Ours is a country divided. Partisan tension seems to be at an all time high. What once were platforms divided by substantive differences about how best to shape the world, have devolved over the years into petty, mud slinging, trenches from which to lob personal attacks. The virtue of loyalty has been perverted into blind adherence to faction, all in the name of the two dominant parties: Marvel and DC.

So maybe the gulf between fans of either publishing house isn’t quite as consequential as that separating our nation’s preeminent political engines, but you wouldn’t know it by the average fan-boy quarrel. Judging by the vehemence and vitriol in any given forum that has soured into that timeless debate, you’d think the stakes were a bit higher than bragging rights about which properties turn out better movies. So where does this intensity come from?

People have affinities for one or the other for their own reasons–perhaps you like the real world settings of Marvel, or maybe you think DC has the better rogues gallery–but these individual preferences often are often surrendered to a degree when one starts thinking of oneself as part of a certain sect. When you hitch your wagon to the DC train it becomes easy to overlook its shortcomings. Thus, all the undeniably cool brooding of Batman offsets the generally accepted lameness of Aquaman, for example. Pretty soon we’re advocating a general swath of otherwise unrelated content with the same gusto as our original favorite, simply because we perceive the less than desirable elements to be integral to the whole that we have come to love and respect.

The same goes for political parties. We each come to the table with our own set of tastes, but we eventually settle for what is being served up consistently, and eventually we tell ourselves that we like it. Sometimes we allow what’s being spoon fed to us to form our genuine affinities, but more often it seems that we swallow the distasteful bits just as an obedient child begrudgingly eats his veggies. What’s more, before long we regard it as irresponsible and immature to turn up our noses in these instances. From there its just a hop, skip, and a jump to vigorous defense of anything under our chosen tent.

It’s easy for a reasonable adult to see the absurdity of extreme factionalism when observing the escalating chain reaction of knee jerk insults that constitute the average debate over DC vs. Marvel, but its harder to see the same fanaticism in themselves. Just as the (hopefully) adolescent belligerents of such pointless arguments could gain some perspective from the realization that they are digging in over something rather trivial, politically active adults should see there own bickering with the same mature eye that would disapprove of such squabbles.

While the stakes are obviously higher in politics than with a debate over artistic merits, the underlying goal is the same: the betterment of mankind through understanding and consideration of individuals and their differences. If the high stakes of running a country were the primary concern, we’d be excused, justified even, for pulling out all the stops. But in a society that fancies itself civilized, where calm deliberation guides our policy rather than heated passions, our foremost concern when engaging in the former should be to remain civil. In other words, what good is saving the country from ruin if you must sacrifice what makes the country worthwhile in the first place?

This is not to say that debates in either arena should be without disagreement or even the occasional outburst. If you think the Green Lantern Corps could kick the shit out of the Nova Corps any day of the week, say so. Go to the mats for it if you feel that strongly about it, but let the reason be that they are in fact an intergalactic police force who derive their power from one of seven entities whose birth coincided with that of the universe itself, rather than just a piddly galactic militia who derives its power from a mere, albeit pretty sweet in its own right, living supercomputer. Or if you think that to even compare the two is apples and oranges, say so, but don’t be a child about it. Don’t weaken your intellectual case by resorting to ad hominem insults.

The aim of any debate should be some sort of resolution on the given subject. As such, debates about which camp–Marvel or DC, Republicans or Democrats–is superior or right are pointless. In the former instance nothing definitive can come of measuring opinions. In the latter, to even argue as much is to lose sight of the point. Political parties exist out of necessity, out of the fact that in a democratic republic the numbers behind a given idea ultimately count more than the merit of the idea itself. More accurately, the best way we as a country have devised to ascertain the merit of an idea is to tally how many people are for or against it. Checks and balances notwithstanding, that’s the gist of it.

To trust to the purity of the argument and its honest deliberation is to be, more often than not, overwhelmed by a larger group who haven’t put as much thought or soul searching into the issue. All it takes is one more person to caucus with your opponent and you can be overruled, no matter how strong your argument is, no matter how flimsy theirs is, or no matter what the ultimate truth of the matter is. It is this sad fact that results in party politics.

This bottleneck seemingly leaves us with only two options, two teams to root for. Far too often this reality leads us to choose the proverbial lesser of two evils. Yet there is something else that voters can glean from comics. Whenever that haggard ouroboros of brand loyalty starts churning online, devouring itself and its participants in an escalating whine of feedback, some calm third party inevitably steps in and reminds everyone that they should just be thankful that we live in a time that either Marvel or DC are producing such content that we can even have a debate. In essence we are reminded how blessed we are that we can debate degrees of merit rather than the extent of our deprivation, that we can even have a debate rather than fight to eke out whatever decency a life of abject misery can afford.

In this we are reminded that we have more than the two choices. We can put our faith in one of the prize fighters, or we can back a Dark Horse and see what happens. Or we can be a floater, and assign our loyalty as the situation dictates. Or, if we try really hard and don’t give up hope, if enough of us search for him and keep our wits and our maturity about us, we might just pin down Access to that elusive middle ground–the best of both worlds.