A Geek History of Time - Episode 65 - Far Side of Absurd Government Part III

Episode Date: July 26, 2020

Wow. You're gonna like this. Oh no I'm not. Cause there is no god damn middle. This is not unlike ancient Rome by the way. Not so much the family of circus. Yeah. I did, when I did Miratelia, I had the same issue as before Nancy.

A lot of them wanted to create self-sustaining farms and got into crystals. I know. Okay. I understand that. But yeah, I'm reading Livy, who is a shitty historian. Because Irrigan is. Others say that because Laurentia's body was common to all the shepherds around, she was called a she-wolf, which is a Latin term for horror.

You were audible, lassies. It was just most of it, was you slamming the table. Yes! As the Romanists at the table, well, duh. Yeah, obviously. Ipso facto. Right. You know, it's your original form.

Ipso, duh. You have a sword rat. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect an artery to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a history teacher here in Northern California teaching middle schoolers about the wonders of multiculturalism by exposing them to the history of different groups other than our own. I am also a very proud father of a two-year-old little boy who has decided that dinosaurs are just about the coolest thing in the world, which I think is a pre-normal developmental phase.

He doesn't seem to quite understand the separation line between dinosaurs and dragons, which I'm okay with. You know, so that's who I am. Who the heck are you, sir? I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher up here in Northern California feverishly recording content in case Districts decide to do things the right way and Using ancient texts to get people closer to understanding each other in all kinds of fun ways

I have a eight-year-old who just lost her top tooth and a 10 and a half year old, both of whom I am now teaching Latin. So we're going to thrive one way or the other. There you go. Yeah, we will summon. They say if you say Latin the wrong way, you summon a demon, they're close. We summon lemons.

So we're one letter off I can I can vouch To to our listeners for the truth of this Every every so often there will be a message on Facebook lemons. You need them. I got them come get them Please yeah, and just last week and after and after an after about a week after about a week the tone because I'm pleading. Yes. Come get your damn lemons of yeah. Yeah. So and just last week we summoned an imp Accidentally and I don't recommend it because you know what they say impenene easy. All right. And we're less than three minutes.

Yeah, we're two, two, five for that one. Two, 25, right? Yeah, all right. Yeah, that was three inch fool. Yeah. So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna get literally Shakespearean. That's please do. Please do.

My responses. So, last time we ended with, we've been talking about the far side. And in order to talk about the far side, of course, we had to get into French existentialism and theater of the absurd and Alfred Gérie. So like you do. And we ended with Mag. I like you do. We ended with mag, like you do. We ended with mad magazine last time.

And just kind of getting into what Gary Larson himself was reading and consuming in terms of media, in terms of what he was watching as a kid because that does absolutely inform what you do with it. And he did have an older brother who scared him on the regular. And he did live in Puget Sound area, so he had access to a lot of, what do you call that, Flora and Fauna. Exploding whales. Yeah, that too. So all of this is going on. He decides to go

off to college, and at first he majors in biology and then realizes he doesn't want to any majors in communications instead. Once he got out of college, yeah. Oh, I'm just sorry. Indicating I was listening. Yeah, okay, and once he got out of college, the world was I'd say in some ways scarier and at the same time less scary We've spoken many a time about how the existential fear of nuclear Explodiness ends up fading into the background and in some ways that lack of Hyper-vigilance on it makes it more dangerous. I

of hypervigilance on it, makes it more dangerous. I would just like to point out that when a fear of a thing fades to the background, people care less and then it becomes more of a danger to them. Because I think that is something we could all do well to remember right now. Yes, yes, in this particular moment. Yes, yes. So, nuclear annihilation, very scary, background noise. Yes, still very friendly or frightening, but you do tend to make friends with it

in some way. While he was looking for work, he starts cartooning. Gary Larson does, and he sold his single frame cartoons to a local magazine in Seattle. And in 79, and his story is just such an interesting story of like, oh shit, that's literally how they did it back then. Like have you ever heard the story of how DB Cooper just like went up and bought an airplane ticket and then got on and didn't even give us a real name? Like you could just do that, right? Gary Larson, by a ticket pay cash. Yeah, you know,

whatever and not even give them your name. It didn't matter. Um, Gary Larson walked into the Seattle Times. What are you gonna do? Try to, you're gonna try to charge the cabb and us. Something like what? Come on. So in, in 1979, he walks into the Seattle Times and he says, Hey, how'd you like to buy my strip? And they look at it and they go, okay, like that, yeah, yeah, like, because that's how it happened. And so he took on his comics as a weekly comic strip

and continuing from here, he went down, and he's barely making money at it. He's barely, I don't know that he's necessarily making rent, but back then rent wasn't more than half year income anyway, so it was okay. But he then goes to San Francisco on a bit of a trip and he walks into the San Francisco Chronicle and says, Hey, how do you like my cartoon? And they say, Yeah, we would. We're going to rename it. And he didn't care. And in January of 1980, he even had 1980 He even had you can call it whatever the hell you want actually had a quote where he said almost exactly that I didn't write it down because I've got you know enough research in here, but oh, you know

It's the Winston Zed more school of Living like yeah, dude pay me. Yeah, it's you know call it whatever you want Just give me to give me the money so I can make the rent. And so in January of 1980, his comics started and from then up it exploded. And so I want to take a look at just some fun facts about his comics and then analyze them a little bit and then see what through lines we can draw.

