Changing the World One Apocalypse At a Time

R. Fiore has an essay up on tcj.com about the Watchmen book and comic. He argues, in part that the movie’s weaknesses are those of the book.

the entire movie depends on an idea that became obsolete within a few years after the book came out, which is that nuclear war was such an imminent absolute threat that the only decent course was non-resistance to totalitarianism. What this in turn depends on is a failure to understand the difference between nuclear war and every other kind of war, which is regardless of who was left hobbling, the respective high commands could not hope to personally escape the consequences. Even if they were sheltered during the blast, all the comforts and riches of their capitols would be blasted away. But what really makes the whole idea empty is the belief that conflicts between peoples aren’t genuine, and that they could all be swept away by an imaginary bogeyman. This is an idea as juvenile as any that ever appeared in a comic book.

So first, I don’t think Watchmen is pro-totalitarianism (V is another story). Ozymandias and his final solution are undercut and questioned repeatedly, both by other characters and by the narrative itself. Rorscach and Dr. Manhattan both suggest, for different reasons, that destroying New York may not have been worth the candle, and the final page of the book indicates that the fate of the world hangs, not on Ozymandias, but on some moron with ketchup on his shirt. (If you want to see me natter on about this topic at greater length, you can read this and also this).

I have problems with several of Fiore’s other points as well. For example, if I understand his argument aright, he seems to be under the impression that, because nuclear war would kill everybody, the people in charge of the nuclear buttons would never actually press them. The whole cold-war paranoia thing was just a big dumb mistake; nobody was ever in any danger, since mutually assured destruction was absolutely fool-proof. The lesson of the end of the Cold War was that we never had to worry about the Cold War to begin with.

Fiore’s correct in some sense — if our leaders were rational, we needn’t have worried about nuclear war. The problem, of course, is that they weren’t particularly. I’ve read a bunch of accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis (most recently one by Garry Wills) and I’m pretty convinced that John F. Kennedy was enough of a preening prima donna that he would have sooner destroyed the world than lose the news cycle. Thus, avoiding nuclear holocaust depended on…Khruschev. As it turned out, Khruschev was more level-headed than even a glass-half-full, turning-dog-turds-into-lemonade, off-to-join-the-Peace-Corps-and-frolic-with-the-happy-natives kind of optimist had any right to expect. But just because things worked out doesn’t mean that people weren’t right to be a little nervous.

I also disagree with Fiore’s contention that Watchmen misunderstands history and people. I mean, yes, obviously, the fake-space-alien-uniting-the-world is not especially probable. Among other things, the plot in the comic relies on the existence of psychic powers broadly distributed among the populace. And a guy who can catch bullets. And the existence of teleportation technology. Watchmen is many things, but a realistic narrative it is not.

But Fiore, obviously, is talking about more than that. He’s arguing that it’s ridiculous and childish to believe that conflicts between people can be swept aside by “an imaginary bogeyman.” He’s saying that miracles not only can’t happen, but wouldn’t work anyway because people are too set in their ways. Ultimately, Fiore seems to be skeptical not just of miracles, but of change.

Like Fiore, I don’t really believe in miracles, and I have my doubts about change. But I’ve been reading Terry Eagleton, who, as a Marxist, has a certain commitment to miraculous social transformation, and he does make you think. In his memoir The Gatekeeper, he discusses at length a Carmelite nunnery where he served as altar boy as a child.

What was most subversive about [the nuns], however, was their implacable otherworldliness. There are tough-minded types who believe that this world is the best we can muster, some of whom are known as materialists and the rest as conservatives. Whatever they call themselves, the hard-nosed realists who claim that there is no need for another world have clearly not been reading the newspapers…For [the nuns], the flaw of the world ran so deep that it cried out for some thoroughgoing transformation, known in their jargon as redemption. Short of this, things were likely to get a lot worse.

Fiore is one of those realists; he thinks the world is what it is. Moore, on the other hand, is suggesting that transformation is possible through a kind of apocalypse. Not Marxist revolution or Christian salvation, but something analogous; a global scale cataclysmic event, killing millions and shifting earth’s concept of its own place in the galaxy.

Contra Fiore, I think that such a massive event would actually really shake people up. 9/11 wasn’t as transformative as some like to claim, but it did succeed in concentrating a lot of minds. And the even Moore suggests would be much bigger — many more dead, and the sudden revelation of a hostile alien race. The only comparison would be the first European encounter with the Americas, which had massive psychological, spiritual, economic, and political consequences, to say the least. If you don’t think a bogeyman on the scale Moore propounds would be enough to change the world, it’s hard to say what would. Certainly, if you’re that assured of stability, it’s hard to see why you would think (as Fiore seems to) that George Bush could have made much of a difference one way or the other.

Moore does suggest that his particular miracle would require gallons and gallons of blood. His willingness to look at that unflichingly and unsympathetically is why Watchmen doesn’t end up endorsing violence or fascism. The revolution may really not be worth it; utopia isn’t necessarily grace.

The funniest thing about both sides of this argument, maybe, is that we know now that both Fiore and Moore are too pessimistic. Fiore argues that the cold war conflict was intractable; Moore argues that it could only be worked out by piling bodies like cordwood. And what happened instead (as Fiore at least should know)? The Cold War ended very rapidly and with (as these things go) little loss of life. Of course, the world isn’t all hunky-dory (and Moore didn’t say it would be.) But things do change, and not always for the worse.

Watchmen is, among other things, about the possibilities and perils of radical political change. It’s not a political treatise; it doesn’t present solutions to the problems it raises. But I don’t think it’s wrong in arguing that those problems could, perhaps, require transformative change, and in further suggesting that, for better or worse, such changes do occur. Fiore says that the plot of Watchmen is hard to believe, but, as Terry Eagleton notes the story of humanity is itself “grossly improbable.” The cynical view that tomorrow will be like today is in fact the most hopeless naivete — more naive, even, than trusting in our leaders not to kill us, or in believing that the fears of our parents were unreal because they no longer happen to be ours. Things do change, in large ways and small. The future is like the past only in being different from the present. Moore got that, which is why, even though its yesterday and tomorrow aren’t ours, Watchmen still seems up to date.

65 thoughts on “Changing the World One Apocalypse At a Time

  1. “Thus, avoiding nuclear holocaust depended on … Khruschev.”

    Like most people, I tended to think of Khruschev as a shoe-waving nut until I read “The Rise and Fall of Communism” by Archie Brown. Khruschev was a ruthless social-climber, but he was neither a megalomaniac nor a paranoic (unlike his predecessor). When it came to foreign policy, he was a pragmatist, though he had to make bellicose public statements to appease the hardliners in the Politburo.

    With regards to Watchmen seeming up-to-date: When I first read the comic the time period never bothered me. It made sense for the story, and in any case I felt Moore’s themes transcended any particular era.

    Then I went to see “Watchmen” with a big group of friends, and most of them actually liked the movie but they found the Cold War elements dated. For them, the movie didn’t have any relevance because it was set in a bygone era. For people just a few years younger than me, the Cold War might as well be the War of 1812.

