Elon Musk is not Batman, no matter how much he wants to be

What do the Caped Crusader and the Musk have in common? Aside from being sociopathic billionaires with delusions of grandeur, not much.

Batman drawn in the style of Andy Warhol by Midjourney. Source: @Knightama

No one in their right mind would confuse Elon Musk with the Dark Knight. Right?

Except for maybe Elon himself. Last December he tweeted something that seemed to suggest an affinity with the Caped Crusader. [1]

Batman has a particular resonance among a certain political set. He’s a (white, male, rich) guy who doesn’t follow the rules of ‘woke’ society and uses any means necessary to ‘right wrongs.’

In a San Francisco Chronicle oped titled “Batman failed Gotham. He and the rest of the billionaires can’t fix San Francisco, either,” writer Gil Duran notes how often this happens:

It’s easy to understand why these rich men fetishize Batman. The character is an alter ego for Bruce Wayne, a billionaire who uses his extreme wealth to subsidize a campaign of extrajudicial violence against alleged criminals. His privilege enables him to live outside the law. In the dystopia of Gotham, the richest man in town can act out his fantasy of becoming judge, jury and executioner.

Unfortunately for his fanboys, Batman’s a terribly ineffective crime fighter. His crusade against crime has dragged on for nearly 85 years but Gotham’s anarchy only worsens. If Wayne were Gotham’s mayor instead of a creepy vigilante, he’d have been recalled by voters long ago….

...If Batman wanted to solve crime, he might spend some energy and money addressing economic inequality, which is inextricably linked to higher crime rates. He’d campaign against poverty and champion criminal justice reform. Basically, he’d be George Soros.

Zeroes, not heroes

The same people who hold Batman up as a model of appropriate behavior are trying to turn self-righteous vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse and now Daniel Penny into heroes. And they’re using it as a political talking point about how ‘Democrat’ cities are crime-ridden hellholes.

Many reasonable people who are not running for the highest office in the land jumped into that thread to point out a problem with Lil Nikki 4%’s argument: Cities and states with Democratic leadership actually have lower rates of violent crime than those run by Republicans.

Source: MSNBC

In other words, you’re significantly more likely to get gunned down by some backwoods cracker with an AR-15 than be attacked by a mentally ill person on a NYC subway. But why sully an argument with facts when lying is so much better at scaring the shit out of people?

The Internet is particularly ill suited for these arguments. That’s because the very act of responding to such bullshit just spreads the bullshit across an ever larger surface. Algorithms on platforms like Twitter (and Facebook, YouTube, etc) are like golden retriever puppies – any attention is good attention. Swatting them with a newspaper (or actual facts) just makes them more eager to please. The more people engage with something, the more people get shown that content or something similar to it.

In other words, every time you rebut or refute the lie, the lie grows.

Because most of the Internet is set up as an elaborate ‘call and response’ system (ie, Elon Musk tweets something idiotic, his sycophantic supports kiss his ass and everyone else dunks on him) it’s nearly impossible to respond in a way that doesn’t help the idiots. [2]

Batman via Basquiat. Same source as above.

This phenomenon has been widely and wisely dissected by George Lakoff, UC Berkeley professor emeritus and co-author of his own substack blog called FrameLab.

To quote the good Dr. L:

...when we negate a frame, we evoke the frame. When President Richard Nixon addressed the country during Watergate and used the phrase “I am not a crook,” he coupled his image with that of a crook. He established what he was denying by repeating his opponents’ message.

This illustrates one of the most important principles of framing a debate: When arguing against the other side, don’t use their language because it evokes their frame and not the frame you seek to establish. Never repeat their charges! Instead, use your own words and values to reframe the conversation.

When you repeat Trump, you help Trump.

Also: Don’t reply to anything Elon says. Or Nikki. Just don’t.

The call is coming from inside the House (and Senate)

In a more recent post, Lakoff predicts that we’ll be hearing a lot more about San Francisco’s problems as the 2024 election draws near, and that Musk could play a significant role in that. [3]

The other thing we’re be hearing a lot more about is ‘stochastic terrorism’ [4]. Rittenhouse and Penny didn’t just murder people; they murdered the right people. By turning them into vigilante heroes, they’re encouraging others to do the same. The Republicans want backwoods crackers with AR-15s roaming around, intimidating and occasionally murdering anyone who doesn’t look like them.

Think about that the next time someone talks about what cities are hell holes and which criminals are heroes. In the end, Batman is just another rich white guy with a grudge.

Which of the many many Batmen was your favorite? Submit your answer (Adam West) in the comments below. [5] And feel free to share this with your ends and frenemies by clicking that thing directly below.

[1] What is it with the fascination with Batman? They’ve made 16 zillion movies and TV shows about a guy who is a) a billionaire, b) a violent sociopath, and c) phenomenally boring. Has there ever been a superhero with less personality?

[2] And yet, it’s nearly impossible to resist the urge to come back with a perfectly cutting rejoinder that causes their brain to spontaneously combust.

[3] Ya think?

[4] Per Dictionary.com: “The public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted: The lone-wolf attack was apparently influenced by the rhetoric of stochastic terrorism.

[5] BAM! KAPOW! BLAMMO!