Last night I had the opportunity to watch the new movie remake of He-Man, and I really enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek writing. Like many of you, I grew up on Saturday Morning cartoons. I had an itemized schedule of Mystery Machine’s and Purple Gorilla’s in dune buggies, a Waskilly Wabbit and a hunter with a stutter all listed out starting early in the morning and ending at 11:00 when I was finally kicked outside to act out all those story lines. And, among them was this cartoon “He-Man”! I was a bit old for it when it came out, and from an adult standpoint it was one of the most ridiculously named storylines ever created, but dang I loved the idea of having a hero come to the rescue.
Perhaps there is just comfort knowing who the good guys are and easily identifying the bad guys to settle a heart and mind. The bad guys were always portrayed monstrously by their actions, their words, their appearance. The heroes were strong, pure, caring, and always helped people by opposing evil. The bad guys always wanted people hurt, dominated, exploited. Scooby-Doo always came out the hero and the bad guys always lost. Saturday morning Ethics were easy to understand.
Then, I grew older and I realized that the morality of reality seemed extraordinarily flexible. I was told that the weak were weak because they chose to be weak, the poor were poor because they chose to be poor. The sick were sick…. you get the point. Somehow the absolute ethics of my Saturday morning education didn’t reflect in my life or experience outside that television, no matter how much I longed for it.
In time we are asked to change our heroes. Superman is crushed by cryptonite, Hulk is ruined by his temper, and as much as I want to believe that there is something greater than this world, God still somehow has babies born with defects, children who live in pain, parents who lose their will to go on in this world. But we yearn for that hero who made everything ok in the end that we loved on Saturday morning television.
We yearn so much that we forget that those stories were just stories for children. The people we lift up to solve all our problems are just skin and bone humans, and if they tell us they are our answer to all that hurts, well…
I’ve struggled to understand how relatively smart people could fall for a leadership that has visited the depredations upon the world that this one seems to enjoy. I’ve thought them idiots, racist pigs, deplorable trash and fools, especially as the truth of this man’s toxic morality comes more and more to light. He’s raped, stolen, and killed to cover his crimes and yet he is loved by a troubling number of people. It’s not logical, it’s not rational.
But outside the horrible scum that have latched onto his leprously-stained skirts in this bid for power at any cost administration follow a horde of broken and hurt people who somehow thought this con-artist cared about anyone but himself. They are the children who sat before the television on Saturday mornings and believed somehow that the blond-haired hero with the great propaganda was here to save them. They drank the cool-aid, bought the shirts – and the hats, they believed the hype because they believed the hurt. They are not going to release that hope easily once given and because of that any atrocity is forgiven.
I fearfully believe this Land of Liberty is lost for an inability to understand right or wrong. The utopian hopeful are mocked by a populace that have come to love their chains as they fight to defend those who would make them chattel because they fear that the people hoping to release those bonds have ulterior motives. I share their fear, in part, because I know that they who thirst for power will shed their skin to walk amongst the hopeful seeking a new path. Morality is cheap for those who mock ethics, and people broken and drowning will destroy anything for hope of salvation.
-Randy
Scottie's Playtime 
There are no superheroes, no gods, no blonde men to come to the rescue. All you have are yourselves. If you don’t step up to the plate, no one is going to do it for you.
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Hi Rawgod. You are right, there is no one coming to our rescue, more’s the pity.
Randy
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Hi Randy. As I wrote to Rawgod. I disagree. You came to my rescue when I needed a hero. Sometimes it is great to meet your heroes. You find out they are grand individuals. Hugs
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Hi Scottie.
Well, it was my honor to be there for you.
I must admit to being a bit disappointed that the point of my post didn’t seem to hit – that being that we are cultured to want someone to come make everything ok. I wanted to show how that predisposition can backfire and we attach ourselves to a very flawed pedestal warmer. I then spoke on how someone making that leap of “faith” won’t acknowledge the mistake easily and will even often go overboard being defensive in favor of that flawed hero going so far as to double down and decide that anything they do is justified because they are that “hero”. I seemed to miss on this.
oh well. Hugs.
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Hi Brother. Hold on, I am still writing my essay on your post. You do write conversation starters, so this is the first part of the conversation. I do agree that often heroes can have clay feet, but I don’t agree that even with clay feet all heroes should be viewed ngegitively. Even the worst people can have a good part of themselves. I prefer to find that. It might not excuse their bad acts, but often if the bad act was a small thing and their help to society a much larger thing than yes, I feel they deserve the lable hero. Hugs
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Hi Rawgod. You are sort of correct and not correct. See, you said no one will come to the rescue and all we have is ourselves. I have to tell you of three heroes of mine who stepped up when they did not have to and saved me. All of them saved my life in their own way.
