Can we just acknowledge how absolutely ballsy the Justice League Unlimited episode "Patriot Act" was?
So, this episode was an extremely thinly-veiled criticism of the Patriot Act law, which was part of America's response to 9/11 and part of the War on Terror, specifically about the government using the Patriot Act to brutalize, imprison, disappear, or just flat-out kill anyone they perceived as a threat that supported the enemy. This included a lot of civilians, whether they were politically dissident or they were just guilty of crimes such as being muslim. Obviously, this was wrong. It is wrong. And nowadays I can say that without fear. But during this period of time? Well, here's the thing;
Between the response the government would have and the social response due to the massive national rise of extreme nationalism, to speak out against what the government was doing was a kiss of death. For example, the Dixie Chicks spoke out against it, and they got blacklisted, they lost all of their fame and social standing, they probably wound up on a watchlist, just for going "Hey, this is wrong." People were terrified of speaking up lest what happened to the Dixie Chicks happen to them. Like, if you were not with the government, you might as well have been a follower of Osama bin Laden himself. You absolutely did not criticise the government unless you were willing to lose everything. JLU is slightly after this era, but still, the threat of this response was absolutely still fresh in everyone's mind. That's the political background this episode came from.
With that in mind, I want to really stress that they made an episode about an American military/government official taking an extreme action against a perceived threat and, instead of using his power to deal with the threat, he turned that power on regular people. People who got between him and innocent civilians, he beat the absolute shit out of them. He calls the civilians, who Stargirl explicitly called "innocent bystanders," word for fucking word, "acceptable losses." When Shining Knight talks about refusing to slaughter a village of innocent people even when ordered to lay waste to them by King Arthur, Eiling calls him a lousy soldier, basically explicitly saying that those who refuse to follow unlawful or morally wrong orders to harm civilians, those who refuse to harm civilians, are wrong. He tries to kill a teenager (because let's be honest, Stargirl is the most sixteen-year-old-girl character to ever be a sixteen-year-old girl, he absolutely knew she was in high school) and an ACTUAL FUCKING CHILD. He rips through the Seven Soldiers as they try their best to protect innocent people, he does his best to kill all of them. The only thing that stops him is that old woman, and her iconic line "How many of us do you have to kill to keep us safe?"
How many innocent people did our government have to harm in order to keep innocent people safe?
(Not to mention the history of the Seven Soldiers. Characters who historically fought corruption, bad cops, Nazis, the Klan, etc. During World War II. Which was not-so-subtly calling the government out. These characters who fought the Nazis, corruption, etc, were fighting Eiling because he was acting like the enemies they fought, trying to harm and kill innocent people to serve his own agenda. Eiling was a stand-in meant to represent the American government. They were basically outright saying "This Patriot Act era was the government acting like the Nazis." Just saying, that choice was absolutely intentional and so exceptionally brave.)
And this is AFTER the episode where Question was kidnapped and tortured by the American government without trial, a lawyer, a jury of his peers, etc. This episode was explicitly the aftermath of Cadmus's decision to do that. The war they tried to start against people who only wanted to keep others safe. That's the in-world context, that the government got called on abusing their power to harm a citizen simply for opposing them because they were siding with an actual fucking supervillain. A supervillain who proceeded to turn against Cadmus with the power they had given him. Which is a mirror to why the Taliban and ISIS and all that really got a footing, because America supported Islamist radicals in the Cold War in their battle against communism and created a very powerful force that eventually wound up turning their power against America. 9/11 was the aftermath of that horrible decision, and "Patriot Act" was the aftermath of "Question Authority."
Again, considering the era this was in, this was extremely brave. Especially considering how insanely explicit this was, the episode was even actually titled "Patriot Act." This ran the risk of getting the show cancelled, the writers blacklisted at BEST- this was not a safe era, this was just coming out of the really dangerous time. They had every right to keep their mouths shut out of self-preservation against a very real threat to their livelihoods. But these people, who clearly remembered that Superman was first known as Champion of the Oppressed, they did this anyway. Which is absolutely incredible and acknowledges how deeply political comics have historically been, and also an extremely brave thing to do. These writers risked it all because they were writing a DC show and DC comics have always been a histically political thing, and because they saw something that wasn't right and they weren't going to be silent.
That was risky, it was brave, and that is absolutely what comics are about. They deserve a prize for that
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