Who’s Drinking the Flavor-Aid?

Jim Jones [Powers Boothe] in 1980’s Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.

This historical event is where the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” originated. Actually, Jones gave his flock generic Flavor-Aid.

Several years ago, when I worked for a very large company, the company was going through yet another “reorg.”
I remember a meeting in which a Senior Vice President faced over 100 members of her division.
She enumerated the many adjustments we were about to go through, and (making it clear that she disagreed with the changes), commented that we all had to “drink the Kool-Aid.”*
In other words, we all had to pretend that the reorganization was a fine idea, and “go along,” without complaint.

Superman (George Reeves) in Adventures of Superman, which aired 1952-58.
The voiceover ended with the tagline “Truth, justice, and the American way.”
(In 2021, DC Comics updated the Superman tagline to “Truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.”)

In trying to figure out this period of political polarization, I’ve decided that we’ve been drinking different flavors of Kool-Aid.
I had been drinking the fantasy that Democrats and Republicans were basically similar, we were all in a melting pot, and most citizens believed in my family’s interpretation of the slogan associated with Superman: “Truth, justice, and the American way.”
When Donald Trump was elected President via the Electoral College—while losing the popular vote—I finally realized that I’d been drinking some serious Kool-Aid.

I had completely missed that some people had been traumatized by having President Obama as President for eight years, couldn’t conceive of a woman as their President, and/or cared deeply for a candidate who I perceived as a conman.
I hadn’t paid much attention to Trump (because I had a bad opinion of him after living in New York City in the 1980’s and 1990’s).
However, many Americans had listened to him, and had responded powerfully to his message.

Scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with Peasant 2 (Michael Palin) screaming “Help, help. I’m being repressed,” as he’s being strangled by King Arthur (Graham Chapman).

Some Trump supporters think that they are being supplanted by people of color and immigrants.
They also tend to interpret the “American way of life” in a way I had never considered.
In this world view: White men should be in power, “outgroups” (like LGBT and “non-white” people) should accept a lower status, and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant societal values should be placed on a pedestal.
(It’s true some Catholics, Hispanics and Southern Italians are allied with MAGA, but their own cultures are thereby repressed.)

Furthermore, most Trump supporters are extremely cynical about Government.
They think it’s obvious that elections are stolen, the Federal government is corrupt, and politicians steal.
When I hear MAGA people being interviewed, it seems that their only real goal is to elect politicians who will cut taxes, and stop the tide of “outgroups taking over society.”

In the book The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Lies, by Aja Raden, Raden quotes a 2002 study by Colleen Seifert, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, who specializes in complex human cognition.
According to Seifert: “when people are presented with evidence that the information they’ve been exposed to over and over is factually untrue, the attempts to refute it further entrench their belief.”
[Emphasis mine.]
Once someone is convinced of something, and it feels “like truth” to them, convincing them otherwise is close to impossible.

The U.S. seems stuck in a place in which about 60% (?) acknowledge that an unfit criminal held the nation’s highest office for four years, and another 40% (?) seem to believe that he did a good job and it would be fine if he were President again.
Making the situation worse, only half (or less) of U.S. citizens can be persuaded to vote, and it’s unclear which side the non-voters are on.

Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson) in The First Lady—the 2022 TV series.

In 1940, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), then First Lady of the U.S., wrote an essay entitled “The Moral Basis of Democracy,” saying:

We are in truth the melting pot of the earth. Our solidarity and unity can never be a geographical unity or a racial unity. It must be a unity growing out of a common idea and a devotion to that idea.

It seems that few of us are devoted to the ideal of Democracy. She goes on to say:

Moreover, no one can honestly claim that either the Indians or the Negroes of this country are free. [Roosevelt used the accepted terminology of the times.] . . . Few members of the older generation have even attempted to make themselves the kind of people who are truly worthy of the power which is vested in the individual in a Democracy. We must fulfill our duties as citizens, see that our nation is truly represented by its government, see that the government is responsive to the will and desires of the people. . . We must maintain a standard of living which makes it possible for the people really to want justice for all, rather than harbor a secret hope for privileges because they cannot hope for justice.

