Why Donald Trump and Elon Musk Are Bad Villains

On a Facebook page devoted to the (sadly fictional) character of Superman, someone wrote, "It sure feels like Lex Luthor is president again."

In 1986, following the series Crisis On Infinite Earths, the character of Luthor was rewritten by DC Comics, as not merely a mad scientist, about the same age as Superman, but as a corrupt businessman, several years older. Some people speculated that the character was based on Donald Trump, as he was then.

In the year 2000, within DC continuity, having appeared to have done a lot of good with his fortune, Luthor gets elected President, despite never having served in elective office. Eventually, all that power goes to his head, and he ends up overplaying his hand, allowing Superman and Batman to expose him, and getting impeached and removed from office before he can run for re-election.

On the TV show Smallville, where he was depicted as roughly the same age as Superman, he goes on to become President.

Back to that Facebook entry: Someone responded: "Why would Luthor want to limit his political power by being a senator or governor? He already owns most of those people in the DCU." (Meaning, "The DC Universe.")

That's what so many people don't understand about villainy. So many villains, in movies and in TV cartoons, say they want to "Take over the world."

They never ask themselves a key question: "What would happen if you actually won?"

(Note: I am aware that I use the word "actually" too much, both in speech and in writing. Deal with it.)

If you actually took over the world, you'd actually have to govern. That means it's all on you. That means policing. Firefighting. Garbage pickup. Fixing potholes. You wanted to be the King. The Emperor. Surprise: What you really are is the damn Mayor of the World. Yeah, you can delegate, but you gotta have guys who actually get it done.

Supposedly, Nikita Khrushchev, dictator of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, said, "You can feed the people with revolutionary slogans today, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. But, the next day, they will say, 'To Hell with you.'" Eventually, there will be a counter-revolution.

That's why the best James Bond villain isn't his arch-rival, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, or any of these other "take over the world" types. It's Raymond Carver, the media mogul played by Jonathan Pryce in the 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies, obviously based on Rupert Murdoch (and his character was married to a woman played by Teri Hatcher, who was then playing Lois Lane on TV).

Carver found a way to get all the power he wanted, without having the responsibility. That's what Trump wanted, and that's what Elon Musk wanted: To eliminate the truth of Spider-Man's slogan: "With great power, there must also come great responsibility."

They don't care what's left of the world after they get what they want. The smart ones are the ones who don't make their ambitions so obvious, and want to keep the world running while they make their money and keep their power.

Murdoch keeps the world running, and has found ways to benefit when things are going well for most people, and also when they aren't. He's a bad person, but a great villain.

But Trump? and Musk? And Mark Zuckerberg? They see people mocking them, even after their success. And for this, they believe those people must be punished. Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg are bad villains. Poor excuses for villains.

(Jeff Bezos? Remains to be seen whether he's a good villain or a bad villain, but he's definitely exposed himself as a villain.)

Someone, referring to Batman and his villains, once said that a villain wants to make others feel his pain, while a hero wants to prevent others from feeling his pain.

When Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde addressed Trump at the post-Inauguration service, and called on him to show mercy to those who were afraid of the policies he promised -- asking him to act like the man at the center of the religion he claims to follow -- he lashed out against her on social media.

She doesn't want people to feel pain. She's the first hero of the 2025-28 Resistance movement. She will not be the last.

Trump wants to feel pain. May his pain increase.