Let It Not Be Said That I Remained Silent

(feel free to pass this around anywhere, if you find it of value)

They say that if you're wondering what you would have done in World War II, or in the Civil War, or in relation to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, just look at what you're doing now. I'm looking, and I'm not satisfied. I'm not doing nothing, but I could be doing more, and I will try. But in the meantime, let me say what I believe, as starkly as possible, so as to leave no doubt about where I stand. Post your own somewhere! Your opinion is at least as noteworthy as mine.

Climate change will kill us all if we don't stop it. Lots of people are doing lots of things to help, and that's great. Governments and corporations are not doing enough, and many powerful individuals are using their considerable resources to prevent any efforts to save us. These individuals are the enemies of humanity.

Fossil fuels should be left in the ground. All of them. Starting now, or as close to now as possible. This will be tough for us, but this is an emergency and we'll figure out how to cope eventually.

Eat less beef. Ah, I miss it. But I'm told it makes a difference.

Most of our problems, we could eventually figure them out. The trouble is we're on the clock with climate change. We have to solve that now, and all this other stuff is getting in the way. So we have to fix everything now, urgently, and instead everything's getting worse. That's whatcha call "suboptimal".

Don't be mean. That's the main rule. If your beliefs work their way around to where you're telling yourself you have to be mean, they're wrong and you should change them. 

War may be the worst thing people can do, but you can't just let Putin have his way in Ukraine, because if you reward him for attacking Ukraine he'll understand correctly that he can just keep attacking countries.

We shouldn't have surrendered to Covid. We could have beaten it. Still, wear your masks, ventilate your rooms, and stay up to date on your vaccines, because it's still nasty and we can still save lives. Not to mention practice for the next pandemic!

A faction in Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza. I don't care if they're Jewish or what; they're guilty of genocide and are the enemies of humanity. Some people are taking this opportunity to express anti-Semitism, which is not only a type of bigotry as bad as any other, but is also a good sign that the anti-Semite is evil in other ways, and, again, is an enemy of humanity.

There are students and other protestors speaking up for the Palestinians. I think they're great and I support them. Leave them alone.

Fascism is rising around the world and needs to be fought harder, by more people, and by what remains of our institutions. Those who kind of agree with this but who respond by nodding soberly and saying, "yes, but you don't understand, and what about, and...," and do nothing, are part of the problem. The fascists, and those who intentionally support them and their variants, the racists and misogynists and homophobes and transphobes and Christian dominionists, are enemies of humanity.

The fascists aren't quite in charge yet everywhere. But they're having an effect: they're turning up the level of fascism in our society. If you've ever had the reaction of, "well, the only option left to us in this situation is to get a gun. Revolution," that's a sign of fascism. They want people thinking like that, like people have to work things out with guns and no other way.

"Both sides" are not the same. Maybe at one time they were, but now one side is normal, with all the benefits and problems that implies, and the other side is rolling downhill into fascism and nihilism, and gaining speed. You don't have to like it that this is the case, but it's a problem if you don't accept it.

If, for whatever reason, you're on the side of the fascists, and you happen to be reading this, this paragraph is for you. I won't take up my time by trying to refute your beliefs or talking points; you're smart enough to do that yourself, if you want to. The information's out there. I'll just say this: you don't have to live like this. You don't have to keep hating everybody, you don't have to view the world as a bloody power struggle, you can find meaning for yourself not in the degradation of others. It's much nicer for you if you change your ways.

Conservatism is fake. It's hatred, greed, and the lust for power, wearing one overcoat made of high-minded rhetoric that nobody actually believes.

Borders are fake. Let immigrants in. They're people! You know, people?

Abolish the police. I'm not being as "extreme" as I could be by saying that; there are harsher verbs than "abolish".

Trans people are basically harmless (know how I know? Because if one was harmful, we would never have heard the end of it) and just want to be left alone. But, currently, they also need protection from their self-appointed enemies. Do what you can to help.

