Basic Trope: Tyrants, dictators, and authoritarianism are the only forces to keep humanity in line.
- Straight: Captain Justice rules Troperville with an iron fist in a world full of self-indulgent and self-centered humans.
- Exaggerated:
- Murderers, rapists, thieves, bullies, and people who masturbate are punished swiftly and mercilessly under the harsh laws of Captain Justice.
- Any and all freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry can and will be ruthlessly exploited immediately. And don't even try to imagine anarchy. Ergo, the only way to keep the selfish citizens in line is Sinister Surveillance, State Sec, Secret Police, and to create a state in which the populace doesn't even control the space in between their own two ears.
- Downplayed: People can be a little too self-indulgent without someone like Captain Justice to guide them and enforce laws.
- Justified:
- Captain Justice believes that leading through idealism isn't effective to control humanity's vices.
- Captain Justice knows that without a strong centralized leader, Troperville will fall into unrest, anarchy, and civil war.
- Inverted: Rousseau Was Right
- Subverted: Captain Justice rules with an iron fist, but the people grow tired of his rule and start a rebellion...
- Double Subverted: ...Which is so brutal that it pales in comparison to the brutality of Captain Justice...
- Parodied: Captain Justice is a Knight Templar with grossly Skewed Priorities about which crimes to punish most strongly and whom to punish for committing them. Despite this, everybody still credits him with saving Troperville.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Continued from Double Subverted. The smoke clears and the new government, while not perfect, manages to balance the needs of the populace with the need for law and order.
- Alternating Averted, Straight, and Inverted plays. One far-reaching and overbearing authoritarian government keeps its people behaving, while another cannot control them. One government that strives for socialist or social-democratic nurturing has good order, while another is in chaos and panic. One government that operates based on the principle of a minimal state has good order despite this, while another is in chaos and panic.
- Averted: Hobbes was unambiguously wrong. The tighter Captain Justice squeezes, the more people slip through his fingers.
- Enforced:
- The work is a Propaganda Piece sponsored by the government of The Dictatorship.
- The author is a Misanthrope Supreme who believes that humans are too barbaric and/or idiotic to be moved by kindness and reason alone.
- Lampshaded: "Attempting to establish a democracy is an exercise in futility and authoritarianism is the only way to preserve civilization. Because humans are not smart enough to make commendable decisions and a non-authoritarian government will quickly degenerate into anarchy."
- Invoked: Captain Justice used to be a socially libertarian idealist but, after seeing a society based on his principles fall seemingly because of them, he Took a Level in Cynic.
- Exploited: Captain Justice convinces Bob to join his side because he paints Charlie as an anarchist.
- Defied: "Authoritarianism isn't all that it's cracked up to be, Captain Fascist. I think I'd prefer anarchy over such a useless system."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Law and order are preserved, but at the cost of impoverishing a large majority of the people who live there because they can't or won't work under these conditions.
- Reconstructed: These people are brought into the fold by the regime redirecting their skills into service of what the Powers That Be deem useful jobs.
- Played for Drama: Captain Justice becomes ruthless after a riot in the place he rules.
- Implied: Alice, a foreigner, tells Bob that she doesn't envy him the authoritarianism of his country, but she does kind of wish hers had the same degree of social stability.
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