When Hate Is Your Life's Work

And those marchers were not alone, either. It has been sickening to live here for the past eight months and witness the staggering amount of work that many newly emboldened white Americans have put into destroying people unlike them. I’ll happily write a 1,000-word hater’s guide to a retail catalog, but my hateful efforts are nothing compared to the work these men put in. Think of Mitch McConnell, working feverishly day and night to secure votes and secretly drafting bills and calling late night Congressional sessions, all so that he could take health care away from poor people. Think of how FRENZIED he was to do this. Obsessed. Think of the sense of urgency that led him to disregard all other work just to pass a bill that could potentially harm so many, and you know that urgency hasn't faded....

Think of the utter indefatigability of these men and their champions. It’s not simply that they hate, but that they have made hatred their life’s work.

And then think of all the effort needed simply to keep these men at bay, or to undo the evil works they’ve already secured. Trump is a miserable, awful man. And even though I have heard a million times that he secretly loathes being president, the man still endeavored to get the job and shows no sign of relinquishing it, not when he can take time every day to satisfy whatever hateful itch he needs to scratch. It is exhausting to deal with him, and what’s scary is that he’s not even close to being the hardest-working white supremacist in his own government. These are men who are counting on your fatigue. These are men who are hoping that their insatiable hunger for repression wears you down eventually, and that you resign yourself to the idea that inequality is both inevitable and irreversible. It will take GENERATIONS to undo the damage they’ve inflicted upon modern America, if it can be undone at all. It’s like cleaning up after a flood.

Drew Magary, writing for GQ.

I discovered Magary through his novels. My wife got me The Hike awhile back, and I loved it so much I snatched up The Postmortal. Just finished it this week.

After reading both of those books, I can attest that Magary can imagine a whole lot of terrible shit. When a guy who writes dystopian science fiction and fantasy allegories full of dog-headed child killers is horrified by the stuff you've dreamed up, you've done something really special.

I can do this all day...

76 years ago, two Jewish men from New York who worked for a major comics publisher decided to create a new hero that would be an advocate for the US entering the war against racism, fascism, and anti-semitism.

They created the Aryan ideal, dressed him up in the stars and stripes, and drew him punching Hitler in the goddamn face. It was not subtle.

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The only good Nazi is a punched Nazi.

That character caught on, and his legacy expanded until his real superpower became that he was the moral center of his storytelling universe. Captain America is essentially an avatar for goodness and protection of the weak. His most recognizable element is a shield.

Then Nick Spencer and Marvel turned him into a Nazi. And, worse, revealed that that entire three-quarters-of-a-century legacy didn't actually happen, not really. Not in the really real Marvel universe.

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Now, and it's hard to find images of this because Marvel's whacking them down as they come up, they're going to validate Nazi Cap by showing him effortlessly lifting Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. Which Thor is currently unworthy to lift because he's going through a bit of a personal crisis. But Nazis are worthy. If they're good Nazis.

Oh. I should probably stress that Thor's hammer is one of many Norse mythological symbols treasured by real-world Nazis. So Nazi Cap is being morally validated by a symbol co-opted by white supremacists. A hammer, no less. They are overjoyed.

Will a reversal happen? Of course. But the damage to Kirby and Simon's legacy is done and cannot be undone. And one gets the feeling that Nick Spencer dumped all over that legacy for no better reasons than to be provocative and mess with his critics. He has the luxury of doing this because he doesn't have any ancestors who were rounded up and put into camps, of course. He's gonna do a great toldjuhso dance, you guys.

Does it matter? Yep. There are Nazis in the White House as we speak. Nazis and robber barons looking to line their own pockets by starving the poor. Literal comic book villains. It matters.

The only thing we can do to this turd taco is point out that the taco is in fact full of turds. Or make fun of it. Which Skottie Young has managed to do, on the cover of an actual Marvel comic book:

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Probably should have put him in charge of Cap.