“Tonight’s the night….”

-Needlessly creepy breakfast montage plays-

Hol' up

Wait a minute

Kill that fash

Put a brick in it

I get what you're saying, where you need more solutions to a problem than just violence if you want long term change, but the metaphor you used implies that violence should not be considered.

Violence isn't the answer, it's an answer, one of many.

Famously, the human rights gained by movements using violent tactics, such as the abolitionists, suffragettes, the civil rights movement, the ANC, were all very short-lived. Hollow victories, all.

No wonder states rarely solve problems! Their heroin usage is symptom management! /s

the thing is- Aang himself understands that his strict adherence to his values is not always a positive thing, i remember in one of the comics (or a later season) he outright calls it his own flaw

if not for the lion turtle giving him an alternative moments before, he'd have to either kill, or watch the world be destroyed

he later has to face that flaw again (actually this time) in the big graphic novels that came out, they're really good btw. give them a read if you have the time to spare

Korra is also like extremely lib pilled (THe entire message is like "Extremism is bad folks")

Write a strongly worded letter, and then tell your nonspeaking autistic manservant that you want to become a superhero. You can pretend to be a cowardly dandy and your assistant can pretend to be deaf with an intellectual disability.

Iroh is not a pacifist. He is just very selective about the use of deadly force.

Iroh tries to teach zuko how to kill his enemies unflinchingly with "cold-blooded" lightning, and when that fails, teaches zuko to redirect lightning, which he knows is — and makes clear to be —explicitly deadly force, "to turn your enemy's energy against them". He acknowledges that, if he were to defeat Ozai, it would be "brother killing a brother", because there was no realistic world in which Ozai could be contained without leading to his death. He accepts that his granddaughter "is crazy and needs to go down".

When he chooses to take back Ba Sing Se, does he go in covertly and retake the puppet state from the occupying troops by forcing a surrender or a diplomatic solution? No, his opening move is to generate the largest ball of fire possible, then hurl it at the titanic wall, which not only does the camera show us has many people behind it, but which Iroh is ready to obliterate, soldiers and all, sight unseen. He does what must be done. Violence is his last resort, but he clearly has no moral compunction against using violence against the violent. Deadly force is met with a redirecting blow, carrying that same energy or more. In the first season, when he believes the fate of the world hangs in the balance, he threatens and uses deadly force "tenfold" that which is exacted upon the moon spirit. There is nowhere in the show that Iroh says that death is never the solution. The only reason we don't see the deaths of the many soldiers occupying Ba Sing Se at Iroh's hands (as well as all of the other times he has caused soldiers to be buried under their own boulders, breathed fire into their faces, or otherwise used violent infernos to defeat enemies) is that it was depicted in a kids' show. The only person in the series who maintains that deadly force is never the answer is Aang. Aang only manages it in the finale by Deus Ex Machina because he's the chosen one (and the protagonist of a kids' show).

Machiavelli would disagree.

Also the video does make a good point that "winning by being good" is inherently tied to Western thoughts/culture and Iroh may have a different perspective being Eastern coded. And also being like, an ex general, and using violence at the end of the show....

This is a fantasy land take that has no basis in reality or human history. At some point, it becomes a matter of physical well being for yourself and those around you. Telling people to just suck it up and take a beating/killing for the benefit of their "soul"...my god. Rejoin the real world buddy. It can be a scary place, but at least it's real, not whatever bizarro world you are speaking from.

You let bullies walk on you, and they will keep doing it. The only thing that will stop them is letting them know that they will pay a real price if they keep at it. Trying to spin this "peace at all costs" worldview is intellectually dishonest and counterproductive.

Nah, fuck that. What are they supposed to do? Roll over and continue being oppressed? End your oppression not just for your sake but for the sake of everyone else whom they may oppress too.

Yeah, those in power always preach peace to preserve the status quo. But what about the suffragettes? The black Panthers? What about the Italian resistance? What about the Warsaw ghetto uprising?

Sometimes it's not about our souls, not about our own psychical wellbeing. It's about the liberation of all. About justice. About making the bastards pay. About showing the world that there's a limit to what people can be made to do and suffer.

Violence is the last resort of the desperate, no doubt. It's not fun. It does taint. It's fucking tragic.

But we are living in increasingly desperate times. Who can deny that? And its just not about us as individuals anymore. That's the message here.

This is beautiful and I want to agree with you.

Mostly I disagree that violence taints your soul permanently. I believe it is this line of thinking that has led the repetition of violence throughout history. Those who wish to do harm are never treated with strongly enough and so they persist. They are readily allowed access to others to harm as they please. Perhaps we can stave off states doing it with the right government types but there will be those in the general populace that desire harm for others and they will strive to upend that government at all times.

My opinion is: oppression deserves reciprocal violence an order of magnitude above and immediately.

Cor, it’s a good job Hitler killed himself instead of somebody having to live with that evil, init?

He wouldn't word it that way, and he wouldn't suggest that killing is universally the best way to go about it, but this is not the least likely thing that could come out of his mouth, as another commenter pointed out "Azula is crazy, and needs to go down". Even as he turned down the team's request to defeat Ozai, he made it clear that it could only end in death, "brother killing brother". He was under no illusion that capturing Ozai was ever an option.

Do you think that the white lotus took back Ba Sing Se without killing anyone with those 100-foot-tall walls of fire? No, you don't expel an occupying force by just cutting the tips off of some spears. Avatar shows us the least-bloody parts of the recapture, but do not mistake Iroh's depiction in a kids' series for pacifism. Iroh is very clear, vocally, that violence is necessary in some cases. He teaches zuko to redirect lightning to send it back at the person who launched it, as he says "to use your opponent's energy against them". He prefers nonlethal methods, but that doesn't mean he refuses to employ deadly force. He and his friends use heavy fire against enemy metal tanks, which would boil alive the soldiers inside. They use rocks to stop up the holes through which benders were actively shooting fire, which would rebound and fill the tank with that same conflagration. Those tanks get shot up hundreds of feet in the air and have hard landings on top of one another, which would not only concuss anyone inside to death, but would crush all of the tanks on the bottom. Iroh literally starts the liberation of Ba Sing Se with a fire blast large enough to completely obliterate the titanic wall, as well as everyone previously depicted positioned directly behind it, in an instant. He doesn't know how many soldiers lie behind that wall. He just destroys it, sight-unseen.

Iroh is not a pacifist, he is just very selective in his use of deadly force.

It's not the least Iron thing to say. Even he said "Azula is crazy, and she needs to go down."

Maybe not kill, but definitely take down and away from wider society to live in a dark, small place.

It’s Iroh-nic, don’t you think?

How many times exactly has that happened in history? Revolutions are famously not peaceful. Not that they shouldn't happen, they absolutely should, but the people in power don't just go "oh shucks, guess I'll give it all up!"

It's the fair thing to do. They get a choice. Best case they learn to live like everyone else, and maybe do something good. In which case, great! Worst case they show they can't be let out in society, and are sent to prison. In which case, hey at least they got a second chance, which is more than what their victims got.

There's a reason it's pushed so hard, and it's because people in power don't want to lose the golden goose that is American apathy. They can oppress us as much as they want, and we think having the moral superiority of taking it on the chin makes us strong. It doesn't.

I hate this trope, such unoriginal writing

Counterpoint: