Why Bruce Wayne Is a Bigger Threat to American Democracy than Donald Trump
America’s pivotal moment wasn’t 2016 but 2008 — the year Batman became America’s favorite superhero and billionaire worship conquered the culture
Once again, Trump’s biggest haters are getting him all wrong. To your average liberal anti-Trumper, Donald Trump is an aberration. He’s a dictator-loving wannabe fascist whose admiration of anti-democratic authoritarians like Putin, Orban, and Xi is fundamentally un-American.
His lack of respect for the electoral process and peaceful transfer of power demonstrates a clear disregard for foundational American values.
He obviously only wants to be president because it’s the closest he can get to his true heart’s desire — which also happens to be the most un-American thing of all — being some sort of king.
But riddle me this: if Trump’s values and attitudes are indeed so very un-American, why does he share so many of them with one of America’s most iconic superheroes?
In Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, the monumental 1986 comic book series that, for the first time, depicted Batman with gritty realism instead of campiness, a 55-year-old Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to make crime-ridden Gotham great again.
And while he gains a rabid following among young men who call themselves the “Sons of Batman,” news media talking heads are aghast at Batman’s quasi-authoritarian approach to cleaning up the streets.
Labeling him a “social fascist” who “never heard of civil rights,” they accuse Batman of “striking at the foundations of our democracy” and argue the masked vigilante is “maliciously opposed to the principles that make ours the most noble nation in the world.”
So is the great American superhero Batman un-American too? Or could it be that far from being foreign and fascist, Trump’s — and Batman’s — values are in fact as wholly and perfectly American as apple pie?
While it’s easy to write Trump off as an un-American aberration, the harder-to-face truth is that the values billionaires like Donald Trump and Bruce Wayne embody are in fact those of the dark side of America — corporate America.
Or is “the dark age side of America” a more fitting description? During the European Middle Ages, aka the Dark Ages, weak central government enabled the rise of powerful feudal lords who ruled their small private domains as kings. And though the Middle Ages are long gone, the dream of being lord of the manor, king of the castle, and master of one’s own domain never died.
In America, where aristocratic lordship was never a possibility, the corporate world offered a workaround. As influential economist Joseph Schumpeter noted in 1911, for those who are motivated by “the dream and the will to found a private kingdom,” being a capitalist entrepreneur offers “the nearest approach to medieval lordship possible to modern man.”
A hundred years later in his best-seller Zero to One, tech billionaire Peter Thiel confirms that nothing has changed. Observing precisely the same medieval mentality among modern Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Thiel remarks on “the strange way in which the companies that create new technology often resemble feudal monarchies” where idolized founders reign as kings.
There is, then, one corner of America that breeds mini-authoritarians who enjoy immense power and wealth in addition to the ability to command and exploit their underlings, ego-boosting endless flattery, and the freedom of being answerable to no one — corporate America. And it’s this America, and not any foreign dictatorship, that created Donald Trump and inspired his lordly ambitions.
Trump’s attitudes, it’s important to note, are not unique among his peers. But while many corporate billionaires secretly believe they should (or do) run the world, they generally keep a low profile and pull strings from behind the scenes.
By contrast, the naturally flamboyant and attention-seeking Trump not only didn’t hide the fact that reaching the pinnacle of American business made him a sort of king, but he played it up and reveled in it.
From his Versailles-inspired palatial Mar-a-Lago estate to delivering his famous Apprentice catchphrase “You’re fired!” with the same royal haughtiness as Alice in Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts decreeing “Off with his head!” — Trump has always deliberately projected an aristocratic image.
No one minded so long as he stayed in his lane. But Trump succeeded in crossing a line that wasn’t meant to be crossed.
By unspoken agreement, the two Americas — corporate and democratic — were supposed to be kept separate, with the medieval, Game of Thrones-style power plays of corporate CEOs confined to the boardroom while outside of it, modern liberal democracy — or at least, its façade — reigned supreme.
The blatantly feudal values of the corporate aristocracy were never supposed to end up in the White House.
The Batman Archetype
How, then, did Trump manage to pull off his historic 2016 victory? Explanations abound, but surprisingly, none consider the crucial role played by the Batman.
In 2008, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s hyper-realistic portrayal of Bruce Wayne as a corporate billionaire who saves the world in a high-tech Batsuit, made history when it became the first superhero movie to earn over $1 billion.
