sometimes he's helping the police and working with them, but his most recent comic incarnations are quite a bit more distant than that.)

The final version could well be the X-Men -- a lot of the time, they're fighting a corrupt Senator's evil robots, or a rogue general's lab-grown supervillain. That actually bypasses the "incompetent law" angle that Batman uses and goes straight to "evil law", the notion that the law is flat-out working against the oppressed.

I wouldn't see the Klan as identifying with the X-Men, because the X-Men are deliberately set up as the minority Other that the conservative white folks detest and fear. I'd see the Klan as identifying more with the "incompetent law" comics -- which, offhand, would be Batman, the Punisher, and some of Daredevil. Those are the comics in which somebody is brave enough to go into the darkness to take down the ugly evil that the goodhearted but inept cops just can't handle themselves.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden writes: "...indeed, much of the genre works by appealing to our wish that the world’s extra-legal violence be under the control of the kind of smart people we admire."

That's a very depressing thought coming from you. It'd be nice if more of the genre were to "work" by making its appeal contingent on our better natures rather than our latent pseudofascism.

I fear that not a lot of the market wants fantasy about worlds where the "extra-legal violence" (the term itself makes me nervous when I think about unpacking it) is under the control of smart people we find mostly unsympathetic. I'd like to think that sort of thing is possible to produce without writing in the oh-so-unpopular dystopian mode, but I'm not so sure.

Perhaps, it's just not a very compelling fantasy unless the good guy is ForcedToBreakAllTheRules™ in the process of kicking the bad guy's ass. I wish I were smart enough to see a marketable way around that, but alas... I'm trying. I'm still trying, but I worry that I'm not up to it.

I'm also reminded of an old Usenet discussion between Patrick and Anna Feruglio Dal Dan, through which I learned that there's a strong association between Tolkien fandom and neo-fascism in Italy. One of the points where the two hobbies intersect is, Anna pointed out, "the extollment of 'heroism' and the intrinsic, ancestral charisma of authority figures".

At which point somebody would have to bring up Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, so it might as well be me. There, it's done.

Avram writes: "I'm sorry this thread is getting taken up with all the talk about superheroes."

I am too, but look at this way. This is a topic that most Americans find too squicky to contemplate with a rational mind. Let's be honest: most Americans are not too sure they want to take note of the fact that the coalition troops have not yet eliminated the "rape rooms" from Iraq— four years after deposing the Butcher of Baghdad...

It's pretty easy to imagine how so many Americans like having a prison sentence mean a constant threat of rape. For the rest of us, that's a deeply shameful thing to have to admit about our neighbors, families and coworkers. They really are that depraved— so what can we do about it?

#4: "With great power comes great responsibility" is, by itself, an accurate and admirable admonition.

No. It assumes that some people have more power than others. In comic book, fantasy, and science fiction, this is generally played out in superpowers, magic powers, or some other power that sets some people apart from others. And because they have these powers, they must use them "responsibly".

and in every single gawddamnmutharfuwkingsumbitching superhero, science fiction, and fantasy story, 'responsibility' is an amorphous phrase which when applied to the world in which the characters live translates directly into:

We have to break the law to save the world.

The problem then becomes that fiction becomes the model for real life, and then egotistical assholes place their identification and ego in the power projection capacity of the United States Military/Police/Government in general, and these knuckleheads forget "responsibility" and remember the "true" meaning of christmas, i.e. we have to break teh law to save the world.

If you start your moral with "Great Power", you must, by necessity, have a power imbalance. Have's and Have nots. And while this reflects a reality of the physical world, it does not give you any morality beyond physical force. Those with "great power" define what "responsibility" is. And what you're left with is the morality of the physical domain: might makes right.

If you want a morality that transcends this brute force righteousness, you need to start with a different admonishment, such as:

All people are equal.

If you start there, then you end up at an entirely different place. You end up in a place where "Responsibility" isn't based in "great power" of some individual, but in the equality among all people. Rather than creating a morality of individual vigilanteism, it creates a universal morality.

Unless we could kill them all.

Nahhhh.

Robert @10, Eugen Kogon describes the same mechanisms in Nazi concentration camps.

One word (response to the original post):

Ouch.

Both ideas are also deeply ingrained in science fiction and fantasy, including some of the genre’s most intelligent work;

I feel that most fantasy and SF riggs the game, though: Either by portraying the law as illegitmate (e.g., corrupt, or being in the hands of a fool or a tyrant), or by creating situations which the law-as-it-is is unable to handle.

The Sunnydale police is not able to go after Vampires and demons. They might have a better chance if they were told the truth and given trainig, but the PTB have no interest in doing so. Even if the police could catch them, there would need to be a system in place to deal with them, which is a whole different problem. So, both corruption and "extraordinary circumstances".

