A Geek History of Time - Episode 35- Marvel's Civil War and the Patriot Act (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 9, 2019

In this episode, Damian fully develops his argument about the connection between the Patriot Act and Civil War. Ed spends some time talking about what a jerk Reed Richards is.

Like they they advertise one match when crashing a car into one of the wrestlers. Not a total victory of Russia, which now we're seeing. He jumped off. He's like, Tantik, bag of flaccid dicks. Sorry, Tantik. Which when you open them up, you find out that they're all cockroaches inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if anybody else is ever going to laugh this hard at anything we say.

We can actually both look out my window right now and see some very pretty yellow flowers that I'm going to be eradicating. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect and are to the real world. I'm Ed Blalock, a world history teacher at the seventh grade level and right now in English teacher for one period a day at the seventh grade level. Kill me now at here in Northern California and I am the father of a 22 month old little boy who has decided that the world is his jungle gym and he wants to climb everything. That's awesome.

Yes. And also, oh god no. You know the point at which it becomes problematic is when he decides that you know That that table that the TV set is sitting on I want to climb up and stand on that You know or or when you know we're we're my wife Okay, I gotta share the story my my wife has really serious working mom guilt Mm-hmm and the day care that we have our little boy at has as a Okay, I got to share the story. My wife has really serious working mom guilt. And the day care that we have, our little boy at, has a selling feature.

They have the ability for you to sign up with an app and you can watch your kid, you can check in with your kid through a camera in the classroom. There's two different cameras set up and you can, you know, so you can see what he's doing over the course of the day. Uh-huh. And because, again, my wife has a near terminal case of working mom guilt, she will put that app up on her phone at the beginning of her workday, prop it up next to the keyboard on her computer at work and just kind of leave it running. And she's working and she can just look over and see what he's doing at whatever time day. Okay. So this wasn't our son, but the climbing thing is apparently a developmental stage for a great many kids.

And she happened to notice that another kid had climbed from the floor up onto the counter in the classroom next to the sink. So we're talking about a somewhere between waste and chest high countertop that a two-foot tall child is standing on top of. So that's a total of, you know, if they pitch over, that's a four-foot fall to the floor. Right. And or more, foot fall to the floor. And she had to have a talk with the management of the center because the one teacher who was on duty at the time was spent two minutes having a conversation with another adult in the hallway while that was going on and nothing happened but you can imagine the level of that she was dealing with, and the,

oh God, turn around, turn around, go back into the room. Notice what's going on, turn around, see this, that was going through her head the whole time that was happening. Okay. So that's, you know, vicarious horror. Right. You know, on behalf of somebody else's kid,

not even ours, because, oh my God, must climb. Right. Everything. Right. Like us. He wants to climb us and he's learning enough words that now we can walk up to you and say, hands. And that means he wants to grab your hands. He wants you to pick him up and he's got really good. Here's this, I blame you. Me. You. Oh, I see you. I know why. Because it's a wrestling move. You pick him up and he sticks.

Both of his feet straight out and wants to play at him in the middle of your chest. Yeah. Because that's the only place I could think of that he would have learned it was the couple of hours that you were looking after him a while back. We spent the whole time throwing things Oh, yeah, well he does that too, you know, whatever I can deal with that

But you know feet in the middle of my chest for like a half an hour repeated repeated because oh my god It's the greatest thing. Yeah, I love him to death, but dear God child. You don't want that to be so quick So that's me. Oh, okay, who the hell are you? I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher. It teaches a little bit of world history. I just assigned comic books to my advanced Latin students board games to a different set of Latin students and a collectible card game to another set of Latin students. All right. All of which have to be done in Latin. Using different characters throughout history and mythology.

God almighty. It's alright. Yeah. I'm a father of a seven year old girl and a 10 year old, not quite 10 year old, almost 10 year old boy, both of whom are getting along famously and learning to play a game like mouse guard. Nice. Yeah, it's a lot of fun and I'm teaching them all kinds of fun things by leaps and bounds.

Awesome. Yeah, climbing is a normal thing. When we bought my son a dresser, he climbed to the top of it and then jumped from that to his bed. And I have pictures. It's adorable and awesome. I'm sure my daughter climbed to the top of her dresser,

which at the time was about five feet high. She stacked all of her drawers like stairs fine to the top and then took a yoga pose. So, yeah, you know, it could be worse. It could be taller. It could be yeah. But having a vicarious heart attack, I would be happy. No, I was fine with it. I was like, oh cool, you got all the way up there because of my panic then they're going to get a little out of that. They're going to freak out. Yeah, so I was like, oh cool, you got all the way up there because of my panic then they're gonna get They're gonna freak out. They're gonna yeah, so I was like awesome. Let's let's endorse that so that you don't think it's as cool Yeah, so

There's no rebellion involved in this at all right, so you can stop doing it right exactly I'll take the clause out that works. Yeah, so last time we were talking about Patriot act and we were talking about a Patriot Act, and we were talking about Marvel Comics, and if it turns out, there were very good arguments for security and very good arguments for civil liberties when it came to Marvel Comics. Yes.

There was no time for arguments when it came time. The Patriot Act, which is why I think Marvel Comics, there was no time for it. There were three days from Finnish writing to... Of the jackal? No. Different condor? No.

Which no, three days of the jackal. Three days of the jackal. Yeah. Yeah. But there were three days from the Finnish writing at stage to the, it's now signed into law. To the end of law. And by the way, that was October 26 when it was signed into law.

So October 23 is when he finished writing it. 9-11 happened on September 11th. To write 130 pages worth of- Well, as you pointed out, a lot of it was pre-generated already. He folded a lot of pre-existing shit into it. It says though there was a prior, and this helped push it along. This is true. Which is a major plot point in the Civil War, actually.

Turns out Nitro is not that powerful. No. And one of the reasons that Wolverine is not in the story for the most part until later is because he's trying to hunt down Nitro and figure out what the hell happened. And Nitro doesn't even know why he was that powerful that day. No. Well, we ultimately, well, spoiler alert.

Yes. You can stop me, but we ultimately wind up finding out, because there's, is it mastermind is this name? The Reed Richards villain, smartest guy in the world, after Reed Richards, winds up checking Reed Richards' math. We wind up finding out in this conversation between Reed Richards winds up checking Reed Richards's math and we wind up finding out in this conversation between Reed Richards and whoever the other guy that mastermind whatever his name is that Reed somehow was was if he wasn't the geneticist of the entire thing but he was pulling strings the

entire time because the alternative was you know know, the destruction of the world mass casualties and it would be so much worse for everybody involved. And so this was the only way, which by the way, that's Reed Richards in a nutshell. Yeah, one that's Reed Richards, arrogance 101 that's Reed Richards in a fucking nutshell. And I was talking at the end of our last episode about how great the writing was the beginning of Civil War. By the way, I think it was Mad thinker. Oh, okay, yes. You know, the writing at the beginning of Civil War was like holy cow, this is amazing.

And I mean, we can wait until we get to the end for the verdict, but you can see what direction I'm going already. Yes. And so anyway, okay. Well, that's, I think, partly that's still the writing, though, because as you go further and further down the road of fighting each other and getting invested in that, you get further and further away from the reasons why you started that fight in the beginning. And as a result, narratively, what ends up happening is the same thing that ends up happening in the story.

So I think accidentally it does that. Okay. Now we can have that argument when we get to that point. So anyway, rewind. It's 2006. Yes. Picture and axe does not sunset. It gets made permanently into law.

