Perhaps, but then you kill that person and the power vacuum that is now created is likely to attract someone so much worse. There is no guarantee the next person will be better than the current one, and if the next one is worse, it would be your doing.
Then just get rid of the next monster. Eventually the hierarchy will learn and reform, if by no other means than by the individuals corrupting the structure being eliminated
Also there’s the potential you could do a purge of random but known issues within the structure outside of the leader themselves. Wipe out a Lavrenty Beria or Reinhardt Heidrich on occasion to show that it’s not just the leadership position itself being cursed.
Killing people who keep abusing that position of power within an exact amount of time however would either get rid of the position or stop the abuse eventually.
There’s only so many times a person in a very specific position can be struck by lightning or have a heart attack before everyone sees that position as cursed or becomes superstitious about it.
I mean, dictators have historically often met with a rather grisly end (Mussolini shot and hung upside down by his toes, Hitler blowing his own brains out, Gaddafi sodomized with a bayonet) and that doesn’t seem to stop people from pursuing the same power.
The entire theme of Death Note is that power turns people into sociopaths and that no matter how many “bad people” you kill you will never actually succeed in cleansing the world of evil, but I guess no matter how ham-fisted you make it people will still miss the point. It’s funny that a lot of people complain that Light has an unrealistically naive view of morality and yet this comment section seems to be teeming with people who are equally immature.
The entire theme of Death Note is that power turns people into sociopaths
First off, sociopathy isn’t a thing. It’s a made up term a fake psychologist made up to put people on death row in Texas for personal gain. Go listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on it. The actual diagnosis is “psychopathy”
Second, Light Yagami was already a psychopath at the start. Notice how in the show that there were 2 others that held the Death Note and they didn’t go mad with power over it.
yet this comment section seems to be teeming with people who are equally immature.
Look at all of the growing injustice and inequality in the world, spurred on by CEOs, dictators, and billionaires. Just look at health insurance, where hundreds of thousands die each year from denial of care. Look at Elon Musk and DOGE defunding USAID, which resulted in over 100,000 children dying across the world. Look at the destruction and death that Russia has brought to Ukraine to try and conquer them.
Look at everyone in this thread who looks at all of that pain and misery and would want to do something about it. You’re calling them immature? No, you’re the one who’s immature, with all of your bullshit pearl-clutching.
Here’s a bit of a tangent: when the US invaded Vietnam, there were a lot of incidents where troops were ordered to just wipe out villages of people who had nothing to do with the war, including women and children. There was also a high rate of soldiers “snapping” and shooting their officers in retaliation. Those soldiers didn’t “snap”, they were the sane ones.
First off, sociopathy isn’t a thing. It’s a made up term a fake psychologist made up to put people on death row in Texas for personal gain. Go listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on it. The actual diagnosis is “psychopathy”
I was only mirroring the language used by the person I was replying to. Great podcast though, I’m already a regular listener.
Look at all of the growing injustice and inequality in the world, spurred on by CEOs, dictators, and billionaires. Just look at health insurance, where hundreds of thousands die each year from denial of care. Look at Elon Musk and DOGE defunding USAID, which resulted in over 100,000 children dying across the world. Look at the destruction and death that Russia has brought to Ukraine to try and conquer them.
Look at everyone in this thread who looks at all of that pain and misery and would want to do something about it. You’re calling them immature? No, you’re the one who’s immature, with all of your bullshit pearl-clutching.
I agree that something must be done, and I understand where the desire to kill those responsible comes from. I feel the same frustration myself, but I also know that engaging in adventurism won’t solve jack shit. At best it can bring temporary relief, and at worst it can trigger an escalation of the violence/repression it was intended to address. The individuals who are most visibly responsible for the injustice in the world today are merely appendages of a much larger group of powerful institutions which are themselves motivated by incentives that are systemic. What I am doing here is not pearl-clutching; my objection is a strategic one, not a moral one. I won’t shed any tears for dead health insurance CEOs, oligarchs, or dictators, but I will always advocate for organizing with others to address the systemic drivers of injustice rather than acting alone and throwing your life away in an act of impotent violence. It’s better to live for a cause than to die for one.
