popular media told kids this all the time in the 90s. which is weird when you think about it. a noticeable amount of kid’s movies had a storyline like “millionaire wants to cut down all the trees, we gotta stop him, guys!”

It just seemed so… irrational. The open greed and contempt, the shortsightedness, the honest to goodness villainy they exhibited. It seemed unrealistic because we also grew up believing in justice and fairness and thinking that surely these people would’ve had a similar experience and thought the same thing and NOT been villains. It’s so damn easy, especially if you have so much money, to just NOT be a villain.

But they haven’t had the same experiences and even if they did, these are people who honestly don’t give a shit. They’re either the type to shrug it off and think the poor really DON’T work as hard as them or they’re the ones who enjoy inflicting cruelty just because they have power and they just like to do it because no one will stop them and they get off on it.

We bought into the idea that people have their own stories, their own perspectives and that no one could be so cartoonishly villainous as that in the real world, that there would be consequences or they’d have to be some friggin’ master planner to hide their true colors. But nope. The cartoonish supervillain is real and they are enabled and protected and they must be fought. It’s the only way we CAN make it unrealistic.