Yes. Standing. Yes. Law. Normal. Yes. Completely normalized. The schism that developed between Iron Man and Captain America highlights the schism between people who felt it was their duty to support the president

Mm-hmm, and those who felt it was their duty to stand up for those who could not So law and order for individual rights of the most vulnerable This is your standard classic difference between conservative and liberal. Yes. Social order, which is fragile and really hard to get back compared to individual rights, which are sacrosanct and should not be trampled. Yes. And that's a tension point. Finding, well, yeah, the tension between those is, I mean, it's lot versus Hobbs. Yeah.

You know, I don't know why I was thinking about lot versus Hobbs earlier today in a different context. But, you know, oh, we were completely separate. It was related to another conversation we were having. Uh-huh. But, you know, that tension between those two ideas and where the balance point lies was an obsession of everybody in the enlightenment. They were trying to figure it out.

Was trying to figure out, okay, so do we need to have an absolute ruler who's going to maintain order at all costs because, oh my my God order is so fragile and life is nasty British and short, Hobbes. Or do we need to have government in order to ultimately protect those sacrosanct individual rights and that is the sum total of what government ought to be doing and nothing more and that ought to all be through the will and the sovereignty of the people. Right. Right. And that's Hobbes.

Hobbes. Yeah. Hobbes was already locked. And, you know, so what's interesting here though is that you see that social order is reliant upon what you just mentioned under lock. The sovereignty of the people. Right. reliant upon what you just mentioned under lock. The sovereignty of the people, right. Because the collective sovereignty of the people

as opposed to individual rights. Individual liberty, individual rights. What I would argue is that we can transpose out of Hobbes the monarch for the people, the mass, the society as a whole in this argument takes the Hobbesian role of the controlling authority. Or the people who are actually wanting this to happen are a small group of folks who are in charge, the oligarchs, who are claiming that it's for the people and it's the will of the people.

Because you don't really see the will of the people being represented by people. You see it for some Davis? No, wait. No. We're doing this for Southern right, knowing you're in it for your own fucking economic interest.

Yes. Yeah. But there is the mom. I see what you're saying. Yeah. And interestingly, there's a mom of a kid who died at Stanford. Kids name was Damien, and it was spelled the right way. Holy shit. Yeah, it was very direct.

What? Yeah, I can believe that. And she's a redhead, I don't remember if the kid was, because you never actually see him in the panels, because he just was part of the one. He's got a very often. But she is a coffin, but he's got a minute. But she is, she kind of represents the world of people, but in many ways she's a lobbying group.

Well, and she buttonholes Tony. Yes. When, when he's trying to express his condolence and he's trying to say we're trying to fix this, trying to make it right, she, she but she buttonholes him and I don't remember all of the details of the conversation, but I remember coming away from him being like, I can understand that this woman is dealing with really raw grief and all that kind of stuff, but this conversation leaves Tony looking like a putt. Yeah.

For lack of a better word. Well, and it was the only one I can... It was really the civil war that made me think that Iron Man was a tool. Yeah, prior to that I didn't care for much. For him very much. It was like, okay, he's a back line fighter who swoops in and does cool shit for the Avengers.

But this series is what spoiled me against him, quite honestly. Well, yeah, and we can get into, I mean, as we go through the plot, we can get into those points. Sure. Now, as we talk about it, that was the first moment where it was like,

you're kind of a moron. Like not like your blank, you're not paying, you're not seeing the subtext of like anything. Right. So Mark Miller, creator of the series, not paying, you're not seeing the subtext of like ganking. Right, right. You know. So Mark Miller, creator of the series, said that he agreed with Iron Man politically.

But he made sure that Cap's arguments held water in 2006 too. Yeah. Now while security is a good thing, and we need the changes to adapt to a new world, Miller, a Scotsman, also so how quickly people went from wanting to feel safe to wanting to invade Afghanistan, to wanting to invade Iraq. Yep. Despite there being no real evidence for it,

and the people's will was manipulated massively in the process. I should also point out here that when Miller says he agrees with Iron Man politely, and you point out he's a Scott as a citizen of the UK long before we had the Patriot Act over here because of the nature of the British Constitution they they have never had the same level of protection for self-accrimination right that we do they have never had the same level of assumption of a-accrimination that we do. They have never had the same level of assumption of a right to privacy that we have.

They instituted massive public surveillance. Yes. If you're in a public place anywhere in the UK, you are being watched by a camera. Like unless you are a career criminal who spends your time discreetly figuring out where the blind spots are. You are spending your life in the view of law enforcement who are explicitly collecting tape

for investigation when a crime gets committed. Like British police procedures nowadays rely on that. That is because it's a standard thing. To us prior to 9.11, the very idea of, I remember people talking about that in shades of horror. Like, oh my God, it's Orwell was totally right. And we still haven't done that. Right. But if people tried to do that now, well, we have done that, we just do it for them. This is true. We have smartphones. We have Facebook. We have social media. We have Instagram. Also, private companies. I have an Echo

Dot in my living room. Yeah, I have one right over there. Yeah, private companies. Yeah Have cameras everywhere There are traffic cameras every yeah You have the right to face your accusers Yeah, and yet we're constantly filmed yeah, so yeah, that's that's what's going on There's a quote that I have that came from Luke Cage, and it says, there's no way I'm working for the government, because the next thing I know, I'm on a plane, do I Iraq,

and I'm going to be invading Syria on behalf of the American government. Poet and argument. Yeah. He's not wrong. Now, strangely to me, this argument of regulation for civil liberty ends up with those who defend civil liberty on the right. And I've kind of done some more reading. Okay, but okay, so most people's understanding in America is that if you defend civil liberties, you're typically on the right. And if you want government regulating controlling things, you're on the left. Yeah. Can you give me I mean you're my conservative friend. Well, for what that passes for anymore in my case

but yes, you're an intellectual conservative. Okay, I'm coming. Yeah, yeah. All right. I need you to give me your best of explanation for how that happens. How government regulation ends up being an argument of the left and civil liberties and becoming on the right. Now try to do it without invoking the second amendment is the real trick here. Oh, I could do it without that. Please. is the real trick here. Oh, I can do it without that. Do it. No, please. No. Where it comes from is the tension between the right

and the left over, collectivism versus individual liberty. And because everything in our politics is tied to economics, because we were founded as a nation of merchants, traders, and, you know, rum runners. You know, John Hancock made his money by, you know, avoiding British tax regulators. Because capitalism is woven inexorably into the threads of our political discourse, from the founding of the country. And because we're a bourgeois nation at our roots,

the idea of the government regulating your ability to make a living is tied to all of your other rights. And so it winds up becoming anybody who is economically libertarian. And that tends to be conservative. That's what it tends to be. Conservatives, as opposed to on the left is collectivism and social safety net and environmental, all the environmental regulation, all that kind of stuff is from the point of view of

as a society we need to do this society, we need to do this collectively, we need to do this. So that's where Democrats in our country have the reputation for being the ones like, well, they're all to be a law. That's tied to that collective, we need to look out for everybody in society winds up being collective.

Okay. Wines up being regulation as opposed to, I have the right to do this thing. So it's like rights versus liberty. It's, well, it's, it's, yeah, rights versus, yeah. Okay. Sorry if I don't know if I put it as rights versus liberty, but it's, it's, it, but it's rights versus collective welfare.

Okay. And in the broad sense of welfare, not a social program, but it's the idea that individual interests need to be prevented from spoiling the, from perpetrating the tragedy of the comments. Yeah. You know, is a fundamentally, I mean, that's, that is a more left-leaning kind of idea. But it requires regulation from the government. It requires regulation from the government to do it, which is the reason that winds up being the way

our political cookie crumbles, the way it does along those lines. Because in, does that make sense? It does, it does. Okay. And I appreciate that. Because in just articulating that, instinctively, I was like, oh yeah, no, I can totally do this. Then I had to actually articulate it. I hope I'm making this clear.