  2. I don’t think “things” change in any essential way. I think the scope and scale of conflict is largely “manageable”, but usually involves ideologically “necessary” forms of manipulation. Once the scope and scale grow too large, the only way to manage it is to push it toward it’s ideological conclusion.
    One of the reasons Communism failed, I think, lies in an intrinsic reaction against such management techniques among the West; if we allow this to continue ( a planned society), it will eventually end in technocrats killing their own serfs for the “greater good”.

  3. Yeah; it was lucky Stalin wasn’t around when Kennedy decided to play “who has the bigger dick” I guess. I think that would have gone very badly for everyone.

    It’s funny…I think people are maybe more willing to see something set in the War of 1812 as a period piece, but if it’s 20 years ago, somehow it’s no longer relevant. Or maybe it’s just the expectation of a big special fx movie; folks don’t go to that sort of thing expecting to have to work at all, I guess.

    Uland, you’re not a Christian are you? The reality of historical change is central to Christianity, I think; the incarnation is a historical event and it changes everything in fairly fundamental ways. That’s part of the reason Eagleton sees Christianity and Marxism as allied; both have a historical sense that isn’t found in conservatism or (necessarily) liberalism.

    “One of the reasons Communism failed, I think, lies in an intrinsic reaction against such management techniques among the West;”

    I don’t know…. The management techniques in earlier Communism were a lot harsher than those around by the time Communism collapsed. Technocrats were really killing serfs for their own good under Stalin; not so much by the late 80s. And Communism *hasn’t* collapsed in China, exactly….

  4. The failure of the Watchment film doesn’t have much to do with the Cold War. Lousy acting, misplaced allegiances to the book….overdone fight scenes…bad movie. The book still works for nearly everyone I know who I’ve introduced to it–comics and non-comics fans alike. It’s failure can’t be that it has a silly/simple solution to its problem…since it’s fairly clear that this solution will be short-lived at best.

  5. I agree w/ the professor. Fiore’s argument just seems beside the point.

    “… the event Moore suggests would be much bigger — many more dead, and the sudden revelation of a hostile alien race. The only comparison would be the first European encounter with the Americas …”

    The thing is, humanity has a history of not uniting in the face of overwhelming outside threats. When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, India and Africa, they found local factions willing to collaborate in return for help doing down the locals’ enemies. Reagan’s “little green men” theory always struck me as funny. If the Martians did show up, the Republicans would sign up to help the invasion so America could be put in charge of the Euro-Asian land mass.

  6. I agree that uniting to face the common foe wouldn’t be the only possible outcome by any means — and I think Moore suggests that it might not be the final outcome in Watchmen, either. But I don’t think that such an outcome would be out of proportion, or inconceivable.

    I guess Fiore’s dismissal just seems kind of glib. Raising caveats and saying, I don’t think it would happen this way, is certainly reasonable. Blanket stating “this is stupid because human interactions can’t change like that” — I find that unconvincing.

  7. True enough, but I’ve always liked my point about the Republicans and the Euro-Asian land mass.

  8. “So first, I don’t think Watchmen is pro-totalitarianism (V is another story). Ozymandias and his final solution are undercut and questioned repeatedly, ”

    The last two pages of V for Vendetta undercut the message as well. Its supposed to be a brave new world, but isn’t the final scene (I’m writing from memory) people huddling, cold, by a fire and the cop guy shoves a potential female gang leader and walks off alone?

    Don’t have the book on me, but Moore seems to agree here:

    “I think that’s why I introduced a lot of the moral ambiguities into “V for Vendetta” in the first place. Some of the fascists are sympathetic and some of V’s actions are very, very questionable. It’s not my job to tell people what to think. “

  9. A recent chronological narrative account of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Michael Dobbs, ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT, seems to show that it was the military advisors around Kennedy that actually were pushing for nuclear attack, and that it was the combined level-headedness of Kennedy and Kruschev (Castro was pushing to launch the missiles on the other end) that pulled us through. I think there’s plenty of space to criticize Kennedy on any number of things, but from the minute-to-minute accounts, he seems to have been the only person in the American War Room who had sense enough to avoid ending civilization as we know it.

  10. I have trouble forgiving him for not just agreeing to pull our missiles out of turkey in the first place and do it publicly, since that was the ultimate compromise. The fact that they insisted on keeping the compromise secret had the effect of humiliating Russia (thus making disaster significantly more likely) for what I can only see as personal political gain,

  11. I can see that as a valid criticism, but I think it’s not unimportant to consider his position as a young president untrusted by the military establishment that not only didn’t want to pull out of Turkey, but was actively pushing him to launch missiles. I have to imagine that it was a high-wire act maneuvering both with the Russians and with his own government and military, needing to stay strong in both sets of eyes in order to remain effective. But I may just be rationalizing.

  12. Especially considering the fact that at talks the previous year, it was the universal understanding that Kruschev had completely dominated and bullied Kennedy into a weak, cowed position, and he had a lot of ground to recover in everyone’s eyes.

  13. Just to keep the argument concentrated in one thread…

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    I was reminded again watching the movie that when I was reading the comic book I never got a clear notion of what exactly the Watchmen did before they were outlawed…
    ————————

    Mm? What about the mentions, appearances of, flashback scenes with old criminals they fought?

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    In the wake of Reagan and Thatcher and George “The Evil of Banality” Bush, Richard Nixon has failed to maintain his potency as a devil figure.
    ———————–

    Indeed so! Why, he looks mature and statesmanlike, liberal compared to Bush II; a towering intellect compared to Ronnie…

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    But most of all, the entire movie depends on an idea that became obsolete within a few years after the book came out, which is that nuclear war was such an imminent absolute threat that the only decent course was non-resistance to totalitarianism…
    ———————–

    In what way, in reality or the “Watchmen” (book or movie) was going along with totalitarianism held up as a reasonable way to stop the threat of atomic annihilation?

    And Ozymandias was hardly setting himself up as a dictator; indeed, he was “making himself feel every death”; aware of the high cost and moral drawbacks of his plan to save the world.

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    What this in turn depends on is a failure to understand the difference between nuclear war and every other kind of war, which is regardless of who was left hobbling, the respective high commands could not hope to personally escape the consequences. Even if they were sheltered during the blast, all the comforts and riches of their capitols would be blasted away.
    ————————

    And yet, this didn’t prevent saber-rattlers on both sides from pushing for such a war; assured that, damaging though it might be, they could survive and fully rebuild their societies. See the Wikipedia entry on influential Cold War strategist Herman Kahn:

    ————————-
    In 1960, as Cold War tensions were near their peak…Kahn published On Thermonuclear War

    Kahn rested his theory upon two premises, one obvious, one highly controversial. First, nuclear war was obviously feasible, since the United States and the Soviet Union currently had massive nuclear arsenals aimed at each other. Second, like any other war, it was winnable.

    Whether hundreds of millions died or “merely” a few major cities were destroyed, Kahn argued, life would in fact go on, as it had for instance after the “Black Death” of the 14th century in Europe, or in Japan after a limited nuclear attack in 1945, contrary to the conventional, prevailing doomsday scenarios. Various outcomes might be far more horrible than anything hitherto witnessed or imagined, but nonetheless, some of them in turn could be far worse than others. No matter how calamitous the devastation, the survivors ultimately would not “envy the dead.” To believe otherwise would mean that deterrence was unnecessary in the first place. If Americans were unwilling to accept the consequences, no matter how horrifying, of a nuclear exchange, then they certainly had no business proclaiming their willingness to attack. Without an unfettered, unambivalent willingness to push the button, the entire array of preparations and military deployments was merely an elaborate bluff…
    ————————

    At least William F. Buckley wasn’t President; his religious dogmatism leading him to argue it was better for the human race to go extinct in an atomic war than turn Communist. (All the “good guys” would end up fitted with wings and haloes, then…)

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    But what really makes the whole idea empty is the belief that conflicts between peoples aren’t genuine…
    ————————

    In what way does “Watchmen” argue this?