And open intended there. So here's some fun statistics. Nearly 14% of his comics have wild animals in them. OK, about 14. Yep, you say? 14. About 12% have dogs specifically. About 10% have scientists.

Just under 8% have bugs. Just under 8% have bugs, just under 8% have snakes, and just under 8% are dealing with prehistoric things. Really, it's that low for prehistoric things. I know. I know. You think about what sticks out in your head, though, right? Yeah, well, the thagopizer hopefully doesn't stick out in your head.

It will. You know. 6% deal with the Old West. 6% deal specifically with hell And here is a thing that I Hell here's your accordion right, you know or you know aerobics and hell And here's the one that really got me only 6% deal with cows Oh shit well, yes, that too. Really? Yeah. Okay. So I just find that funny. So

Gary Larson's far side has been and you're still stymied by that. I know. I really am. Think about like I think of a sick Marvin six six, cow toults. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's one where they're walking into someone's house. Yeah, and then there was. You start running out pretty quick. Yeah, like okay.

Alright, they're iconic, but yeah, precious. Yeah. So, now, 6% of his comics is still a really huge number. I would also like to point that out, that even though it sounds like a low percentage, it's still an exceptionally large number, and we would do well to remember that as well. Well, yeah. number. And we would do well to remember that as well. Well, yeah. This will not age. No, no, no, it'll be it'll be this as a historical document. This will very clearly be from a very specific period and time.

Yeah. So, so, okay. So he, he started in the San Francisco Chronicle in what 81 January of 80 80 Okay, he retired in 95 95, okay, so 15 years At a comic by a published comic, a day, seven days a week. So 15 years times 365 panels.

I had a cocktail earlier this evening, and now I'm into a beer. So I mean, I can't do the math in my head, but that's a lot comics. It really is. It really is. And those are the ones that got published. Who's a creative, anybody who does writing, anybody who does anything like that knows, that's if you're really hot, that's like 50% of what you actually start trying to draw. Or write. Yeah. That's the man was a machine. 50% of what you actually start trying to draw right or right yeah That's the man was a machine. He was he was um

He was I know that he was carried in almost 2000 newspapers But I don't remember how many I wrote it down somewhere as maybe it'll pop up later I don't remember how many far side cartoons he actually did Do you have a did you have it there? What's syndicate? He was, he was signed with. No, he, and that's the thing. He, he ultimately signed with several.

But he, he essentially shopped it around and did it his way, like the way that I described. That was more his, his style. So just, you know, and, and people would like pass it out. Yeah, it's. So his, his, the far side has been analyzed the satire in the past. And it is definitely satire, but it's verbal satire and visual satire. It's not satire on the culture so much as as playing with a language and playing with, just thoughts, you know, it's like. It's like thought experiment satire.

It's odd to see snakes sitting in easy chairs talking to each other at a party. Yeah. It's that kind of thing. It's well, it's surrealism. Yeah. surrealism. Yeah. Which is a cousin of the kind of stuff that you see in theater of the absurd that you see. Definitely a predecessor. Yeah. Yeah. Or a predecessor antecedent. I guess those are the same thing. But yes, it does come from that tradition. And it's an inversion of the accepted reality. So it's a send up of agreed upon conventions and realities, right? And in many ways, it is

because it's in single panel form. It is very similar to E and S goes efforts at theater of the absurd. It's self-contained, it exists as a logic within itself, and then you're done. And it's absurd. Okay. There's no overarching. Right. There's no plot. Controllable. There's, yeah. Okay. In many ways, his far side is akin to Rod Cirling's Twilight Zone, except that the morality play in every

episode is not nearly as overt as it was with Rod Cirling. But he also had bottle episodes. So I find it interesting that he grew up searching these kinds of bottle episodes, and this was the predominant form of art that he took when he did it as a visual medium. And this was the predominant form of art that he took when he did it as a visual medium. Well, yeah. And the thing is there's a conciseness to that format. Like if you're doing a gagged a comic

in a four panel, five panel, whatever format, there is a specific as a comic, you can probably comment more on this than then, or delve into this a little bit more. Premise set up. But you have to have, you have to have, Prem set up a punchline. Yep. Whereas with what he's doing, you just throw it up there. He's doing the equivalent tool.

And it's all kind of self-contained and you don't have to. Yeah, you don't have to worry about figuring out the way to pace it visually. You don't have to worry about tying one image to the next image. Yeah, none of that is a concern. You have, you have, it's, it's easier. And I'm sure that Larson would probably say, you know, you know, four panel, five panel, you know, strip comic is not something I wanted to do because that was just too much work. But the thing is, what's brilliant about what he did is it's really hard to, that efficient with reducing, yeah, yes, elegant in the classical scientific sense of elegance. There's only a couple where it left people wondering, like the cow tools, one, for instance,

he had to explain it. There's so few that he had to explain because it's all self-contained in there. Yeah. I loved it, right? So he, but interestingly, here's a parallel, right? So both the Twilight Zone and the Far Side, which by the way are literally a place that is other words.

The Twilight Zone is somewhere there. The twilight zone is somewhere there. The far side is somewhere over there. They're also at a place that is not here and a time that is not now. They're both fairly timeless. And they both are critiquing the times in which they live. The difference is the twilight zone's totally doing it on purpose, and I think Gary Larson is falling over backward into it.

