The Death Of A Nation?

The Birth of a Nation is at once one of the greatest movies and most terrible movies ever made. D.W. Griffith's expansive and innovative storytelling is on full display and the magnificent power of cinema is is all too evident, but tragically the story this tells is one of a dreadful history, of an aspect of American life which is truly shameful. 

That shame is not present in Griffith's portrayal of the Klu Klux Klan, the Secret Empire which in this movie rises up out of a misguided sense of necessity to stem the savagery of the freed black slaves who show they are incapable of leading themselves in a civilized manner and threaten the creamy white skins of Southern womanhood. It's the most profound and dreadful bullshit! But this truly is a well-polished turd, and the artistry of The Birth of a Nation can be recognized, but never should its themes be celebrated.

The Birth of a Nation triggered a rebirth of the Klan, this time these cretins adopted the look of the movie and the wearing of the white robe became consistent throughout the country as chapters of this odious fraternity spread its wings over a seemingly ever-ready populace. The popularity of the Klan was such that they even marched in force in Washington D.C. in 1925. The Klu Klux Klan became damn near mainstream, but it was knocked out by the patriotic fervor of the World War II. The toads who had once sought to become Klan instead slithered around the new hate group in town -- the National Socialist Party better known as the Nazis. The Klan got another infusion of energy during the ascendency of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency. Now here we are again with a fourth version, all decked out in black and substituting an "X" for a Swastika. 

D.W. Griffith was a Kentuckian, and for that reason I was keen to include some of his work in a Film Studies class. But these are high school classes and not college and so much more care must be taken in selecting examples of cinema. When Spike Lee's BlacKKKlansman was in theaters, I sought to get permission from my principal to show The Birth of a Nation in class. I was eager to use the opportunity to drive home the misguided themes of the original movie within the context of the new film. Much to his credit my principal at the time listened to my arguments seriously but ultimately decided against it. I understand his decision. A news story that some white teacher was showing The Birth of a Nation to his mostly white students in a community famous for its conservative leanings could be publicity no one needed, least of all me. To attempt to explain the film being shown in some historical context with proper permissions from parents sought and signed, would've meant nothing to media intent on sensationalizing race relations in America at almost every turn. He likely saved me from myself.

But it's important in a way that Griffith made this document of the beliefs of the Klan one hundred years ago. This rosy anti-historical account is a byway into the mind of the racist nationalist who lives in constant fear of the outsider, the one who unlike himself seeks not just "tradition" and "heritage", but something new and different and vital. The real Klan is about preserving the false memory of a more civilized time when order was maintained through violence and the utter and complete dehumanization of men, women and children. It is the shame that will blight the American record for all time and sadly continues to spread its diseased tendrils down through the decades. 

And even more shameful that it has once again risen and taken hold of our federal leadership. Someone said recently that these new challenges to liberty threaten the soul of America, but in truth the country sold its soul long ago and has been trying in fits and starts and in a shambolic way to redeem itself. For the moment we seem to have taken a knee, but we will continue our journey. 

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O Canada!

I sometimes have a hard time believing that the United States and its longtime ally Canada are now in effective war. At present that war is limited to rhetoric and economic fisticuffs. The there is no doubt that my brothers in the far North fear for their political independence, and I don't blame them. And further I applaud them for not following us down this dark road. 

Canada is the only foreign country I have ever visited and likely the only one I ever will visit. The movement at the time between the U.S. and Canada was seamless, painless and built on decades of trust and good will. Now that's been sundered by the power-mad ravings of an ignorant celebrity and wannabe Caesar. 

I live in Kentucky renowned for horse racing and bourbon. I don't know about the horse racing, but I pretty much know the booze ain't welcome up North. Sweet Potato Hitler has seen to that with his ridiculous tariffs and moronic screeds about making Canada the fifty-first state. The former is utterly destructive to both countries, and the latter is sheer lunacy. 

