The Scumbag #5

[history79]

Comments

[themajesticmoose]

Ernie has the right idea about how to deal with repulsive trash like the little fascist piece of shit here

People who think you can defeat fascists through debate and "Reason" and other such horseshit are absolute fucking morons. Well some of them are also cowards to be fair, I suppose. So they're morons and cowards.

The way you beat fascists is simple. You beat them to death

[nyadnar17]

I don't think normalizing the goto tactics of Fascists in order to fight Fascism is a sane approach.

[themajesticmoose]

Fighting back against fascism isn't "Normalising the go to tactics of fascism"

Nor is it "Just as bad as fascism" despite what some morons living in some hippy dream world might say.

Fighting back against fascism in this way is the reason we're not living in a nazi shithole and speaking german right now. This is the only method of fighting against fascism that works. This has proven to be a fact by literally all of human history. Fascism has never been defeated by talking. Morons who go around thinking that you can "Debate" fascism or "Reason" with fascism are the kind of gutless idiots I hate every bit as much as I hate fascists themselves.

We didn't beat the nazis by sitting around in a hug circle and being "Respectful" and "Tolerant" of their "political opinions"

[zachbeacon]

Yeah, things rarely go well for the moderates who think they can reason with fascists. Or the cowards who think they'll be left alone if they enable them.

[themajesticmoose]

Yep. Anyone who thinks you can reason with a fascist needs to go buy themseves a history book and start living in reality

As for the kind of "people" who collaborate with or enable fascists

Well

Far as I'm concerned they all deserve what Quisling got

[zachbeacon]

I meant it in more of a Night of Long Knives sense* but fuck the Quislings of the world too.

*"But they can't be a Nazi. They're jewish/gay/non-white/ect." That's right, they can't be Nazis (for long). They won't be around once the fascists have real power and purge their ranks.

[tcampbell1000]

To be honest, I found this ending pretty disappointing. Yes, sure, Ernie gets his "big hero moment" and proves that he cares about people, because he's finally thrust into a situation where he can't ignore the horrible things being done to people right in front of him.

Fine, but that doesn't actually make him a tremendously upstanding character. I honestly think most people would react the way he did if they (1) had his superpowers and (2) faced an undeniable wrong that needed righting. Most people aren't psychopaths: what keeps us from helping each other is fear for our own well-being and the many little lies we tell ourselves (and that others tell us, especially in the current era).

So, great, he's not a psychopath. He's not the scummiest scumbag. But really, we already knew that or we wouldn't have enjoyed hanging out with him for five issues.

This experience could be a beginning for him: the feeling of his decency making a difference in the world could lead him to seek out that feeling again and again, and therefore really and truly become better. However, it could also serve to reinforce his self-regard and convince him he doesn't need to change at all. An earlier scene that touched on his fears of ending up in the gutter points to the first scenario, but the way our narrator presents this scene points to the latter. She treats the experience as an ending instead: as if passing this extremely low bar is all Ernie needed to do to go from scumbag to angel, and the story seems to agree.

Being a hero for five minutes is pretty easy, especially when your powers mean it entails no real risk to yourself. It's how hard you work to get to the next five minutes of heroism that counts. That, and how you behave when it might be your ass on the line.