Who invented this bad comic book villain?


Here we have an example of unbelievably bad writing. This plan makes no sense, unless your goal is just to create pointless pain and suffering. The only motivation for this kind of scheme is mindless ignorance and hatred, and yet the villain is supposedly rich and well-connected. Doesn’t he have anything useful to do with his wealth? Even a greedy desire for more money would leave more room for plot development than just looking for a moat with venomous snakes and shooting peasants in the legs.

The only thing that can happen next is for a Schwarzenegger or Willis type of meathead hero to come along and blow him away ignominiously, with some kind of wise-ass remark. It’s been done, it was boring then, it’s stupid now. Send the script back for a complete rewrite and come up with something plausible.

Wait, what? It’s not fiction?

Jesus fucking christ.

Comments

  1. microraptor says

    “You are making me look like an idiot!” Mr. Trump shouted

    No, Mr President, you’re doing that all on your own.

  2. PaulBC says

    “You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!”

  3. says

    Trump is really angling for a war crime on American soil isn’t he? I know it’s trite to make the comparison these days, but he’s starting to sound a lot like Hitler.

  4. Akira MacKenzie says

    You want to know what’s scarier? This man was given the power he has largely because there are millions of violent, cruel, people just like him.

  5. kome says

    The Republican party today acts (and in many cases, looks) more cartoonishly evil than the villains in Captain Planet.

  6. vucodlak says

    My state (Missouri) just tortured a brain-damaged man to death.

    The State Supreme Court’s response on hearing the defendant’s appeal, premised on the possibility that his brain injuries would cause him to suffer great agony as he died, was to say that he had no right to a painless death. I’ve watched Trumpkins respond to this information with “right on” and treat the event of his execution like an exciting sportsball game.

    So Trump’s brainless, villainous blather doesn’t surprise me a bit. His fans knew exactly who they were voting for- someone every bit as cruel, foolish, and loathsome as themselves. Hell, the only reason we haven’t planted antipersonnel mines all along the border is that companies need cheap labor to exploit.

    If the wall gets built, we have a moral obligation to tear the fucking thing down. We have more than enough monuments to evil in this country, starting with our legal system.

  7. wzrd1 says

    My wife read the story to me, while I was reading a few other abominations of his.
    We both met him, long before unreality TV and while he was still bankrupting casinos and fouling up real estate deals. The Chamber of Commerce suffered a 90% attrition the following year at said function, exclusively due to his presence, the boor of the party.

    Now, I’m actually fairly competent in assessing someone’s personality and predicted responses in fairly short order after meeting and interacting with them. It literally kept myself and my SF team alive many times.
    That monster set my spidey sense into gamma emission alert indicator color.

    So, it doesn’t surprise me, what surprises me is that nobody blew a fucking whistle back then, when he repeatedly wanted to commit crimes against humanity!
    I’ve worked with the IC a hell of a lot over the decades, even got investigations triggered against myself, due to a gaffe in handling classified data or similar technical errors, due to a difference in procedures in different commands.
    Want out from under the hammer? Admit that you fucked up, you assumed similar, showing old unit SOP and new unit’s hidden SOP and well, their procedures change a tad, so that newcomers find that “hidden” SOP.
    Lie, lose your position and clearance.
    My report on the incident, once the whistle was blown, included a near-collision, as the individual approached the data, while I was getting a glass of water. Said individual also reported the same, when asked.
    So, I still had maintained control of the sensitive data.
    The local SOP was changed to reflect lessons learned.

    I tell all peers and subordinates, “I fucked up” gets you out of trouble, lying just digs the hole you are in deeper.
    Want to get out of the hole? Stop fucking digging!

    Oh, for those not conversant in the acronyms.
    SOP = Standard Operating Procedure.
    IC = Intelligence Community.
    I could toss a veritable dictionary out there, but not relevant to the conversation currently and revealing in potential at some levels.
    Which is why some agencies, such as the NSA, encourage simply stating one works for the DoD, aka Department of Defense, US being implied. Only confirm agency affiliation when pressed and when obfuscation or distraction was unsuccessful, then have any further questions referred to public affairs (PAO).
    And no, never worked for the NSA. I worked Army, DoD or Navy.
    In uniform, the whole Joint Services thing was still baking and growing. Overall, was Army.

