Quote Originally Posted by Pteranodon View Post
Thay keep slaves cause that's what brute degenerate humans do- they rape, murder, bully, enslave, band together into gangs, and hold petty grudges against anyone who fights back. And once again I'm glad "We're Alive" doesn't sugar-coat the monstrous barbarity that'll become routine once law and police are gone and no one's left to restrain the sociopaths....

Unless I'm mistaken, Durai is black; so a black man owns slaves...in America.... either way, I no longer see him or Scratch as a character; they're subhuman things that ought to be killed slowly (just like the slave-owners in the Colony) This isn't what desperate people resort to for survival- this evil mentality is out there right now in the real world, all over the place, barely held in check....Not everyone of course, but more than you'd think.

If I had to choose between a zombie and Durai (or Scratch) I'd use my last bullet on the Maller.
Many Great Civilizations in history had slaves or built their Great Society on the backs of slave labor. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, British, French, Hungarian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Norse, Americans and more held slaves. You can argue the enlightenment of some or all of these societies as you want, but it's the human animal that asserts dominance over the weak and forces them to do their bidding through force, manipulation, coercion, intimidation, and other tactics.

It's a pretty universal thing in the animal kingdom every social species defers to the Alpha of the pack, but since we are more advanced than animals, we assert dominance in more brutal and creative ways (other than simply running off competing males). I think it's very shortsighted to think of the Mallers simply as "subhuman" and does a disservice to the story by thinking of them simply in one dimension.