Infiltrating Deltas: I’d heard talk of Congress contemplating the creation of a Superman Day, recently. They were thinking of using the day you originally succumbed to your injuries fighting Doomsday, to honor heroes like yourself, those who fell in the line of duty and those who served, and those who fell. And I also hear you delivered a statement, in writing for obvious reasons, about why you thought that was a bad idea. Why?
Superman: Okay, my argument was two-pronged, actually. First, I wouldn’t want it called Superman Day, or to celebrate my death. I’m, as a symbol, too small for something like that. If anything, it could be called Justice Day, and celebrate the founding date of the League- or use some other day, because really, it isn’t and shouldn’t be about me.
Second, we already have a day. Granted, our observance isn’t far-reaching, and the implications are, well, I’ll stop padding it. We celebrate Veterans Day as ours, or ours with traditional military veterans, anyway. I think it’s appropriate to look at the people who do what we do in that same light.
ID: That’s… interesting. Because, knowing how you feel about war, I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about veterans.
S: Really? I didn’t think my position was all that gray. Veterans, at least in principal, lay their lives at the feet of the altar of freedom. Some are chosen as sacrifices, others walk away whole; most are damaged in ways that are hard to recognize or qualify, but bear wounds as deep as those who died. I have the utmost awe and respect for veterans, military or otherwise.
ID: Okay, see, it’s that, that caveat: “at least in principal.” What the hell does that mean?
S: You really don’t care about the big picture if you think someone’s stepped in dog crap, do you? It’s a niggling complaint I have with the way we use our military. We treat them like mercenaries; hell, in Iraq, we’ve had them fighting side by side with mercenaries. And our military, our servicemen and women, they deserve better than that. They ought to be above reproach, but when we tarnish the work they do, it lessens the value of their very real sacrifices. My qualms are with the administration of our military, not with our soldiers.
ID: That makes a degree of sense. But do you think it’s appropriate elevating vigilantes to the levels of sanctioned military veterans?
S: I think it would be inappropriate to ghettoize their sacrifice into a separate day simply because they gave their lives independent of a martial authority.
ID: So you don’t think there’s a difference? That the fact that vigilantes are breaking the law doesn’t make them unworthy of being honored side-by-side with servicepeople?
S: No. And I’m surprised to hear you even implying that line of reasoning, which is virtually the same as people who argue against gay marriage, as if the granting of civil rights to one group has ever detrimentally impacted the rights of others.
ID: Of course, you can make the argument that the loss of privilege for a favored group is understandably resisted, but that’s an argument that rhetorically is equivalent to asking “So what?” in the face of iniquity. So no separate but equal for superheroes?
S: Separate is never equal. It can’t be.
ID: I’ll forego my usual bit of race-baiting, even though there’s a part of me that’s a bit curious whether a Kansas farm boy maybe picked up any good ole boyness.
S: My father was very tolerant. And a veteran, I think you’re forgetting.
ID: That’s right, he was drafted. But do you think if your dad hadn’t been drafted, hadn’t been a
S: But he was. Drafted and a veteran. I don’t think he would have chosen to be a soldier, but that doesn’t change the fact that he recognized the sacrifice for what it was, or that he wouldn’t have sought to instill that wisdom in his son. There’s a reason they call it military service, because it is, they’re doing a service for each and every one of us.
Though I think there is sometimes a disconnect when we talk about soldiers, particularly in the modern, all-volunteer-force variety. I have all the respect in the world for the profession, but it is a profession. And the reasons people take the job are many and varied, having as much to do with lack of opportunity as a desire to do good work for a nation. And I don’t think that acknowledging that aspect, and particularly the dynamic skew it creates, with larger percentages of the poor and minorities serving, takes anything away from that service, or the sacrifice some of those soldiers end up making.
And that’s why I’m really very comfortable holding up people who do what I do on that same pedestal: because we are an all volunteer force, because few if any people get into this for any kind of personal gain, let alone financial. Most of us outlay large sums of money, for tailors, gadgets, whatever.
