So I been thinking that it’s time I stopped working at the pet store because seriously, the pet store sucks. You’re over by the doggy bins and you’re marking down the puppies because they’re a month old now and they just look at you like “if you drop my price by another two hundred dollars can I have a family pleeeeeeease?” And then you look over at this one basset hound who’s not even a puppy anymore and you’ve marked him down four times now so he’s only five hundred dollars and he’s just given up on everything, he just lies in the corner waiting for the end he knows is coming.

Also, the pay sucks. They could at least pay me thirteen dollars an hour to take care of the depressed dogs, and also the depressed cats and the depressed parrot and the lizards, who are probably not depressed but are kind of stupid.

So it’s time for a new job! And I have decided that I am going to be a published author! Now I know what you are thinking, you are thinking “but Flapjacks you have never ever written anything except awesome blog entries which totally steal the show from MGK, how will you become the next Stephen King? Will it involve murder?” No! Of course it will not involve murder. Murder doesn’t get you published. Unless you kill somebody really really famous and important and then get a successful insanity defense and then thirty years later all is forgiven and you write a memoir. Or if you are O.J. Simpson. But regardless neither of these options appeals to me, so murder is right out.

No, I will become a famous published author on the virtue of my prose. My book is tentatively titled The Civil War Never Happened. (I need a better title. Maybe The Lie Between The States. Or something catchy. One of you come up with something! I am too busy becoming a published author to think of a title!) It is about how the Civil War never actually happened, and all that stuff you hear about the Civil War is just a toxic smokescreen invented by liberals to make real patriotic Americans feel bad about loving their country.

Consider!

– Civil War theorists claim that the Civil War happened between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. But this eminently makes no sense. For starters, in the beginning, there was just a United States of America… and nowadays, there is just a United States of America. Do these Civil War theorists seriously claim that a whole other country just showed up one day, and then ever so conveniently went away? Don’t you think that’s just a little suspicious? Who do these liberals think they’re kidding?

– Civil War theorists claim that the Civil War happened because of slavery. But if it happened because of slavery, then where did all the slaves go? Kind of handy for them to just stop being slaves, all at once! That’s like, supposedly, a million people or so! Who all decided to quit their job! Can you imagine what that would do to the economy today if everybody who worked at Taco Bell (which, I have it on good authority, is just like slavery) just up and quit? It would be chaos! And yet, the Civil War theorists would have you believe that these ex-slaves just all went and got new jobs and the U.S. economy was fine and dandy. Uh-huh.

– Civil War theorists would have you believe that there is ample evidence that slavery happened. However, this is all based on a misconception. See, one of the great extinct species of North America, like the dodo and the passenger pigeon, is the polled slaverford (pronounced “SLAV-eh-ford”), a curiously thin-necked breed of cattle. Modern-day “historians” have mistaken records of the great slaverford drives of the south for ownership of people, and tarred honest Southern cattle barons with crimes against humanity which they did not even commit! They pull forth slaverford chains, which were used to drive herds of the cattle across the Southern prairies, and mistakenly assume that they are intended for use on humans. You could almost pity these poor liberal academics who have never been out in the real world, and therefore do not know that the polled slaverford was hunted to death by Irish immigrants in the early 20th century, and that mention of the slaverford in history books was excised by President Kennedy in order to protect his ancestors’ honour.

– Liberal imagineers claim that the Stars and Bars is a “Confederate” battle flag, but in fact there is ample evidence which you can read about in my book which makes it clear that the Stars and Bars was a reward given to the thirteen most patriotic-est states of the Union by Abraham Lincoln himself!

– Civil War believers claim that the Civil War cost the lives of over 200,000 men. However, what they fail to account for is that during the supposed dates of the Civil War, there were no less than three smallpox epidemics as well as a cholera pandemic, dengue, tuberculosis, dropsy, okie-pokie-smokie, and the dreaded “Iowa flu.” It didn’t take a war to kill all those men: they just all got sick and died in a perfect storm of bacteria! Those bodies with bullets in them? Brave American soldiers, both wearing the Blue of the Army and the original Gray of the Marine Corps Auxiliary Marching Band (people really liked their marches in the 19th century), who committed suicide rather than take up valuable doctoring resources, making the ultimate patriotic sacrifice for Mom and apple pie.