A little apart from that, and re: Xopher's point @8: Personally, I read Buffy not as a reification of the Other, but as an externalisation of internal conflict -- not only the monsters are mirrored to the outside, but so are the fights. Vampires have human faces, and the monsters are us.

j h woodyatt @33: It'd be nice if more of the genre were to "work" by making its appeal contingent on our better natures rather than our latent pseudofascism.

But fighting unjust laws and tyranny is an appeal to our better natures... even in Star Wars...

Marvel makes a lot more sense if its accepted that Professor X is evil.

Batman, on the other hand, is mentally ill but the mental health system in Gotham City is inadequate, so he roams the city and fights the other mentally ill persons that Arkham was inadequately funded to treat. If Bruce Wayne stopped spending money on neat gadgets to fight the criminals, and instead focused that money on renovating Arkham Asylum's staff and facilities, there wouldn't be nearly as much trouble in Gotham City. Its a very depressing parallel to American Society, and that may be why I stick to Green Lantern, where the heroes, conveniently, are the police.

And has anyone ever tried telling one of these people who think that rape is part of the punishment in prison that the way we have things set up creates a class of people who are not punished, and are actually encouraged to act exactly as they want to despite all of the far worse things that they have done, and that a well-controlled and regulated prison system would be much more fair.

I haven't, but it'd be interesting to hear their reaction.

I just left a long comment about prison injustices (not specifically rape) over at Ezra Klein's blog. My current roommate, who's also an old and dear friend of mine, just finished a five-year prison sentence. (That is, in fact, WHY he's living with me; there are hairy legal issues involved with him living anywhere much else at the moment.)

The stories he tells about conditions in prisons (and he was in several over the course of his incarceration) deserve a MUCH wider audience. He didn't, personally, witness any incidences of rape -- but the things he did see were, in many cases, MUCH worse. And the frightening thing, the thing that really drives home the horror of it all for me, is that he doesn't TELL the stories he tells in that teaching voice that says, "this was really awful." He tells them in the sort of casual voice in which you or i might relate an anecdote about our work day. This shit is *just that common*.

Here's the last three-quarters of my comment from over there, copied and pasted:

-----------------

A few examples: People dependent on medication are *routinely* denied it; one guy killed himself after being denied his mental health meds. One guy my friend knew died of a ruptured appendix while SCREAMING for medical help and being ignored (it wasn't the one-hour-per-day when medical calls are actually answered and inmates can go to the infirmary).

My friend worked as a prison cook in one of the places he was -- and the grain that was brought in for things like oatmeal routinely came in in bags marked "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION." One of the other cook-assistants tried to smuggle one of those empty bags out of the kitchen; he was brutally beaten by the guards to the point where he couldn't walk. There's a particularly charming phenomenon called "stomping", where a guard stomps on the chain between an inmate's ankles -- my friend has ridges of nasty scar tissue from having this done.

The particularly awful thing is that federal (and many state) correctional institutions are more or less above the law. In most states, inmates can't sue for *anything* that happened to them while they were incarcerated. They mostly can't get access to their medical records (or any other documentation about them), which might support claims of what happened to them. (Or in the case of deceased inmates' families, provide fodder for a wrongful death suit.) Wardens and guards *know* that they're basically immune from any possible repercussions for their actions, and many of them act accordingly.

Frankly, i'm sort of at a loss as to why we think the people *incarcerated* in the prisons are the "real monsters" in this equation. Assuredly, some prisoners are montrous; equally assuredly, some of the people running the prisons are as bad or worse. (Several previous posters have mentioned women's prisons, where some male guards are given to behaving as if the female inmates are there strictly as entertainment. Several commenters and Ezra himself mentioned that wardens and guards ROUTINELY deny requests for protection when there *is* abuse going on.)

To me the lesson is that people who don't believe in the rule of law, who don't believe that rules apply to them, are the problem. No matter WHICH side of the bars they're on. The difference, though, is that prisoners are solely responsible for what THEY do; we're ALL responsible for what our appointed representatives, the wardens and guards, do.

-------------

--Adrienne

See, this is why Hellblazer or Books Of Magic have always been my favorites.

They're not about justice, they're about either a total anti-hero, or someone who's gets handed power, and how he fails at living a normal life.

I don't see where the idea that society requires extra-legal violence to function is a conservative viewpoint. I see plenty of people and groups of all political stripes all over the world who think that, and only some of them are "conservative."

On this thread I see anecdotal evidence from TV shows that some unguessed fraction of the public thinks prison rape is a proper "extra" sentence. What fraction? What are their politics? One of few named people (Bill Lockyer) who makes an approving joke about prison rape in Klein's series is a Democrat.

This should not be a liberal-vs-conservative issue; demonizing conservatives over it will just make a solution harder. This is an issue of prison culture, which has become disfunctional in this country to a degree which may be unique in the world (I don't know that for sure though). What needs to be done is to figure out how to change the prison culture. One way of doing it would be to aggressively prosecute prison rape, and those who allow it. Those convicted of it would be segregated in some way from the rest of the prison population.

