Last night my wife had the computer, so I found myself channel-surfing into one of Hollywood's less memorable superhero movies, "Daredevil." (OK, Proust fans, I sometimes indulge my lowbrow tastes. I can't always be reading "War and Peace.") While in the shower today, I was musing over the myriad ways the movie could have been done better, when it struck me -- progressives can learn a lot from comic book superheroes.
Howzat? What the hell is Max babbling about? More on the flip.
For those who didn't grow up reading comic books, or if you've managed to avoid the best of the recent crop of superhero movies (the "X-Men" series, the first "Batman" movie, of the ones I've seen, IMO), the best of the crop spend less time on special effects and blowin' things up, and more time delving into character. And many of the most memorable and sympathetic superheroes spend a lot of time searching their consciences: am I doing the right thing kicking so much criminal ass? Should I hang up the outfit and channel my efforts in a more conventional direction? Am I crossing a line with my unusual approach to serving the public good? Where exactly is the line?
You see where I'm going.
Progressives are like the comic book heroes -- often they spend a great deal of time agonizing over what the right thing to do in a particular situation or with a particular issue. They argue and debate among themselves, often endlessly, and often don't settle much. One of the staples in comic book plotlines is when the hero fails to do something necessary because of a crisis of conscience, and while he/she dithers, the bad guy, untroubled by any vestige of conscience, sets off the diabolical Yeehah ray or kills the helpless damsel in distress or fires up whatever evil scheme he/she has spent their time scheming towards. The hero finally overcomes the bad guy only after he either overcomes his crisis of conscience or decides to set it aside, kick the ass that needs kicking at the moment, and figure out his feelings and his motivations at a later time. And by that point, something awful has already been allowed to happen.
We are in that position now. We have the equivalent of Lex Luthor -- okay, an idiot Luthor -- in office now, bent on the destruction of everything we hold dear. Preznit Luthor has already overseen the destruction of the Twin Towers, an act worthy of any comic-book supervillain, and is busily waging an illegal and immoral war, dismantling the Constitution, and neutralizing our country's stand on basic, decent human values. And while we dither and debate, the villainy goes unchecked.
It's time to set aside our mutual crises of conscience. We need to accept the fact that we are, indeed, on the side of right and good. We need to quit quibbling among ourselves on whether or not we should hammer the Bush crime cartel, what kind of tactics we should or shouldn't use, where exactly is the high road of political action, what constitutes the low road, and why we should or shouldn't "lower" ourselves to fight fire with fire; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The fight is on us NOW. We have to either come to terms with who we are and what we stand for, or at worst, set aside the arguments and do what needs to be done. We can settle the finer points of what we believe and don't believe after we defeat this overwhelming evil that threatens us.
Time to put on the cape and mask and go kick some righteous ass, and leave the dithering for a later time.