And now we come to it. After so long, my side is revealed. I’m with Firestar.

To be honest, it took some serious soul searching for me to come up with which side I would be on. I feel like the romantics side with Captain America and the utilitarians side with Iron Man. While I do consider myself a romantic in most instances, I can’t shake the feeling that the hero with the “old man’s idea of the world and young man’s face” might not be the best leader to follow into America’s increasingly progressive movements. While I’m happy for America to continue this trend, I do find myself cringing when the answer to so many questions has become “let the government take it from here”. So I yearn for away to show that I see the same problem Iron Man sees, but have a Captain American attitude when it comes to invasive and forceful governmental control. Firestar beat me to it, though I think her motivations differ from mine some.

For me, the decision to walk away comes out of something I outlined in the Firestar, Cap post. The decision to walk away has certain positives. First and foremost, its legal. It seems hypocritical to choose illegality when your desire is to be a superhero (Neat! Superheroes by Daft Punk just came on my radio). Yet, it is also makes it clear where you stand. It is more important to maintain your privacy and integrity than it is to keep going out and saving the day. Not because your private life is grotesque or perverse, but because these rights are what make America and to abandon them to protect it seems nonsensical. Like saying “I love pizza!” then the government telling you “well, you can only have pizza if you take the dough and run it through a pasta maker. Then, instead of a searing hot oven, just boil the ‘crust’ separate. You can still have the toppings and everything”.
“But that isn’t pizza any more”.
“We only changed one thing, and we had to give some up some things you consider ‘traditional’ because some people weren’t cooking the crust right and people were getting sick. If you want pizza, you need to be able to compromise!”.
“But I want pizza and you don’t want pizza and your compromise is to get rid of pizza.”
“Everyone else seems to be happy with the new pizza ideas. You just need to get rid of your antiquated idea of what pizza is supposed to be.”
“Hmm,” I say, “seems like there’s a better option that doesn’t ruin pizza for everyone”. … I’m actually going to end the metaphor there. On top of me seeing about a thousand avenues I could take that would be fun, it’s making me hungry.

So, yes, I let them have what they want. It sucks. It’s even unfair. Yet, that is the only choice they gave, and for me, it seems like an easy one. I walk away from the world they create and I don’t agree with to wait and see if anyone else feels like I do or if I’m an anomaly. The thing is, I get that people need to be safe. I get that for some reason we have turned to the government to be the protector of everyday life. The problem is that somewhere along the line, people started looking at pain as a thing to be avoided at all cost. People stopped fighting for themselves. People started telling the government it was their responsibility. We are suppose to go to an adult. We’re suppose to go to our supervisor. We’re suppose to pass all of our problems related in some way to violence to people with the proper authority to take care of them. I know how this sentence sounds, which is rash and brutish. It is assumed that if I feel this way, it’s because I want to lash out (I don’t. I’m boring, actually). Culturally, we have decided that violence cannot have real maturity. It is not reasonable. It descends into chaos and cruelty and ruthless horror.

So instead, we take our horrors internally. We are so alienated from fighting that it has ceased to be an option. Instead, we go straight to suicide. Maybe murder, sometimes. Bullies are a huge threat to our youths, not because people are beaten up or insulted, but because we have no way for the victims to cease being victims. If you think going to the teacher will stop that, you’re not seeing how bullies bully. I was never truly bullied in school but I had to stand up for those who were. I was never bullied despite the fact that by my 8th grade year I knew I preferred Picard to Kirk, I knew that the pound sign on a telephone dial pad was properly called an “octothorpe”, or that when Raphael would appear all black in TMNT, it was because he was in a wrestling costume he got when kidnapped and forced to fight on an entertainment planet, transported by Cowlick, a disembodied, giant cow head, capable of interstellar flight. I was never bullied because I had a black belt in karate, I was part of one of the earliest MMA movements in my state, I lifted weights, and am very polite. Yet, I have never been in a fight. I have never punched anyone outside of protective sparring equipment. I was never really bullied because, even though I never had any one witness me knock some one out, I simply couldn’t be bullied. I am very comfortable when someone wants to hit me. I have had broken bones, snapped ligaments, swollen joints, bruises, scars, lots of bloody noses, and black eyes. I stood back up. I got better. Not to mention that my words have always been much more powerful than most peoples hearts. I had more confidence in myself than most, even when I knew how empty I was. Even then, at least I knew what was making me empty.

I don’t need the government to ensure my safety. I need it to allow me to be safe. The SHRA to me is less Nazi and more fascist. It’s less Third Reich and more Smokefree Laws or banning aquarium sized soft drinks at fast food joints or as @mrjoshuahargis posted once, they restrict hiking on rainy days in SoCal. They restrict hiking on rainy days. It’s too much nature all at once guys, we can’t handle that.  It is removing personal rights in order to protect and patting us on the head, telling us it will be alright. It doesn’t respect me, so it makes calls for me about my health and my life. Side note: for long story reasons, I straight up teetotal. Which is quite interesting… to me. To everyone else, not so much, it seems. Nothing says “boring” like the number of things you don’t do.

Here I am preaching to a choir. At least, I hope I am. Superheroes embody this notion. Instead of finding someone else to deal with their problems, everyone else came to them. They would go in search of it to keep it as far from their home, their city, their country, their world as long as possible. They would do it pro bono. They would do it because it was right, because justice needed to be served, because they could, and because others could not. We read these books because they’re thrilling and fun. They are doing what we know is right and it feels good. It feels satisfying. It feels right.

I remember an episode of Desperate Housewives (and I’m ashamed, too). Anyway, there was a scene when some spoiled brat daughter is crying because her mom wouldn’t let her date some brand new guy on the street because of blah blah blah. The mom responds “I just want you to be happy” and the girl shouts back “Don’t just ‘want it’, make it happen!”. Then she did. The mom started trying to hook them up. I remember thinking Wow, good come back. Then, I turned to the wisest person I know, my mom, whom I know for really-reals wants me to be happy, and asked her “How would you respond to that?”. My mother told me (paraphrasing, as this was several years ago) “Caped Persuader J, it is not my job to make you happy. And it certainly isn’t my job to go against my better judgement to give it to you. You can’t find happiness there.” That last part is another discussion, though. The point here is that if you sit back and wait for the authorities to make your life better, it won’t ever be. I can’t remember what happened on the show, but I’m sure the bratty girl was unhappy about something else later.

GRAH! Okay! All that to say this: No one can make you happy. As soon as the government starts to restrict rights in order to make you feel better, it stops being run by and for the people and starts being run against them. It stops giving its people room to grow and starts giving them cages to keep them. This move of turning to the government to force the entire population to give up its rights for the “betterment” of the population sits quite ill with me. So why then be with the quitter than the puncher? Remember how I view the proper rebellion? Following all the rules, in a clean suit and pressed tie, I would walk up to the oppressors and legally spit on the paper and those what wrote it in the language they understood and in all ways comprehensible. They tell me I’m too dangerous because they passed a bill that targets faceless powers, so I show them my face then let them know its going away because it was the better option. They expect resistance. They know about the fighting that will happen. What do they do when some one who has always done it right turns away from them? Captain was easy to write off. He’s an old, old man. It’s easy to say he’s out of touch and resorts to fighting too early. What happens if he just walks? Iron Man is easy to figure out. A man who buries himself in armor and is celebrated assumes the world wants to be covered and protected. What happens if he takes off the protection?

I don’t sign up because the law is wrong. I don’t join the resistance because they are expected. I walk away with Firestar and simply hope that enough others see the same point. They don’t, though. They almost never do (puts on my hipster ‘stache and walks out of my artisanal vegetable chip shop).