And so another painful transformation begins. Like Joyce, it seems Dorothy will also suffer the collapse of a central part of her identity, based on lies she was fed as a child.
For Joyce, it was Evangelist motivations. For Dorothy, it’s her ultimate goal of becoming President, inspired by an over-idealized conception of politics she’s had since grade school.
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is deconsecrated…”
I mean arguably this is what college is for. To challenge, maybe even break your preconceptions and ideals as you educate yourself and form new ones. Trying, hopefully becoming a complete person.
I agree college is as much about learning to be a person as it is about learning math or science. Then again in many ways the process of growing as a person and the growing pain that comes with it never really ends (well, you know, until you do, but thus is life or … err… death as it were).
Her parents didn’t push her in this direction. They seemed to want her to do whatever makes her happy.
I’d love to know why she wants to be president.
This ‘you must be evil to be president’ nonsense is something I’d have thought Dorothy would have heard before. If you really think the government is so terrible, get involved with local government.
I think we’ve kind of seen why she wants to be president in how she treats her friends. Dorothy feels a compulsion to take care of everyone for them (even when they don’t need her to), and so her desire to be president is likely that but on the grandest scale. If I had to project a little bit onto her, I’d wager it’s partially because she was raised with so much support, gets the notion ingrained that ‘you can be anything you want to be with enough effort’, and what she wants to be is that person who takes care of everyone’s needs. She has the intellect and self-confidence to believe she can actually do that and can fix everything for everyone, but also the naive optimism to maybe know but not truly register that that… just can’t actually be done. That her dream is simply a childish fantasy no matter how much practical thought and effort she puts into trying to make it work.
Probably because her interests civic-oriented and this is the most unique and unattainable job in the field. It’s about the thrill of achievement. Based on me having been a Dorothy until about 23 years of age.
Kinda important to remember Dorothy becoming disillusioned with becoming President is kind of a consequence of American politics going to pot in real life. At the start of the strip her dream was corny but didn’t have that bad implications. Same way as to how Robin’s storyline happened in 2008 and had to uh, go through some changes.
Mnemnosyne
The start of 2008 was much, much later than the start of all US presidents needing to do at least a few horrible things no matter what. That started with George Washington. This would have been true regardless of how politics changed in the last fifteen years (at least, in any realistic fashion; I suppose one could come up with some imaginary situation in which the last fifteen years usher on a golden age where presidents no longer need to do bad things).
I guess William Henry Harrison may be an exception. Did he have to do anything horrible during the 31 days he was President?
Witch
Can any US president during the period slavery was legal be considered good?
By the standards we’re using here, you can certainly find war crimes to accuse him of.
“War is Hell”, after all.
temperaryobsessor
Yea the whole burning Southern fields thing.
Xaeon
I don’t think it’s fair to judge historical figures morals based on modern moral standards any more than it’s fair to judge their intelligence based on modern scientific understandings.
zee
Hmmm nah imma say owning human beings and systematically torturing them is pretty bad regardless of time period.
thejeff
I mean, I think so, but then I would since I work on modern moral standards.
It was widely accepted practice for some 5000+ years.
Wizard
Slavery originated as an alternative to the indiscriminate slaughter of defeated enemies, so it was arguably an improvement. Which just goes to show that something can be really bad, yet still be better than what it replaced.
not someone else
And it’s almost like part of the reason we popped off a war about it was in part because a significant number of people understood that before we abolished most of it.
Hof1991
Know who knew slavery was wrong? Every enslaved person ever. Start with Hagar. Add in Spartacus.
thejeff
Enslaved people didn’t want to be slaves – usually. Some societies had high ranking slaves who were more privileged than most free people. Imperial officials and the like. Since you’re citing a Bible story, consider Joseph, enslaved, but also vizier in Egypt.
Others escaped from slavery and then took slaves of their own.
BBCC
As someone with a history degree I strongly disagree. Something doesn’t stop being wrong because of its time period and just because something is widely accepted doesn’t make it right. You end up excusing a lot of awful shit with logic like that. And it always assumes that ‘widely accepted practice’ means ‘nobody knew it was wrong’ when that’s very rarely true. Nobody can know scientific facts that haven’t been discovered yet, but everyone had the tools to know that owning other people is wrong but they chose to do it anyway.
temperaryobsessor
As someone complicit in global warming and plenty of other terrible things, really well put.
