Don't use the R word against my favo!
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I'm going to be blunt and straightforward here; and I don't care whose feelings are wounded over this: people have very vague ideas about politics, political infrastructures, and, if they aren't well-implemented, their far-reaching and devastating consequences that last for decades till the system in place isn't attacked, dismantled, and replaced with something better or worse. They've got some threadbare notions about political theories that allow them the endless opportunities to keep the bandwagon effect alive and kicking, but they've got little idea about the fundamental aspects of political ideologies and how they're sustained by figureheads for generations to come. (For instance, people jumping on the BLM movement and hash-tagging Free Ukraine or something of the sort; but if you take a good look at their profiles, they malign Palestinians; stand by Israel and call its genocidal policies a necessary evil; have no care in the world about the military industrial complex and how much brutality it's inflicted on MENA; and the after-effects of that violence that occur to this day in the shape of mass-starvations, civil wars, and extra judicial killings to curtail these many little wars, which have sprung in the aftermath of military chaos, for the net-benefit of the aggressors.)
Politics to these people are mere aesthetics, the en vouge facet of participatory liberalism, and "we're the good guys!" game and not a contemplative stance on the friction between ideological divides, why they occur, and how the can lead to progression. A good example, or the illustration of his phenomenon, would be Leo Strauss, creator of the Neo-Conservative (neocon) movement. Inspired by Gun Smoke, a Television-Show set in the lawless world of the Old West, he deified the idea of heroics, actors that can assume the role of heroes, and evil that needs to be vanquished for a nation to thrive, stay untied, and be free of "seflish desires" as he'd called it. Here, the birth of new American Nation took place, one that believed in the national myth of vanquishing evil as a force of good. Sounds familiar? If it does, then it is: it's the story of every hero, real or imagined.
If you look at Tobirama, he reads the exact same way: a national myth (will of fire) for the masses to stay united; evil (Uchiha or any disruptors of stability) that needs to be vanquished in the name of good; and a conservative vanguard (his little troop of hyper nationalists) who'd lead their nation (Leaf is a state, but let's keep it simple) to glory. Is there any difference between Strauss, Tobirama, Zahwari, or any other neocon whose ideology stems from notions of nation/state supremacy and its deification in the annals of state heroics?
What Tobirama did, like Strauss, was to break apart the story into easily digestible pieces, one that a common man can understand: heroes, evil, and glory in vanquishing that evil. That's how he created will of fire; that's how most rallied behind him; and that's how he got away with placing down the fundamentals of atrocities, obfuscated them somewhat behind this children's tale. Why? Because the notion that your collective is a force of good allows that collective to bypass the complexities of systematic racism, oppression, and brutalization. Everything is washed down into black and white tones, and a common man doesn't have to think too hard, mull over much, and contemplate very long on the vagaries between ideologies that create friction in the first place. A friction that's essential for growth, progress, and betterment as a whole.
The world, then, turns into a battleground where sides have to be picked, evil has to be branded (COH is branding in every sense of the word), and battles have to be fought to cut the hydra's head at its lair. Then and only then can a collective stay a collective, fight for a common cause, and come away with riches; and in the process, deliver freedom to the masses. That's why Itachi is more liked than Sasuke; Ashura is more liked than Indra; and Senju are more liked than the Uchiha. It isn't that they don't have any ideology to offer; it's that theirs is one of friction, one of complexities, and one that goes beyond the binaries. And beyond these two extremes, the myth ends, and when that ends the nation has nothing left to stay as the collective. It breaks apart at the seams, and that's something Strauss realized. Tobirama, too.
The Uchiha are your pot-shakers, trouble-makers, and challengers of this simplistic narrative Tobirama has sold to the fictional masses and the readers that align with similar philosophies in their realities: good shall prevail; evil shall be defeated; and glory shall be ours! And with this simplistic view, armies (populaces everywhere) are easy to galvanize and keep the myth alive for as long as possible.
It's not a coincidence that Tobirama is considered separate from Danzo's fanaticism, when the reality is that he laid the very foundations on which Danzo (and Orochimaru) and the Elders' Council built their future. That's like suggesting that the person who created the blueprint, building, and precepts to function in the building shouldn't be held accountable for any mishaps, just the people that come afterwards and follow the precepts down to the last detail.
Danzo, basically, is Tobirama with his mask off: there are no inhibitions as Leaf has left behind its precarious past that was fraught with danger that arose from flimsy treaties and shaky foundations. Pretenses had to be kept up. With uncertainties came more care; but even during that time where caution had to be exercised for Leaf's own safety, Tobirama and his Senju bro fashioned a legacy that pushed the world into a lethal conflict through the distribution of powerful weapons: one for me and one for thee!
The fact that he opened the door to bilateral relationships through nukes should ring alarm bells for everyone; but not this fandom; and the reason goes back to the neocon mindset: good guys versus the bad guys, a philosophy that was repeated during the Cold War, which is being turned to again, the fall of the Soviet Empire, and the subsequent war on terror; and every single time, the enemy was reduced to the "great evil" that had to be vanquished, create a tale of heroes for the masses. If you don't believe me, just read any news, watch any political discourse, and listen to the general public and their savior politicians talk about the issues; and you'd realize how pitifully simplistic their notions of good and evil are, a bifurcation in the world, a good side that they happened to occupy via destiny.
