Yeah, but - it's sort of like the politicians who choose to wage war, and then make sure their children don't have to fight in it. At the end of the day, Sam and Dean have power, and with great power comes great responsibility. If it's necessary to kill demons to protect the world, why doesn't that apply when they have to look the mother of the demon-possessed person in the eye? Because it makes them emotionally uncomfortable. It brings home what they are actually doing. If you're only willing to drop the bomb if you don't know the names of the kids who will die, maybe you shouldn't be dropping the bomb at all.
Does Dean feel bad about all the people who died? Yes and no. Dean's guilt is excessive to the point of being self-serving - and yet, he frequently makes the choice to not actually make the hard choices. Don't get me wrong, Dean can be very self-sacrificing, but in this episode, when faced with the possibility of killing a young man in front of his mother, he choose to shoot the boo-hiss serial killer instead, and feel like less of the bad guy. Dean makes himself feel guilty so that he feels less like a bad guy. Dean's guilt isn't about doing the best thing - Lisa and Ben are proof of that - it's about making Dean feeling like a good person (by, paradoxically, feeling like a bad person). Dean does "the hard thing" only to the extent that it makes him feel the like a noble man who punishes himself by doing bad things so over people don't have to. He draws the line at too hard - even if that means his choices make things worse, rather than better.
ETA: Oh, and IF killing possessed people is the right thing to do, then they are saying Nora's son is not only more important than other possession victims - he's more important that all the people who will be killed by the demons and tortured to death by the demon's protégés. Basically, other people should die to prevent theoretically deaths. But they met this guy's mother a few times, so it's okay to run the risk of letting people get tortured to death horrifically. Because Sam and Dean don't know those people, they don't seem to spend two thoughts on it. Which makes you wonder why, really, they kill other possessed victims - if this isn't something they really think about.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2017-04-11 12:55 pm (UTC)Does Dean feel bad about all the people who died? Yes and no. Dean's guilt is excessive to the point of being self-serving - and yet, he frequently makes the choice to not actually make the hard choices. Don't get me wrong, Dean can be very self-sacrificing, but in this episode, when faced with the possibility of killing a young man in front of his mother, he choose to shoot the boo-hiss serial killer instead, and feel like less of the bad guy. Dean makes himself feel guilty so that he feels less like a bad guy. Dean's guilt isn't about doing the best thing - Lisa and Ben are proof of that - it's about making Dean feeling like a good person (by, paradoxically, feeling like a bad person). Dean does "the hard thing" only to the extent that it makes him feel the like a noble man who punishes himself by doing bad things so over people don't have to. He draws the line at too hard - even if that means his choices make things worse, rather than better.
ETA: Oh, and IF killing possessed people is the right thing to do, then they are saying Nora's son is not only more important than other possession victims - he's more important that all the people who will be killed by the demons and tortured to death by the demon's protégés. Basically, other people should die to prevent theoretically deaths. But they met this guy's mother a few times, so it's okay to run the risk of letting people get tortured to death horrifically. Because Sam and Dean don't know those people, they don't seem to spend two thoughts on it. Which makes you wonder why, really, they kill other possessed victims - if this isn't something they really think about.