See the problem is Light didn’t use the thing correctly. He could have written, “while suffering from a massive stroke, Senator ___ voted to pass nationalized school lunch.” Sure, the killing people sounds fun, but it’s what they do while dying that could make the world a better place.
Problem is he completely lacked a systemic critique of society and fixated on crime, which he took for granted as the cause of all problems. For Light, all evil in the world comes down to individual moral failings, and by getting rid of the criminals he was eradicating evil.
Also doesn’t help that Light was a fucking vigilante legalist of all things, if he had an actual moral structure there’s a solid chance he wouldn’t have been noticed by L for ages if at all. Oh no the Atomwaffen all killed each other in unrelated news the entirety of house Al-Saud just dropped dead, how would you even track that.
Eventually you run out of monsters to fill the position (and the supporting positions below). At that point you now have people willing to make positive changes in the world in positions of power
That is not how it works at all, and it’s actually a very childish way of thinking. There is not some finite pool of monsters these positions of power draw from, the positions of power make the monsters. “Power corrupts” is the most common trope in fiction since the advent of fiction for a reason and it’s baffling that so many people still don’t get it.
Insisting that tropes are universally true just because they’re repeated is absurd. It’s something a child would think up.
Go look at history. There’s plenty of examples of people who do the right thing when in positions of power. This is because power doesn’t corrupt - it reveals who people truly are. It’s just that selfish people are more likely to seek out power for personal gain.
Deathnote can kill in any way you want as long as it’s realistic. Not sure how they’d figure it out. Which means that at some point people will start to think divine intervention, especially if ending the war stops the heart attacks / eagle attacks / flag poles falling on said leader, or whatever other symbolism you’d choose.
Same as the death penalty IRL. You can’t know that person x is guilty and that person x not existing will make things better.
Counterpoint - you can know if leader of country x is guilty of killing others if they say they’ve done it quite openly and want to do more of it.
Perhaps, but then you kill that person and the power vacuum that is now created is likely to attract someone so much worse. There is no guarantee the next person will be better than the current one, and if the next one is worse, it would be your doing.
So? You have a death note. You can give every new entrant a 1 month trail run. Eventually people will figure out a pattern. Humans aren’t that dumb.
Then just get rid of the next monster. Eventually the hierarchy will learn and reform, if by no other means than by the individuals corrupting the structure being eliminated
Also there’s the potential you could do a purge of random but known issues within the structure outside of the leader themselves. Wipe out a Lavrenty Beria or Reinhardt Heidrich on occasion to show that it’s not just the leadership position itself being cursed.
Killing a leader doesn’t get rid of the position of power that enabled their misdeeds.
Killing people who keep abusing that position of power within an exact amount of time however would either get rid of the position or stop the abuse eventually.
There’s only so many times a person in a very specific position can be struck by lightning or have a heart attack before everyone sees that position as cursed or becomes superstitious about it.
I mean, dictators have historically often met with a rather grisly end (Mussolini shot and hung upside down by his toes, Hitler blowing his own brains out, Gaddafi sodomized with a bayonet) and that doesn’t seem to stop people from pursuing the same power.
We’re talking year long consequences, after being in power for years. And then the next leader doesn’t meet said fate.
Every month though? Different story. Especially if it’s something like getting struck by lightning
If all that happened in the same month I bet it would get some people talking tho.
No, the position is occupied by the next monster. And so on. And so on. Dang, that’s such a nifty way of getting rid of sociopaths!
The entire theme of Death Note is that power turns people into sociopaths and that no matter how many “bad people” you kill you will never actually succeed in cleansing the world of evil, but I guess no matter how ham-fisted you make it people will still miss the point. It’s funny that a lot of people complain that Light has an unrealistically naive view of morality and yet this comment section seems to be teeming with people who are equally immature.
