Batman and Penguin: The Dark Night Lifts
"The rash of billionaire bankruptcies lead us to a great reveal"
It is challenging to stay current while developing the graphic elements of a comic book that portrays current events. Almost every day spent composing, I had the sense that my previous day’s drawings had just been eclipsed. Can Tesla’s bankruptcy bring down Elon Musk and stop the extortion-by-primary grift that keeps House and Senate Republicans in lock-step with MAGA? Will Elon’s technocrat Nazi history stop J.D. Vance from becoming the next president? What will be the political fallout from billionaire wealth losses since the inauguration (Zuckerberg -$17bn; Bezos -$45bn; Arnault -$19bn; Musk $139bn; Thiel $12bn (75%)), even assuming some clawback by insider trades this past week?
In bringing a long-form satirical comic to a (temporary?) finale, I wanted to have an interplay between Penguin and Batman that might give insight into the motivations of each. The Penguin/Cobblepot/Trump character, for all its sociopathic narcissism, could be a green president. Do you remember in his first term, when the unnecessary global pandemic (the playbook for strangling it in the cradle by aggressive contact tracing was written by the Bush Administration, improved and funded by Obama, and handed off to the incoming president only to be trashed and ignored) that killed 19.1 million to 36 million people by January 2023 when WHO stopped counting, triggered a recession that lowered GDP worldwide about seven percent? That seven percent decline was just what was needed to combat climate change and a host of other problems like biodiversity loss, microplastics, and ocean acidification. It just needed to be sustained.
Alas, it was not sustained. Once industrial countries were sufficiently out of the pandemic, thanks to masks and vaccines, economic expansion resumed, with predicted consequences.
But take cheer! Tariffs and the Trump Recession may change all that, which is why I say this Penguin/Cobblepot/Trump character could be the greenest president ever. The pandemic recessionary dip was remedied by deficit spending. This one may not be. Which causes me to wonder, what other long-postponed human needs could be equally obtainable now that the world order is being stripped away and sold for parts?
How about nuclear disarmament? How about relocalization? What about decentralized democracy?
Here is the last chapter of Batman: The Dark Night. The entire series is online for viewing here.
Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to cease the war immediately. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years. It will continue to do so with your assistance. We aid Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road and work to heal collective trauma everywhere through the Pocket Project. You can read about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). Thank you for your support.
And speaking of resettling refugees, did you know? A study by Poland’s National Development Bank found that the influx of Ukrainians added between 0.5% and 2.5% to GDP growth and paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
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#RestorationGeneration.
When humans are locked in a cage, the Earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is that human beings are not necessary. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.
We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the tremendous old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. Coral reefs rebuilt with biorock build beaches faster than the seas are rising. It is not too late. All of these great works of nature are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.
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