What if SuperEarth are NOT the bad guys?

[Phoenix]

It is fairly obvious to anyone who is paying attention that Super Earth might very possibly not be quite and squeaky clean as they would like to appear. It would appear that at best Super Earth is a resource starved bureaucracy that keeps its citizens in line with an illusion of democracy (sure glad there are no parallels to that in the real world, eh?). The cheesy propaganda, the questionable politics, the literal use of soldiers as ammunition. Yes, this doesn't strike the average person as a utopia, and in fact might make people think that Super Earth are the baddies! Especially since they apparently started all of these wars to begin with. This is in fact a common sentiment in many players, many of which will remind those of this opinion with annoying regularity. The ultimate irony being that it is simply the result of believing everything they are told, just from the opposing side.

So let us start with what we do know about Super Earth. Well super Earth is most probably largely a wasteland. We know (or at least believe that we know) that Super Earth was devastated in previous wars which resulted in entire regions like the UK being destroyed and rendered uninhabitable. We know how that the majority of the population live in megacities, and we know that life probably is not all that great for the average citizen given that there is child labour and continuous propaganda towards basically putting up with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ living conditions. Propaganda is continuous, descent is immediately quashed, and I'm going to go out on a limb here once again and reiterate the fact that it's almost certainty a plutocracy, or even an autocracy behind the thin lie of democracy (again, not sure if we can throw stones there). This government is held together through unity of the human race, and a continuous hatred of their enemies. Fans of 40K will know that's a pretty similar description of the Imperium of Man. The Imperium are certainly not your cartoon good guys, in fact they often do some pretty bad stuff. However the point is that the universe doesn't ALLOW the Imperium to be anything else. The Imperium are not good, they do everything Super Earth does and more, and yet in their universe they're not "the bad guys". They're humans, in a universe that wants them worse than dead. Deeming the Imperium the 'bad guys' is laughably simplistic in that setting, and could only be justified if the Imperium's enemies were good.

So lets look at Super Earth's enemies. Start with the bots. Now the current idea is that Super Earth basically enslaved the cyborgs, and the automatons are their righteous vengeance/liberation. This is basically pieced together from 'Because Super Earth said the opposite'. Super Earth claimed the cyborgs attacked Earth first, which by the contrarian logic means that Super Earth attacked them first.

So the bots are the good guys? Now if that was the case, I would love to know the justification of the butcher camps which can be found all across missions where human captives have been obviously dissected (probably while still alive) by the bots. Why? To learn about humans? No. For thrills? Doesn't sound very 'good' to me? Or maybe, they're harvesting their brains to turn them into automatons. Which leads to a very awkward question. What exactly are the cyborgs/automatons? Because from what it looks like, they're some form of AI/hive mind which converts humans into automated slaves similar to the cybermen from Dr Who. This is obviously a horrific threat to humanity as a whole, and the cyborgs by extension could ACTUALLY be a direct threat to ACTUAL liberty. The technology to control and interface with the brain is clearly possible, and Super Earth would know about this technology. If Super Earth were truly as evil as the cartoon image portrays, they would have made their own citizens automatons by now. Using the cyborgs as slave labour could very well be justly deserved for the plans that they had for humanity as a whole.

So what about the bugs? How evil of Super Earth to harvest bugs for starship fuel! And to release the bugs on human planets to create a false flag! How terrible. So this one seems even more precarious than the claim of evil deeds against the automatons.

1) Super Earth already had a war with the automatons going, they didn't need a second front to fuel the war machine.
2) Releasing the bugs would make little logistic sense when you've already got a logistical network that is controlled and in place.
3) The acquisition of the fuel which allows for humanity to survive from a collection of mindless insects doesn't strike me as all that evil.

Again their are claims that Super Earth is responsible from illegal broadcasts. By why should we believe this exactly? Every time a government claims anything their are people who will claim the government was behind it, especially during times of war. Unconvincing, to put it mildly.

And the illuminate? Humanity attacked them because they had weapons of mass destruction, but it was probably to gain FTL technology. Now this is a very on the nose reference to the Iraq war, but lets get something straight right off the bat. The Illuminate HAD and HAVE weapons of mass destruction. Of course they do. Any space fairing civilisation has such weapons as a natural by-product of the technology required to be a space fairing civilisation. We don't really know much more about this enemy, but the idea that it's a lie that they had weapons of mass destruction is obviously complete crap. Now was it really to steal the FTL technology? possibly. But are you referring to the FTL technology that allows for Humanity to... survive? FTL technology in a universe where it is possible IS a necessity to survival. Inferior FTL is also not enough. You MUST be able to move resources as quickly as an adversary. It is not an option to be out matched in such a thing. So once again Super Earth did what they needed to survive in a hostile universe. Necessary acts for survival are rarely deemed evil, so why does Super Earth get labelled as such?

I could ramble on about this all day, however I will use a real world analogy to put things into perspective. WW2. The Allies VS the Axis powers. The Axis powers are largely considered the bad guys (for obvious reasons) since they did some pretty evil stuff. This would make the Allies the 'good guys', right? No disagreements (largely) so far. Tell me, if we were to look closely at the Americans, the Commonwealth, and the Soviets, would we honestly not find anything wrong with their actions? Ever? The Soviets in particular have been often directly compared to the Nazis is the atrocities they carried out, but yet we still have a clear cut dichotomy. The reality is that there is very rarely a 'good guy', just many different shades of grey.

In conclusion.

A child thinks Super Earth are the good guys
A teenager thinks Super Earth are the bad guys
An adult realised Super Earth are not the bad guys

[76561198131065017]

the american government/elites/corporations are the bad guys.

[Katitoff]

Super Earth is authoritarian dystopian world, where progressive autocrats win.

[The Ironguard]

oh boy. Bugposters incoming :p

In seriousness though. The Terminids are feral, clearly hostile to humans, and can spread across planets. Even if Super Earth didn't specifically expand into Terminid territory, the Terminids would inevitably expand into theirs. You can't negotiate with bugs, and it's not a feasibly long term solution to just be under siege forever. Plus, Super Earth aren't even trying to eradicate Terminids, they're trying to domesticate them, since they produce a vital resource. They're essentially to turn the bugs into cows.

As for the bots... well, they're essentially skynet, except skynet programmed by communists who are in direct opposition to Super Earth. I don't think there's a lot of options for negotiation, and considering that they don't have any problem with slaughtering civilians, and who knows what other atrocities, i don't feel bad about wiping them out either.

[Doctor Zalgo]

The allies did some pretty gnarly ♥♥♥♥ like Dresden and Hiroshima but the argument is that these atrocities prevented a greater loss of life down the track.

So it comes down to whether you're a consequentialist who believes that you have to weigh each decision according to all relevant consequences, or whether you're a deontologist who is wrong.