Voy - Renaissance Man

[clearspira]

I said my piece on the episode itself. But here you bring up personal power and the mutant issue in Marvel. What is the point of the Registration Act? So we have a list of who you are and what you can do.
So what? If the bank loses money out of the vault do they go check out the highschool student first because she can walk through walls? Or maybe check the bank manager who has the combination to the safe and keys to the security system?
Ability does not automatically equal desire. So to do anything you need to do something with this subset. Lock them up because they potentially could cause harm? Kill them, same motive?
Hey lets see them as weapons and train them for national defense while we distrust them. That has no chance of backfiring.

Do people with powers have the potential to cause great harm. Yes.
But you need a better answer than put their names on a list.

Since each mutant has a different power (for the most part) what security measures (if any) are needed would be different depending on each individual mutant. If there's a mutant who can alter people's memories, then you need to develop some procedure to detect memory alterations, and hopefully to guard against them. But you can't do that if you don't know the memory altering mutant exists in the first place.

I mean, that's why Magneto was able to build a helmet that protects him from Xavier's telepathy, while most everyone else is helpless before him: because Mags knew Charles, and so knew that some sort of countermeasure was needed.

Fair point. What is the counter to Kitty Pryde? And you have her on a list and presumably know where she lives. So I ask again, things get stolen. Do they start with someone with potential but no criminal background. Or do they perform proper investigations?

I ask these questions because the general rule I see often enough is that there is potential for harm. Therefore we need to register and track people. And it always sounds both too far and not enough at the same time. What can such a list be used for? It would be like a sex offenders list. 'Is there a mutie near you?' And it would begin and end at mutant. How do you differentiate Xavier and Magnus from some kid that can change the colour of his hair?

Sherlock Holmes: ''A bank vault was broken into without anyone actually dynamiting the doors off, stealing the keys, holding up the clerk, stealing the password, without being caught on camera or actually breaking through any of the connecting doors that lead to it. I mean... it seems to me... just to me you understand... that really does sound like the girl who can walk through solid matter who lives just down the road.''

Watson: ''But Detective, she has no criminal record!!''

Sherlock Holmes: ''Whenever you eliminate the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Or in this case, when it walks, talks and flaps like a duck, then it probably is a duck.''

BTW, I'm sensing a cultural divide here. Y'see, in Britain, we only allow certain people who need to have a gun (such as farmers) to actually have a gun as we believe that everyone has the potential to use a gun to kill someone. Americans believe that everyone should have a gun because its ''the finger that kills and not the gun.''

Britain would absolutely not allow someone who can blow up your head with a thought to go without at least the local police force and MI5 knowing about it. The other possibility would be like the universe of My Hero Academia where Quirks (mutant powers) are all illegal by default apart from trained superheroes. That is how you stop Shadowcat, you make it so that the first wall she walks through is her last.

[Nealithi]

It was Xavier who built the machine and he knows full well what it is capable of, especially afterwards. That's like building a nuclear bomb (actually a million times worse) and saying "well, I would never us it, unless someone else forced me to, so what is the problem?" The problem is that Xavier is worried about the government having the power to register mutants, yet he has personally built a machine that gives him WAY more power than that and isn't telling anyone- he is the most powerful man in the world, and nobody knows it.

The fact that someone else could abuse it doesn't make it okay for him to have it, especially since its primary purpose is essentially to spy on people and that is bad enough in itself. Even without Cerebro, he frequently uses his powers to look into peoples' minds without any permission (which is a break from other versions of the character mind), and even freeze hundreds of people in place at once, both of which are extremely invasive and mind-rapey.

And let's not forget that the human in question was driven to extremism because his own son was a piece of work who drove his mother to suicide with his own mutant powers, and that after his evil plan was foiled Magneto and Mystique came along and turned Xavier against every single human, with the super-flimsy justification that the actions of Stryker condemn the entire human race.

It doesn't matter if mutants didn't have a choice in it- it is unreasonable to expect them to not use their powers except in very restrictive ways, especially those powers- like telepathy- that innately involve violating the rights of other people in most cases. Skin colour and gender identity do not brainwash people, drain their life force or destroy buildings on the onset on puberty- your slippery slope argument is fallacious because mutant powers are completely different.

Phoenix in the 3rd movie does not follow the comic. It is established that this is just an alternate personality of Jean (at least regarding that movie) that was dangerous and out-of-control. Again, the issue is that she has the power to vaporise people (human and mutant alike), and nobody knew about it because Xavier covered it up- with disastrous results.

