Superboy goes MAGA, Comes Out of Closet
The in-joke here is a little complicated, but if you have been following comic book news lately, you will get the reference:
My comment:
The silliest part of this silly picture is having Superman protesting anything to anyone.
The original picture had the same scene, but with Supersodomite and his danger-haired commie catamite protesting capitalism and the climate.
Since Lex Luthor has a weather control machine, and since Superman has, in the past, moved the Earth closer or farther from the sun to regulate temperature, I honestly do not understand to whom or about what, in the original pic, he is allegedly protesting. If he is worried about Global Warming, he can cool it with his super-breath, or gather icebergs from the rings of Saturn to chill the earthly stratosphere.
Having Aquaman, and his Kraken, in the background makes even less sense, since the sea environment would be unaffected by any global warming, except, perhaps, to expand the ocean boundaries. If the water level rises, isn’t that good for him?
In the original picture, one protestor clutched a sign saying “there is no Planet B!” Which, in the DC universe, is not a true statement. It is called Earth Two.
But even if the protest were to someone who could change something, about a problem that was real, it makes no sense.
Superman is the emblem of divine power on Earth, as Hercules or Moses, a heavenly hero sent from On High to quell chaos and restore the divinely mandated order of civilization, in this case, truth, justice, and the American way.
In a symbolic sense, he is the establishment.
Being American, he is also a minuteman, so he goes back to being a farmer or a newspaperman after the current emergency is quelled, whether caused by invading moon-apes, an active volcano, a mad inventor, a kryptonite-powered robot, or an evil imp from the fifth dimension.
Superman has the power to bench press the moon. He can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, outrun a locomotive, overleap a tall building. To whom would he protest? His submission to the laws and customs of America is voluntary. Which means he regards those laws and customs as sacred.
If at all, he could express a public opinion on the unwisdom of any deviation from the core principles of truth, justice, and the American way, such as, as pictured above, siding with those who protest that the election was stolen. But we only voice that protest because we expect the public magistrates to uphold the laws they swore to protect, the Constitution they swore to defend. We do not have the power to do anything about it, except take up arms, and we have not yet (as of the time of this writing) been driven to that extreme. We have no power to solve this crime. Superman does. Superman, upon discovering that the election was stolen, could gather up all the Dominion voting machines and thrown them into the sun.
But, of course, he would do more good in such a situation as Clark Kent, merely by using his x-ray vision to read whatever the FBI had in their secret files concerning Hunter Biden and his laptop, and publishing that in the Daily Planet. No protest needed.
A protest is cry of desperation, once orderly public debate with the government or negotiations with the company proves futile, of the powerless against the powerful, a last-ditch attempt to gain public sympathy to the goals of the protestors, in hopes of swaying public opinion, or intimidating magistrates or elected politicians.
Hence, a protest is either a threat of mob-violence, or is, at least, a visual display of the numbers and conviction of a large mass of voters. One picketer is an absurd sight. He is a soapbox preacher, not a protest-mob. Without a credible threat of violence, a protestor is saber-rattling without his saber. It is crackpottery.
And, to have moral authority, the protest must be of the weak and downtrodden against the strong and established, the have-nots against the want-nots. A large mob of shouting men with threatening signs against, for example, a shepherd girl, a hot-dog stand vendor, a cripple, a blind man, a leper, is not a protest, any more than the mass jury of Athens executing Socrates was a protest. It is not called a protest if the multitude is on the side of power. It is merely brutality.
Superman cannot protest because, paradoxically, he is too powerful to intimidate anyone. If he had demands, he could whisper them in a soft voice, using super-ventriloquism, from a mile away. He has no need to gather public sentiment to his cause. To be sure, he can persuade by sweet reason rather than intimidate by threat of force, but then again, if he wanted to persuade, why not have Clark Kent write an editorial in a great metropolitan newspaper? Protests only start once persuasion stops. That is why Leftists generally love protests, and Rightwingers generally do not. We prefer guns.
Batman does not carry a gun due to his traumatic memory with his parents. Spiderman is too young to own a firearm. But Superman does not carry a gun because such a thing would be a toy to him, and would melt the next time he was wrestling an active volcano.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