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    …and that they could all be swept away by an imaginary bogeyman. This is an idea as juvenile as any that ever appeared in a comic book.

    While Watchmen is not on Ozymandias’ “side”, the clear implication is that his plan would work. It’s more along the lines of “we could make world peace this way, but it would be wrong.”
    ————————

    First, the whole world didn’t think that the alien threat (or in the movie, of a Dr. Manhattan gone rogue) was an “imaginary bogeyman”; the deception was carefully wrought.

    And, conflicts between peoples can be real, and still be set aside when they’re faced with a larger threat. Stalin was the most brutal Communist leader the USSR ever had, yet the U.S. enthusiastically allied with him, supplied his forces with armaments, to defeat Nazism.

    ————————
    R. Fiore:
    When I sat down to write this I was seriously wondering whether anyone cared about this movie anymore.
    ————————

    More about the great graphic novel than the movie…

    ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky:
    So first, I don’t think Watchmen is pro-totalitarianism (V is another story)…
    ————————-

    “Yes” to the first; but, anarchy is totalitarianism?

    ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky:
    I’ve read a bunch of accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis (most recently one by Garry Wills) and I’m pretty convinced that John F. Kennedy was enough of a preening prima donna that he would have sooner destroyed the world than lose the news cycle. Thus, avoiding nuclear holocaust depended on…Khruschev. As it turned out, Khruschev was more level-headed..
    ————————–

    What I’ve read of the Cuban Missile Crisis made clear that, as is the case today, the man in the White House can unilaterally decide to push the Red Button, and the missiles start a-flying. While in Russia, the Premier could not. It was up to the Politburo, the “the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” to make that decision.

    Meaning that, if a nut made it to the top position, the Russian system was more able to prevent them from unleashing Armageddon.

    ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky:
    Contra Fiore, I think that such a massive event would actually really shake people up. 9/11 wasn’t as transformative as some like to claim, but it did succeed in concentrating a lot of minds. And the even Moore suggests would be much bigger — many more dead, and the sudden revelation of a hostile alien race…If you don’t think a bogeyman on the scale Moore propounds would be enough to change the world, it’s hard to say what would…

    Moore does suggest that his particular miracle would require gallons and gallons of blood. His willingness to look at that unflichingly and unsympathetically is why Watchmen doesn’t end up endorsing violence or fascism. The revolution may really not be worth it; utopia isn’t necessarily grace.
    —————————-

    Yes, and yes…

    —————————-
    Jason Michelitch:
    A recent chronological narrative account of the Cuban Missile Crisis.. seems to show that it was the military advisors around Kennedy that actually were pushing for nuclear attack, and that it was the combined level-headedness of Kennedy and Kruschev (Castro was pushing to launch the missiles on the other end) that pulled us through. I think there’s plenty of space to criticize Kennedy on any number of things, but from the minute-to-minute accounts, he seems to have been the only person in the American War Room who had sense enough to avoid ending civilization as we know it.
    ——————————

    Quite so!

    ——————————
    Noah Berlatsky:
    I have trouble forgiving him for not just agreeing to pull our missiles out of turkey in the first place and do it publicly, since that was the ultimate compromise. The fact that they insisted on keeping the compromise secret had the effect of humiliating Russia (thus making disaster significantly more likely) for what I can only see as personal political gain…
    ——————————-

    If JFK had publicly agreed to pull our missiles out of Turkey (he did so covertly), the Republicans would have been frothing at the mouth they way they were after JFK pulled the plug on the Bay of Pigs invasion, attacking Kennedy and the Democratic Party for being “soft on Communism.” The same thing would’ve happened if LBJ had decided to give up on “saving” Vietnam.

  14. It’s worth remembering too that Kennedy provoked the entire mess by trying to invade Cuba, and then compounded the problem with continued and really despicable efforts to assassinate Castro and undermine the government, until Castro decided he wanted Russian missiles in Cuba (which was not his first choice by any means.)

    Kennedy’s foreign policy was largely a cowardly, incompetent, asinine mess. I do appreciate that he didn’t actually blow up the world…but that does seem a fairly low bar.

  15. “If JFK had publicly agreed to pull our missiles out of Turkey (he did so covertly), the Republicans would have been frothing at the mouth they way they were after JFK pulled the plug on the Bay of Pigs invasion, attacking Kennedy and the Democratic Party for being “soft on Communism.” The same thing would’ve happened if LBJ had decided to give up on “saving” Vietnam.”

    I think a responsible chief executive would weigh the dangers of nuclear war against the dangers of being sneered at by Republicans, and decide that a few Republican sneers were, in fact, not worth risking the world over.

    But that’s why I’m not a politician, I guess.

  16. “It’s worth remembering too that Kennedy provoked the entire mess by trying to invade Cuba, and then compounded the problem with continued and really despicable efforts to assassinate Castro and undermine the government, until Castro decided he wanted Russian missiles in Cuba (which was not his first choice by any means.)”

    Kennedy’s foreign policy was largely a cowardly, incompetent, asinine mess. I do appreciate that he didn’t actually blow up the world…but that does seem a fairly low bar.”

    Yeah, Kennedy in his first year was weak and ignorant on foreign policy. I can’t argue that. The Bay of Pigs and Castro Assasinations were leftovers from Nixon’s efforts under the Eisenhower administration, but Kennedy should have both known better than to go through with them and been strong enough to stop them, and I think neither was the case.

    That said, being literally the only person in the room who doesn’t want to blow up the world and having the fortitude to stick to those guns in the face of the people whose respect you need in order to govern the military with any effectiveness…yeah, I have to credit him for that. I don’t think that’s a small feat at all. I truly think that Kennedy evolved from his disastrous early days, and of course we’ll never know if he would have grown even more given the chance…

  17. ———————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:
    It’s worth remembering too that Kennedy provoked the entire mess by trying to invade Cuba, and then compounded the problem with continued and really despicable efforts to assassinate Castro and undermine the government, until Castro decided he wanted Russian missiles in Cuba (which was not his first choice by any means.)

    Kennedy’s foreign policy was largely a cowardly, incompetent, asinine mess. I do appreciate that he didn’t actually blow up the world…but that does seem a fairly low bar.
    ———————-

    Yup! And one of South Vietnam’s leaders assassinated?

    ———————–
    Washington D.C., November 5, 2003 – A White House tape of President Kennedy and his advisers, published this week in a new book-and-CD collection and excerpted on the Web, confirms that top U.S. officials sought the November 1, 1963 coup against then-South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem without apparently considering the physical consequences for Diem personally (he was murdered the following day). The taped meeting and related documents show that U.S. officials, including JFK, vastly overestimated their ability to control the South Vietnamese generals who ran the coup 40 years ago this week…
    ———————-
    http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/

    When Sarah Palin is President (thanks for being such an incompetent, cater-to-Big_Biz weakling, Obama), that bar will be laying on the ground!

