The Four Color Media Monitor

I found this item on the left-wing TPM Cafe site that says that people are comparing the Green Lantern Corps to the might of the US Military:

As you may know, the Green Lantern Corps is a sort of interstellar peacekeeping force set up by the Guardians of Oa to maintain the peace and defend justice. It recruits members from all sorts of different species and equips them with the most powerful weapon in the universe, the power ring.

[...] Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of "overcoming fear" which allows you to unleash the ring's full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn't function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the "Parallax fear anomaly" which, along with all the ring's other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.

Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.

First off, I have no knowledge of my own about anyone comparing the American army's might to the power rings. And if it were similar, surely they'd have come up with energy shields with which to guard against rockets, just like Hal Jordan and plenty of other GLs with the right powers can do? There's a very sharp difference between real life and science fiction. Not to mention that, if American military really had powers similar to the GL Corps, then there's every chance that Saddam and Ahmedinejad would be discovered to have weapons similar to those wielded by Sinestro and the Weaponers of Qward to rival those of the US Army!

Second, I personally don't think, and never have, that strength alone is what'll bring about victory. It is intelligent and strategic thinking that does, not to mention having a bold spine and not caving in to the menacing demands of anti-war extremists like the ones identified with the Daily KOS and MoveOn.Org.

And as a conservative voice, I personally never made any comparison between American military might to the GLs power rings, and never even thought about it before, mainly because, like I said before, there's a vast difference between real life and sci-fi. If reality had any of the same features as sci-fi, spanning all the way across the board, all these battles to vanquish evil would've reached outer space by now. I tried to see if there was any other discussion on the Net making these comparisons, but nothing came up.

I assume the writer must've heard one lone conservative voice making a possible analogy, but that doesn't mean that all conservatives think that.

Labels: Green Lantern