So more than anything, I hold both groups in extremely high regard. I wouldn’t put either ahead of the other. And I’m guilty as much as anyone for forgetting every day how important that work is, how safe I am, and my family is, because of what they do.
And on days like Veterans Day, I try to make that effort to let them know just how much that service means to me, how truly and deeply I respect them. I try to honor them; it’s the least I could conscionably do.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Showing posts with label League. Show all posts
Showing posts with label League. Show all posts
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
The C Word
Independent Domicile: I want to say, before we begin, because this interview's only being recorded and transcribed- that is to say there's no audio- and I know you've been staying away from the public eye as much as you can, but since we started the interview you've lost forty pounds. Your skin is pale, clothes fit loosely.
Superman: Well, for the sake of parity, I want to state you look like crap, too.
(laughs, breaks into a fit of coughing)
ID: How are you doing, really?
S: The days are harder. And I think it's all really sunk in. I've been living with the reality of my own mortality for a while now, but it's really starting to feel real now. I guess, I guess I got cocky. You know, I've been in so many strange places, been confronted with so many weird threats, there was a part of me that believed that God, the universe, whatever, had some kind of plan for me, that I was invulnerable until I'd done that one great thing that I'd been shot across space in a rocket to do. And I don't think I've done it yet; there's no sense of closure to my life, no finality to it yet.
You know, fighting Doomsday, there was something epic about that. It had grandeur, and spectacle; I could see paintings of that immortalized in the Smithsonian and the Louvre, and while the idea makes me blush a little, stopping him, stopping murder incarnate, that felt like something purposeful. When Lois held me in her arms, and I wasn't even aware enough or strong enough anymore to see, but I knew she was holding me in her arms, and I felt that maybe that was that, that I'd fulfilled my purpose, that what I'd accomplished was something really good and truly great, and that I could pass on from that point and be peaceful. And nothing since has had that kind of closure for me.
ID: So do you think there's something to that? I mean, and I don't know where I read it, so maybe it's just a gossip-column thing, but your father had a heart attack around that time, and went and found you in some kind of an afterlife and convinced you to come back. Do you think that, maybe, that was a mistake, that you were supposed to stay dead after that?
S: It's a thought, isn't it? But honestly, no. I don't think that's true because I was supposed to marry Lois. As sure as I know anything, I know that, and to do that, I had to come back after Doomsday.
ID: So what about that, then, marrying Lois? Isn't that closure enough for you?
S: I don't know. I remember the first time I found out my cells had stopped aging. It was at S.T.A.R. Labs, and they told me that, functionally, I hadn't aged for several years, and in fact it appeared like the aging process had partially reversed, so age-related damage that they had previously recorded had healed. And there was a kind of a quiet pause, before the head scientist, whose name escapes me at the moment, um, and I apologize for that, I'm sure it'll come to me, but I know it wasn't Emil Hamilton- he was on the team, but I remember he was preoccupied with Kara at the time- anyway, the lead scientist told me, “we don't know if you'll ever age another day again.”
And Lois actually got really upset; she turned to me, tears in her eyes already, and I excused us quickly before flying us out of the conference room. By the time we touched down in the arctic, she had regained her composure, but she explained, very carefully, why that upset her.
She said she'd always assumed I'd outlive her, that stress or cancer from her mother's side, or a building falling on her or even her own propensity for eating out of The Planet's vending machines would kill her, but the thought that she was just a blip on my radar, just the first ring on a tree that might never stop growing, that her part in my life was going to end up so trivial- it nearly broke her heart. And I told her the first thing that came to my mind, because even though I think faster than a computer she can always tell when I hesitate: that I couldn't imagine outliving her, because I was fairly certain that her dying would kill me. She hasn't had a problem with it since.
