#Resistance Is Futile

The mental and moral decline of American liberals inexorably (and irreversibly?) continues: two of my friends have shared this meme in the past week.

The enthusiastic stupidity of this item boggled my mind.  It's so convoluted that it's hard to get a grip on it to explain what's wrong with it.  Most obviously, Lex Luthor is a fictional character, who does what his writers and artists want him to do; Donald Trump is, unfortunately, a real person, who's dedicated his life to doing what he wants to do.

I haven't followed Superman comics since I was in junior high school, something like fifty years ago now.  So, while I figured that the plot twist this meme referred to wasn't as simple in its significance as its author wanted it to be, I had no idea where to begin to find what its complications were, and didn't care enough to pursue it.  But thank Cthulhu for anal-compulsive comic book nerds, one of whom posted this excerpt from a Wikipedia article on on LexCorp as a comment:

"When CEO Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States, Talia al Ghul took over the company, who donated a large portion of its profits to the Wayne Foundation during Superman and Batmans’ year-long absences.[4] Following his dismissal as president he fired her and took back his place, though she secretly kept a portion of stock."

So no he didn't he just had someone else run it for a while like trump.

Quibbling over the virtually-actual details of the career of a comic book villain is almost as depressing as watching people crow triumphantly at totally destroying Trump with a meme, but it's like quoting the Bible: if you're going to put the discussion on that level, your quotations had better be accurate.

The larger problem is the mentality (if that word can be applied to such knee-jerk reflexive behavior) that reduces every issue to Our Team vs. Their Team.  Trump's obnoxious behavior on Twitter, ironically, is exactly what Obama and Clinton fans wanted their guys to do: speaking their minds, trashing the opposition with pithy putdowns.  Bam!  Boom!  Oh, burn!  You totally shredded and destroyed those Reichtards!  Remember the "Texts from Hillary" memes?  Some of them were mildly amusing, but it was plain that many Clinton fans thought they were real, because they wanted them to be.  Given Obama's record on trying to be funny and snarky, he'd have been just as embarrassing as Trump if he'd taken to Twitter.  His fans would have been delighted, though, not embarrassed, because he was Their Guy, the Captain / Coach of Their Team.  His enemies would have been appalled and outraged.  It's not the content, ever, for partisans; it's the team.