Both of them are looking at the Marianette effect that those times had on humanity, though, and that those times had on language and that those times had on expectation. So they are both offering a distorted view to get at a larger truth that we'd rather not confront. The difference is Twilight Zone did that on purpose. Far side seemed to have done that accidentally. Okay. Yeah, because it's really, really like ridiculously obvious that that's settling as I mean mean we talked about it in our Twilight Zone episodes. Sirling had a point with a capital P. Yes. Like you know the night the

night is particularly dark in Alabama and Mississippi. Exactly. You know there's there's there's really no getting around what you're trying to say there in 1960, whatever was when that episode aired. Like, no, no, no. There is an anvil being dropped here. Yes. You like. Yes.

And, you know, Larsen, as you said, he was playing around with words, playing around with concepts and ideas and thoughts and flipping things around and making them absurd. And the commentary that that creates on his times is indirect. Yes. And and and we what you really, I mean to to see the far side as a commentary on the 80s into the 90s, you really have to do what we do in this podcast, which is really take a look at it and okay, well, all right, but like what's he what's he saying here? What did he mean to do versus?

One two. Yeah, you know, authorial intent. Shit. As we like to say here, you know, and and in his in his own conscious mind, what what he was just trying to do was just, oh, hey, this is clever. And then put it down, right. But there's no way to do that outside of the context in which you are doing it. Exactly.

The historical, the historical context. And to have been influenced by living in absurd times his whole life where he had no say over his destiny the whole time that's gonna have an impact You know Yeah, whereas Rod certainly grew up a little earlier and he saw you know, Nazis on the rise and that had an impact So the far side does exactly what the Twilight Zone does, but with fewer words and with a single panel. It is clearly satire, even if Larson didn't mean it to be.

It's so funny that you got to that. And if you look at how he grew up as a young kid reading Mad Magazine at a time where Mad was the only thing that kept us alive. And by Mad, I mean, mutually structured. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know have to hope that your leaders are irrational. And what the fuck kind of world is it where you live in, where your best hope is that your leaders are irrational and aren't going to try to save you. And that's what's gonna save your life. Like it's, I cannot, I can't wrap my mind. I mean, I've had friends who grew up with really shitty parents

where like, you know, if you said what you really, really liked, they'd take it away from them. So then you had to pretend not to like the thing that you really liked, and I saw how that messed up my friends. Now have a whole society that is dependent on that. And it just wow. Yeah. Yeah, well, and we kind of get into this a little bit last time.

We kind of get into this a little bit last time. But, you know, I don't know how many courses you took in international relations, Polycy in college. I took one specifically on that. I took a history of the Vietnam War class, a history of World War II class. So I would count that as three. Okay.

I don't care. Because those were both very much like, oh, because we got into, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the really pointy-headed game theory, you know, throw a computer at it and see, you know, what happens after, you know, 10,000 iterations. What? you know, what happens after, you know, 10,000 iterations. What, depending on how the person running the experiment weighted the different results? Sure.

The rational, and we may have, I don't remember whether or not I got into the details of this, but what they figured out over multiple different runs of the experiment, however many iterations, that it is actually rational to, in the classic scenario, prisoners to let a shut up don't say anything. up until the first time your partner, right, Pettitore, ever, the other until the other player flips on you, at which point after that, you flip on him every single time.

Right. And the thing is, I feel like it's important to point out that when we look at the Cold War as a, you know, every morning, you know, Khrushchev had his finger planted on one button in Kennedy, had his finger planted on the other button, you know, that's not actually how it worked. And it was a series of, are we going to go along? Are we going to, you know, how are not actually how it worked. And it was a series of, are we gonna go along? Are we gonna, you know, how are we gonna do it?

And, you know, the game was, we're gonna keep cooperating, we're gonna keep cooperating, we're gonna keep cooperating until the other guy fucks us at which point everybody dies. Now you put that in with- And so it was, and so it was the rational decision, not to push the button first. Now let's- You know, right.

Let's accept that the first time someone does, that's pretty much going to end the game. Yeah, well, yeah, game. So you plug back in your Camu where the rational thing is to live without hope. Okay. And then you accept the absurdity of it all. Like all of that is, that's happening at the highest levels,

but that's happening at the lowest levels. Like none of it makes any goddamn sense. So as he's growing up, as Larsen is going up, the thing that keeps us alive is the guarantee of mutually assured destruction, which is the weirdest God damn thing to keep you alive. And as he's growing, the tightened grip of conformity is unable to hold on, and it was shown for what it was. And with all the absurd background of our annihilation is happening too. So here you've got a country that professes to be the bulwark of freedom against conformist communism.

And the way that you show that freedom is by so controlling society and limiting what all the expressions of art can be that you squeeze all the liberty out of it to the point where the only acceptable thing to do is Jackson Pollock type stuff because then it has no meanings. So you can't have any kind of political expression in your art, even though art is inherently political, because if you do, then you are striking a blow against freedom by using your freedom. So we all have to conform so that we can be free. And it just, I mean, it's, it's

wow. Like growing up in that, I, yeah. So yeah, he starts cartooning the far side in 1979, 1980, just as Ronald Reagan, a B-lister from Hollywood who'd become governor of California for two terms, because we have a really dumb history in the state who had narrowly lost a primary against four to seventy six uh... was now starting to show signs that he's gonna get the nod as the republican nominee yep and when you say it out loud like that it really does sound pretty god damn ridiculous and absurd

that he yeah really does yeah it you know, and it's, and the thing is, you know, when we were, who, what, I don't remember what the episode it was, but when, when I was doing research on, on Reagan, for prior episode, probably be Conan, then. Yeah, yes, it was, thank you. But when I was looking into the 1980 election, I, of course, only having been five years old,

