The Dark Knight Comes to Life
If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than lies, it’s the justification for lies by once honest men. I hated hearing Batman speak the following line at the end of The Dark Knight: ”Sometimes… truth isn’t good enough…”
It wasn’t heroic at all and an unnecessary admission of defeat. Gordon’s and Batman’s jobs are to protect the citizens of Gotham from crime, not from the truth — in this case, the truth about Harvey Dent. By the end of the film, Gotham’s once heroic district attorney wasn’t a hero any longer, but instead a murderer. How condescending is it to the people of Gotham that Batman and Gordon feel only they can handle that truth.
It brings to mind the Big Lie about Islam that our government pushed on us right after 9/11 and continues to this day — that “Islam means peace.” As for Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, good men don’t become evil unless they already had it in them, and I suppose The Joker saw something in Harvey that he knew he could bring out of him with a simple push.
Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered and he suffered the same loss that Harvey experienced when The Joker murdered Rachel Dawes; but Batman doesn’t become the bad guy, he continues to fight evil.
And The Joker didn’t win at the end of The Dark Knight, as Gordon said, and as Batman seemed to accept with his words, “The Joker cannot win.” But in their lie, in their both agreeing to allow Batman to take the rap for the murders committed by Harvey Dent, they lost, and they became Two-Face/d.
As Ayn Rand puts it in Atlas Shrugged, “Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.” Fortunately, Christopher Nolan explores the consequences of that ending in The Dark Knight Rises. As Alfred J. Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler/surrogate father, tells Bruce in one important scene in the new film, “Maybe it’s time we stop trying to outsmart the truth, and let it have its day.” I recently discussed this during a podcast review of The Dark Knight Rises. Listen here.
Next: What’s Bane saying?
Mr. Fawstin,
I’m no fan of the occupy your wallet guys and I despise Islamic Supremacists but I also can’t cheer on Ayn Rand’s ideology. I remember listening to Yaron Brook give a conversion speech for Objectivism at my college, where he denounced private charity ferociously, to the point of equating Mother Teresa’s ideology with Osama bin Laden. So much of life requires self-sacrifice that I just can’t imagine an objectivist actually being able to remain committed to their ideology. Soldiers and parents sacrifice a lot for others, after all.
Are your comics objectivist, in that they oppose all acts of altruism and all belief in the supernatural?
I am an Objectivist, and Objectivism is opposed to faith as it recognizes that Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality, only means to knowledge. As for your criticism: You Know you’re winning when your critics Need to lie in order to discredit you.
I didn’t notice any “criticism” or “lie”? What are you talking about?
Rational objectivity has no fear of altruism. contrary to your detractor’s insinuations, altruism isn’t emotive, defeatist, masochistic victimology at all!
Altruism is the most coldly-calculating, rational stance a civilized man can make. It is based on the reflection of ‘the other’ as equally motivated as the self by the behavioural conditioning binary of fear and greed (the stick and the carrot). It is calculated to confirm one’s own security by negating the other’s fear and canceling his greed, by striving to make him feel safe and happy, respectively. This form of “charity” is really enlightened self-interest, not submission to victimology extortion. It can also be described as “moral” in that it doesn’t attack first, for is not the desire to make the others feel safe and happy, the very definition of “love”?
Contrast this with the self-defeating, primitive savage moslem impulse, as advised by Muhammad: to fight fire with more fire, in that, when faced with the other’s fearsome greed, the best response is to make them MORE scared of your own greed!
“conversion speech”? “denounced private charity ferociously”? “equating Mother Teresa’s ideology with Osama bin Laden’s”? Fitting accusations from someone who believes that “so much of life requires self-sacrifice”, since you’re quick to sacrifice the truth in order to attempt to make a case against Objectivism, which most critics need to do. Here’s what I had to tell another dishonest critic of Rand’s/Objectivism’s position on private charity:
Charity is an optional issue for individuals, not a moral issue. But Forced charity, as in the government forcing tax payers to pay for things that they may find morally repugnant, that is indeed an “abomination” and Rand and Objectivists are opposed to that.