I'm not saying that mutant registration would have stopped the Nightcrawler attack (that is really a failure of military police and politics), but certainly that wouldn't have been possible if Nightcrawler wasn't capable of those things to begin with, and we are lucky that Nightcrawler wasn't like his dad who use those same powers to help try and start World War III of his own free will.

The point is that tracking and listing is pretty much essential and inevitable, whether mutants are registered or not, and the X-Men and Magneto are hypocrites for opposing anything like that because that is exactly what they do without anyone knowing about it, because the know the idea is sensible and has merit. Dangerous mutants are as much a threat to other mutants as they are to humans, as i keep reiterating, and the human / mutant conflict is a false dichotomy.

Point one, correct me, but I thought it was Magnus that initially designed/built Cerebro? Because Xavier has not been shown to be an engineer? Hair splitting but if you took the room and plans from him then he could not recreate it. And it seemed like it only worked properly for Xavier. Jean Grey used it in the first movie and it knocked her senseless.

If Hollywood capabilities are taken into consideration, your computer can tap every camera we have placed in all the cities and towns around the world. So spying is the most minor issue. I am not however going to defend Charles Xavier. Even in the comics he often came off as an ass. But he is one man. Do you write off all of a subset of humanity because of the actions of one or a few of them?

Stryker's son, and I ask forgiveness here. Came off to me as being abused by his father for being a mutant before he drove his mother to suicide. Stryker gave him to Xavier to 'cure' him. And Xavier could not do that. So the guy came off as an abuse victim to me for one. And while this does play to the concept of control. Did not mean to kill his mother. But how does putting his name on a list stop that?

My slippery slope is because the people wanting to do extreme things will find reasons to expand such a general and broad power. Without focusing the legal areas of such a process and list. Its existence can be used as precedent for others to go after other people they dislike.

So Phoenix was a problem caused by Xavier playing God again. See my previous point on him being an ass.

It wouldn't be a problem if he couldn't do what he does. Ignoring the third movie cure a moment as I think I have mentioned earlier many mutants would love said cure. IE Rogue. What do you do, shoot him? Is different and has potential for harm, so kill him? Force a cure that will strip away his abilities? If it does not cure the blue skin and tail with it you are sending him to die by a lynching. Because forcibly removing his powers is not just like going to someone's home and taking their legally purchased guns.

Xavier is a hypocrite, I agree with you there. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor, he has a little more reason to hate the idea of government lists of people.

As I have stated previously. My issue with the registration is it is both too far and not far enough in one move. Too far: We now have a list of every potential power and anyone with some authority can get it. Because no small town cop (or any locale's police really) could be corrupt or bigoted. And the CIA and other alphabet soup agencies would never target these people for recruitment. Add in armed forces, etc. Flipside, besides chumming the water, what does the registration do? In and of itself it does not protect a soul on either side of the debate. It does not give protections or medical treatment. It does not include promises against workplace discrimination.
It is just a list with names declaring them Other.

[Nealithi]

Sherlock Holmes: ''A bank vault was broken into without anyone actually dynamiting the doors off, stealing the keys, holding up the clerk, stealing the password, without being caught on camera or actually breaking through any of the connecting doors that lead to it. I mean... it seems to me... just to me you understand... that really does sound like the girl who can walk through solid matter who lives just down the road.''

Watson: ''But Detective, she has no criminal record!!''

Sherlock Holmes: ''Whenever you eliminate the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Or in this case, when it walks, talks and flaps like a duck, then it probably is a duck.''

BTW, I'm sensing a cultural divide here. Y'see, in Britain, we only allow certain people who need to have a gun (such as farmers) to actually have a gun as we believe that everyone has the potential to use a gun to kill someone. Americans believe that everyone should have a gun because its ''the finger that kills and not the gun.''

Britain would absolutely not allow someone who can blow up your head with a thought to go without at least the local police force and MI5 knowing about it. The other possibility would be like the universe of My Hero Academia where Quirks (mutant powers) are all illegal by default apart from trained superheroes. That is how you stop Shadowcat, you make it so that the first wall she walks through is her last.

Let's look at the same scenario and not know a girl can phase through walls. How does the same crime be committed? We have a word for it. Embezzlement.
Bank official skims money from the vault for a bit. Then one day acts shocked as his papers show just the night before the full amounts were there. Must be the mutant.

