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Say something nice about a villain
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It's been awhile since we've had a thread about historical villains and infamous bad people. Corrupt leaders of men, world-class forgers and thieves, genocidal idealists with a vision - as despicable as these sorts of people were, many led remarkable lives and did interesting things with their genius/power/talent. If we can be mature about this, we can discuss whether or not a villain had any bright spots during their time in the public eye. That is, bright spots that were drowned out by their heinous acts and aren't really well-known by John Q. Public. This thread is not meant to pardon a villain's crimes. Seriously. This thread is meant to discuss if these villains were as inhuman as our textbooks make them out to be. Feel free to discuss fictional villains, too. Only discussing real villains might get depressing.
Mao Zedong - even though the Chinese people still label him as a revolutionary patriot and have his body enshrined, he comes across as incompetent in Western textbooks. The squabbling Chinese civil war in the 1930s, The Great Leap Forward, Hundred Flowers, the Cultural Revolution - at one point, Chinese peasants were dismantling parts of the Great Wall to use as concrete for modern buildings with the government's blessing. Executions were rampant. Food shortages were common. Counterproductive reforms. So what did Chairman Mao do correctly? He did a good job of leading Communist troops during the Long March, when he was evading the Chinese government during the civil war, and he later planned a few successful raids on Japanese camps in China. Mao made China more industrialized, too, dragging the nation out of its early 20th century traditional agrarian ways, which is no small feat considering China held a quarter of the world's population then. He just had to step over 70 million corpses to do it.
Bill Mason - I'm reading his biography now. He ended up stealing $35 million from burglaries during his career, his targets usually rich celebrities. He wasn't terribly greedy, though. More of a thrill seeker. He stole an Olympic gold medal from Johnny Weissmuller but Mason mailed the medal back after his conscience got the better of him.
Mao Zedong - even though the Chinese people still label him as a revolutionary patriot and have his body enshrined, he comes across as incompetent in Western textbooks. The squabbling Chinese civil war in the 1930s, The Great Leap Forward, Hundred Flowers, the Cultural Revolution - at one point, Chinese peasants were dismantling parts of the Great Wall to use as concrete for modern buildings with the government's blessing. Executions were rampant. Food shortages were common. Counterproductive reforms. So what did Chairman Mao do correctly? He did a good job of leading Communist troops during the Long March, when he was evading the Chinese government during the civil war, and he later planned a few successful raids on Japanese camps in China. Mao made China more industrialized, too, dragging the nation out of its early 20th century traditional agrarian ways, which is no small feat considering China held a quarter of the world's population then. He just had to step over 70 million corpses to do it.
Bill Mason - I'm reading his biography now. He ended up stealing $35 million from burglaries during his career, his targets usually rich celebrities. He wasn't terribly greedy, though. More of a thrill seeker. He stole an Olympic gold medal from Johnny Weissmuller but Mason mailed the medal back after his conscience got the better of him.
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So...really, Aladdin is the villain here. Because...seriously.
Aladdin 2.
He was the driving force behind creating the Volkswagen.
We already got the anti-smoking Nazi bit in. Should we mention Hitler and the trains?
Nonononono - good things.
Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
Genghis Khan was so cool.
Henry II laid the foundations for the existing legal system of the UK and the United States.
Oliver Cromwell let Jews live in England openly for the first time in almost 400 years.
We're supposed to be saying nice things about villains.
Hitler and his ilk also developed the autobahn which inspired Eisenhower to create the US highway system.
Thus ensuring our reliance on oil for years to come.
Eisenhower, you son of a bitch...
That place has a horrible recidivism rate.
(they can be fictional, right?)
Oliver Stone you so cwaazzzyyy
http://www.parade.com/celebrity/hollywood-wire/2010/07/28/oliver-stone-apologizes-for-clumsy-hitler-remarks.html
For some reason, the phrase "tongued Jesus" disturbs me.
I believe there's a theory that the part about Judas' role was mistranslated. What King James describes as "betrayed" could more accurately be "handed over". This also leads to speculation that Jesus actually asked Judas to hand him over, so that the scripture would be fulfilled.
Right, wrong fascist. Sorry, I was just playing with the myth.
As for Eisenhower, the other story about how the highway system came up (the one on placards on I-80) is that he got the idea for it as a junior officer traveling cross-country in an Army convoy prior to WWI (iirc), thus leading many young officers in the American military to believe that no matter what chaps their asses today, someday they may be able to implement changes.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
As dictators go, the Emperor was pretty good. The Empire kept order and patrolled space, which allowed commerce and trade to continue. Sure, there was repression, but I doubt the average citizen was all that oppressed. It was a dictatorship that was more similar to ancient Rome than North Korea.
The Rebellion, on the other hand, basically kicked over the entire apple-cart without any real plan on what to do after the Empire was defeated. Post-Endor, the galaxy probably devolved into a bunch of mini-states run by local warlords.
Rigorous Scholarship
I was always under the impression that the world would actually be perfect if Doctor Doom was in charge of everything.
Steve Jobs beat cancer.
Rigorous Scholarship
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
He also has hilarious (from an American perspective) stuff about him in British Museums. Because from the British perspective he was all loyal and whatnot. It's amusing.
Doctor Doom has read the list on being an evil overlord so of course he'd actually make a pretty good dictator. He tends to fuck up sometimes though (I blame the cocaine)
and his minions love him.
And whenever it comes up people always end up resorting to arguing "no no no, he only did all those awesome things so that he could avoid doing these other hypothetical things that would have been TEN TIMES RADICOOLER!!!"
Which as may be, he still implemented a surprising amount of awesome considering his reputation.
**edit: also he was the coolest muppet in that political muppet show I barely remember from the late 80's.
Second coolest if you count triceratops riding cowboy Regan with superman's powers from the Genesis video.
Neoconservatism gets a lot of shit. However, I feel like its heart is in the right place. Neocons are right that the world would be a better place if more countries were democracies, and if individuals had more basic freedoms. They are also right in that America should be using our power to spread freedom and democracy. Where they went wrong were the means to do this.
So, in this sense, I feel like Bush's neoconservative was much more forgivable than past American attempts at imperialism, in particular Manifest Destiny—which was morally indistinguishable from Nazism—but also our "anti-Communism" during the Cold War, where defeating communism was more important than actually spreading freedom and democracy.
Also, perhaps it's premature to conclude this, but Bush in his second term did try to fix the Iraq War in a more or less rational, non-ideological way. He must have realized, at least partially, the extent of his administration's incompetence.
Bush's incompetence—combined with his simplistic, childish, fundamentalist ideology—are what make him a "villain," but I'm not actually prepared to say he's a bad person. Clearly he was in over his head.
I was going to mention that, but of course, it's "sort of"
Porsche had the idea for years. Hitler merely capitulated on Porche's ideas and made it happen. (building the factory, the KdF-savers program, etc). But the real post-war VW was built by the British.
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
You've just explained the whole premise of Jesus Christ Superstar.
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
Yeah, he didn't build it, or design or anything, but he was like, "this should happen" and he put in place a lot of the stuff that made it possible.