Mr Fawstin,
I don’t know what Yaron Brook said, and I agree that government should never force charity. In fact, I go further and say there is no such thing as “forced charity”. Charity, after all, litteraly means love. Anything not done out of love is, by definition, not charity.
However, I don’t understand how charity is “not a moral issue”.
Charity is an optional issue, it’s not moral to give or not to give (unless you give to groups who are up to no good) If you want to give charity, fine, do it, if you don’t, you don’t have to. It’s a private, personal choice that individuals make to support individuals or institutions they want to. But there are those who, in lieu of being moral, give to charity and loudly advertise that fact in order to be perceived as moral.
You seem to imply that “private, personal choice” and “moral” are mutually exclusive categories. I don’t see why that would be necessarily true.
Morality is very simple, as defined by the Golden Rule of Law: “Do Not Attack First.”
All crimes are forms of theft: offensive attacks that deny the attacker’s victim something they, not the attacker, are entitled to; basic robbery is theft of one’s stuff (and so is arson); kidnapping, assault, and rape are all thefts of one’s bodily autonomy, murder is theft of one’s life, and lying (fraud) is only the most basic form of theft – it’s the theft of the Truth. (And lying includes presenting one’s merely subjective, unresearched, fact-free opinion as if it were objective fact)!
And even all threats are psychological attacks (aka: coercion, duress, extortion, “terrorism”) which are thefts of one’s peace of mind and security, and all non-defensive attacks are already classified as crimes.
After all, when you attack the Others first, then, by definition, you are the predatory criminal aggressor, and they are your innocent victims – there’s no two ways about it!
(Attacking second, in defense of one’s self and/or of innocent others, is always OK, and is in fact a mandatory requirement for having any sort of deterring justice in the world at all, ever! Without counter-attacks criminals have no reason to be deterred into ceasing theirs)!
Thus, we have developed a natural law, which rationally depends on these cause-and-effect facts, known as The Golden Rule of Law, which, by defining situational morality as “Do Not Attack First!” enables trust, progress, and Civilization. It is often abstracted as “THOU SHALT NOT KILL!”
It’s opposite might be called ‘the brazen rule of chaos,’ which defines immorality as “only we have the holy right to always attack all ‘The Others’ first, so there, nyah!” and so inflicts distrust, stagnation, and Barbarism. It has been abstracted as “THOU SHALT KILL!” (and is known today as “islam”)!
Even the ‘Ten’ Commandments are really only a bunch of listed symptoms, illustrating this simple binary; the first five are all cautions to “Fear and Obey!” while the second five are all admonishments not to steal! Thus, they, too, can be summed up as “Greed NOT; Be Fearful!” (or: don’t attack first)! – while islam embodies the exact opposite (“Fear NOT; Be Greedy”) – or: “Always attack first!”
And of course the victim-blaming rationale for evil is always that one was somehow only “defending” one’s self, by pre-emptively attacking the others first, by adding insult to injury with the slanderous implication that “well, they were going to attack me, anyway” and “so it’s for their own good for them to Submit to me attacking them, first”)!
Even small children instinctively know the Golden Rule of Law as the:
“But, Mom! THEY STARTED IT!” Rule.
Interestingly, our despised (by moslems) “Western” system of morality, is in fact entirely “Eastern” (Chinese) in origin!
It was first coined by Cong Fuzi (“Confucius”) in the negative (as “Do NOT Do Unto Others…!”) and then allegedly by Jesus in the (false, nannnysate advice) positive, and since then it’s been used in the UN’s founding Charter (where it describes the #1 War-Crime as “to be the aggressor in war”). It’s the physician’s Hippocratic Oath (“First, Do No Harm!”) and is even used by social engineers as the “Precautionary Principle.”
It’s opposite creed, which I’ve termed the ‘Brazen Rule of Chaos’ has been attributed by John Milton in Paradise Lost, to Satan, as: “Who Dares, Wins!”
Mr. Fawstin I think I may becoming a real fan. Obviously this type of criticism of Rand isn’t based on anything she said or wrote, I’m sure. And I read a hell of a lot of Rand.
