The dark side of the good guys

Is anyone else troubled that Merlin doesn't simply kill Church thugs, but fills their final seconds in this life with terror and an attack on their lifetime of faith?

Taking his side for a moment, there are things he needs to get off his chest, and he can only tell them to someone who will take them to the grave. Still, telling the dying that they are about to go to Hell is an unnecessary cruelty.

There's a parallel in our history to the order to kill Inquisitors on sight, and looking back it's now considered to have been a war crime.

On other occasions the good guys have put their ideals into practice. The perpetrators of the Delferahk massacre got trials and went to the gallows with benefit of clergy, for example.

This, btw, is good writing! Ugly wars constantly tempt people to show their worst side. Our host is realistic to show it happening.

Will the good guys catch themselves and pull themselves back before reaching the moral event horizon?

Hmm, compared to the torture and cruel deaths the Inquisition meets out they are getting off lightly IMHO.

Poker

Why would Merlin need to give a trial to people whom he had watched commit the crimes that we know they did? and how would every one of those Inquisitors get to trial in the first place?

Was he supposed to have whisked them off to Charis in his totally illegal space ship? or tie ropes around them and force march them for a few months?

The Inquisitors have shown flat out the limits they are not only willing to go, but desire to go... and there comes a time when the only way to stop the excesses is to make it known that there will be no second chances for these creatures of clyntahn.

a few seconds of terror vs weeks and months of systematic torture and abuse culminating in a brutal death? they got off lightly.

I always find that even a generation or two of separation, tends to give people a sense of moral superiority to those who actual were living in these kind of situations.

These inquisitors in particular distinguished themselves with their evil, and thus they needed to die. Could Merlin have just killed them with a well placed Sniper Round through the forehead? Most likely, it doesn't however send the statement that THIS does. I am sure there is a level of personal satisfaction involved, but meh. They had it coming.

The situation we are at now in the series is that the only trial required is, "Are you an Inquisitor". The act of being one is the immediate death penalty. Although it will be interesting to see what happens to say Stephn Maik if/when they capture him.

To be honest if you want to highlight the dark side of the good guys far more tellingly you should look at Duke Eastshare and his men. He was positively giddy about the coming opportunity to hang inquisitors, and when the Fort Tairys garrison refused to surrender he was thanking them for that. Or how about all the temple loyalist civilians Baron Green Valley has been expelling? What do you think is going to happen to them in the very near future.

Or how about that one Charisian Engineer/Technical Mission in Siddimark city, who was talking about finding absolution from God when the last Temple Loyalist in Siddimark chokes out his final maggot ridden breath on the end of a rope?

They are still a looooong ways from the kind of atrocities that you would see from people like the Waffen SS, or the Red Army under Stalin. In fact implying there is some sort of comparison is an insult to all the people who were killed.

That being said, this war IS most definitely starting to get uglier and uglier. Human nature can only stare into such atrocities for so long before they start responding in kind.

Snipping for brevity -

Direwolf18 wrote:I always find that even a generation or two of separation, tends to give people a sense of moral superiority to those who actual were living in these kind of situations.

...

They are still a looooong ways from the kind of atrocities that you would see from people like the Waffen SS, or the Red Army under Stalin. In fact implying there is some sort of comparison is an insult to all the people who were killed.

That being said, this war IS most definitely starting to get uglier and uglier. Human nature can only stare into such atrocities for so long before they start responding in kind.

There are still ideals of human moral sentiment and behavior from which we can measure distances, and the good guys aren't sitting on those peaks.

But part of measuring how we compare to those ideals has to be accounting for the pressure the person on the spot has pushing them down that mountain. Brutally offended compassion will be one of those pressures. If someone had some Olympian detachment that could look on death camps - on Earth or Safehold - and be unmoved but simply put ticks on the perpetrators' account for balancing, that person may remain safely at that peak - but they're also totally inhuman, with the living heart of our need for justice to condemn acts that brutally offend our compassion dead in that Olympian chest.

Bad things will make good people want bad things for bad people. Give the good people a chance, and some of those bad things will be done. Some of them should be done. Some of the rest should be forgiven, while still acknowledging that not doing it would have been a lot better. And we've got institutions of justice to keep it from going too far, too often, along with practices of apology and forgiveness and compassionate ideals to take edges off retribution sometimes and put feuds to bed.

