I think Batman, not the eagle, should be the national symbol of the US.
That is all.
Well, I’ve heard worse ideas…
In all seriousness, I don’t like it, because he’s a criminal. Yeah, he’s a well-meaning criminal, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. He’d spawn (oh, wait, he’s another super-criminal) a lot of copy-cats, leading to an awful lot of deaths.
A good friend of mine suggested the snapping turtle: he’s hard to hurt, but if you insist on bothering him, he’ll bite your thumb off. Otherwise, he mostly minds his own business. That’s a lot closer to the American ideal than Batman is.
Batman is a violent vigilante who assaults people without any due process. Very much not a suitable symbol for a nation governed by the rule of law.
Doesn’t that depend on which Batman we’re talking about?
Still, I thought it was Superman who was supposed to stand for “truth, justice, and the American Way.”
To get an idea of what this might look like, have a look at the coats of arms of the towns of the former Crown of Aragon in Spain.
I think the GCPD deputized Batman at some point so the vigilante label isn’t appropriate.
What version of Batman doesn’t do that?
I suppose the 1960s TV version was supposed to be deputized by the Gotham police. Is that what you mean? Maybe that means he was technically not a vigilante, but he still was very iffy on constitutional rights.
You’re sitting in your favorite Gotham watering-hole, looking out the window, when suddenly–It’s the Bacardi-signal!! Gotta drink to that!
Seems fair.
He ( or any other American superhero / heroine ) are far more representative than anything in Nature.
I can’t tell whether that’s a regular bat looking to its right, or a bat with a hat looking to its left.
^ A Bat-hat?
Isn’t that why we went with the Don’t-Tread-On-Me rattlesnake for a while?
I never really got that phrase. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then what the heck is the road to heaven paved with? Bad intentions? Or do good intentions also pave the road to heaven, the way bad intentions presumably also pave the road to hell? And is there a mediocre road to some kind of neutral limbo, and is it paved with good intentions and/or bad intentions and/or mere indifference? Or can some kind of mere indifference lead me down a neutral-intentions path to hell, if I’m not out to harm others but I also don’t really give a crap about helping them?
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For the purposes of this matter, it doesn’t matter how the road to heaven is paved.
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The point of the warning is that intention is irrelevant to whether the matter sets you on a path to hell. Good intent doesn’t make something a good act.
in the Silver Age, comic book Batman was also an official police deputy. Had a badge and everything. Part of the requirements of the Comics Code Authority.
That aside, trying to fit superheroes into a real world system of civil and criminal law works about as well as trying to fit them into a real world system of physical laws. You can’t expect a group of people who regularly break the first law of thermodynamics to be particularly careful about following the fourth amendment.
Ayup! That was a good one too!
The leap to the converse is intuitive, but logically invalid. For example, let me offer some very good advice: “Never murder anyone over four years of age.” That’s perfectly sensible, sound, valid advice.
It does not mean “It’s okay to murder anyone under four years of age.” It does not say that.
The truth is that all roads are paved with good intentions.
(ETA: Or do I mean inverse? I always get those two confused. I think inverse is more correct. Oh, well.)
Is that what was being referred to? Regardless, I don’t think that that aspect of some versions of Batman would be what comes to mind generally.
I don’t think I agree with that. However, assuming you’re right, it just means we shouldn’t use superheroes as symbols of real life civic virtue.
Well, yes, I got that – which is why I of course went on to muse that it’s entirely possible that a road paved with bad intentions can lead to hell, and one paved with good intentions can lead to heaven. Which means the analogy would really be more like someone saying “hey, you shouldn’t kill some people over the age of four”: it doesn’t rule out killing some of the Over-Four crowd, and it also doesn’t mean you should go around killing folks just for being in the Under-Four set.
But that’s my point: it’s a statement that’s barely worthy saying; it doesn’t argue against any particular good-intentioned act, and it likewise doesn’t argue in favor of any, unless we say “regardless of intention, be it good or bad, just avoid doing stuff that leads to hell.” Which, really, who needs that spelled out?
Batman having an actual police badge isn’t normally part of the popular conception of the character, true. But “Batman works closely and openly with the police,” absolutely is.
What I mean is, the world in superhero comics does not function under the same rules as the real world, on any level, from human constructed social compacts to the laws of nature themselves. In the real world, the laws of physics mean that you can’t create matter out of nothing. In the comic book world, physics clearly don’t work like that because the Hulk does that every time he’s in a bad mood. In the real world, the penal code means that if the cops let a guy in spandex punch bank robbers for them, the city would be sued into penury and none of the criminals Batman catches could possibly be convicted. In comic books, the penal code clearly doesn’t work like that, because Batman regularly puts criminals behind bars, and Gotham isn’t constantly being sued by the Riddler.
As for using Superheroes as symbols of real life civic virtue, that’s actually worked out pretty well, historically.
Yeah, I disagree that this is a necessary condition of superhero stories. You could easily set up a superhero setting in which realistic rule of law and morality is in force, even though physics is fantasy-based. It would definitely limit the kinds of things that could happen in a superhero story, but that’s just how fiction works—you can choose any point on the scale of fantasy-to-verisimilitude—and you can make specific exceptions.
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If that was the only kind of thing Superman was ever depicted doing, or if Superman was generally known in the minds of the public as adhering to the rule of law, then that would be a different issue than what we are talking about with regard to Batman.
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This example is kind of backwards. It’s not the public or the government holding up Superman as an example of civic virtue to be revered and followed. It’s a specific fictional story that is written to demonstrate a particular civic virtue, and then the creators being praised for doing that. To the extent that it affected public opinion of the Ku Klux Klan, it’s an example of a fictional story being used for (virtuous) propaganda, not an example of official reverence of a lawless fictional hero.
I disagree. It’s not a tautology at all. And it’s not really about practical advice on avoiding going to hell, either. It’s a metaphor. It’s pointing out that your good intent on its own doesn’t necessarily make your decisions or actions good.