BBCC
Exactly! There are people who don’t care or really actively take part in global warming, but there are also people who know it’s wrong and at least try to help in the areas they can. Same with all sorts of terrible things. And future generations will wonder why anyone didn’t want to help (she said hopefully).
Snail
…what the fuck?
Sorry, is this argument specifically in reference to US slavery and/or First Nations genocide?
Because no, I’m going to judge the hell out of people who *kidnapped, claimed ownership of, exploited, tortured, and murdered* other human beings in order to steal their stuff/labor. I’m going to judge them *almost* as hard as they were judged by their human rights advocate, abolitionist, and slave/ex-slave/First Nations freedom fighter contemporaries, all of whom did in fact exist since before the United States was officially a country.
Cultural normalization of atrocity is a hell of a thing, and can absolutely warp the minds and consciences of people who could have been decent human beings in a different environment, but that doesn’t make it- or them- okay. Donald Trump probably could have been a good person if he wasn’t raised by Fred Trump, and we don’t excuse his bullshit because of that. I promise you that throughout all of human history, humans have been capable of recognizing that slavery, torture, and genocide were evil.
Lumino
John Brown has entered the channel.
thejeff
Interesting philosophical question. Assume a Northern President who didn’t own slaves personally and opposed the institution within the bounds of the law – perhaps proposing legislation to ban it or at least prevent its expansion beyond the current slave states.
Would he still be considered not good simply for running a country that had slavery, despite having no legal power to change that?
Nedlum
John Quincy Adams was an abolitionist, oppsed admitting Texas because it would expand slavery, and litigated before the Supreme Court for the prisoners of the Amistad.
Keulen
William Henry Harrison is one of the rare cases of a president who, due to dying in office so soon, did all his terrible deeds before becoming president. Mainly screwing the Native American tribes out of their land and supporting slavery in the part of the US that eventually became Indiana.
Hof1991
Harrison was elected because he was a war criminal.
What’s that quote from, NG? Looking it up, I’m seeing
-Dumbing of Age comments
-A book about Marxism and modernism
-A novel about Chernobyl
What’s the source that inspires you?
YUP. they said they aint gonna raise production quotas, even though people like me can barely work or even FUNCTION without them T_T
phony balonga feel-good wars like the “war on drugs” are all about the drip-feed of patriotism until you realize they come at the expense of actual people and their lives
Coulda sworn it’s from _The Tempest_, but you’re right. It’s a quote of an allusion, perhaps.
Laura
Act IV, scene 1
PROSPERO:
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
StClair
I quoted it ten years ago, when the servers for the MMO City of Heroes shut down.
Wonder if this is setting up a period of Dorothy rushing into questionable decisions because why bother if she doesn’t have to worry about elections? Everyone in their dorm was so convinced it was Joyce who was going to be the one going wild they’d be blindsided.
Relax, Dorothy, America is far too misogynist for you to have a chance of ever getting close in the first place. America only wants old white guys for president.
Presidents have VERY little control over funding–that’s absolutely Congress’ bailiwick, and it’s one of the few they haven’t surrendered to the Executive Branch over the years.
She could theoretically make tweaks in programs which she has say in, but those are generally also kept on a tight leash. She could redeploy troops, for instance, but she couldn’t actually close the military base which those troops were originally stationed at–pork-barrel politics generally keeps those in the districts represented by someone the party in power wants to stay in power.
thejeff
Yeah, there’s a very weird vibe here, that’s almost like scapegoating the President and letting the rest of the government off the hook. Not to mention the rest of the population.
As President, you likely could bring most of our overseas troops home – though some might have treaty commitments not so easily revoked?
But that comes with huge consequences. Biden ended the occupation of Afghanistan, using Trump’s withdrawal deal as a excuse. Arguably that’s less imperialism and and ending a war crime, if you consider that occupation a war crime, but there are a lot of Afghan women not celebrating the evil Empire leaving. What was the right thing to do there?
That’s the kind of decision Presidents have to make.
Mark
Indeed, I’m surprised we can pay anybody enough to take a job in which you wake up most mornings knowing that you face at least one decision in which every choice is bad.