First off, sociopathy isn’t a thing. It’s a made up term a fake psychologist made up to put people on death row in Texas for personal gain. Go listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on it. The actual diagnosis is “psychopathy”
Second, Light Yagami was already a psychopath at the start. Notice how in the show that there were 2 others that held the Death Note and they didn’t go mad with power over it.
Look at all of the growing injustice and inequality in the world, spurred on by CEOs, dictators, and billionaires. Just look at health insurance, where hundreds of thousands die each year from denial of care. Look at Elon Musk and DOGE defunding USAID, which resulted in over 100,000 children dying across the world. Look at the destruction and death that Russia has brought to Ukraine to try and conquer them.
Look at everyone in this thread who looks at all of that pain and misery and would want to do something about it. You’re calling them immature? No, you’re the one who’s immature, with all of your bullshit pearl-clutching.
Here’s a bit of a tangent: when the US invaded Vietnam, there were a lot of incidents where troops were ordered to just wipe out villages of people who had nothing to do with the war, including women and children. There was also a high rate of soldiers “snapping” and shooting their officers in retaliation. Those soldiers didn’t “snap”, they were the sane ones.
I was only mirroring the language used by the person I was replying to. Great podcast though, I’m already a regular listener.
I agree that something must be done, and I understand where the desire to kill those responsible comes from. I feel the same frustration myself, but I also know that engaging in adventurism won’t solve jack shit. At best it can bring temporary relief, and at worst it can trigger an escalation of the violence/repression it was intended to address. The individuals who are most visibly responsible for the injustice in the world today are merely appendages of a much larger group of powerful institutions which are themselves motivated by incentives that are systemic. What I am doing here is not pearl-clutching; my objection is a strategic one, not a moral one. I won’t shed any tears for dead health insurance CEOs, oligarchs, or dictators, but I will always advocate for organizing with others to address the systemic drivers of injustice rather than acting alone and throwing your life away in an act of impotent violence. It’s better to live for a cause than to die for one.
See the problem is Light didn’t use the thing correctly. He could have written, “while suffering from a massive stroke, Senator ___ voted to pass nationalized school lunch.” Sure, the killing people sounds fun, but it’s what they do while dying that could make the world a better place.
Problem is he completely lacked a systemic critique of society and fixated on crime, which he took for granted as the cause of all problems. For Light, all evil in the world comes down to individual moral failings, and by getting rid of the criminals he was eradicating evil.
Also doesn’t help that Light was a fucking vigilante legalist of all things, if he had an actual moral structure there’s a solid chance he wouldn’t have been noticed by L for ages if at all. Oh no the Atomwaffen all killed each other in unrelated news the entirety of house Al-Saud just dropped dead, how would you even track that.
I’m built different.
Never watched it.
Eventually you run out of monsters to fill the position (and the supporting positions below). At that point you now have people willing to make positive changes in the world in positions of power
That is not how it works at all, and it’s actually a very childish way of thinking. There is not some finite pool of monsters these positions of power draw from, the positions of power make the monsters. “Power corrupts” is the most common trope in fiction since the advent of fiction for a reason and it’s baffling that so many people still don’t get it.
Insisting that tropes are universally true just because they’re repeated is absurd. It’s something a child would think up.
Go look at history. There’s plenty of examples of people who do the right thing when in positions of power. This is because power doesn’t corrupt - it reveals who people truly are. It’s just that selfish people are more likely to seek out power for personal gain.
Then the replacement uses it as justification to further that endeavor.
Deathnote can kill in any way you want as long as it’s realistic. Not sure how they’d figure it out. Which means that at some point people will start to think divine intervention, especially if ending the war stops the heart attacks / eagle attacks / flag poles falling on said leader, or whatever other symbolism you’d choose.
So many corrupt preachers are gonna get struck by lighting…