These People Are Not Allowed To Be Spider-Man Fans
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I need to take a moment from talking about superhero fiction to vent about something very gross I saw.
Thankfully, I have my own blog where I can do that.
But I read an article recently that was pretty disgusting and I had to talk about it.
Not just the article, but the comments.
To be clear, none of this is really new. It’s been what our political discourse has looked like since, probably, 2015. Beforehand, even, though these sorts of comments didn’t really reflect mainstream opinions prior to that.
And to be more clear, none of this actually involves comic books or superheroes or their fans, but I am reaching out like Reed Richards to connect these two topics together because I can.
No, this was regarding an article I recently read entitled ‘We are in dark times’: Donald Trump’s USAID freeze claims first victim after 71-year-old’s oxygen supply was cut off.
Predictably, the article is not about Spider-Man.
What this article is about is the effect of President Trump’s gutting of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, which is an agency developed in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy to provide aid to foreign civilians. People in developing countries around the world rely on food and medicine provided by USAID in order to live, and Trump and Co-President Elon Musk’s decision to destroy this agency already claimed the life of a 71 year old woman who lost access to oxygen when her healthcare center lost its USAID funding.
Of course, the woman was in Myanmar, so Actual Nazi Elon Musk was quite happy about that.
But my issue isn’t with this easily preventable death. Nor is it the other problems this ending USAID will cause, such how enough food to feed 36 million people is going to spoil, a 400% increase in AIDS-related deaths will occur, and other negative outcomes so devastating to America and the world that it should get Trump and Musk immediately imprisoned for life for crimes against humanity.
Nor is it how the head of our government–and also his subordinate, Donald Trump–is destroying this country. No, that would be actually more political than I intend this blog post to be.
No, it’s the article comments that drove me to write this.
And how these people are not allowed to be Spider-Man fans.
A Bunch of Twisted Little Green Goblins, They Are….
Way, way, way too many people in the comments of this article–all supporters of this gutting of USAID–were way too dismissive of this woman’s death at absolute best.
Too many were like this humanoid pile of excrement.
I’m sure Garrett is just a wonderful human being with compassion for the elderly, disabled, and children.
No, I’m just kidding. Garrett is so cartoonishly evil, even Norman Osborn would tell him to chill.
Also, I have severe doubts that Garrett has ever been economically productive in his life. Most of these people who judge others on whether they “rejoin the workforce” or “have healthy children” have never in their lives improved the world around them by any metric.
Of course, there’s also the fake pearl clutchers.
I’m confident this person isn’t sorry about this woman’s death, and I’m not sympathetic to the whole “These people have to learn to fix their own problems” argument. People aren’t dependent on USAID because they haven’t learned how medicine works or something. They aren’t mindless savages who can’t tell the difference between poop and food. They are trapped in third world countries that would require complete reorganizations of major political and economic institutions, access to resources they don’t have onhand and don’t have the means to trade for, and an incentive structure that encourages the centers of power within their country and outside of it to see their well-being as a priority.
The whole “they have to learn to fix their own country” is a stupid argument by stupid people who want to let foreigners die but don’t have the infinity stones to say it in public. I’ve no respect for them.
But it’s really these two comments that caught my eye.
America can’t be expected to save everyone, that is correct. But this person died because we decided not to save anyone. Andrew even says in his comment that if we spent $1 trillion more per year, we could easily save millions of more lives.
If that were true, that would be a pretty good argument to spend another trillion per year. Obviously, there is a limit to what we can do, but it’s still an argument.
Of course, that’s moot. The issue isn’t that we decided not to increase USAID spending by another trillion annually. It’s that we decided to cut it off.
That is a failure on our part.
A failure not too different than letting a burglar run by you and not stopping him when you easily have the power to do so.
Bryan says it’s not the responsibility of the US taxpayer to take care of people around the world when we don’t even take care of our own people’s needs.
First off, I bet Bryan loudly opposes any guaranteed health care proposal that would take care of our own people. People who make this argument hate the idea of poor people here in the United States having access to healthcare.
But second, there’s a word in there that stands out to me.
Responsibility.
Bryan, do we as a nation have the responsibility to care for people around the world who are sick and dying and need our help?
Yes.
Why?
Because we can.
And, Bryan, if you disagree with me, you are not allowed to be a Spider-Man fan.
With Great Power….
The proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider is a superpower.
So is the ability to stick to walls. So is spider-sense.
You know what else is a superpower?
America.
I like that about America. That it is the biggest, baddest dog in the yard we call Earth.
And its ability to provide foreign aid to others in need reflects that.
USAID spent about $71.9 billion in foreign aid in their 2023 fiscal year. That sounds like a lot….until you realize that’s a mere 1.2% of the US’s $6.1 trillion dollar budget. And that’s at the high end of what it has ranged since 2001.
We have the power to spend a lot of money on providing foreign aid, which comes in the form of disaster relief, fighting public health crises, and promoting democracy and “good governance”.
We have great power. And so we have great responsibility.
This is the central theme around Spider-Man. The central mantra of Peter Parker.
There’s no expectation of reward. No quid pro quo or tit for tat. No profit or growing of his own power.
Spider-Man has the power to help people, so he has the responsibility to help people.
This is the great life lesson that the narrator in Amazing Fantasty #15 Uncle Ben taught him.
It’s so famous in pop culture that people who’ve never read a Spider-Man comic in their life know the expression. Even if you weren’t on a website dedicated to superhero fiction–even if you didn’t read or watch superheroes at all–you know the full line.
And as Spider-Man’s responsibility to help others flows from his power to do so, so does America’s through foreign aid.
You could disagree, and that’s fine. And, obviously, there are limits in terms of spending amounts and methods of assistance that we can provide.
