That Curious Cat

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Batman: Urban Legends #10

"And tonight... it's also about the company I keep.

It's different with him out here. I think about when he was younger. When I was younger. It was a different time. Simpler. And... I miss it. I miss those days. For that... it's hard to be around him."

- Under the Red Hood (part 2)

And I've seen this posted a lot and it's great, HOWEVER

the very next issue we've got Dick's POV, while they're fighting Amazo:

"By the time I think, "this is bad"... he's already airborne and on the attack. Even after all these years, I'm still amazed by him."

- Under the Red Hood (part 3)

And it's so great bc from the outside they're fully locked in, annihilating multiple enemies or winning against a robot that has all of Justice League's superpowers, and that must mean they are just focused on tactics, or thinking about every little movement they make in order to stay alive, or analysing their enemies' weak points, stuff like that, right?

WRONG, they're just:

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Yeah, yeah. It's bad. We get it. Kinda hard to miss right now. You know what? So is everywhere else. You are not going to find a single government, a single nation, anywhere on earth that is perfect and unproblematic.

We need to acknowledge this. Nowhere is perfect. Everywhere has corrupt people who actively seek positions they can use to exploit power and enrich themselves at the expense of others. The vast majority of countries in the world have a lot of blood on their hands and were founded in war; loads of countries have a history of colonization and exploitation of other countries, and a lot of that is continuing to this day.

Now raise your hand: who here was taught as a child to believe in the good your nation can do for its people and the world? Who here was raised with the idea that your country had an awful past but has learned better and is trying to move forward to do better and be better in the future?

Short of buying a boat and hiding away at sea, you are never, ever going to be free of nationality. Not even if you burn it all down; something new will just arise in its place. This is the world we have; this is the society we have to live in. Do you not wish it was better? Do you not wish that is did reflect that optimism you were raised with?

The reason children around the world are taught to believe in the good side of their nation is NOT because the people teaching us want to indoctrinate us into the cult of nationalism (okay yeah, some do do that on purpose, and sometimes that's just the result despite teachers' best efforts), but because they want us to see that good side, see what things are like now, and get angry and disappointed and energized enough to fight to make it reality. To actually do better and become a better world for everyone.