I did not, I wasn't paying any attention. So I hadn't remembered that there was actually another Republican who tried to run, did run, and got a noticeable share of the vote because nobody, actually, well, not nobody. There were plenty of people who really did like Reagan, but there were an awful lot of Republicans at the time who really didn't. And there were an awful lot of Democrats who were disappointed in Carter. And he himself called it National Malays. And so nobody was happy about anything. Like, we're going to vote for the cowboy from Bakersfield, not Bakersfield, a Burbank. We're going to vote for the Burbank cowboy because he's at least giving us this energetic

seeming, you know, Pollyanna rose, Rosie's view of ourselves and has all this hopeful rhetoric. So we're going to vote for him, but we don't really like him that much. Well, and I'm going to go one further with you. We're going to vote for the guy who pretended to be a war hero over the guy who was an actual war hero. Like say what you will about Bush. Like a guy who actually was a naval veteran. Yeah.

You know, so it just, so in January of 1980, things didn't quite feel real. And how could they? The world was in a massive state of flux. The deadliest threat to humanity was just now a part of the background scenery, like the zombies and the walking dead. The far side was about life in a way that wasn't quite real. I mean, the name, first of all, the far side, right? And the typical juxtaposition between the caption, which is our version of Charon, guiding us from the real shore to the unreal far side of the River Stix. And the image, thank you, the image, which is the unreal underworld in which we are now transported, made for a really quirky set of humor.

Okay, you just managed to create a analogy, a set of symbolism there that went really dark. Yeah, the 80s were a darkly goddamn time. But the 80s were full of primary colors like yeah. I mean, yeah, you're not wrong there, but yeah, at the same time. I mean, yeah, no, I yeah, the existential dread that that hung over everything. I mean, it got to the point where musicians thought that they could be saving the world, because the people who were tasked with keeping us safe

couldn't. So musicians started playing music in order to, like, we are the world. Yeah. Live aid. We just have to hope that the Russians love their children, too. It's stuff like that.

Yeah, it's and and life is just getting more and more absurd. This cartoon is perfect for the time. Ronald Reagan, the media man, becomes president and he was called the great community. Or sorry, the great communicator, though he rarely said anything of substance. He spoke with comfortable slogans and he used the language to say nothing and yet sound substantive. Here's a couple excerpts from his inauguration speech, okay? He's really good at making us feel comfortable while at the same time ramping up the existential threat to our lives. He's

really good at that and there's your juxtaposition. He's the caption and look at this picture. And we collectively as a society were okay with it because at least it sounds nice, right? This should sound very parallel to Sartz analysis of the polite German by the way. Okay. Here's a quote from Ronald Reagan, 1981. Okay. I kind of want to do the voice, but I'm just going to sound like a bad version of Richard Belzer doing his voice, so I'm not going to do it. To a few of us here today, this is a solemn and most momentous occasion. And yet, in the history of our nation, it is a commonplace occurrence.

The orderly transfer of authority, as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place as it has for almost two centuries and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every four-year ceremony we accept is normal is nothing less than a miracle. So I mean we both grew up. God God, it was so nice back in the time when we could, you know, take that for granted. Yeah. So, he thinks his presidency is starting with a miracle, ultimately. And it's a commonplace miracle. Which in itself is a weird juxtaposition.

So it makes us feel special. He mentions our uniqueness. Despite there being no fewer than 20 others of similar democracies at the time, I went back and counted. There were 20 other countries that transferred power peacefully democratically. And then he says,

Okay. The business of our nation goes forward. I have questions. What does that really mean? From where? What business? What is the business of our nation since we're not a command economy?

Then he goes on. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity. Again, he's using words with no substance. He used the phrase those who. That's deliberately vague. Do work is also very deliberately vague. Fair return, totally undefined. Successful achievement. What the hell does that even mean? And of course, he's doing the boilerplate stuff going after the

tax system because somehow taxing the rich is more, taxing them more is unfair all of a sudden. We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. He's referring to the economy specifically, but again, no specifics. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now as we have had in the past to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. Now, he's referring to the economic woes that took decades to take hold, okay, a rock within the system that finally clung in.

It's interesting that he's calling on the very collectivism that he's disdaining, by the way, and in painting it in this light, he's making it acceptable and co-opting it again. Well, okay. He's calling for collectivism in the sense of unity, common effort. But anybody who grew up in the the Reaganite cult for lack of a better word, will be able to, I mean, you're talking about how all of this language is meaningless and let's do none of these terms are defined and all that. That's awesome. And you're right. But at the same time, you're also wrong because his target audience knew exactly what it was that he was telling them in code. So it's dogwistling.

It's it's it is well dogwistling has a very specific racial connotation and parts of that are dogwistling It's gonna say parts of that speech that I've already read to you But but parts of it are class dogwistling mm-hmm rather than racial dogwistling and parts of it are Protestant work ethic dogwistling sure for lack For lack of their word, the the the the American mythos. City is yeah, well, yeah, the American mythos and and the ingrained idea that that we that we have in this country is that that hustle is the key. Mm-hmm. Like like Like, that's just it. If you just work harder.

