Is rick as bad as negan?

"If TWD would have been a show about a man who lost his wife to cancer in a hospital during the first week of the outbreak who then wandered around in the wilderness for some time where he meets and loses people until he and a group of more or less loyal followers find the Sanctuary, take over, build the place up and then suddenly a group eradicates an outpost of his, we definitely would think Negan is the ‘good guy’, the hero of the show. We would have seen a lot of violence, a lot of brutal deaths by his hands, but we would have thought that most, if not all of them, were justified. Negan is not evil, but from a moral standpoint, he does bad things. Negan wants to safe people, ALL people, but he thinks to achieve this he has to herd them like sheep. He forces them to submit into his totalitarian system and punishes those who refuse abhorrently. He provides order, safety, and stability, but takes away their freedom and ability to think for themselves. I don’t want to defend what Negan did, but he is not an arbitrary killer. He doesn’t kill people he doesn’t ‘have’ to, and the people he kills or let his people kill aren’t random, except maybe Olivia. Denise was an accident. Killing someone just to introduce himself isn’t what he does either, neither in the show nor in the comics. The kid on the Hilltop and the men and boys from Oceanside were Simon’s misdeeds, that is canon, and, although this admittedly is only my speculation, wanting Gregory dead and Bud threatening to kill one of them when Sasha, Abraham, and Daryl meet him on the road was imo the Satellite Outpost somehow out of control. This, of course, is in the grand scheme still Negan’s fault because his system is designed to coarse people and he even encourages this culture of violence and even psychotic behavior. That said, from Negan and the Saviors point of view what happened on that clearing was Rick’s fault. His attack on the outpost forced Negan’s hand to show him the strength of the Saviors and what they are capable off when taunted. I no doubt believe that he enjoyed killing Abraham and Glenn, breaking Rick, showing off, but under different circumstances a first meeting between the Saviors and Rick’s group would have gone down way differently. That brings us to Rick. Much like Negan, Rick wants to keep people safe, but he focusses on the safety of his own family and doesn’t care much about anyone else to the point that he disregards the fact that these are people, too. So everytime his family is remotely in danger, Rick overreacts, which isn’t evil either, but a lot of the things Rick does then appear to be bad, mostly in the later seasons when they are already in Alexandria, like waving that gun around, his inability to handle an abusive husband despite being a trained cop without resorting to brutal violence, and of course that unprovoked attack on the outpost that was more of a hit than anything else, and his indiscriminate killing spree during the war. I never really understood why Rick’s the heart and loyally followed leader of the group since he his mentally unstable, shows constantly pure judgment of situations and people, comes up with halfbaked plans that leave a lot desired, and more often than not reacts impulsive and emotional. Negan was right with one thing, he kills people, but Rick gets people killed. That doesn’t make Rick as bad or worse than Negan, it makes him dangerous regarding the safety of his own group. Negan’s system is unsustainable, sooner or later a war had been inevitable. That brings me to my last point, that indiscriminate killing of EVERY Savior. Tara, Daryl, Maggie, Rick, even Carol, all those people who tell others and themselves that this is a necessary evil in order to lead everyone in a bright new future are doing this out of one reason, revenge. That makes them hypocrites at best. Rick not only lets this happen. Rick’s the worst. Especially after Carl’s death, he is basically out of control and what he does to those men in that tavern who first surrendered and even saved his life is unjustifiable. At this moment, in that situation, Rick is way worse than Negan. Negan wouldn’t do something like that, he has himself more under control, and he knows that every single life is worth something. He wouldn’t throw them away like that just to satisfy his need for revenge. But anyhow, overall the world of TWD is grey through and through. There is no bad and good anymore and everyone thinks they are the heroes of their own story, so both Rick and Negan are equally bad (or good) in their own way."

Thought this was a pretty cool in depth answer to the question. Found this on quora by Stefanie Hilpert. Here is the link

https://www.quora.com/Is-Rick-as-bad-as-Negan?ch=10&share=df580687&srid=uYQQ1

Submitted February 02, 2019 at 02:32PM by CaptainCleric http://bit.ly/2WCno9u