This problem will not be easy to solve, because it feeds on the prison culture, the racial problems of this country, and so on. However, it is worth trying.

DaveL @ 45

Is that the Bill Lockyer who used to be CA attorney general? He's a Democrat about like Hillary is.

#36 Greg:

I don't think "with great power comes great responsibility" leads to anything bad at all. The mistake is one step further in the argument, where someone justifies his actions with "with great responsibility comes great freedom from the rules that bind ordinary people." And that's ultimately a rehash of the old idea that the ends justify the means. I'm on a mission from God here, so it's okay for me to steal the women and rape the cattle. I'm fighting Islamofacism, so the normal rules of humane treatment of prisoners don't apply to me. I'm punishing evildoers, and just because some namby-pamby court won't let me sentence them to ten years of rape and maltreatment doesn't mean I can't do it.

There's this idea that's become part of our culture, that the rules of civilized society make us weak. A true hero would become strong by ignoring them.

And we all know this is crap from our personal lives, right? It's frighteningly easy to justify something to yourself because you want it to be okay, even though it's really not. Yes, he's married, but his wife doesn't understand him, and this is True Love. No, it's just ripping off a big corporation, not like stealing from any real people. No problem, I'm a better driver with four beers in me than most people are sober.

This idea--that refusing to be bound by any limits or rules is how you become powerful--is pure poison. But just about every cop movie, spy movie, etc., that you see follows this pattern, right? And pushing this idea further gets you to Dirty Harry and on to 24, and from there, to secret prisons and waterboarding and getting confessions by threatening suspects with rape by other inmates.

I remember this subject was a slightly more frequent topic of public discussion not long after Joseph Darby's pictures from Abu Ghraib were published. I was among the people who were saying that if Americans can't deal with what they're seeing in those pictures, then they're really not prepared to cope with what's going on in our own prisons back home.

Where did we get the monsters who perpetrated those crimes at Abu Ghraib? From the same place we get most of the guards and wardens who run the prisons in our own country. And they get away with what we let them get away with because "a few bad apples" don't mean the whole apple tree is diseased.

I contend the phenomena under discussion here are tightly coupled. Props to Ezra for showing up, but I wish I were more confident that closer scrutiny will produce the public outrage we'd all like to believe it would. There's a deeper root cause here, and I think Patrick is right to point it out.

Maybe if we all just recited the Pledge of Allegiance a few more times, then we wouldn't have to think about these inconvenient data points that conflict with our civic religion. Who's with me?

#44 Josh:

Or Sandman, who really is above the normal rules applied to people. And who holds himself bound to a different set of rules, which he won't violate even at great cost to himself. (Note how he ended up owning hell for awhile.)

As an example of the other side of this, think of the movie _Munich_. The main character did the extralegal vengance thing, with the support of his government and compelling nationalist/ethnic identity reasons to justify it. But that didn't keep it from screwing him up beyond recognition.

DaveL, there are plenty of conservative Democrats (Orson Scott Card, for example), and even some liberal Republicans. But the ideas that Patrick's talking about are intrinsically conservative. When liberals give in to the impulse for extra-legal violence (and they have been known to do so), they are acting contrary to the politics they claim to follow. When conservatives do so, they're acting on the conservative need for class and hierarchy and privilege.

albatross, I was trying to point that "with great power comes great responsibility" doesn't have any direct negative real consequences itself, but that's only because "responsibility" is an abstract concept, subject to different interpretations. As soon as you get one step removed from that statement, the abstract "responsibility" becomes the concrete, and that's where the line gets crossed.

The other thing that should be pointed out is that its a perfectly fine statement, when "responsibility" gets an accurate interpretation. But people who get "responsibility" aren't the people committing murder and torture and rape, are they.

The problem I have with the statement is that its sufficiently ambiguous that it appeals to a wider audience than any less ambiguous statement would. It gives a lesson that decent human beings can understand, and it gives a justification that self-righteous sociopaths can slather on top of their crimes.

I mean, I'll go watch Batman as some entertaining escapism. But some guys will see it as a valid attitude for police work.

And the reason it's ambiguous is because it focuses on teh difference between the image of self and other, the "power", and leaves the implementation in the abstract term of "responsibility". Which is simply carte blanche for morally bankrupt folks (presidents and vice presidents included) to make "responsible" action be whatever they want it to be.

I'd rather see fiction adopt memes that aren't self/other, aren't white/black, aren't strong/weak. And while some can read "with great power comes great responsibility" and get something positive out of it. I think it's sufficiently ambiguous that it is an enabler for those looking to be enabled. So, it may not "lead to anything bad", for you, I think it can lead to bad things for a sufficient portion of the population that I think it needs an upgrade.

As an extension of that, the generally ingrained idea that 'soldiers preserve our freedoms by fighting wars' is really disturbing to me.

