Re: Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors,
Then why were they engaging in law enforcement activity at the start of A:AoU? The Avengers weren't reacting to an imminent threat; they located the whereabouts of suspected criminals, defended themselves from attempted murder, rounded up the members of a criminal syndicate, and then delivered them to judicial authorities.
There are blurry lines, it's not a perfect description, as I've said, but they weren't actually hunting down Hydra.
In A:AoU, they explicitly mention having taken down other Hydra bases. They were hunting Hydra.
Private fire departments also had a nasty habit of letting the fires burn unabated if you were not one of their customers, only intervening to stop them from spreading to the dwellings of their customers. Should the Avengers have the legal authority to refuse service to some people? To decide they'll save this city but not that city?
Those are the financial pitfalls I already mentioned. Private fire depts. resorted to terrible things to convince people to pay for their services, because without money the firemen starved. The Avengers don't have those pitfalls. Even if Stark Industries folded tomorrow, the Avengers are celebrities doing possibly the most eye-catching charity work in the world - they can always find funding, at least enough to keep themselves going.
And also, yeah. The Avengers don't have a responsibility to save everyone on the planet.
So, if a supervillain is threatening to destroy Moscow, the Avengers can just say, "Well, we don't like Putin, so tough day to be a Muscovite"? There's no legal system in place to compel them to save millions of people?
That's a strong argument for regulation of the Avengers right there.
They choose to do that. If they decided to take a vacation and aren't around when something bad happens, then that's just bad luck. Just like if you wound up getting in an accident in an area where there's only one doctor and he's on vacation. Whoever is there will do their best, and that's just the luck you have.
False comparison. There are places in the world without hospitals -- but the hospitals that exist are still legally obliged to treat any patients they receive. The Avengers clearly do not have a mobility problem -- so why are they not legally compelled to take action to protect any community under threat from fantastical criminals?
If the Avengers started intervening against any of those things (well, except the last one, assuming you mean people being beaten while the avengers are there, and not just summarily punishing police forces that have a history of brutality), then that would be a much stronger argument that they should be part of the govt. because they would be making obviously political decisions for large groups of people who never elected them. Saving people from an army of alien invaders isn't a political decision.
But saving people from Hydra isn't a political decision? Hydra is an organization with an explicit political agenda and plan for governance -- a plan that also involves murdering millions of people, but a plan nonetheless. What distinguishes fighting Hydra from fighting
United Russia, or fighting the
Workers' Party of Korea, or the Ku Klux Klan?
They went on the run to stop Ultron,
No, they went on the run because Banner was wanted for his Hulk rampage in Johannesburg.
Once Ultron was gone, they didn't seem to be hiding at all anymore.
Except for Banner.
Partially (although, really only Stark, Banner and Wanda). But, of course, Ultron was the result of Stark trying to control the whole playing field, just like registration...
There is a very big difference between one unelected, unaccountable person trying to "control the playing field," and many different people, elected and accountable, attempting to regulate the playing field while being answerable to the people.
It can be dangerous if someone doesn't actually have good intentions or if their intentions change.
It is
inherently dangerous for institutions to rely on one man's decency, because power inevitably corrupts. This is why governmental institutions must always be built with checks and balances, and why executive agencies must always be answerable to the people in a system of democratic control and accountability.
It's certainly not a principle to base a blanket rule one, but the paradigm governing the Avengers doesn't have to be a blanket rule. There's only a handful of them - the system can take their actual trustworthiness into account. As long as they continue to respect the summons of a court, they are still accountable. If they stop respecting that, then the govt. can always go after them anyway.
How? If the Avengers decide to put themselves above the law... exactly who is going to stop them?
This is precisely why the Avengers need to place themselves into a system of democratic accountability and regulation, and why there should be multiple Avengers teams comprised of members who are not personally loyal to one-another.
This relies on the assumption that they can be trusted to do so.
Isn't that just the same logic you hear when police go, "Hey, we investigated ourselves and cleared ourselves of any wrongdoing!" after there's a police shooting?
Not really. The police can be investigated and stopped by anyone with authority and a gun. If Thor goes nuts, you really have no choice but to call the other Avengers. No one else is capable.
You are missing the point. The point is, why should the Avengers be trusted to self-regulate?
This is another reason a system of international regulation is a good idea: Create multiple teams that answer to the same international body, as a check on the other team if they or one of their own snaps. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
That could be a better option, but almost certainly one for the future. The other teams don't seem to be anywhere near existing yet.
I mean, they keep adding superheroes. Since the first
Avengers film, we've met the Falcon, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and Ant-Man, and we're about to meet the Wasp, the Black Panther, and Spider-Man. And that's not including Deathlok and Quake and Mockingbird and Daredevil and Jessica Jones and Luke Cage and all the other superheroes we've met on TV.
Agents of SHIELD established that Inhumans are being revealed on a regular basis -- I think it's pretty clear that the conditions are right for governments to be able to locate and recruit (consensually!) superpowered people for multiple teams without personal connections to one-another.
I mean, I think that's an excellent argument for the FBI to do a better job of rooting out Hydra followers from the halls of power, but not a good argument for saying that the Avengers shouldn't have to answer to anyone else.
The same FBI, that Wilson Fisk's having a guy in almost let him get away?
And considering what happened to the US Navy's Anti-HYDRA task force, I'm not sure they would survive going against HYDRA. HYDRA isn't exactly ISIS or Al-Qaeda they're like James Bond terrorists which are way more dangerous.
Yeah -- and James Bond is an agent of MI-6 who takes orders from and answers to the democratically-elected British government.
I've always found the idea that Captain America would be against superhero registration kind of iffy. This is the guy who worked as an official superhero for the United States Army, after all. And as a believer in democracy, surely Steve understands how dangerous it is when powerful people set themselves outside of the law and refuse to be held accountable to the People through the democratic state. Setting yourself above the law while exercising executive power is a recipe for abuse and tyranny. So I tend to think there needs to be some other impetus for him to be against superhero registration -- maybe the lethal manhunt for Bucky is the key here. If Steve thinks the Accords won't so much lead to accountability as to governments engaging in extra-judicial executions of enhanced persons (and/or to superhero conscription?), I can see Steve turning against the Accords even if he'd be in favor of superhero registration in other contexts. Steve made his opposition to extra-judicial killings very clear in his opposition to Project Insight (even before Hydra was revealed) in The Winter Soldier.
Yeah, what possible reason would a WWII soldier have for being against a government entity wanting to take a select group of people, single them out, and register them?
There is a very, very large difference between saying, "If you choose to exercise executive law-enforcement power by acting as a superhero, you must work for the democratically-elected government and answer to them," and saying, "If you have superpowers, you must register with the government and/or work for them whether you want to or not."
The first option gives people a choice -- they work for the government if they want to be superheroes; if you don't want to work for the government, the only rule is that you don't get to exercise executive power by acting as a superhero. And it does not require registration if you chose not to let anyone know you have powers.
The second option is clearly oppressive. I suspect the Sokovia Accords will somehow be closer to the second option.
The only appropriate use of the Time Stone by the MCU writers would be to time travel Peggy Carter to the present day so that we can have an awesome Cap-and-Peggy-in-love-and-fight-the-bad-guys movie.
I think my brain actually threw up a little.
NO SHAME!
).