"Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare--Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive."
-- Rod Serling
Every election cycle Right waits for a Man of Steel to show up like Santa Claus bearing a sack full of miracles that will cleanse the glorious Homeland of their imaginary enemies and restore righteous, white, Conservative make Christian order to the Universe.
Then they pout like small children when the American political process refuses to perfectly produce him.
The modern history of American Conservatism it the story of the Right hitting the same slot machine over and over again, hoping that it will come up "Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Führer."
And unless they are broken, defanged and dispersed, one day it will.
10 comments:
nice video of Newt giving advice to GOP back in the day
Serling is underrated. whole episode is here http://youtu.be/0zASdhsHO1s
Awesome animated film from the 60s of "The Hangman", by Maurice Ogden with narration by Herschel Bernardi.
I couldn't help but think of David Brooks and his centrist pals.
Saw that one the other night as well.
Last night was one of the best: 'The Invaders'
Any idea whether a Serling-narrated commentary on either episode exists?
Please keep up the Good Work, DG.
"...unless they are broken, defanged and dispersed..."
I'm not sure it's possible to do this by voting alone, at least that's the feeling I got after the 2008 elections. In this world, it seems the enemy controls the weapons (internet included) to break, defang, and disperse the 99%. Perhaps the winning strategy is to surrender, thereby forcing them to reunite us.
It's not wise to blame Jesus for what's happening in this world, he offers us an alternative. In fact the term 'rightwing Christian' is an oxymoron. I have a draft animal named Blue who believes rightwing ideology is compatible with the teachings of Christ, but he's an oxymoron too.
Now paradoxes are a different animal altogether. I love them because they make all things possible, on Earth as they are in Heaven. Here's a song that helped me recover my senses a while back, it's message contains a paradox.
http://tinyurl.com/2vt72v8
Thanks for the link to the entire episod, Rev. I watched the entire 52:14. I guess back in 1963, there was no Godwin's Law applying to TV shows, eh?
The very fact that the current election is what it is on the Republican side is frightening. The right is indeed waiting for that spark--and there's no doubt that humankind now and then produces such a person. Germany, after all, was the very heart of Western culture--the cradle of Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Kant, modern physics and medicine, even much of our philosophy. That's where Hitler emerged. Any of the current crop of GOP candidates, with their finger on the "red button," is cause for much more alarm than Aminidinijad, if only because the US has far far more weapons of mass destruction than any one else.
By the way, a Man of Steel has just won the election in Guatemala. Retired General Otto Pérez Molina has just been sworn in as President.
There is strong evidence Pérez Molina was intimately involved in genocide and torture in the 1982 Quiché Highlands campaign.
There are several stories at Democracy Now! about Pérez Molina, and Corey Robin describes the roots of United States involvement in Guatemala in his book The Reactionary Mind.
What has happened recently in Guatemala is directly from the U.S.'s anti-drug playbook: Make drugs the focus of a state-wide effort to crush drug cartels, then when drug cartels prosper because of increased prices for drugs because of the state's repression, increase the level of state violence, which causes increased cartel violence, which causes the public to cry out for a strongman to end the agony of the drug war. Ipso facto, we have Man of Steel Otto Pérez Molina.
We also saw it in Columbia, and we are likely to see it in Mexico. It's happening in Honduras. Hey, we don't have communism to kick around anymore, so we have to make do with what we've got. The Drug War will have to suffice.
It can happen in the U.S. too. Perhaps it already has, but the strongman wears velvet gloves--our prison statistics wold seem to bear this out.
I remember seeing this episode a long time ago. I was surprised on seeing it again that Wollmer was played by Dennis Hopper.
Twilight Zone He’s Alive. Time to repost this for Chiller Theater. Spot on.
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