So I write in this blog like once a year anymore, which is a horrible track record, but it's primarily an outlet for my random thoughts anyway. So thanks to the like 30 people who bear with me and read this whenever I do randomly get the urge to publish something.
If you're a Marvel fan in any sense of the word you know my title refers to two different works that feature the late, great Captain America. Hero of World War 2 turned propaganda turned evil (occasionally) for some unfathomable reason. I'm not a comic buff, because ADHD makes even reading comics that long difficult if I'm not REALLY engaged with the content. Lucky for me the MCU exists so I can enjoy all the star spangled glory of Cap in real, moving color, which engages my brain enough to allow me to go back and check out the comics with Chris Evans delightfully animated voice as narration.
When Captain America: First Avenger premiered, I didn't even go see it. Cap was my least favorite avenger. He was a boring, apple pie eating, war touting American hero, and as someone who has been a conscientious objector since I learned what that meant from the DCOM Cadet Kelly, I had zero interest in the exploitative nature of a hero designed to perpetuate the myth that war was our only form of international conflict resolution.
For those of you screaming at your screen, I have done a lot of learning in the past nine years (god, Cap 1 came out 9 years ago, y'all), and my opinion on all of the above has shifted. Cap isn't just propaganda (although the argument could be made that he is that as well). He's the machination of a couple of young American, Jewish artists who really wanted to punch Hitler in the face before the US even entered WWII. He's the dream of defending values and morals that was taken from so many young men in the 40s who were deemed unfit for service due to physical ailments or disabilities. And most importantly, he is an adaptable mold that is used throughout his history to explain and crystallize American (read: US. We're not the only country on two continents) values throughout time. He's the amber through which we can reproduce the dinosaurs of the past, and reshape them into something relevant.
So why am I writing about Captain America nine years after his first movie? Because lately I have been watching the country I live in topple everything important to me in almost every way imaginable. And as I pondered the best way to explain my frustration for a governmental system that would rather support big budgets for paramilitary police forces, our broken economic structure, and a despot who frankly never should have been elected in the first place over the good of its citizens I come back to Cap.
Captain America: Civil War is by far one of my favorite MCU installments. It didn't do everything I wanted it to as far as tying Cap's Nazi fighting past to his fascist opposing present (maybe, had it been made in 2019, there would have been more interplay there), but as I look at our current timeline and ponder what Cap is really fighting for in the movie, it perfectly fits as a metaphor for what my brain has been wrestling with since senators and 45 started calling for the economy to reopen MONTHS before anyone in the US should have been going about their business as usual. The fight we face in this upcoming election (and the years that follow) isn't between Democrats and Republicans, or even Progressives and Conservatives.
It's between Democracy and Capitalism.
Now, as I can feel several of my relatives rolling their eyes at me through time and space, allow me to explain my shocking statement: I am not suggesting that these two things are mutual exclusive. The whole of mutual exclusivity is a myth we tell ourselves so we can feel right while assuming others are wrong. In fact, none of the dichotomies I stated above are mutually exclusive. People and systems are always going to be too complex to fit into any kind of binary system, be it bipartisan politics or heteronormative gender norms, but that's a blog post for another day.
So if I'm not trying to make the point that you can be democratic OR capitalist, what am I saying?
For those raised with a Christian background, or even just Christian adjacent (which is everyone who grew up America after Europe got here), who've likely heard the phrase "A man cannot serve to masters" or the more to the point, "Man cannot serve both God and money".
Obviously there's a lot wrong with this statement as an inclusive rhetoric, (I have oft seen it reworded as "One cannot serve...") but outside of the obvious copy edits one could make to modernize the quote, the general message remains: You choose where you put your loyalty, and if its to money, it doesn't get to be to people.
I have spent many hours debating about and trying to find language for my feelings about Capitalism. The idea of currency is abhorrent to me. As is the entire structure of an economy based on the acquisition of said currency. The inner workings and utter frustration I face at the thought of a system that is built on the idea of gaining literally nothing because it represents your ability to acquire more nothing is shriek inducing, and again, could be a blog post unto itself, so I won't delve too deep here. Let it suffice to say that I understand that we have currency because it fits in pockets better than goats, and also inflation is a lie rich people tell to pretend they have more nothing than they do.
But back to my point.
Captain America's film trilogy culminates in Captain America: Civil War, in which Cap faces off against long time friend, Tony Stark, the entrepreneur and former militarized weapon salesman who believes that the only way to keep the general public safe from the potential destruction wrought by superheroes is to make sure that all said superheroes are on full display for public consumption and debate through something called the Sokovia Accords (The Superhero Registration Act in the comics). Cap on the other hand is against the Accords, stating, in perhaps the most distilled form of this very blog post "If we sign this, we give up the right to choose."