Do Americans still hope for Justice?
About a year before she wrote this essay, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote another essay called “Keepers of Democracy,” which appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review (Winter, 1939).
She says:

There is a growing wave in this country of fear, and of intolerance which stems from fear. . . when we allow one group of people to look down upon another, then we may for a short time bring hardship on some particular group of people, but the real hardship and the real wrong is done to democracy and to our nation as a whole. We are then breeding people who cannot live under a democratic form of government but must be controlled by force.

Have we bred people who cannot live under Democracy?
How many voters no longer hope for justice?
Is the simple difference between the two sides that some are willing to endure an authoritarian government (as long as they are accepted into the group that is “on top”), while others want to live equally with others and make the bargains necessary to live in a Democracy?

*In case anyone is too young to know where the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” originated, it comes from the story of Jim Jones—a cult leader who died in 1978, with around 900 followers (at least 200 of them children). According to Wikipedia, Jones asked his group to ingest grape-flavored Flavor-Aid (misidentified as Kool-Aid) plus cyanide, as an act of “revolutionary suicide.”

Will This Be OUR Crisis?

From left to right: Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) in AppleTV’s Foundation.

The second season of Foundation is airing on AppleTV, and episode seven arrives on August 25th.
Based on the book series by Isaac Asimov, Foundation is about a mathematician named Hari Seldon, who becomes the first psychohistorian.
He predicts that the Empire is approaching its’ decline and fall.
However, between his time, and the far future, there will be several crises (or tipping points), during which the coming period of disorder may be shortened with his assistance.

The cover of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, published as an abridged version (in 1951) as The 1,000 Year Plan. Seldon hoped that his Foundation would shorten the period of chaos between the first Galactic Empire, and the second Galactic Empire, to around 1,000 years—mitigated from a probable 30,000 years of disorder.

Seldon sets out to establish a society, a “Foundation,” to cope with these crises, and save human civilization from barbarism

The U.S. has had its’ own “tipping points.
The first was the country’s birth.
In 1776, many colonial citizens were too conservative to rebel.
Thousands of Loyalist families fled to Britain, or Canada, leaving their wealth behind.
Perhaps, if all white men over the age of 16 had voted “Yay” or “Nay,” the colonies wouldn’t have separated.
According to Wealth and Democracy, by Kevin Phillips: “Only supporters of Independence were allowed to vote [for the Declaration of Independence], Tories being barred, and with prewar property requirements also set aside.”

The Founders needed “the rabble” to set up a new country.
However, many of the Founding Fathers could only imagine a hierarchy of Anglo-Saxons being in control.

Another “tipping point” occurred in 1861 when eleven Southern states declared themselves a separate country.
However, the real crisis had begun years before the South seceded, with a general lack of respect toward the Federal Government that grew with each inadequate presidency.

Abraham Lincoln (Satan) carrying away the Goddess of Liberty published in Southern Punch on November 14, 1863. Southern newspapers vilified Lincoln before and during the war.

Southern newspapers convinced their citizenry that if Abraham Lincoln were elected, he’d arm slave revolts, give their daughters to Black men, and make the South destitute.
It had become illegal to even discuss abolition publicly in most Southern states, and over twenty Northern abolitionists were lynched.
(The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, by Larry Tagg.)
The U.S. was forced to choose between a weak central government (and the enslavement of almost four million Black people), and remaining the united country that the Founding Fathers had dreamed of.

British DVD cover of C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America.

In 2004’s C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America—a satirical “documentary” in which the South won the Civil War, written and directed by Kevin Wilmott—Wilmott shows the C.S.A. becoming an Empire, and taking over sections of Central and South America in order to keep the slave system going.
Those scenes seemed hyperbolic until I learned the story of William Walker.
Walker was a young Southern doctor who in 1856 traveled to Central America and made himself the President of Nicaragua, (thus creating a slave country south of the border).
U.S. President Pierce actually recognized Dr. Walker’s government as legitimate!
Walker’s regime lasted less than a year.
A few years later, he tried for power once more (this time in Honduras), was captured by the Brits, found guilty in a court, and executed by firing squad.

The 1930’s were another tipping point, when the Great Depression resulted in Democracies ending all over the world, and international trade breaking down.
(The fact that this was a reactionary period, wasn’t covered well in my high school history book.
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt—the President from 1933 until his death in 1945—hadn’t used his power judiciously, or if the U.S. hadn’t become united by World War II, perhaps we wouldn’t live in a Democracy today.

Trump shaves Vince McMahon’s head in 2007’s WrestleMania23. Who thinks Trump would have let McMahon shave his head if he had lost the bet?