    ———————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:
    I think a responsible chief executive would weigh the dangers of nuclear war against the dangers of being sneered at by Republicans, and decide that a few Republican sneers were, in fact, not worth risking the world over.
    ————————

    The sneers were predictable and by themselves could have been dealt with. The consequences – the American people being easily-manipulated dimwits – would likely have been to hand over control of the U.S. government to a Party that would’ve been more likely (being even greater saber-rattlers than Kennedy) to initiate an atomic attack.

  18. “… being literally the only person in the room who doesn’t want to blow up the world … yeah, I have to credit him for that. I don’t think that’s a small feat at all. ”

    You forget Bobby (“Now I know what Tojo felt like”). Otherwise I agree with you, w/ this addition. I think it was important to America’s standing, not just Kennedy’s standing, to keep the Turkish deal secret. Important enough to justify the Cuban Missile Crisis? That can be argued either way. But I don’t believe that Kennedy cared only about his own rep, either with the public or with the mil/national sec establishment.

    The USSR behaved aggressively by putting the missiles into Cuba. Yes, we had missiles on their border, and I’m sure they felt threatened by that. And when they put their missiles in Cuba, that was a threat to us. Any deal we made as a result of that threat had to come along with a disincentive to keep any Soviet leader from looking for the next opportunity to crowd us. Kennedy managed such a disincentive. In the world’s view, he made Khruschev back down, and not much later Khruschev wasn’t in charge of Russia anymore. I doubt we would have been better off if Kennedy had simply said, “Okay, you got us” and let Khruschev walk away with his winnings.

    Kennedy didn’t just avoid blowing up the world (as Noah puts it). He made US-Soviet nuclear relations more stable and thereby made the world safer. After the crisis we have the Test Ban Treaty, and eventually Johnson and Kosygin are talking peacefully at Glassboro even as the US is tearing up Vietnam. The US could kick up that insane, bloody mess without nuclear war breaking out. The fact was bad news for Southeast Asia, of course, but good news for the world as a whole.

  19. The problem with that logic is that the USSR was acting defensively, not offensively. The U.S. had made it clear it was trying to invade and overthrow Cuba. The USSR and Cuba reacted to that defensively by moving missiles into Cuba. Had we not been hellbent on overthrowing another sovereign nation, this particular dangerous mess would not have happened.

  20. But what lesson would have been learned if we had let Khruschev get his way with the missiles? The result would have been destabilizing, even though we started things.

    So Kennedy’s motive was most likely not protection of his individual standing, or not just that, but also the desire to make sure we weren’t put thru more such crises.

  21. I do think it’s worth looking, again, at the fact that A) the international view at the time was that the American president was young and weak, having just been brutalized by Kruschev publicly at an international forum, B) that he actually was young and relatively weak and/or incompetent in foreign policy at the beginning of his term compared to the time of the missile crisis, which can be seen in C) his going through with the invasion plans and assassination attempts that he inherited from the previous administration — whether he did because he was inexperienced, ignorant, weak, or a combination, he still fucked up, but I’m inclined to see this as a fuck up of trusting that the military and espionage establishment knew what it was doing, a lesson he learned in time to shout down his generals and advisors during the crisis.

  22. Tom, I think that it would have been good for the world and good for the nation if Kennedy had told the American people the truth; i.e., that he had negotiated with Khruschev in good faith, and had reached a compromise. Instead, he simply perpetuated the idea that in these sorts of conflicts, it was us against them and one of us had to win, American presidents had to be strong, strong, strong, etc. It’s a horrible narrative both for the world and for American domestic political institutions (Garry Wills is, again, quite good on this — he points out that the whole point of the compromise was for Kennedy and the Russians to collaborate in *lying to the American people.*)

    Jason, did Kennedy stop with mucking about in Cuba after the missile crisis? My impression is that he did not, but I could be mistaken.

  23. “he simply perpetuated the idea that in these sorts of conflicts, it was us against them and one of us had to win, American presidents had to be strong, strong, strong, etc. ”

    But then he went on to the Test Ban Treaty. Yes, when it comes to eye-to-eye showdowns the Crisis perpetuated the idea that one side or the other had to give. But then there were fewer such showdowns — as in none. Meanwhile, Kennedy built up the idea that in our day-to-day nuclear relations we should find solutions both sides could live with.

    “the whole point of the compromise was for Kennedy and the Russians to collaborate in *lying to the American people.*”

    Ain’t that the way of it.

  24. Noah– Have you seen “The Fog of War,” the Errol Morris documentary about Robert McNamara? They play tapes of phone conversations with the various presidents under whom McNamara served. The conversations from the Cuban Missile Crisis are nerve-wracking; it’s terrifying to think that the fate of humanity rested on a bright but inexperienced young leader who had already made serious blunders and had advisors urging him to start an all-out nuclear war just to prove he wasn’t a pussy.

    Then you hear the later tapes of conversations with Gerald Ford, a man who, bless his heart, seemed to think of war as a very expensive football game, and you realize how much worse it could have been.

    I don’t know how likely it would be for the “Watchmen” scenario to result in people trying to collaborate with the aliens, but the possibility must have occurred to Moore, since that’s exactly what happens in the second “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series.

  25. I haven’t seen the Fog of War; maybe I’ll try it when I need a good scare.

    Basically, it’s terrifying to think that people whose main skills are outsized ambition and pandering to others are in a position to kill everyone on the planet. Of the Presidents since 1950, I think the only one I’d feel confident would not, in the right situation, start a nuclear holocaust was Jimmy Carter — and maybe Obama. Maybe Eisenhower too? Eisenhower was an evil bastard in foreign policy, but he tended to only fight when he knew he could win (short term. Over the long term, his foreign policy was not especially good.)

  26. “I don’t know how likely it would be for the “Watchmen” scenario to result in people trying to collaborate with the aliens, but the possibility must have occurred to Moore, since that’s exactly what happens in the second “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series”

    I think there’s no possibility of communicating with the squid in Watchmen. It shows up, psychically kills everyone, and dies. I don’t even know that people think its intelligent. I think there might have been propaganda that it wasn’t, it’s as if a giant shark came out of the bottom of an ocean, ate a city, then died of dehydration.

  27. ——————–
    pallas says:
    …I think there’s no possibility of communicating with the squid in Watchmen. It shows up, psychically kills everyone, and dies. I don’t even know that people think its intelligent. I think there might have been propaganda that it wasn’t, it’s as if a giant shark came out of the bottom of an ocean, ate a city, then died of dehydration..
    ———————

    Nicely phrased! But if it had been merely an unintelligent alien animal, which destroyed a city merely by accident, would Ozymandias have considered that to be enough of a threat to rally superpowers on the brink of war to unite against it?

    Moore is not explicit in describing an alien civilization, but let’s see what Ozymandias says:

    “…the [cloned brain of the creature] was a psychic resonator. It would amplify a signal pulse…triggered by the onset of death.

    “We coded a lot of information into that signal. Terrible information.

    “Max Shea’s descriptions of an alien world, Hira Manish’s images and Linette Paley’s sounds…many will be driven mad by the sudden flood of grotesque sensation

    “No one will doubt that the earth has met a force so dreadful it must be repelled, al former enmities aside.”