I realize that the metaphor is muddy at best, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are both complex characters that have a lot of variation in their beliefs about who they are and what they stand for, but if we burn them down to their essence, crucible style, what we're left with is palpably related to the struggle we face as the 2020 election looms ever closer. Which master wins out, people, or money.
Obviously Tony also cares about people, and that's why he's pro-registration. He has seen first hand the horrors of uncapped capitalism, I mean, power, and he sees only one option, oversight. Cap on the other hand values choice and personal responsibility over a corrupt system controlling the actions of its citizenry.
Now I know some of you just jumped on the fact that I essentially just undid my own argument. Cause it might look like the statements you just read place Cap firmly in a laissez faire (Why is that phrase so impossible to spell?) sort of camp, while Tony seems to take a more "democratic" stance of having government regulation. But in this comparison, dear friend, you have fallen into a deadly trap. Because you have conflated our system of government with our system of economy.
Democracy and Capitalism are NOT the same thing. And you can't use them as equivalent in the same way that you can't take health statistics from California and falsely extrapolate them the entire country to convince people who have never taken a statistics class that the global pandemic isn't affecting the US. Or at least you shouldn't. Because that would be ethically wrong and morally reprehensible. It can't even be a conversation about apples and oranges. It's like trying to compare the health benefits and of apples versus the taste of broccoli. Somehow the answer to the debate is simultaneously "both" and "gross".
Cap's anit-registration stance has nothing to do with economics. He's supporting a fundamental right of everyone who lives in the US to choose. Now, I will be the first to point out that as a white guy originally from the 1940's, Cap could potentially be a little out of touch with more modern understandings of who "everyone" includes. But Chris Evans' portrayal and interviews gives me hope that the actor's own flavor gives Cap a willingness to understand his own privilege, learn, and grow that inherently makes him a hero.
Tony, on the other hand, sees everything through an economic lens. Not intentionally, but he was raised by a "self made" millionaire who taught him that his brain could be used to make money, and that that was the important thing to focus on. So of course he uses the same economic formulas to come to conclusions about people. Everything is a numbers game for Tony. What he can get, and later in his life what he can give, are still based on a capitalistic idea of scarcity and zero-sum games. So when people with superpowers start racking up a body count, Tony does the math and concludes the same thing that responsible economists do when a market becomes a danger to the whole structure: put restrictions on it.
Here's the thing about trying to debate broccoli and apples: there is no winning. Particularly if you're coming at the debate with two foundationally disparate understandings of what you're debating. If your slogan is Apples are Good (for you) and your opponent is arguing that Broccoli is Bad (tasting) your debate will be a nonsensical mismatch of facts and figures that are utterly unrelated to the opinion polls taken by the opposition. False correlations between numbers of people who like broccoli and the health benefits of good/bad tasting foods will be drawn. Smear campaigns against apple falsely claiming that they are healthy will be waged. Broccoli lovers will become a fringe group because how could anything that tastes bad be healthy if apples, which taste good, are healthy. Chaos will reign. All because you're not actually having the same conversation.
Tony is looking at oversight through the lens of a capitalist who came up during the 80s and 90s, the height (at the time) of unbridled consumer culture in the US. Steve is looking at oversight through the lens of a young man who watched fascism rise in Europe and was given the chance to directly combat it. Both are doing what they thing is right to keep people safe.
Civil War came out in 2016, just 6 months before the election that would give us a leader who has done his darnedest to dismantle most of the structures that keep actual liberties and freedoms in place in the interests of capital gain and power. We weren't talking about the lives of citizens then the way we are now. We weren't dealing with international protests against a corrupt policing system, an administration that tries to systematically walk back the rights of its citizens, or a global pandemic. We weren't hearing rhetoric, almost on the daily, that supports "getting the economy moving" even to the detriment of our most vulnerable citizens.
We also weren't talking about the systemic issues around race in our country. We weren't looking more closely at our para-militarized police forces and wondering if they were really performing the function we wanted them to perform. We weren't asking bigger questions about the availability of healthcare, or the nation's ability to recoup losses if the economy tanked again.
So here we sit at a crossroads. The 2020 election is in 78 days. In 78 days we find out if the US is stronger as a democracy, or a capitalism. Because in 78 days the citizenry of the US that is allowed to vote, will have the option to declare where their loyalties lie. You can be a capitalist and believe in democracy. You can be a democrat or republican and agree with capitalism, but they aren't the same thing. I can't even use them the same way in those to sentences, because the literal words don't make sense when used as the same part of speech. Ultimately one of those things is more important to you, money or people.
In 78 days, many of us are gonna make a choice about which one is more important. And that choice is going to shape our country, and in some ways the world, for the next four years. Team Cap or Team Iron Man? Democracy or Capitalism? People or Money? There's a lot of ways to frame the question.
But what really matters is your answer.