The people who frighten me most are those who claim that only soldiers deserve freedom; soldiers are the only true citizens, civilians being decadent or gutless schmucks.

Zell Miller said something like this at the RNC a few years ago.

It's a regrettable attitude conveyed by some military instructors.

On a related topic, I am worried that American criminal law is now infested with right-wingers, who believe they have some kind of divine duty to put criminals away with maximum punishment. Their attitude to the law represents this extra-legal mentality. Though our legal system still has trial by jury and public defenders, typical juries probably have this tough-on-crime attitude, and the resources allotted to public defenders are pathetic.

The prison abuse is the bottom level of this phenomenon, but the fish rots from the head down.

#43 Adrienne:

Long ago when I knew something about this, the inmates were filing tons of lawsuits for any reason or none. My guess is that this is one of those pendulum-swing things, where the solution to too many frivolous lawsuits isn't to penalize the frivolous ones, but rather to choke off nearly all of them. (If this sounds like tort reform, you're catching on. And three-strikes laws, and sex-offender-mark-of-Cain kinds of laws, and....)

Prisons are inherently nasty places, because of the kind of people who get locked up in them, and because of the kind of people who work there. The guards (at least back when I saw this stuff) were taking a dangerous job that paid squat. The fringe benefits involved a lot of power over other people, getting to wear a uniform and be an authority figure, stuff like that. The inmates include a fair number of people who might just snap and kill or rape a staff person or a guard, even though they know that ten minutes later, a dozen guards will be beating them to a pulp. That might just be past their time horizon, or maybe they're just in a bad mood today, or the voices told them to, or whatever.

I expect we could stop prison rape if it were an issue we cared about. But I agree with some of the other posters, I don't think most Americans much care. And I think this is part of a bigger trend.

#52 Greg:

What would be a better meme, in the context of superhero kinds of stories and worlds? "Even the wise cannot see all ends?"

Can you think of superhero type stories (Bond is a superhero in this context, as is, say, Willi Wachendon in _The Peace War_) where the superhero thinks he's wiser than he is, and ends up realizing he's done horrible things?

Enders Game seems like one example. I'm a bit reluctant to start listing others (though they're not easy to think of) for fear of spoilers.

The real-world version of this is the way so many of the Manhattan Project scientists later were horrified about what they'd helped build. Probably some spies recruited by the KGB through idealism ran into the same issue, as they saw what they were really serving.

Yesterday's 60 Minutes did a segment on how a mentally-ill inmate in a Michigan prison was starved to death. The text is there, but the video is sickening. Particularly when the woman in charge of prisons in Michigan smiles when told about some of the things that happened.

#2, Niall McAuley: "I think rape in US jails, and US media acceptance of rape in US jails is an issue which should be examined carefully in the US after you GET THOSE FUCKING CARRIERS THE FUCK AWAY FROM IRAN."

Oh, put a sock in it. Yes, the imminent ginned-up war with Iran is important. No, it doesn't mean you, or anyone else, gets to order us around with regard to what we can and can't talk about.

#7, Xopher: "Assuming you mean the original Scooby Gang (Scooby, Shaggy, Velma (hi Velma!) et al), and not the Buffy Scooby gang

No, I meant the Buffy crowd. And I bow to no one as a fan of BtVS.

#12, Serge: "There is a fantasy element to comics....I mean 'fantasy' as in 'I know this would NOT be a good thing to have in the real world, but, hey, I'll ignore the negative aspects for the sake of... well... fantasizing...'"

You know, I'm very familiar with this transaction. I do it every day of my working life. If you think I'm saying "SF and comics are crap because of this moral insight I've had, and you're crap for liking them," you have another think coming. I take it as axiomatic that these stories work, that they get inside our heads, that they contain all kinds of real truth and value. For this reason I also take it as axiomatic that we owe it to ourselves to think about them with ruthless honesty. I'm not trying to debunk science-fictional power fantasies, I'm trying to improve them.

#29, Avram: "Holy crap, now that I've looked at those Ezra Klein posts, I'm sorry this thread is getting taken up with all the talk about superheroes."

Yeah. Those of you who haven't read the linked-to Ezra Klein posts, stop reading this comment thread and go catch up. Yeah, you.

#32, Patrick Weekes: "As somebody who enjoys reading comic books (well, once they're compiled into graphic novels -- I don't have the time to look for them issue by issue, and I like big books), I'm immediately defensive."

See response to #12, Serge, above.

#45, DaveL "This should not be a liberal-vs-conservative issue; demonizing conservatives over it will just make a solution harder."

Sorry, we disagree. To my mind it's the "liberal-vs-conservative issue." Does the consent of the governed matter? Does it matter if authority is duly constituted? Are we in fact striving toward a system in which everyone's voice matters, or is this just an ideal to which we pay lip service? These are real questions and important.

