Patriotic Heroes!

With the vital help of my daughters we've been cleaning out my garage. It's a detached affair with two car bays, both of which have been jammed with sundry debris for nearly a decade now. When my wife and I first moved into this house I vowed that I'd keep at least one bay open for an actual car and for a few years I succeeded, but then the vagaries of life meant that stuff from homes and classrooms needed immediate shifting and the garage became the depository. So we finally at last buckled down and in three hard days (plus a large part of another) we moved it on, either to the dump or to sundry charities or used book shops. It was a Herculean task, not unlike the Augean Stables, but we did it and now we can smile with that burden gone. But we did keep a lot of it too, and one thing of value I uncovered was an unblemished version of the classic Uncle Sam poster above by Montgomery Flagg. 

That iconic image of Uncle Sam was created to inspired potential soldiers for World War I but it has become timeless. Comic books are a product of World War II, though of course they pre-date that war. But it was the war which made them an ingrained part of American culture and not just reading for kids. Comics became an important propaganda vehicle and were used directly and indirectly by the government to inspire folks to give their all to the war effort. Superheroes galore decked themselves out in the red, white and blue as chronicled in Craig Yoe's Super Patriotic Heroes tome. Over twenty stories about all sorts of heroes from famous ones like The Shield and Uncle Sam himself to more obscure ones like Captain Freedom, Super-American and The Flag. There are several woman who don the colors such as Pat Patriot, Miss Victory and USA The Spirit of Old Glory. 

The villains were readymade as well with Uncle Adolph topping the roster of baddies along with his co-conspirators Mussolini and Hirohito. Real Nazis like Himmler and Goering as well as made up ones like Captain Nazi and The Hun. These were evil folk who deserved to be killed or brought to heel and ultimately to justice for crimes which devour the very soul. Take That Adolph from Fantagraphics is a fun book filled with comic book covers from the era which showcase just how immersed in the war comic books were along with the rest of society. We have long been told now that this was the "Best Generation" and that's for good reason. 

But such musings get me wondering. In our modern time, our nation is rarely called upon to wage all-out war in the same way that the citizens of World War II were required to. The American war machine has become a permanent fixture and crucial part of the American economy. It has also become ever more sophisticated where now wars are fought with a minimum of manpower and even remotely from the relative safety of our own shores. Wars are fought in our name which we are barely aware of and not only are we not required to give our all to the war effort, we are actively encouraged to go about our business as if things were normal. And sadly maybe constant war has become normal, waged at such a low temperature that we barely feel its heat. 

So we have been conditioned such that when a true national emergency erupts such as the appearance of the Covid-19 pandemic, many Americans feel all too comfortable debating the very truth of it and when they are given an opportunity to protect themselves from it choose to find an excuse not to do so despite the benefit to the general welfare. I've recently been watching Wartime Farm, a British show that attempts to recreate in some small sense what it was like to live and work on a farm during World War II in Britain. It's the latest in a series of these shows that have focused various historical eras such as the Tudor period, the Victorian age, and the Edwardian era. But in the Wartime show there is a single mindedness to the show and to the mission of farmers in that time to sacrifice all to feed the people. Much was asked and much was demanded and while I'm sure there were struggles, it was also a time when much was delivered. They were after all the "Grestest Generation". Would that we could live up to their example. 

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