Yet another tipping point occurred in 2020, when publicity-seeker Donald Trump—less a populist than a Hero of Hierarchy—lost his opportunity to serve a second term.
This continuing crisis is more like the 1930’s tipping point, then the ones in either 1776 or 1861.
Although a few U.S. representatives propose that the U.S. split up into red and blue states, that wouldn’t work today.
(Too many states are purple.)
Just as 1930’s isolationists flirted with Fascism, Trump created MAGA by convincing Americans that he had the ability to wall them off from “out groups,” as well as put a halt to societal change.

A comic book in 1950 explained why our votes are vital.

To read the complete comic go HERE.

Close presidential races have occurred before.
However, those elections weren’t “tipping points.”
Four presidents were assassinated—in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963—but those tragedies didn’t create chaos.
Most folks viewed the two parties as too similar to really care who won.
In too many elections less than half of Americans vote.

No one state, or group of states, got everything they desired in the U.S. Constitution (written in 1787), but that was the point.
People got together and bargained, and the majority opinion won.
The Constitution, and Bill of Rights, were written to work hand in hand with a Democratic society, and Democracies work best if people are free to do whatever, as long as doing so doesn’t harm others.
As the saying (attributed to multiple people) goes: “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

The framers erred in hoping that slavery would gradually fade away.
They also made a mistake in creating the Three-fifths Compromise,* enticing Southern states to sign the Constitution by trading this compromise for a bit more power.
(This strange agreement “baked” the concept of slavery into the Constitution.)
Eventually, wealthy Southerners conflated their own freedom with the freedom to be “on top” of the societal heap, and to own other people. 

Picture of Washington and Lincoln (the saviors of unity) by Currier & Ives.

One way of thinking about each U.S. crisis is that they centered around reactionary cycles and hierarchy.
However, as Lincoln (the disciple of Washington) expressed it in his Gettysburg Address, the U.S. needs a Federal Government that is: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
There’s simply no room for hierarchy in that phrase.
In the crises of 1861, 1933, and 2020, large segments of American society feared that their ways of life were being threatened.
They became resentful of other Americans, and valued “Anglo-Saxon order,” and wealth, over the Democratic system.
Hierarchy, and not caring about the general good, is a very bad fit with Democracy.
We are now at a crisis point.

* The Three-fifths Compromise was an agreement—in the U.S. Constitution—that included slaves in the state populations, but in a very peculiar manner. It specified that each slave would be counted as 3/5th of a human being. The resulting totals were used to calculate the number of seats in the House of Representatives, the number of electoral college votes, and how much states would pay in taxes. Although slaves couldn’t vote, slave-holding states ended up with more state representatives, and more electoral college votes, than they truly deserved.

Teetering on the Edge of Fascism?

Poster from Gabriel Over the White House, starring Walter Huston, as President Hammond.

There’s a lot about U.S. history that I didn’t learn in school.
For example, I learned this year that Republicans took the presidency from a Democrat before 2000.
(The “election” was in 1877, a backroom deal—in which 20 electoral votes were conceded to Rutherford B. Hayes, to end Reconstruction—which made Hayes the 19th President by a single vote!)
In addition, I wasn’t aware that, during the 1930’s, America teetered on the edge of giving up on Democracy. 

Evidence for a “lack of confidence” in Democracy can be found in the 1933 film, Gabriel Over the White House—directed by Gregory La Cava, and financed by William Randolph Hearst.
(Hearst was a newspaper publisher and politician; his life was one of the inspirations for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.)
“Gabriel” is the story of a political hack who’s elected President.
Early in his presidency, he nearly dies after speeding.
After the car crash, he changes from a figurehead, to an activist intent on saving the country.
According to IMDb, the film was released with two different endings—an American version and a little-seen European version.
(I’ve only seen the American version. According to sources on IMDb, the European ending is similar to that of the original novel. See below.)

When President Hammond (Walter Huston) is elected, he’s a caricature of a glad-handing politician.
He jokes about not fulfilling election promises.
His knowledge of geography is nil, so he asks his attractive young secretary (with whom he’s having an affair) where Siam is.
He’d rather crawl around on The Oval Office floor—with his four-year-old nephew—than pay attention to an army of the unemployed marching on Washington.
After Hammond awakens from his coma, however, he refuses Cabinet pleas to “defend the Capitol.”
Instead, he supplies food to the homeless men, and promises them jobs.
Dramatic lighting (and the sound of faint trumpets) reveal that this is a new President, guided not by his party’s needs, but by the Angel Gabriel.