There are things that can be said in favour of both socialism and capitalism. There are also ways in which both can be abused. I have doubts that we will ever find an economic system that works perfectly for humans, but I think any system will do which preserves the ability of ordinary people to have control over their lives, and no system will do that does not.

Institutions are weak these days. Nothing good will happen unless individuals team up to make it happen; nothing bad will be prevented unless individuals team up to prevent it.

You are more than your job. You are more than your economic role. Luminous beings are we. The most important thing is that you exist and you can do what you want with that fact. Create, think, play, love, eat, swim. It's your life.

This "enemies of humanity" stuff may make me sound intolerant, to some. To which I say: Oh, right, I'm the problem.

The people I've described as "enemies of humanity" have earned the very worst treatment we can conceive for them, right up to torment and execution. But just because they deserve it doesn't mean we should do it. We don't deserve to be torturers or murderers; nobody does. We need to find a way to beat them without killing them, and to find a way to persuade--or, even better, convince--them to join us. If we as humans have jobs that we are responsible for just because we live, these are them.

We, as humans, have been too tolerant of our own evil for too long. We need to stop accepting it, or listening to it, or compromising with it, and start fighting it harder, and to win. I think "civilization" is more of a goal to be achieved than an existing status to be defended. Are we civilized now? Are we civil? Maybe someday we will be.

Honestly, everybody, we can do this. We can. But the golden future won't build itself. Help somebody today.

Always Repeating Itself

2016 seems like it's an ordeal. Sometimes it doesn't feel like we're going to make it to 2017, because who knows what might happen next? Any crazy terrible thing! Nothing is off the table.

Here's what I think is going on.

You may know from previous writings that I'm into the Strauss-Howe generational cycle theory. If you're not familiar with it, here's the upshot: every eighty years, give or take, society will go through a period of about twenty years, give or take, called a Crisis era. In a Crisis era, it will feel like everything is coming to an end, like things can't go on like this any longer, and like we have to solve all of our giant problems right now. It's a time in which crumbling institutions finally give up the ghost, and new ones are born, and a time in which children are overprotected to the point of feeling smothered. Previous Crisis eras in North America have featured the Depression+World War II, the Civil War+Canadian Confederation, and the American Revolution.

My intention is not to try to sell anybody on the generational cycle theory. If you want to look into it and you think it makes sense, great; if not, great. My point is this: there have been tough times, tumultuous times, before, and they have been survived. The challenges all around us are serious, but we can, if we try, cope with them. We can, maybe, solve problems and make things better. We may be able to come out the other end of this with a better society than the one we have now.

It's not the end of the world and it's not a time to despair. It's a dangerous time, yes, but also an opportunity to do some good. It's a time to keep our hands on the wheel, in whatever way makes the most sense to you.

So don't let it get you down. If, as I suspect, the Crisis era began on September 11th, 2001, then we've still got a few more years of this kinda action to go, but... it's fine. This is the kind of thing that people deal with, and wouldn't we rather that we were those people, rather than some other bunch? This is history, and we're in it. We should act like it.

Let's Take a Look at the News Hostility Scoreboard

I have a few things I want to touch on and I'm not sure how to work them all in so let me start this way.

Gamergate.
1. I'm not a gamer. I don't know much about video games. Or care. However,
a) the important aspect of the discussion is not the games or the games journalism but the death threats, rape threats, harassment of women, and related misbehaviour by some carbon units who seem to have forgotten that they aren't melodrama villains, and
b) I don't need to know anything about video games to know that I'm against that. Plus
c) it's not like the same kind of thing isn't going on in the comic book world also.

2. Most intelligent things that there are to say about Gamergate have already been said by others, and more cleverly than I would have said it. So I won't drag you through all of that again. (Although here are some links if you want them: 1 2 3 4.)