    (Sounds almost like Ozymandias* planned for visceral horror and revulsion to play as big a part in the human wish to fight these creatures as the more reasonable desire to repel an invasion…)

    *Moore clearly hinting with that name that the character’s grandiose plans, like the monuments of a pharaoh, would come to dust:

    —————————–
    OZYMANDIAS

    I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.
    ————————–
    – Percy Bysshe Shelley

  28. Mike,

    Here’s the bit I was thinking of, p. 25 of the last issue, on the news “Could further attacks be imminent?”

    A balloon next to it says “We think not, imagine an alien bee, not very intelligent, that stings reflexively upon death if…”

    I’ve seen comments on how the mouth of the squid looks like a vagina.

    Veidt, the smartest man on earth, is able to see many of the subconscious motivations that drive human behavior, which is why he’s able to invest in products that people will buy before they even know they want them. He uses sexual imagery for his advertising.

    Although he did work with science fiction writers and artists, I think he knows this symbolism of repressed sexuality, mixed with this violent attack, will somehow redirect human aggression. There’s no indication that he’s even wrong.

    The only problem is a) it might turn out that, for all his intelligence, he’s a fallible human after all, and b) he can’t account for every X factor, like Rorschach’s paranoid theory about a costume hero murderer, or the journal.

  29. I think it’s worth pointing out, too, that the whole thing is clearly a Cthulhu joke. A pretty funny one too. One of the great things about Watchmen which people maybe don’t talk about that much, and one of the things that makes it a really worthwhile thing to read for lots of different audiences, is that it’s genuinely funny in a lot of ways and on a lot of levels. Maybe that’s the biggest difference with the film, which was faithful to everything but the humor.

  30. I ducked out of the thread in the middle of an argument about the Cuban Missile Crisis, I rejoin it and see the words “the whole thing is clearly a Cthulhu joke.” Now that’s a fast-moving conversation.

    About Watchmen and humor. True, the comic is funny and the movie isn’t — except for the opening credits, which people often cite as their favorite part of the film. That’s the one time the movie comes alive, and also the one time it lets itself be funny. Probably not a coincidence.

    I still can’t get over the mismatch between the credits and the film proper. Hard to believe the same guy did them both.

  31. Wow.

    Re: The tone of the movie versus the tone of the book, and the credits sequence-

    I’m going to quote myself from the comments section of R. Fiore’s review and hope someone here might have a better response.

    “I’m not a big fan of Watchmen the comic (being it still involves improbably-small-headed men in their pajamas involved in various unlikely scenarios with each other, whatever it’s other charms), but I cannot disagree with you more with this capsule review. Watchmen the Movie has many of the same events, and almost all of the same dialogue, in the service of a completely different purpose. Whereas the comic seems to be telling us what violent idiots these people are, presenting the violence to shock and horrify our sensibilities, the movie shows us these same things lovingly, as if to say “look at this beautiful violence I have created for you.” Maybe it’s my own underexposure to recent popular movies, but I have rarely seen something so sure of its own disgusting, blood-dripping virtues, starting with the aforementioned credits sequence and moving on from there. Really? You were fine with this movie appropriating some of the most horrific imagery of the last century just so it can tag on its own character to the scene? You’re willing to watch the death of real life men digitally recreated for you just so a movie can prove how tough and cool it’s main character is?

    Wow.

    Beside that, there doesn’t seem to be any point in bringing up the incompetent staging, the bewildered acting or the “my first mix tape” aspect of the soundtrack.

  32. One last thing- I had to force myself to remember that there’s more to the credits sequence than just the two horrific recreated deaths, which goes to show you how strongly that part marked me. I was gritting my teeth for the next twenty minutes or so. I’m willing to concede that I might have found some sections of the credits funny if I hadn’t been so horrified (there’s no other word for it) by the rest.

  33. I can’t even remember the credits sequence well enough to know for sure what you mean…but you’re talking about the Silhouette being killed in the credits, right?

    Like Tom, I thought the credits sequence was much more stylish and exuberant than the rest of the movie…in part perhaps because it wasn’t so locked into the comics blueprint. At the same time…yeah, the lesbian death sequence was really unpleasant.

    Bright Lights has a good discussion of it I thought.

    Watchmen’s violence didn’t exactly horrify me…but I’d agree that it’s much more cynically amoral than the violence in the comic.

  34. For any of those who think Watchmen is silly/overrated, take note that decades after its publication, the collective writing on it still hasn’t come close to exhausting what there is to say about this book. I call that literature.

  35. I agree with Sean…the biggest problem with the Watchmen film is how it celebrates violence and gore(Kung-fu/Matrix fights in Antartica instead of a 3 panel dismantling as in the book–the severing of hands in prison, accompanied by buckets of blood, etc.) AND that all of the moral complexity of the book comes from the destruction of innocent people in NY who we know and like–and who are human. All of these characters are more or less gone from the film…and so the destruction of NY is a set piece of cool explosions and craters. That is, the film is a superhero movie–not a deconstruction of one as the book is.

    Someone above (Noah?) characterized Cuban missile crisis and aftermath as an agreement to hoodwink the American people—Isn’t this what Watchmen is too? Intentional? I wouldn’t necessarily doubt it, given Brought to Light.

  36. ————————————
    Pallas says:
    …Here’s the bit I was thinking of, p. 25 of the last issue, on the news “Could further attacks be imminent?”

    A balloon next to it says “We think not, imagine an alien bee, not very intelligent, that stings reflexively upon death if…”
    ———————————–

    Ah yes, now I remember that part!

    Looking it up, that speculation is apparently made not very long after the New York disaster. Which now I see (every time I reread the book, new details are discerned) was not so much intended to make the human race come together to fight off an alien threat – ere in the last pages the cultural mood* would be one of militarism rather than of looking forward to a bright future – than to shock it with a startling reminder that We’re Not Alone In The Universe; make humanity realize how close it had come to Armageddon.

    ————————————
    Pallas says:
    …Veidt, the smartest man on earth, is able to see many of the subconscious motivations that drive human behavior, which is why he’s able to invest in products that people will buy before they even know they want them. He uses sexual imagery for his advertising.

    Although he did work with science fiction writers and artists, I think he knows this symbolism of repressed sexuality, mixed with this violent attack, will somehow redirect human aggression. There’s no indication that he’s even wrong…
    ————————————–

    And the young of the “squid” species eat their way out of their mother’s womb, too, to make them even more grotesquely alien

    ————————————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:
    …One of the great things about Watchmen which people maybe don’t talk about that much, and one of the things that makes it a really worthwhile thing to read for lots of different audiences, is that it’s genuinely funny in a lot of ways and on a lot of levels. Maybe that’s the biggest difference with the film, which was faithful to everything but the humor.
    ————————————–

    ————————————–
    Tom Crippen says:
    I ducked out of the thread in the middle of an argument about the Cuban Missile Crisis, I rejoin it and see the words “the whole thing is clearly a Cthulhu joke.” Now that’s a fast-moving conversation.
    ————————————–

    Yeah, I’m pretty delighted about the level of lively activity here; it’s like the Good Old Days of the now sadly moribund TCJ message board. “Watchmen”: over 20 years old, and still inspiring thoughtful discussion! In contrast, what kind of talk has its contemporary, “The Dark Knight Returns,” inspired?

