Sasori

First you have the senior/oldest convict who won’t shut the fuck up. Then, you have a fresh lesbian (who didn’t waste any time trying to get into her pants) and her possessive/clingy lover.

There may have been a line in your latest somewhere that said something about some topic of argument rather than being pure invective, but the percentage is low enough that at this point there's really no point winnowing it out.  From here on in it'd just be basically "You're a creep!" "No, you're a creep!" and I'm sure we both have better things to do.

Bwahahaha!!! Someone thinks they're pretty damn special. Take it from me, when you're arrogant you look less stupid when you veil it a bit.

Nothing arrogant here, just an observation. You got obliterated previously and yet despite having provided no arguments worth responding to (and having been shown as much) you gave it another go anyway. What else do you expect me to say in that situation? Lie and go “Oh, wow, another profound response by Purple Library Guy, can’t wait to read that one!”?
 

Well I'm not a Christian, and I give what I get, so I will now shift my tone appropriately.

Sounds to me like you’re just butthurt over how badly you got embarrassed and now want to use my alleged mocking as an excuse to be an asshole and start throwing around ad hominems. Pretty sad, really. Just come out and show your true colors, no need to attempt to justify them first.
 

You may spend time thinking about specifically Christian ethics, but you evidently have never given a moment's thought to the concept of tactics.

Nah, you’re just continuing to make no sense. So she could shoot him to death no problem but threatening him with a weapon and then forcing him to do whatever she wants to is unthinkable? Your mind works in strange ways. Not to mention that I already pointed out to you that she could have hired someone to do it for her if you are that married to your “B-but she’s a weak, wimpy female and he’s a big, burly hunk of male ” argument.
 
Also, you sure like mentioning Christian ethics a lot, don’tcha? I guess you have nothing else to latch onto so that has to do.
 

For someone who talks about the rule of law so confidently, you seem to have little understanding of how systems work. No, it does not require "conspiracies" for those nearer the top of a system (and certainly those in the law enforcement business) to enjoy relative impunity. And indeed you must know that, you're just looking for opportunities to sneer rather than dispute in good faith--contemptible and it makes you look a fool. Or, I dunno, maybe you're just that naive.

For someone who rambles on about reading comprehension so much you’d think that you’d have done a better job of understanding the argument I made there. I did not deny that powerful people get away with crimes more often, just that they do so for completely different reasons than you suggest (through some sort of ominous collusion of the Powers That Be, apparently). They do so, for instance, by buying better legal aid and thus have a leg up in any courtroom over someone without the same means. That does not mean, and here is what I was getting at, that Japan lacks rule of law and that it’s thus fruitless to search for justice in the legal system and instead resort to vigilantism.
 

Demonstrably false? Well, go ahead and demonstrate it then. But try to remember if you make such an attempt, that corrupt in many ways though present-day Japan is, the milieu we are dealing with is not present-day Japan, it is Japan from a few decades ago, much closer to the wartime era.

Any conviction of a powerful person would prove my point. But judging from this run-on sentence I guess you wouldn’t accept that as evidence anyway? How convenient for you.
 

Further, what we are dealing with--what the character has to deal with--is the world as presented in that manga. It is clearly a hard-boiled universe, and time after time when we see police and jailers in action and dialogue, it is made clear that they worry little about what's legal but quite a lot about internal politics; the only way one of them could go to jail would seem to be if an enemy within the system got something on them.

What baloney. Don’t care about what’s legal? Then why does the head warden care so much about no one finding out just how exactly he runs his prison? Could it be because it is against the law and he would get in trouble if word ever got out? A-doyy.
 

Given her riches? She owned a shop. Apparently the shop and its contents were valuable enough that liquidating them was presumed by some other characters to have generated enough money to seem like an important amount to an unemployed man. So no, despite your repeating it several times, she was clearly not rich. Vaguely respectable, but any money she had was obviously tied up in the shop, without which she would have no livelihood.

Urgh, are you going to interpret everything I say in the narrowest sense possible and ignore the intended meaning of it? Is that what you are resorting to now? The point is (and remains) that she had the means to sue the guy. And since she was ready to throw her life away for “justice” surely some money is a far smaller price to pay.
 

Incidentally, he was not punished by the law. Your superior sacking you is not a legal proceeding; if it's done in response to an illegal act, one might even characterize it as vigilantism. {sarcasm}I'm surprised you're not outraged!{/sarcasm}

This whole post is drenching with hypocrisy, unbelievable! You chastise me for, what you think is, speculating too much and yet here you are claiming with undeserved confidence that he was not punished by the law. For all you know he actually was tried and convicted but was let out on probation and subsequently fired in a separate proceeding. Oh, look, I can make shit up, too.
 

