A two-parter
A little on my thoughts on the future of the 24 election season and a new found appreciation for Supergirl comics.
A tale of two very different messages
Biden’s age is a weakness
Last month, Nikki Haley told the country what the GOP would hammer Biden with to win the presidency: that he’s old. He’ll die in his second term, and Kamala Harris will be a worse president because she’s not a white, old man. (Ironic, no?)
That’s going to be the playbook going forward. Bidens worst negative is his age, so the MAGA world does have a good point, for once. I don’t think he should run, but I’d need a Witmer and Buttigiege-level ticket to say an alternate is viable. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this time around.
Don’t ask anyone in the MAGA world how old Trump is, they won’t remember.
Roe + He’s a rapist, that Trump
After being found liable for sexual assault in a court decision this week, the Democrats now have a one-two punch in their pocket to counter the “Biden old geezer” messaging.
The first is that President Trump is pro-rape/sexual assault, but don’t take my word for it, take his! Combine that with the fact that Roe being gone means women in many states must carry a resulting pregnancy to term.
I’m speaking in broad strokes here and only about messaging. Whether there’s more truth to one or the other is sadly irrelevant to the perecption. I don’t think “fear Kamala” is going to win against the second argument in a general.
Supergirl and Autism
First, I propose that everyone read at least one thinkpiece about how superman is autistic.
If you watched Man of Steel, there’s a scene where Superman uses his abilities as a weakness by forcing General Zod, also a Kryptonian, to experience the abilities without training or honing his senses. Zod is thrown to his knees while being bombarded by overstimulation.
That’s AUTISM!
Ok, it’s not exactly autism, but it’s often how we feel when overstimulated.
I don’t fully identify with Superman as much as I do with Supergirl, and it has to do with having a late diagnosis as an adult.
When Krypton went boom, Kara Zor-El, Clark’s cousin, was a teenager. She had plans, a life, and was on her way to the science or military guilds (depending on which books) of Krypton before the big bang.
Her dad slung her into a ship with a cryo chamber, so she’s still a teenager when she meets her then thirty-something cousin-who-she-last-saw-as-a-baby on earth. She’s changed his diapers! She cleaned super poo!
Depending on which comic you pick up, she’s often in high school on Earth. So imagine having these powers to learn, know your cousin who you should be older than is like this megastar important person you have to live up to, whether he’s living or dead depending on the timeline.
Oh, the teen angst, I love it. But the other thing I love about Kara is she’s about 3000x years advanced in her understanding of tech. Her robots made robots that made robot factories. So her understanding of earth tech is always awkward because it’s like if I introduced my kids to a sundial for time management.
Like me, she has this fundamental obsession with having tech that works how she wants it to work. When it doesn’t meet her expectations, she gets frustrated and stubborn and won’t leave the thing alone until she either smashes it or makes something 10x more complicated to do the same thing.
Kara had been growing into an adult, and then everything was pulled out from under her, and then these abilities and ways to think about herself she never knew about before. Sound familiar?
So yeah, Kara is very much my fav autistic superhero.