    What Trump suggested seriously nauseated me! Essentially, every damned thing he suggested was a crime against humanity and frankly, if he implemented any of them, I am fairly certain some peers would end up putting a bag over his head, speed cuff and further restrain him and transport him to the Hague.
    Regardless of local casualties within the grounds.
    Yeah, it is that bad to us and hell, even worse.

    How he’s treating asylum seekers astounds us, you should literally have pitchforks and torches out!
    That you don’t do so, admits tacit consent.
    Nearly as bad as when the M.S. St. Louis was refused refuge and asylum in the US, instead deported back to go into concentration camps.
    While I am of Italian ancestry, I can never forgive sending 900 men, women and children to their potential deaths.
    That is a debt that this nations owes to humanity.
    And Trump seeks to amplify that debt.

    Excuse me, as I yet again cry myself to sleep.

  8. wzrd1 says

    @7, if you’re speaking of the case I’m thinking of, most growths were within his airway, a few inside of his brain and well, his crimes were horrific and the society demanded his termination, lest he continue terminating innocent civilians, taxpaying or not.
    As I have a golf ball sized lesion on my liver of the very same condition, been anesthetized, even given cardiac medications, due to some heat damage to my heart and obviously, for general surgery, was paralyzed, that golfball remained.
    In his case, poke it, it bled. No shit, it usually did, in such lesions. Leave it alone, induce cardiac cessation via potassium chloride, no increase in BP, no evil bleeding and choking.
    Where I have a concern, given the societal acceptance of killing someone, is, did he suffer any amount of pain and that is, oddly, considering modern OR’s have such monitoring, proper monitoring. Potassium chloride bolus burns like the veritable devil’s fire down the vein a bolus goes through.
    Went through it, due to a medical emergency.
    I’d never wish that felt by a living creature – ever.
    And that was half a dose from lethal.

    As for a wall, I say, build it big. Design a fine and safe deck, then design a sliding board, both dry slide for winter and waterslide for summer.
    With proper elevators for the disabled.
    And a massive food bar after landing and drying off.

    I do eagerly await release of that specific document chain.

  9. anchor says

    “As for a wall, I say, build it big…”

    Wet or dry slide, that would not be so kind to wish on Monarchs and other migratory “living creatures”.

  10. vucodlak says

    @ wzrd1, #9

    his crimes were horrific

    Irrelevant. Torturing someone doesn’t suddenly become ok just because that someone is a vile human being. Torture is never acceptable.

    the society demanded his termination

    Doesn’t make it right. Nothing makes it right to torture someone to death.

    lest he continue terminating innocent civilians

    Bullshit. He was already in prison, and therefore not a threat to society. And don’t give me this “innocent” crap, either. There is nothing innocent about people salivating at the prospect of torture and murder.

    I’m not completely anti-death penalty. I think it’s wasteful, useless as a deterrent, dangerous to society in general and law enforcement in particular, and seems to invite disingenuousness. However, I can accept the premise that some people are really too dangerous to ever be allowed to roam free, and I don’t think that executing someone is necessarily any more cruel than locking them up for the rest of their natural life in one of our torture prisons.

    Ideally, we should reform our prison system to be a humane institution from top to bottom, and do away with the death penalty. At a bare minimum, if we’re going to murder people it should be done as humanely as possible. Death should be painless and instantaneous. Instead, we’ve chosen a method that seems designed to cause suffering while looking neat and clean.

    There is nothing just about what happened today, and we are all lessened by it.

  11. unclefrogy says

    the guy in question in this instance shares with many “fictional villains” and real life villains the characteristics of being a self-centered amoral A’hole without any spec of empathy at all this one just happens to have been born with money which has helped him “succeed” thus far despite being a complete ignoramus who has the gift of lying easily (all the time)
    unfortunately he is far from unique, he has many very similar people working for him who would gladly take his place without even taking time to say thank you with any humility at all and continue with their own variations on a theme.
    uncle frogy

  12. chrislawson says

    Who is responsible for this villain? I would say it’s a three-way tie between American capitalism, his father, and Trump himself.

