#mcu politics

[legalandnotease]

I am not getting into MCU discourse but yeesh, 'sacrifice his personal freedom for the greater good to make the world feel safer' is nearly a word for word retelling about what Alexander Pierce said in CA:TWS.

You know the high ranking Hydra agent who stood as a high ranking Sentor along side all the other Nazis in the US government and SHEILD who were planning on the mass murder of anyone they deemed dangerous or undesirable?

Hi Riana

I don't blame you for not getting into this discourse, because it gets nasty, but I totally agree with you.

I honestly think the vast majority of Tony fans have not seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier and so don't understand the basis for Steve's objections to the Accords and government over-reach.

Although there is one other, worse, explanation. They have seen the movie but they didn't understand what it was telling them.

Winter Soldier will never cease to be relevant because it is literally telling you how authoritarian dictatorships come into being.

The people on power create choas and instability (or exploit it) then, when everybody is scared, they come along offering the solution: hand over your freedom to them in return for security and protection.

They will *get rid of* the bad people to keep you safe and in return you just have to do what they say. Forever.

They cannot see that is exactly what was happening in Civil War, and just like in real life, there was a huge danger because HYDRA were not gone. Both movies show how easy it is to be seduced by authoritarianism and fascists. All they have to do is say they are protecting everybody, and the gullible or the complicit will be taken in.

The problem is Tony Stans think that Tony is always right, even when he is supporting what is, to all intents and purposes, fascism. Even when he is standing alongside a man like Ross and telling everybody to submit to him.

I have said this many times: but if Tony Stark was in Winter Soldier he would have been on Pierce's side and supported Project INSIGHT. Tony fans would have be saying he was right to do so, and Steve was wrong and bad for not understanding Pierce and Tony "just want to protect the world".

So yeah, its actually concernng how fascist-coded Tony Stark is. From his spiel in Age of Ultron about "peace in our time" which echoes Neville Chamberlain's campaign to appease Hitler, so his support of the Accords, to his rant in Endgame. Its also concerning how his fans like @good-news-every-1 who recently shared one of my posts don't see it because they are so madly in love with him.

It is no wonder there's a fan theory that Tony was HYDRA the entire time. Another theory is that this is the reason he wanted Bucky dead: because he feared Bucky knew the truth about him beng HYDRA and could expose him.

[bedlamsbard]

I for one would LOVE to hear about That Man's opinion on the Sokovia Accords, and any other blends of the real world into marvelverse as you have time and space for

Donald Trump is the horrifying combination of anti-Accords, anti-Captain America, and anti-Iron Man. I have THOUGHTS on this.

Okay, so CACW takes place in 2016, yes? which was a horrifying enough election year IRL, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe we're looking at a scenario where I have postulated that Matthew Ellis is the Democratic candidate. Ellis was elected in 2012 after Barack Obama dropped out of the 2012 race post-Battle of New York as a result of pressure from the World Security Council; my best estimate is that Ellis takes Joe Biden's place as Obama's vice president in the 2008 election (apologies to our Irish Catholic granddad, we can probably safely assume he's still a senator in this AU) and coasts to electoral victory on a wave of post-BONY patriotism. (see my hard-hitting investigative journalism on who was president during the Battle of New York. George W. Bush was president during the events of IM1, we can assume that all real world presidents prior to Ellis served as usual, a.k.a. FDR was president during CATFA, Bill Clinton was president during Captain Marvel and the BW prologue -- actually, we know Clinton was president, because we see him in the BW credits, same with a few others.)

For better or worse -- worse, as it turns out -- Ellis's administration becomes closely linked to Tony Stark and James Rhodes, since Tony and Rhodey very publicly save his life during the events of IM3 and are responsible for his VP (Rodriguez, no first name that I'm aware of) being arrested for treason and probably other nasty stuff. Four months after that, the events of CATWS go down, and while Ellis is quoted in Steve's Smithsonian exhibit with the "Welcome Back" wall bannerand thus they presumably met, Steve is not closely associated with Matthew Ellis in the same way that Tony Stark is. Steve is also closely associated with a major blow to the American intelligence apparatus, the deaths of most of the World Security Council, the destruction of SHIELD, the "death" of Nick Fury, the disgrace and death of Alexander Pierce, and the arrests of a number of major American politicians, including Senator Stern of Pennsylvania. We know from CATWS that Ellis himself was a target of Project Insight; I have also postulated that the Hydra reveal had a major effects on his administration, including either the arrest or the resignation of his original Secretary of State. Thaddeus Ross got the SecState position not because he was Ellis's original pick, but because post-CATWS (or possibly post-AoU), he was able to leverage his previous experience with the Hulk and other recipients of the super soldier serum to be politically useful.

