Well, no. Because here is the difference: A police officer or soldier can be disarmed when not on duty. A superhuman can not. Given that the UN placed their superhumans under house arrest it was clear that they weren't interested in controlling their mission, they were interested in controlling them. They wanted Winter Soldiers, people they could drag out to solve problems and stick on ice when not in use.
Phew. Okay, this is gonna an annoying argument, I can tell.
It is pretty clear from the movies that leaving the Avengers unsupervised is a bad,
bad idea. The last time that was done, Iron Man created
Ultron, which would be a sensible enough reason to put him under supervision.
Besides, there are a helluva
other sensible reason why the Avengers would be under house arrest or would have their movements limited by law instead of the UN wanting them to "become Winter Soldiers":
- Natasha Romanov is a person of interest in I-don't-even-know-how-many assassinations and extralegal activities that don't have statutes of limitations, and considering the suspicions levelled at her in Winter Soldier, she would probably be considered a dangerous flight risk or a vital eyewitness to the HYDRA trials by any sensible judge, past service to the global community be damned, and thus be ordered to be confined and observed.
- Vision can shoot laser beams, and he's a newly born 'human' being struggling to learn social customs and measuring his strength -- him being supervised makes perfect sense.
- Rhodes and Wilson are active-duty and reserve military members who can in all likelihood be legally ordered to remain in a specific place to be called up.
- Scarlet Witch is a mix of Natasha's problems (she's a person of interest in criminal activity by being a HYDRA "volunteer" and possibly aiding and abetting genocide) and Vision (she has powers that she hasn't yet evidenced to be able to handle maturely and safely for society).
- Do I seriously need to explain Iron Man being left unsupervised being a bad idea?
- And Captain America has previously demonstrated demonstrated a willingness to resist and evade a legitimate arrest warrant -- even though it was one handed out on false pretenses.
Every single Avenger has an entirely sensible and valid reason to be under house arrest, and all of them have potentially violated international humanitarian law in Sokovia, meaning their victims could demand their actions being scrutinised in a court of law -- which means they could be put under house arrest pending trial or because they don't want the Avengers causing similar levels of collateral damage when it might
not be justified.
Just to make something clear: I'm not looking at this from the perspective of the viewer with all our intimate knowledge of the characters involved, Aaron. I'm looking at this like
a normal reasonable bystander would, someone who doesn't know these people intimately. There are many sensible reasons why people would put any single one of the Avengers under house arrest, limit their movements, and have them observed and controlled that also apply to any other ordinary human being. That's what "oversight" means.
And if the world was genuinely in danger of being destroyed... Well, the Avengers could ask to be released to deal with it, or break themselves out and deal with it and be presumably vindicated later as they were in Sokovia. I actually assume that the Sokovia Accords are meant to create exactly that possibility, especially because Iron Man is shown to be allowed to go after Bucky and later after Cap to bring them in, but only under the supervision of Ross (and thus by implication the executive branch of the US).
And even if they were detained or put under house arrest and only released to deal with world-threatening crises... I'll be honest, and no matter how harsh it sounds,
that doesn't bother me all that much. With great power comes great resposibility, and with great power and responsibility comes great oversight. That applies to all of us normal human beings, and I certainly think it should also apply to superhumans.
This is why the X-Men movies trying to put powerful mutants as stand-ins for disenfranchised and disadvantaged minorities don't work, incidentally.
This is also where my big beef with superhero concepts
in general comes from: individuals are given
hilariously wide latitude to make decisions that impact the lives of possibly millions to billions of people without the civilian populace trying to bring them to heel like any sensible government IRL would, and if the government
tries to do that, it's explicitly or implicitly portrayed as a bunch of incompetent or outright malicious power-hungry oligarchs and intellectual dullards instead of intelligent converned citizens that wish to avoid creating further harm to the world. And generally, the superhero are shown to be "justified" or "right" later for some bizarre, convoluted reason and any attempts at oversight are doomed to fail because of greed and short-sightedness. It just
smacks of anti-establishment 'Might Makes Right' Übermensch bullshit.
Civil War at least goes to the effort of showing that Cap
isn't right and justified when he tries to evade any and all oversight, and he even acknowledges it himself. It balances it out by trying to show that oversight can be corrupt, inefficient, and ironically lack in oversight as well with Iron Man and Ross being hypocrites about the entire thing, but it
still doesn't show the government as a possibly reasonably concerned citizen and thus perpetuates the anti-establishment stereotypes I mentioned above.
And that sucks balls.
Yup. Which is why in a sane world we'd not even try to impose oversight on them. The moment the Nukes start thinking for themselves is the moment we normal humans cease to be the rulers of the planet. If the only thing that can hold the monopoly of force is superhumans than the superhumans are the government and civilian government exists only at their sufferance. Our best bet is to treat them as well as possible in the hopes of their natural empathy making them act in our best interests rather than attempting to control people who we can't control and just making them angry at us.
MCU isn't a world where all men are, in fact, created equal. It is a world of Great Men. The MCU is a world where Ayn Rand is right. If that scares you, it should.
Well, considering the above, we at least seem to agree that the superhero genre seems to have some pretty fundamental ethical problems.
I just
absolutely refuse to let the hypothetical solution to this scenario be "let's allow the superhumans to create an oligarchy and refuse to enforce reasonable oversight, thus letting our democratic institutions exist at the sufferance of superpowered folks who are potentially quite,
quite unstable". That's really no better than unfettered feudalism, and even historical feudalism had checks and balances and thus "oversight" in a very basic, limited way.
Besides, the movie shows how a single individual can make the Avengers dance like a marionette on its strings with the right information and the right incentives, and he uses it to drive them apart and shatter the public trust in the Avengers. I am somehow unconvinced that the same couldn't be done in reverse; that there would
never be well-intentioned, concerned, and intelligent individuals who are willing and able to create systems that would balance out the various dangers and concers both superhumans and normals have, and that these systems will always be unacceptable and always doomed to fail.
But I guess nobody wants to read or watch the adventures of Richard "Dick" Lively, totally muggle Head Commissioner of the United Nations Multilateral Superhuman Control Treaty Drafting Committee. No matter how actually
interesting and
relevant it would be. :-/
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