Clark Kent can have a political stance. Superman has to be impartial and as fair and not-heavy-handed as possible.
Imagine that there was man with Superman’s semidivine powers and general humanism, What would he do?
He has the power to singlehandlly change the political landscape of earth for the better. Innocent people are tortured to death everyday because he doesn’t act. Ching even made a remark over this:
And what was that?! Someone who dashes about like a... (searches for the word) ... hummingbird? Who goes from disaster to disaster with no principle other than to be of help? What kind of code is that? A worm eats dirt because that's all it knows how to do. Yes, I admit he has ability, but look at him! Skulking around, wearing glasses, when I know for a fact they are completely unnecessary! And his modest style of living and dress! For whom is he pretending? Why pretend at all?! He could rule this world if he wanted to, and enforce what he knew to be a better way, and yet he refuses to. To Ching, Clark is moral coward. And if it was as Ching thought that Superman sits back and just let people abuse other people because he was afraid to exercise his powers I would agree.
To me though Superman have thought one step further. Yes in the short run he could create a better world by force, but in the long run this would likely result in greater misery. Very few people likes to be bullied even if it’s being forced to do something that is good for them. And who is he really to impose his values of the multitude of human cultures? I don’t know but it makes me think on the Iraqi war. Just because you have the power to overthrow dictators it’s not necessarily the best move.
So instead of forcing people to be good, he works within the framework of human law and tries to teach people to be good by example. And respecting others point of view even though you don’t have to would give you an incredible strong rhetorical ethos.
I mean, I have ideas for how to "fix" issues like starvation, but those ideas I have involve basically acting like Robin Hood--taking from the rich and giving to the poor. I mean, certain countries have large surpluses of goods, and don't even think to share with those that don't.
By fixing these problem I didn’t mean resource transference, I thought more about beating the drum(and if Superman was real everything he said would be prime time news), building houses drilling wells, distributing food, medicine, basically peace corps kind of work. That Superman would spend time stopping jewel robberies when thousands of children are starving to death each day seems ludicrous to me. To me everything he does or doesn’t do have a political significance, that’s why a conscientious guy like Clark/Superman couldn’t really help but having a well developed political point of view.
If this was how he was fleshed out he would be much more realistic IMO.
