Stop Writing
Off The Villains Before They’re In Prison
As a longtime comic book fan, not to mention a creator of numerous comic publications, one of the most aggravating parts of a superhero story is when the villain manages to get away with their criminal act.
At the beginning of John Byrne’s “The Man of Steel” #5, we see Superman holding what appears to be Lex Luthor’s infamous battle suit and telling Lex that he’s “getting sloppy”. Everything in the battle suit says it’s made by LexCorp. Even the operator is a LexCorp employee, complete with a company ID. But Lex has an explanation for all of that, stating that the employee was fired “weeks ago” and that the battle suit was reported “stolen”. Oh, and the supposed “former” employee would not be able to say anything because his mind was scrambled by the battle suit’s interface. So there would be nothing that could directly tie Lex in with the blatant attack on Superman. He manages to get away with it, as he would do with so many of his criminal activities.
In the “Challenge of the Super-Friends” cartoon series that aired on Saturday mornings in 1978, the Legion of Doom would commit nefarious criminal activities, only to be stopped by the superheroes. But just when it appears they will be headed to prison, somehow the Legion always manages to find a way to escape so they can terrorize the world in the next episode.
The escape was always something that was required for the storytellers of both comics and cartoons, because if the bad guys really went to prison, then they wouldn’t be able to go after the hero or heroes the next time. Unless, of course, they manage to escape from incarceration, which, in the case of Batman villains, happens quite frequently even to this day.
I bring this up because we have a really bad habit of writing off the bad guys before they really are.
Remember John Gotti? How many times was he facing charges for organized crime? Prosecutors kept on saying they “got” him, that he was through, only to either have the charges dropped or to be acquitted. Over and over and over again, he was arrested, charged, and then walked. Everyone kept on saying he was finished, that the prosecutors had him dead to rights. They didn’t. The media dubbed him the “Teflon Don” because nothing would ever stick on him, until he was finally convicted in 1992.
Remember Al Capone? Prosecutors tried just about every charge they could, including vagrancy, but he somehow kept getting away with his crimes until he was finally convicted for tax evasion. Again, everyone kept saying he was done. He was finished. But he wasn’t until that final charge, the one that nobody really counted on.
Remember Saddam Hussein? From Operation Desert Storm until his capture in the Iraq War, everyone kept on saying his time was done. After losing Kuwait, people kept on saying he was done. He was going to face war crimes charges. He was going to be removed from power. He was going to face justice. He wasn’t. He managed to stay in power and continue to be belligerent and threatened the world. Even after Iraq was invaded and overwhelmed in the Iraq War and Hussein was on the run, people kept on saying he was done when he wasn’t. We captured him by accident. And we weren’t the ones that finally delivered justice. His own people did that.
Osama bin Laden, the man that ordered the hit on America on September 11, 2001, was yet another criminal that somehow eluded justice, even though we continually said he was dead, that we were coming to get him, that he was going to face justice. Six months after the attack, our own president, George W. Bush, arrogantly said that Osama didn’t matter anymore. He remained in hiding until Bush Junior’s successor found Osama and sent the special forces in to capture and kill him. But up until that time, we were saying Osama was done. He was finished. He was done in. He was bombed or his own people got him, or he was trapped in one of those many mountain caves. But he wasn’t. He was living in comfort and obscurity.
Do you see a pattern here?
Well now we have a malignant narcissist who previously sat on the highest office of the country. A man who talks and carries himself like a mob boss. A man who was impeached not once but twice. The amount of criminal activity he is accused of is staggering and would make the worst mob boss in history pale in comparison. With each accusation made, we are told that he is “done”. As a businessman, as a political leader, as a sociopolitical cult leader, as a basic human being, he’s supposedly “finished”. Nobody will do business with him. Nobody will follow him. He would be run out of office, and then run out of politics. He’d go to jail. To prison.
And yet, to this article’s date, the narcissist has yet to face one criminal charge. He has yet to be indicted, never mind arrested.
One district attorney chickened out and fired the prosecutors that were ready to indict him. One Attorney General has been slow-walking any idea of charging said narcissist saying only that “no one is above the law”. Another prosecutor has turned a supposed sure-fire grand jury into a long and drawn-out expanded inquiry. One attorney general in New York has finally brought charges... but those are only for a civil case, not a criminal one. Civil, like so many other charges that get settled after a long and drawn-out series of legal maneuvers that the narcissist is a master at doing.
Despite the promises from pretty much everyone that the narcissist is “done”, he is far from being so.
Let’s get brutally honest here... we need to stop thinking that the narcissist, like any other unscrupulous person, is somehow “done” until he actually is. Rich and powerful people are not treated the same as you or I. If any of us did even a fraction of what he’s been accused of doing, we would already be in prison. Not held up in pre-trial inquiries and court orders barring evidence, never mind getting a “special master” to oversee the evidence against us. We would already be tried, already found guilty, and already in prison. Ask a young woman named Reality Winner if you don’t believe me.
Someone like the narcissist has no problem doing business even after being caught screwing people over. He has no problem getting stupid people to give him money, to pay his bills, and to support him with all the adoration of a cult. Do you think someone like him would follow court orders? Barring him from doing business in New York – as the civil case requests – means nothing for someone who has no problem working through proxies and doing business around the world.
The only thing that would stop someone like him would be incarceration. Prison. Shut away from fawning sycophants and adoring cult followers, unable to manipulate the political system, unable to screw people over.
Al Capone and John Gotti didn’t stop doing what they did until they were actually convicted and sent to prison. Saddam Hussein was defiant despite global condemnation until his own people executed him. Osama bin Laden survived and continued to run global terrorism for years until he was finally captured and killed. So too would someone like the narcissist never stop, despite all the predictions of him being “done”, until he is actually arrested and convicted and sent to prison for the things he did. Just like any other villain, never treat their fate as being set until it actually is.
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