Damn it, these words don't work. So because to me, you have Tony Stark representing the government wanting to restrict the rights of individuals. That's inherently conservative thing because they're after social order. And Cap is wanting to say no, these are our rights. To me, that's inherently a liberal thing because it's protecting the rights. And yet when a classical liberal sense, the idea of the individual rights, then the sovereignty of the individual citizen in that sense, is a classical liberal idea. Right.

Yes. So, in terms of left and right, those line up to me, ideologically, left and left, you know, Tony is representing the right and Cap is representing the left. Yeah. And yet this idea of regulating your guns, yeah, is very much the left because of the public danger it poses. Well, that's the exact same argument that Tony Stark is using. We are too dangerous for the public. Yeah. Therefore, we should regulate, but it's clearly an authoritarian approach that he's,

he's creating. Whereas, Cap is saying, no, no, no, civil liberties, which aren't property rights. No. Right. And I think that's where I can speak out of that. Here's not the weird kind of, because you are right, that there is a parallel to second amendment. But ultimately, it's really important to note that the second amendment is an amendment

about a specific kind of property right. That's a good point. And in this case, we're talking about the rights of individuals to their fourth amendment rights. Right. We're not talking about your ability to own a firearm for you to have access, your right to have access to a weapon. That's a good point is not that these are people who are weapons Yeah, and because we're talking about people who are

Unavoidably weapons that's their person not their property that's their person of the property and so that That warps. warps the nature of that argument that that makes that it makes the parallels to Second Amendment inappropriate. Well, yeah. And I think I think on one level, you can totally say that there's a Second Amendment parallel. When you're talking about something dangerous needing to be controlled. Right. There's definitely a second amendment. There's there is a parallel to the arguments made by people for amendment of the second amendment or for, you know, uh, uh, things that second amendment proponents say are a violation of the second. Yeah.

Um, so there's a parallel there. Right. But the parallel to the second amendment falls apart when you realize that we're talking about people not property. True. And so what we're what we wind up talking about here is individual right to privacy versus privacy versus collective right to safety and security and regulation of a dangerous thing. I would argue this is more like environmental regulation. This is you have this business interest, you have this thing that you are doing. If we want to take the analogy to talk about corporate personhood, the corporation as a person naturally creates this problem for the collective society. And so there's the right quote unquote of the corporation as a fictive person to exist and do business and do its thing.

And then there's the right of society to say, okay, no, look, you got to limit how you do that. Right. And, and so that's harder to pin down to a, when you're talking about a fictive person corporation, sure, that's harder to pin down to a specific amendment. Yeah. But I think that's, that's a better analogy

for what we're talking about. Okay And I don't like it the more I think about it because it kind of dehumanizes the characters that we're talking about in a way but Well, they're literally effective people. Well, yeah, this is true. So yeah, but you get what I know I do I do the 14th amendment by the way, is what's normally used to defend corporations, which is really gross. That's disgusting. Yeah. Jesus.

Yeah. So this is becoming an argument of regulating people who have destructive capabilities and training them, or letting vigilantes flout the law because they consider themselves as answering to a higher purpose. And I'm really uncomfortable with what you said. I don't want to support it.

When you phrase it that way. Yeah. You start sliding Tony work. Yeah. But I still think that Cap has a more compelling argument simply because of the very practical and real danger that Spider-Man pointed out. Speaking of which, this story becomes a tale of three characters. Spider-Man, thing, and Punisher.

Spidey, I get. Punisher, I know where we're going with that. Oh, okay, yeah, thank you. Yeah. So you got one of my favorite parts of the whole saga, the better fact, was the almost kind of throw away bit with Ben Grimm. Oh, where he speaks in French?

We're, yeah, well, and the reason he's doing it is because he left the fucking country. Yeah, he went up to Quebec. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a clubbing time in French. It was, it was, it was choice. It was so beautiful.

So anyway. So yeah, you have these two uh polar opposites now. Cap and Ironman, who by the way were best of friends. Yeah. So uh and it's Spider-Man thing in Punisher. Spider-Man comes out, names himself, and registers publicly. This goes against everything he's ever acted on. Punisher tries to join Cap and his allies. And Cap basically tells him to kick rocks. Yeah, and he considers himself doing a good thing despite being a horribly violent murderer. Oh yeah, well, that's the fundamental issue with Frank Castle's particular brand of crazy. Yeah. And it was a, it was I remember that was that was another moment. I remember reading at the time I remember going yeah go cap yep

Castle dick The thing is purposefully neutral chooses to be in the neutral side because he compare he cares about his family more than he cares about the world around him Mm-hmm. It's not very heroic No, but it's really, really completely understandable. Identifiable and totally understandable. And it's one of the most human moments of the story. Yeah, well, it's been grim the most human character there. But I also put woodpoint out with this. He's acting from a position of tremendous privilege. He's super strong and super tough. No one's gonna fucking hurt him True, he's got a public identity already and his whole yeah his his idea is ready public

He's wealthy and his family are themselves the fantastic four. Yeah, so the amount of threat there under is Comparatively less than say on May. Yep. You know Septogenarian, Occasionarian little lady and now paled on an octopus arm, right like dude. Yeah Incidentally cap goes to moon night and preemptively tells him to piss off because he's too crazy So that happens Because he is. Yes. But he straight up, because he's like, don't even think about it.

No, I came to you to tell you no. But I wasn't even asking. I don't give a shit. Right, I don't care. No. Yeah. Now, Spider-Man is the every man. He's us.

He's our best conscience. Not cap. No. Cap is too unattainable. Iron Man is to remote. Spider-Man is the audience. Like he's always bent. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the deal is... Cap. Yeah. Cap is the paladin. Yep. You know, he is the ideal. He is the paragon. Tony is trying to think the mythic or legend kind of archetype in this case, but he's he's he's another archetypal figure in this case.

He's a man who's got a figured all out intellectually. Yeah, he's got it figured out all out morally. Morally and emotionally. Yeah. And so we're in the middle trying to figure out, okay, do I listen more to my head? Do I listen more to my heart? You know, is is is there and and he's in that place where it's like, well, I need to find out where the shade of gray is light enough.

Spidey is also really smart. Yeah. But he's conscience driven. Yeah. So he has these instincts, he has these drives, he has these conflicts within, and they've always been aimed at specifically at the readers, right? He worries the whole way, and he gives voice to our worry about whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea. Whether or not arresting and detaining immigrants is a good idea. Since some did 9-11, is this the America we want to turn into? Yeah. Here is Spider-Man. All right. Iron Spider. Mm-hmm. The semi-robotic suit. Which I just want to point out there's a certain extent to which in the iron spider suit there's a parallel between him and Doc Ock. Oh 100 percent. You know. Yeah. That the closer to Tony you get the more like Doc Ock you are. Yeah. So, um, and he's, I don't know, I don't remember who he's talking to in the panel. He's, he's chastising, cap and iron man.

Oh, both of them. Uh-huh. Okay. So he's chastising both of them. But mostly cap. Mostly cap. Okay. Okay.

Aw, come on. The only people who win when we're fighting each other are the bad guys, big man. This goes against every principle you ever believed in. Caps reply, don't talk to me about principle spider-man, I saw that little stunt you pulled on TV, is Mary Jane happy about the Sandman having her zip code now. Wow, Steve, dick, move, right? Well, yeah.

That's, I, I, I, I, I understand. I mean, it's, it's, I think he's a meaningful point, but it's kind of punched in below the panel. It is, it is. It is, like literally. Mm-hmm. You know, very Jane, but, you know, she, wow.