But I don't think the reverse is true; I don't think my death will kill her- and not simply because she's had to live through that once already, but because as much as I know she loves me, Lois doesn't need me the way I need her. She loves me, she cares for me and about me, and hard as it is to believe she genuinely likes having me around all the time- but she doesn't need me. There have been times when I've wondered if she wouldn't have been a better reporter, maybe a better person, if it weren't for me. And maybe that's one thing I wish I could hold on to see, the person my wife becomes without me.
ID: Okay. But closure. I know you'll never be happy with the thought of leaving Lois behind- that with her you'll always want one more day, but acknowledging your impending mortality, do you think it's even reasonable to seek closure at this point?
S: Hmm. I don't know. I just hate leaving business unfinished. Take the League- I think the League's in transition now. With all humility, I've been sort of a go-to for a lot of issues, and now that that resource is being taken away, there's been a bit of a scramble to figure out how things work when you can't just fling a Kryptonian at it.
ID: What about Kara?
S: Kara isn't me. There are a lot of things that, physically, she can handle, but there are a lot of other things, having to do with maturity, and experience, or even just rapport that I have, with a lot of world leaders, a lot of communities across the globe- I've been at this a fairly long time, and I've met a lot of people, made a lot of friends. That's something the League is learning to work around, now. And the same goes to an extent for physical threats. I mean, Kara can hold her own, but she hasn't been under a yellow sun for nearly the same amount of time as I have- there was more than one time where I was the weapon of first and last resort- because if I couldn't stop it there was no one else who could, and that's something the League is I think reeling from.
And I'm still healthy enough at the moment to contribute, so don't think I'm down or out. But I've been taking a backseat, trying to let others do things I might have done myself in the past. One person who's really stepped up of course has been Diana. Bruce and I have such conflicting styles of management, and such strong personalities, that people often saw us fight. It made people think we were in charge, that we were the ones running the League. But, and I think Bruce would agree with me, the League lives and dies on two people's shoulders- and that's Diana's and J'onn's. Diana has a quiet authority- like what Bruce always wants, but gets irritated about when you don't read his mind and do what he wants, so he goes with gruff schoolteacher. But Diana and J'onn are the people who soothe bruised egos, who make the calls afterward to make sure follow-up assistance is there if it's necessary, who make sure we haven't accidentally caused India to invade Pakistan, or make sure monitor duty's filled. But what I'm getting at is the League is maturing, I think, into a group that will function rather well in a world without me- and I'd like to live long enough to see that, too.
ID: So what it sounds like is you've made your peace with dying- you'd just like to stay after it happens.
S: Yeah, something like that. You think we could swing it?
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Monday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: Well, for the sake of parity, I want to state you look like crap, too.
(laughs, breaks into a fit of coughing)
ID: How are you doing, really?
S: The days are harder. And I think it's all really sunk in. I've been living with the reality of my own mortality for a while now, but it's really starting to feel real now. I guess, I guess I got cocky. You know, I've been in so many strange places, been confronted with so many weird threats, there was a part of me that believed that God, the universe, whatever, had some kind of plan for me, that I was invulnerable until I'd done that one great thing that I'd been shot across space in a rocket to do. And I don't think I've done it yet; there's no sense of closure to my life, no finality to it yet.
You know, fighting Doomsday, there was something epic about that. It had grandeur, and spectacle; I could see paintings of that immortalized in the Smithsonian and the Louvre, and while the idea makes me blush a little, stopping him, stopping murder incarnate, that felt like something purposeful. When Lois held me in her arms, and I wasn't even aware enough or strong enough anymore to see, but I knew she was holding me in her arms, and I felt that maybe that was that, that I'd fulfilled my purpose, that what I'd accomplished was something really good and truly great, and that I could pass on from that point and be peaceful. And nothing since has had that kind of closure for me.
ID: So do you think there's something to that? I mean, and I don't know where I read it, so maybe it's just a gossip-column thing, but your father had a heart attack around that time, and went and found you in some kind of an afterlife and convinced you to come back. Do you think that, maybe, that was a mistake, that you were supposed to stay dead after that?