I want things to be like they were before, but it's clear that even after this ridiculous leader has faded into the West they won't be. Like any relationship, when one strikes another, the victim might forgive in time but will forever and for all time remember the blow. And they should. 

O Canada, I wish it weren't so. 

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Post-Modern Monopoly!

Monopoly is a very popular board game. The history of his game is found here. The game was invented by a socially conscious woman named Elizabeth Magie who wanted the game to be a "practical demonstration of the [then] present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". It began existence under the name The Landlord's Game and was to be cautionary. It's a cautionary quality was lost over time when it was snapped up by Parker Brother and decades of play made it seem quaint. 

The game was inspired by Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and Increase of Want wit Increase of Wealth: The Remedy written by Henry George in 1970. The book was important in triggering the Progressive Movement which the modern Republican Party is so intent pushing back. They want a land filled with vast wealth for a tiny few and grinding poverty for most, so as to allow the wealthy to garner as much power over others as possible. They have the money, now they want they want the power. The Golden Rule has no place in the game of Monopoly. Instead of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." the game promotes "Do all you can to get ahead and screw your fellow man." That edict is driving the United States and possibly the world into a great economic depression. 

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Of Maus And Meta-Maus!

Today is a certain lunatic dictator's birthday. (No, not that one -- the other one.) To commemorate this asshole's entry into the world, I give you Art Spiegelman's Maus, one of the most powerful examinations and indictments of the Holocaust in comics form. I've re-read Maus, but this time with insights gleaned from reading MetaMaus, a tome which gathers together sundry interviews and other materials pertinent to the creation. 

This time I read the collected Maus. MetaMaus is keyed to this volume and page numbers are specific to this collection book. It's only been a few years since I read and commented on this story, but current events push me to engage with it again. I wonder how my feelings will change when the oppressions depicted in the story echo those we might feel today. 

Art Spiegelman's Maus - A Survivor's Tale is one of the most brutally frank comics I've ever read. Spiegelman is not only intent on relating the dreadful details of his father's survival of the Nazi regime's attempt to exterminate the Jews in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe, but he shows what effect that bloody campaign had on the survivors of the genocide. His father was one such survivor and the man Vladek Spiegelman is presented as a fully rounded character, a man with grit and capacity for love, but a man who is overwhelmed by his need to be prepared for the next time the Jews come under assault. This need expresses itself in his miserly approach to life which makes him a challenging person to live with. Spiegelman does not attribute all of Vadek's stingy ways on his war experience, but increasingly as the story unfolds before us in chapter after chapter, we see that had Vladek been someone else, he and his wife might not have lived through the horror of Aushwitz. And we also can tell that the survival has also had a toll on Vladek 's spirit. The story follows Vladek's and Anja's story as they see the rise of the Nazi regime and attempt to survive and later hide from the predations. They are ulitmately unsuccessful and the story leaves off as they are both ultimately captured and sent to join their people in Hitler's death camps. 

Maus was originally produced in six chapters spread over six issues of the comic magazine RAW. RAW produced a new issue annually for the most part and so the saga of Maus was begun by Spiegelman in issue number two of RAW in 1980. And each issue and year after that until the final installment of what became part one of the saga was published in RAW#7 in 1985. The story was then collected and published by Pantheon Books as Maus - A Survivor's Tale in 1986. When a sequel was finished some years later the title was lengthened to Maus - A Survivor's Tale Part I My Father Bleeds History. (We'll get around to Part II next week.) 

Spiegelman is attempting some complex things in this story. He simultaneously wants to detail the horrors of the Holocaust as seen first-hand through his father's eyes. In addition, he wants to show the relationship between himself and his father which is rocky at best. Spiegelman's mother Anja had committed suicide some years before and his father had remarried to a woman named Mala. Spiegelman also had a brother who was killed during the Holocaust, and he seems to suffer from having been compared all his life to this ideal brother who never grew up. It's clear that guilt and angst are wide and deep inside the family and getting an understanding of that dysfunction seems to be Spiegelman's ultimate goal in pushing his father for details of the WWII atrocities. 