Merlin with the inquisitors didn't do much more than strip away the falsehoods that justified, in the inquisitor's mind, what he'd done, and punished him appropriately within the means available. Punishment while leaving the wrongdoer in the dark still about the wrong strikes me as a whole lot worse. Oh, yes, he quite enjoyed it, in a way that isn't exactly a moral credit to him and probably isn't a part of a healthy long-term habit. (Though someone who wouldn't enjoy it, under the circumstances, probably has a larger package of wrong with them.) All that's worth noting, but on the scale of wickedness, it's a little twitchy tick near the bottom, while the Bad-O-Meter makes a loud noise and breaks around what the Inquisition does.

I suggest that we go look in the mirror. We all have a dark side. And we've all occasionally given way to it whether we're willing to admit it or not. If we've never been in the pressure cooker the way Merlin and the other good guys in RFC's story have, we should be grateful.

Don

Morden wrote:Was he supposed to have whisked them off to Charis in his totally illegal space ship? or tie ropes around them and force march them for a few months?

No, because in the two cases I'm thinking of, they had seen him with his governors turned off and Knew Too Much. They were a strategic security risk and leaving them alive would have risked the lives of millions.

Offering them Last Rites and giving them an instant death wouldn't cost anything, though.

Inquisitors captured on the battlefield are a security risk, but not a strategic one. Off to POW camp with them, while collecting evidence of their war crimes so they can be tried and hanged. Segregating them from the other POWs would meet every legitimate security need that the Commissar Order accomplished.

Of course, the good guys are not as bad as the bad guys. Psychological torture and unneeded summary executions are always a dark side.

Direwolf18 wrote:snip
To be honest if you want to highlight the dark side of the good guys far more tellingly you should look at Duke Eastshare and his men. He was positively giddy about the coming opportunity to hang inquisitors, and when the Fort Tairys garrison refused to surrender he was thanking them for that. Or how about all the temple loyalist civilians Baron Green Valley has been expelling? What do you think is going to happen to them in the very near future.

Or how about that one Charisian Engineer/Technical Mission in Siddimark city, who was talking about finding absolution from God when the last Temple Loyalist in Siddimark chokes out his final maggot ridden breath on the end of a rope?

They are still a looooong ways from the kind of atrocities that you would see from people like the Waffen SS, or the Red Army under Stalin. In fact implying there is some sort of comparison is an insult to all the people who were killed.

That being said, this war IS most definitely starting to get uglier and uglier. Human nature can only stare into such atrocities for so long before they start responding in kind.

Direwolf18, your examples are better than mine. Add in the captain who wanted to continue firing on the Church ship after it surrendered, and who was just barely stopped by his XO.

Again, it's good writing to show the good guys suffering the moral consequences of staring into the abyss. It's likely to get worse.

The current policy with repect to inquisitors was declared from the pulpit of the cathredral in Telesberg by no less than the ultimate good guy, Archbishop Maikel, in the aftermath of the murder of Manthyr and his people. Presumably that was worked out in the inner circle by the initiative of the crown.

I understand the why of the policy. But I am uncomfortable with it. I think it should be changed. Punishment should be restricted to actual criminal behavior.

Don

n7axw wrote:The current policy with repect to inquisitors was declared from the pulpit of the cathredral in Telesberg by no less than the ultimate good guy, Archbishop Maikel, in the aftermath of the murder of Manthyr and his people. Presumably that was worked out in the inner circle by the initiative of the crown.

I understand the why of the policy. But I am uncomfortable with it. I think it should be changed. Punishment should be restricted to actual criminal behavior.

Don

I agree. However... Are there likely to be inquisitors who are not conspirators to the summary execution of people for the "crime" of exercising freedom of thought or conscience? I have to think there's a serious presumption of guilt that's fair on Safehold at this time for inquisitors that way. And they are unlikely all to be practically able to be kept in custody with specific evidence gathered before a court that can deliver all the niceties of the law.

There's a war on and the rule of law is going to get bruised pretty badly, where you don't just suspend a lot of the expectations of it.

If and when the ICA can find the one honest inquisitor out there who is doing his best not to be Clyntahn's hand on Safehold's throat, I hope that they can suspend that judgment in his case. But if it should happen that, say, Staiphan Maik really shouldn't be lumped in with so much of the rest of the Inquisition, it may be asking too much of Charis' tolerance and access and availability of the information to exonerate him to spare him what too many others deserve.

Justice is going to have to be a rough approximation here, at best.