And, you know, yeah, you know, and then all of that about, you know, unfairly, you know, not able to reach full productivity, you know, to text, to be an unfair and all that stuff. That is, that is, that is a thousand percent, the, the clarion call of supply-side economics, which, you know, the whole argument was, I mean, there's, there's the, there's the overt argument, which is, no, no. We're penalizing, if we continue penalizing rich people, rich people aren't going to want to invest their money in paying people more. So we're going to let rich people have that money. So they'll have an invest, they'll have an incentive to do stuff with it right Okay, which which like okay, I understand the train of logic there, but having now lived through

40 years of Essentially supply side economics being what both sides have done since Reagan back it up a hair During the primary George Bush argued against it and said that's voodoo economics. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Even then it was known as a canard. Yeah. Well, yeah. No, everybody. The thing is the thing is anybody who knew anything about actual economic theory looked at it and went that's bullshit. That's that that's no. And, and anybody who looked far enough back in history would go, that's futile. You understand?

And that's, that's how, that's futile. And, and that's literally part of how the second estate got destroyed by the bourgeoisie. And, and the peasant class during the French Revolution is like, well, but we're the nobility, we don't pay taxes. Right. Do you like keeping your head? Yeah.

Because if you push that far enough long enough, you wind up telling somebody to eat cake. Yeah. And you're fucking head off. Well, so here's what I'll say. Oh, you know, all right, no go ahead. Go ahead. I've ran to the long enough for carrier.

With the idealism and fair play, which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America at peace with itself in the world. Boy, all right, freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. Double-Oi. It's been more available. Yeah, you know, on paper. It's been more available.

Yeah. And theory. We've had to pay a whole variable. on paper. It's been more available. Yeah. And theory. We've had to pay all the available. So he's saying it's been more available, but we've had to pay a supremely high price, but we've always been willing to pay, so it's always been available.

And it's like, wait a minute. If you have to pay a really high price, then that means it wasn't available. Well, okay, no, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Cut him some slack. Okay. He graduated. He got his economics degree from the Barron Samadhi School of Economics. That's true. So his grasp of supply and demand is not going to be, you know, perfect or you know, exist. You know, and and and when yeah, the the the the correctness of his of his rhetoric, I think,

was much less important in the historical context than the magnetism of his rhetoric. Like when we're sitting here, you and I sitting here 40 years later, Jesus Christ had to have to have to have to have to have. Fuck. Yep. But you and I sitting here decades later, having survived all of that, have the benefit

of an awful lot of hindsight to be able to look back at that and go, that's clown shoes. Yes. Like that's, you're not saying anything. This is a lot of puffery. And empty, and empty air and and all that but in the moment It was a lot harder for a lot of people in the audience to see that

because because the tone of it because the tone of it, because the essentially uplifting is a word that comes to mind, but complimentary might be a better term. You know, it's kind of message that you go stroking, kind of, no, no, we are awesome, you're all awesome. USA, USA, was something that an awful lot of people responded to,

because an awful lot of people needed it. You know, when you get used to several decades by that time of being, you know, King of the King of the Hill, and then you suffer one body blow after another body blow after another body blow, you know, Vietnam oil crisis recession, another oil crisis, another recession, you know, and just all these humiliations, there is a like needing to be important, needing to be powerful. It's an addiction. Yes. And giving anybody, giving anybody a hit of that is, is there, there, it's going to be very, very hard for people to remain rational about it and cold about it. Yes.

Cold. Maybe not rational, but to remain cold about it. Again, we're sitting here talking about this as survivors of that, you're 40 years later, with the benefit of a whole lot of hindsight and seeing exactly what came out of all of that. In the moment, the power of being told, no, no, we're awesome. We're exceptional. Was, yeah, was cathartic, you know, in a,

I don't know if cathartic is the right word. I would say it is the equivalent. It energizes. Yeah, it is the equivalent of a five hour energy drink when you're tired. Yeah, you know, um, and so he brings up the idea of freedom and dignity, which is really kind of interesting because he's actually pulling on old Roman terms of Liebertaas and Dignitas on that one. So points for stretching back to the classics there, Ron.

Here's another one of his quotes from that same speech. Well, yep. Points to his speech writer. Yeah. Well, Ronny. There was speech writer. I read an interview with several speech writers, and they all said the same thing.

Because people asked, they're like, okay, you wrote that special phrase, didn't you? He's like, yeah, I did, I did. And like, so how come you don't get credit for, he's like, it's not my speech, it's his. I wrote it for him, but it's his. And so speech writers regularly say, no, no, no, I wrote it, but he delivered it, therefore it's his. so speech writers regularly say no no no I wrote it but he

delivered it therefore it's his he made it work so okay so it's kind of like you know Mariah Carey didn't write a lot of her songs but those are her songs you know yeah so here's another it is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people and This from what I could read was the only real policy goal that he's stated plainly and clearly and I don't think he has to Outline a whole plan in his single speech here. I don't think that has to happen But it's literally the only time he's spoken

with any real specificity. And it's in such a way that's absolutely a dog whistle to racist and sexist, because hey, states, you can fuck with people of color and women again. And the federal government isn't gonna protect marginalized folks from various states' shittiness now. So, and in the context of him talking about states rights, it's really, really important

because of the times in which you and I are recording this. Yes. That we, that we also, that one of us also point out that there are multiple images from his campaign in 7980. And I think again in 84 of him and other high ranking, Republicans going full on Confederate flag hugging or standing in front of Confederate flags when they were campaigning in that part of the country. At that point, it hadn't become quite as much of a thing where you'd see a Dixie Battle flag in Indiana like you'll see now because it's taken on a whole different set of loading for other idiots in other parts

of the country. But it's still a code, it was still very much a code that the Confederate movement had an ally in that cadre. Yeah, well, he's from Hollywood and Hollywood was absolutely stuffed full in the prior generation to him with apologists. I mean, even my beloved Buster Keaton was a huge apologologist for the South. So here's another quote of his,

above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon of our adversaries in today's world. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have, let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and pray upon their neighbors.