The film script was based on a science fiction fantasy entitled Rinehard, by British author Thomas F. Tweed.
In the novel, American President Rinehard, changes, after a car accident, from a fan of “detective and wild west” tales, to a reader of political and economic tomes.
He dissolves Congress, fires his cronies in the Cabinet, declares martial law, creates his own militia, sets up agents in all state governments, increases the size of the Supreme Court (to 15), and replaces the Constitution—all to eliminate “red tape,” and create a functioning government.
At first, the White House staff is hesitant to follow (thinking he’s become insane), but one by one they conclude that it’s “a divine madness, the kind of madness that this crumbling world needs.”

Cover of Gabriel Over the White House, as published in Britain by Fantasy Books. Kemsley House, London. This is the version I read, but it was first published in Britain as Rinehard.

Cover of Gabriel Over the White House, as published in America by Farrar & Rinehart. Thomas F. Tweed’s name is not mentioned in the printed American version.

Oddly, the 1933 film credits list the Gabriel Over the White House author as “Anonymous.” Did Hollywood want to keep it hushed up that the author of “A Sensational Novel of the Presidency” was British? The story is told in first person by Hartley Beekman, Secretary to the President.

Tweed (1891-1940) was a British WWI Lieutenant-Colonel, and a political advisor to David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister.
According to Wikipedia, some characters in the novel are based on real people that both Tweed and Lloyd George knew.
Rinehard is set in the near future, and is about the world being given the government it “needs”—an efficient, benevolent dictatorship, where evildoers are punished.
(The secondary plot is a tale of Rinehard battling vicious Italian gangsters.)
Tweed later wrote another book known alternately as Blind Mouths or Destiny’s Man—which again involved a dictatorship and a healer.

It’s easy to figure out that Tweed was a Brit who never “crossed the pond.”
His novel is filled with British terms (“queue” instead of “line,” and “hire-purchase” instead of “buying on time”) plus awkward attempts at American slang.
(His gangsters seem based on British penny dreadfuls.)
A group of Chicago gangsters—"talking rapidly in Italian,” and described as “fat, swarthy, and soft-voiced”—are comically named Wolf Miller, Jose Borelli, “Spike” Jameson, and “Roddy” Greenblatt.
They commit a robbery with one thief costumed as Pierrot.*
(It’s strange that Tweed imagined that an Italian-American gangster would dress as an Italian clown; this “flourish” must have come from reading penny dreadfuls.)

The book was written in the 30’s, so it’s riddled with casual anti-Semitism, anti-Black, anti-immigrant and anti-Feminist sentiments.
A Chicago newspaper (Chicago Searchlight) is called a “filthy tabloid loved by Negroes, Jews and Italians.”
The President’s mistress/secretary (Pendie Malloy) is described as having a “faint strain of Jewish blood” because of her “acquisitive nose” and “full red lips.”
(“Acquisitive” is not my typo; that’s what Tweed wrote!)

The only sections that deal honestly with human emotions occur late in the novel, when an assassination attempt causes a head injury, and Rinehard returns to his former self.
Four years have passed since the car crash, but the befuddled Rinehard thinks it’s just days later.
He’s horrified to discover all the undemocratic measures he’s taken during his presidency, and wants none of it.
He asks that the White House staff set up the “television apparatus,” so that he may apologize to the nation.
However, his aides have become too invested in his legacy.
They refuse his request, causing a heart attack.
Rather than give Rinehard the medicine he needs, a staffer allows him to die.
The President’s legacy is left intact. 

President Hammond (Walter Huston) and Pendola Malloy (Karen Morley). In the novel, the secretary’s name is “Pendie Malloy” (short for “Independence”), but in the movie her name is Pendola Molloy.

In the novel, the only indication that Rinehart is possessed by an Angel is found on page 64.
Pendie Malloy tells the narrator (Hartley Beekmann) that: “Sometimes when Rinehard is dictating, he seems to be at a loss at a certain point. . .He lifts his head and bends it sideways, for all the world as if he were listening to something or someone.”
Malloy speculates to Beekmann that “God has become a little merciful,” and has “sent Gabriel to do for Rinehard what He did for Daniel,” lead The Prophet in the right direction.