What escapes me, and will until I die, is the “why?” Rand’s books are so widely available, why would anyone think they could get over on someone who actually read them? To disagree with her is one thing, but to manufacture from thin air ideas she never espoused, to deliberately misread and misinterpret everything that she ACTUALLY said? It just boggles me. But then, Rand’s fundamental admonition was to think.
By the way, I met Yaron Brook a few months ago and he was actually a pretty low key guy and introduced Objectivism to a crowd that was probably only mildly familiar with it. He not only had no beef with charity per se, he was happy to acknowledge it as a viable avenue for anyone whose choice it was to give. He made no intimations that voluntary contributions were problematic at all. All in consonance with Objectivist thinking.
My criticism of Rand is based on what I read in her novels, which is the face she presented to the world, plus her own personal life. She considers it wrong to consider self-scrifice more beutiful than soem physical accomplishemnt. She cannot understand that there are people who are trult altruistic without losing their selves at all. (Example – See Simcha Raz, A Txzadik in our Time.) She excels at creating straw men; her own life shows she has no understanding of human nature.
In the Fountainhead:
1. Her almost-hero instigated a version of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, but this isn’t a big deal.
2. She refers to the persecutor Pasteur (see Microbe Hunters) as persecuted.
3. The best she can come up with against the wonders of the universe is airplanes.
4. Her characters are immoral, amoral, unbelievable, repulsive, and unsympathetic.
Batiful = beautiful
Rand = Rosenbaum
My fellow Israeli, Yaron Brook, is everythign that Alica “Ayn Rand” Rosenbaum is not.
Thanks, Terence57, I agree, and Yaron’s a great guy doing great work, I can’t imagine anyone else in his position.
i agree with everything you say… i only wish you were a
better artist. Can’t have everything, i suppose.
That depends on what you think “better artist” means. Have you read my comic book/graphic novel work?
What is your idea of a “better artist” Sam! I think your problem has to do with genre and for that reason this doesn’t qualify as art to you.
I, along with many others, love and enjoy and am fascinated by Bosch Fawstin’s Art.
Yo
…And what an interestingly subjective, back-handed “compliment” that was!
Granted, Batman had an ulterior motive in taking the blame for Two-Face’s crimes. As shown with his little tete-a-tete with the crime boss midway through the film, Gotham’s underworld was losing its fear of Batman because everyone knew that Batman wouldn’t kill.
Batman was going to have to do something horrific– or deceive everyone into thinking he’d done something horrific– to make the crimelords fear him again.
Before the Dark Night, Miller and Johansen recreated Daredevil. And importantly, if they didn’t create, they recreated Elektra. Now Elektra and Selena Kyle have much in common, although I would make the argument that Elektra has the greater lethality as well as that intangible je ne sais quoi, … killer/anger… Daredevil 168, a bit before and after… for me that changed things forever.
All the rest is commentary.
It was those issues of Daredevil which put Frank Miller on the map, (& his inker was actually named Klaus Janson). And it was those Daredevil issues which caught the eye of D.C. Comics, and they wanted Miller to take on Batman BIG TIME after that, as he did.
Mr Fawstin –
I just purchased and read both of your “Infidel” comics a few minutes ago (I am a fast reader). I am very impressed by your Killian character, and would like nothing better than to read what Rand called a “mid-level” piece by him.
I noticed some of the Easter eggs in the opening scene in his apartment. Great literature choices!
I was just wondering how much of this story is autobiographical. If it is, I hope you have sufficient personal security to continue writing and publishing safely. Even if its not, I hope you maintain as much security as Mr Spencer; I believe you will need it soon if you don’t already.
I… consider myself to be an Objectivist, but like all genuine philosophies I believe that it takes many years to properly “chew” and internalize the ideas involved. So, more power to you, and I hope to see more of your comics soon.
JP, thank you very much for the kind words and for getting The Infidel. The story definitely influenced and informed by my own life, my Muslim background, but the twins are basically me split in two, with one part embracing my heritage and the other part rejecting it and fighting it.
I had the honor of being on Robert Spencer’s side in a debate dealing with the terminology game we’re playing, Islam vs “Islamism”, check it out here http://bit.ly/uHdfT0
My work also landed me on The Daily Show. Here’s the video and my Full account of my appearance here http://bit.ly/Lv32m0
Thanks again.