  13. yaque says

    There was a cute 80’s (?) movie called “Gremlins 2” that had a smarmy tycoon type named “Clamp”, believe it or not. His corporate logo on the front lawn of his tower was an earth globe squershed inside a big C shaped clamp …
    He’s been recognised as a clueless asshole since the creation.

  14. Markus Schäfer says

    Interestingly, the Clamp character in Gremlins 2 was written as a Trump parody but the actor managed to instill the role with a sense of childlike, shortsighted glee which turned him into a much more sympathetic person.

  15. voidhawk says

    Isn’t there already a large swath of the border that is a water-filled trench that is incredibly dangerous to cross – the Rio Grande? And yet people still risk it.

  16. Kagehi says

    @Ray Ceeya What do you mean “angling for”. Most of the stuff already going on at the border would, if done by any other countries “leader” already be considered war crimes.

  17. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    I think “he” gets ALL his ideas from cartoons, has no concept of reality. cannot read books, depends on pictures for information. Cartoons from superhero comic books are his reference materials

  18. PaulBC says

    Forget comic books. Organized crime bosses are real and Trump acts and talks like one. I have been saying this for years, but it has been the subject of lots of highfalutin analysis since the Ukraine phone call. I am not sure he gets his ideas from cartoon villains as much as real life criminals like John Gotti. He also may believe this is a normal for a president, because he is ignorant as well as evil. (Granted alligator filled moats takes it up a notch).

  19. raven says

    Trump’s idea of a water filled moat filled with snakes or alligators isn’t going to work.
    Cottonmouth snakes and alligators need some dry land to haul out and rest on.
    And you are going to have to feed them often to keep them alive.
    It’s a high maintenance, not cost effective barrier solution, which is why no one bothers with them.
    Barbed wire is cheaper and you don’t have to feed it.

    About what you expect from a guy who went bankrupt running a casino.

  20. PaulBC says

    raven@21 The cruelty is the point. Obviously an alligator-filled moat is a stupid idea, and electrified spikes sounds pretty crazy too. I am surprised he didn’t insist on alligators with laser beams on their heads, but I don’t want to give him any ideas.

    Simply saying “alligator-filled moat” or (in his wet dreams) trying to make a real one conveys the message of how much he hates the idea of Latinos crossing the southern border. He feels it in his gut, and his supporters love him for it, because they feel it too. Whether it will “work” in some practical sense of providing immigration controls (which we have already) is besides the point.

  21. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Darth Cheeto: “…“alligator-filled moat…”
    Oh, look, he’s gone from “drain the swamp” to “build a new one”.

  22. says

    “‘That’s not allowed, either, they told him'”
    Note that at no point did anyone say, “No, you can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.” This is telling about how both he and his staff think. This is the president who wants machine gun emplacements along the border. It’s as if he believes that Mexicans will come riding up to the border wall, led by Pancho Villa, shouting “arriva, arriva,” and wildly firing pistols in the air as they come. Knowing our “stable genius” of a president, that’s probably exactly what he thinks.

  23. PaulBC says

    Jonathan Norburg@24

    And at no point did anyone say “You are fucking nuts, man! Get a grip!”

  24. jrkrideau says

    If you get into any trouble for it, Mr. Trump told him, I’ll pardon you.

    It is a minor point but we appear to have the president of the United States inciting a federal official to break the law.

  25. GerrardOfTitanServer says

    The death penalty has been about torture for a long while. If they wanted a quick, painless, cheap execution method, they would be doing nitrogen asphyxiation. It also has no supply problems either re rare drugs that certain companies and countries are withholding.

    Even the infamous guillotine would have been much better than most modern execution methods employed by the US – remember that the French persons introduced the guillotine as a humane and ethical way to kill someone, and it really was compared to alternatives at the time, and it still is compared to most execution methods in the US today.

    Of course, we should just abolish the death penalty; that would be the ideal solution.