    Reading farther down the thread, I see this was posted:

    ————————————-
    Allen Rubinstein says:
    For any of those who think Watchmen is silly/overrated, take note that decades after its publication, the collective writing on it still hasn’t come close to exhausting what there is to say about this book. I call that literature.
    ————————————–

    Yes. There is so much richness, inventiveness, depth in philosophy and characterization, moral ambiguity (the “villain” did it all to save the world from nuclear annihilation; of the heroes, Laurie says, “All we did was fail to stop him saving Earth.”) there…

    (BTW, “Changing the World One Apocalypse At a Time”: Great thread title!)

    ————————————–
    Tom Crippen says:
    About Watchmen and humor. True, the comic is funny and the movie isn’t — except for the opening credits, which people often cite as their favorite part of the film. That’s the one time the movie comes alive, and also the one time it lets itself be funny. Probably not a coincidence.
    ————————————–

    True! Back in the “It’s Official! Watchmen is a tremendous piece of crap” thread, well worth rereading ( http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=6053&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 ), I’d mentioned among a listing of Snyder’s failings:

    ————————————-
    Snyder has no idea whatsoever how to pace the readings of lines. Word-emphasis is wrong, intonations that in the comic expressed reproach, more powerful for the quiet way they were delivered (Rorschach’s “You quit.”), in the movie is delivered as an angry growl. Other phrases that in the comic were spaced so as to provide little surprises, jolts of drama, in the film lose this effect by being delivered run-on:

    Dan: “…I feel that we have certain obligations to our fraternity.

    “I think we should spring Rorschach.”

    (In two separate, if conjoined balloons in the comic. Which then further improves over the film with a “beat” – an intervening panel – before Laurie says, “What?”)

    …In the comic, after the gruesomeness via which Rorschach deals with his attackers in his cell, there is a little comedic interlude as he follows Big Figure into the bathroom. Laurie is ticked off that – in the midst of a rescue attempt – Rorschach apparently has to “go,” and Dan explains how a suspect once escaped ’cause he had to stop and take a whiz, or something like that. Then we hear a thumping, and water from the toilet Big Figure got jammed into head-first flows out the bathroom door.

    God forbid everything should not be grim, gritty, and hyperviolent for Snyder. The jokey chat is missing, what spills from the bathroom is a flood of blood.
    —————————————–

    On that thread we also read:

    ——————————————–
    Eddie Campbell’s [commented on his blog] that “When You see comic book content having to be dumbed down in order to be turned into movies, you know that something is wrong with the world.”

    And Hayley Campbell’s assessment of the movie is perceptively on-target too…

    “…most of it is such a carbon copy of the book that some of what alan’s saying gets across by accident. it’s kind of like someone with no sense of humour retelling a joke he heard once…

    “…when they fight the comedian in the beginning to toss him out the window it’s as if his entire apartment has been dipped in liquid nitrogen — they throw him against a wall and it shatters. they slam him against what looks like a marble bench top and he leaves a head-shaped hole. everyone seems to be full of 90 pints of blood. when the dogs fight each other for a bone in the book it’s just a long bone – it’s up to us to realise the true horror of it all. in the movie, it’s a leg bone with a frilly sock and a small pink shoe on the end. it’s all there, it’s just so fucking obvious.”
    ——————————————–

    And there too:

    —————————————–
    patpalermo wrote:
    …Unfortunately, they were stuck with a director whose adolescent indulgences and complete ignorance of nuance acted to cripple them at nearly every turn.

    …Not to mention his COMPLETE FAILURE to include just ONE relatable, normal New York Citizen to remind us of the stakes–and the cost–of the story,

    And also his complete COP-OUT regarding said use of violence– We get to see lovingly-photographed, extended shots of cleavers hitting the skull of a pedophile, but not ONE shot of the carnage that Viedt’s plan has wrought–

    AND HIS UTTER MISUNDERSTANDING OF WHAT MAKES OZYMANDIAS WORK AS A CHARACTER—

    Snyder proved himself too juvenile to understand what his story was about.

    Moore, even at his most flawed, wrote a story that is cynical towards superheroes but compassionate towards normal people. (And the closer his heroes get to being average joes, the more we forgive them.)

    Snyder, however, seems just cynical. But cynical in that irritating way that high school goths are cynical. They haven’t earned enough experience of the world to be weary of it in any insightful way.

    This movie wasn’t made for fans. It was made for fanboys.
    ——————————————–

    Back at The Hooded Utilitarian:

    ——————————————–
    Sean Robinson says:
    …Re: The tone of the movie versus the tone of the book, and the credits sequence-

    …Watchmen the Movie has many of the same events, and almost all of the same dialogue, in the service of a completely different purpose. Whereas the comic seems to be telling us what violent idiots these people are, presenting the violence to shock and horrify our sensibilities, the movie shows us these same things lovingly, as if to say “look at this beautiful violence I have created for you.”…
    ———————————————

    …And isn’t it just too cool and badass? (An absolutely correct assessment, Sean.)

    ———————————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:
    I can’t even remember the credits sequence well enough to know for sure what you mean…but you’re talking about the Silhouette being killed in the credits, right?

    Like Tom, I thought the credits sequence was much more stylish and exuberant than the rest of the movie…in part perhaps because it wasn’t so locked into the comics blueprint. At the same time…yeah, the lesbian death sequence was really unpleasant.

    Bright Lights has a good discussion of it I thought…
    ———————————————-

    Yes; with one respondent making the interesting comment:

    ———————————————-
    Sandra says:
    It seems to me that the movie version of Rorshach murdered the two women; because the writing on the wall is similar to Rorshachs handwriting (caps letters mixed with a lower case ‘e’ for example).
    ———————————————-

    Hurm!

    * As shown in the poster: “One World – One (is the word ‘Nation’?)” and the billboard for Veidt’s new product, reflecting his perception of the changed zeitgeist, “Milennium.”

  37. “God forbid everything should not be grim, gritty, and hyperviolent for Snyder. The jokey chat is missing, what spills from the bathroom is a flood of blood.”

    Yeah, after I saw the movie I reread parts of the book, Rorschach is hilarious in the book. He’s so completely non self-aware as he delivers these dead pan one liners.

    He’ll go from complaining about prostitutes and perverts to planning investigations based on speculations about people’s sexuality:

    “Possible homosexual? Must remember to investigate further.”

    One of my favorite bits, not in the film, is when they are approaching Veidt’s base, Night Owl wonders why Veidt has murdered all of these people, and Rorshack states, unselfconsciously
    “Insanity, perhaps?”

    and starts doing his weird eating beans thing, with the “Chomp Chomp Chomp” sound.

    There’s the bit where he beats a bunch of people up in the bar, breaking bones, and complains unselfconsciously, with no awareness of all the pain he’s inflicted, something along the line of

    “Nobody knew anything. I feel slightly depressed.”

    I actually liked the played up violence in the film whenever it involved Veidt beating people up. He’s so smart, and beyond the other heroes (except for Manhattan, of course) that his movements are dance-like and effortless when he does things like catch the knife and throws it back at the Comedian, for example.