That's why Tobirama's ideology is something that resonates with them: it's simple, creates an evil to be defeated, and a myth to be upheld for supremacy. It offers a shared legacy to people to fall behind, adopt, and find salvation as a collective. A state/nation's large ego that's capable of assimilating their smaller egos, granting them more purpose beyond mere segmental social realities.
Sakura Fandom is viciously guilty of this, locating her salvation in the paradise of nuclear family, a career, and an opportunity to vanquish the evil that was Sasuke; their fix-it Fan-Fictions (FFs) are plagued by this repugnant intellectual bankruptcy that bullishly keeps everything nice and simple, centered, and not too radical at the expense of every theme that tackles the horrors of the military industrial complex in canon; however, she, apparently, "deserved" better for putting in the work to make this system flourish whilst not being rewarded the chance to exact punishment on Sasuke for slighting her "honor" as woman, a citizen of the state where the "good guys" flourish; but she wasn't allowed to be good, you see, not allowed to get even and flourish like her male counterparts. Can you read this with sincerity and tell me that this isn't Tobirama's doctrine, only with a wash of the dreadful neoliberal/pop feminism to give it a "women rights matter!" spin? You can't because it's exactly that, the "good guy syndrome", a national myth, only that Sakura was "robbed" of the chance to display this goodness, this violence that Sasuke so deserved! (Kill Your Heroes is exactly that, distilled down to even simpler bits, an ideology so pitifully stupid that even Strauss would blush in shame over its minced shambles.)
The neocons created a fiction, an illusion, a distortion of reality in which they occupied the place of good; and overtime, that myth, that fiction, that distortion became their reality. Tobirama, too, did the same, and in time, his distortions considering the Uchiha, Leaf's place as a force of good, and its myth turned into his realities and that of the masses that occupied Leaf. The fans cling to what resonates with them. It isn't that Tobirama sold his ideology well (Lord knows that the guy isn't exactly a charmer). Not at all as it's a very simple and almost childish "good versus evil" mantra; it's that it's what they understand.
That's why they very desperately seek out deflections for his very clear, very simple, and very effective policies. In that they're effective because they're simple, understandable, and easy. And in that race to absolve him of his vile doctrine, they use Danzo as the scapegoat, refusing to answer the simple question: which new policy did Danzo implement? Danzo, in his entire tenure, introduced no new policy regarding the Uchiha. Tobirama created the village's system, its infrastructure, and all the segregation policies. (Yes, the population movement occurred in Tobirama's time, not in Danzo's.)
Danzo didn't invent a Jutsu created from human experimentation; Tobirama did and Orochimaru simply refined it. All the ghastly images you see in Orochimaru's secret labs? Tobirama liberally engaged in them. Danzo didn't lay down the COH fearmongering; Tobirama did. Danzo didn't create the Police Force and all the political policies that isolated the clan, choked out their political influence, and branded them as "ticking timebombs"; Tobirama did. When Tobirama is the primary creator, influencer, and formulator of the aforementioned, how does that place the mark of evil on Danzo and not him? This argument is bereft of logic.
That's why Itachi is considered sacred and Sasuke isn't, a boy who only meant well as he's one of the good ones, of the good guys, of the good nation against all that's evil in the world. Once you establish this awful narrative that one side is just good, then everything that they do is good. And once you establish that the side they stand against is evil, which it has to be as forces are always singular, then everything they do has to have an "evil" caveat, a selfish agenda, and an arrogance that's rooted in the hunger of power.
What lies within the national myth is sanctioned: its mass-butcheries are lesser evils; its prejudices, unwitting mistakes; its victims, collateral; its political fuck ups, little mistakes; and its thirst for more and more power to maintain the myth, a right that's needed for the good ones to remain good as, without it, we all go over to the "evil side", allow the evil forces to win against good, and let them take away our national myths for their own nefarious purposes. And that's why everything the Uchiha do is magnified by comparison: their right to resist is an unlawful hunger for power; their killings are evil as they're no longer performed in the name of national myth; and their quest to value their sovereignty is an act without value before the state sovereignty that's supreme. This is the us versus them, good versus evil, and right versus wrong repeated over and over again in various flavors; yet all of them meet at the same destination: a desire to preserve the national myth of heroics; it's us against the world; and the charge to right the world of its wrongs is ours! (These arguments have been and are regurgitated word for word by the proponents of the Socialist Evil, war on terror, and freedom through democracy; the actors change but the precepts remain unshakeable.)
So it isn't that Tobirama is wrong or that what he did was evil. No, it's that his philosophy is that of simplicity, one that the readers associate with, a reality that's so familiar to them. It's a neocon's best dream, and the readers are helpless because it's a dream that they've shared, a myth that they sustain, a reality that they find easy to imagine.
It's not that complicated; and like Senju Tobirama and Leo Strauss and their neocon ideology, it's, in fact, childishly simple.
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