The political teachings of The Batman

We (Virge&family) enjoyed The Dark Knight immensely last Thursday night. It really is all about The Joker. That acting performance alone gave the movie a larger-than-life life. The Joker is truly scary.

However, there were aspects of the movie that I found far more disturbing than The Joker's psychopathic anarchy. The political message packaged in the movie was: When you have a politician who appears to be a fearless defender of the people, you should go to any length to make them seem perfect. Hide their failings. Help everyone to trust in a human hero. The people need it in order to have hope.

In real life, what happens when you get a large number of people trusting in, believing in a politician? What happens when people throw away the idea that power corrupts and start making exceptions for their favorite hope-for-mankind's-safety, "incorruptible" leader? That's not a recipe for salvation; it's a recipe for disaster.

Even the very best of us are still fallible. One doesn't have to resort to cynicism in order to be realistic. If we grant power to a fallible human to execute a particular public duty, then we should expect complete transparency with regard to that office. Anything less is tantamount to encouraging corruption. Using secrecy to make real humans into heroes is madness.