So we've got here vague threats to vague enemies, mention our weapons, but our moral fortitude more, look out, y'all are on notice, but only vaguely so. Here's another quote, and this is actually the second specific policy thing he mentions. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each inaugural day in the future years, it should be declared a day of prayer. So it is a specific course of action. It's very culty. And it's a...

No, not really. Not really, I'm not really sure. I'm blaming. Oh damn it Fall well well a little bit fall well. Yeah fall well. Yeah Fucking fall well and this is a Baker all of those Deficient dog was god damn it to the religious right Well, okay, and and I'm gonna throw this out here. Yeah's not a dog whistle. It's a religious right in any Well, one one it's a bullhorn, two

You cannot separate the religious right from the Confederate movement in this fucking country. I Because you know the whole reason the the whole goddamn reason that know, the whole reason, the whole goddamn reason that we have the problems we have right now in our country, speaking as a teacher for a second, in a union rep for teachers, the reason that we have the problem we have in our country right now with charter schools, stealing money from public school systems, is because back in the 60s, fucking white people in the fucking South didn't want their kids to go to non-segregated schools, so they found the excuse of forming religious schools, which allowed them to exclude people who they didn't like. Yeah.

And these religious schools would exclude black people 20 times more often than they would exclude white people. Well, yeah. And on top of that, they charged tuition, which created a financial barrier, which made it even more convenient to exclude black people because, you know, who's going to have the money? Redlining is the thing. Yeah, redlining is the thing. And that busing was strained over at home. And then they reacted to that. And then they figured out, yeah, they figured out a way to game the system again. And, is the backbone of all of the fundamentalist right-wing Christian

latching themselves onto the 10 of the Republican Party bullshit that we've had to deal with. And, you know, Barry Goldwater was a lunatic, but he was entirely correct on one thing. And that was that if the Republican Party allowed itself to become allied with the religious right. It would never be able to separate itself. Yeah. Never. And now, and now, what do we see? We see professed Christians across this country, literally saying that our current president has been chosen by God. Right.

And they overlook and and as now, speaking not only as a teacher and a public employee, but speaking as a Catholic, the idea that they would be open to considering that level of heresy says so much about how actually Christian they fucking are that it's It's branding. It is disgusting. They took up brand and it had a confluence. It Dovetailed with the rise of mass media on a national scale It dovetailed with cable because you had

televangelism and it's not like we didn't have this in the 30s by the way. You did, four square church, you had Father Cochland, you had all that. But, you know, and they were just pro-fascist. These people are also that, but, but they're making, they're such grifters that they're making a shit ton of money on it. And if your brand is Jesus and it's making it so you've got a lot of money and you can, you know, I don't know, say rape your secretary with no consequence, then why wouldn't you keep doing that?

Like, that's a good grift if you're a horrible human being. If you can get somebody who used to be a movie star who somehow just keeps falling over backward into successful office, then of course you're going to latch on to that. Like it's... Yeah, how do you care if you're falling over backwards? Yeah. So here's the real kicker though, right? I could actually pull on any inauguration speech and do this. That's kind of the point of inauguration speeches, all right? But Reagan did this throughout his presidency. Very little substance, lots of comfort.

In fact, his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, got dragged for not doing that because he actually spoke the truth about America's state of the Union at the time. He said the state of the Union was weak. He's the only guy I can recall who's ever said it. And feel free to hit us up at Geek History time on the Twitter and correct us. But the very... But you won't because you can't because he is the only one to have actually come out and done it. Even during civil war. Yeah.

Even during civil war Lincoln didn't say that during the state of the union. Yeah, and prior to Woodrow Wilson nobody delivered it in front of Congress either. They would just send it over as a letter. That's a good point, yeah, true. But yeah, he gets dragged and the very same thing that Reagan used to beat Carter over the head with and walk away with the presidency is that fact that he said it. And Reagan was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm going to lie to them instead. Now Reagan wasn't new in being substanceless in his speech.

He was just really good at substanceless speech. And it was a talent. Yes. And that made him people's idea of what a good leader sounded and looked like. All image, no reality. He was a very effective marionette for playing Ubu. And that made it somehow more palatable to the passive middle, enabling them to be complicit in what he actually did instead of what he said he was doing. What we were then doing during his presidency was play acting.

And really, that's what Larsen is calling out in his comics. It's all play acting. It doesn't actually matter what's said or done. It just matters that it sounds like it makes sense. So here's an image and a caption, and push it as far into juxtaposition as possible to grossly overstate the absurdity of it and finally show us what we're doing with our own grotesque reflections. Hey look at me everybody, I'm a cowboy, howdy howdy howdy. Like do you know how fucking dark that particular cartoon was?