USAID money has been illegally diverted to terrorists before, just as Spider-Man completely botched that one attempt to save Gwen Stacy. Hey, I’m a fan of the character, but even I’ll say that Spider-Man is an irresponsible person when you really think about it. No one’s perfect, no one is good all the time, and executions in broader attempts to do good get botched. Even outside of USAID, America killed plenty of civilians during World War II.
But if you disagree with the premise that America’s responsibility to provide aid flows from its superpower status, then you disagree with the foundational philosophical premise at the heart of Spider-Man.
Writing about the ethics of nations and everything involved there would certainly be a thousand times more complicated than writing on ethical systems and superheroes, but that doesn’t mean overlap doesn’t exist. With great power comes great responsibility, and considering that much of our modern day wealth is built on a supply chain that uses sweatshop labor abroad (and child/slave labor!!!!), I’d say we have an outsized responsibility to help the needy in countries whose labor we exploit for lower prices.
Now, I know that there will be someone who reads this and thinks that any amount of money spent on helping people overseas is too much because we here in the US don’t benefit from it. That it would be better to just withdraw and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems.
But doing what’s right when you have the power to isn’t just about being super nice. It also helps you, and it hurts you if you don’t.
You know who knows that firsthand?
Spider-Man.
America Is Letting the Burglar Run By Us
There was a time that Spider-Man had power, but did not take responsibility.
It’s not an obscure period in the character’s history. It’s his origin story. It literally was shown on screen in not one, but two major motion pictures.
Spidey lets a burglar run by him even when he has the power to stop him because, well, why should he? The whole world has been cruel to him and now wants him to stick his neck out for others?
“From this moment on, I just look out for Number One–that means me!”
Translation: “I missed the part where that’s my problem.”
Well, we know how that went. That burglar would then go on to break into the Parker home and kill Peter’s Uncle Ben. And thus Peter learns firsthand that with great power comes great responsibility.
Earlier, I mentioned that enough food to feed 36 million people will spoil. Ignoring for a moment that that food is grown by and purchased from American farmers who have just lost a major customer (and possibly their entire businesses), what do the people who want there to be no more foreign aid think will happen when people overseas face a mass starvation event? Where do the people who rely on us for disaster relief go?
If you are one of those people who support Fuhrer Musk torching humanitarian aid, you’re probably someone who thinks refugees claiming asylum in the United States are participating in an “invasion”, like they’re the Skrulls or something. Well, guess what? Those refugees are coming here.
When we decide not to provide people in third world countries with vaccines and antibiotics and other means to control disease epidemics, where do you think those viruses and bacteria eventually end up? They come here and we get sick. And I don’t feel like getting, I dunno, Angry Fish Disease or whatever else we don’t know about because you’re opposed to helping others.
And it’s not just about avoiding bad stuff. It’s about the good stuff, too.
When Spider-Man decided to no longer be selfish and embrace the responsibility his powers gave him, he quickly made friends throughout the superhero community. The Human Torch was one of his best friends from early on, he maintained a longstanding friendship with the Fantastic Four, had an ally in Daredevil in dealing with the criminal underworld, and eventually had all the resources of the Avengers available to him. It’s how he was able to have an entire squad of superheroes behind him in Maximum Carnage, including Captain America.
When America exports its goodwill through foreign aid, it earns back the goodwill of the entire world. People and countries put their faith in our military to defend them, so we have increased military readiness and leverage against our enemies. They get exposed to our culture through movies and music, so people identify with the US more than they do with other superpowers. They trade with us, giving our businesses access to markets abroad.
It’s called soft power, and it’s why we’re not constantly managing pandemics and fighting large-scale wars.
I assure you, if America wasn’t working to exert soft power over these countries, China and Russia would.
My point is, Spider-Man embracing his responsibility to protect others as a superhero is good for him, not just the people of New York.
Likewise, America providing foreign aid relief isn’t just about us being nice, but it also helps us.
Does Whatever a Global Economic, Military, and Cultural Superpower Can
As I said before, this article about the death of a 71 year old woman in Myanmar had nothing to do with Spider-Man. Or any superheroes.
The commenters on that article that still support cutting off foreign aid never claimed to be Spider-Man fans.
I am reaching to connect the two.
But that connection does exist.
With great power comes great responsibility.
It’s the central theme of Spider-Man. And it’s the central ethical rationale behind our provision of foreign aid to the world.
It’s true that we can’t save every last person. There’s limits to the aid America can provide. Just as there are limits to how many lives Spider-Man can save. He can’t stop every mugging single handedly.
But just as Uncle Ben’s death was ultimately preventable if he had acted in accordance with that guiding principle, so was the death of this 71 year old woman. In both cases, the responsibility that power put upon you was abdicated.
Except, at the time, Peter Parker was a 15 year old boy who didn’t know any better. America is a global superpower whose current crop of “leaders” here in 2025 know better, but just don’t care.
So if you believe that with great power comes great responsibility, you can’t only apply that to fictional superheroes that got bitten by radioactive spiders. You have to apply this idea to real life, if you really believe it.
These people, and so many others, don’t believe in it. They don’t believe that power confers that responsibility. And that’s fine. That’s just a difference in personal ethics.
But it’s just like the anti-woke grifters and the X-Men. You can’t be fans of a superhero team that outright represents civil rights, diversity, and tolerance if you’re against those things.
And the same applies to people who reject the idea of a global superpower providing aid to the impoverished around the world whose own governments have left them behind. Who reject the idea that great power confers great responsibility.
These people are not allowed to be Spider-Man fans.
So says I, the arbiter of superhero fandom, imbued by myself with the power to make superhero fiction decrees. I haveth spoken.
Away with ye!
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