Marilee, I saw that segment (neatly sandwiched between an Obama interview and a Norah Jones interview; what the hell were the editors thinking?). Horrifying isn't a strong enough word.

This was a 23-year-old mentally-ill kid who was shackled and chained, denied meds, denied water, and essentially left to die. And yes, the woman who had been in charge of the place (I think she was no longer there, but maybe I'm wrong) didn't seem to feel any responsibility for that kid's treatment or death.

albatross: The Sandman, mentioned above, is a good example of this. In fact that's one of the reasons I like The Sandman so much -- because when you look back on the entire series, you realize that his fate is the inevitable result of *many* unwise decisions on his part, all cascading together.

In Traditional Medieval Fantasy, we're basically talking about a world of warlords who report to bigger warlords. Not to say that there aren't laws in this kind of world -- in fact, one of the most interesting things I've learned from reading the Icelandic Sagas is how important it was for our tough heroic manly Icelanders to follow the law and be "learned in the law." It's just that back then, being a great lawyer sometimes meant you had to go off and sink an axe into someone's skull.

In that sort of context, does it even make sense to talk about "extra-legal" violence? Or at least, the sort of extra-legal violence we worry about in the 21st century seems fundamentally different from what a medieval Icelander would consider extra-legal violence.

I think where Traditional Medieval Fantasy can really collapse under its own weight is not in the vigilante-style violence, but in having a too-naive perspective about the political structure. Many fantasy novels are all about restoring the Good King or the Lost King to the throne, so we can defeat the Bad King and start a new Golden Age. But as China Mieville (and others) have pointed out, why are we rooting for them to have any king at all? I can appreciate that the *characters* might think it's a good idea to have a Good King, but I hate it when the author just assumes that the *readers* have the same values.

Remind me NEVER to go near the United States.

If countries were people, the USA would be the American prison guard.

#32 Patrick Weekes "I wouldn't see the Klan as identifying with the X-Men, because the X-Men are deliberately set up as the minority Other that the conservative white folks detest and fear."

My thoughts exactly. They would be the Klan if the Klan were a group of blacks who played a dual role fighting other, malicious blacks and defending innocent blacks against the powerful but frightened white majority. In other words: not so much.

#36 Greg London: "If you want a morality that transcends this brute force righteousness, you need to start with a different admonishment, such as: All people are equal."

The basic problem being: people aren't equal. I cannot equal Stephen Hawking's intellect or Yao Ming's athletic ability. Neither of them can equal Bill Clinton's people skills. People are all unique, and different. Pretending like they are interchangeable gets you nothing good. So how about instead:

All people deserve equal treatment.

Now "with great power comes great responsibility" is in context. How are those who have been born exceptional, or find themselves in a position of great influence, to use their power? Pretending as if this never happens is useless. Demanding responsibility from those so blessed is not.

Returning again to the superhero branch of the thread (because I don't wanna read more about prison rape before going to sleep), the desire to see justice done is a powerful drive. So is the desire to have a law-abiding society. Where two (or more) powerful drives clash, that's where you find great stories. So of course there are lots of stories to be told about the tension between Law and Justice.

The good stories explore this tension. The author says "What if we've got someone caught between these two drives, what does he do? OK, that's what, but then this other thing happens, does he still pick the same answer? And then this other thing, still?"

The reason shows like 24 are dishonest is because the show's creators have decided where the shows stands (safety trumps law, so torture is justified), and they're willing to suspend plausibility to make things work out for the hero (so torture always works, except when the bad guys torture the hero, when it doesn't). Jack Bauer is something of a Mary Sue -- he's right because the writers want him to be right.

(Actually, I haven't seen any more of 24 then the first few minutes of the first episode, so I may be wrong about some of the above.)

There's another thing that's occurred to me, about Rorschach in Watchmen, how he never makes mistakes either, but that's because Alan Moore is examining his themes by having a bunch of different characters embody the theme from different angles and then crash them into each other at the end, and Rorschach needs to be the uncompromising paragon of Justice for the ending to work, and so Moore gives Rorschach odious personal habits to keep him from seeming Mary Sue-like, but it's past 2 AM.

Hey! We have perfectly good mafiosi without any need to import them from Chicago. Ours are meaner than yours. I mean, did John Gotti ever kidnap the twelve year old son of a rival chief, keep him imprisoned for two years, then personally strangle him and dissolve him in acid?

Thing is, nobody exactly knows where the Mafia came from, but one theory is that they used to be the feudal lords small-time enforcers. Same principle as the prison rape, I guess.

If you'll allow unrealistic martial arts to qualify as fantasy (or superheroes), I think the best handling I've seen of the theme of violence, its uses and consequences would be Rurouni Kenshin. Seijuro and Kenshin have great power, but choose very different approaches to how they should use it. What they do, what happens as a result and how it changes them is pretty interesting - and moving - although the series is unfortunately occasionally prone to "Meaningless Villain of the Week" storylines. I won't spoil the specifics here, but the question of which of them was right about how to use power is, IMO, unresolved. In any case, with great power most certainly does not come a blithe disregard for the consequences of one's actions, and it's not only Bad Guys that can be hurt.

