Batman and Joker: the New Killing Joke

Among superheroes, American men generally choose Batman or Superman, and at my local Singaporean library, only Batman’s graphic novels occupy a full row. Of the two, Batman is more popular because he operates outside rules—just like an intelligence agency. The Brits have Bond; Americans have Batman. When cops and bobbies are stuck, help magically arrives—except it’s not magic. It is technology that disregards regulations, particularly privacy-related. Such help requires tools too expensive for most cities but de rigueur for defense contractors and billionaires.1 Meanwhile, as law firms become more like corporations, principled judges like James Robertson resign. In 2015, he wrote,

Privacy is more of a cultural construct than a legal one in this country, and we are aiding and abetting its steady erosion with our dependence on the Internet, our credit cards and smartphones, our flirtation with social media, and our capitulation to commercial exploitation of Big Data. In a sense, we are all under surveillance, all the time — our whereabouts, activities, and transactions reduced to metadata and available to anyone who can break the code — and we have brought it upon ourselves.

Today, billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson explore space not to settle Mars but to perfect satellites and surveillance. They operate not to bolster law enforcement, but their own personal empires. Governments outside China, Russia, and Germany—which failed to competently regulate the internet or privacy rights—seemingly have little choice but to accept an elongating fifth column while distracting voters with immigration and abortion. How did we get here?

Once upon a time, governing was not difficult. Enemies were large corporations and the mafia, both having supra-national loyalties and thus suspect by default. Using the law and lawyers reasonably, governments kept them in check. John Gotti gets too smug? Your expansive criminal laws put him in jail.2 A pharmaceutical company sells an unsafe product? You threaten the CEO with prison or bankruptcy unless he does the right thing. An accounting firm inflates numbers? You shut down Arthur Anderson.

With technology, it wasn’t that simple, and problems arose when the government failed to collar Microsoft, which eventually destroyed Netscape and forced most competitors to the open source realm.3 Then, attorney Eliot Spitzer—who pursued the Gambino family and lived—got booted as Wall Street executives cheered. Not coincidentally, a few years after Spitzer’s demise, the world experienced the largest banking crisis in modern history. Years later, nothing has changed, at least if you believe journalist Jesse Eisenger: the “United States has lost the will and ability to prosecute top corporate executives.”

What has changed? Technology became cheaper; surveillance of ordinary citizens easier; and surveillance of the rich and well-connected impossible. Without surveillance capabilities, the government needs to infiltrate organizations to be successful. But if you’re an infiltrator, why not work for the entity better able to protect and pay you, which is no longer the government? An innocent man used to only need a good lawyer. Today, he needs real-time footage, digital forensic experts, hackers, and a law firm. Were all of us overly optimistic after Microsoft Explorer and Windows ‘95, or did we desperately need better competition post-1991? 

“There was a looming sense of doom in America, a perception that established politics had failed. Many pundits had said that—after being motivated and defined for 30 years by the Communist threat—Americans seriously needed to find a new enemy.” — Mark Lawson (1993)

A side with mostly angels and idealists will eventually lose, which is why good police departments have informants and vice squads. A side with angels and idealists that cannot protect them will not only lose, but convince everyone the way forward is pursuing the enemy du jour on its own terms: without ethics. So long as civilian governments depend on outsiders for technology, protection, and information, how can anyone effectively protest the new paradigm of “Prosperity without Principles”? I wish I knew. Being outside formal institutions gives more options and also more pitfalls. It is too soon to tell whether the lows will exceed the highs in America, but parallels with Deutschland are undeniably odd:

Capitol Hill attack (January 6, 2021) —> Beer Hall Putsch (November 8, 1923) 

Convicted felon (no time served) —> Convicted felon (served only nine months) 

America First —> America First was a “campaign slogan not only of [Woodrow] Wilson in 1916, but also of his Republican opponent… [Warren] Harding ran on an ‘America First’ platform in 1920. When [Republican President Calvin] Coolidge ran, one of his slogans was ‘America First’ in 1924.” [from Smithsonian Magazine, Anna Diamond, October 2018] 

Make America Great Again, tariffs4, “manufacturing renaissance” —> 

Geda/Adidas, Klaus Maertens’s Doc Martens, Volkswagen, and others rise; we must “place German life once more upon a natural and secure basis—and that means either new living space [Lebensraum] and the development of a great internal market or protection of German economic life against the world without…” (January 27, 1932)

Technological leader, challenged by Communist China and BRICS —> 

Technological leader (see U-boat, etc.) until other countries allied out of necessity 

“This election is not a choice between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a choice between Communism and freedom.” (August 29, 2024) —> 

“With an unparalleled effort of will and of brute force the Communist method of madness is trying as a last resort to poison and undermine an inwardly shaken and uprooted nation... [Germany] will take under its firm protection Christianity as the basis of our morality.” (February 1, 1933) 

Heightened attacks on minorities and immigrants, particularly Semites 

—> Heightened attacks on minorities and immigrants, particularly Semites5

James Robertson, our Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, and Jimmy Carter, our best Christian, are dead. So is the West, unless it can re-capture their spirit, defeat the jokers in office today, and rebuke their Arkham Asylum. Jiāyóu! 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (January 22, 2025 from Singapore)

1 If not busy losing credibility, particularly on individual rights, governments might have recognized their impending replacement by tech-industrial CEOs. 

2 But see Neil Gorsuch’s book, Over Ruled (2024). 

3 Today, open source, once considered the foundation of a free and fair internet, is now mostly corporate-owned. The Linux engineers have been bought out. 

4 As best as I can figure, the tariff strategy seeks to reward Britain for “Brexit” while transferring supplier wealth from China to EU-aligned leaders. In other words, it will be rewarding to be a middleman again, as long as you support America’s president. 

5 In case you didn’t know, the definition includes Arabs. By the way, my last name is Arabic, and I was arrested twice in California though never convicted. The first time, no charges were brought; the second time, charges were dropped hours after I sent an email indicating a prospective malicious prosecution claim. In a separate incident, a lower court judge with German ancestry ruled against me on a civil restraining order, which was later overturned on appeal by a blonde-haired judge with a German last name. Interestingly, the blonde looked more Russian than German to me. Hoppla!