Aussir
There’s a quote from the webcomic Girl Genius I have always liked that communicates the general feeling here:
“Could you burn people down – women and children – even if you *knew* they had become monsters? The baron can. The baron has. I respect him for that, but I don’t want to *be* him. No sane man would.”
thejeff
That’s my general take, but I don’t think it’s Dorothy’s and I don’t think it’s the take of a lot of commentators here.
I get a serious feeling of “The baron is evil for burning those people down. He needs to be stopped.”
455 thoughts on “War criminal”
Ana Chronistic
esprit de l’escalier kicking in in 3… 2… ?
True Survivor
I never knew that term. Thanks!
Doctor_Who
Never thought Dorothy as a politician would remind me of Walkyverse Robin, but this has the same vibe as her attempt to outlaw cancer.
Needfuldoer
Except Dorothy doesn’t have wacky cartoon hijinks on her side.
Hoboturtle
I mean Dorothy hasn’t tried wearing a sombrero. We can’t rule that out yet
The Wellerman
And so another painful transformation begins. Like Joyce, it seems Dorothy will also suffer the collapse of a central part of her identity, based on lies she was fed as a child.
For Joyce, it was Evangelist motivations. For Dorothy, it’s her ultimate goal of becoming President, inspired by an over-idealized conception of politics she’s had since grade school.
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is deconsecrated…”
Dana
She should maybe adjust her goal to being a good Congresscritter. Mine rocks pretty hard, so it can be done.
ValdVin
Congresscritter! Upvoted. I’m not the only person who uses that.
Victor
I’m glad somebody cancels out mine, who is demonstrably evil.
Opus the Poet
I want somebody to cancel out both of my senators, Cruz and Coryn. One is pure evil, the other about 90%.
Sirksome
I mean arguably this is what college is for. To challenge, maybe even break your preconceptions and ideals as you educate yourself and form new ones. Trying, hopefully becoming a complete person.
True Survivor
I agree college is as much about learning to be a person as it is about learning math or science. Then again in many ways the process of growing as a person and the growing pain that comes with it never really ends (well, you know, until you do, but thus is life or … err… death as it were).
Zach
Her parents didn’t push her in this direction. They seemed to want her to do whatever makes her happy.
I’d love to know why she wants to be president.
This ‘you must be evil to be president’ nonsense is something I’d have thought Dorothy would have heard before. If you really think the government is so terrible, get involved with local government.
Gizen
I think we’ve kind of seen why she wants to be president in how she treats her friends. Dorothy feels a compulsion to take care of everyone for them (even when they don’t need her to), and so her desire to be president is likely that but on the grandest scale. If I had to project a little bit onto her, I’d wager it’s partially because she was raised with so much support, gets the notion ingrained that ‘you can be anything you want to be with enough effort’, and what she wants to be is that person who takes care of everyone’s needs. She has the intellect and self-confidence to believe she can actually do that and can fix everything for everyone, but also the naive optimism to maybe know but not truly register that that… just can’t actually be done. That her dream is simply a childish fantasy no matter how much practical thought and effort she puts into trying to make it work.
StClair
This is pretty much my take as well.
Needfuldoer
Yup, agreed.
Opus the Poet
She really needs to go into the judiciary to fulfill that desire.
APW
Probably because her interests civic-oriented and this is the most unique and unattainable job in the field. It’s about the thrill of achievement. Based on me having been a Dorothy until about 23 years of age.
Nono
Kinda important to remember Dorothy becoming disillusioned with becoming President is kind of a consequence of American politics going to pot in real life. At the start of the strip her dream was corny but didn’t have that bad implications. Same way as to how Robin’s storyline happened in 2008 and had to uh, go through some changes.
Mnemnosyne
The start of 2008 was much, much later than the start of all US presidents needing to do at least a few horrible things no matter what. That started with George Washington. This would have been true regardless of how politics changed in the last fifteen years (at least, in any realistic fashion; I suppose one could come up with some imaginary situation in which the last fifteen years usher on a golden age where presidents no longer need to do bad things).
I guess William Henry Harrison may be an exception. Did he have to do anything horrible during the 31 days he was President?