As for extralegal violence, it seems to me that its extralegality is of no consequence. The fact that it's violence already makes it a harm that dwarfs the harm of breaking the law; thus it can only be justified in the necessary service of a greater good (maybe, if you accept that kind of tradeoff) or to prevent a still greater evil (usually more violence, there isn't much higher than violence on the harmfulness scale).

To put it more simply, in any particular instance violence is just or unjust; legalizing unjust violence doesn't make it just, so why would banning just violence make it unjust? Any situation that can justify violence can certainly justify lawbreaking.

Is anyone else having disturbing thoughts about the parallels between these attitudes about prison rape, and the attitudes to which female victims of rape outside prison are regularly subjected? When rape is okay as punishment for male criminals because they "deserve what happens to them," and the same people who espouse that attitude are also the first to claim that any female rape victim "deserved it" because of something-or-other that she did or failed to do... in effect, these people are claiming that being female is de facto a crime.

Patrick @ 57... ...For this reason I also take it as axiomatic that we owe it to ourselves to think about them with ruthless honesty...

Of course. I made a comment about some of the problems with the premises behind comics and about what if those characters existed in the real world.

(Typing past my sock) The Lord of the Rings is an example of a Restoration of the Good King by Defeating the Evil Lord, but it's also an alternative to the idea that the Good Guys must break the rules to take care of business.

Any one of Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond or Galadriel could probably have used the Ring and defeated Sauron, and each one has a chance to take it, and all of them turn it down.

Oh, since we're talking among other things about how this plays out in actual storytelling, I have a recommendation.

The 13-episode anime series Arjuna takes a conventional fantasy setup and does something genuinely nifty with it. Our protagonist is a teenage girl who, not long after the story begins, lies on the bring of death. She's offered the chance to return to life as the new avatar of time, whose job is to protect the Earth from the hostile spirits devouring it. She accepts, and adventure ensues. The thing is that this time around, the Earth is serious about the mission - since hostility and rage are part of the problem, her early efforts to fight them raw supernatural power are doomed to failure. The enemy's weapons only serve the enemy. So the meat of the series is about her growing understanding of the world, its enemies, and the lacks and needs all around, so as to break the endless cycles and deal with the flaws that set them spinning in the first place.

To my taste, at least, the series manages the feat while continuing to produce shows that are funny, engaging, and exciting.

Lee@65: I would make one significant distinction between the popular conception of prison rape of males and non-prison rape of females.

Prison rape is considered to be funny.

The rape of women, even if it happens to drunk skimpily-dressed 'bad' women, is not considered comedy material in the same way that prison rape is. When a high-profile court case ends with a man being sent to prison, the same "You sure got a pretty mouth, boy" jokes start flying all over the political spectrum. When Kent Hovind was sentenced, people whom I know would never-ever-not-in-a-thousand-years make jokes about the rape of women were giggling over the idea of him bent over a bunk.

In the line of fantasy storytelling, the first thing that comes to mind to me is Death Note (anime and manga).

The premise is that the protagonist, Light, a genius student, acquires a notebook which has the power to kill anyone whose name it written in it. He eventually decides to use it to 'cleanse' the world of criminals. (Who needs to be killed is decided by him, of course.)

Of course, it quickly becomes clear that Light is a deeply creepy sociopath with a god complex. But I was poking around at some forums for a translation group and was shocked to see a thread titled, "Are Light's actions just?" Only the first few episodes of the anime were out, and he hadn't he'd killed any really innocent people yet. But it was still disturbing to see that there was even the question.

Interestingly, the genius detective who goes after Light uses fairly immoral methods as well - using a criminal as bait for Light to kill, unconstitutionally bugging his house, and eventually torture.

Really interesting stuff, and I think the way people react to it can say a lot.

indeed, much of the genre works by appealing to our wish that the world’s extra-legal violence be under the control of the kind of smart people we admire. The Second Foundation and the X-Men—and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry—are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we’re assured) merited and just.

Mmf. Almost right. Here's why I think you're slightly wrong.
The X-Men, the Klan etc are self-appointed - that's the key thing about vigilantes. If you're Sheriff Gary Cooper and you go after bandits, you aren't a vigilante. If you're a normal bloke and Sheriff Cooper comes round and says "Come and help me go after these bandits", you aren't a vigilante. If you just decide to up and go after them yourself, you're a vigilante, because you don't have the sanction of the law (via the Sheriff) on your side.

I think this puts the Laundry on the side of the angels - it's an agency of the British government, it's subject to oversight (boy, is it ever!), it's in the same ethical position as the Army. If the Laundry were just a secret Anti-Demon Society, then they would be basically the Klan with a different objective.