I am not seeing a divide there? Anyone with a gun does have the potential kill someone. Note the 'anyone' A gun can sit on a mantle for a century and never harm anyone in and of itself. I hate gun registration for the same reason I disagree with the mutant registration. It is a list used to go after people, Because. It does not grant them any protections and not being registered paints a target on you. No the authorities have an easy list of targets. All for political gain, not the safety of the public.
My thoughts on gun control in the US is that gun safety should be taught in schools alongside reading and writing. You don't need to teach them to be snipers or hunters. But safety.

I don't know if I posted this story here before, so please bear with me. I chose not to own firearms because of this. Twenty-seven years ago, damn that makes me feel old, I got out of the Air Force. I was living in an apartment with a friend and an acquaintance of ours worked at a gun store. He loaned us a pistol to see if we wanted to buy it. (Yes illegal and stupid, I was young) My friend was enamoured with the idea of a full clip and then that extra bullet in the chamber, ooh ahh. We had no where to go fire this thing. It was not kept close for home defense. And we had none of the tools to clean or maintain it. So he loaded the gun with the extra round, then set it on the table by the door and went to the bathroom. I went around the table, unloaded the clip and chamber. Put the empty clip back in the gun and went back to my seat to put the bullets back in the box. A friend of my roommate came in as my roommate was coming out of the bathroom. (He never locked that door) Said arriving guy picked the gun up off the table. Pointed it at my roommate and pulled the trigger. My roommate was shocked and said if he had not just used the toilet he would have soiled himself. (I cleaned up the language for this post.) The guy that came in? Yeah he thought it was a lighter and thus funny. When he found out it was a real gun? Didn't care. No harm no foul man.

That is when I decided I might be okay with a gun, maybe. But I can't trust others around me with them. How does that tie into the argument? My idea of gun control is education. I had to argue with grown men, two of them retired teachers. That semi-automatic is not a machine gun. They simply did not know the difference. Semi made automatic sound scarier to them.

So again, my issue with the mutant registration is not that mutants are harmless. It is that it is security theater that can cause harm.

[CrypticMirror]

The way to catch a bank robber is rarely to go around rounding up the usual suspects, but to look at who suddenly has unusual spending habits and work backwards. Good hunters don't follow, they wait. That little girl who walks through walls, unless she suddenly turns up for work the next morning with a brand new bright red Ferrari 308 GTS Spider, is not going to be caught because the files say she could walk through walls. She is going to be caught because she suddenly starts flashing the cash. What is gonna stop her walking through walls in the first place? A well observed and equitable unwritten social contract which prioritises rewarding moral behaviour in the first place.

[s955120]

BTW, I'm sensing a cultural divide here. Y'see, in Britain, we only allow certain people who need to have a gun (such as farmers) to actually have a gun as we believe that everyone has the potential to use a gun to kill someone. Americans believe that everyone should have a gun because its ''the finger that kills and not the gun.''

Britain would absolutely not allow someone who can blow up your head with a thought to go without at least the local police force and MI5 knowing about it. The other possibility would be like the universe of My Hero Academia where Quirks (mutant powers) are all illegal by default apart from trained superheroes. That is how you stop Shadowcat, you make it so that the first wall she walks through is her last.

I am not seeing a divide there? Anyone with a gun does have the potential kill someone. Note the 'anyone' A gun can sit on a mantle for a century and never harm anyone in and of itself. I hate gun registration for the same reason I disagree with the mutant registration. It is a list used to go after people, Because. It does not grant them any protections and not being registered paints a target on you. No the authorities have an easy list of targets. All for political gain, not the safety of the public.
My thoughts on gun control in the US is that gun safety should be taught in schools alongside reading and writing. You don't need to teach them to be snipers or hunters. But safety.

Let me provide another perspective on the cultural divide and gun control things.

I come from a country with strict gun control. 95% of my people don't have guns. And most of my people support it. How did it work for us? Very well I'll said. We have less than 100 gun crime per year, only 10% are using real gun and not some modify stell pipe that can maybe shoot one or two bullets. And it will be a huge news if there are even more than two people die from gunshot that year. So I totally support gun control in my country.

Then do I think America should apply strict gun control just like my country? Absolute not.
You see, there are many element making implement gun control easy in our country: we are an isolated island, so the import route is limited. We never have any gun market, so no commercial firearm can leak to the street. Only very few people had the experience of working in a firearm factory to have the related industrial knowledge. And people generally believe in the police and their fast respond time that they don't need guns to protect themself. None of these were true for America.