Witch
Can any US president during the period slavery was legal be considered good?
sun tzu
I mean, Abraham Lincoln, but that’s cheating.
thejeff
By the standards we’re using here, you can certainly find war crimes to accuse him of.
“War is Hell”, after all.
temperaryobsessor
Yea the whole burning Southern fields thing.
Xaeon
I don’t think it’s fair to judge historical figures morals based on modern moral standards any more than it’s fair to judge their intelligence based on modern scientific understandings.
zee
Hmmm nah imma say owning human beings and systematically torturing them is pretty bad regardless of time period.
thejeff
I mean, I think so, but then I would since I work on modern moral standards.
It was widely accepted practice for some 5000+ years.
Wizard
Slavery originated as an alternative to the indiscriminate slaughter of defeated enemies, so it was arguably an improvement. Which just goes to show that something can be really bad, yet still be better than what it replaced.
not someone else
And it’s almost like part of the reason we popped off a war about it was in part because a significant number of people understood that before we abolished most of it.
Hof1991
Know who knew slavery was wrong? Every enslaved person ever. Start with Hagar. Add in Spartacus.
thejeff
Enslaved people didn’t want to be slaves – usually. Some societies had high ranking slaves who were more privileged than most free people. Imperial officials and the like. Since you’re citing a Bible story, consider Joseph, enslaved, but also vizier in Egypt.
Others escaped from slavery and then took slaves of their own.
BBCC
As someone with a history degree I strongly disagree. Something doesn’t stop being wrong because of its time period and just because something is widely accepted doesn’t make it right. You end up excusing a lot of awful shit with logic like that. And it always assumes that ‘widely accepted practice’ means ‘nobody knew it was wrong’ when that’s very rarely true. Nobody can know scientific facts that haven’t been discovered yet, but everyone had the tools to know that owning other people is wrong but they chose to do it anyway.
temperaryobsessor
As someone complicit in global warming and plenty of other terrible things, really well put.
BBCC
Exactly! There are people who don’t care or really actively take part in global warming, but there are also people who know it’s wrong and at least try to help in the areas they can. Same with all sorts of terrible things. And future generations will wonder why anyone didn’t want to help (she said hopefully).
Snail
…what the fuck?
Sorry, is this argument specifically in reference to US slavery and/or First Nations genocide?
Because no, I’m going to judge the hell out of people who *kidnapped, claimed ownership of, exploited, tortured, and murdered* other human beings in order to steal their stuff/labor. I’m going to judge them *almost* as hard as they were judged by their human rights advocate, abolitionist, and slave/ex-slave/First Nations freedom fighter contemporaries, all of whom did in fact exist since before the United States was officially a country.
Cultural normalization of atrocity is a hell of a thing, and can absolutely warp the minds and consciences of people who could have been decent human beings in a different environment, but that doesn’t make it- or them- okay. Donald Trump probably could have been a good person if he wasn’t raised by Fred Trump, and we don’t excuse his bullshit because of that. I promise you that throughout all of human history, humans have been capable of recognizing that slavery, torture, and genocide were evil.
Lumino
John Brown has entered the channel.
thejeff
Interesting philosophical question. Assume a Northern President who didn’t own slaves personally and opposed the institution within the bounds of the law – perhaps proposing legislation to ban it or at least prevent its expansion beyond the current slave states.
Would he still be considered not good simply for running a country that had slavery, despite having no legal power to change that?
Nedlum
John Quincy Adams was an abolitionist, oppsed admitting Texas because it would expand slavery, and litigated before the Supreme Court for the prisoners of the Amistad.
Keulen
William Henry Harrison is one of the rare cases of a president who, due to dying in office so soon, did all his terrible deeds before becoming president. Mainly screwing the Native American tribes out of their land and supporting slavery in the part of the US that eventually became Indiana.
Hof1991
Harrison was elected because he was a war criminal.
C.T. Phipps
I assumed being President was Dorothy suggesting to herself, “What is the absolute biggest bestest highest goal I can pursue?”
StClair
“… which will allow me to
fixhelp the most people?”C.T. Phipps
I don’t think that necessarily is a primary part of it. She doesn’t have any central policies.