– Why the Lie? (Oooh, maybe that should be the sub-title.) Why perpetuate the lie that is the Civil War? Clearly, it is the work of liberal academics out of touch with Real America, who are in cahoots with big business interests like Big Costume, Big Fake Historical Rifles, Big Camping Supplies and Big Bugle. Seriously, did you really, really think there was a place called “Appamattox” before 1943? World War II was the excuse this dreadful conspiracy needed to rewrite American history! While brave young soldiers were off fighting Hitler and… uh… the Japanese leader guy, the imagineers were going around inventing a new history so that when they got home, they’d feel guilty about being Southern, because liberals hate hush puppies and bluegrass music! And then they would have the gall to profit off them! Doesn’t that make you mad as all heck?

So anyways, that’s my book, and even as I finish up this blog post I have already gotten four offers to publish the book before I even hit “publish” in WordPress, so I’m totally sure this is going to work out just fine, guys oh my god I’m gonna make so much money. Do they make swimming pools for money like they do in Uncle Scrooge comics? I bet those are awesome in real life.

Ever notice how sometimes, there’s a weird synchronicity at work in the things you read? I just got done reading a book about the Hollywood blacklist, and I’m now reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (not bad, but I’d still rather read a biography than a roman à clef). Both of them focused a lot on the social unrest of the 1930s, as the world headed for war, and on a society that was far less united in its opposition to Hitler and fascism than we like to mythologize. (America has a disturbing tendency to mythologize its own past, and then unfavorably compare it to the realities of the present.)

Reading the two books together have sparked an idea in my head for a comic book. And since I’m probably never going to get a chance to write it, I’ll share the idea here.

It’s the biography of Steve Rogers.

When you think about it, we really don’t know much about Steve Rogers before he became Captain America. We know he walked into a recruiting office eager to do something–anything–to help fight the Nazis. We also know that his parents were dead by then (one of the reasons he was accepted as a volunteer was that he had no family.) But beyond that, it feels almost like he wasn’t a real person until the day they gave him the Super-Soldier Serum.

But I think he must have been a very interesting person indeed. Because Steve Rogers has always been socially progressive–his attitude towards Sam Wilson might seem patronizing to modern audiences, but for someone born in 1917, Steve Rogers is pretty damned enlightened. He seems to have been working-class; there’s no real mention of an inheritance anywhere in his background, and he’s had to take jobs to make ends meet on several occasions. And he’s very strongly anti-Fascist; it’s telling that he signed up to fight against Hitler a year before the United States’ entry into the war…and was passionate enough about it that he wouldn’t take 4F for an answer.

All those things add up to a very interesting, potentially shocking, probably fascinating backstory that’s never been touched on. Namely, that Steve Rogers probably grew up in a Communist household. He might not have been a card-carrying Communist himself, but his parents almost certainly were. Because being a Communist had a different meaning during the Great Depression than it did twenty years onwards, in a Cold War America. During the 1930s, when unemployment was high and a privileged few were almost completely insulated from the Depression’s effects, lots of people joined the Communists because they believed in things like unionization, racial equality, and fighting back against the rise of totalitarian dictatorships in Europe. (Lots of prominent leftists went to help in Spain against Franco before Hitler rose to power. It was the cause celebré of its day.) The later political connotations didn’t come about until after World War II…which is part of why so many people wound up getting nailed by accusations of associating with Communists when the witch-hunts started.

Both of Steve’s parents were Irish immigrants; I see Steve Rogers’ dad as a union organizer, perhaps a dockworker or a teamster. His mother might have been a seamstress, also a highly politically charged profession (when Steve Rogers would have been born, the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was still a pretty recent memory.) The two of them probably believed solidly in the rights of the working man and woman, joined the Communist Party because many of their friends and fellow activists were members, and probably didn’t know nearly as much about Stalin as they thought they did. They might have led a fairly bohemian social life, rubbing shoulders with upper-class leftists like Hemingway or Dorothy Parker who liked to get involved with the lives of the people they were fighting for.

