A Dark Knight for politics
I think we need a Batman to face down the threats of instability. However, in now way is a "Batman" a "good" thing, it is merely that which is necessary. Chaos can lead to nothingness, let us not be nihilists...
"Here, the Joker's violence is aimed at proving a very clear point: that deep down, we're all the same as him — "only as good as the world allows (us) to be". "I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else!" boasts the Joker in Alan Moore's classic comic The Killing Joke, on which Nolan's rendering of the villain is based. Hence the Joker's claim that those who proclaim rules and institute order, such as politicians or police officers, are simply hypocrites who pretend to uphold moral codes, which are promptly "dropped at the first sign of trouble". Far better to be consistent: "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules." It is in this sense that the Joker is "an agent of chaos". Not mindless chaos, but the idea that those who would control society are contemptible. They're schemers trying to control their worlds … I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are."
He explicitly does not want to kill Batman ("What would I do without you?"), but he certainly wants Batman to kill him. This would violate Batman's "one rule" and prove the Joker's point. That is why Harvey Dent, the promised "White Knight" is so central. The Joker kills Dent's fiancee, not because he wants her dead, but because he wants to drive Dent to darkness. If he can transform the incorruptible district attorney into a murderer, the argument is won. Recall the Joker's delight as he hands Dent a loaded gun and presses it against his own head, enticing Dent to shoot him. When Dent leaves this decision to the toss of a coin, then exclaims: "Now you're talking!" he knows Dent has fallen.
Is that a political cause? In a very broad sense it is, though not in the sense we often use the phrase. He does not seek any clearly identifiable, concrete political outcomes. His politics are far more abstract, philosophical, even artistic. He argues not for a world ruled by him, but for one without rules altogether. Ideologically, he is not so much an anarchist as a nihilist. He is a terrorist, then, but one who advocates a belief in nothing."
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