The Zeitgeist

 

In Oz, the Lion ultimately found his courage (left) and there really are such things as "Wicked Witches" and "Flying Monkeys."

Lions and Tigers and Bears:

We Need Democrats in the

Fight to Defend the Emerald City

A few weeks ago my local 24-screen stadium-seating mega movie-plex had a special screening of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. Never having seen it before on a large screen (let alone a huge one) I thought I should see what the flying monkeys look like when liberated from the confines of television. I can faithfully report that the monkeys are really terrifying and Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the Wicked Witch of the West is only done true justice when she’s 20 or more feet tall.

Inadvertently, I also came away with some other revelations from the giant screen experience – while Wizard is couched as a children’s story, it actually makes some pretty stark statements about good and evil and what to do about that aforementioned evil.

We are shown that the citizens of Oz, be they Munchkins, residents of the Emerald City or even the Wizard himself are all living in terror of the two Wicked Witches, those of the East and the West – so much so that when Dorothy (spoiler alert if you never grew up as a kid in America) upon her arrival to Oz kills (or her house kills) the Wicked Witch of the East; the Munchkins lay on a spontaneous parade of joy – hailing Dorothy for killing the former owner of the ruby slippers.

When towards the end of the movie Dorothy (with the help of Toto, the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man) “liquidates” the Wicked Witch of the West, even the witch’s own soldiers are beside themselves with relief and happiness. There was no relativism or ambiguity about the bad guys (or gals) and no guilt in rejoicing at the witches’ demise.

While The Wizard of Oz is fantasy, like many fairy tales, it was meant to impart to its juvenile audience that evil really does exist (even in a candy-coated place like Oz), that it’s frightening, but that it can be overcome when good people band together to fight it.

Much as there was great evil in the real world of 1939 there is a whole lot of bad stuff going on in the real world of 2015, no matter how much we’d like to sugarcoat it or escape to somewhere over the rainbow to avoid it.

We face the dangerous and devious machinations of a Wicked Wizard of the East in the form of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. He’s just signed a military cooperation deal with Iran which provides for joint military exercises and training along with pledges of cooperation against US “interference.” Putin arms Syria’s genocidal Bashir Assad and through Iran indirectly enables Hezbollah and Hamas, the twin Iranian proxies on Israel’s borders. Iran is also menacing Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula through its auxiliaries there. Mr. Putin also has a sophisticated Russian spy ship in Havana harbor and is planning Russian military bases in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Let’s not forget his ongoing bullying of the Ukrainians.

And talking about the Hussars of the Wicked Witch of the West’s army and her squadron of flying monkeys – we’re now dealing with the crucifying and decapitating ISIS hordes rampaging across Sunni Mesopotamia; the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan; a resurrected Al Qaeda exporting wanton murder and mayhem across the world and the Nigerian Boko Haram rolling all Pol Pot-style by eradicating whole villages of non-Muslims and other opponents. Let’s not forget the A-bomb seeking Ayatollahs in Teheran – they’ve got intercontinental ballistic missiles sitting on launch pads with guidance systems aimed squarely at the West. It’s always “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and these people mean it. This is not make-believe, it’s all too real, just ask the Charlie Hebdo survivors in Paris

From 1939 to 1945 advances in technology didn’t deter the forces of evil – in fact technology enabled the more efficient killing of millions. Our web, wifi and cloud-based world of today is not a shield against nefarious maniacs – to the contrary, our new technologies are a boon to their efforts, not a civilizing palliative. In World War II it was only by mustering a greater resolve and greater determination that evil was vanquished – and at great cost to humanity.

For most of the 20^th Century it was the Democratic Party in the US that was at the forefront in the fight for freedom – from Woodrow Wilson through Truman, JFK and LBJ. The Republicans were the isolationists with their heads in the ground.

In January 1941, with much of the West under the thumb of fascism and with external threats against the US mounting each day, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address said that “thinking of our children and their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for any part of the Americas” because “the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world…We must always be wary of those who…preach the ‘ism’ of appeasement…enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.”

FDR asserted that America needed to be front and center in the fight for what he called “The Four Freedoms.” They are “the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and freedom from fear.” Just as in 1941, civilization is under attack from those who trample upon and make a mockery of freedom and human rights. The difference today is that we’re perhaps at the “1933” place on the dial, not 1941. The key is to ensure our world doesn’t see the equivalent of 1941 in 2017or 2018.