We like reading stories about good people using violence against bad people. Of course we do. That's what makes good stories.

The subject of official versus unofficial violence deserves going into. The intelligent conservative view is that there will always be unofficial violence in society, and that it is better that the otherwise lawless should be on the receiving end than that they should be inflicting it.

I don't much like this argument, but I don't see how to refute it. You can't stamp out bullying except with superior force, and a force sufficient to frighten all bullies will be potentially the most frightening of all. But it's still better than the rule of people who strangle their enemies' children and dunk the bodies in acid.

Abi wrote:
----------------------
Not all Americans care. A certain proportion of US public opinion can be divided into:

1. The rest of the world has no right to an opinion on America
2. The rest of the world should appreciate America's good points (American exceptionalism). It is entitled to an opinion if the opinion is favorable.
3. There is a rest of the world?

Note that this does not prevent the same Americans from judging the rest of the world and finding it wanting.
--------------------------

And such attitudes might be feasible if the USA were completely isolated from the world -- like, say, North Korea.

However, the USA have the world's most ubiquitous mass media -- which are switched on all the time -- making it the world's #1 "celebrity" nation. This has consequences.

I recall that around the first time George W. Bush was elected, he actually said that America should be "strong but humble." Ironically, he was right...

The opposite attitude -- to be strong but arrogant -- will only lead to problems.

Marvel makes a lot more sense if its accepted that Professor X is evil.

Interestingly, last time I looked at Marvel it was almost explicitely being written that way. Professor X had been banned from the X mansion for various reasons including being depowered by the Scarlet Witch (part of the House of M fallout) and having made Cyclops and the rest of the X-men forget about some former X-men. Ultimate Professor X has more or less always been extremely sinister. (Ultimate Marvel started some time in the late 1990s more or less from the beginnings of all the characters in the Marvel universe).

Batman, on the other hand, is mentally ill but the mental health system in Gotham City is inadequate, so he roams the city and fights the other mentally ill persons that Arkham was inadequately funded to treat. If Bruce Wayne stopped spending money on neat gadgets to fight the criminals, and instead focused that money on renovating Arkham Asylum's staff and facilities, there wouldn't be nearly as much trouble in Gotham City. Its a very depressing parallel to American Society, and that may be why I stick to Green Lantern, where the heroes, conveniently, are the police.

Re: Batman, hear hear! (I'm working on a fic in which Oracle, Black Adam, and a few others use the absence of the first line of DC heroes during 52 to sell/mass produce much of the supertech heroes use to actually improve the world). Re: GL, they are too overpowered for my tastes (and then there's the Will being All Important - a theory I detest).

"Interestingly, the genius detective who goes after Light uses fairly immoral methods as well - using a criminal as bait for Light to kill, unconstitutionally bugging his house, and eventually torture."

hmm, I think if the "can torture ever be used" question implied a hypothetical 'the only way to catch a guy who has a magic notebook with which he can kill anyone just by writing their name in it involves torture, is it okay to use torture in that case?'

I would have to say that I would accept torture in the case of stopping the guy with the magic notebook.

If our society requires extralegal violence to hang together, then I say let it crumble, let it collapse, let it die out. It's not worth it. Such a society does not deserve to survive; its collapse MIGHT pave the way for a better society arising after a period of chaos.

Granted that you added you don't really believe in this requirement, this alternative is actually no better--it's just more extralegal violence.

To some extent, the bloody-collapse-and-revolution fantasy is just the lefty version of the vigilante fantasy, just more thugs against the rest of us. At least, that's the conclusion that always stops me when I have these kinds of dark thoughts.

PJ Evans: As far as I can tell, Hillary is not a Democrat only in the same sense that Bush is not a Republican, which is to say that some members of her party don't like some of her positions.

Avram: My point is that if this does become a liberal-vs-conservative issue, the problem will not be fixed or even addressed. Think of it this way: if conservatives and the electorate really are as much in favor of extra-legal punishment, up to and including rape, is a political effort by the left, or Democrats, or liberals alone, with no conservative cover, going to have a prayer of succeeding? Remember Nixon's Law'n Order campaigns? This needs to be a bipartisan effort to make any headway at all.

Patrick: Conservatism (no, not Bushism) is also linked to law, respect for tradition, and other virtues which militate against the idea of extra-legal punishment. Social conservatives, if I may utilize a stereotype, are from regions and economic situations where they are uniquely (for American Caucasians) vulnerable to forces that might have them end up in jail, either justifiably or unjustifiably. Add in the social conservative distaste for homosexuality, and you have a population that ought to be able to be enlisted in an anti-prison rape campaign. As I said in my first post, I'd love to see some survey numbers that back up the claim that people (of whatever politics) think prison rape is "okay."

I agree with those that say the hardest part of such a campaign is that it would probably rank pretty low on peoples list of issues they are concerned about, but then, that's what issue campaigns are for: to raise awareness.

