The Emperor Palpatine

This is the part of the 1953 sci-fi movie where the scientists realize the high voltage lines & atom bombs only make the monster bigger

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 2, 2017

I saw the post just above on Instapundit this morning, thinking it was a reaction to yesterday's verdict, but I suddenly realized it's dated July 2, 2017. You can say things about Trump one time, and they turn out to be just as applicable to other situations. Greg Gutfeld made a similar reference to pop-culture paradigms in last night's monologue:

The good news is that as this trial descended into an absurdity of corruption, Trump's numbers have been going up, while Joe Biden's keep falling, like Joe Biden himself. Turns out Americans love it when one man fights against a corrupt system with his back up against the wall, just as much as they detest a dementia-ridden dirtbag who's spent half a century padding his life with your money. . . . It ain't over til the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is America.

In other words, Joe as dementia-ridden dirtbag morphs into Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine, who Wikipedia says "has become a widely recognized symbol of evil in popular culture." Well, here's an intriguing essay on the hero in popular culture:

[I]n Pop Culture heroes, especially American ones, never seem to want to be heroes, they are forced to confront some horrendous situation. The Popular Culture hero never steps out to be heroic, he doesn’t go around looking for trouble. . . . The hero in most of these scenarios is a reactive force, a passive weapon that flips into action only when activated. . . . The hero is improvising in this reactive state, he is an action hero. The Pop Culture hero is not a thinking man, he doesn’t plan, he doesn’t contemplate the situation, he doesn’t search for alternatives only a way out. The hero is always directly contrasted to the Pop Culture villain who is portrayed as the thoughtful one, an intellect – he plans, he contemplates, he devises. The hero is portrayed as youthful talent and potential, the villain as an intellectual plotter, a seasoned decadent with an angry, vengeful axe to grind. This Popular Culture scenario plays out in American life every single day in a myriad of ways, and it is now playing out in our current political season with Pop Culture references to heroism abounding.

This was in fact written in 2008, before anyone ever thought of Trump as anything but a wealthy playboy turned reality TV star. Trump is nearly as old as Biden, but Gutfeld is correct when he contrasts Trump, the improviser who campaigns from the courtroom, with Joe the dementia-ridden dirtbag. And nobody left or right has ever characterized Trump as a thinker -- in fact, he cultivates a certain anti-intellectual persona.

Trump as a pop-culture hero reminds me perhaps most of Christian Bale's very contemporary Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, which was released in 2012, also before anyone ever thought of Trump as a politician:

[Writer-Director Christopher] Nolan has stated that, due to the eight-year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, "he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state.". . . . Bale acknowledged that Batman is "not a healthy individual, this is somebody that is doing good, but he's right on the verge of doing bad". Bale clarifies that "He doesn't want to forget [his parents' deaths]. He wants to maintain that anger he felt at that injustice".

There's also a mythic pattern to the Batman character in the Dark Knight Rises's story line. Bruce Wayne becomes a recluse and abandons his role as Batman, while the police commissioner blames "the Batman" for a current crime spree. In fact, Wayne is trapped by Bane, the supervillain, and consigned to an underground prison. Bane then releases criminals from Gotham's jail, who take over the city, and has Gotham's elite exiled and killed in kangaroo courts. Months later, Bruce escapes from the underground prison, returns to Gotham as Batman, and restores order to the city.

There's something similar in Trump's current story arc. He's improbably elected president in 2016, beset by manufactured scandals and plots by the Deep State, defeated in 2020 in a stolen election, but it looks like he'll return in 2024 -- not necessarily as a good guy, maybe even as a good guy on the verge of doing bad.

There's resonance to this story. That's my takeaway from yesterday's verdict.