Hope versus Fear, by Mike Gold
You don’t have to have read superhero comics for any great length of time before you get the message: perseverance plus righteousness will defeat the enemy every time. Despite the “maturation” of commercial comic books, this essential message remains at the core of the superhero concept.Turn on your television set and listen to our government’s message. If you disagree with their policies, you don’t understand the fact that there are monsters trying to get us. If we don’t torture anybody we like, we will have another 9-11. If we don’t wiretap anybody we like, we will have another 9-11. If we don’t give AT&T and Verizon a pass on their illegal activities, we will have another 9-11. If we speak out against the Iraq War, we don’t support our troops and therefore we will have another 9-11.
To justify this, they point to incidents that are massively exaggerated or outright lies. That gas attack on the New York subway system? It was bullshit. The attempt to blow up Fort Dix? That was, quite literally, a pissed off pizza delivery guy and a couple of his friends from the Mack Sennett lot. In Florida, the government busted seven childish wannabees for conspiring with “Al Qaeda” (actually, with undercover agents) in an attempt to blow up Sears Tower in Chicago – it seems that one of the seven was briefly employed there. Our evidence that they were master terrorists? They had been bopping around in public wearing homemade military uniforms and turbans, and they asked an undercover agent for boots (they supplied shoe sizes), machine guns and $50,000 in cash. Even idiots can pose a threat, but busting these clowns doesn’t justify waterboarding or preemptive military strikes.
Yes, we have real enemies out there and we need to deal with them in an effective manner. I’m not to trivializing it in the least by saying the threat requires police actions: detective work, and fairly routine detective work at that. The type the FBI has found fairly effective these past many decades. Abandoning everything that makes America America is not effective; it is surrender.
Now we have Hillary Clinton, losing badly (she isn’t even close, folks; count the delegates – she needs to pick up two for every one that Barack Obama gets in the future), playing the fear card. Who do you want to pick up the phone at 3 in the morning? Hillary had no security clearance before she became senator, she did not get and still does not get the president’s daily security briefings, and she’s hardly more experienced than her opponent. Who do I want to pick up the phone at 3 in the morning? Well, if it’s experience we’re looking for, I’d have to say “Bill.”
Politics as usual.
There’s Al Qaeda, and our government has surrounded them with a whole lot of Fin Fang Fooms. I was raised with promises from my civics classes and hope from the Fantastic Four.
Comic books teach hope. Our government teaches fear.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.
I'd like it best if the phone didn't ring at 3 AM — if we worked to create a world in which there was no longer the danger of such threats. Yes, there will always be crazy people, but we don't have to supply them with weapons.
It has been very clear from the start that this administration is frightened of the world. In general I have never seen good achieved from a position of fear. And I think there is a great deal of evidence from the past eight years to support this view.Clinton is now acting from fear. But Obama and McCain are both expressing a more positive view of the world. They both appear confident of the US resources and people. And I think that is what we are all responding to. And it is a good thing we are. But I wonder if we have any hope of seeing Obama and McCain preserving this positive outlook into the actual campaign. I doubt it. But I have hope I'm wrong.
Everything you say is true, but here's the problem. The people who need to hear this, the uninformed/undereducation voters, don't seem to care. They take their cues from the 30-second scare ad. Heaven forbid they should be so pro-active as to read a newspaper of a blog that might teach them something. How do we reach these types?
You don't. Talk radio is for pissed-off zombies, and they stack the deck.What you do is you get out the new vote, something at which Obama's been quite successful. Younger voters, particularly women 18 – 35, traditionally have been ignoring the elections. Not so much this year; there's been a real turnaround. The politics of fear doesn't work on 'em; they've got to deal with the future like it or not. They've never had a candidate who inspired hope.