And if there's one thing that is pretty clear about this woman it is that she is intelligent; if she thought something wouldn't work, the presumption is that it wouldn't work, at least within the manga's universe.

Bwahahaha, did you really think I’d let you get away with this weak-ass “argument”? So because she’s intelligent that means that all her actions are infallible and arguing that they aren’t is impossible? Get a grip. She might very well have realized that she stood a chance of getting him convicted but decided against it to satisfy her thirst for revenge which would not be quenched with just some jail time for him. In other words, she might’ve chosen her emotions over reason. And I already told you that. Again, listen to your own advice about reading comprehension some time.
 

Oh, how precious. Proud of our little smear, are we?

Nah, not at all. How about you? Are you proud of yours?
 

I notice you don't actually engage with the logic; evidently you can't.

Can’t engage with what isn’t there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Well, since you ask, I've been making political economy one of my main areas of study for about 25 years now, including, yes, anarchist ideas in the mix.

Sounds like you wasted 25 years of your life then if this is all you have to show for it. I noticed, too, how you evaded my question of where you got these ideas from. “From my research” is awfully vague.

Anyway, you go on to point out that I used “anarchy” rather than “anarchism” and insinuated that this was a mistake. It was not. Anarchism is a respectable political ideology which I certainly have no qualms with (anarchosyndicalist ideas in particular, such as the ones popularized by people like Noam Chomsky, appeal to me). Anarchy, however, does not and this is what you are espousing so that is what I called it: You know, the brainless, punk “do whatever the fuck you want” version of anarchism.
 

But you seem particularly outraged.

Outraged at someone who defends a would-be murderer, yes. But I can see why you would be perplexed by someone who finds that outrageous.
 

Odd, since Jesus Christ's relationship with the rule of law was rather nuanced [...]

Oh, indeed it was! What of it? Do you think he said “If someone hits you on the right cheek then go right ahead and slash his throat ’cause you can’t trust the law, folks, gotta take it into your own hands!”. I really don’t see what you thought you accomplished with this quip of yours.
 

No, we hadn't. As noted above, she was a shopkeeper; it looks rather as if the shop involved Japanese clothes, which other countries would have little interest in. Leaving the country would have made her a foreign immigrant with no marketable skills or means of support. Any little nest egg she might have from selling off the shop would not last long at best or would be quickly stolen, extracted as bribes and so on at worst, leaving her a penniless woman alone with no family ties in a foreign country where she did not speak the language and which would probably discriminate against her (particularly since post-war, most people in nearby countries hated the Japanese for significant reasons).
Yeah, sure, piece of cake. Sigh. No, of course this woman from insular Japan was not thinking in terms of making a desperate run to other lands where she'd end up a prostitute or something so she could be more merciful to the guy who betrayed her love and had her raped.

Sooo ... a shopkeeper has no marketable skills? And didn’t you say earlier how oh-so-intelligent she is? Wouldn’t a woman of that caliber be fine in any situation? You sure seem to think very little of her all of the sudden now that it fits you. The way you spoke of her earlier it seems preposterous to imagine that she’d have to fall back on prostitution to make a living.
 

Slights of that magnitude returned at the same level do not typically result in huge consequences, whereas matters at the magnitude we are actually dealing with do.

Once more you conveniently act the fool (or are you acting?) and apparently intentionally miss the point of the argument: You heavily speculated in order to support your argument and imagined that for raping/beating/whatever-ing him she’d face lethal retribution and that this danger made it okay to preemptively kill him despite that being disproportionate. Now my example showed that this kind of notion breaks down when you actually think about it for a second and reveals just how unjust and immoral this line of reasoning actually is. Since you hate the specific situation I provided so much, how about this addendum? The person in whose food you spit is a war veteran with known anger issues which present a very real possibility of him avenging himself in an extreme fashion.

Do you still continue claiming that it would be justified to murder this person for fear of consequences of the vengeance that you initiated in the first place?
 

You yourself seem fairly clearly to be a pretty vindictive person, who in fact reacts with serious venom to people for the offense of holding opinions which differ from your own.

Serious venom? What? Did my snarky words hurt you, poor guy ;_; ? Here, let me kiss them to make it all better. *smooch*. There. Feelin’ better now, bubbele?
 

Incidentally, as a side note I'm not clear why you are taking such a strong stand against disproportionate reactions to offenses. [...] If you were genuinely saintly I could bear with you. But you're just pretending to saintliness as a basis to attack people; what smug hypocrisy.

“I’m Purple Library Guy and I do not understand the concept of ideals. If I fail to live up to some ethics standard I just drop it, hence the atrocious set of moral beliefs that you’ve seen me exhibit hitherto.”