He's wearing the cowboy hat because they're all eating the cowboy. He's wearing the cowboy hat because they're all eating the cowboy. Howdy, howdy, howdy. Like, look at that juxtaposition. And when you are in a world where everybody is playacting at democracy, playing acting at this moral high ground, and everybody in office is playacting at it too, it's all so absurd. It's all marionette stuff. So what does that bring about? What does that encourage in an artist?

Howdy, howdy, howdy. Like Lex juxtapose the reality of seven or eight vultures sitting around a corpse, juxtapose it with like a kid playing dress up. And that shit's funny. Yeah. So all of this led to a greater carol. Six six. Yeah. Like you want to talk about dark cartoons. Mm-hmm. Cannibalistic cows. Like just yeah, it's the same, it's the same thing. Yeah. Or or or in a similar vein, oh, relax. You relaxed chicken soup is good for a cold

and it isn't anybody we know. Yes. Yes. Like you can go back through and find some dark shit in your house and stuff. Now all of this led to a greater sense of paradoxical certainty and uncertainty at the same time. The world was edging closer and closer to nuclear holocaust being a reality.

Technology that was supposed to keep us all safer was just as dangerous as the madman at the switch. And even the movies reflected that, like in War Games. War games by the way, this movie, absolutely influenced Ronald Reagan to write NSDD 145 the first presidential order to specifically deal with computer security. I'm gonna say that again because it's that's where we were. The president watched a movie about a kid using a modem to hack the national defense grid and he made policy because of the movie he saw. That's absurd. Well, okay, so is the president, you know, getting legislation passed for cleaning up the canning industry because of a novel everybody read. I disagree. Not everybody read it. First of all,

literacy was not as big. Second of all all a novel is wildly different than a movie I feel like you're engaging in genre ghettoism by saying that I would say okay here's here's why I'm gonna I'm gonna push a little further with this that novel was written with a specific political intent this movie was made to entertain and it was seizing on something that was new and entertaining at the time. I think there are two different purposes. I would say that if I said simply by the virtue of the novel, this one has papers and this one has celluloid. Yeah, I think you would be right. Okay. But I think I mean, up to S. Clair was absolutely a muck raker. Um, with, and he, he was grinding that acts, whereas

the guy who did war games, he, he was making a movie for a studio for entertainment. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I, I, the jungle was a socialist polemic like the second half of the jungle is like here's why socialism is better Yeah, well, yeah, and and what it and and you know if you want to talk about absurdism You know, it was meant to be socialist polemic, you know up with the workers, you know Look at how horrible the working conditions are and the legislation that actually got passed as as a result of it was you know the FDA being created because oh my god, you mean there's rat poop in my food? Yeah. So, but what I'm going to argue again, a little bit, and I see where you're coming from,

but I'm going to continue to push a little bit on it. I'm going to go to William Gibson. Okay. And that is science fiction, which is what it's, I mean, it's speculated. I'm going to go to William Gibson. Okay. And that is science fiction, which is what is, I mean, speculums, it wasn't really, it wasn't, you know, crazy science fiction, but it was science fiction. War games brought up to the forefront by virtue of, okay, you know, if we have the systems being run by a computer, one of the ramifications of that, I'm going to spin this out in order

to tell the story. Until that science fiction writer, screenwriter sat down to write that out, nobody had come up with that policy because nobody had thought of it. So so but how could they not have thought about it. So, so. But how could they not have thought about it if they'd gotten all the mainframe computers on board in NORAD? Like, we had been updating our computerization there.

Whereas if you go back to the jungle, everybody knew the meat was rancid. I mean, shit, the meat for the Spanish-American war killed more people than Cuban bullets. Like that was a known thing. And then it became like, okay, you've got this groundswell. It wasn't just the jungle that led to that. Whereas over here you've got war games,

and modems are pretty new as far as consumers go. And all that kind of stuff. But we knew that things were futureized. Well, everybody knew things were computerized, but what was nascent at that point was that was, we're getting into talking about phone freaks, and computer students, programming students going through the telephone companies dumpster to get numbers.

And the thing is NORAD and DARPA and all of those people had been connected as computers together, but nobody had thought about the ramifications of, well, if we're doing all of this through the phone lines. And everybody and all of a sudden, now consumers have access to a modem. Nobody had made that jump. In the same way that science fiction authors failed to conceive of what the worldwide web

was going to look like or what it was going to do. Nobody, it is very very hard for anybody, especially anybody like the kind of people who work for Norad or any of the organizations that are doing that kind of work. There is a definite tendency to lose the forest for the trees. And, you know, this is the thing that I'm working on. This is my project. And over here we have this other person's project. And seeing the second and third order ramifications of stuff, is one of those places where historically, I

think it is more notable where everybody gets it right, then when they are completely blindsided by some new development. And when a science fiction author comes along and says, okay, well, we have this thing and we have this thing. What if I throw these two things together and oh, hey, look, here's this story I can tell. And then all of a sudden everybody watching it, who knows anything about how those things work goes. Oh, shit. Okay. Okay. So, I would still say that a guy who grew up making movies, being influenced by a movie's screening, and then making policy because of that, when he's got an intelligence community right there.

I mean, his vice president used to be the head of the CIA. It was, yeah, head bent. So, I totally get what you're saying there. And I'm not saying that to try to defend him, I just think it meaningful to point out that this is one of those things that science fiction as a genre has done, like HG Wells coming up with the idea of the submarine. Sure. And, you know, the level of devastation that could be carried out by that.