Yeah. So that's spidey. By the way, yeah. I just want to point out that immediately puts me in mind of Chris Evans in the trailer we've now all seen online for the movie Knives Out where he's just sitting here and he's sure saying everybody, each shit. Each shit.

Each shit. Each shit. And like, because it's Chris Evans who is now indelibly forever connected to Captain there. Having kind of that same moment. That's as close as Cap is ever going to get to telling somebody to each shit because language. Oh yeah.

Holy cow. Now thing is the every man who's been busy providing for his family, right? Yeah. He's our non-aligned friends. I'm in moderate. Oh, I just don't want to, you know, I don't know. I just don't want to worry about politics.

I don't watch the news. Yeah, those are the things. He's the working class sensibility. Man. He doesn't want to be bothered with politics. He's made me, he's made me really not like Ben Graham. How the hell is that? He's perpetually grumped out by both sides.

It's, yeah. And he's on both sides. Yeah. Because he has friends who believe one way while he believes another. And he allows them to in that he's grumpy against everyone. Punisher is a middle component of a generational dynamic. Okay. Okay.

Cap is the greatest generation and his values. Yes. He's a generational dynamic. Okay. Cap is the greatest generation and his values. Yes, he's a new dealer. Yeah, yeah. He participated in a heroic and successful war. He literally saw the internment in his lifetime on like any superhero around him by the way. He's outdated as are his values and this is what I meant by unattainable.

Punisher was a product of Vietnam. He came back more violent, he was conflicted. Ultimately, the culture he came back to devoured his family, and by extension himself, he is the skullface of the American failure. He is pain. Cap is righteous. He is damaged. Cap is righteous. He is damaged. Cap is whole.

And then there's Iron Man. He's technology and munitions in electronic surveillance. He is the war on terror, personified, literally personified. He's an army of one. He's more tech than humanity, more machine now than man, more intelligence. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but certainly misguided and the ends are starting to justify the means a lot quicker. But we'll get into more of that in a second because I got some shit to say about some of that. He's much more intelligence than raw courage.

Okay, yeah. He's a drone pilot doing more stuff by, but sleeping in his bed at night. He's colorful, he's entertaining, he's smug, he's an alcoholic, and he's the arrogance of Afghanistan and Iraq. Okay. And in 2006, our culture is caught between wanting to feel safe again and remembering its ideals. In 2006, we're caught between our pain and our conscience. Okay.

I'm going to show you this and I just want you to describe it and maybe I don't know if you remember this. Oh wow. It's an epilogue to right after Spider-Man pulled off his, I believe it's right after Spider-Man pulled off his mask. Okay. Oh wow. Okay. So there's a summary of Japanese American internment. There are three comic panels at the bottom toward the bottom of the page. There looks like there's an excerpt from a diary entry. Actually, it's a poem that was read by somebody who was in turn. By an in turn. And Spidey is on a cell phone talking to somebody. I believe it's Mary Jane. Okay and he tells her I love you at the end of the conversation and then the

very last frame, there's, Spidey is superimposed over a picture of an internee aboard a bus being driven presumably to one of the camps. And Spidey is reading copy of the New York Post with Hulk steroids scandal on the front cover. Yeah, well it is a New York Post. All right, so cover. Yeah, well, it is a near post. All right. So yeah. Yeah. All right. So. So it's explicitly juxtaposing the current issue of

hero registration with Japanese internment, which I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know how I feel about that. Well, on the one hand, it's an important thing to remind readers of. On the other hand, it feels a little gross to use it. Yeah. So I'm going to read the poem. Okay. I don't mind because I understand why people think it's gross, but I think it's this is what cemented for me that these were very important comics Here's the poem. They've sunk the post deep into the ground. They've strung out wires all the way around with machine gunness

Just over there and centuries and soldiers everywhere imprisoned in here for a long long time. We know we're punished though. We've committed no crime our thoughts are gloomy and enthusiasm damp to be locked up in a concentration camp. Loyalty we know in patriotism we feel to sacrifice our utmost was our ideal, to fight for our country and die perhaps. But we're here because we happen to be jabs. We all love life and our country best. Our misfortune to be here is in the West.

Our most fortunate to be here in the West. To keep us pen behind that damn fence is someone's notion of national defense. That's the poem. And what gets me is at the very top of that next page is the interaction between a young girl and her dad getting off of the bus presumably at one of the internment camps. Yeah, looks like man's in our background at the bottom of the page. And the little girl is stepping off the bus and says, Daddy, when can we go home?

And the father says, this is our home, Kimiko. So there's one more page where dad is talking to his daughter. And if you don't mind reading that, that's probably. All right, so as this conversation is going on between the father and his little girl, Spidey in the iron spider suit is, I don't know, moving around between building this, doing stuff. He's got a great movement because he's cooperated. Yeah, so the father says, you must promise to be a good girl, Kimiko, we are all going to have to do the best we can.

She asks, did we do something wrong? Father says it's just for a few weeks while the war is on. They have given us housing, you see. The little girl says, why can't we be in San Francisco? He says, we are helping the war effort. She asks, why? He says, because it is our duty, because we are Americans. And then at the very bottom of the page, we see that Spidey has made it across New York to Ellis Island. And he is looking up at the Statue of Liberty and he says with great power, huh? So I think it's totally valid to include that because this is at a time where America is yet

again having to answer the question, what do you want? Well yeah and there were security and liberty. And there were there were there were people who at the time were bringing up man's and r and talking about the threat. Yep. You know, that we don't know how many of these people, meaning these turners, Arabs, you know, of various and all stripes. We don't know, you know, there might be sleeper cells. We got it, you know, I mean, there were people who were like, whacked out paranoid.

Yep. And then there were people who were concerned that that whacked out paranoia might lead to something like, and that's happening again. Exactly. So the specifics of the Civil War and our... It just took a couple of more presidential administrations that didn't involve Arabs, but now we're selling weapons to the very country that funded the

attacks by presidential fiat after Congress didn't want to do it. Right. It's a weird separation of powers. The specifics of the Civil War and our vastly changed culture are worthy of note here. Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic developed a prison in the negative zone called 42. Yep. Cute. But it really got its name as one of the 100 ideas that Stark, Pym and Richards came up with to fix things after Stanford. This prison is literally not in our world and there's no due process,

no extradition and no appeal process to get out. Detention is endless. This should sounds familiar to the Detainment Facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Not on American soil. It was set up under Bush in January of 2002 as a place that the fence secretary Rumsfeld, a position that Tony Stark would also hold in the comics, could hold indefinitely the detainees without any real legal standing in American jurisprudence. At the time of its inception, the Bush administration claimed that anyone held there would not be entitled to the Geneva Conventions protections.

The US Supreme Court said otherwise and by July of 2006 the Bush administration gave lip service to the fact that detainees should be given those protections. Yeah. Several committed suicide and it's been proven that torture has happened there. Yes. I'll show you this. This is Firestar. I'm the new warriors. Yes, of the new warriors. They didn't choose this life, Miss Floyd. I did.

And now someone somewhere has decided that's just too bad because I'm suddenly a danger to society. I was in the new warriors. I lost a lot of good friends because of what Nitro did at Stanford. But I don't ever remember us being that dangerous So kind of comes back to the internment and such like that

so By the way of the 779 men who've been held there since 2002 yeah in Guantanamo Bay 400 plus were captured by afghan and pacistanie bounty hunters yeah not enemy combatants that were captured after battle no no and but they were defined as such yeah 173 were held and released without ever being charged 43 were considered too dangerous to release but also having not enough admissible evidence for a trial. But I mean it's not on American soil, so fairs fair. So there you go. In 42 daredevil gets caught and led to 42. And it's not because he was caught as an enemy combatant, it's because he refused to register. He hit a

silver dollar in his mouth and gave it to Tony to start saying, I guess that makes 31 pieces of silver you've got now, huh? Sleep well, Judas. Wheeeee! Here's the fun part. Iron Man started using villains to hunt down the heroes. Because those were the only people he could find. That too, but the heroes in and he imprisoned them. So many villains signed up to do exactly that

to be legitimate and strained the casualty of what was going on, except that it didn't because America had used the similar methods to fill the detention facilities at Gitmo. Yeah. George Bush also said in November of 2001, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.