S: It's a thought, isn't it? But honestly, no. I don't think that's true because I was supposed to marry Lois. As sure as I know anything, I know that, and to do that, I had to come back after Doomsday.
ID: So what about that, then, marrying Lois? Isn't that closure enough for you?
S: I don't know. I remember the first time I found out my cells had stopped aging. It was at S.T.A.R. Labs, and they told me that, functionally, I hadn't aged for several years, and in fact it appeared like the aging process had partially reversed, so age-related damage that they had previously recorded had healed. And there was a kind of a quiet pause, before the head scientist, whose name escapes me at the moment, um, and I apologize for that, I'm sure it'll come to me, but I know it wasn't Emil Hamilton- he was on the team, but I remember he was preoccupied with Kara at the time- anyway, the lead scientist told me, “we don't know if you'll ever age another day again.”
And Lois actually got really upset; she turned to me, tears in her eyes already, and I excused us quickly before flying us out of the conference room. By the time we touched down in the arctic, she had regained her composure, but she explained, very carefully, why that upset her.
She said she'd always assumed I'd outlive her, that stress or cancer from her mother's side, or a building falling on her or even her own propensity for eating out of The Planet's vending machines would kill her, but the thought that she was just a blip on my radar, just the first ring on a tree that might never stop growing, that her part in my life was going to end up so trivial- it nearly broke her heart. And I told her the first thing that came to my mind, because even though I think faster than a computer she can always tell when I hesitate: that I couldn't imagine outliving her, because I was fairly certain that her dying would kill me. She hasn't had a problem with it since.
But I don't think the reverse is true; I don't think my death will kill her- and not simply because she's had to live through that once already, but because as much as I know she loves me, Lois doesn't need me the way I need her. She loves me, she cares for me and about me, and hard as it is to believe she genuinely likes having me around all the time- but she doesn't need me. There have been times when I've wondered if she wouldn't have been a better reporter, maybe a better person, if it weren't for me. And maybe that's one thing I wish I could hold on to see, the person my wife becomes without me.
ID: Okay. But closure. I know you'll never be happy with the thought of leaving Lois behind- that with her you'll always want one more day, but acknowledging your impending mortality, do you think it's even reasonable to seek closure at this point?
S: Hmm. I don't know. I just hate leaving business unfinished. Take the League- I think the League's in transition now. With all humility, I've been sort of a go-to for a lot of issues, and now that that resource is being taken away, there's been a bit of a scramble to figure out how things work when you can't just fling a Kryptonian at it.
ID: What about Kara?
S: Kara isn't me. There are a lot of things that, physically, she can handle, but there are a lot of other things, having to do with maturity, and experience, or even just rapport that I have, with a lot of world leaders, a lot of communities across the globe- I've been at this a fairly long time, and I've met a lot of people, made a lot of friends. That's something the League is learning to work around, now. And the same goes to an extent for physical threats. I mean, Kara can hold her own, but she hasn't been under a yellow sun for nearly the same amount of time as I have- there was more than one time where I was the weapon of first and last resort- because if I couldn't stop it there was no one else who could, and that's something the League is I think reeling from.
And I'm still healthy enough at the moment to contribute, so don't think I'm down or out. But I've been taking a backseat, trying to let others do things I might have done myself in the past. One person who's really stepped up of course has been Diana. Bruce and I have such conflicting styles of management, and such strong personalities, that people often saw us fight. It made people think we were in charge, that we were the ones running the League. But, and I think Bruce would agree with me, the League lives and dies on two people's shoulders- and that's Diana's and J'onn's. Diana has a quiet authority- like what Bruce always wants, but gets irritated about when you don't read his mind and do what he wants, so he goes with gruff schoolteacher. But Diana and J'onn are the people who soothe bruised egos, who make the calls afterward to make sure follow-up assistance is there if it's necessary, who make sure we haven't accidentally caused India to invade Pakistan, or make sure monitor duty's filled. But what I'm getting at is the League is maturing, I think, into a group that will function rather well in a world without me- and I'd like to live long enough to see that, too.