3. In general I'm opposed to death threats, rape threats, harassment, murder, rape, and assault of all kinds.
a) Just so there's no confusion, I can also say that in specific I'm opposed to those things when directed against women who have some thoughts about pop culture.
b) Not that that's a particularly original idea, but
c) it may gain weight by repetition (which is most of the reason why we're going through this section of the discussion in the first place), so:

4. Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Janelle Asselin, Brianna Wu, and anyone else who has to deal with similar mistreatment have my complete support and encouragement and also my hope that all this is resolved in a satisfactory way.
a) (Where "satisfactory" is a catchall adjective that includes many possible outcomes including jail time for some of the troublemakers out there.)

(Note: the internet has acted as the primary medium for this trouble and harassment. I'm happy to say that, in all the time I've been operating this website, there has never been any of that kind of action here. I thank you all and here's to many more years of just that.)

I mean, like everything else isn't bad enough, now people want to reenact the Salem witch trials only with witchcraft subbed out for freaking video game criticism? You'd think that inequality, climate change, and Ferguson MO would keep us all sufficiently busy. What the hell is wrong with people?

It's very tempting, in these times, to just say, "Well, screw it, then! Everything's terrible, and I don't care anymore, and everything might as well fall apart." To resort to cynicism, in other words.

Stipulated that everything is terrible. I don't want to try to tell you that everything isn't terrible.

But not everyone has the option of giving up. (I mean, in some situations they do. If we're talking about--and I will be--giving up on DC Comics, then everyone has that option. There's nobody in the world so disadvantaged that they can't cut DC Comics out of their life, with the possible exception of DC Comics employees.) Giving up is a privilege.

Look at me: reasonably prosperous straight white male. It's easy for me to look south across the border and say, "Wow, that country is messed up. Cops pulling you over and taking your stuff, banks stealing people's houses, cops gunning people down in the street for the pure joy of it... I'm not going there." But, see, I can easily afford not to go to the U.S. For the people who live in Ferguson, it's not so simple. How would they go about giving up, assuming they wanted to? Move to another town? Hide in the basement 24/7?

The more options you have, the more giving up on the world is an option. The fewer options you have, the more you're forced to fight back. The irony here is that the people who can fight back the most effectively--the people I describe as having "more options"--are the people least likely to actually do so.

My next step is not to say that I know what I should do, or you should do, or anybody should do. (And for the most part that discussion doesn't belong on this blog.) But I do know that checking out on the world is not the way to go.

Which brings me back to DC Comics. (Remember comic books? This is a blog about comic books.)

A while ago I got so fed up with the various wretched things DC was doing that I stopped buying their comics (except for Legion of Super-Heroes, until there wasn't any more of that for me to buy either). And there were another couple of companies that did things I didn't care for either, and I stopped dealing with them too. But, you know, you do enough of that kind of thing, and you start to get a sense of the limitations of the tactic.

1. It frequently doesn't work. As in, whatever company you're boycotting may very well ignore you and keep on with what they were doing. And then where are you?
2. It's really another version of checking out of the world.
3. You can only do it once. Imagine this scenario. XYZ corporation says that they're going to do Plan A. You don't like Plan A, so you tell XYZ corporation so, and you tell them that if they stick with Plan A they'll lose you as a customer. XYZ corporation weighs these considerations and keeps going with Plan A. You take your business elsewhere. A few months later XYZ corporation announces that now that Plan A is going so well, they're also going to start in on Plan B. You like Plan B even less than Plan A. But now what are you going to say to XYZ corporation about it? You can't become even less of their customer!
4. You lose touch with what the people you're boycotting are up to.
5. If you keep doing it, you will eventually reach a point where you can't deal with anybody anymore (and you will reach that point, because, as stipulated above, everything is terrible) and you're basically a hermit in your house.

The problem is with exerting influence over powerful economic or political entities that are very good at not listening to anybody they don't have to. I don't have any secret trick for doing it, but my thinking now is that you can do it better by maintaining a relationship with them than by cutting off that relationship.

