Captain America destroys communism!

                Today in Human Geography we continued our world leaders PowerPoint. For the first couple leaders I already had their information, because I went through the PowerPoint a little bit ahead of where we were and copied notes when I was done with what we were supposed to do. We looked at more corrupt leaders, more morally wrong leaders, and Trump (He gets his own section for reasons already obvious). While we went through the PowerPoint and we were on the slide about Syria’s leader al-Assad, Angela asked why didn’t the lowly Syrians rise against Assad and take power? There is a lot of complex politics that take place around this, so it’s very hard to explain to someone who has never really thought about it before. Luckily, due to Marvel comics and some other sources (but mostly Marvel comics) I learned about how this works. You’re probably thinking “James, how would Marvel comics help you learn politics”. The answer to this is quite simple. Back when communism and other such governments had more power (and do mean more power) comic books were printed during wartime to boost morale and help explain why the way other countries do things are bad. Sure, there were some stretches in the storyline to make it more interesting, such as a human-impersonating robot that was strong enough to take on the Avengers single-handedly, but the main ideas remain the same. Tyrants with big weapons create a sort of elite group of people with power. Those people get guns and resources from the tyrant, and they make their own groups. Each time the amount of power given out is lower, until you reach the common people. This system is mostly based on a lost and greed for power, or simply because an underling wants to stay on the good side of the local leader who has everyone else with him and against you. If do or say anything that displeases the higher parties, they will most likely threaten or destroy you (in the case of Syria) so that you can’t influence others. There are other factors that go into this, and they can get very complicated, but this is the basics of it. Another point that came up was about Vladimir Putin and nuclear war. It was a short conversation by our standards, but I believe that as long as nuclear power can destroy a world, no one will use it, simply because everyone would start pushing buttons and everyone would die. After that, there would be nothing to rule, and there would be no point in firing the missiles in the first place (or there would be no one left alive). Just for reference on that Marvel comics politics thing, all of this occurs in Avengers issue #18 (You should be able to see it on Marvel.com with a free preview).