A decidedly polarizing statement. The back of every issue of civil war was, whose side are you on? Mm-hmm. An equally polarizing statement, heightening the tension of the Ben Grims and Peter Parker's of the world. Now, this is another thing I want to show you,

and this is an argument between Iron Man and Luke Cage. But I think it's so sprawling that it's gonna need multiple of our voices. Before we do that though we really ought to do an ad because this shit is getting really really sad. Yeah and I'd like to cheer us up with advertising. With capitalism. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll see you guys on the other side. Hey, you nationian Head here. And Damien. Damien.

You in the market for a new book? Why, you know what I am? All right, well I got a series to recommend to you. Oh, this fantastic. You know what, I would love to read a book about like Irish folklore and Celtic folklore, but set in urban setting in America. Got anything?

Wow, that's not at all artfully set up. But I do as a matter of fact have something for you The American fairy tale trilogy by Bishop O'Connell starts with the stolen. The second volume is the forgotten the final Okay, is the return you'll remember the second volume later you punning son of a bitch. No that's The title is the forgot that which is fine because I'm sure they could find it on Amazon And they would actually find the title without having to rely on your baddie memory Good day, sir and on that note back to the show All right, we're back. Let's dive right into it. I'm going to read for you Ironman's part. You do my favorite read Luke Cage, and let me know if you're doing Jessica Jones too.

Okay. I'll take care of the Ironman Miss Marble, and you two, keep it up with the Joneses. So Ironman, I need to know Luke, because at midnight, if you don't, and you and Jessica are effectively criminals, again, silence from Luke Cage. Yeah, no reply. They're in Luke Cage's house, by the way. Now I talk to, wait, I talk to the powers of B.

You're sorted past all being swept under the rug, all that trouble in your youth, none of it will affect your standing as a sanctioned Avenger. And Jessica jumps in. Luke is still not saying anything. Jessica jumps in. What about me, Mr. Stark? Yeah, I have powers too. And you know what? I don't want to use them. And I have no plans to use them. And I don't want to work for the United States of corporate sellouts. What about someone like me? Well Miss Cage.

Jones. Well Jessica, you'll sign in and we'll deal with that when the time comes. You have a newborn baby. No one's going to ask you to go fight Dr. Doom. That's your ass. Jessica, your... Carol, don't.

Just your military, you like being told what to do. We don't. In fact, we hate it. It does, it's Captain Marvel. Or Miss Marvel, the country has shifted and we're doing everything we can to keep everything nice and... You're compromising yourself past any level of...

And then Luke Cage. The world ain't a nice place. If it was, we wouldn't be who we are. You're trying to make the world something and ain't. And worse, you're selling yourselves to do it. And who are you selling to? What you're trying to do, it can't be done. It's not human nature. Uh, Tony, look, I need to know, will you sign on? Guess we'll find out at midnight.

Look, they will come to your home and they will take you out of here. And if that doesn't work, they'll call us and next. Do you want this? Is that what your goal is? Oh, is it Mississippi in the 1950s now? Oh, come on. The difference is... Stop it. Will you stop? And then we go to the middle. It's an interesting... Yeah, it's a different... Yeah, interesting layout. Getting pulled out of your home in the middle of the night for being different is the same now as it was then. Jessica jumps in. Does have a timeless quality to it.

Don't it? And then Iron Man and Carol are categorically silent. Then Iron Man says no, this is about breaking the law. Slavery used to be a law. And then Carol says Luke. Then. Yeah. And then Iron Man says you're twisting this and I won't hear it.

You should hear it. You should turn those robot ears on real loud because it is what it is baby. You're perverting it all. You're distorting the ideas you said we stand for to the point that when you're done with all of this, the ideas won't mean anything. You'll stand for nothing except whatever they tell you to. And I am in response with, if you join, you can make sure that exact thing doesn't happen. So talk about trying to co-opt all over the place. And then they leave, and then it's a discussion between Luke and Jessica dealing with the reality

of what they have to do. I'll take Jessica Jessica you take Luke. Okay. And she's they're just sitting there and Jessica says I got to take the kid and leave. I know. I got it. I know. I'm not leaving you though. I just have to keep her safe. I know that. And then she says come with a come with screw all of it. We got enough money to leave, right? Canada needs superheroes too. I ain't leaving. This is my home. And then she says, Luke, please, you want to end up

like Matt Murdock and jail, fighting for your life. I ain't leaving. I worked damn hard to clean up this neighborhood. This is my world. And I ain't gonna have my kid grow up to find out that after all we've been through, her daddy buckled to the man. I hate this thing they did.

I hate it with everything in me. I ain't going along with it and I ain't leaving my home. The people of this neighborhood know me. I want them to see what they do to me for standing up for what I believe is right. I would just like to point out what a men man is he talking about here. And then he says to her, hey, I got unbreakable skin and I've been to jail. I can handle anything they threw at me and I'll bust out of any place they put me. And then I'll teach them what's right if it takes the rest of my life. So he is definitely

making a moral stand that, and that just contrasts with that poem that we saw in tournament right yeah and he knows it's gonna cost you yeah so then Luke is talking to a neighborhood kid what you gonna sign that thing nope because it's crap damn straight what are you gonna do I'm gonna go inside and sit in my home and not bother no one. We're supposed to be allowed to do that, right? Yes, sir. And then he goes up to his apartment. And then the clock strikes midnight.

And at the door, you hear knock, knock, knock, Mr. Cage. Incredible. Now, it's like right there at midnight. Mr. Cage, this is Shield Agent Gabriel Jones. Can I have a word with you please? I'm kind of in the middle of something. Can you come back another time? Notice they haven't said they have a warrant for his arrest.

No, no, no, no. I'm sorry, Mr. Cage, I can't do that. Okay, hold on. And he's picking up his couch. And he flames the couch through the wall. Yes. And then, yeah, yeah, I remember it from the last time I was falsely accused of asterisks and bleep.

I didn't do. Yeah, and then the cops say, okay, we got a problem here. They're shield agents, sorry. And then there's a, okay, we got a problem here. They're shield agents, sorry. And then there's a fight. Oof, we need backup. And then there we go. Telecarrier, we are experiencing resistance. Ground crew, Romani, get in there, the whole way is blocked.

Use your hover disc, keep it on the sky. It might be an ambush. Is it just one guy? And then they start shooting at Luke with armor penetrating things. And then what I really like here is that there's these two young men in the days before smartphones filming it. Yeah, they have, they have a camcorder. And kids saying, whoa, told you I knew they were coming. Don't stop filming. Now Luke's shirt has been shot off. Yeah.

He's getting hit. It stings when he gets hit by the way, but it doesn't break his skin. And they keep shooting at him. Lots and lots of automatic weapons, fire. And then cap and daredevil. Show up. Show up.

Now daredevil is in prison and it turns out that this particular daredevil is actually Danny Rand filling in for a while. And then it gets really bad for everybody. And to the point where they call it in, and he says, yes, yes, it's Captain America. And then Falcon shouts in. And the Falcon, please, I have psychics. I'm psychic syndrome as it is. And then you see Luke saying, didn't expect to see you to hear Derrick Ovel, aren't you and Jail? Well, I am in the Nigma wrapped in a riddle. Are you okay? Mm-hmm. I was just resting.

