#fuckyeahb5

I assume the latter option is not an option because otherwise people like Ivanova's mother choosing Sleepers seems a little less rational (not totally irrational, because if the military said that because I have brown eyes I have to go in for check ups every three months to ensure I'm not doing any sneaky brown-eyed-person stuff, I'd be rightly upset - and there would be some people for whom freedom from check-ups would outweigh the danger of having to take poison for the rest of your much shorter life. though I'm a bigger fan of "protest" as opposed to "martyr" myself).  From the "telepaths are the best" POV of the Corps, however, WHY would you destroy good telepaths when your goal is more and better telepaths? 

I mean, guys. The Psi Corps is a union. It is so obviously a union. It is a union in a world that thinks workers of this particular profession are outright evil and must be controlled, okay, but they're totally a union. Their job is to fight the system for you. Their job is to win you the rights you don't have. They will do so by whatever means necessary, and it will SUCK for everyone involved - or do people think we got weekends and living wages and worker's compensation without people suffering, being beaten, starving, being physically intimidated (and sometimes harmed), even by their own leaders? The whole point is that you get something out of it in the end, but in the short run you strike (thereby not getting a paycheck to feed your family) or you protest (risking jail and physical assault), and you're not too happy about all the guys in the same position as you that said "fuck you, I'm getting mine" and decided to scab for the other side because they don't think your children having a decent life is worth some sacrifice now - i.e. the rogues, who presumably do freelance telepathy and thereby undercut Psi Corps' only legitimate leveraging power: their economic monopoly on telepathy. Which, presumably, Psi Corps helped create.

(Psi Corps is obviously a neurotic, totalitarian caricature of a union, of course, probably caused by the fact that they are in an industry where their physical ability is their tool, and their industry was freaking nationalized. They're a branch of the army of a dictatorial system! You can ascribe them the best motives in the world - and they'll still end up being not entirely dissimilar to the Psi Corps that you see in the show, just because of how psychology works. You throw in a totally human lust for power (both fuelled by and divorced from the initial desire to protect telepaths), you put them in a situation where there are no external controls on their scientific curiosity (indeed, there are probably external motivations for them to do their experiments), you put them in a situation where fascist/totalitarian behavior is encouraged (and no one can argue that it wasn't being encouraged, Clark didn't happen overnight) and voila! Psi Corps.

One of the reasons I like Babylon 5 so much is because Psi Corps makes perfect sense to me. I mean, seriously - even a cursory survey of the behavior of traumatized nations throughout history (ones that suffered attacks, war, subjugation, genocide attempts, etc.) and you see an overwhelming desire for enough power to not have to be afraid any more.

(One of the reasons I am frustrated with Babylon 5 is that this nuanced view is painted so well early on, and then done so, so, so very little with as time goes on, with upper echelons of the Psi Corps being regularly portrayed as uninterestingly and uniformly evil and the people who are fighting against them being portrayed as uniformly good...)

        ...actually, as a final note, Psi Corps really doesn't seem to have many legitimate options for registering their protests.  I mean, they are implied to be a powerful, creepy organization that is blackmailing and manipulating major important figures, but...um...what else can they do, exactly? Clark's gov't isn't exactly friendly to people protesting it, and I doubt that telepaths (as a despised and feared minority) would get much support for their protests. (See, e.g. most protests happening throughout the world today, alas). I mean, telepaths have bribed, and blackmailed, and forced their way into power - but they still can't walk around without a badge. I'd wager they still can't take non-telepath jobs outside of the Corps - no matter how wonderfully efficient a telepathic teacher would be, I suspect that the "don't touch my baby's brain!"/"what if they steal my PIN number while I'm at the ATM?" crowd is still by far dominant - so to them, forcing people to join so they don't starve to death in the streets probably seems totally logical.  I mean, sleepers themselves are probably a violation of the Geneva Convention - which means that telepaths have likely been deliberately exempted from human right protection statutes. Creepy!

So, basically, my question is this: take away the blackmail and the bribery and the manipulation, and what leverage does Psi Corps have left? I mean, look at "Mind War" - Bester shows up and he seems to have legal jurisdiction and ability to do what he says he's here to do, and the local guys stonewall him, help the (legally!) criminal, then blackmail HIM into not telling anyone what they did. It's probably happened before, too, for less valid causes than the B5 crew had - probably just anti-telepath/anti-Psi Corps feeling (and he would have equated those two, very likely, or just been offended by an anti-Psi Corps). From his POV, of course he's going to resort to less savory means to achieve objectives. He was legally in the right 100% in this case, and the law (B5 staff) didn't help him at all. So what else does he have?

AU Suggestion

...this is a very long way of saying: GODDAMN IT I WANT TO SEE A TELEPATH STRIKE! Psi Corps spends years manipulating and blackmailing their way into influencing key senators while simultaneously making themselves totally invaluable to all business deals conducted by all companies, making themselves a necessary part of the court system, making themselves a vital part of the military complex...and then, one day, the rogue problem has died down enough, the Shadows have gone away, and the new Earth government seems less likely to murder them all if they protest than Clark's did - and seem more inclined to have concerns like "I don't want to be seen slaughtering people" and even possibly moral scruples against doing so - and that day, that one day, all the telepaths pack up and go home to Psi Corps. And Psi Corps shuts its doors in the little ghetto they've been forced to live in and says: "We're not coming out until you give us equal rights. We're not coming out until you pass a law saying that discriminating against someone in hiring decisions because they are a telepath is illegal. We're not coming out until we have the same access to college, and jobs, and ATMs that you all have. And until we come out, enjoy having to relearn all that 'trust' thing that all of you big business interest have totally forgotten how to do because you have telepathic verification of the other side's good will, enjoy having to use the rules of evidence in trials, enjoy having to pay compensation to innocent people who get wrongfully convicted, enjoy not having us as your spies and tools."

And then, behind the scenes, they start pulling all the strings that they spent decades collecting - encouraging senators to vote FOR a "Telepath Equal Protection" Act (let's be honest, knowing the government, it's probably called the TEEP Act, they'd figure out something to put in as an extra "E"), forcing people who don't want to vote for it to not only vote for it but to advocate for it, and doing the same with the contacts they've made in the business world. And if the government decides they're going to crush them with force? They've built up a whole Black Omega squad just for this moment.