And by the time Steve was twenty, they were both dead. Certainly, that’s something that shouldn’t be treated lightly in any story about his life; union organizing in the ’20s and ’30s was a dangerous business. Activists could get beaten, jailed, or even discreetly murdered by hired thugs kept on the payroll. Maybe Steve’s dad died in a riot at the docks caused by paid agitators? Maybe his mother worked herself to exhaustion, eventually dying of pneumonia from trying to support the family single-handedly because Steve was too frail to get a job like his father had?

Steve’s poor physical health speaks volumes, too. It suggests malnutrition, childhood illnesses, the sort of thing that happened a lot in families too poor to afford good food and real doctors. Maybe Steve had a brother or a sister once, someone he never talks about because it’s too painful. Maybe he narrowly avoided the same fate.

The more I think about this, the more I think it would make a great story, a vibrant chronicle of pre-WWII America as seen through the eyes of a young man who would someday become its emblem. (Although he probably wouldn’t have stayed that way if he’d been around in the 50s. The HUAC would have had a field day with him. Maybe it was a good thing he stayed frozen in ice for a decade or so…) I’d love to write it. Tom Brevoort, if you’re reading this, call me!

Julius Caesar once said, “Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.” Of course, nobody understood him, because he was speaking some crazy moon-man language instead of English, but it turns out that the saying translates out to, “Men willingly believe what they wish.” Or, to paraphrase, “People believe lies easier if it’s what they already believe.” This is why Julius Caesar made such a good politician, excepting the bit about convincing people not to stab him to death with knives.

But the point still stands, and has in fact stood throughout all of human history. There are certain lies that will always work in politics, no matter how often they’re used, no matter how often they’re debunked, and frequently, even if both the speaker and the listener know they’re lies. Because they’re seductive. They’re things we want to believe are true, and so we let ourselves go along with them because the truth is nasty and unpleasant and the lie is warm and comfortable. There has always been an audience for these lies, and there always will be. The three lies are:

1. It’s somebody else’s fault.

2. There are easy answers.

3. You shouldn’t have to pay for it.

#1 is the most popular, and usually the ugliest. Whether it’s communists, Jews, Muslim terrorists, Hutus, or any group you care to name, there’s always a popular trade to be made in scapegoating an “enemy” as the source of all your problems. Once that enemy is defeated (and “defeated” can be a vague term covering a wide variety of nasty options) your problems are over. If they’re not, of course, you can always find another enemy.

But it isn’t always about wiping out the “enemy” group; sometimes it’s more profitable to keep them around as perpetual scapegoats. Race has been used for this purpose a lot in America; back in the early days of unionization, when business owners wanted to prevent the working class from organizing, they’d usually play one ethnic group against another in an effort to keep them from realizing they’d get further together than separately. “We’d love to pay you more, but those (Negroes/Irish/Chinese/Italians/insert group here) work for cheap, you know…” It can be handy to have someone to blame for everything.

#1 and #2 go hand in hand a lot, especially when passions have gotten high enough that scapegoating has moved to brutality, but it’s more often seen by itself. Anyone who has a pet cause will trot out #2 at some point to support it, usually as a way of solving a complex or intractable problem. “All we need to do is reduce the capital gains tax, and the economy will improve!” “All we need to do is get rid of pornography, and violence against women will stop!” “All we need to do is drill in Alaska, and we’ll find all the oil we’ll ever need!” This one works especially well because the lie is always short, simple, and direct; while the truth that contradicts it is usually long, complicated, and involves fiddly technical bits that it’s easy to pick holes in. (Sometimes, of course, the lie is as simple as, “Problem? What problem?” This works very well with situations that gradually deteriorate, instead of being big, obvious crises.)

And of course, #2 combined with #3 is a perennial favorite of the entrenched interests that feel that (in the words of Despair.com) “if you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.” Most problems, especially the endemic or systematic ones, need a lot of hard work and sacrifice to fix. And when one guy is telling you, “Hey, we can fix this, but it’ll take a lot of hard work and effort and sacrifice and time,” and the other guy is saying, “Nah, we just need to build a big wall along the Mexican border,” which one are you going to try first?