So I'm lifting my sanction from DC Comics. I mean, who knows what they'll get up to without me watching carefully, amirite? It's not because I think they deserve it; it's just that I'm starting to feel like all I've really done is leave myself out of the discussion. So I'm climbing back in. Slowly. I can't think of a whole lot of DC titles I really feel like reading these days, although there are assorted back issues and collections, and of course the Legion showing up in Justice League United, which I would have gotten anyway, and it's about time I bit the bullet on Astro City... We'll see.

Dissemble

I don't know if you've heard, but the Avengers movie is coming out this weekend. It seems like a lot of people want to see it and it's pretty good in its soulless blockbustery way.

As stated before, I'm not going to go see it.

You don't have to either, you know. You can, obviously you can, but you don't have to. If you're not crazy about how Marvel treated Jack Kirby (among other things), you can always say, "You know what? My life will be just as good if I don't see this movie as it is if I do." It is an option. You could even let Marvel know about your decision and why you made it.

Not the only option, of course; some people have decided to just not see it in the opening weekend, reasoning that this will deny Marvel and Disney the prestigious early numbers. I don't put a lot of weight on the early box office being that much more valuable than the overall take, but they must decide, and it's certainly another option. And then a lot of people have decided to see the movie, but also to donate to the Hero Initiative, and I can certainly see the logic of that, so there's one more option for you. Or you may just decide that this is not an area where you want to expend your protest energy, and see the movie or not strictly according to your particular tastes in leisure. It's all okay with me, not that you need my approval.

I do urge you, though, to do something to try to make the world a better place, as you understand it, in some way. It's a target-rich environment out there.

I wrote about this kind of thing before, you may recall, and earlier this week I finally let DC and Marvel in on my thinking. I sent this letter to Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada:

Dear Sir:

I'm writing to tell you I won't be buying your comic books any more.

To elaborate: I'm a longtime superhero comic-book fan and blogger. In February I got to the point where I wasn't comfortable buying DC and Marvel comics, or watching any of their spinoff movies and TV shows, and stopped. I suppose I should have written this letter then, but I don't think the timing makes any difference.

It's not because you're not publishing anything I like. For instance, I'm going to miss Fables so much it hurts, and I was really looking forward to trying Mark Waid's Daredevil series. (Although I should say that I plan on continuing to buy DC's Legion-of-Super-Heroes-related comics, because I don’t want to stop blogging about them.) But enjoying comics doesn't outweigh other considerations.

You can probably already guess my reasons for taking this step: your treatment of previous creators and their heirs, like Siegel and Kirby and Moore and Friedrich (and recent events surrounding Chris Roberson have certainly not changed my mind); your portrayals of female characters; your corporate owners' attempts to make copyright more and more restrictive.

DC and Marvel are the great pioneers of the superhero genre, and the discrepancy between your companies’ actions and the ideals represented by your characters is striking and unpleasant.

I'm disappointed that it has come to this. Please give me some reasons to revisit this decision; I'm willing--no, I'm eager--to do so.

Regards,

Matthew E

I don't expect it'll have any effect. Or not much. I figure I'll get a couple of form letters back, something like that. I suppose DC might decide to be hardasses about it and try to come after my blog legally; there wouldn't be much point to it but it's theoretically on the menu. The important thing is that I feel better, and that makes it worth doing, because certainly DC and Marvel weren't doing anything to make me feel better.

Lot of stuff going on

There's a lot of stuff going on these days; probably some of it has caught your attention. War, climate change, economic disasters, natural disasters, political upheaval, political repression. And I sit around saying, well, what am I doing about it. Not enough, is what I'm doing about it. No good reason why not, either. I mean, sure, I have hostages to fortune, but I can do something, right?

So let's start here: according to this website, today is American Censorship Day. Go read it, think about it, consider what to do next. Sure, my site here is in important respects a Canadian website... but the blogging service that runs it is American-based, so that's one thing. Plus, I don't know, one cannot do everything, but one has to start somewhere, and this is a good somewhere.