I think the question of comic-book or SF/F treatments of extra-legal powers is interesting, but I wish it wasn't devouring this thread: the fact that it is is probably in part due to our ability to flee a distasteful, squick-inducing topic for one that's more congenial. (That's also why people make jokes about prison rape: cf. Siggy Freud's take on things we joke about).

#61: So how about instead: All people deserve equal treatment.

I didn't think that needed clarification, but sure, all people are granted the same inalienable rights.

Now "with great power comes great responsibility" is in context. How are those who have been born exceptional, or find themselves in a position of great influence, to use their power? Pretending as if this never happens is useless. Demanding responsibility from those so blessed is not.

Oh good grief. I'll give you "context".

From the point of view of "all people have the same inalienable rights", the law is an extension of the will of the people. Government is subservient to the people because people are equals and together they create a government that is a collective agreement.

Most fiction stories that invoke the "with great power comes great responsibility" are stories that involve one or some small group of individuals who hold themselves above the law, because for some reason or another, the law cannot deal with some problem.

That's your "context" right there.

The context is an indirect way of saying that a government formed by an equality of the people will always be flawed, due process will never achieve justice, and these flaws of an equal society can only be fixed by SuperMan and a will to power.

The "context" is not about some "gifted" or "blessed" individual operating as an equal member of society. The "context" is that a society of equals produces substandard due process that allows guilty people to go free and produces weak police and military units that allows outside forces to overwhelm them. And these problems can only be fixed by some "exceptional" individual who does not submit himself as part of society but rather holds himself separate and distict from society. Someone who operates above the law. Someone who has the strength to do "what needs to be done".

People of "great influence" like Martin Luther King Jr. operated within society. They lead society to a better place by enrolling society into some higher principle and got society to be better than it knew itself to be.

Compare that to the use of force in your standard superhero comic. The hero does not "lead" society to some better place. Society fails to deal with some super villian because due process fails or because society is weak. And some super hero with "great power" uses "great responsibility" by acting outside the law, holding himself above the rest of society, and uses brute force against some unquestionable evil.

The context of "with great power" in standard fictional stories is basically "society is broken, you'll have to become a vigilante to find justice"

Society as a group of equals never means that everyone must be mediocre. This was a meme in "The Incredibles" actually. Superheroes weren't allowed to use their powers ever. The super-kid couldn't go out for sports because he was super-fast. and society wouldn't allow it.

Oh hell no. That's not what equality is about.

But that's the context of standard superhero stories. "equal" somehow means "identical in every way" or "everyone must be mediocre".

If you are a "blessed" individual, the idea of equality doesn't ask you to give up whatever it is about you that makes you blessed, unique, etc. Equality means that you work inside the rules to be the best you can be. and if there is some injustice in the system, you lead society to change the system. You don't simply force your will on those you view as evil doers.

"Power" needn't mean the ability to zap supposed bad guys -- in #61, I think Heresiarch was talking about our own world of non-identical individuals, people who vary greatly in many ways. It's a place where county supervisors and senior librarians and police chiefs, etc. etc., have to make decisions more important than "What shall I have for breakfast today?" and should make them wisely, though all too often they don't.

Wish-fulfillment power, as seen in superhero comics and the pulpier forms of genre fiction, appeals to something more universal, and it's not just a desire for justice in an imperfect world. Justice can easily slide down into vengeance. I know I feel that impulse at times -- when I'd like to condemn child murderers and other violent pedophiles to be staked out in the desert, left for the sun to wither and scavengers to eat. Anger and disgust! (Apparently, pedophiles have a particularly hard time in prison too.) But I know that's the id talking, not the forebrain.

Some fantasy novels grow more interesting when their villains have genuine crises of conscience and their monsters wonder what it means to be "human".

Niall@67: Quite right, in The Lord of the Rings, the heroes don't try to break the rules in order to take care of business. (And when, say, Boromir tries to break the rules, the plot punishes him.)

The real problem I have with the story is that archconservative narrative of "Daddy/King Aragorn is going to make things all better." As far as I can tell, Tolkein wants us to accept that idea uncritically.

Andrew Brown, #72:

The intelligent conservative view is that there will always be unofficial violence in society, and that it is better that the otherwise lawless should be on the receiving end than that they should be inflicting it.

I don't much like this argument, but I don't see how to refute it.

How about this: decent people don't attack those who are powerless. Any "law", written or unwritten, which says it's okay to do that is evil. Prisoners don't get abused because they're lawless, or bad, or whatever. They get abused because they can't fight back.

What makes it acceptable for "lawful" folks to inflict unofficial violence? Once you do that, don't you stop being lawful?

It's easier to construct a plot if your characters use extra-legal violence.

Faren @ 79... I know that's the id talking, not the forebrain.

"Morbius, what is the id?"
"Id, id, id, id... It's an obsolete term..."