Maus also makes an interesting choice, one which I'm sure has made for its long-lasting reputation and that is to use the tried-and-true comic book convention of using intelligent animals to stand in for human beings. Whether it's Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny or Huckleberry Hound, we respond to this idea with eagerness, and it allows for the crimes and horrors to be shown with a degree of separation which oddly allows them to bypass our defense mechanisms to no see horror. It seems we understand immediately that certain animals can represent certain kinds of people, perhaps too easily. Spiegelman has drawn criticism for using pigs to represent non-Jewish Poles and cats to represent the Nazis. But it only makes sense in a universe in which the oppressed Jews are seen as Mice. The seeming slow but steady progress by the Nazis to eradicate the Jews is presented at one level in the story as literally a "cat-and-mouse" game. 

Given this trope, it's easy to understand why some folks who are careless in their thinking and lazy in their reading might jump to a conclusion that the treatment is inappropriate for kids. Funny animal comics are the very essence of kid's stuff, but this is a different animal story which ain't all that funny after all. The Tennessee school board which banned Maus from its classrooms only succeeded in making sure that more people were aware of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning work and that sales flew through the roof. Their objections to the work are laughable and it seems clear that these folks want their children to grow up free of the moral dilemma the Holocaust presents to all modern peoples. They are derelict in their responsibility both to the students under their care and to history itself which requires that we remember the evil which is done, so that the chances of that evil reviving is minimized. 

The publication of Maus - A Survivor's Tale in 1986 was one of the markers that comics had grown up into a fully mature narrative form. The splendid creativity and diversity sparked by the advances of the direct sales market meant that while comic books diminished as a mass market entertainment they had in place become fully realized art. Art Spiegelman had hit a home run in the field, book that defied the conventional attempts to categorize it and which functioned equally well as both biographical and autobiographical and which used outsized metaphor to drive home themes that much of a broad audience might reject in a less user-friendly format. 

 

But Spiegelman was not finished. The first chapter of the second volume of the story which would become known as Maus - A Survivor's Tale II - And Here My Troubles Began was first published in the eighth and final issue of RAW magazine where the first part had been serialized. There is a jump in the framing narrative which we'd been following about Spiegelman trying to get the story of his father Vladek's survival of the Holocaust when we learn that Vladek has died. Part of the angst seen in Maus is that of Spiegelman himself who was tortured by his demanding father and the suicide of his mother in 1968. He made it quite clear in the story that he blamed her death on his father and his unyielding pressure about money and other details of daily life. Working through this anger with the help of his wife Francoise Mouly is part of the story we must also consider. 

This story has Vladek and his wife Anja captured at last after many long months of avoiding the Nazis. They are sent to the death camps, and we follow Vladek as we lose touch with Anja's story. There is intense frustration on Spiegelman's part about this aspect of the story since his father had destroyed his wife's diaries about the events of the Holocaust. So we are left with only Vladek's story, and we see that he survived the camps by good fortune and savvy working of personalities and resources. The Jews in the camps are beaten and killed and summarily marched to their deaths by a regime that seemed all too intent on this singular proposition. From the perspective of this story WWII seems much less about tactical decisions on the battlefield and all about the singular mania which demanded that Jews everywhere be put to death, that all things Jewish be absorbed or obliterated. There was little distinction between man and woman or adult and child, all were subject to perhaps the most organized and banal genocide in human history. 

While we follow Vladek's journey in the camps and then out again where the danger is no less intense it seems, we see the horrors of Nazi regime and the war it perpetrated reflected in individuals and their losses. They might be mice and cats and pigs and dogs as rendered by Spiegelman but never does the forget that these are people suffering in stunningly brutal ways. Sudden violent death was a commonplace and only relentless effort and luck could stave it off.  By the end of this second tale, we have followed Vladek not only from Auschwitz to Sweden to New York to Florida and to New York again, we have seen one old and tortured soul who longs for connection with his son but cannot give of himself long enough to find it. There is no happy ending in Maus - Survivor's Tale, just an ending of sorts. Survival is a story that never ends and travels from generation to generation for all time. 