Alright, gotcha. That explains a lot, actually.

Reply to Purple Library Guy who apparently still hasn’t had enough and came back for seconds

Bwahahaha!!! Someone thinks they're pretty damn special. Take it from me, when you're arrogant you look less stupid when you veil it a bit.
You know, I disputed with you politely and put forward a thoughtful thesis in response to what looked like a serious, if somewhat pushily put, position. But your response makes it clear that you have no interest in discussions in good faith. Everyone who disagrees with you in any particular is apparently someone to mock and despise. This is what your Christian morals teach you, is it?
Well I'm not a Christian, and I give what I get, so I will now shift my tone appropriately.

What? Why is this suddenly a problem when that doesn’t stop her from being able to even murder him in your mind, huh? I mean I know your argument is bad and has no legs to stand on but come on! You can do at least better than this, can’t you? Why would raping him present a problem if killing him doesn’t?

Suddenly? Goodness, here I thought I was disputing someone who read what they were arguing with for comprehension. My position from the beginning was that killing someone is far easier and less risky than, say, beating up. The point is that shooting someone, or even knifing them, is a single momentary action; it can be complete in an instant of surprise, at which point the other party is dead or dying and can do little in response. At that point it doesn't matter how big they are. You may spend time thinking about specifically Christian ethics, but you evidently have never given a moment's thought to the concept of tactics.
 

What are you rambling on about? No rule of law in Japan? I think you’re confusing the fact that money allows people to hire more competent lawyers with some sinister, society-spanning conspiracy to keep the little man down and let every powerful person off scot-free (which is demonstrably false).

From when you say "no rule of law in Japan" you demonstrate that you have no conception of what I'm rambling on about. If you want to be taken seriously, the order is understand what the other person is saying first, argue against it after.
For someone who talks about the rule of law so confidently, you seem to have little understanding of how systems work. No, it does not require "conspiracies" for those nearer the top of a system (and certainly those in the law enforcement business) to enjoy relative impunity. And indeed you must know that, you're just looking for opportunities to sneer rather than dispute in good faith--contemptible and it makes you look a fool. Or, I dunno, maybe you're just that naive.
Demonstrably false? Well, go ahead and demonstrate it then. But try to remember if you make such an attempt, that corrupt in many ways though present-day Japan is, the milieu we are dealing with is not present-day Japan, it is Japan from a few decades ago, much closer to the wartime era.
Further, what we are dealing with--what the character has to deal with--is the world as presented in that manga. It is clearly a hard-boiled universe, and time after time when we see police and jailers in action and dialogue, it is made clear that they worry little about what's legal but quite a lot about internal politics; the only way one of them could go to jail would seem to be if an enemy within the system got something on them.

Not that any of this even applies to this our case at hand, mind you! Remember, he was punished by the law and we know that he at least lost his job for his involvement in that sting operation. Furthermore, it’s not even clear that our protagonist sought official justice (which, given her riches, would’ve had a fair chance at success). No, it seems more likely that she preemptively assumed that the judicial system wouldn’t do right by her and possibly put him out of her personal vendetta’s reach (i.e. prison) so she rather took it into her own hands.

Given her riches? She owned a shop. Apparently the shop and its contents were valuable enough that liquidating them was presumed by some other characters to have generated enough money to seem like an important amount to an unemployed man. So no, despite your repeating it several times, she was clearly not rich. Vaguely respectable, but any money she had was obviously tied up in the shop, without which she would have no livelihood.
Incidentally, he was not punished by the law. Your superior sacking you is not a legal proceeding; if it's done in response to an illegal act, one might even characterize it as vigilantism. {sarcasm}I'm surprised you're not outraged!{/sarcasm}
Meanwhile, your assertions about how sure you are that she would have actually done fine if she'd gone to the law and so forth are just the sort of assumptions you accuse her of--except yours are really naive. And if there's one thing that is pretty clear about this woman it is that she is intelligent; if she thought something wouldn't work, the presumption is that it wouldn't work, at least within the manga's universe.

And where’d you get those bizarre ideas from anyway? 6th grade Anarchy for Dummies™?

Oh, how precious. Proud of our little smear, are we? I notice you don't actually engage with the logic; evidently you can't.
Well, since you ask, I've been making political economy one of my main areas of study for about 25 years now, including, yes, anarchist ideas in the mix. You? Maybe you need to be reading that Anarchy (or rather, Anarchism) for Dummies book.
But you seem particularly outraged. I take it that for you, the point of the rule of law has nothing to do with justice, or equality under the law, or anything like that. I suppose you've just been told it's important but have never thought about why, and so any suggestion that it might be less than an absolute good gets you all in a tizzy--you just can't process it. Odd, since Jesus Christ's relationship with the rule of law was rather nuanced and you're supposedly getting this stuff from being Christian.
 