Laura
What’s that quote from, NG? Looking it up, I’m seeing
-Dumbing of Age comments
-A book about Marxism and modernism
-A novel about Chernobyl
What’s the source that inspires you?
not someone else
It’s originally from the Communist Manifesto.
The Wellerman
It’s a quote by Karl Marx, from the Communist Manifesto.
So tempted to write a mega-paragraph about the German Ideology, but alas, I got not the spoons after a full day of coding without Ritalin.
If only I could get inspiration to make DoA fan games.
Laura
Dang, yo’! That’s heavy sh**!
The Wellerman
RIGHT!??!?! The DEA is a piece of shit ?
Laura
DEA? You mean, related to the Ritalin shortage?
The Wellerman
YUP. they said they aint gonna raise production quotas, even though people like me can barely work or even FUNCTION without them T_T
phony balonga feel-good wars like the “war on drugs” are all about the drip-feed of patriotism until you realize they come at the expense of actual people and their lives
Laura
**I hope your ship comes in, NG.**
Mark
Coulda sworn it’s from _The Tempest_, but you’re right. It’s a quote of an allusion, perhaps.
Laura
Act IV, scene 1
PROSPERO:
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
StClair
I quoted it ten years ago, when the servers for the MMO City of Heroes shut down.
(but now, it’s back! after a fashion. 🙂 )
Insanenoodlyguy
I’d prefer she doubles down and we get the War Criminal Dorothy Arc.
The Wellerman
Eh, war crimes happen every day. I’ll tell you what doesn’t happen every day — Booster vs Raidah.
Hilen
Ooooooh myyyy gooodness.
That would absolutely rock.
Archieve
Wonder if this is setting up a period of Dorothy rushing into questionable decisions because why bother if she doesn’t have to worry about elections? Everyone in their dorm was so convinced it was Joyce who was going to be the one going wild they’d be blindsided.
Masumi
They can go wild together!
Mark
She’s Dorothy. She’s going to think it through and come out the other side with a plan and a spreadsheet.
Durandal_1707
Relax, Dorothy, America is far too misogynist for you to have a chance of ever getting close in the first place. America only wants old white guys for president.
StClair
except for that one time we elected a black guy and half the country lost their minds.
thejeff
Sure as hell weren’t going to follow that up with a woman though.
shadowcell
Dumbing of Age Book 13: If They Handed Me a Checkbox for War Crimes I Would Simply Check “No”
newlland(Henryvolt)
I am down for this title.
anon
Cut out military funding and do as much ‘good’ as she can/has planned before she gets impeached/rioted out or so lol
Freemage
Presidents have VERY little control over funding–that’s absolutely Congress’ bailiwick, and it’s one of the few they haven’t surrendered to the Executive Branch over the years.
She could theoretically make tweaks in programs which she has say in, but those are generally also kept on a tight leash. She could redeploy troops, for instance, but she couldn’t actually close the military base which those troops were originally stationed at–pork-barrel politics generally keeps those in the districts represented by someone the party in power wants to stay in power.
thejeff
Yeah, there’s a very weird vibe here, that’s almost like scapegoating the President and letting the rest of the government off the hook. Not to mention the rest of the population.
As President, you likely could bring most of our overseas troops home – though some might have treaty commitments not so easily revoked?
But that comes with huge consequences. Biden ended the occupation of Afghanistan, using Trump’s withdrawal deal as a excuse. Arguably that’s less imperialism and and ending a war crime, if you consider that occupation a war crime, but there are a lot of Afghan women not celebrating the evil Empire leaving. What was the right thing to do there?
That’s the kind of decision Presidents have to make.
Mark
Indeed, I’m surprised we can pay anybody enough to take a job in which you wake up most mornings knowing that you face at least one decision in which every choice is bad.
Aussir
There’s a quote from the webcomic Girl Genius I have always liked that communicates the general feeling here:
“Could you burn people down – women and children – even if you *knew* they had become monsters? The baron can. The baron has. I respect him for that, but I don’t want to *be* him. No sane man would.”
thejeff
That’s my general take, but I don’t think it’s Dorothy’s and I don’t think it’s the take of a lot of commentators here.
I get a serious feeling of “The baron is evil for burning those people down. He needs to be stopped.”
Jonah Sanville
my smart girl just wants to help people
True Survivor