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Constitution Pop!

Saturday is Patriot's Day, the day the American War for Independence began with the battles in Concord and Lexington. In these harrowing times, I thought it best if I picked up another copy of the United States Constitution. As an American citizen born in the Eisenhower administration, I have grown up just assuming my rights as detailed in that document were largely secure. These days not so much. The above volume is a fun way for a comics fan to revisit these solemn rights. 

I loved R. Sikoryak's Masterpiece Comics, so I'm sure I'm more than happy to add Constitution Illustrated to my collection. It's an enlightening revisit of the words which bind our trembling democracy together. 

This little ditty started appearing on Saturday morning television over fifty years ago. I have to admit I prefer the melody of "I am a Bill", but this one is pretty good too. What it speaks of is beyond good, it was noble, at least in its original intent and in more recent decades its interpretation and amendments. But now white men got scared they might not be top dogs anymore, so they scrounged themselves up a sociopathic galoot to run for the highest office in the land (he still works me though he tends to forget that) and win and begin a terror campaign which gives lie to not just essence of the document but the words themselves. 

Take a look at this remarkable document, the very one they'd love to get their hands on and shred.  

The Constitution of the United States | National Archives

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The Misshape Of Things To Come!

Here is a look at a musty concept called "The Technate" which according to some is the ultimate goal of the current administration and explains all the saber rattling with allies such as Canada, Mexico and the European Union. It imagines a single North American entity governed not by democracies but rather technocracies, a society governed by the whims of engineers and technocrats. It's deemed more efficiency and was deemed a more effective way to arrange society in the 1930's in the first Great Depression when it looked rather like the normal arrangements of society had fallen well short.  

Now that creaky old notion might well be back. 

If I imagined for one goddamn minute in our increasingly dangerous world that an intellectually honest technocracy as described by H.G. Wells and others was possible, I might buy in. (Even in his world though Wells had to contend with the demagogue.) But I have zero confidence in a felonious administration that has given us a vaccine-denier as the Human Health and Services, is working steadily apace to deconstruct the "Department of Education", is shadowed by a no-nothing, pretend "Tony Stark" who keeps blowing up rockets and wrecking planes just to keep himself out of jail, and puts forth a tariff plan that seems to have been cobbled together in the last moments with bizarro-world math! Is a true meritocracy possible under that guidance? Of course not. We are led by narcissists and man-children who look on other people as mere props in their much more important life story. 

Let's work to bring back and improved version of our once defective, but still at least nominal democratic republic instead. 

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Apokolpytian Analogs!

I wonder why as a loyal American citizen I have a hankering to read about a brave and bold struggle against a depraved power-hungry despot who wants nothing more than total control of everyone all the time? I wonder?

I've bought Jack Kirby's Fourth World saga yet again. This time in the mammoth single volume version put out by DC Comics several years back. I end up reading about the New Gods saga pretty much every year. Often, I return to the source, the works produced by comics genius Jack Kirby in the early 1970's soon after he'd left Marvel Comics, the place which had been built on the backs of his bountiful creations. 

He saw that comics could be something other than cheap pamphlets hawked by low-rent publishers who were given rebuff by "real" publishers. That his greatest creation has been collected time and time again in format after format proves he was right all along. That they formed the foundation of the most successful film series in history is just one more indication that Kirby saw the world in ways which spoke to the spirit of man. 

When I read the news of the day, I often get a yearning to see some Jack Kirby character deliver a haymaker to appropriated chins. There's is no doubt that Kirby would have been among the most ferocious voices against the predations of the current Republican cabal. When I look at Trump and his lackeys, I see the faces of those villains Kirby crafted long ago, at a time when another President tried to flout the law. 

