Age of the Geek

By: 
Travis Fischer

Left behind
     I enjoy politics. Largely because it gives me a chance to apply all the things I’ve learned reading X-Men comics over the years.
     For instance, when most people think of opposing ideologies regarding the X-Men, they probably think of Professor Xavier and Magneto. After all, they’ve been going at it since the very first issue back in 1963.
     Across all mediums, you can count on any adaptation of the X-Men starting with these two genuinely wanting the best for their people, but going about in drastically different ways. Magneto wants to consolidate mutants into a group powerful enough to protect them from any would-be aggressors. Xavier would rather see mutants assimilate into the larger society.
     As leaders of their respective philosophies, their relationship mirrors that of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Except with super powered battles and a lot more property destruction.
     But while we’ll continue to see this dynamic explored in movie adaptations, no doubt including the upcoming “X-Men: Apocalypse,” it’s not something that’s been used in the comics for a long time.
     Sure, the X-Men comics still center around mutants fighting each other over differing philosophies, but Xavier and Magneto are no longer key components in that discussion. I don’t recall exactly when it happened, but there is a powerful scene where Xavier and Magneto realize that their disagreements don’t matter anymore. The world they fought to shape has moved on without them.
     I wonder if that’s how the Republican and Democrat establishment feels right about now.
     The Republican party is currently dividing its energy between subverting the will of the American people by refusing to hold confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and figuring out how to subvert the will of their own base by making sure Donald Trump doesn’t secure enough delegates to win their nomination.
     Ironically, the GOP’s best hope to stop Trump is Ted Cruz, who was previously considered the worst case scenario for the establishment before Trump raised (or lowered) the bar.
     Sen. Lindsey Graham, who once happily joked about the idea of Cruz being killed on the Senate floor, is now endorsing him because, in his own words, the poison of Cruz is preferable to the bullet that is Trump. In Graham’s recent appearance on the Daily Show he has the attitude of a man standing on the deck of the Titanic, bitterly resigned to his fate. No matter who wins the Republican Primary, Graham and his ilk are certain to lose.
     Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton’s role as the future Democratic standard bearer is still being challenged by a man who has only technically been a Democrat since last November.
     While Clinton still holds a lead over Sanders, this is a fight nobody expected she’d have to work so hard to win. Her nomination may be complicated by the shocking number of Sanders supporters that would sooner vote Trump over Clinton.
     We tend to think of politics as a matter of “left and right.” By that measure, you’d have Bernie Sanders on the left, Hillary Clinton and John Kasich in the middle, and Ted Cruz on the right. You’d expect voters to gravitate towards the candidate closest to their own place on the line.
     But Trump’s cannonball into the political waters seems to have tilted the political axis. A not insignificant number of voters with different priorities have begun to emerge and they’re changing rules of the game.
     The GOP was already facing an ideological crisis before this shift added a new dimension to the conflict. If they manage to subvert Trump at the convention, it could very well result in an open revolt that irreparably sunders the party.
     The Democrats aren’t at that point yet, but the Sanders campaign has tapped into that same vein of anti-establishment feelings, particularly from young voters who feel their interests aren’t represented by either party. Sanders speaks to millennials that didn’t grow up indoctrinated with Cold War propaganda and thus don’t have a reflexive negative reaction to the word “socialism.”
     In both cases, party leadership will either have to adapt or risk being left behind as the country moves on without either of them.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is not a member of any organized political party.

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