Ellis has to be in favor of the Sokovia Accords because his SecState is running the show -- in theory the Accords will be administered by a UN panel, in actual practice, as we see in CACW and BW, the intent is for either the American SecState in general or Thaddeus Ross specifically to have sole control over the Avengers. Less than ideal by anyone's standards. Pre-Accords, no one knows how this is going to shake out.

Let's go back to how Donald Trump hates Steve Rogers, like, so much. The feeling is mutual. I'm pretty sure Trump personally knew, or at least met, Tony Stark pre-Iron Man, because they would have been in some of the same social circles: those personalities are going to clash. That's not going to go over well. Trump probably made overtures to Steve because CAPTAIN AMERICA! we love America! what's more great for America than the Greatest Generation! only uh. it's Steve. and Trump pre- (and post-) 2016 is everything Steve Rogers hates. sure, he's a great piece of American propaganda, but he grew up as a poor second generation immigrant son of a single mother with significant health issues during the Great Depression. that didn't go away when he got the serum and it certainly didn't go away when he got out of the ice! so Steve probably rebuffed the initial overtures politely, but he did rebuff them, and Trump, hmm, doesn't handle that sort of thing real well. so then a big part of That Man's campaign turned into the "fuck Captain America" tour with a side of "fuck the Avengers," playing heavily into the damage done during the events of Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Which Ellis's campaign was probably also doing, but more circumspectly because Matthew Ellis is an actual politician and he's politically linked to two of the ten Avengers (Tony and Rhodey); Tony's also the one with the most obvious "pull." Steve's got some but Steve doesn't actually want to use it.

So on the one hand, if Ellis is pro-Avengers and pro-Accords, but in a "they should be controlled but we need them" sort of way, then his main opponent is going to not be in favor of either. In 2016 Trump does want the Avengers controlled (so he can have personal pull over the two Avengers he hates the most, Tony and Steve; he's probably also not fond of many of the others! like, Natasha and Wanda are both women and immigrants...). But he doesn't want them controlled by a UN panel, he wants them controlled by the United States of America. You don't let THE UNITED NATIONS give orders to CAPTAIN AMERICA. The Avengers are mostly made up of American citizens, they include some fine pieces of American engineering; this is America's business. So that's his focus on the Accords leading up to CACW.

CACW itself is a political disaster for Matthew Ellis and almost certainly flipped the election for him -- it goes so horrifically badly for him even if he got the "victory" of the Accords passing that there's basically no way to recover from it, though presumably he tried in the months between May and November 2016. The events of BW and the Raft breakout during those months put the nail in the coffin of Ellis's reelection campaign. Trump spends that time beating Ellis's failure to control the Avengers into the ground, along with personal insults about Tony's incompetence as a superhero and Steve's disloyalty as an American, etc. etc., along with all the other stuff from his 2016 campaign. Absolute disaster for everyone on every level.

(Ross manages to skate through into Trump's administration -- since we know he's there in IW in 2018; I think he's addressed as "Mr. Secretary" there but can't check rn -- because he's a slippery son of a bitch and probably manages to parlay his Hulk experience, his hardheadedness in going after Natasha Romanoff, and tbh probably the fact that his nickname is Thunderbolt Ross into a cabinet position. (We've all heard the speculation that Jim Mattis got the real world SecDef position because his nickname is Mad Dog Mattis, right?) It's possible that in IW he's no longer SecState and is in fact running that UN panel, but I think that table of people we see has U.S. military uniforms at it and Rhodey specifically refers to potentially being court-martialed.)

presumably there are no Avengers-level disasters between 2016 and 2018 (we know the events of Spider-Man Homecoming and Ant-Man and the Wasp take place then, but they're not "call the team out" big), which is probably the only thing that keeps the whole disaster from going up in flames before then. the fact that no one can catch Steve or the other rogue Avengers must be driving That Man crazy and he probably went on some vicious Twitter rants about that.

and then, in my heart of hearts, he gets snapped in 2018.