ID: So what it sounds like is you've made your peace with dying- you'd just like to stay after it happens.
S: Yeah, something like that. You think we could swing it?
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Monday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Justice
Illusionary Declaration: You brought up Darfur last week. So we need to talk about that. You ostensibly head the Justice League, the most powerful non-profit, non-governmental-organization in existence. You could, for all intents and purposes, tear Bashir from his bed right this second and hand-deliver him to The Hague. I want to ignore the peace-before-justice argument for a moment, since Darfur is just an example- there’s currently problems in Myanmar, Tibet, Somalia- a lot of places, really, with recurring, not just crisis-of-the-week type problems that have gone unaddressed by yourself and your bespandexed colleagues. Why hasn’t the League intervened?
Superman: That’s probably the best question you’ve ever asked, and it takes us back to the very start of the League. I’ll start by saying when we started, we were all naïve. I’d been in costume less than a year, so had most of us up to that point. We averted a White Martian invasion with the help of J’onn J’onnz
ID: The Martian Manhunter
S: and we sort of realized that there were some things we couldn’t do on our own. Some of us had worked together previously before, but this was something on a scale none of us had seen before, and it really taught us all that there was just a different type of threat out there than we’d previously been exposed to.
It started, for me, at least, with a conversation with J’onn. As an alien living amongst humans, I sort of took it upon myself to help him find a place, get settled, develop his own life, and we were having lunch in a very 50s diner. J’onn was talking sort of matter-of-factly about an early warning system; he kind of took it for granted that we already were connected to one another in a way that would allow us to function like a group. And we started to develop the idea as we waited for milkshakes.
He and I were planning on starting a push with the others who had helped avert the invasion, and we were going to have lunch again on Sunday to hash out details of that, and I remember Diana called on Saturday. Her background was in politics, diplomacy- after all, she was primarily an ambassador- and she’d already been networking with Flash, Green Lantern. She said she’d probably have called sooner, but she’d had to go to Atlantis three times to convince Aquaman- though I’ve always sort of assumed, and Diana’s always refused to deny, that he only kept her coming back to get in her pants- though I suppose technically her battlesuit doesn’t include pants.
She’d covered some of the details, at least in theory, that J’onn and I had missed, and of course, there was only one person left to talk to, Bruce. We spent twenty minutes trying to figure out if he’d even be interested, and then which of us had the most chance of convincing him. I thought she could flirt him into it; she seemed to be under the impression that he and I shared some kind of bond. In the end, well, Diana was very persuasive- she was a hell of an ambassador, even in those days, so I made the call. He was cold. “I expected you to call an hour ago. It’s a stupid idea. I’m sure you’ve already come up with a ridiculous name for it.” He paused. “I’ll work with you as a consultant, to limit the damage the rest of you can do.”
A couple of weeks later we set up a summit, and we set out to make ground rules. We actually wanted to format it off of the United Nations, with members voting on rules and resolutions- taking the time to weight the consequences of intervening in situations versus just rushing in and possibly making situations worse.
And it was Bruce who brought up politics, asking one of those questions that sort of had an answer hidden inside it- but he asked us about Northern Ireland. This was before the Belfast Agreement. At first, there was mostly support for the British point of view, until it was pointed out that elements of the revolutionary groups, while resorting to terrorist methods, were spiritually replaying the American revolutionary struggle. Bruce added a little fuel to the fire by comparing that conflict with Israel and the Palestinians, which further polarized the discussion.
It became so heated that at one point it looked like we were going to come to blows, and J’onn demanded we take a time out for lunch. We split up into basically pro British and Irish groups for lunch, and over the course of eating, we came to the realization that I think Bruce was prodding us towards- that when there wasn’t a clear-cut answer, we needed to steer clear. It wasn’t, and hasn’t, been a perfect solution, but what it taught us was that there are simply some questions that needed to be answered by the people involved.