Okay. Star Trek and cell phones. Right, yeah. You know, is just kind of that's, I think that, that movie getting made and being like, oh, wait, hold on, people can do that. Okay, we gotta do something about that. Well, and I think that movie getting made,

by the way, the thesis statement of that movie was at the very end, was the only way to win is not to play. Going right back to the prisoner's dilemma. Yeah. Interestingly. So here, let's talk about the day after then. You know, for a little bit of uplift and... Surefulness. Yeah.

So, first, after the day after, so it'd be the day after after, there was a bit of an all-star debate on ABC's viewpoint in which Carl Sagan was debating with a few other people and he made this point. He said, quote, imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches, the other 7,000 matches.

Each of them is concerned about who's ahead and who's stronger. So Carl Sagan is pointing out how absurd everything is. And we've gone well past any kind of morality at this point, well past any kind of common sense. And secondly, I'd point out that Reagan was impacted by what he saw on TV. He saw an advanced screening of it and wrote in his diary that the film was, quote, very effective and left me greatly depressed, and that the made for TV movie changed his mind on the prevailing policy of a nuclear war.

Not scientists, not ethics professors, not experts, TV. Yeah. So while this is happening, and he's being influenced by movies and television, the movie star was, not quite a star movie star, the belief in American exceptionalism was on the rise, and the closer we got to annihilation, the more we felt exceptional. And interestingly, the difference in terms of partisanship approval was greater under Reagan than under any president in the modern era. Any?

Wait. Yeah, I know. Way. Yeah. I checked. I checked. And even Obama had a smaller gap. Okay.

So we just leave it. Are we just leaving out the tangerine in the room? Or yeah, because his presidency is not over yet. So you can't actually. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So on average, people were fair enough. Yeah. All right. So on average, people are more and more confident. What? Well, I was just going to say that like, no, no, I'm pretty sure we have a record center in office right now. Yeah, probably. So, so people are more confident in our survival and our supremacy, the sharper and more nihilistic Reagan's rhetoric toward the Soviet Union God.

Oh, we're going to survive this. The closer he gets us to death again absurd There's another place where overwrought language leads people to showing greater enthusiasm and support by the way Which was really ascendant in the 80s Pro wrestling yep Of course.

Of course. Of course. Now, I wouldn't call Pro Wrestling Theatre of the Obserid as there is actually a structure to it. It has a morality play aspect to it. However, there is a shit ton of absurdity in wrestling and the play acting is absolutely there, so much so that they actually cut themselves to add to the drama of the fake battle to make it look... it's so convoluted, but it's there. It's absolutely there.

Well, you know, and yeah, it can't be theater of the absurd, because, despite all of the absurdity, not only are there structures, but those structures are kind of iron-clad. Yes, they are. Like the story arc, like if you are the one looking at the beginning of a particular story line, I'm gonna say you probably have about a 75 or 80% chance of being able to predict okay. So step two is gonna be this step. Some work down here this isn't gonna happen and then it's all gonna end up with that guy and that guy actually being you know

allies at the very end they're gonna wind up coming together and that guy actually being, you know, allies at the very end, they're gonna wind up coming together and that dude over there who we're not paying any attention to right now is actually gonna be the one who gets turned into the villain of the whole piece. Yes. Like because just like a soap opera, just like G-Dagekki, just like any of those forms of media, that narrative structure is critical.

And it is inexorable. And so it's in some ways the antithesis of theodil of the absurd. That's absolutely true. Yeah, theater of the absurd, the literal antithesis of it, I think, is improv combat. Like, yeah. Okay. So there is a president who is absolutely playing

the part of being the president, and a country that is absolutely buying into that part. And nobody is really making any choices of any substance while pretending at having morality at the highest levels. And meanwhile Gary Larson is cartooning and pointing out how silly just about anything he puts in his panels is. He was nearly in 2,000 papers like I said about 1900 taking home a ward after a ward after a ward. There were no recurring characters, there were just recurring archetypes. There was a tremendous appreciation for the quick in and out nature of it,

paired with its subversive nature when it came to the agreed upon norms of language and behavior. So he's pointing out the absurdity of our lives at a time where our lives are increasingly absurd. And that's where I'm going to leave this episode because I actually got to talk about Gary Larson, and then we'll bring him up to the next one. So where can people find you on the social media? On the social media, I can be found on Twitter at EH Playlock. We, collectively, can be reached on the Twitter at Geek History time. I individually can be found on Instagram at EH Playlock,

or Mr. Blaylock, MR Playlock, which is also where you can find me on TikTok until such time as the app gets shut down as an organ of the Chinese government. By an organ of the Russian government. By an organ of the ML. Now, yeah. So, so where can they, we're going to find you if they want to yell at you about having gotten Camo wrong You could find me on Twitter and Instagram at duh harmony two H's in the middle there

And you can find me on every Sunday night with Johnny Taylor doing Collean in the ring on twitch.tv forward slash calling it in the ring on twitch.tv-forcelash-callingit in the ring and then you can also find me on Tuesday nights at twitch.tv-forcelash-capital-puns and that noise that you heard was me horribly horribly doing a terrible job of trying to bring up my TikTok

because capital punishment does have a TikTok but I'll be damned if I can find our account. So I'll have to find that in the interim. You kids and all your book learning. Anyway, so for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time, let's get this baby off the ground. And I'm in Blaylock and until next time, let's get this baby off the ground.