Tweed’s 1933 novel presents an America in which “people had lost all hope and faith and belief in their institutions,” and have “a deep distrust of politics.”
Above all, they need a “Leader.”
After President Reinhard begins to present his “Rinehart bedtime stories” on television, the populace dutifully lines up behind him.
There’s no need to gag the press, or to interfere in the free expression of public opinion.
(Indeed, a science fiction-fantasy! Rinehart’s “bedtime stories” preceded FDR’s fireside chats.) 

Crime boss Nick Diamond in center (C. Henry Gordon) faces the President’s top aide, Hartley Beekman (Franchot Tone), on right. In the movie (and book), the President’s top aide heads a Federal Police unit that punishes criminals, not by imprisoning them, but with courts martial and firing squads.

The Hollywood film is somewhat different from the Tweed novel.
The film is set in the present (1933), rather than the late 1940’s.
The President’s relationship with his young secretary is obviously amorous in the film (but not so clear in the novel).
The film gangsters are slightly more realistic, and more “upscale.”
Several characters from the novel are combined in the film script, to simplify the plot.
The ending for the film is different too, with President Hammond dying after he’s signed a World Peace covenant.
However, the gist of the story is there.
Both the film, and the novel, are based on imagining whether America (and Britain too?) might be better off, if democracy was suspended and a “benevolent” dictator took power. 

In Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1939 article “Keepers of Democracy” (in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter), she describes a world in which the people of the U.S. had allowed themselves “to be fed on propaganda which has created a fear complex. . . People have reached a point where anything which will save them from Communism is a godsend, and if Fascism or Nazism promises more security than our own Democracy, we may even turn to them.”
(Sadly, this description of propaganda-believers sounds very similar to what’s occurring in 2023.)

President Hammond (Walter Houston) addresses the “army of the unemployed” under a statue of George Washington and offers them jobs as the “army of construction.”

In Gabriel in the White House, President Hammond becomes a dictator, but he’s also a protective figure, who gives people a sense of security.
In the film, he walks—unescorted and Jesus-like—to address the “army of the unemployed.”
He bravely confronts the evil crime boss Nick Diamond in The Oval Office.
He’s aware of his role as a servant of God and Country, and becomes remote from human affections.
In 1933, President Hammond was the only type of benevolent dictator that Hollywood (and Hearst?) could imagine as a substitute for Democracy. 

*”Pierrot” and “Harlequin” are both commedia dell’arte characters. In her youth, Dorothy L. Sayers did admit to enjoying trashy over-the-top “penny dreadfuls.” Their influence can be felt in Sayer’s 1933 Lord Peter Whimsey mystery, Murder Must Advertise. In that story, Lord Peter disguises himself in a Harlequin costume, while infiltrating a cocaine party, to solve a murder. 

Retribution of the Dollar-Hunters

Writers and journalists have traveled from “across the pond,” stayed for a while, examined American society, and published their viewpoints since the 1700’s.
They discussed topics like American individualism, and the large number of churches.
However, one attribute stood out—how fixated Americans were on making money, and the lives of the very rich.

French historian Alexis de Tocqueville (who visited America in 1831) was concerned that there would be “permanent inequality of conditions and inequality” because of American pursuit of self-interest and American disinterest in the general good.
He also discussed how quick Americans were to act in an excessively subservient manner to people they perceived as wealthy.

Book cover of Dickens & the Workhouse by Ruth Richardson, published by Oxford Press in 2012.

Novelist Charles Dickens asserted that Americans had a relentless focus on materialism—especially in relation to slavery, the prison system, and treatment of the mentally ill.
English economist John Stuart Smith described (in 1860) how American men were devoted to “dollar-hunting,” and American women were devoted to “breeding dollar-hunters.” 

Founder Thomas Jefferson, had a “complicated” history with money.
He assumed authority of the Monticello plantation (inherited from his father), at the age of 21, and was a wealthy man since birth.
As a young man, he advocated for abolition.
However, when he neared the age of fifty, he realized that Monticello earned 4% a year through the births of black slave children alone, and that these babies were his most lucrative “investment.”
He walked an intellectual tightrope on the issue of slavery for the rest of his days—fearing punishment from God, but unwilling to face bankruptcy.
(The book Master of the Mountain, by Harry Wiencek, tells the story of Jefferson’s financial decisions, in relationship to his views on morality.)