It's funny that you mention talk radio. I live in Minnesota and am supporting a talk radio host for Senator! Then again, Minnesota is the land that gave this country it's highest ranking elected "Independence Party" candidate, Jesse "The Body" Ventura! Wait a second, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Arnold "The Terminator" Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono (he hung out with Scooby Doo), Gopher from the Love Boat, Stuart Smalley, that guy from Law and Order; maybe politics and comic books are more closely related than people imagine! OK, maybe there isn't an Abraxis comic … yet.You are right about the politics of fear. The Bush administration has used the tactic of flag waving/fear mongering, accusing anyone who disagrees with their illegal policies of rendition and torture of being tantamount to treasonous. But I would say that this is also an administration that has used the politics of LIES. Blatant exaggeration and falsehoods were used to justify our invasion of Iraq. Bush has called Democrats the party of "Tax and Spend," when his administration put in one of the LARGEST single social programs since Social Security with the Medicare Drug Benefit (a law written by the Drug Companies themselves that forbids the government from trying to negotiate better drug prices). He has cut social programs, put forth unfunded school measures. All the while committing our nations forces in a wasteful fight that distracts them from bring the ACTUAL 9/11 terrorists to justice.We are spending BILLIONS (maybe TRILLIONS) of extra dollars in Iraq because we have an undersized millitary, so we have to waste money on companies to suppy the Army with food, transportation and SECURITY! Security? Really? We are PAYING firms like Blackwater to GUARD US Army Generals because the US Military can't find the men to do it themselves! The last time I checked, the military were supposed to be IN CHARGE of security. Why are we spending SO many more BILLIONS upon BILLIONS in Iraq? Because A) Bush doesn't have the balls to man-up and say, "Whoops, this was a big mistake!" and get us out of there. Or B) Bush doesn't have the sense to say, "The Army is too understaffed to take care of the commitments that we need in order to keep America safe, so I'm reinstating the DRAFT!"The DRAFT is considered a political "third rail," a subject that can't be touched.The National Guard are NOT trained and were never intended to be on the front lines of foreign wars. Bush has misused the National Guard to avoid re-instating the draft. Mercenaries have been declared illegal by both the UN and the Geneva Convention. But, we didn't bother to sign either of those declarations. But Bush has used sub-contractors and Mercenaries to supplement the US Military NOT in an effort to keep costs down, (or if that is the reason given, it's a LIE) but to avoid reinstating the draft.What sacrifices has Bush asked the American people to make? He asked us to keep the economy moving by spending more. He's asked us to give up our civil liberties and our self-respect by promoting torture, rendition and illegal wire-tapping. If Bush were a man of principles who believed in the wars that he has put us into, he should be willing to ask the people of the US to make the kinds of sacrifices necessary to wage the kind of war we have, both in MONEY and in SERVICE. First, roll back the TAX CUTS that have disproportionately benefited the VERY rich (like the Estate Tax). This won't SOLVE our nations financial woes, but it's a start.Second, if we NEED to be in a war with hundreds of thousands of our nations military stationed overseas, have the BALLS to instate a national draft instead of using Mercenaries, the National Guard and extending and re-extending the tours of duty of current military sevicemen.It's a LIE to say our nation has to be in a WAR, but then ask our nations citizens to pay for that war with TAX CUTS, extra-spending (both personal and governmental) and an ever shrinking volunteer army. We either have to get out of Iraq or find the courage to do what needs to be done to PAY for it by RAISING TAXES and bringing back the DRAFT.
This exchange helps to explain why I've found myself drawn back lately to those proto-Marvel giant-monster comics of the mid-century — an attitude of self-possessed hope and a willingness to square off against Fear Its Ownself.For all their incomplete grasp of the Way the World Works and their frequent Commie-buster posturing (a primary motivation of Reed Richards and his Fantastic-Four-to-be), those Atlas-into-Marvel stories deal generally in a fear-defiant form of resourcefulness, with peaceable aspirations. Project the outlandish fantasy to Real World situations, and institutionalized fear can become its own enemy.The original "Fin Fang Foom!" yarn offers a sharp example — never mind the laughable aspect of a talking dragon in Code-approved Jockey Shorts. The stories' newer Marvel Masterworks editions are as valuable in this light of hopeful gumption as for any nostalgic and/or archival imperatives.