I am sorry for making you think about Donald Trump's political views but at least they aren't his actual real world ones (horrifying).

[literatureatthebowofnails]

Interesting that Avengers: Civil War came out in May of 2016. Because honestly, what kind of moron would appoint (much less vote to confirm) Thaddeus Ross as Secretary of State

[let-them-fight]

can we stop doing this trope

[thedevilinthem]

frank castle having a civilized interview with a therapist is objectively the funniest thing i can imagine.

[mysharona1987]

Thankfully the bad guys aren’t openly bragging about their evil schemes like Bond villains. Otherwise the rest of the world might have an excuse to do something about this.

Wait, now Supervillains do yoga?

There was a reason I never did yoga.

That is basically half ass gymnastics for people who can’t do gymnastics.

Maybe aerobics would have made her less into killing brown skinned toddlers?

[emdashbitch]

your honor I think they would be great friends

[drgrlfriend]

John Hodgman, National Treasure. https://x.com/hodgman/status/1833694892305813836?s=46

[ridleymocki]

I know there was a mass exodus from mcu fandom after end game but I just think it'd be really neat and special if everyone that lost their minds for the Captain America movies in phase one also went and supported Anthony Mackie's Captain America movie. Like, fuck disney and all their shit, but supporting Black actors in roles not typically given to them shows there is a market there, and that's very important.

[italofobia]

please take a look at @gazamaha6 's campaign, which has been verified by nabulsi and 90-ghost:

as you can see, Maha's campaign has only reached 7% of its goal! (as of 21/03/25) this is UNACCEPTABLE.

donate what you can and share this post with your followers or with anyone who can donate. the situation is dire, we can't abandon Maha at a time like this!

[beauty-funny-trippy]

"He bends over for Putin."

[five-milfs-and-a-twink]

[pfeiffer-cipher]

What is Bucky's motivation for running for Congress, genuinely? It's so out of left field I'm worried they're not going to give a sufficient explanation in thunderbolts. He's experienced some pretty terrible shit at the hands of the U.S. government in the past, and I could understand someone else in his shoes wanting to make a difference in the political sphere because of that, but this is Bucky we're talking about. He hates being in the public eye. He breaks the law several times in FATWS without regret (not that that would stop any politicians in reality from gaining power, *cough cough*, but this is fiction we're talking about), and appears utterly disinterested in engaging with the bureaucracy. He's at his happiest hanging out with Sam and his family - what on earth would motivate him to jump into politics as soon as he's starting to heal mentally? He is definitely a people person, so I could see him becoming some kind of liason in the future, but the environment of big-ticket politics seems like it would mesh SO poorly with his personality.

He could be backsliding? Maybe this is his new way of making "amends"? Except that in the Thunderbolts trailer, it's pretty obvious that he's supposed to be the "mature, seasoned character that keeps the others in check" and it seems that he's gotten past the guilt that drove his actions in FATWS and beforehand.

Maybe he's bored of fighting and wants to make a difference in a different way than he's used to? But he has never indicated any desire to become a politician in the past. Like, not even a hint. I can read into the MCU all I want and I still don't see any hints that this is a career path he's remotely interested in.

Of course there's always a chance that it's a cover, but why would he go through the trouble of running for office in that case? Why wouldn't he just...I don't know...take someone else's place? Pretend to be a bodyguard or something? Financing an entire campaign would be a very roundabout way to build a cover for yourself, but hey, I don't know what's happened between FATWS and Thunderbolts. Maybe that'd be necessary for some reason.

All of that being said, I'm just begging Marvel for some consistency here. I have pretty high hopes for thunderbolts despite all my complaints and I'm really hoping they don't just explain away the whole Congress thing.

[mysharona1987]

But, really.

If you are going to end the world can you at least be Thanos or Dr Doom or Zod about this shit?

Frankly, I would have far more respect for Mark Zuckerberg if he just owned up to his supervillain shit.

[finelytaylored]

[mischa-leper]

I love these queers