Religion played a part in American viewpoints about wealth.
The early Puritan and Calvinist settlers (ignoring the story of Job in the Bible) viewed material prosperity as a sign of God’s love.
During the Gilded Age (1877-1900), young boys read the rags-to-riches novels of Horatio Alger—a man raised in a Calvinist household who graduated from Harvard Divinity School.
Minister Norman Vincent Peale expressed his belief that one could “live successfully by picturing oneself succeeding,” both on his pulpit, and in his book The Power of Positive Thinking.
Several Protestant ministers—among them Joel Osteen and Paula White—continue to preach the “prosperity gospel.” 

Although many Protestant ministers didn’t believe the theories of Darwin, social Darwinism* had a big impact on American men in the late 1800’s.
According to historian Richard Hofstadter “American society saw its’ own image in the tooth-and-claw version of natural selection.”

Andrew W. Mellon (James Cromwell) in 2010-2014’s TV series Boardwalk Empire. In the episode “You’d Be Surprised,” Mellon testifies before Congress.

Andrew W. Mellon (1855-1937), Secretary of the Treasury under three Presidents—Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—told Presidents that a Depression* would “be good for the country because it would purge marginal farmers and small business people.”
He also advocated for violence against labor unrest.
(After his death, the IRS sought millions from Mellon’s estate for back taxes; his estate finally settled for $668,000.)
Today, Mellon heirs still fund right-wing causes.

Along the way, there was some rebellion against the “love of wealth” ethos.
The ”Share the Wealth” clubs,* of “Kingfish” Huey Long (1893-1935), claimed to have seven million members in the early 1930’s.
In FDR’s first inaugural address he said: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

American films illustrated our concerns.
In 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life, a guardian angel teaches George Bailey (James Stewart) the value of love, and his own life, over materialistic goals. 

Cousin Eustace (Charles Williams), Cousin Tilly (Mary Treen), Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), and George Bailey (James Stewart) gaze at a basket of money in It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s a Wonderful Life deals with many money issues.
Young George Bailey assumes that his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed) must prefer his high school rival Sam Wainwright, because Wainwright is so wealthy.
Banker Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) owns most of Bedford Falls.
Yet, Potter is so avaricious that he steals the $8,000 that Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) loses, and then connives to send both Bailey and Uncle Billy to prison, because of the loss.
The alternative universe Bedford Falls—Pottersville, in which Bailey was never born—is a sleazy place of poverty, crime, and run-down businesses.
(Bedford Falls has been picked clean by Henry Potter. Uncle Billy has been committed to an asylum, and their bank is a brothel.)

At the end of the film, Bailey’s navy veteran brother, Harry, makes a toast: “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
George’s “wealth” is the love and admiration of the people of Bedford Falls, not the money in his bank account.

The Scarecrow (Patrick McGoohan) puts a gun to the head of a British soldier in Disney’s The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. The film and TV series were based on stories of the British smuggling gangs who brought in brandy and tobacco to avoid taxes, and novels by Russell Thorndike about a pirate turned vicar (Dr. Syn) who steals to give to the poor.

European popular culture tended to have a more egalitarian bent, and viewed wealth with suspicion.
English folklore told of Robin Hood, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
Dashing highwaymen, like Dick Turpin, were sung about in ballads and immortalized in plays.
French authors created Arsene Lupin (a gentleman thief)—and the much more ruthless Fantomas—criminals who successfully eluded the police.
The German legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin explains how the Piper—when cheated of his full fee (for luring away thousands of rats)—revenges himself on the town of Hamelin, by stealing away its’ children.

Americans favored some famous thieves—Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Bonnie and Clyde, to name a few—but these were real people who Americans read about in newspapers and dime novels.
We also heard stories about industrious workers like Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry.
When I researched Paul Bunyan, however, I discovered that the Bunyan stories were rooted in the lumber fields of Canada.
There weren’t any folk tales about John Henry; his battle against a steam drill originated in an 1870 song.
Johnny Appleseed was a real person—horticulturist Jonathan Chapman (1775-1845).
It turns out that Chapman was a missionary of the Swedenborgian Church, as well as a planter of apple trees.
According to Collier’s Encyclopedia, “a good deal of what has been presented to the American public as folklore, we now know never existed in the oral tradition.”

