What I like about the Batman is that he doesn't have any superpowers, and neither do his enemies. They've all just been driven mad by their own demons, the Batman included. It's an exaggerated (and beautiful) way to say that events and circumstances go a long way towards building worldviews, and a great reminder that everyone is a human being before they look like the Joker to us. And I think it's an awesome analogy to our two party system in the year of our Lord, 2012 AD.
I hate politics with a greater fury than I hate the Victorian period of literature. As such, this is all I'll say on the matter.
Republicans on the payroll know their voters well, and tend to target peoples' deepest fears/prejudices/issues, and can cast a net to pull in emotionally-charged votes. They're aiming the rhetoric at people who work their lives away for their families, people who either didn't go to college or went with a one-track mind. They're aiming at people who weren't curious/exposed to/didn't give a shit about the roots of human philosophy or science. People who don't think because no one pays them for it. Because they've avoided challenging their long-held notions about the world, those kinds of folks are more likely to have prejudices, irrational fears, and...and, fuck; fuck them for directly appealing to religious people, because devotion to religious law is so often black-and-white, and they know a Christian has to fucking vote for the guy who says "God" more frequently.
I know everyone is responsible for their own morality and information, but the truly religious are a lot more complicated than that. For instance, those Christians who actually are Christ-like...you know, the ones who devote their lives to God and not CNN...they hear Romney say he's against killing babies, and that the incumbent is somehow not against it, and that is a clear-cut choice. No matter what bottomless puddle of shit flows from anyone's mouth after that, the Christian is going to vote for the "not a baby killer" and go back to his/her life of quiet devotion. Good people get good things from the Bible, but goddamn if I don't wish Eve's apple had come from Some. Other. Fucking. Tree. And, well, the political Christians deserve whatever hell they believe in. I hope it's worse than they think.
All the while, Dems over here are cursed with that blasted "greater good" handicap that assumes people would help somebody in need, if given the chance. A la the Batman. Ever notice that the Batman is always up against a bunch of brainwashed and/or rich cronies along with the supervillain? The greater good is something everyone agrees with, but when it comes to saving one's own ass, everyone's just gonna assume Batman's taking care of it. Which he usually is, with the help of technology, engineering, billions of dollars, one old Alfred, and...knowledge. And he is not thanked. They aren't without their flaws, the donkey asses; but shit, I'd vote for Bill Clinton again over these two.
It sucks that he had to remind everybody that we're all growed-up now -- we can stop spitting spitballs at the other side of the room now, but now everybody get out your kinder-mats because it's naptime. Jesus.
The thing that makes it a handicap in this political climate is the charged atmosphere. Republicans are now vying for emotional votes IN LIEU of intelligent and informed decisions, because if they scare their target audience enough, those people will be voting in some sort of survival mode in a world where money is evaporating and they'll have to pay for everyone's birth control -- surely, in that world, being taxed for a more egalitarian society sounds like crazy talk, because it means they'd have to change their entire worldviews to be happy with it. Wars are started and cultures are vaporized over challenged worldviews, and the elephant in the room says it's the only thing that can save us from actually pursuing real knowledge. God for...bade, I guess.
Most lifelong repubs I know are acting like...fucking, Reivers from Firefly or something! They, like the Reivers, have gone to the edge of the universe, and have been driven mad from staring into the abyss for too long. When they read anything good about Obama -- or even just his name -- I could swear it wasn't this bad before. "He's a Muslim! He aborts babies! He gives all my money to black people on welfare because I'm a racist! [b]Shoot 'im![/b]" It's like Obama is the Viet Cong or some shit, where the US soldiers had to strip an entire nation's population of their value as human beings and simply called them all "Charlie," because that's the only way they could live with themselves after killing mothers and children. Obama isn't booby-trapping the rainforests in Viet Nam, but he gets unchecked hatred from the ever-forgetting elephants. Without all that time-consuming fact checking, of course.
I'm not campaigning for Obama or anything, even though he's asked me to dinner a billion times this month, but that kind of behavior from the conservative side says a lot more about today's Repub mindset than it does about Obama's first term. If I didn't know anything Obama did in his four years, I'd see Jesus regretting his crucifixion at the sight of the disgusting horde he died for, and I'd fucking vote for whoever they aren't supporting. It's repulsive. And with a sack like Romney, pushing the country into thinking America is falling apart is really his only fucking shot at it. A man with no provable moral character, no regard for facts, and no plan to help anyone other than himself.
I'd compare the Joker to Romney as an analogy, but I like the Joker too much. At least he admits he's fucking shit up because he doesn't believe in anything, and he'd never run for POTUS in a million years. I respect that in a man.
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