Who’s talking about suicide? Hadn’t we established that she more than had the means to simply leave the country?

No, we hadn't. As noted above, she was a shopkeeper; it looks rather as if the shop involved Japanese clothes, which other countries would have little interest in. Leaving the country would have made her a foreign immigrant with no marketable skills or means of support. Any little nest egg she might have from selling off the shop would not last long at best or would be quickly stolen, extracted as bribes and so on at worst, leaving her a penniless woman alone with no family ties in a foreign country where she did not speak the language and which would probably discriminate against her (particularly since post-war, most people in nearby countries hated the Japanese for significant reasons).
Yeah, sure, piece of cake. Sigh. No, of course this woman from insular Japan was not thinking in terms of making a desperate run to other lands where she'd end up a prostitute or something so she could be more merciful to the guy who betrayed her love and had her raped.
 

Awww, I guess it was too much to expect that you would get the point of that analogy

Don't be silly, little person. Of course I got the intended point of the analogy. But it was a terrible analogy. It failed on precisely the grounds that it was supposed to illuminate: Slights of that magnitude returned at the same level do not typically result in huge consequences, whereas matters at the magnitude we are actually dealing with do. Again, if you're not a complete idiot you know this perfectly well--so your attempt at reductio ad absurdum was not only false, it was offered in bad faith in the first place. When you make arguments you know to be false, it is a stupid idea to try to mock people for calling you out on them. Look, bluffing is OK in poker, but it's unethical in discussion--and even in poker you don't get to raise again after you've been called.
Incidentally, as a side note I'm not clear why you are taking such a strong stand against disproportionate reactions to offenses. You yourself seem fairly clearly to be a pretty vindictive person, who in fact reacts with serious venom to people for the offense of holding opinions which differ from your own. It seems clear that if you were in her boat, you would be far from turning the other cheek as you claim, but would instead retaliate disproportionately, or if you didn't have the guts merely fantasize about doing so, while coming up with apparently-persuasive logic to demonstrate how different it was when it was your own personal ox being gored.
If you were genuinely saintly I could bear with you. But you're just pretending to saintliness as a basis to attack people; what smug hypocrisy.

Did you miss the part where he's a big strong police detective and she's a normal-sized civilian woman?

What? Why is this suddenly a problem when that doesn’t stop her from being able to even murder him in your mind, huh? I mean I know your argument is bad and has no legs to stand on but come on! You can do at least better than this, can’t you? Why would raping him present a problem if killing him doesn’t?
 

I don't know about you, but I have no idea how I would go about hiring somebody to commit rape, let alone reliably, let alone on a corrupt police inspector well known to the underworld who has more contacts than I do.

Did I miss something where he was shown to be well-connected with the yakuza? If not, she could just approach them with the idea. Mobsters are known to use rape since it apparently proves more effective than violence in many cases. They even do this today, VICE has a documentary on it. Anyway, she has lots of money so why do you think this would even be a problem? Enough money solves almost every problem, don’tcha know?
 

[...]

What are you rambling on about? No rule of law in Japan? I think you’re confusing the fact that money allows people to hire more competent lawyers with some sinister, society-spanning conspiracy to keep the little man down and let every powerful person off scot-free (which is demonstrably false).

Not that any of this even applies to this our case at hand, mind you! Remember, he was punished by the law and we know that he at least lost his job for his involvement in that sting operation. Furthermore, it’s not even clear that our protagonist sought official justice (which, given her riches, would’ve had a fair chance at success). No, it seems more likely that she preemptively assumed that the judicial system wouldn’t do right by her and possibly put him out of her personal vendetta’s reach (i.e. prison) so she rather took it into her own hands.

How you can defend someone so selfish and vile is beyond me. And where’d you get those bizarre ideas from anyway? 6th grade Anarchy for Dummies™?
 

All that's easy to say, but saying retribution is only OK if you're willing to commit suicide to get it is a bit steep. Yes, I'll certainly grant that she's not a plaster saint.

Who’s talking about suicide? Hadn’t we established that she more than had the means to simply leave the country?
 

This case is not someone spitting in someone's food.

Awww, I guess it was too much to expect that you would get the point of that analogy

Well, the idea here is that by your logic one cannot be expected to use proportional retribution when being a vigilante because the victim of your retribution might retaliate in return (the circle of violence, who’d’ve thunk it?) and so they have to be murdered preemptively in order to avoid that. My analogies highlighted how ridiculous and immoral that line of thought is as it justifies that kind of murder even in harmless cases where, following your slippery slope argument, it might spiral out of control in an ever-crueler back-and-forth of vengeance.