We might assume that love of money, and admiration for the rich, goes hand in hand with the famous “Protestant Work Ethnic,” but that isn’t the case.
It’s true that (according to Pew Research Center), Americans work longer hours per week than Europeans, and take shorter vacations.
It’s also true that millions of Americans have two, or three, jobs.
(It’s been this way since the 1990’s.)
However, people don’t have multiple jobs because they want to work more.
Most are doing so because of medical debts, because hourly wages are so low, or in order to feed and house their children.
According to an article in The Guardian (September of 2022, Michael Sainato), nearly 5% of U.S. workers hold two or more job positions.
However, many experts call that a serious underestimate.

In Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she theorizes that because real wages have stagnated for workers since the 1970’s—without the safety nets afforded in other Western countries—we’re experiencing what political scientists (like Diana Mutz) call “dominant group status threat.”
A percentage of Americans feel that the “outgroups” (Blacks, Asians, immigrants) are doing “too well,” and therefore their own status is being threatened.
These deep fears are one source of MAGA support.

The Bizarro World of the Superman comics (art by Wayne Boring) is a crazy mirror image of the real world in which “bad” means “good” and coal is used for money.

To simplify, we’re living in a bizarro world where half of us believe that Democracy is only possible if we all have equal access to good health, education, and opportunity; while others just want to join the “top” caste, and are fearful of societal change.
Each believes the other is living in “Bizarro World.”

*Further information on these ideas is found in Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips, published in 2002, by a division of Random House.

No Feeling for Human or Humanoid Dignity

Panels from “Space Falcon, Pirate of the Stratosphere” written and drawn by Harry Harrison.
In these panels, Falcon and Tubby imprison slavers Cassandra (and her associate), and rescue the half-dressed men who she has enslaved.

Currently, both the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild, plus the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors (SAG-AFTRA), are on strike.
Until the unions work out a deal with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP) all TV and film productions, involving their members, will be halted.
Novelist and screenwriter, George R.R. Martin, recently said on Comic Book Resources (CBR.com) that a producer was quoted as saying that “AMPTP strategy is to stand fast until the writers start losing their homes and apartments.”
It looks as if this is going to be a long, long strike.

I recently retired from the world of design and print production, and I also paint and draw.
It seems to me that fine artists and book production people have some things in common with the writers and actors working in film and TV.
We’re all people who love what we do, more than we love making money.
Because we feel this way, we’re at a serious disadvantage in dealing with people “in charge,” whose sole business is generating money from our skill sets.

When I was a design and print production artist, I sometimes worked with managers who seemed almost resentful of artists.
Just like Alfred Hitchcock, who wanted his actors to be willing tools for his vision, these managers wanted artists to simply become their hands.
We’re at the threshold of editors using art-generating AI programs (like Midjourney and DALL-E.2, built from billions of images created by artists) to replace artists.
I remember dealing with several managers and editors who must love this development.
Now, by using AI, they can cut “prima donna” artists out of the illustration process completely!

Panels from “Captain Rocket,” written and drawn by Harry Harrison.

There’s a pattern of men being paralyzed, or held prisoner, in Harry Harrison stories.

Was Harrison subconsciously illustrating his position as a “wage slave?”

In 1964, Harry Harrison (1925-2012) wrote a science fiction short story “Portrait of the Artist,” that nicely describes just such a control-freak manager.
(Perhaps, the story is so perfect because Harrison was a centaur of sorts—an artist, and a writer.)
Note that the 1960’s were way before computer software was used for page composition.
(Programs that preceded InDesign weren’t in play until the 1980’s.)
The 60’s were the days of blue pencil, rubber cement, and India ink plus zip-a-tone on paper board.
In the future envisioned by Harrison, however, computers are drawing comic books, and have also taken over many service jobs.

In “Portrait of the Artist,” an experienced (read “older”) comic book illustrator named Pachs—who for years has used a Mark VIII Robot Comic Artist computer—is called into his manager’s office, and realizes that Martin is about to fire him. Martin says:

I’m going to have to let you go, Pachs. I’ve bought a Mark IX to cut expenses, and I already hired some kid to run it. . . You know I’m no bastard, Pachs, but business is business. And I’ll tell you what, this is only Tuesday, still I’m gonna pay you for the rest of the week. How’s that? And you can take off right now.

