So it is done

Atlas

James Ironwood was a man with the highest understanding of 'professional ethics'. It was not just one or two occasions where 'Captain Jimmy' had turned against his own commanders or subordinates. All precisely because he treated his job descriptions or orders with even more care and zeal than was expected – or even required – of him.

No, there were always reasons for writing rules, good reason. Reasons that hundreds of people had died for. Rules that had been scrutinized for tens of thousands of hours, establishing each rule and law. Rules that were practiced and constantly monitored and improved.

But alas, the written word had not always kept up with what the people in Remnant had discovered. Oftentimes, this cruel world of theirs forced upon its people the necessity of upholding the 'unwritten' rules and ignoring the written ones.

It was impossible to rewrite an entire collection of laws or all of the army's job descriptions every year. Equally, it's impossible to rearrange the entire huge system every day after analyzing every fact by analysts or in the reports of those in authority. Some things are self-evident, even if they are perhaps wrong in the literal sense.

For example, the law of non-attraction of Grimm.

It states that, if Grimm were attracted by negative emotions – didn't that mean that, technically speaking, anyone that is experiencing negative emotions was guilty of attracting Grimm?

It was a law created from the specialists' understanding of Grimm behavior, from the state's necessity, from the gaze of the vast systems of surveillance, punishment, and protection of the population of Atlas. But it was only a law written by humans, which could not react perfectly to all possible situations and conditions.

Doing so would be counter-productive to the effect it wanted to achieve.

So, patrolling policemen did not arrest every crying baby, whose negative emotions, technically speaking, are indeed attracting Grimm. But still, grabbing crying babies from their mothers is beyond stupid. Nor did they arrest every actor enacting a tragedy in a TV drama. And certainly, no policeman would break into the home of an arguing young couple with a gun to their heads and shout that he would arrest them now unless they immediately made up and went out for a romantic dinner.

Technically speaking, using only cold logic – a policeman who sees a violation of the law must stop that violation. And with the existence of the law on preventing Grimm attraction – all policemen should have done just that. But no one did.

Simply because, in addition to formal logic, there had to be an understanding in a policeman's mind of how exactly he was supposed to behave in each particular case. Understanding when they were supposed to use the cold, formal logic of a marshal of justice and when he was supposed to use his human understanding.

The kind of policeman who could not, at some point, retreat from his job description and ask himself whether they should follow an order, was an ideal executor. They would be a machine performing the absolute function of ensuring the functioning of human society – but at the same time also too dangerous a weapon to be left unchecked.

General James Ironwood was just such a weapon.

He always followed orders to the letter, practiced his function to the fullest he's capable of. And therein lies the danger – his determination to always do exactly what he was supposed to do...

According to his understanding of his own function.

If James Ironwood had become, for example, a simple captain, whose function would have been to support the defense of Atlas? To provide soldiers with decent weapons, to procure supplies in case of a siege, and to lead in its defense? James Ironwood would have become the most perfect army man in the world, as if born and bred exclusively to perform that function alone. It could be said that James Ironwood would have been the perfect commander.