It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Superman!

Superman was the great savior during my childhood, along with a few other heros with seemingly superhuman abilities to dodge bullets and fight evil, like Wyatt Earp and Matt Dillon. It’s thrilling to know that a real, live Superman now flies among us, fighting evil and saving America. Of course, I mean Donald Trump.

The earlier comic Superman hid his vast strength under a meek disguise, but when it came time to rescue us, he boldly displayed his awesome powers. Trump has never toyed with humility, but only recently has he thrown off all disguise to reveal the truly superhuman Trump.

Trump attended a military-style boarding school for 5 years in the early 1960s. He “always felt that I was in the military”. School gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” That explains why he showed no interest in earthly war in Vietnam: he knew everything already. His military experience must have come from other planets. He told an Iowa audience, “I’m good at war. I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war. I love war, in a certain way.” Doesn’t everybody?

Today he is a military expert without equal. “You know the thing I’ll be great at? And I do very well at it. Military. I am the toughest guy. I will rebuild our military. It will be so strong and so powerful and so great, that we’ll never have to use it. Nobody’s going to mess with us, folks. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody’s going to mess with us.” He said, “I will be so good at the military, your head will spin.” He told Bill O’Reilly, “There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.”

Superman is tougher than anyone, but always fair. So is Trump. In 2011, he said, “I am the least racist person there is.” In November, he reported that he was the “least racist person on Earth”. This month, he told Don Lemon, the black CNN newsman, “I am the least racist person that you have ever met.” That is why “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

Superman had great physical powers. Trump also has great mental power. “I went to the Wharton School of Business. I’m, like, a really smart person.”  “I was a great student.” His memory is other-worldly. He remembered graduating first at Wharton in 1968, when none of his classmates could remember him at all, and the commencement program did not list him as getting any honors.

Trump is really smart, and most of the rest of us are dummies. On Republican Congressional leaders: “These people are babies.... They’re babies. They’re babies.” On other presidential candidates: Jeb Bush is “dumb as a rock” and Marco Rubio is a “clown”. He told it like it is in Fort Dodge, Iowa, when he came in second in an Iowa poll: “How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country?”

These intellectual abilities enabled him to write a fantastic book. “I write a book called The Art of the Deal, the No. 1 selling business book of all time, at least I think, but I’m pretty sure it is.” Other business books have sold 10 times as many copies here on Earth, like Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, but Trump is adding in sales all over the galaxy.

Put those superpowers together and you have an out-of-this-world negotiator. At the 2015 Values Voter Summit in Washington, he guaranteed the audience that after he is elected President, but even before he takes office, the Americans who are prisoners in Iran will be back. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make this statement, if I get elected President, before I ever get to office, I guarantee you, they will be back, I guarantee you, 100%, 100%.”

That’s just a selection of his superpowers. Everyone is irresistibly attracted. “All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me, consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”  “I love beautiful women, and beautiful women love me.”  “Teachers love me, every one of them”.  “The Hispanics love me.” In fact, “People love me. I’ve been very successful. Everybody loves me.”

Wow.

Add in one more super-power, his invisible shield that protects him from rays of knowledge which he doesn’t like from the outside world.

I think he is super-fooling all of us. Here is what he is using all of his powers for: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

That would be super. For him.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, December 22, 2015