Hallo! I am behind on my Book Diary, which has me a bit worried. I’m also hoping to have a short story finished so that I can work on Camp NaNoWriMo, starting today, so I need to make sure I get on that. I hoped to also get a new Impish article out soon. Ish. We will see!
The new season of The Witcher is on Netflix, as is Nimona–but I have the DVD of SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods from the library, so I probably won’t get to all of that now. Also, I’ve started the fourth season of The Expanse.
Anyhow some reflections on Justice League Unlimited! This one’s pretty link-heavy, and I apologize.
Waller Doesn’t Need to Cover Up Much
In the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited, which I maintain is one of the greatest superhero storylines ever put to screen and is miles ahead of Civil War, it’s discovered that Amanda Waller is leading a government agency called Project Cadmus, which is meant to counter the Justice League if the League ever goes rogue. In her first appearance, Waller implies that she knows who Batman is under the mask. When he confronts her in her house during the episode “The Doomsday Sanction” (you can see the scene here), she threatens to expose him, and he threatens to do the same to her.
“I’m sure the American people will be just as interested in your activities as mine: secret weapons. Illegal cloning experiments. Bypassing Congress.”
Ah, the early 2000’s, the Bush years, when the media was absolutely convinced that if we just knew all the shady stuff that the government was up to, there’d be a public outcry and we’d fix it all. Except that’s… not really what happened, is it? Because this point of view is incredibly optimistic on precisely how much the public actually cares about being used, manipulated, and lied to.
I really don’t think that, if Batman had gone public, and revealed that a government figure with ties to past administrations was involved in all of those things, that anyone would do anything about it. At least, nothing effective. The public will probably forget about it after a few months.
I realize I sound incredibly cynical, but to wit, here are some political scandals that are public information, and yet haven’t had any major public backlash calling for reform or repercussions against those involved:
-Barack Obama’s administration ordered ten times as many drone strikes as George W. Bush. This also resulted in tons of civilian casualties, which has been documented extensively, despite assurances that it was “so precise” that it wouldn’t kill civilians.
-Human rights abuses at the border with Mexico have been going on for over a decade, and yet people tend to blame whoever is in the Oval Office as if they started the problem, instead of blaming them for failing to fix it.
-Let’s not forget about “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Guantanamo Bay’s still open, after all.
-The US government is still totally spying on you and Snowden is still a criminal in their eyes for telling us about it.
-And yeah, of course the fact that a former President kept a butt ton of classified documents in his vacation home, and yet he’s got hordes of supporters who are convinced that the law is persecuting him for minding his own business.
When the makers of Person of Interest were asked about how they felt with the Snowden leaks, considering that they totally called it on government spying, they said, “Yeah, we kind of assumed everyone would be more upset about it.” Instead, your Average Joe does not know or care what Snowden did.
The idea of “This will cause scandal if it leaks to the public!” is not as cut-and-dry as fiction would have you believe. The public is willing to excuse quite a lot if it doesn’t bother their daily lives, and especially if the figure involved is “on their side.” If that person champions the causes they care about, and if that person angers (or, let’s be real here, oppresses) their supporters hate, then they can keep going about doing their illegal activities and probably not get stopped.
So no, I don’t think if Batman leaked Cadmus documents to the American public that it would stop Waller. Considering that season also has Lex Luthor running for President, and apparently having an incredible amount of popular support–
[The show neglects to describe his platform, which is a shame because I really want to know what it is.]
–it is not hard to imagine that there is a sizable section of the public that has problems with the Justice League. No, Luthor doesn’t talk smack about the League, not straightforwardly, but he could easily make backhanded compliments and passive aggressive comments that lead people to think badly of them.
Of course, that all goes out the window when Cadmus straight-up nukes a government facility right by a city. Not that it’s Waller’s fault or knowledge, but it is something that signals the downfall of Cadmus once the full details of that get out.
If you want to do the whole ‘We have to expose this plot, and the public will react!’ thing, then you’re going to have to work really carefully for me to accept it as believable. Again, most people do not care about major scandals if it doesn’t affect them, especially for figures they’re heavily invested in. They’d have to do something incredibly, obviously, publicly horrible on camera for people to go all-in against that figure.
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