Trump as Batman: Law and Honor

 In the post "The Spy Who Loved Us" on Nov. 1 I gave very brief summary encapsulating who the real Donald Trump is, in the minds of some people who have followed him.  In that I mentioned that Trump explicitly identified himself as Batman to a boy who asked him at the Iowa State Fair. That was in August 2015, five months before the first primary. Here's a video about it. 

I won't recap the points I made in that earlier post. But yesterday I was thinking the idea of Trump as Batman. It occurred to me I was missing part of the picture of that reference.

Back in the 1970s, when comic book superheroes were mostly for kids and not grownups, and when I was a boy in Iowa, we talked over such things as the differences between the super powers of various heroes. One discussion that almost every kid my age knew about---the difference between Superman and Batman. Who's more powerful?

It seems ridiculous to ask. Superman is an alien being with physical powers that no human being can match. Batman is just a normal human being, albeit. wealthy one who has used his mind and his body to craft himself into a formidable force against his enemies. How are they even in the same league (the Justice League, to be specific)?

Here's the answer. Yes, Batman has enormous wealth that allows him to build fancy weapons and gadgets to battle the bad guys. Yes, he is a skilled in martial arts and has strength to defeat them in hand-to-hand combat if necessary. But neither of those is his real super power.

What is his real super power? It is the law. Batman always has the law on his side. We especially see in the 1966 television series version of Batman starring Adam West. Batman, when he needs to, can call the cops. The bad guys can't do that. Batman is the openness of sunlight and all its disinfecting power. He brings with him the righteous justice of all of open American society against his foes. He is able to do this even more powerfully than Superman, who as an honorable man is bound by the law. The law is above all of them, and no one is more closely tied to it than Batman.

This is Trump in a nutshell, and why he truly is Batman. He has the law on his side at all times. No exceptions. Somehow early on, he realized this was the only path to success in life.  But of course he had to create the persona we call "the Donald" in order to achieve what he wanted---infiltrating the bad guys over time.

Today the 1966 version of Batman seems corny by today's audiences. The year 1966 was about the cutoff between the old classical version of America and the new postmodern version. This old Batman seemed too "square" almost right out of the gate. Within a few years of that, being square that way became the worst thing in the world. Following those kinds of rules meant you were a sucker.

We have seen the rise of the antihero to replace the hero. We are so used to it by now. People who write movies don't understand the concept of honor, which was at the heart of every classical hero. So we've gotten the dark Batman, who is compromised, because the law is corrupt. Our version of Batman is one who has to lower himself to a compromised state, because playing by the rules means you will lose. It's one reason that so many superhero movies are mostly boring garbage today---there is no conception that honor is the most important thing in the world, and that honor itself is a superpower.

We are a fallen people right now. I am just one of many of my cohort and among the generations younger than me who fell the lies. Even if you don't act on the lie, it can make you despair. This is precisely the demoralization that Communists spoke of, as the method of destroying America over time. The Communists apply this to entire generations, in order to transform a country away from its morals. 

Thank God we had one man who resisted all that, and who also happened to have the other traits of Bruce Wayne, and who was more passionately interested in justice than any one of us could possibly have suspected.

We're going to see the Law-as-Superpower aspect of Trump's Batmanness play out of the next few weeks, I think. It's going to the mother of all calls to Commissioner Gordon, and the bad guys are going to be surrounded and throw up their hands. But first we're going to have a big brawl with lots of "Pow" and "Crash" effects before the bad guys give up.