entry060 - Political Superscience (aka Super Tuesday)

So say you're Superman.

Everyone loves you, right? I mean, you're the fucking Superman! (Not to be confused with the goddamned Batman.)
So you waltzed right into Metropolis one day, seemingly out of nowhere. You promised everyone you'd clean up the streets, you'd make their little...metropolis...a safer, better place to live.
Truth, Justice, Ways traditionally thought to be American.
You were the ultimate outsider, you had this verve about you, and you genuinely seemed to be capable of doing things that no one on this planet can do. Wow.
This is a good thing. Everyone loves you. Right!
You then went away for a while. Not completely away...you were heard to have saved this cat from a tree and that elderly woman from an accident at a street crossing. Staple hero stuff.
Okay, you were not around much, but people were still riding that Superman high. Superman fever was still in the air! People felt better about their day-to-day just knowing that you were going to save it. The day, that is. See, bad things were still very obviously happening. And while seated out in space, you heard people confide to their loved ones and mortal frenemies that while you were a super man, you were still just one man who found himself washed up against a sea of troubles.
So along with the power to leap tall buildings, run faster than trains, and maintain a modest following after your network switched from the WB to the CW, you now had the benefit of the doubt. Another good thing going for you.

Enter Lex Luthor.

This prick was begging, borrowing, and stealing cheap land along the San Andreas Fault. Cheap. Mad Cheap. So much of it and at such a cheap steal of a price, it seemed too good to be true.
He then figured out a way to cause an earthquake along the fault line where this cheap property did in fact lay.
He was rooting for this major de-fault, because ol' Luther was looking to create beachfront property, while causing hundreds of thousands of nearby homeowners to be literally underwater. Fuck, this sucks. "Help, Superman!" they shouted.
So what did you do?
Well, you certainly couldn't fly in the opposite direction of the rotation of the earth, thereby causing a reversal of the planet's spin, which in turn would reverse time itself. Though you seemed to have promised to do just that.
But you didn't.
Instead, you located Luthor's hideout, and you met with him face-to-face. You didn't take him to the authorities (i.e. fly him directly into a chain gang full of mocking convicts). You didn't even raise your super-fists to him or wield your super-breath for whatever reason.
You asked him politely yet firmly to review his business practices and to make sure he really needed to and was within his legal rights to put all those homeowners underwater. Everyone has a right to make a living, you contended, but you'll be damned if they do it while exploiting the rights of others. So you said.
One victory lap of press conferences later, and Crisis Averted!
The people were annoyed with you. Here you were saying all these things about helping, and you made a deal? With LEX LUTHOR??
Some people understood that things were probably more complicated than they knew, and you probably did the best you could with the tools that were available to you.
Others knew for a fact that you could have done so much more since you were in fact SUPERMAN and promised as much when you told everyone that you were a SUPER MAN, Superman.

What the fuck.

Next up, you announce that everyone is entitled to a life free of fear of nuclear war, and that you were going to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. "Wow! That's amazing!!" people thought. Surely, all you would have needed to do is collect them all in outer space with a big net or something and then throw them into the sun, and-
Wait. No, you decided to discuss this with all the world leaders whose countries possessed nuclear weapons. You decided to talk with the people who had a vested interest in nuclear weapons, since most of them are regularly lobbied by companies who manufacture nuclear weapons.
You talked with these people.
Behind Closed Doors.
Hurm.

When you emerged from your valiant battle, you were proud to announce that everyone in the world was required to have access to a nuclear fallout shelter and radiation detector. But not to worry, you told them, no one would be denied a permit to build a new shelter no matter what the preexisting condition of your property may be. Also, the world's leaders would help out with the costs for the unsheltered who could not afford something of the sort.
Now, people being protected from nuclear war regardless of preexisting property conditions or affordability was all well and good...but you gave the people the choice to live in a world without nuclear weapons. So how did they all of a sudden lose that public option you touted? And why did you work this out with interests who clearly were part of the problem and would very clearly benefit from such a “plan?”
You're Superman! The pattern of compromises that turn out to be shitty seemed so unnecessary. You could’ve potentially delivered on stuff like this easily. Not to mention the fact that you had the backing of the entire Justice League. Everyone was willing to help with your plans!
Well, they WERE all behind you. That is, BEFORE this pattern emerged. Now you have dissent in the ranks of the League you yourself put together and were a part of...Batman, that Martian guy,...some were starting to think you weren't all about that shit you were talkin’ from the get-go.
Not to mention the fact that you managed to perpetuate wars that were already hopeless and perpetual, but you didn't really talk about that all that much.

So yeah, what the fuck.

Next up, you discovered that Richard Pryor figured out a way to steal money out of a ton of working-class bank accounts and 401(k)s and IRAs… AND fuck around with oil tankers. All the while he told everyone what a great innovation and boon his new supercomputer was to the economy, how necessary it was, but in reality he was playing games with everyone's hard-earned cash. Furthermore, he fucked around with oil tankers. Financial and ecological ruin, all in one clever example.
Shit, this sounds like a job for Superman!

"Stop Richard Pryor, Superman! Stop that second-rate Lex Luthor knockoff! Kill his butch sister that turned into a robot!"

Oh wait...6 (SIX) days after Richard Pryor caused all this devastation, you decided to let him clean up the oil tanker fuck-up. Also, you got him to setup a fund to help those fucked-up by the oil tanker mess.
BUT YOU LET HIM KEEP THE MONEY HE STOLE.
The people mean no offense, Superman. But they are going on the news, they are shouting it everywhere. You kept saying how hard it is to do the things you want. But you literally are a super man. If you had gone and made an understandable case against these literal villains, if you had done what super men by right ought to do, if you had parlayed your support into drive to act...you had everything at your disposal - EVERYTHING - and you made it seem like "the machine" was just too much for you to bear. You're kidding me hear.
Lex Luthor and Brainiac funded "grassroots" political protest groups against you. Some of them went as far as questioning if you were ever really born on Krypton. You did nothing to quell these stupids. Television pundits said you had a deep-seeded hatred for "Human Culture." Still nothing. Yeesh.

Suddenly, your biggest challenge arrived. General Zod and his two cohorts enslaved the planet, and begrudgingly gave Lex Luthor Australia in exchange for the location of your fortress of solitude.
So they showed up.
And instead of doing the bare minimum to try and stop them...instead of tricking them into losing their powers, killing them, and making Luthor looks like a fool AGAIN...instead of so much as whipping that stupid, suck-ass plastic emblem net thing that made zero point zero sense to us all...what did you do?
You allowed Zod to enslave any citizen of Earth found to be available for slave-labor after 99 weeks of “freedom.” In exchange for this “concession,” Luthor kept Australia.

And another compromise bit the dust. People were waiving pictures of your cape with a Swastika in place of the "S" during rallies they were too fat to stand at for longer than twenty minutes. Everyone on your side was left scratching their heads. You managed to maintain close ties with your benefactors who covered the upkeep on your fortress in exchange for your "concessions.
And Truth, Justice, and the Other Thing got raped like a federal inmate with a lisp.

So say you're Superman, and you did all that.

Now you know how Barack Obama's presidency up to and including this tax cut extension bullshit feels to me.

"Super" means never having to compromise with the bad guys. It means you find the guys that everyone knows are the bad ones, and you fight them, and you win.
Now look what you made us do, you little jerk. We've disbanded the Justice League. The Legion of Doom will be getting back together next year. Up, up and away.
Wow, what a shit job.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!