    In the original book, they do have the bit where, they are about to fight Veidt, and Night Owl says that Veidt is so above them, that Night Owl suddenly knows what normal people feel like around him and Rorshack. Throughout the film and book, Rorshack plays these tricks on people, planning violent traps they stumble into.

    It’s true to that spirit when Rorshack charges Veidt in the film, has no idea Veidt is aware of his approach, and Veidt leaps out of the way, sending Rorshack smashing into a television.

    Some of the other scenes playing up violence, like the assassin shooting Veidt’s business partners, were lame….

  38. “– ere in the last pages the cultural mood* would be one of militarism rather than of looking forward to a bright future – than to shock it with a startling reminder that We’re Not Alone In The Universe; make humanity realize how close it had come to Armageddon.”

    Oh, one more thing, in the text interview with Veidt, he says he thinks that many humans subconsciously want the end of the world to happen, so they no longer need to take responsibility for their actions.

    I think the violence in New York is meant to fill that need, its like this orgasmic apocalyptic bloodbath that gets it out of their system.

    At the very least, it might make the world’s leaders see that mass annihilation isn’t so much fun after all. …

  39. I see that this thread has now been squeezed out of sight on the home page of tcj.com; let’s see if that equals “out of mind,” too…

  40. “I had to force myself to remember that there’s more to the credits sequence than just the two horrific recreated deaths, which goes to show you how strongly that part marked me.”

    You may be a bit oversensitive and were overloaded by the experience.

    “Really? You were fine with this movie appropriating some of the most horrific imagery of the last century just so it can tag on its own character to the scene?”

    You know, I might be, depending on what the tagging accomplished, what imagery was chosen, etc. Luckily Auschwitz and Hiroshima didn’t show up in the sequence, so I was spared some of the tough cases.

    I like the way you start a thought with “Really?”

    “You’re willing to watch the death of real life men digitally recreated for you just so a movie can prove how tough and cool it’s main character is?”

    No, not just for that. A lot depends.

  41. I’m still slogging through this but, Noah, you said “I think the only one I’d feel confident would not, in the right situation, start a nuclear holocaust was … maybe Eisenhower too?”

    I’d second Eisenhower. As a point of comparison: in 1954 von Braun emphasized that it would be a “terrible blow to American prestige” if the US lost the race to put the first space sattelite in orbit. In 1956, the Soviets brutally suppressed the Hungarian rebellion (“We will bury you,” says Khrushchev). In 1957, Sputnik goes up. The public thinks the Soviet Union has the edge — and from a simple PR standpoint they did. But Eisenhower, as early as 1955, believed that the Soviets needed to be in space first, despite the PR damage, because if they got they first, the US could respond by congratulating them, and space would be depoliticized. If the US had gotten there first, Khrushchev would have been under extraordinary pressure from the Politburo to claim an extension of Soviet airspace to the edges of the cosmos. Had that happened, our world today would be a much different place.

    A man who can think like that is a man of peace, even if he was in the GOP.

  42. ———————–
    Sean Robinson says:
    …You were fine with this movie appropriating some of the most horrific imagery of the last century just so it can tag on its own character to the scene? You’re willing to watch the death of real life men digitally recreated for you just so a movie can prove how tough and cool it’s main character is?
    ———————-

    Gotta admit, I didn’t remember the movie’s main titles all that well. I just tapped “watchmen title sequence” into Google, though, and found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2hNhM3dHB4 .

    That was certainly the best part of the movie. Considering its fluid flow and editing, deft camerawork, I’d wondered if Snyder had cut his filmmaking teeth on TV commercials, and indeed he had: “Snyder went on to shoot, as a director and cinematographer, television commercials for such clients as the automobile companies Audi, BMW, Subaru and Nissan, among others. Other commercial work has been for clients including Nike, Reebok, and Gatorade…” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Snyder )

    …Which also, unfortunately, might account for his deficiencies in handling actors.

    I’m astonished you consider the “digitally recreated” – looks t’me like it was just filmed – violence of the JFK assassination and the burning bonze so grisly.

    In the actual Zapruder footage (which one ABC Afterschool Special spliced into its story of teen romance to add weight to the lightweight tale), you can see the burst of chunks of skull and brain matter flying off as Kennedy’s head explodes. (Yes, they used that part in the ABC show.)

    Must have been an attack of subtlety, because Snyder mutes that gory bit; there’s a well-nigh subliminal touch of red. (For comparison, see the Zapruder film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge_f4OEsV9I )

    The Comedian is hardly the main character of “Watchmen”; and, how does showing him apparently having shot JFK – from ambush – “prove how tough and cool” he is?

    I remember seeing those Vietnamese Buddhist monks self-immolating as acts of protest against their government at the time. In the movie titles – unlike what I saw on the TV news – you can hardly tell it’s a human being burning up.

    Incidentally, the very moment in the carefully- edited sequence that we are shown the murdered Silhouette and her lover, Dylan is singing, “And don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”

    …Are we maybe getting a message?

  43. Caro, I wouldn’t see Eisenhower as a man of peace necessarily. He was awfully gung ho about overthrowing sovereign nations; he attempted 6 and managed 4, according to Garry Wills. He was more successful in his overthrow attempts than his successors — though the longterm ramifications were often not good (in Iran for example.)

    As Presidents go, Eisenhower was okay. But again, this is a low bar.

  44. Well, he was military. But he wasn’t Stalin…

    C.F. today’s neo-con version of rhetoric about global peace through military intervention. They talk an Eisenhowerian game, but I think Eisenhower meant it and I think they’re playing PR.

    So I’m crediting DDE with sincerity and a skilled tactical mind: peace, not pacifism. His commitment really was more to peace and prosperity than to his own reputation and America’s theatrical prestige. You can disagree with the actions that led him to without seeing him as insincere — the “political” charge you level against JFK.

    I think it’s worth noting that Wills is concerned with how we got to a present-day phenomenon: the history at stake in his argument is today’s world. He traces trends back into the atomic age, but those trends wouldn’t have been visible or sensible in the same way to mid-century Americans. While it’s a good account of how we got to where we are now, I would caution using his framework to interpret decisions made by Eisenhower and Kennedy in their context: they didn’t have the benefit of the lessons of Vietnam or the same perspective on technology and mass media that we do today, and their population had notably, if not profoundly, different values. Mid-century Americans thought like us in a surprisingly large number of ways, but not all…

  45. Indeed; let’s beware of…
    —————–
    Presentism is a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter.
    —————–
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29

  46. I’ll second the recommendation of Dobbs’s One Minute to Midnight. It’s pretty good at historicizing the Missile Crisis. It’s definitely written to make the most of the drama but it also does a nice job with documentary sources and trying to get at what was in people’s minds at the time.

    I don’t think it’s possible to disagree with Noah that the secrecy was political, but you do indeed come away from the book, as Jason says, feeling that Kennedy was one of the least likely people on the NSC to escalate the conflict: the joint chiefs would have, left to their own devices, but Kennedy let himself be persuaded by the doves.

  47. I don’t think Eisenhower was insincere, especially. The problem is he was sincerely imperialist, which is not good.

    Americans didn’t learn any lessons from Vietnam that weren’t already manifestly obvious from the Phillippines and Korea, at the least.