Donald Trump is the canny center of the evil, though I don't think he's got the long-term strategy skills of Darkseid, but rather he's a villain who merely seeks to fulfill his rapacious desires in the moment. Trump also is slavish to Vladimir Putin, and Darkseid would never have allowed himself to be put into such a situation, at least not for long. Our "President" is the puppet and not the puppeteer. 

Marco Rubio works as the bumbling but ever diminutive Virman Vundabar. Rubio was once a somewhat respected legislator, but by aligning with this administration has forever stained his reputation. 

Cash Patel seems born to play the role of the malignant DeSaad, There's a manic cruelty in Patel's eyes which indicate he's eager to torment another soul. 

The often-inebriated Pete Hegseth would make a dashing but corrupted Kanto. Kanto was smarter and more competent than Hegseth, but still working with evil is its own reward in most cases. 

Susie Wiles fits as Granny Goodness. (Tulsi Gabbard is auditioning for his role in years to come.)

RFK Jr. could slither into the role of Doctor Bedlam. He is madness all wrapped up in one foul single little man. His quackery might well kill us all. 

Kristi Noem's got Lashina written all over her. She and the other chicks in the administration such as Linda McMahon (Mad Harriet), Kelly Loeffler (Bernadeth) and Elize Stefanik (Stompa). This is of course before the Furies reformed. And I'm not including Big Barda in this mix at all. 

Our real world's version of the savage Kalibak is Tom Homan, the brutal man who runs I.C.E. and likes going on TV to brag about dragging undocumented people out of the homes and workplaces. There's a glee in his eye when he talks about it that can really roil the stomach. 

I do a gender switch for the Glorious Godrey role and stick in the fare but fatuous Press Secretary Karoline Levitt. She smiles gleefully even as she delivers yet another death blow to democracy. 

And I haven't forgotten the mutating J.D. Vance who gets the role of Mantis just because he gives me the creeps. Our Vice President doesn't work for us, and he doesn't work for Trump either. His master is a billionaire who wants to rule his share of the planet. 

Scott Bessant, Sean Duffy, Doug Collins, Lee Zeldin, Russel Vought and Howard Lutnick can pick among themselves as to who wants to be who in the Deep Six. 

And there they are. I found analogs almost too uncanny as I thought through this post. These are dark times in America. But as Jack Kirby learned so well, the villains have to confronted, the enemy must be defeated and we as humans must always choose Life and not Anti-Life. We have heard the word...it is battle. 

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APRIL FIFTH Is The DAY!

 

Just want to spread the word. Following the debacle that was "Liberation Day" from the Trump administration tomorrow seems an ideal time to press an advantage in the field. The news media might even cover it. 

Know your rights out there. Check out this ACLU advisory. 

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Another Galaxy, Another Time?

In between fretting about the downfall of the 20th Century order, I'm indulging myself in some Star Wars. I saw the first movie in the theater four times, and it was among the very first VHS tapes I owned. (Still have it.) I got the Marvel comic for a few issues, but I got distracted from that and didn't pursue it. One thing I've never done in all these years is to read the novelizations of the first trilogy. Lucas is credited with the first installment, the one we now call "A New Hope". When I read the first few pages though, I was struck by some startling parallels. Here is the "Prologue". 

I was gobsmacked at how much it reads like the news of the day. I guess we are enduring a story as old as time and fraught with enough drama for nine feature films and counting. Change a few names and we have the current crisis in the United States well and properly predicted, albeit from the depths of space from a time long, long ago. 

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Ignore Us When We're At Your Front Door!

Those who have told us what to think for decades need to have an attitude adjustment. They need to tell the truth about what's happening. They are cowed by an administration which threatens their revenue streams, but they have to know that we will put them out of business if they do not awaken and answer this most urgent call. It's incredibly frustrating to me that I cannot be at one of these marches due to my sundry physical infirmities. But I am going to do what I can to support them from this meager podium and other places as well. They have not arrested a natural citizen for using his or her First Amendment protected speech...yet. We must use it or lose it. 

Tap on any of the images above or use this link for more details. 

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