This presidential election is epic! Batman vs the Joker in the “The Dark Knight” epic!
Two polar opposites doing battle for the control of the free world. Or is it Gotham City? If so much wasn’t at stake, it would be funny and entertaining, and well… it is anyway. Do we live in reality or a Hollywood script. Presidential elections can make you wonder.
It is hard sometimes to see where lines between fact and fiction or reality and cinema blur.
In my blog today we are going to have some fun looking at the similarities between Hillary and Batman and Trump and the Joker.
Movies like the Batman sequel “The Dark Night” that pit the ruthless darkness of the “Joker” played by Heath Ledger, and the even deeper darkness and internal struggle of Batman played by Christian Bale are archetypal battles within all of us that have been waged between good and evil since Cain and Abel.
Hillary and Trump (i.e. Batman and the Joker) couldn’t be more perfect to see this human drama play out. Each sees the other as the evil in the world, and in so doing blurs the lines between what is real and what is fantasy.
Clinton is like Batman – she presents herself with no shadow. Holding to the highest ideals, unbendable laws, groomed her whole life for this one moment in time when the American people need a woman’s touch in politics where the size of the problems that face us are in direct proportion to the narcissisms and infinite corruption of the ruthless “Old Boy” network and corporate greed that has dominated politics for as long as anyone can remember. Like Batman she is idealistic and incorruptible from her ideals, defender of the poor and helpless, good always winning over bad, or will die trying. Willing to be seen as the bad one or the scape goat if higher good is achieved by it. Willing to punish what appears as evil in the world with no hesitation. She appears to live the American Ideal.
Like the Batman/ Bruce Wayne alter ego, a woman in politics has to have a super hero alter ego that can have no weakness. Hillary’s Batman like alter ego, her public persona, must be the good wife and caring archetype of a mother outside the ring of politics that is moral and above reproach and reason (things the men in politics rarely care at all about). But as candidate Clinton/Batman, she must be unbending, tough (but not ruthless like men politicians) and simultaneously not show it outwardly. The path to the White House for a woman is infinitely narrow.
In the movie “The Dark Knight” talking to Bruce Wayne, Alfred his butler (played in Hillary’s life by Bill Clinton) says to Wayne, “know your limits.” Wayne replies, “Batman has no limits.” Alfred answers, “But you do.” Wayne responds, “I can’t afford to know them.”
There can be no fear or even blinking for women in politics, and Hillary has worn her superhero mask now for decades.
Trump, on the other hand, is Like the “Joker” and is seemingly all shadow smoke and mirrors. Having no plan, just negative rhetoric, he never cared about being president, doesn’t want to be responsible for anything or anybody beyond his own wants, but entered the race as a publicity stunt to get more rich partners to invest in his version of corruption and power. When the plan worked better than he dreamed, his true mastery was revealed. Like the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” he is an expert in motivating people out of fear to create a mob mentality that will follow him blindly.
To Trump life and the rules of society are jokes that he breaks behind his back while he smiles and tells you “You’re Fired!” He has a huge King complex and a deep desire to rule the world so he can literally do anything he wants.
His plan to make a mockery of the political system and American government designed to protect its people from the Donald Trumps of the world was not a move to become president, it was a strategic gladiator maneuver to weaken his opponent. Now, in this strange turn of events where he killed his opponent — not just maimed it — he is getting the leverage he has always wanted to better serve his personal interests. The Joker is forever opportunistic, seeing every chink in the armor as an opportunity that must be exploited.
And from the movie “The Dark Night,” the Joker/Trump says, “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just… do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, the commissioner’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself… I just bring a little anarchy to the process”
Like the Joker, Trump has lived the life of a high profile mobster, one of an elite group of untouchables in the United States’ big business world who buy loyalty with favors, live lavish lifestyles, pay no taxes and boast about being above the laws that govern the common people whom they enslave.
Also like the Joker, Trump has a history of using any and all means to extract whatever he wants from whomever he needs it from. No law has ever touched him, his teams of the best lawyers are like his henchmen, working around the clock keep him untouchable. They use bankruptcy to never pay his debtors what he owes them, bankrupting them for real, paying backroom money for court settlements that allow no admonition of guilt in shady dealings. There is no tax he can’t find a loophole to, no beautiful woman he can’t seduce with money and power. Just to keep himself entertained, he financed the Miss Universe competition for 13 years to womanize the most beautiful women in the world without drawing any attention to his predatory behavior. He embodies a shark in $10K suit.