Pachs conceals his emotions, and leaves to get very drunk at a bar near the office.
(The bartender is an affable robot, with an Irish accent.)
I won’t spoil the tragic ending, but Harrison’s story concludes with Martin revealing his disrespect for Pachs as an artist, employee, and human being.

Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) undergoes euthanasia—first step in the process of becoming Soylent Green. His friend Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) is in the window.
In Charles Platt’s interview book with science fiction icons (Dream Makers Volume II), subject Harry Harrison tells Platt that his book Make Room! Make Room! was debased into the film Soylent Green.

After Harry Harrison fought in WWII, he returned to New York to study fine art.
He soon realized that it would be impossible to support himself as a fine artist, so he pivoted to comic book illustration and writing.
That was a good choice until the Comics Code hit, and publishers cut production by two-thirds.
By that time, Harrison had married and started a family, so he pivoted once again, to become a full-time independent author.
He’s best known for The Stainless Steel Rat book series, the DeathWorld book series, and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (that MGM purchased for Soylent Green).

AI-generated scripts for sit-coms, AI-created background actors in films, and AI-produced illustrations in magazines have a lot in common.
The purpose of each is to save time and money, but each also result in impoverishing the very people who originated the raw material.
The present systems undervalue the artists, and overvalue the overseers, who want creatives to act as their tools.

Detectives Matthew Sikes (Gary Graham) and George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint) help policeman Albert Einstein (Jeffrey Marcus) in the TV version of Alien Nation.

(The word “overseers” brings back fond memories of one of my favorite TV shows, Alien Nation.*
This series was cancelled in 1990, after 22 episodes, because its’ theme of accepting diversity was too controversial, and TV executives didn’t understand the show’s value.)

Managers obsessed with control, and executives obsessed with saving money, aren’t the only issues involved in more use of AI.
Writers, actors, and designers are also worried about quality.
We already live in a world in which network execs dumb down scripts because they underestimate viewer intelligence.
Just imagine what TV shows would be like if executives had full control over scripts.

It's difficult for many retired production and design people to look at new books and magazines these days.
We see “widows” (incomplete, one, or two, word lines) at the tops of pages and columns—once a real no-no.
Indexes (if there are indexes at all) are software-generated; they list every term and name in the text, but not the substantive information.
Pixelated images—that should have been swapped out for high-resolution images—are everywhere.
Layouts that may have looked OK on a monitor, are unreadable on the printed page.
We’re living in an era of “good enough” color reproduction, and “good enough” printing.

I assume that the family of Anthony Bourdain gave permission for his voice to be voice cloned in 2021’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.
I guess that the family of Wilt Chamberlain permitted Chamberlain’s voice to be voice cloned in the three-part 2023 TV series Goliath.
In the first run of 1982’s Conan the Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger mispronounced “lamentations of the women” as “lamination of the women,” and either he (or someone else?) later re-looped Conan’s dialogue.

Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sits in front of the fire in Conan the Barbarian.

Today, Schwarzenegger’s lines would be voice cloned.
It should make a big difference to everyone, whether a person’s heirs consent to voice cloning, or the person consents.

The word “robot” comes from the Slavic word for “drudgery.”
(See my article on Rossum’s Universal Robots.)
It would be fine if all that AI did for humanity was end drudgery: coding text, checking that pages would print properly, or making it unnecessary for an actor to lose 60 pounds for a role.
However, the big problem is that people in charge (the overseers) are indifferent to quality standards, and oblivious to allowing artists human dignity. 

The jokers in charge don’t have the ability to judge, or evaluate, the material that AI produces.
To use the writing style and word combinations of scriptwriters to write dribble is unethical.
To use the face, or voice, of an actor to make them play a scene they wouldn’t perform is immoral.
To use the color sense and gesture of an artist to forge a scene that they wouldn’t paint is wrong.
With performers, it’s worse, because their own personas are being misused.

*The premise of Alien Nation (1989-1997, the series through five TV movies) is that a slave ship of humanoid space aliens (the Newcomers) crashes in the Mojave Desert, and the Government attempts to integrate the 300,000 aliens into California society. The primary storyline is Police Detective Sikes overcoming his prejudices toward the Newcomers. The secondary storyline is the Newcomers being pursued by technologically-advanced “Overseers” who want to re-enslave the escapees, as well as enslave the entire earth population.