  48. Noah, sorry, I meant political lessons from the Vietnam era and mass culture, not military ones. I just don’t think it would have occurred to Kennedy to be transparent in the way you’re saying he should have been. A voting populace who had fairly recently experienced WWII — Loose lips sink ships! — had a higher tolerance for secrecy than the population post-Vietnam.

  49. Yes, Christ showed us that salvation is possible, but we’re still fallen. Human agents didn’t reveal anything to us, or create some kind of social structure to allow Christs arrival. If it was true when it was revealed to us, it’s an eternal truth..

  50. The truths may be eternal (transcendent) but their revelation in the world, and our relation to them changes (because we are fallen and live in a material universe.) The way change functions in Christianity, I think, is by the breaking through of transcendent truth into the material world, which is the mystery of the incarnation. So though Christ’s truths may be eternal, the world before Christ is very different from the world after, because it was at that moment that eternal truth entered the non-eternal world.

    C.S. Lewis is great on this. In his sci-fi series, non-humanoid sentients were all created before Christ; after Christ, only humanoid races were created. In some sense there’s no change; Lewis is very clear that what matters really is your soul, so the non-humanoid/humanoid distinction doesn’t matter in an eternal sense. But in our material universe, this change is nonetheless a fairly big deal.

  51. No, I hear you. I think “change” is possible in the sense that there is a new way out ( Christ), but that the conditions that have to be met- our natures, etc.— are essentially the same.
    It’d be really difficult for me to make the leap to Marxism from there; material conditions don’t change our souls.

  52. It is tricky. Marxist’s really emphasize materialism, obviously…but at the same time, Marxist revolution is, almost despite itself, clearly meant to be transcendent. I think from a Christian perspective, that might be part of the reason Marxism seems so diabolical; it sort of parodies aspects of Christianity much more deftly than Satanists do.

    And, on the other hand, it’s why Marxists like Terry Eagleton and Zizek are obsessed with Christian theology.

  53. Yeah, I can see how Marxism could be viewed as a materialists desire to transcend through a universal, eternal value system.
    I wonder if the fact that Marx was Jewish, and that so many early Bolsheviks were Jewish, speaks to a sublimated desire among them to have a Christian-like ethic, but clearly one their terms.
    Theologians had pretty much come to the conclusion that even with this new covenant, the vast majority would not follow, we’re so fallen, while Marxists seem to think that some kind of innate rationalism would kick in and people would follow.

    The high church hierarchies are viewed ( or apologized for..) by some Catholics as necessary in light of the masses probable inability to follow; a path had to be cut, so to speak, for those who maybe could.

  54. I don’t know if it has to be a psychological sublimated interest in Christ…it could have as much to do with the sources of Marxist theory — he was working in a Hegelian/Western philosophical tradition which is derived from Christian theology in a lot of ways. Though I’m sure there are folks who have written about his Jewish intellectual roots as well…

  55. Noah! Now’s your chance to tell me what’s wrong with materialism! Seize the moment!

    Marx’s take on Christianity was very influenced by Feuerbach: that’s actually the origin of some of the cultural constructionism as Feuerbach famously said that “man created God in his own image.”

    I think a lot of Zizek’s interest in Christianity (don’t know about Eagleton) is trying to make a more properly Hegelian Marxism: Feuerbach was a strong critic of Hegel, in no small part because of how easy it is to reconcile Christianity with Hegel…

  56. Feurbach! I’d totally forgotten about him.

    Eagleton was raised Catholic; I just read his memoir, which is great. I think his interest in Christianity (and Zizek’s too) is that they find its social/mystical message compelling. That is, I think Zizek is obsessed with the nature of God because he’s obsessed with the nature of God as much as because he wants to reconcile Hegel and Marx.

    I’m still sort of trying to work through what I think about art and materialism, at least to some degree. I guess I just don’t generally find materialist accounts convincing; there often seems to be some appeal to a transcendental other, or event (as I sort of suggested in terms of Marxist revolution. I think you either acknowledge that there’s something outside your materialism, or you end up with a fetish, claiming that some part of the material world is transcendent. I think Zizek actually has this problem a lot; he keeps claiming that the point of the Christian faith is the death of God, demonstrating the absolute materialism of man…but any rhetoric about God is shot through with transcendence, and I think he ends up basically claiming that man is God as much as that God is man. Which is why he’s got this Nietzschean (sp?) fetishization of will and choice, I think.

    It seems like to value the material in a way that doesn’t involve fetishization, you need to believe in the transcendent (as Chesterton might say.) Neibuhr is interesting on this; he argues that everyone has a relation to the divine, so everyone has some truth — which is different than arguing (with liberals) that truth is relative or somewhere in the middle (both of which make a fetish of human rationality, essentially.)

    It’s all fairly wishy washy on my part, though, since I’m still an atheist.

  57. It seems to me that the only current philosophical alternatives among your educated power class types are materialism, which sees ideology as central to modern existence, and pragmatism, which sidesteps ideology completely.

    Materialists enjoy reterritorializing, redrawing boundaries dissolved by the Industrial Revolution– a chair is not a computer is not a consumer is not a politburo. And Christianity works with this– there is a moral center in the universe, a body is required for resurrection, the last shall be first.

    Pragmatists are in harmony with capitalism on the other hand, saying that what works is what is true. There are no clear borders in the world or in the body or in between bodies. This also works with Christianity. There is no clear boundary between the divinity and the humanity of Christ, just as there is no clear distinction between the soul and the body, or between souls, or between the soul and God.

    Marxists and conservatives indeed appreciate the former, community activists and hybrid Presidents favor the latter, but each at the expense of denying themselves an empty set, a third term, a hole in the sky.

  58. Bert — I think your point was probably very valid in the late 1980s, but Marxist thinking at the moment is very driven by thinkers from Eastern bloc countries, intellectuals who have personal, visceral experience with the limitations of a Marxism that makes no room for pragmatic concerns. They do maintain their suspicions about the fully pragmatic alternative that Western-style capitalism offers, so they tend to spend a lot of time thinking about that “empty set”.

    It’s an interesting spectrum of perspective, because traditionally, Hegelians considered Marx to be a pragmatist. The Frankfurt School Marxists, probably most Western European Marxists but I say that with reservations, embraced that approach.

    Noah — I’m slow this weekend – I will owe you something on Hegelian transcendence; I agree that Zizek’s interest in Hegel takes the form of an interest in the nature of god, I just think it’s Hegel’s god, the Absolute Spirit/Mind (soul, espirit, etc.) rather than the marketed-to-millions God of our Western Christian institutions, be they megachurch or catechism.

  59. This thread might be fraying and/or withering, but Caro, I wanted to assert that, as a fan of Zizek, the sort of Eastern-bloc Marxist writer I think you’re describing, I don’t think he quite lines up with your new pragmatized academitariat. There really is a need for revolution. Lenin is preferable to Habermas. Global capital flows have only underscored the irrelevance of Richard Rorty-type culturalist liberalism. We need ideology. Something he and Frederic Jameson can agree on, although probably less so the Frankfurt folks.

    Which is not to say that he’s a Christian– the Hegelian Spirit he favors is the one that is also a bone– but the category of transcendence is one he disavows with more than a hint of protesting too much.

  60. Yeah…Caro, have you read “The Monstrosity of Christ”? It’s just hard to get through that and not feel like Zizek is arguing with himself about the existence of God and not necessarily winning.

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