Talk:Energybending/@comment-150.108.238.41-20120422191134/@comment-4662143-20120422204414

The Communists were also striving to ensure equality in birth. No private property means no rich and no poor. No one is born with any more privileges than anyone else. If Bending existed in our world, the Communists would see it is harmful as well. At any rate, it cannot be said that the Equalists are disregarding equality in pay/quality of life either. The protestor in the park specifically cites social oppression as justification for joining Amon, much in the same way Communists used social oppression to bring the peasants and proletarian workers to their side. Unlike the Fire Nation, which was more similar to Imperial Japan, with its personality cult around the emperor, hyper nationalism, militarism, racism, and desire to conquer the world, the Equalist are more similar to Communists in their methods and ideology. Though the Communists did have armies, they operated using guerilla tacitics, much in the same way that the Equalists do. They emphaize a blind devotion to the concept of Equality, but never define what exactly that means aside from ridding the world of benders. In the same way, the Communists got rid of their kings and rich landowners, but never actually defined what equality meant aside from getting rid of the old order. Hence,they were able to justify all sorts of hypcritial debauchery in the name of better securing equality. As George Orwell put it in his Animal Farm "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others." The iconography is the same. The propaganda picture of Amon used in the recent episode, with rays of the sun coming out of his hand, is very similar to propaganda pictures of Mao Zedong and Kim il Sung, who were depicted with the rays of the sun coming out of their faces. Plus, the humiliation of the benders at the meeting is very similar to the way alleged counter-revolutionaries were treated during Struggle Sessions in Maoist China. I suppose you're right in saying that we don't know enough about Amon to tell whether he is a sociopath or not, but it seems to me that he has the potential.