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Category: America
I’m one of the 5,000 lucky Floridians who was able to sign up for JohnnyCare, the fake health care sharing ministry created by John Oliver and the people at Last Week Tonight for this recent episode:
Health care sharing ministries are a uniquely American kind of organization where members — who share common religious or ethical beliefs — contribute to a pool of money that covers their health care costs. It sounds good in theory, but as the video above and this New York Times article show, it’s a little different in practice.
Unsurprisingly, the standards for setting up a health care sharing ministry in Florida aren’t terribly high. This is why John Oliver and Last Week Tonight were able to set use Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, the tax-exempt church that they were able to set up back in 2015, to set up a spin-off church, Our Lady of Perpetual Health, in Florida, which allowed them to create a health care sharing ministry, JohnnyCare, also in Florida.
For a mere US$1.99, I provided another member with the JohnnyCare Instant Care Kit, complete with “not one, not two, but three” band-aids. In return, another member paid the same amount to buy me this one:
It came with this packing slip:
Only 5,000 JohnnyCare kits were made. As required by law, since JohnnyCare is a health care sharing ministry registered in Florida, only residents of Florida — of which I am one — were eligible to get one.
Hopefully, I won’t need those band-aids anytime soon. In the meantime, I think I’ll stick with what passes for healthcare here: Neo-feudalist employer-provided health insurance.
Although the concept of the superhero is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, superheroes as we know them today are a product of American history. DC’s Superman and Wonder Woman fought in World War II, as did Marvel’s Captain America, Bucky, the original Human Torch, and Namor, a.k.a. the Sub-Mariner.
(Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with Namor just yet. Once upon a time, most people outside the world of comic book fandom would never have recognized the characters from Avengers: Endgame. I’m still blown away by the fact that Groot and Rocket Raccoon are pretty much household names these days.)
I think that superheroes represent the best of American ideals, and that one of the best representations of superheroes is this little essay that’s been around the internet for a number of years. I’m posting it here as my way of celebrating Independence Day. Enjoy!
A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power.
I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large.
But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read.
The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact…
The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return.
Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story.
But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive.
We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies.
But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you).
The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take.
So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it.
That’s not why children read it.
We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson…
The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY.
Here’s the Rachel Maddow piece that the graphic above comes from:
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My plan for the next few weeks
The text of the tweet exchange:
Lauren Boebert: Vladimir Putin is basically calling Biden a senile old man, China rebuffed Anthony Blinken to his face & Kim Jong Un refuses to talk to anyone from the Biden regime… but it’s good to know that America is ReSpEcTeD AgAiN.
Brian Tyler Cohen: Yes, dictators loved Trump and hate Biden. This is not the flex you think it is.