Uh-huh. So they have their interplay and that, that is the rescue of Luke Cage. So that's what someone who's fighting against the system puts up with. Other people who are crushed by the system have to get on buses and in turn. So in Civil War Frontline it's a companion series and it's at the end of the first few issues. There is these beautifully done epilogues, like I said. First one was to Mary Jane, which we read. And the second issue of it contains a juxtaposed story of Caesar crossing Rubicon, along with his soldiers complete with the Aleyai Yakdast, with Iron Man arresting prodigy for failing to register seconds after midnight. So Iron Man didn't go to a rest

Luke Cage. He went to arrest a drunk. Well, because going to a rest-loop cage, he'd have to face all of the moral Compunction of the rest of the All the overtones he'd have to make the hard choice. Yeah, and Ironman says Seconds after midnight you are now recognized as an unregistered combatant Please, please exit this area quietly, you have 10 seconds to comply. But the more chilling part is because now because it's 12 years later is this. A Roman soldier in that epilogue is telling his friend, of course it's a good thing. I'd rather rely on my own judgment than on laws handed to me by some fat distance senator.

Rome needs shaking up and Caesars just the man to do it. A common man, a soldier ostensibly loyal to Rome, so disconnected and disillusioned from the democracy that he doesn't respect the tradition of democracy anymore, and he wants to send someone to Rome so they'll shake things up. Also Iron Man. A third epilogue contains adapted lyrics to a song comparing American companies attack on a Vietnamese village as carnage and soos, juxtapose with Miss Marvel leading a raid on an unregistered and frankly underpowered superheroes with a squad of shield agents. It ends with the line and we would all go down together.

A 4th one contains a story about two brothers fighting each other on opposite sides of the battle of Sessonville near Charleston, South Carolina. And on and on. Miller and Marvel really pushed the idea that there were differences and sins on heroics on both sides of the argument. Now that Luke Cage one is really fucking cut and dry to me. The cap stuff, I'm seeing the argument of vigilantes versus security collectives, but the Luke Cage 1 is dead set, and I think it's really interesting that it's an African-American superhero in his own neighborhood in Harlem that you're seeing the government come cracking

down on, and it's not ambiguous at all. And they really push the idea that both sides are growing mutually incomprehensible to each other as well. Susan Richards leaves Reed Richards. Again. Yeah. Ben goes to Canada. I think you know.

Yeah, that's true. But she leaves him specifically over this. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Spider-Man switches sides after the damage is already done to him personally. The skisming of American Republic is really reflected in these pages and it was happening at an accelerating, though unnoticed, rate in 2006. People saw it mostly as just politics as usual, with the other side just digging in a little harder.

Man, they're really going for it this time. Perhaps the most telling part of the series is the fact that Captain America, human embodiment of the former ideals of our flag, our nation, our culture, the promise of all those things for everyone, gets killed. Yep. And root to the courthouse. He's killed before due process. He's killed before due process.

He's killed after he turns himself in, in order to prevent further destruction and bloodshed, kill before due process, he's killed after he turns himself in, in order to prevent further destruction and bloodshed because he realizes that continuing to fight, although he doesn't concede his point, right? He concedes that continuing to fight is only going to cause more damage. Yes. And he has a moral responsibility not to do that.

Yeah. Which I'm going to point out is the point at which in the series for me, he became the good guy. Now prior to that, Tony Stark had already for me become the bad guy. Gotcha. Tony Stark had already for me become the bad guy. Because we find out prior to that, that he had clone Thor, without Thor's permission, and was treating the Thor clone like a robot.

He had put together Prison 42. Yeah. He had done all this shit that was like, no, no, no, this is villainous. Yes. And he had completely fallen under the end justifies the means. And I was already in the real world a proponent of any people who sacrificed their freedom for a feeling of security deserve neither.

Uh-huh. To begin with, and then seeing Tony Stark embodying, well, you know, we gotta do this for safety, for security, for we gotta protect the children. Right. It was just like, okay, no, you're a fatuous asshole. And I'm completely fucking done with you. And then, you know, well, you know,

and Cap is being kind of stiff-necked, and, you know, this is just, you know, and then Titan, who was, who was, who was, Goliath, Goliath. Goliath wanted to be killed. Yes. And it was very shortly after that that Cap said, I'm not, I'm not gonna continue fighting anymore.

There's been, there's been too much, I can't have more blood shed on my hands over this. I'm going to turn myself in and count on the courts being able to say, this is not just line acting, you know, and then getting assassinated on the floor. How steps. Making him a martyr for the ideals that he that he was trying to defend. So my biggest problem with the Civil War storyline was that I thought by the end of it, they had started out doing such a great job balancing the two sides off against each other and making it clear that no, seriously,

you can be an individual who is conflicted over this and you can be somebody who has an opinion on either side for all the right reasons. And they had taken that and by the end of it, to me, they'd lost that. That had gone away and it was cap is on the side of the angels and Tony has become corrupted by the power involved in what he's doing and the goal of doing it for the sake of doing it. And he's a bad guy, and a fascist. And, you know, and like I was deeply, deeply disappointed by that.

And I bet that you're gonna wind up making an argument that isn't that kind of the whole point. Yeah. Now that I've said all this, so take it away. Well, the next thing I was gonna say is that as he dies, the ideal of America dies. Yeah. Uh, publicly, on the courthouse steps, before the ideals can be tried. Before they can be decided on. Before we can decide which way we're going, they die. And then the very next line I say is that I wrote down here is

I would love to hear your input on the fact that he surrenders and is eventually killed as Steve Rogers, not Captain America. But you just did that, so Captain America. But you just did that. So yeah. Yeah. Now I want to scale back for a second and point out that the series ran into all kinds of problems, not the least of which was the focus of the audience that seemed to be on the battles. People really like the battles. Of course, they're comic books. Marvel and Marvel comic books. I mean from the very beginning of Marvel comic books, anytime there's a crossover, that's what everybody wants to see. Right. But it's, I mean, from the very beginning of Marvel comic books, anytime there's a crossover, that's what everybody wants to see.

Right. But it's, you know, the creators thought that certain moments also weren't as important all of a sudden, and they thought that the audience was missing the point of the question. When the point of the question is, do you comply with the government that's stepping on your civil liberties or the civil liberties of a small portion of the population in order to make everyone more secure, or do you resist? Now that is a false economy, but it is interesting that they were upset that the audience didn't really give a shit about that, which tells me that that had been normalized.

But the Patriot Act had been normalized. But the Patriot Act had been normalized. Well, because it had. I mean, it's really hard to argue that it hadn't been by 06. What everybody was debating about, what everybody was arguing about. I mean, the fact that the Patriot Act was about to either sunset or become a permanent fixture. Yes.

Came up in the news, and it was something that, you know, you heard pointy-headed people on TV where political animals talk about. Yep. And then it just kind of happened. And the public, I mean, it's a frog in a pot of water. Yeah. We collectively shrugged because we had the Iraq war going on

We had we we had you know Afghanistan being Afghanistan like it's been for the Russians and for the British before them Uh-huh everybody who's ever tried to be in Afghanistan. Yep, and You know, we had we had this other stuff going on and, you know, we had been living with these regulations by that time already for five years. And kind of accepting them. And I'm not gonna say regulations.

