Myth and metaphor

I'm a little disappointed that Tom Tomorrow appears to base a six-panel cartoon entirely on one article, but it's not a short article and the topic is compelling.

So is the metaphor, myth or not. 

I first began reading newspaper archives in my mid-30s. I was dating a woman whose father remarked that, when he became an Eagle Scout, the paper had a nice write-up that he wished he had saved. I thought I'd surprise him with a printout from the library microfilm and began going through the late 1930s period during which I figured it must have occurred.

I never found it, but I began reading the accounts of the Japanese invasion of China, as well as bland articles about Germany's chancellor. It was before the annexation of Austria, but, still, the events made my first response, "Why didn't you do something then, instead of waiting for it all to hit the fan?"

But as I read the stories I realized that, like the metaphorical frogs, everyone was tut-tutting and hoping things would work out and assuming that everything was probably going to be alright in the long run.

And, of course, things did sort of kind of work out in the long run, albeit a long run that included the death of several million people and the general upset of the entire globe. And a period during which, as my mother once remarked, "You have to remember, we didn't know at the time who was going to win."

One of the problems with hindsight is that it mostly works when analyzing a time mankind screws up. It's pretty easy to look at death camps and atomic bombs and the rape of Nanking and the bombings of London and Dresden and all the rest and say, "Wow. They shouldn't have let that happen!" 

It's harder to look back at good decisions with new insights, because you don't see what would have happened otherwise.

You kind of get a sense, for instance, that, if all the good things in our economy and society during the 1950s had just happened "anyway," Eisenhower probably wouldn't have bothered mentioning the potential perils of the military-industrial complex.

But it's harder to pin down and praise the point at which someone steered our domestic agenda in the right direction then than it is to lob rocks at Neville Chamberlain for having been a gullible prat some years earlier.

The other thing that has been on my mind, and which comes to a boil with this cartoon, is a sort of sense of "I told you so" which goes back first to 2008 and then to 1968. I supported Obama, but I never climbed onto the bandwagon that suggested his election would bring about the jubilee and millenium in which the lion would lie down with the lamb and we would all beat our swords into plowshares.

It reminded me of 1968, when everyone suddenly declared Bobby Kennedy the one who would lead us out of the wilderness, and seemed to feel that, if he became president, our troops would be home from Vietnam by maybe mid-February. Of course, Sirhan Sirhan made sure that he never had to live up to those unrealistic expectations.

I think we'd have been better off spared the excesses and corruption of the Nixon White House, but I doubt we'd have gotten out of Vietnam any sooner with RFK in the big chair. I wanted him to win, but I wanted his supporters to kind of chill out and keep their expectations in proportion.

Similarly, I didn't expect Obama to completely reverse everything. But, goddammit, I expected him to reverse a few of the worst things.

And I think there will come a time when people going through the archives of old newspapers (or web sites or whatever) will find bland, matter-of-fact coverage of the Supreme Court upholding the right of the executive branch to avoid scrutiny when they send apparently innocent people to foreign countries to be tortured, and they'll wonder what the hell we were thinking.

And the answer, of course, will be that we weren't.

(Incidentally, if you're a Tom Tomorrow fan, bookmark that link, since it is to his new home at the Daily Kos. And do read that New Yorker piece.)

Comments

[Dave Stephens]

When I voted for Obama, I knew he was a classic full-of-himself-bloviating-gas-bag-liar-liar-pants-on-fire narcissist politician.

It was especially obvious, both in the incredibly inane, "Change" campaign slogan and the most asinine and obvious lie I have ever heard a candidate utter, "I have NO idea what the man that performed my marriage and baptized my kids was saying every FRIGGIN day on the pulpit in the church I attended."

I knew this. But I could not release the faint hope of National Health Care that my sister enjoys in Wales and other friends have enjoyed in Canada...

He appears to be a one-termer, much like Jimmy Carter, but it's still hard to say at this point. But as much as Obama has enraged his extreme base, I'd say he's gonna have a lot of no-shows, especially the youngsters foolish enough to be taken in by such a lame "Change" slogan - those kids are ticked off and ticked off folks generally don't go to the polls...