What’s the Matter with Bruce Wayne?

[Editor's Note: the following article was written by an anonymous contributor. A masked vigilante of writers, if you will.]

Lately, I have noticed a lot of talk about figuring out just what is wrong, mentally, with Bruce Wayne. With the new Christopher Nolan film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” now in theaters, this seems as convenient a time to do so as any. He is a brooding character with a troubled past, yet at the same time many people believe he also suffers from multiple personality disorder, clinical depression, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder. Many, like Dr. Robin S. Rosenberg PhD, author of “What’s the Matter with Batman? An Unauthorized Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader,” believe that Batman is just as crazy as the lunatics he sends to Arkham Asylum. I think, though, that our desire to psychoanalyze Batman, and everything we think is or could be wrong with him stems from the simplest of facts: he is a Conservative.

(Author’s note: I have seen the film, and while it does not stray too far from the Batman mythos, I will be focusing more on the Bruce Wayne from the comic books rather than from the Christopher Nolan films. No spoilers are included in this article).

 Bruce Wayne is the heir to and owner of Wayne Enterprises, a huge multinational corporation with a dozen subsidiaries, each with their own specialties: Wayne Technologies, Wayne Biotech, Wayne Medical, Wayne Aerospace, and Wayne Foods, just to name a few. The company employs over 170,000 people in 170 countries. For those bad at math, that’s 1000 people per country on average. The closest real-world comparison would probably be General Electric, though Wayne’s interests are much more eclectic and WE is technically a smaller company. GE’s current revenue is around $147.3 billion, according to Wikipedia, with 301,000 worldwide employees. Forbes lists Wayne Enterprises as having a revenue of around $23 billion (Wikipedia $31 billion), and Bruce Wayne at a value of $6.9 billion (down from $7 billion in 2011, thanks Obama), with a controlling interest of 51% of Wayne Enterprises. Let us not forget that Bruce also probably takes no salary or the minimum $1.00 per year, with the majority of his income coming from stock in WE and his family’s inheritance, money amassed long before the company went public. So, while Bruce may not be the richest of the 1%, he’s still public enemy #1 of Occupy Gotham.

On top of being a successful businessman, Bruce Wayne is also a philanthropist and runs the Wayne Foundation, a charity for helping victims of crimes, as well as running soup kitchens and researching cost-effective solutions to social problems. His parents, likewise, ran charities. The Thomas Wayne Foundation provides funds for medical research and funds free clinics throughout Gotham City. The Martha Wayne Foundation is an arts-based charity and supports orphanages, schools, and soup kitchens in the city, while offering grants to artists to help them produce their work. Overall fine causes from an upstanding, truly American family.

This is where the Liberal desire to explain what is wrong with Bruce Wayne begins. The modern liberal view is that an individual should not choose where their money goes, but the government should make that choice for them. This way, instead of funding simple, humanitarian causes like soup kitchens, free clinics, or art grants, we can pour hard-earned taxpayer dollars into black holes like the California High Speed Rail, Boston’s Big Dig, or the ever-inflating costs of Nationalized Health Care. Furthermore, as the great leader Barack Obama so eloquently put it, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” I guess in Bruce Wayne’s case this is true. The business was actually founded by his ancestor Alan Wayne, who used the small fortune amassed from real estate owned by his grandfather Charles Wayne to lay the foundation of the company. However, unlike 38 Studios or Solyndra, there has never been a single dollar of government funding for Wayne Enterprises. Because Bruce Wayne is successful, self-reliant, and obviously gets major tax breaks from running charities that directly help those in need, he exemplifies everything that Liberals hate.

Now we will take a look at the darker side of Bruce Wayne. When Bruce was a child, he watched his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, get killed right in front of him. We have already established that his parents were wealthy business owners and philanthropists, again, the kinds of people Liberals hate. In a desire to reduce crime throughout Gotham City, Bruce Wayne, himself suffering from chiroptophobia (fear of bats), acquired the persona of Batman later on in life, to strike fear into the hearts of criminals. He uses the funding and technology developed by Wayne Enterprises to assist in his efforts. While some may see the Batman as much of a menace to society as The Joker, Two Face, or Bane, Batman actually represents traditional and, in fact, Biblical family values: Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father, and Thou Shall Not Kill. Batman’s plight is to continue making Gotham a safe place to live, much as Thomas and Martha Wayne had done before their tragic deaths. Bruce Wayne simply believes that it is time to take matters into his own hands and take the Gotham Police Department, a function of the government, out of the equation.

Of course, the reason that Batman’s rogue’s gallery of villains always ends up back on the street is entirely due to the government-run and inept Gotham Police Department. Batman brings the criminals in, the police send the thugs to Blackgate and the masterminds to a six-week treatment at Arkham Asylum. Hell, in the game Batman: Arkham City, the city counsel is somehow convinced that it is a good idea to transform downtown Gotham into a gigantic prison where the masterminds and thugs alike can run loose, cutting it off from the rest of Gotham with a concrete wall, and put a well known criminal, Hugo Strange, in control of the prison-city’s security. We all know that dedicating several square miles of a city to become a super-prison would cause untold damage, including families needing to be relocated, businesses shutting down, and of course deaths, thereby turning Gotham into modern-day Detroit. Those who run the city believe this is a good idea, so Bruce Wayne steps up to run for… well, we don’t really know what, but whatever it is we know he intends to put an end to this insane idea in a manner entirely visible to the public. While the approach may be the exact opposite of his usual tactics for stopping crime, the end goal is the same: protect the city, protect the people.

When we combine everything we know about Bruce Wayne into a whole – businessman, philanthropist, humanitarian, crime fighter, and Bible scholar – what we get is a perfect Conservative. Wayne is a man who loves his family, his employees, the people he protects, and his money equally. Bruce is often referred to as an outstanding citizen, yet Batman is often referred to as psychologically unstable. What this says to me is that the Liberal community is in denial about our beloved Mr. Wayne. They do not want to believe he is a Conservative. They find it so hard to hate Bruce Wayne because he is such an outstanding citizen. Yet it is easy to pick on Batman because he seems so detached from everyday society. The only way the Liberal community can justify attacking Bruce Wayne is to attack Batman.

That is what is wrong with Bruce Wayne. He does not fit the Liberal ideal. His views are not their views and therefore he is wrong. However, because everyone loves Bruce Wayne so much and therefore he cannot possibly be a Conservative, we must delve deep into his psyche to find out what it is that could possibly be wrong with him and diagnose it. To these people I say enough is enough. Get over it. Conservatives are not the warmongering, money hoarding, hate-filled people the media has made us out to be. We make jobs. We help people. We fight crime. We work a lot. Sometimes we are rewarded for it. Sometimes the government says, “You know what? You’ve done so much for your fellow man and helping out the country in your own way this year, keep some of your hard earned cash.” There is nothing wrong with being rewarded for a job well done. Bruce Wayne constantly does a good job, whether or not he is wearing a black cowl with pointy ears. A man like Bruce Wayne deserves to be rewarded for all he does. Anyone who believes otherwise or believes there is something wrong with him for wanting to be an upstanding citizen should judge their own choices before judging his.