A sure sign that most Americans still believe in good and evil, in the Four Freedoms, in America’s leadership role in ensuring a better world for all mankind is the resounding box office success of the new Clint Eastwood film American Sniper. Yes, it’s a great piece of movie-making and Bradley Cooper turns in a stellar performance reaching way beyond his prior goofy roles, but the film is resonating with Americans in a big way because it shows American leadership in the struggle against the bad guys and portrays what most Americans want our country to stand for. Jack Kennedy would have scoffed at calling this a “Republican movie” as some critics have dubbed it.

Back in Oz the Lion needed to find his courage, and find it he most certainly did because of his love for Dorothy. Since Vietnam vast swaths of the Democratic Party have become averse to the legacies of Harry Truman and JFK when it comes to projecting American force in the world.  Sometimes the only way to save the Munchkins and create security for the Emerald City is by liquidating witches and hobgoblins, however difficult that may be. Democrats need to love liberty as much as the Lion did Dorothy and join arm in arm with Republicans here and our allies abroad in a global effort to protect the yellow brick road so that all of humanity (not just Americans) can enjoy lives blessed with peace and freedom.

The Zeitgeist

   

A Kid’s Memory of November 22, 1963:

The World that Was and is No More.

I was five years old on Friday, November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Even we kids could perceive the paradigm shift that took place as a result of that horrendous event and recall the somber and mournful tone of the next few days. I was just a year younger than Caroline Kennedy.

My parents and I were living a Mad Men kind of life on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Like JFK, my dad served in the Navy in World War II (but my father was younger and not an officer) and like Don Draper, he wore those gray flannel suits with skinny ties. Like Jacqueline Kennedy, my mother was pretty, slim, stylish and had jet black hair that she wore in various iterations of the First Lady’s coiffures. In the summer we went on vacations to Cape Cod and the Hamptons. My family was fully a part of the New Frontier.

The first tip-off that something extraordinary had happened was the disappearance from late afternoon television of all the violent and goofy visual fare that we kids ingested before dinner. No Three Stooges, No George Reeves’ Superman, No Looney Tunes’ cartoons featuring exploding devices from the Acme Company. TV was all news all the time at a time when that kind of programming was previously non-existent. The adults were transfixed by the news coverage for the next few days and it seemed like a pall had descended on all the grownups.

It is said that America changed on that day and they’re right. The 50s probably ended on that Friday afternoon in Dallas. In the coming months and years everything really did change. Music changed. Clothing, fashions and hairstyles changed radically. American sensibilities changed. The trajectory of November 22, 1963 would propel us towards the tumultuous 60s and our modern era.

The world of 1963 was a much simpler time without computers, portable phones of any kind, a time without color television (for most of us) or any way to record a show and play it back – and only a few channels to watch, not 200 or more of them; A time of cars and homes without air conditioning; a time without ATM machines – if you ran out of cash on the weekend you were flat out of luck because no one had credit cards either. It was a time when stores were closed on Sundays and most Sundays you saw your extended family who all lived somewhat nearby. It was a time when work really was between 9 and 5 and somehow without working 50-60 hours per week and without typewriters that corrected, without photocopy machines and without calculators, people built things, deals were done and money made.

Maybe it was because I was so young in 1963, but compared to today, it seemed as if so much of the world was young then. People weren’t regularly living into their 80s and 90s. Our parents were young and had us young. The Baby Boom had turned out legions of kids and they were swarming everywhere. No one made play dates in the 60s, you just bounded out of your house and tons of kids could be found in the street or at the playground. You ran-off to play outside for hours on end and no one worried you might be abducted or molested. People were courteous and formal. You addressed people as “Mr.,” “Mrs.” or “Miss” if you weren’t very close to them – and children never called adults by their first names. You got dressed up to go to the movies, to a restaurant or to the theater – even to take a trip on a plane.

In 1963 we were also faced with the very real specter of Armageddon and the Cold War along with the reality of so many diseases that could end our lives in an untimely fashion for which cures or manageability have been found today.

Like Rip van Winkle, I look around today 50 years after November 1963 and can barely recognize the American landscape compared to the way it was then. How much more bewildered and bemused must people over 70 be with America today. Twenty-five years ago most Americans were alive when JFK was shot and could recall where they were that day. Now on the 50^th Anniversary, most Americans here were not born by 1963 and that 60s world is fading slowly into the mists of history in that gauzy way my generation probably thinks of the 20s, 30s and 40s.

Thankfully, no matter the intense acrimony and polarization in Washington these days, we’re not assassinating our Presidents. If the biggest challenge we face today is the nuances of health insurance and not the end of mankind in a nuclear holocaust, then we’re probably doing pretty well. That life expectancy has soared and infant mortality plummeted, that our material comforts and conveniences are unparalleled in the history of mankind means we’ve made a lot of progress since November of ’63. JFK who spoke often about the world of tomorrow, tragically, didn’t get a chance to see any of it.