So you can see how the different experience influence how differnet countrys' view on the topic. We have a culture that believe in gun control because we had seen it implement in our environment and it works very well. And many American have a culture of not believe in gun control because they see no proof it can ever work in their environment.

And they both can be right, as there are no universal answer that fit all the environment.

[Thebestoftherest]

I do think having a list of gun owners is okay.

[pilight]

I do think having a list of gun owners is okay.

It does make things easier when you want to declare martial law

[Nealithi]

The way to catch a bank robber is rarely to go around rounding up the usual suspects, but to look at who suddenly has unusual spending habits and work backwards. Good hunters don't follow, they wait. That little girl who walks through walls, unless she suddenly turns up for work the next morning with a brand new bright red Ferrari 308 GTS Spider, is not going to be caught because the files say she could walk through walls. She is going to be caught because she suddenly starts flashing the cash. What is gonna stop her walking through walls in the first place? A well observed and equitable unwritten social contract which prioritises rewarding moral behaviour in the first place.

I agree with you. The concern is that may not be what the police do. The way the media likes to whip a frenzy on topics will fan hate and bigotry. So like the post civil war south. Something was allegedly robbed. There is a black male in town, get him. If he is lucky (Relative term) he spends the rest of his life in prison. Unlucky get killed. Oh yeah and he was absolutely innocent.

That again goes into why I think such a list is dangerous of itself.

[Nealithi]

BTW, I'm sensing a cultural divide here. Y'see, in Britain, we only allow certain people who need to have a gun (such as farmers) to actually have a gun as we believe that everyone has the potential to use a gun to kill someone. Americans believe that everyone should have a gun because its ''the finger that kills and not the gun.''

Britain would absolutely not allow someone who can blow up your head with a thought to go without at least the local police force and MI5 knowing about it. The other possibility would be like the universe of My Hero Academia where Quirks (mutant powers) are all illegal by default apart from trained superheroes. That is how you stop Shadowcat, you make it so that the first wall she walks through is her last.

I am not seeing a divide there? Anyone with a gun does have the potential kill someone. Note the 'anyone' A gun can sit on a mantle for a century and never harm anyone in and of itself. I hate gun registration for the same reason I disagree with the mutant registration. It is a list used to go after people, Because. It does not grant them any protections and not being registered paints a target on you. No the authorities have an easy list of targets. All for political gain, not the safety of the public.
My thoughts on gun control in the US is that gun safety should be taught in schools alongside reading and writing. You don't need to teach them to be snipers or hunters. But safety.

Let me provide another perspective on the cultural divide and gun control things.

I come from a country with strict gun control. 95% of my people don't have guns. And most of my people support it. How did it work for us? Very well I'll said. We have less than 100 gun crime per year, only 10% are using real gun and not some modify stell pipe that can maybe shoot one or two bullets. And it will be a huge news if there are even more than two people die from gunshot that year. So I totally support gun control in my country.

Then do I think America should apply strict gun control just like my country? Absolute not.
You see, there are many element making implement gun control easy in our country: we are an isolated island, so the import route is limited. We never have any gun market, so no commercial firearm can leak to the street. Only very few people had the experience of working in a firearm factory to have the related industrial knowledge. And people generally believe in the police and their fast respond time that they don't need guns to protect themself. None of these were true for America.

So you can see how the different experience influence how differnet countrys' view on the topic. We have a culture that believe in gun control because we had seen it implement in our environment and it works very well. And many American have a culture of not believe in gun control because they see no proof it can ever work in their environment.

And they both can be right, as there are no universal answer that fit all the environment.

That is a nice thorough answer.
Thank you.

[Thebestoftherest]

The way to catch a bank robber is rarely to go around rounding up the usual suspects, but to look at who suddenly has unusual spending habits and work backwards. Good hunters don't follow, they wait. That little girl who walks through walls, unless she suddenly turns up for work the next morning with a brand new bright red Ferrari 308 GTS Spider, is not going to be caught because the files say she could walk through walls. She is going to be caught because she suddenly starts flashing the cash. What is gonna stop her walking through walls in the first place? A well observed and equitable unwritten social contract which prioritises rewarding moral behaviour in the first place.

I agree with you. The concern is that may not be what the police do. The way the media likes to whip a frenzy on topics will fan hate and bigotry. So like the post civil war south. Something was allegedly robbed. There is a black male in town, get him. If he is lucky (Relative term) he spends the rest of his life in prison. Unlucky get killed. Oh yeah and he was absolutely innocent.

That again goes into why I think such a list is dangerous of itself.

How did this come to past.