Inevitable?

The video posted by the American president’s reelection team is unambiguous: “I’m inevitable,” says the character of Thanos, Donald Trump superimposed on to his head, with a click of his fingers … eliminating congressional Democrats in one breath. Amusing? Sinister? It hardly matters; an image is all the campaign team needs to fuel the public debate.

Just a distraction? Maybe.

But since it’s there, let’s discuss it.

Since their inception, superheroes have been a commentary on American society and politics. The fact they were created in the wake of the Great Depression by immigrants feeling the full force of the collapse of the American dream is not coincidental. While DC Comics, created in 1934, depicts fictional presidents, Marvel Comics (which started in 1939 and created the character of Thanos in 1973) regularly portrays sitting presidents.

In Marvel comics, the characters of presidents are often portrayed through their vulnerability. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower get kidnapped (“Human Torch Comics” #34, “What If” #9); Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter escape an assassination attempt (“Incredible Hulk” #185, “Fantastic Four” #178) and John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama almost lose control of the country (“Journey into Mystery” #96 and “Amazing Spider-Man” #583). Lyndon Johnson looks beyond appearances and pardons Dr. Banner, while Bill Clinton is less discerning and starts by banishing Captain America (#344). More ambiguously, Ronald Reagan tries to kill Captain America while drunk (#344), and George W. Bush, despite his poor choices (“Civil War” #1), turns out to be just a president trying to do his best (“Avengers” #70). Richard Nixon, in a category of his own, ends up implicitly (“Number One” never reveals his identity to the reader) leading an attempted coup d’état on behalf of the Secret Empire (“Captain America” #175).

However, one president is yet to make an official appearance on the Marvel stage, even though he was seen there, directly or indirectly, before he was elected. In fact, Trump Tower is mentioned in 1988 in “Iron Man” #227. It is depicted in “Infinity Gauntlet” #2 in 1991, when the tsunami triggered by Thanos destroys Atlantic City and swallows up another Trump Tower − aficionados will notice that this scene is missing from the film, “Avengers: Endgame,” which played in cinemas this year. Trump nominally appears in Marvel in 2008, in “New Avengers” #47: When his limousine blocks the path of an ambulance, Luke Cage moves it out of the way; Trump rages against the superhero and the threat of legal action. He implicitly appeared during the presidential election campaign, under the guise of Modaak in “Spider-Gwen Annual #1,” but since the election, Marvel has made no mention of the sitting president.

It is ironic, therefore, that the president should finally be inducted into superhero culture by his own entourage. All the more so that they used Thanos, the bad-tempered, destructive “supervillain” seeking “summa potestas,” a Latin phrase meaning “highest authority” or “totality of power.”

And yet the visceral fear of a tyrant on a quest for omnipotence is so embedded in America’s political culture that its constitutional architecture is designed to prevent it from happening. In fact, in the minds of the Founding Fathers, the mechanisms put in place would maintain a precarious balance between the complementary powers, which would each rein the other in − the famous checks and balances. But the Constitution is an old, outdated text, drafted when the United States had to secure its territorial and political integrity. At this point and in practice, there is no longer a constant balancing but rather a pendulum that swings on a cyclical basis, from Congress (as after Watergate) to the president (as after 9/11).

Because things have changed, the president has his finger on the nuclear button; he is at the head of an unwieldy administration and foreign policy (marginal in the beginnings of the republic) is now of central importance. Furthermore, the current president came in after a period of constitutional change that seemed to culminate in the George W. Bush presidency (and was not undone by Obama’s presidency).

But today the president relies on legal experts like John Yoo returning to the fore − author of “Defender in Chief” (2020) and one of the architects of George W. Bush’s torture memos. Or David Rivkin, who worked as a legal adviser to Reagan and George H. W. Bush. These unitary executive theorists take defending the powers of the president to the extreme, believing that he can do no wrong if he uses his powers to benefit the nation. Their influence is evident in the transformation of governmental power, and is reflected in the demand for absolute loyalty to the president himself, the systematic use of executive privilege, the politicization of day-to-day government business.

The Founding Fathers thought they were keeping watch but the risks are real. The fact that Time magazine has named public servants (including whistleblowers), the last bastions of integrity within government, “Guardians of the Year” speaks volumes about these changes. Therefore, the video comparing Trump to Thanos, as frivolous as it is, is worth paying attention to when seen through the distorted prism of today’s executive. In a democracy, a snap of the fingers can come from nowhere.