Politics and patriotism is getting deep and heavy in comic books these days. Yeah, I used to collect comics years ago, but I stopped when I graduated from high school. I’m not sure why. Oh yeah! The prices were getting ridiculous. But anyway… I’ve been reading the Civil War event titles from Marvel. The primary focus is that the United States government has passed a law requiring all super types to register their identities with the government and become agents of the government. The logic is that untrained super kids and others are dangerous. They might mean well, but ya never know what could happen. Actually, one of the pivot points was that a good vs evil battle ended badly killing 600 bystanders. Yikes. So, Tony Stark (Iron Man) decides to stand up and publicly support the new act. He figures it’s the right thing to do and this sort of thing would happen eventually. He drags Peter Parker along (Spider-Man) and many, many others that I would never see on that side, but then it all just happens and fiction or not, I’m seeing it all too real and absolutely ugly. Of course, not everyone is a-okay with the idea of registering. Captain America stands in that group. He’s got his share of folks behind him too. So, no more spoilers for anyone that might actually read comics, I promise.
Behind all of the ink and pencil drawings is a great deal of powerful stuff. Sue Richards (Fantastic Four #538) tosses out, “Disagreement isn’t disloyalty. Sometimes the most patriotic thing you can do in a democracy is disagree.” Steve Rogers/Captain America fed up with the super business grumbles in “New Avengers #18″, “They just care about themselves more than they care about the world they live in. They want to be comfortable, not safe. They don’t want to fight for their freedom. They want someone like me to fight for it for them.”
Big ouch.
I consider myself a patriot. I don’t go around madly waving the flag but I care about my country. I care about the world too. As long as I could vote I’ve always vote Republican. Well, actually, I’ve voted Democrat twice and each time both candidates switched parties after winning their elections. And I still strongly feel that I’m more Republican that Democrat. I’m a economic conservative while socially um, er, uh, lenient. Somewhat. Maybe I’m socially moderate. Anyway… I’m not a fundamentalist. I’d bold and raise the font size there but it’s not that necessary is it? No, I’m not a Libertarian. Don’t give me any sales pitch for that group, please. So… as a Republican patriot I have issues. Big issues. I supported the idea behind the war on Iraq. I support the troops. But I don’t support the laziness of the people in our country. And I sure as Hell don’t support all the internal spying, wiretapping, and fascist methods sweeping our government. It’s a nightmare.
Back to the “idea behind the war” bit. The middle east is a big huge mess. Duh. It would be great if it could be fixed. Duh. President Bush thought we could do it. Eh? And the territory would become stable and one day we could leave it free standing and rejoicing in democracy. Bwa? Yeah. It’s a fantasy. It ain’t happening. It may never happen. What can the US do about it? Nothing. Stay the funk out. Far out. Sure, if some real, specific person or persons causes issues outside of those borders or in our borders or our friends borders we send in professionals and make those persons be unpersons. But… we. cant. fix. Iraq. And that’s not as easy to say, no matter how obvious, as many others might think. Not for me. You know… the Republican patriot.
I’m loyal to my country but I disagree with my government. And I’m angry that it is that way. Oh, wait… am I allowed to be angry? Who knows, these days. Even barely approaching the border on this stuff brings up images of paranoid conspiracies for me. But it’s not so much a conspiracy these days, is it and it’s not paranoia if it’s true.
Sigh. What a huge, nasty mess.
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