August 06 , 2004

It wouldn't be as fun of a world for me if I didn't have cartoons. I don't mean only when I was a kid, watching Rocky exclaim "Holy Smoke!" or laughing over Bullwinkle trying to pull a rabbit out of his hat and instead extracting a snarling lion, all the while as I was trying to find the right balance of milk and Cap'n Crunch so the cereal would maintain that nice most crispness instead of dissolving into mush. Even now, I watch cartoons, although I dispense with the Cap'n Crunch.

Indeed, I get a lot of my information from cartoons! I sure got a lot as a kid, such as always remembering to wear a football helmet (since I didn't have a leather Rocky helmet-with-goggles) while trying to use a blanket to parachute from the top of the barn to the ground (never did that again), or to never stick my hand into anything unless I know what's in it. The last time I ignored the latter advice I stuck my hand into my briefcase not realizing there was an Exacto-knife in it. It wasn't as bad as a snarling lion, but not by much. I never did that again, either. Obviously, I'm more along the lines of Bullwinkle than Rocky.

My view is that popular cartoons, the good ones that resonate with the public, are just modern myths. What you'll find is the same stories repeated over and over, for thousands of years. And if they weren't true, the stories would not have lasted.

Let's look at one of my favorite cartoons, Pinky and the Brain. I have found you can take that cartoon and map in onto the world, and you'll get a pretty good explanation for a lot of the troubles in it. And not just now, but in the past, too. Also, the future.

Brain's problem is that he wants to conquer the world. He's just a symbol for every Would-Be World Conqueror in the past, and for that matter, now. He's insane, and you if removed the hubris from him, there's be nothing left. In the Christian tradition, Brain fits the archetype of Satan, who wanted to conquer the world. He fits it just as Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung and Hitler fit it. Only Brain is funny, because he is ridiculous.

To the Greeks, Brain would fit the archetype of the god of war, Ares, because he's incompetent and keeps failing at everything he does. It's no surprise you can find an overlap in the characters of Ares and Satan: they both want to conquer but keep screwing everything up.

Pinky, who is a moron who worships Brain, represents Mass Man. No matter how bad Mao Tse-Tung, or Stalin, or Hitler were, none could have gotten anywhere unless Mass Man supported them. You can see this today, at a site like Free Republic, where all the Pinkyesque Mass Men worship George Bush no matter how badly he fouls things up. They not only can't tell how bad of a job he's doing; they think he's doing a great job.

I don't even have to look this up: I know there were Germans who worshipped Hitler, Russians who worshipped Stalin, and Chinese who worshipped Mao Tse-Tung. Why? Because there are people in the US who worship George Bush or Bill Clinton, and think they can do no wrong. These people all share the same Pinkyesque psychology, no matter what country they're from.

In real life, Pinky and the Brain would not only be supporters of the State, but attempt to obtain control of it. After all, how else could anyone conquer the world except through the power of the State?

Although it's not mentioned in cartoons, all Would-be World Conquerors are illustrations of that old saying, "All tyrants call themselves benefactors." In the US, we need look no farther than Bush and his neocon advisors. All want to conquer a large chunk of the world so they can bring the deluded leftist pipe-dream of democracy to it.

On the other side of the world, Osama bin Laden, who I believe has been a pile of crushed bones for the last few years, wanted to conquer the world so his version of Islam could impose its deluded pipe-dream fantasy on it.

Both Bush and bin Laden have their fervent--and deluded--followers, just the way Brain has Pinky. So, I think it's pretty obvious that Bush and bin Laden have a lot in common, are villains without knowing it, and both are doomed to fail, just as Brain always failed. And, unfortunately, both need each other. It takes two to make a fight, even if it means both standing on the sidelines yelling directions while Mass Man dies on the field.

So, on one hand we have the hubris-afflicted and power-hungry villains, aided by their dimwitted followers, who want to conquer the world by controlling the State. Now what about the other hand? The heroes?

Things get even more interesting here. All heroes support society, not the State. This runs all the way back to the myth of Hercules, who was a protégé of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and civilization, and not of Ares. In fact, he was continually engaging in combat with Ares.

All modern heroes, who are just updates of Hercules, also support society and not the State. This is just as clear as can be, from Superman to Batman to Spiderman to the Hulk. All of them not only don't support the State; all are attacked by it. In the movie version of The Hulk, he was attacked by the unholy alliance of the State, Big Business and the military--the well-known military-industrial complex. The lesson is that anything the State gets its tentacles in, it corrupts.

Pinky and the Brain is incomplete in that it has no heroes. Instead, Brain fails because he follows the sequence of hubris to nemesis. He's his own worst enemy. In fact, he's his only enemy. It's enough, though.

The complete story has to have heroes and villains. I've always been fond of another cartoon I grew up with-Underdog. I suppose it's partly the appropriateness of his name that attracted me, along with the fact he spoke in rhymes ("When Polly's in trouble/I am not slow/It's hip-hip-hip and away I go!")

Underdog's archnemesis was Simon Bar Sinister, who not surprisingly had a dull-witted sidekick named Cad, who could do little more than say, "Duh, okay boss!"

Underdog, good dog that he was, always fought for what was right, but what he really fought for was his girlfriend, Sweet Polly Purebread, who was continually in peril from Simon. The lesson here is that one should fight for what is closest to one--family and friends. But going to other countries and meddling in their business? You'll never find a cartoon or myth that supports it.

Edmund Burke spoke about the "little platoons" that helped make life worthwhile--family, friends, neighborhood. Those things are a lot of what society is. Those are the things Underdog fought for. It's what Brain, and Ares, and Satan--and today the State and its minions--are trying to destroy, under the guise of being benefactors. What is ignored is another old saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Burke also wrote, "All it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Hercules understood the truth of that saying, as did Underdog and every other cartoon hero. They knew perfectly well that evil, i.e., the State, must always be fought, or otherwise it will destroy society.

Lew Rockwell See Bob's archives there.

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If It Can Go Wrong...It Will

Rewriting the Past

Bugs Are Our Friends!

The Way It Should Have Been

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A Hole in the Head, Part I

Mapping George Bush's Head

The Not-So-Wild Wild West

Pledging to the Monster

The Tribe and the Outsider