But this was only the beginning of a new phenomenon. That same year also saw the release of Iron Man, the movie that launched the era-defining Marvel Cinematic Universe, and also mythologized a Batman-like corporate billionaire who saves the world in a high-tech suit of knight’s armor.
Why was the zeitgeist suddenly and forcefully captured by tech billionaire hero knights? The fact that the character of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, was famously based on tech billionaire Elon Musk is telling. It’s no coincidence that Batman and Iron Man conquered the zeitgeist at a time when public fascination with real-world tech billionaires was at a peak.
Steve Jobs famously launched the iPhone in 2007, Jack Dorsey debuted Twitter in 2006, and Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook available to the general public a few months later. And with tech wizardry creating real-life magic, a real-life Batman powered by fantastical gadgets didn’t seem quite so implausible as before.
Plus, amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, people were yearning for a savior. But the moment called for a darker hero than Superman, whose idealistic mantra “truth, justice, and a better tomorrow” seemed naïve and out of place in a world ravaged by unbridled capitalist greed.
The dark, dog-eat-dog world inhabited by Batman, where the weak are forever preyed on by the strong and the brave knight is perpetually beset by the corrupt and the power-mad was a far better fit for the times.
It was the perfect moment for Batman to inspire a new hero archetype for our corporate billionaire-dominated age.
This hero is a technologically superior billionaire who hails from the very top of the feudal corporate hierarchy, but instead of living the debauched lifestyle of a bored aristocrat or worse — a ruthless and corrupt lord of the manor, he chooses the path of a feudal hero by becoming a champion of the people — a knight.
Like the legendary chivalrous knights of the Middle Ages, he becomes the mythical savior of the weak and the downtrodden, offering to protect them from the evils of the very system that made him and his friends rich and powerful.
I contend that it was the Batman archetype of a billionaire savior, which by then was deeply embedded in the American psyche, that won Trump the 2016 election. Like Batman, Trump simultaneously fed the public’s admiration for billionaires and the public’s desire for a defender against the corrupt corporate system that creates them.
Sounding at times indistinguishable from leftist rival Bernie Sanders, Trump railed against “a global power structure” that “robbed our working class” and “put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations.”
Obviously, the elderly Trump is far from an ideal embodiment of the Batman archetype, but that’s how archetypes always work: no medieval knight was an ideal embodiment of Lancelot, and no Egyptian pharaoh was an ideal embodiment of the sun god Ra. Still, evoking these archetypes in people’s minds elevates the powerful to mythological status, making it that much harder for mere humans to challenge them.
Which is unfortunate because while they may have used similarly appealing rhetoric, an activist like Bernie Sanders would have attempted to reform the corrupt system while Trump and his fellow billionaires, like the medieval lords they’re so desperate to emulate, offer protection but never reform.
When, for instance, scientist and environmental activist Dr. Pamela Isley confronts billionaire Bruce Wayne at a press conference with her proposal titled “Wayne Enterprises: A Cessation of Toxification” in 1997’s Batman and Robin, he casually dismisses her concerns over his company’s polluting, and mocks her naivete.
Of course, Dr. Isley was indeed naïve to think the Chairman of Wayne Enterprises would take her seriously, especially when her sweeping proposals would decimate his bottom line.
When it comes to corporate profits, for all that they pretend to fight for the little guy, billionaires will always be — as Dr. Isley calls Batman and Robin — “protectors of the status quo.”
Though while their interest may not be reform, the billionaire class is certainly pushing for change. For the entirety of its existence, corporate America has been trying to bend democratic America to its will. And now that corporate billionaires had a taste of the ultimate triumph with one of their own winning the White House, they are more emboldened than ever. Their quest for power won’t end with Donald Trump. It’s only just begun.
But what is their will? It’s not terribly difficult to deduce, given their feudal corporate values. For instance, is it at all surprising that Peter Thiel, whose protégé JD Vance is Trump’s running mate, is a known admirer of anti-democracy blogger Curtis Yarvin, who believes America should be run by a CEO-king?
And thanks to the Batman archetype, Americans might even welcome their new CEO-king with open arms in the belief that, as Bruce Wayne has taught them all too well, a Dark Knight can protect them more effectively than any democratic process.
