I’ll admit this right up front (it is in my bio here on the site, after all) – what I consider to be my favorite super hero story (for a variety of reasons) was written by Frank Miller: Batman #404-407; “Year One”. While I will not get into why this is my favorite superhero story, I just wanted to disclose this fact in hopes that readers may understand that I am able to separate the artist from the man, because even after all I am about to say, Year One will still be my favorite superhero yarn.

Frank Miller recently posted this diatribe on his website. What it amounts to are the sad, ill-informed, paranoid and racist ravings of an idiotic old man. Mr. Miller seems to be obsessed with the boogey man of Islam so much so, that even events clearly unrelated to Islam in any way shape or form are dragged through the mud to serve as an avatar for home-spun terrorism. This is of course, the position he gladly heaps upon the Occupy Wall Street protests… wait, what?

Sadly, Mr. Miller has become so lost in the sea of solipsistic right-wing commentary that he equates a group of people exercising their CLEARLY defined and innate first amendment rights to “putrid false righteousness”. Something that Mr. Miller clearly does not truly understand as he goes to great lengths shouting incoherently about how the movement is “anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment” I would very much enjoy hearing what exactly the first amendment is in Mr. Miller’s mind and therein, his explanation of how a group of peaceful protestors are doing anything but exercising said rights. These are the ravings of a disconnected and distorted mind, clearly showcasing the classic signs of cognitive dissonance. Frank Miller has become the Glenn Beck… the Rush Limbaugh of Comic Books.

Mr. Miller infuses his whole rant with petty insults, slinging such obtusely manic stones as name-calling and character attacks wrapped up in empty and shameful jingoism. In fact, let’s not parse words here; it seems that the only real content to his rant is simply a sordid collection of ridiculously immature instances of slanderous muckraking: text-book straw man fallacy.

There is no discernible point to his ravings and with his first sentence he simply devolves into a vulgar exhibitionist. He even goes as far as to call the movement as a whole “…a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob…” – I’m speechless.

His main arguments, if there really are any to be found, which supposedly justify such unforgivable remarks,  are:

1. The Occupy movement consists of young, unemployed losers (who can some-how afford iPads and iPhones) that squander their lives playing “Lords of Warcraft” games in their mother’s basements.
2. While blinded by self-pity and narcissism they do not realize that America is in enormous danger from the threat of “al-Qaeda and Islamicism” and that these Occupy protestors are uneducated about the real dangers and evils facing this great country of ours. If they had half a spine they’d sign up for the military and go fight a “real” fight.

Let’s deconstruct these ridiculous arguments real quick, shall we?

1. This is based off of unsubstantiated and preconceived, uneducated bigotry. Obviously Mr. Miller watches a lot of Fox News and has been led to believe these “facts” about the Occupy movement – he is obviously too lazy and intellectually dishonest to research this “fact” for himself, for if he did he would find these things simply are not true. In short, this is all simple ad hominem argument and I’m shocked he is able to think, let alone write, such insipid and abusive statements.
2. This is so steeped in hypocrisy that it comes off as self-parody. I’m sure Mr. Miller took every chance imaginable when he was younger to enlist in our military – right? Oh, he didn’t. Well then, that’s a silly stance to take against ‘self-pitying and narcissistic youth’ when it seems he never lifted a finger in his day to serve this country which he so desperately wants to fellate at every given opportunity. What was he doing at the same age of some of these Occupy protestors? Right, he was drawing comic books. I’m not sure that counts as saving our country and fighting a great, insidious evil that holds our world on the brink of utter annihilation.

I’m dumbfounded by what exactly the correlation between socioeconomic inequality and international terrorism rooted in religious fanaticism is in Mr. Miller’s mind. But I’d love to hear his reasoning.

I feel bad, really I do. Frank Miller has gone off the deep end and there will be no turning back. The World Trade Center attacks seem to have been a trauma which he was unable to endure. 9-11 was a horrific event, we can all agree upon that immutable fact… but those of us with a modicum of intelligent consideration were able to process the horror and come out the other side with our faculties still fully intact. Some, unfortunately, were not as lucky and their cognition was forever subverted; as such, the discourse was subverted as well, which allowed some very misinformed people to validate and encourage bigotry and hatred on a very public and mainstream level disguised as patriotic dignity. This alteration of the discourse supported an ideology of intolerance and a distrust in our own brothers and sisters who didn’t immediately bow and appeal to an oversimplified, knee-jerk nationalism. It divided us as a culture and we became spiteful and suspicious of one another to the point where we began divvying up and forfeiting our constitutional and civil rights to those who promised to protect us from further trauma… the fear mongers took hold and some folks have not recovered since.

Here’s hoping that people like Frank Miller will once again approach problems with an honesty and with an open mind and not fear ‘the other’ so much so that it clouds better judgment. Say what you will about the Occupy Movement, but in the end they are a group of citizens expressing their dissent in a peaceful and lawful way… there is nothing more ‘American’ than that, regardless of what people such as Frank Miller would like to believe.