With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility...Accountability...not so much

This is the poster child for a Stream of Unconsciousness post.  I've had a couple drinks, I've been thinking random thoughts, and I'm going to bloviate about them with very little editing.  Nothing I write here should be taken as a firm belief or policy prescription (except about Spiderman).

I fucking LOVE Spiderman.  Been a fan since I was a kid.  I got about fifty issues away from a complete ASM collection, but you can guess the cost of those last issues.

Anyway...

My favorite line was his Uncle's about with great power comes great responsibility.  Spiderman really lived that line.  But why?  What if he didn't?  It occured to me that no one really had any way to make him ACCOUNTABLE for his actions...which is really the most important part.  He was internally accountable, but this was the comics for Christ's sake.  Reality doesn't work that way.  As evidence, see virtually everyone with power...ever.

Corporations have power (post coming with more detail) and theoretically are accountable to shareholders, boards, the government.  But really, what ever happens to a corporation.  First they lobby the government to self regulate, then they pull crap anyway, then they get fined, maybe, which causes them to pass on the cost to customers or shareholders.  The people responsible almost NEVER face accountability.  Obviously there are a lot of corporations that behave and do good things, but not because the system holds them accountable.  Even when the government steps in and shuts them down it's the shareholders who pay.  When they get sued - shareholders or customers...see the pattern.

Then there's politicians.  They have power.  Do voters hold them accountable?  Rarely.  Usually they represent a gerrymandered district that is solid for their party, meaning even if their voters get really pissed off, they just vote in another person of the same party.  Democrats have been counting on the Black vote for decades, while doing nothing for them.  Republicans the same with the fundamentalists.  Examples abound.

But what really got me going was war.  Who starts wars?  Governments.  Presidents, Prime Ministers, dictators, kings, parliaments, congresses, etc.  Who pays the price?  Soldiers, Citizens, Children, Innocent bystanders.  Where's any accountability?  Even the loser government often stays in power, and if not, different elites take over.  Rarely are individuals held to account for the wars they start.

What really brought this home was Gerald Ford's executive order preventing targeted assassinations, and the Geneva Convention and other international agreements prohibiting targeting non combatant leaders for assassination, particularly by non-uniformed soldiers.  There are some murky areas, especially since 9/11, but, essentially, this is people who initiate and direct wars that kill thousands, if not millions of innocent people, send soldiers to their deaths, and displace millions of people...as well as inevitable war crimes, rapes and murders...saying, "but we're off-limits."  Those who initiate the horrors of war are protected by laws and agreements from facing the consequences of wars they start.
Agreements that these SAME leaders negotiated,

There's very little in the world more ass-backward than this.