Okay. I will quibble with that. These were laws. Okay. Regulations and then, yeah. You're right. Okay, regulations are rules and guidelines for the enforcement of laws. Right. These were statute letter, these were black letter law. Right. Okay. Amendment

accepted. Yes. We had gotten used to this being the law. And many of us didn't like it. Right. But the amount of mental bandwidth and the amount of energy we had to really get outraged over it anymore. We were directing our outrage at other stuff that seemed like it was a lot worse, you know, or we just grow tired of Being outraged all the time. Yeah, which is a deliberate tactic by those who want to seize power. Yes

So many critics panned the series. Yeah largely because it was not realistic enough, which is Weird because they also said it wasn't comic book enough. Yeah. Like it got caught in the middle. Essentially. Well they did too. Yeah critics, critics, I think, really, really wanted it to be a lot one thing or another. Yes.

And I think a lot of the critics who were talking about that kind of stuff were not really paying attention to what it was the creators were trying to say. Yeah. I think it did, again, at the very were trying to say. Yeah. I think it did, again, at the very outset, I think it did an amazing job of framing what we were all facing without realizing we were facing. And again, I think the necessity to cater to what the audience wanted created some problems because you know, everybody's like, oh man, I want to see, you know, I want to see Kappin and Iron Man go at it

right? I want to see, you know, and whatever hero was on one side, whatever hero was on the other side man, I want to see him go at it. And it's like the part of the story I wanted to hear was, no, I want to find out what Wolverine fucking finds out. Like me, as a not really typical, you know, comic book fan, demographically speaking, you know, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,ine fan over the rest of it. Anyway, or I was at the time, now I'm a cap guy. But, you know, but like, no, I wanna, I wanna, now that you've introduced this intrigue thing, there's people pulling the strings behind the side. I wanna know what that's about. Right.

You know. And they never fully paid that off. They never paid that off, which is one of the things I didn't like, but there were all these loose ends left kind of hanging because they had to kind of rush together to throw an ending to it. Right. And that's where I agree with you, by the way, is that I don't think that it fulfilled its promise as a series.

I don't think that it was flawless in any way. I do think that it's falling apart toward the end. I was okay with that. And with you being disappointed, I was okay with that because it is a mirror of the time that it was in, but you're absolutely right. It did not, it did not tie up the loose ends that it really should have. It's like, why are you bringing that up if you're not going to pay it off? Well, check of the gun, you know, if you show me a gun in the first act, somebody needs to shoot it in the third act. Yeah. And you do have some of you got shot. Yeah. But we never forgot what the gun was. Why they shot him. Yeah. We never figured out who

the assassin was. What direction they were coming from. I mean, for all we know it could have been Frank fucking castle. Right. Like, actually, we do know like tell me that story. Right. They did solve it, they, but- And then it got really convoluted and stupid. And it was- Well, and they had him traveling through time, stuck in multiple timelines at once. Yeah.

And I mean, I remember I actually read the comics because I saw that he was, that they were gonna be bringing Steve Rogers back. And I, you know, to tap the vein for that. Yeah. But it was, it was kind of stupid. I mean, it was not a great example of plot writing. But I say that with, especially with frontline being in there,

it really still reads well today, reread it. But now you pull different lessons from it. It's not as much a snapshot of its time. Now it is, but it's a snapshot that's so effective that you can see your time in it. So in 2006, mass shootings weren't as big a deal. Well, they're hadn't been nearly as many of them. Right, well, that's because they're still

an automatic weapons band. Yeah, oh. No, wait, that face that. And it faced out earlier than that. No, no, no, it didn't wait it faced out in 2009 because it was put in place So but people aren't shooting up elementary schools full of kids or high school schools full of kids So nowadays the question of registration is different Because it is more about

days, the question of registration is different because it is more about guns. Second amendment. And the polarization is different today. Now, okay. So, nowadays, the argument for this being about second amendment is a more compelling tie in or more compelling takeaway. Yeah. So, presentism would allow us that. Yeah.

It was not intended that way, but there's our thing. But I would also point out that back then police were not on camera murdering on armed civilians as in a critical mass as they were from the 2010s forward. They weren't running over memorials for the people that they had shot in the same day. They weren't turning off their body cameras right before they shoot a kid for running away, who's 13 years old. They weren't rolling up on somebody's house, prowling around the outside of their house and then saying, get your hands up and firing before anybody has enough time to comply. So the question of whether authority or we weren't seeing them

doing any of that. Right. So the question of whether the or we weren't seeing them doing any of them. Right. So the question of whether the authority is legitimate or not has a very different connotation as well now. Oh, yeah. Now, like most comics, it is a snapshot in the time in which it was written, right? Probably even more so considering Miller's choices. Oh, yeah. But it still has a rather universal quality, largely due to the fact that both sides absolutely saw their solution as the greatest good and

Didn't revel in the suffering of the other side losing True also neither side took to Twitter to use the death of a child for political gain true So what have you gleaned? I think you have convinced me that on some levels I was overly harsh in my judgment of what the series did accomplish because I think you have a compelling argument there. The depth of the symbolism of Steve Rogers is marvered him. Yeah, you raised that tide for me. Yeah, I was really good. And the extent to part of my problem with it,

part of my problem with it, part of my problem with it was at the time, the way Tony descended at lightning speed into utter villainy, like mercenary contracting, literal supervillains, was four issues in. Was, he was hiring villains to do this stuff. Blackwater was hired pretty quickly.

Yes, this is true. There's a whole other kettle of fish involved in talking about how that all happened. What bugged me and what made me angry, or maybe not made me angry, what frustrated me at the time, was I felt like that was, again, it was dissent into mustache twirling bad guy,

ism with a veneer of, well, you know, I'm doing this for the right reasons, you know, they turned Tony into Magneto. You know, without the moral, without without the same level of moral back like you can look at Magneto and go, you know, he's he's he's right. He's right. He's wrong. He's right.

He's right. He's right. He's right. He's right. He's right. He's right. He's right. no man, you fucked this up. Like right away. Yeah.

And I felt like the descent happened too fast to be compelling for me. Sure. It immediately turned me off. I mean, like I said, within two or three issues at the wall, I was like, well, you're the bad guy like You know you had this argument that made a lot of sense But now you've done all this shit that like I just I can't get behind that like this is I wouldn't have used a phrase like

problematic Back then right now I'd be like you got problematic Immediately and now right your way past that Let me let me ask you something. Okay. So he took two, three issues. That's about three months worth. Yeah.

How long did it take you to feel that way about Rumsfeld? A Rumsfeld? Yeah. Because if that answer is any more than that, yeah. We gotta address a hell of a lot more bias. Oh. And that's fine. You get to because you're a different person now than you were then. Yeah, but it took the comic book people over a month before they started doing that.

The public issue, this publication schedule. True. But like literally it was written into the thing of like it's going to be about a month before we start doing it to people, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. But like you know, Tony's descent was over the course of several months within that world. True. Rums fell. The experience of reading it.

I didn't read it, you know, one comic one month and the next month. I didn't pick it up. I bingeed. Okay. So for me, it was like over the course of an hour and a half. I watched him just, you know, turn into Sauron. What the fuck? That's fair.

So that's part of my experience. I'll admit that's part of my experience. If I had been reading it, as it was coming out, as it was coming out, my experience might have been different. But to me, it was like, okay, look at the amount of narrative mass.

We have the number of comic pages that we have here that it's taking for this to happen. I feel like this needs to take up more paper. There needs to be more dead trees involved in this journey. And that bugged me. Now, you're totally right. The like, with Roosevelt, I was like, whoa, hold up, what weight, whoa, you know,

that happened real fast. Good. My, my, because the deal is I, I will admit, and I think I've admitted it before, that at the outset, I believed what we were being told about Saddam Hussein, and I was, I am a muscular enough Americanist that there was a part of me that was like the 308 rule applies.