Re: “If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than lies, it’s the justification for lies by once honest men.” There’s a simple reason for that stance: Lying is only the most basic form of theft – it’s the theft of the Truth. And theft IS crime!
As for one of the most obvious lies of our time (“islam means peace”!):
Islam’s own most official instruction manual, the Qur’an, declares islam was created by “god” to violently destroy and replace all “other” religions and cultures in the world. The subsequent actions of their followers confirm this.
Further, they have declared it their “right” to murder anyone who even verbally declares their defensive opposition to the moslem’s attacks, in declaring it “blasphemy” to resist their extortions.
Without actually knowing anything about islam, most of “our government” bureaucratic gangsters will attempt to pre-emptively slander those who do know about it. This is a simple, obvious case of cowardly treasonous criminal negligence, when a group (say, islam) declares “War!” for “our leaders” to declare “No, they didn’t!” Such a stance also indicates an immediate abdication of their rights to maintain and enjoy their positions over us, as they ignore their commensurate responsibility to protect us.
Why do they always spin superficial situational symptoms into their own “causes!”? Why pretend to go to war against the mere symptoms of “terror/ism,” or “al-Quaeda” instead of their real causes: islam?!
Why deliberately get everything so completely BACKWARDS all the time?!
“Multiculturalism” pretends that, because all the mere superficial symptoms of growing up in different parts of the world (appearance, skin tone, sartorial variances and ‘preferences’ for, and familiarity with, various types of ‘ethnic’ foods, all really only depending on environment – are of only negligible importance, that “All Cultures Must Be The Same!” As if raising generations under the indoctrinating cultural imperative of “THOU SHALT KILL!” would make absolutely no difference in any subsequent social norms, when compared to raising a populace of children with “THOU SHALT NOT KILL!”
Because, historically, the socio-economic results of these two real cultural differences are predictably obvious and plain to see:
We obey the Golden Rule of Law, which, by simply defining all situational morality as: “Do Not Attack First!” enables trust, progress, and Civilization.
(See all “Western” countries)!
They obey the brazen rule of chaos, which embodies immorality as: “Our god says we always have to attack all ‘The Others’ first!” and so inflicts distrust, stagnation, and Barbarism.
(See all ‘moslem’ countries)!
Multiculturalism is a lie being pushed on us by business interests which seek to save money on their labor costs by replacing us with cheap slave labor from their third-world slave-pens.
Actually & factually: The USA still has one of the LOWEST corporate tax rates on the planet.
And even if corporate taxes were set to ZERO, since their own corporate-made law says they are only beholden to their bottom lines, they would STILL try to cut costs by downsizing and outsourcing our jobs here to their 3rd-world slave-pens over there (and by bringing their 3rd-world slaves over here, too)!
No jobs here = no taxes here = no government here (which is why it keeps buying China’s money) = no country here = welcome to the globalized plutocracy.
Why do you think you keep seeing all these multi-cultural advertising billboards everywhere?! Who do you think keeps pushing the multi-culti agenda? Who keeps insisting that it’s our duty not to be meanies by importing tons of primitive, non-White moslem savages, because somehow they’re all poor oppressed People Of Color refugees? Who keeps pretending they’re a “minority,” when in fact, worldwide, Blacks outnumber Whites ten to twenty to one?!
It’s the corporations that do it to us, as they sell us out by selling off our countries to the lowest bidders (usually our declared enemies)! It’s the banksters at the top of that corporate heap, and the oil-barons beneath them who hold all the other corporate gangs hostage to their ‘products!’
Corporate leaders hate having to pay any taxes to anyone anywhere, ever! So they’re in league with the global communists who want free movenement for labour, and with the moslems who also hate all nationally sovereign countries, seeing them all as merely temporary, man-made false idols, intending to replace them all with the global moslem umma, ruled by their theocratic caliphate!
So ask yourselves this: What do the communazis, moslems and corporazis all have in common?
They are all totalitarian Conformists! Corporate welfare = corporate communism!
A couple of notes on the original book.
1. The Superman part was basically your standard anti-American, anti-Reagam (he sort of appeared, it seemed to me) nonsense.
2. The end seemed rather facist.