After lunch, a little more seasoned, I think, we turned to the subject of imposing peace. It was true that we could impose peace on Israel, but at the cost of becoming dictators- and under a superhuman dictatorship –even more so than under a normal human dictatorship- it would be impossible for the democratic reforms necessary for a lasting peace to form. We felt really productive during the second half of the day, and we thought we were closing in on something concrete until Bruce stood up and lectured all of us on playing a self-congratulatory game of model UN. And aggravating as he was, he was right. We’d drawn up bylaws in a day; we were prepared to change the world on a whim.
He didn’t show up for the second day of our summit, but he’d cast a shadow over our talks, and basically all of our headier plans fell apart, so that when he showed up again in the last few hours of the third day, we were working with a much smaller, much less reaching League than the one we’d sort of been dreaming of on that first day. To this day I don’t know how much of that was calculation on his part, and how much of it was a genuine frustration at what he saw as a superhuman superpower forming with too little forethought, but I think it kept the League on an even keel. I shudder to think of the world we might have created otherwise.
What’s funny, is, in retrospect, what we ended up with was less like the UN and more like the League of Nations, and I’ll explain that. The UN is, by and large, “led” by the Security Council. Major, and especially priority, decisions are made through the council and not the secretariat. Our League is based on simple majorities; it’s true that I hold a position of relative leadership in the community, and there is a tendency for people to camp around the original founding members, but when it comes time to decide what we’re going to do, my voice is only as strong as the next man or woman’s. I think that’s eliminated a lot of potential strife, and helped us live up to the democratic ideals we’ve set for ourselves. I don’t aspire to inspiration, but I hope that, sometimes at least, we serve as an example people can and will follow.
ID: But in Darfur there are concrete things that could be done
S: And how far do we go? Do we tow the AU line, and try to wall off Darfur from the rest of Sudan? Do we go a step further, and smash the militias at the risk of destabilizing the entire country? Do we attack the military, the government, and potentially throw the whole region into conflict?
Everything we do has consequences. We've offered our, uh, services, I guess, to the Security Council, and, understandably, they're as reluctant as we are to intervene. The larger the response, the greater the chance for it to go catastrophically wrong, not to mention that using the Justice League could be seen as an escalation of an international superhuman arms race.
If the UN ever asks for our help, in Darfur or anywhere, we'll be there, but for now, they're trying to deal with the situation through traditional diplomacy. For better or worse, justice moves slowly.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Monday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: That’s probably the best question you’ve ever asked, and it takes us back to the very start of the League. I’ll start by saying when we started, we were all naïve. I’d been in costume less than a year, so had most of us up to that point. We averted a White Martian invasion with the help of J’onn J’onnz
ID: The Martian Manhunter
S: and we sort of realized that there were some things we couldn’t do on our own. Some of us had worked together previously before, but this was something on a scale none of us had seen before, and it really taught us all that there was just a different type of threat out there than we’d previously been exposed to.
It started, for me, at least, with a conversation with J’onn. As an alien living amongst humans, I sort of took it upon myself to help him find a place, get settled, develop his own life, and we were having lunch in a very 50s diner. J’onn was talking sort of matter-of-factly about an early warning system; he kind of took it for granted that we already were connected to one another in a way that would allow us to function like a group. And we started to develop the idea as we waited for milkshakes.
He and I were planning on starting a push with the others who had helped avert the invasion, and we were going to have lunch again on Sunday to hash out details of that, and I remember Diana called on Saturday. Her background was in politics, diplomacy- after all, she was primarily an ambassador- and she’d already been networking with Flash, Green Lantern. She said she’d probably have called sooner, but she’d had to go to Atlantis three times to convince Aquaman- though I’ve always sort of assumed, and Diana’s always refused to deny, that he only kept her coming back to get in her pants- though I suppose technically her battlesuit doesn’t include pants.