Of course, it’s not just politicians that make use of these lies. Generals do it too; after all, Clausewitz said that war was just a continuation of politics by other means. In World War II, as they were discussing the best way to fight the Japanese offensive in China, General Claire Chennault suggested that the new science of air power could be used to fight the war with minimal casualties, bombing the Japanese from forward air bases and bringing them to their knees with very little manpower or supplies. General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, who was commanding the US ground forces at the time, said that Chennault’s strategy was foolish–the Japanese would just overrun the air bases and take the territory. Only a hard-fought ground campaign, one with a major commitment of men and material, would take back China.

Unsurprisingly, everyone went with Chennault’s plan. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese overran the forward air bases and took the territory. Because in war, unlike politics, lies get exposed quickly.

When I got the word that I was admitted to the MGK Legion of Super-Bloggers (Check it out! Shiny new flight ring!), I thought long and hard about what I could bring to this mightiest of blogs that it didn’t already have.

It was while adjusting my knickers in the lift on the way back from the petrol station that the thought hit me like a runaway lorry: “Bloody hell– I’m in Britain! Right then, let’s knock out a huge pile of bollocks about that.”

This is, after all, the nation that spawned Alan Moore, David Lloyd, Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Warren Ellis and Paul Cornell into the world– to say nothing of Terry Pratchett. And everything they say about Britain is marvellously, disgustingly true.

However, disconcerting things have been happening here of late. A scant ten years ago, we were all scandalised by the Lord Chancellor’s announcement that he would now wear trousers rather than breeches and stockings. Word on the street was: Dude, you make over £200,000 of our money per year. You wear what we tell you to wear. Also, you fight crime! Have the grace to do it in tights!

And now, we hear that people who speak with the Queen — for example, to thank her for doing such a fine job as Canada’s head of state– no longer have to exit the room walking backwards. This would be fine if the reasoning behind it were “The Queen is an adult and can cope with seeing people’s butts. Indeed, she rather likes them. The only butt with which she has hitherto been familiar is the Duke of Edinburgh’s, and quite frankly, it no longer amuses her.” But no: they’re changing it because they’re afraid they might get sued if some idiot injures themselves. People have been moonwalking out of royal audiences since the bloody Magna Carta, and has anyone sued yet? Of course not! Anyone idiotic enough to reveal that they fell on their arse in Buckingham Palace, let alone launch a lawsuit about it, doesn’t deserve to call themselves British.

Even if you did sustain serious injury while backing slowly away from the Queen (hands where she can see ‘em, Canuck), we do have a National Health Service in this country. This means that you and your dented posterior will be whisked away to the nearest hospital, where you will be kept waiting for ages, drooled upon by drunken maniacs, subjected to blankly unhelpful attitudes and finally either grudgingly patched up or left to die on a gurney– but it will be FREE. In America, you’d get a lugubriously worded letter from your insurance company listing the multitude of reasons why being left to die on a gurney isn’t covered, and now you are both dead and broke (congrats.)

For those who missed the most recent silliness: US right-wing rag Investors’ Business Daily says in an editorial [now heavily re-edited] that Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance in the UK” because apparently they’d have let him die in order to cut costs; multiple people point out that Hawking was in fact born in the UK and lives here; Hawking himself says the UK’s health system has done just fine by him, thanks. He’s 67, carries the entire cosmos around in his head, and is mightily, awe-inspiringly British.

For if there is one thing which defines the British character, it is endurance. Whether the thing endured be tights-induced discomfort, royal etiquette-induced arsebruises or the small matter of the next nation over being wankers to you for centuries, your British person will keep calm and carry on. That’s what got us through two World Wars, up Mount Everest and frozen into a stiff-upper-lip-flavour ice lolly somewhere near the South Pole. Mmm, tasty.

(Nota bene: when the Queen awards Chris his MBE for Services to Awesome, I recommend he exit the room backwards so that he can watch her weeping as he leaves.)

First, photos of Nazis having fun times… at Auschwitz.

And second, the improbable but nonetheless likely later years of Josef Mengele.