See, I thought she gave an order in part 1, and then said "How nice you didn't have to do that thing you wanted to do," and backed right off it in part 2.

True. Very true. Um... can we blame the drugs?

Strega, but I really did read that as "Sometimes you have to do terrible things, and I want you to promise me that you'll DO them." So "Don't flinch" means "don't flinch", and can also mean "If you have to kill me, don't miss.

Inevitably, each and every o­ne of us will have to face a moment where we have to commit that horrible sin. And if we flinch in that moment, if we hesitate for o­ne second, if we let our conscience get in the way, you know what happens? There are more kids in those body bags.

Let me state for the record, because I am autistic in this way, that the quoted portion here is a logical fallacy known as the "false dichotomy." Either you commit an atrocity or you let people die -- why is this a universal either-or statement, when there might be many other potential outcomes? The answer: crappy/underhanded rhetoric.

(Crappy in the sense that some people can't think their way out of perceived dichotomies; underhanded in the sense that "Why do you hate America?" is considered a legitimate form of argumentation nowadays. I don't have a strong opinion as to whether Cain was crappy, or underhanded, or both, or something else -- because I'm not sure what the writers intended.)

This rhetorical analysis brought to you by Citizens for Elegance in Argumentation, the Corporation for Clear Rhetoric, and the letter Q.

By the way, you can get Highlander season sets way cheap here: [link]

$30.00 per season instead of $80.00 at Amazon.

::hearts Nutty to the moon and back::

I think when she says "Don't flinch when that happens," she means, "Don't flinch when that happens."

Does she have some particular horrible thing that she expects Kara to have to do in mind, though? I mean, it's kind of a nonsensical piece of advice to give two days after meeting someone unless you're trying to rev them up for something, and it's not like Kara has a problem with blowing up Cylons, so it would have to be something else.

I guess it just didn't work for me as something the character would say at that point if not for the writers wanting there to be Ironic Subtext. YISMV.

Either you commit an atrocity or you let people die -- why is this a universal either-or statement, when there might be many other potential outcomes? The answer: crappy/underhanded rhetoric.

Not if one assumes she's not talking about every decision (if I part my hair on the right, hundreds will die) but about the moments in which you have to perform atrocities to save lives, in which there are no other choices for survival.

Which contrasts with Adama's decision to be worthy of survival, rather than survive at any cost in those same moments.

eta:

I guess it just didn't work for me as something the character would say at that point if not for the writers wanting there to be Ironic Subtext.

It worked for me as Cain grooming Kara. Every lesson doesn't have to be about the next ten minutes.

Can't you all see it? The woman is screaming "I need to be killed! Kill me now, before we are consumed entirely by the slashy subtext!"

t pouts

now I have to rewatch to see if I think Cain wants to die

Not if one assumes she's not talking about every decision (if I part my hair on the right, hundreds will die) but about the moments in which you have to perform atrocities to save lives, in which there are no other choices for survival.

But she does the conflation herself, between "sometimes" and "inevitably" - I'll repost below:

Sometimes terrible things have to be done. Inevitably, each and every o­ne of us will have to face a moment where we have to commit that horrible sin.

If it's "sometimes" that she's talking about, then it's legitimate to claim under certain limited circumstances that only two (or a small number) choices exist. But when you get to "inevitably each and every one of us," then you're playing fast-and-loose with who gets what choices when, and it's fair to call fallacy.

[There's also a school of thought that the job of leadership is the job of avoiding situations in which there are no good choices, but the point here is that claiming that a bad-choice situation (now with big scary death and atrocity!) is "inevitable" for every person is a big fat lie.]

If it's "sometimes" that she's talking about, then it's legitimate to claim under certain limited circumstances that only two (or a small number) choices exist. But when you get to "inevitably each and every one of us," then you're playing fast-and-loose with who gets what choices when, and it's fair to call fallacy.

I don't get it--with "sometimes" she narrows her pool, and within that pool, some things are inevitable. I don't see why you insist that these things are inevitable outside the pool. I do think the language could have been streamlined, but that it's much easier for me to assume she's being a little sloppy about talking about binary Gordian Knots rather than characterising every important decision.