She’d covered some of the details, at least in theory, that J’onn and I had missed, and of course, there was only one person left to talk to, Bruce. We spent twenty minutes trying to figure out if he’d even be interested, and then which of us had the most chance of convincing him. I thought she could flirt him into it; she seemed to be under the impression that he and I shared some kind of bond. In the end, well, Diana was very persuasive- she was a hell of an ambassador, even in those days, so I made the call. He was cold. “I expected you to call an hour ago. It’s a stupid idea. I’m sure you’ve already come up with a ridiculous name for it.” He paused. “I’ll work with you as a consultant, to limit the damage the rest of you can do.”
A couple of weeks later we set up a summit, and we set out to make ground rules. We actually wanted to format it off of the United Nations, with members voting on rules and resolutions- taking the time to weight the consequences of intervening in situations versus just rushing in and possibly making situations worse.
And it was Bruce who brought up politics, asking one of those questions that sort of had an answer hidden inside it- but he asked us about Northern Ireland. This was before the Belfast Agreement. At first, there was mostly support for the British point of view, until it was pointed out that elements of the revolutionary groups, while resorting to terrorist methods, were spiritually replaying the American revolutionary struggle. Bruce added a little fuel to the fire by comparing that conflict with Israel and the Palestinians, which further polarized the discussion.
It became so heated that at one point it looked like we were going to come to blows, and J’onn demanded we take a time out for lunch. We split up into basically pro British and Irish groups for lunch, and over the course of eating, we came to the realization that I think Bruce was prodding us towards- that when there wasn’t a clear-cut answer, we needed to steer clear. It wasn’t, and hasn’t, been a perfect solution, but what it taught us was that there are simply some questions that needed to be answered by the people involved.
After lunch, a little more seasoned, I think, we turned to the subject of imposing peace. It was true that we could impose peace on Israel, but at the cost of becoming dictators- and under a superhuman dictatorship –even more so than under a normal human dictatorship- it would be impossible for the democratic reforms necessary for a lasting peace to form. We felt really productive during the second half of the day, and we thought we were closing in on something concrete until Bruce stood up and lectured all of us on playing a self-congratulatory game of model UN. And aggravating as he was, he was right. We’d drawn up bylaws in a day; we were prepared to change the world on a whim.
He didn’t show up for the second day of our summit, but he’d cast a shadow over our talks, and basically all of our headier plans fell apart, so that when he showed up again in the last few hours of the third day, we were working with a much smaller, much less reaching League than the one we’d sort of been dreaming of on that first day. To this day I don’t know how much of that was calculation on his part, and how much of it was a genuine frustration at what he saw as a superhuman superpower forming with too little forethought, but I think it kept the League on an even keel. I shudder to think of the world we might have created otherwise.
What’s funny, is, in retrospect, what we ended up with was less like the UN and more like the League of Nations, and I’ll explain that. The UN is, by and large, “led” by the Security Council. Major, and especially priority, decisions are made through the council and not the secretariat. Our League is based on simple majorities; it’s true that I hold a position of relative leadership in the community, and there is a tendency for people to camp around the original founding members, but when it comes time to decide what we’re going to do, my voice is only as strong as the next man or woman’s. I think that’s eliminated a lot of potential strife, and helped us live up to the democratic ideals we’ve set for ourselves. I don’t aspire to inspiration, but I hope that, sometimes at least, we serve as an example people can and will follow.
ID: But in Darfur there are concrete things that could be done
S: And how far do we go? Do we tow the AU line, and try to wall off Darfur from the rest of Sudan? Do we go a step further, and smash the militias at the risk of destabilizing the entire country? Do we attack the military, the government, and potentially throw the whole region into conflict?
Everything we do has consequences. We've offered our, uh, services, I guess, to the Security Council, and, understandably, they're as reluctant as we are to intervene. The larger the response, the greater the chance for it to go catastrophically wrong, not to mention that using the Justice League could be seen as an escalation of an international superhuman arms race.
If the UN ever asks for our help, in Darfur or anywhere, we'll be there, but for now, they're trying to deal with the situation through traditional diplomacy. For better or worse, justice moves slowly.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Monday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
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