This is a bad guy. He's murdered his people in the past. We kind of let him do it. But you know, this is our opportunity to kind of fix that by getting rid of this bad guy. And I always had some misgivings because, you know, I was paying enough attention to no, we don't have a plan for like what we're going to do after we take Saddam out, we don't really have a plan for him, we're going to handle everything. But you know, I accepted the idea that well, you know, the revenue, the revenue that the Iraqi government will have from oil production, all this stuff, they'll be able to do. We'll pay for all the stuff that's gonna have to happen

and all the dada dada. And of course, we didn't know just how corrupt Cheney was. We didn't know, just how we didn't believe. I was gonna say, the evidence was all there. I knew plenty of people with whom I disagreed because I was like, no, there's no way. That's too cartoonish. Yeah, well, that's too comic book-y. Yeah, no, yeah with whom I disagreed because I know there's no way that's too cartoonish. Yeah well that's too comic book. Yeah no yeah and I was on a

brown. Yeah homeless people are not being found devoid of blood. Right. That's right. Shania was out of town this week. What are my favorite bits from the Daily Show talking about Dick. Um what's fitting name for that guy? I let me tell you. So, but, you know, and so, you know, at the beginning, I was like, three away rural applies. We have the ability to do it. We have a response, but that means we have a moral responsibility to do it. He's a bad guy.

We got to deal with this. And I bought all of the intelligence that Congress bought and everybody else bought, which turned out to be false. Right. So I was a supporter. Yeah. I was I was dupe like everybody else. Well then we went in and I remember I've I've distinctly remember having a conversation in my friendly local gaming store with the owner of the store. Um, about because you know it, because it was all adult guys.

Right. We had a bunch of 30-something, 40-something guys that were part of the crowd at this place. Part of the reason the store didn't do very well and didn't have enough kids in their buying shit. But anyway, discussion came up and we were, you know, bounce ideas, you know, bounce an argument off of each other. And I paraded the idea about, you know, we're in there trying to fix

things. We're in there trying to help people and our guys are getting shot at and we're trying to be the good guy. And Kyle, the owner of the store, said, well, think about it this way. Whatever your intent is, whatever the air intent was, if an affluent army showed up in your backyard, and even if you hated him, they shot to leave your view government or drove him out of power. Yes, someone else came in and did that. Drove him out of power. If somebody else showed up here and they were rolling around in armored vehicles and setting up, you know, a concertina wire perimeter around their camp on the edge of Seattle, because

it's where it was living at the time. You know, how would you feel about that? And I was like, okay, I don't really have a ready response to that. I got to think about that a little harder. And then it was that same year, about a couple of weeks after that, that of course Bush had his moment standing on the deck of the carrier with a big mission accomplished banner behind him. Right. And then it was, I think, that Thanksgiving that he flew into Bogram Air Base to have a photo up with the troops and then fly back out.

And over the course of that time, that was when I stopped being a Republican. Interesting. And I can say that it was the mission accomplished moment that finally pissed me off enough, that I could not say I was a Republican anymore. Because my father was a naval aviator. Right.

My dad actually worked on carrier decks. My dad actually flew naval aircraft. Right. And to see George Herbert Walker Bush, who spent the Vietnam War in an air national guard unit and Didn't even show up for all of his air national guard time right to see him Wearing all of the trappings of the career that my father spent 21 years serving in mm-hmm. I

I was insulted like I was angry. Like, I, I was angry. Funny thing is, my dad wasn't. My dad, my dad had a completely different interpretation of the whole thing because politics is a team sport. He's gonna be a Republican for the rest of his life, whatever. And to him, it was, no, that's, that's the president, you know, wearing, you know,

navel flight suit. That's, you know, to him, it was, no, that's the president wearing, you know, a flight suit. That's, you know, to him, it was representation. To me, it was appropriation. Mm-hmm. And then he shows up, has a photo op on Thanksgiving and then leaves was just like, how much artifice are we gonna swallow from this fucker? Like, I'm, you know.

And so, you know and so You know at the same time that was all happening or that was earlier than civil war But then you know by the time civil war came around I was No longer that guy and and so for me I I think you're probably right about runs fell I probably saw shades of how rapidly that whole thing completely fell apart in how rapidly Tony turned into a mustache twirling bad guy and I was like, well, shit, I don't want to see this.

Yeah. You know. So. Yeah. Well, here's a, that's ultimately that's kind of my last statement on it. Okay. I'm gonna finish with a quote that my brother put me on to. Okay. And it is from a 4th of July speech on foreign policy to the House of Representatives. Okay. From 1821. Okay. John Quincy Adams. Oh, yes. Okay.

And now friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of notation and aberration, discoverers of maddening, ether and invisible planets, the inventors of congary rockets and trapeional shells should find their hearts disposed to acquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind. Let our answer be this. America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inexplainable rights of human nature and the only lawful foundations of government. America and the assembly of nations, since her admission among them,

has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them, the hand of honest friendship of equal freedom of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken amongst them, spoken among them, though often too heedless and often too disdainfully as the language of equal liberty, of equal justice and of equal rights. I would point out that she spoke to her own states and had deaf ears on that. But she has in the laps of nearly half a century

without a single exception respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. This is 1821. She has abstained from interference from the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for the principles to which she clings as to the last vital drop that visits her heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests in the a- a- a- a- a- a. She is the champion and vindicator of her only her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under oaths or under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence? She would involve herself beyond the power of extrication and all the wars of interest and intrigue of individual averse envy and ambition which assumed the colors and usurped the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatrice of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit. America's glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind.

She has a spirit of shield, but the motto upon her shield is freedom and dependence and peace. This has been her declaration. This has been as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit her practice. her practice. I think that that would work as domestic policy as well. At least it used to. Yeah. So, anyway, as far as reading a recommendations go. Yes.

I'm going to recommend people read the Civil War Frontline part. Okay. That's six part series. Actually, that one might be the seven part part series. Okay. Civil War Frontline is decidedly different than Civil War proper because it follows reporters. And they interview people, but it follows reporters.

And so there's far less action. When you see the action, you're seeing it through the reporter's eyes as a bystander and as a reporter. And you get into a lot more of the moral arguments in that. So do you have any recommendations? Read the Bill of Rights. Oh, reread the Bill of Rights.

I know I've recommended at the end of another episode, but reread it. Yeah. For the love of God, reread it. Remember the Constitution. Yeah, yeah, more. Perhaps more directly. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, that's pretty much it just I Would I would call upon all of us to try to remember the better angels of our political nature

and And that is the best reminder I can think of The other recommendation that give it be the Federalist Papers. Interesting. Because there are a lot of arguments involved in the Federalist Papers that explain why the amendments are what they are. Yep. And what the concerns of the founders were when they wrote them. founders were when they wrote them. And so I think that's an important part of one's renewing one's education in basic citizenship. I like it. So yeah, no, it's good. Well, this was depressing.

Well, so many of our episodes that have anything to do with time 11 wind up being that one. That's a really good point. Yeah. I think I, well, a little bit because, you know, what we're talking about is, as a set of changes in national psyche that are rooted in the dark side, like literally fear, hatred, anger. And anything that's rooted in that to the extent

that it is, is you can not have wind up being kind of a drag. It's a good point. That's a really good point. So, all right. Well, for a geek history of time, oh, you know what? Yeah. You can find us on Twitter at geek history.

Time. Time. You can find me at Twitter at Geek History. Time. Time. You can find me at E.H. Blaylock. You can find me at Da Harmony. And until next time for Geek History of Time, Blu. Geek History of Time, yeah. I'm Ed Blaylock. I'm Damien Harmony. And keep rolling twice.

I'm Damien Harmon. And keep rolling twice.