In the movie the Joker turns people against each other by feeding on their fears to see if he can get them to commit murder if pushed far enough. Trump, like the Joker, has literally created a social experiment to see if rage and fear sprinkled in with a little victimhood was all you need to win not only the votes, but most importantly, the soul of America. Shadow leaders know that it doesn’t matter how you get people to follow you and die for you, as long as they do. His statement that he could shoot someone in the street and his followers would not even blink could have come directly from the mouth of the Joker in Gotham City.
But on the other hand… is Hillary/Batman without shadow? Could some of the power brokering that Trump does publicly be happening behind the scenes with Hillary?
Is Trump/the Joker without light? Or is he really acting as a mouth piece for the masses that have no voice and tired of a government officials that do 10% governing and 90% pandering?
In “The Dark Knight” Batman/Hillary in a way is no different than the Joker. He wears a mask and is a vigilante, but does it for higher good, risking his life every night for the people of Gotham, making deals with the mobsters they can’t refuse. He sees himself as above the laws created by corrupt people to protect the victimizers more than the victims, but at the same time, he protects his own riches in his alter ego life as Billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne/Hillary Clinton. Batman, like the Joker, has to live from a set of rules that are different than the average person. Wielding real power takes a different kind of person — the average person doesn’t have the stomach for it.
Reality Side Note
Have you noticed that presidents all go fully gray or white haired within 2 years of being in office? Maybe it is because at night they are Batman and have to make choices to save the good people of Gotham/US from threats they can’t even tell anyone about and that may not conform to the laws that others have to live by. For Hillary, 8 years of living in the White House with her husband Bill, watching him turning greyer every day has hardened Hillary to be ready to do what others can’t even imagine needs to be done.
Trump/the Joker is not just a raging narcissist, he unconsciously is playing one of the highest spiritual roles, he embodies the Luciferic principle in action. Lucifer is the bringer of light through temptation and choice. He asks, “What is your price you will sell your soul for?” Trump/the Joker knows that everyone has a price but the game for Lucifer is to see how cheap he can get your soul for. And he will never make the deal unless he can get you to sell it for less than it’s worth. He calls it smart business. We all need people like Trump to ask ourselves what we really stand for. In life, until fear forces you to use your power of choice in the dark and you fully experience pain of your choice, i.e. living in hell, you cannot begin to make responsible choices.
Lucifer is simply a businessman, giving you what you think you want while he takes the only valuable thing in you. It is the part in all of us that tempts us to do what we know deep inside we should not do but do, or what know we should do, but are not. People like Trump/the Joker accelerate the process by being powerful deal makers, tempting us with Earthly riches or illusory safety, when we all know the only one who ever wins in a deal with Lucifer is Lucifer. Look at the Miss Universe contestants, who is the only one who made real money on their beauty?
Trump has already told everyone that he will conduct business as usual if he becomes president. The change he would bring to our system of governing might be just what it needs to wake us from the partisan stalemate going on for generations. He is a deal-maker, he is already making the back room deals, you can count on it, and is even talking about making a deal with Putin in Russia. In this one, Trump may have found his own Lucifer to deal with.
Shadow leaders force you to choose between the wants of your personality and the real needs of your soul and higher purpose. Do you choose fear, hate and being against? Or do you choose courage and being for integrity and truth? How do you choose?
How Do You Choose?
Trump/the Joker so beautifully and effortlessly stepped into the arena and is giving us the choice — fear or trust. Whatever happens, he has already won since we cannot vote from the issues any more. We are already hooked emotionally “for” or “against” Trump.
Hillary has shown what it takes to wear a bullet proof suit of armor and possibly be the most prepared person we have every put in the presidency. She will likely be the most powerful leader we have ever had as president in a country that begrudgingly gave women the right to vote 80 years ago, but never thought one would be president someday. She may win from the “against Trump” vote but her role was not to force you to choose, her role is to do what no man has ever had the integrity to do. Her backdoor way to the presidency may be the only way a country steeped in prejudiced against women’s rights could ever make this choice
This November 8 each of us must make a choice. Who is more qualified to run and defend the free world? Batman or The Joker? You get to choose.