The first was the farmer that I was working for starting when I was 15. I went to work for him because I had a crush on his son. But when school got out when I was at the end of my 11th grade year I got a beating I thought would kill me. It was one of the worst and I fled to go hide in the farmer’s barn. He found me and I begged him to let me stay there in the summer fearing I would be killed if I went back to the house of my abusers. He had a different idea. He offered to send me to his church’s boarding school for the summer and then the coming school year. I doubted my abusers would allow it, I was still being regularly used even by the hellspawn who did not live there; they would just come visit and use me, and it was normal for them. For 17 year old me it was hell.
He only wanted to know if I would go and obey the rules, I said yes, and he said leave the rest to him. He did go talk to my “family”. He came back and told me I could go home, pack my clothing, including any dress clothing I had and he would pick me up in the morning. I said I was afraid they would kill me or hurt me more. He said no, that no one would touch me and if they did I was to either call him or escape and come to him, but he felt it would be OK. He was correct. I went back, no one spoke to me or touched me. I packed what I needed into trash bags and the one suitcase I had. He picked me up in the morning. I wonder what he said to them that made a known violent brawler like my adopting male back down and let me go without at least using me or beating me one last time.
The second hero in my life was Ron. He not only helped me more from being very self-destructive and has been the most positive influence on my life. He has been my husband, my friend, the person who pours affection on me, the person who hears me cry out at night and wakes me often holding me until the sobs stop and for the rest of the night. He is the one who moved us far from the abusers and stood between them and me when they came back into my life, telling them the rules to be in my life and being also willing to enforce them.
The third hero is Randy. I have written about Randy’s heroic actions to save my life in 2013 / 2014. Randy and I became friends, and he saw my falling apart in late 2013. By March of 2014 I gave up. I wouldn’t give up and sucide, but I wouldn’t try to live. I got up in the morning, showered, dressed, and would lay back on the bed waiting to die. I did not eat, and I did not leave the room for anything other than necessary doctor appointments. Then as my doctors advised Ron how to get me back into living, I started self harming again. It got bad. One day Ron woke up as I was slicing up my forearm, and he saw the blood running down my arm. He was in an painic not understanding why I was doing such a thing. I showed him my prior scars on my wrists, arms, and legs. He told my doctors, and they said to hide all the knives in the house. I had my favorite jackknife hidden from him, and even though it was not the perfect one, it did the job.
Then Randy found out; I don’t know if I told him or Ron did. All I know is Randy was working 12 hour shifts at a plastic molding factory, he oversaw the night shift and did multiple jobs depending on what needed doing and who called in sick. He started calling me first thing as he left work. He left his phone ringer on and begged me to call him anytime I was feeling sad or wanting to hurt myself. He understood why I did it and did not condemn me or berate me, but he worked hard to show me there were other ways than slicing my own skin. Randy spent some days spent 5 or 6 hours on the phone with me denying himself the sleep he needed to work his shifts. He took every call I made and let me talk, sob, and cry on the phone to him and never shut me off or out. He would wake up and call me if he did not hear from me during the day. Then he supported what Ron and the doctors figured out how to get me going again—my candlemaking. Some days I will tell you about that effort. My point is Randy spent over a year on the phone, texting, and on the computer saving my life when all I wanted was to give up. But he wouldn’t let me, and he is still my second biggest supporter.
So yes I have met three of my heroes, and they are humans who esisit. And I love them all, including the man who wanted to put me through the SDA seminary to be a preacher. But he did not know I was gay, I already knew I was and due to my childhood abuse I knew I enjoyed having same gender sex.
Randy really writes grand posts doesn’t he! Hugs
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Sorry I wasn’t clear, Scottie. I meant guys in tights and capes.
And it was you who stepped up up to the plate. It was you who asked for help when you needed it. And you may say you don’t love yourself, but this tells me different. You got out of your cage. You revealed yourrself to the farmer. That was risky. Yes he helped you, but you were strong enough to ask him to help. Do not sell yourself short. Somewhere inside of you, maybe too deep to notice, you love yourself. You were not ready to die.
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Hi Jerry. I agree with you I am not ready to die. I don’t want to die. I do not want Ron to die. I want to keep fighting for those that need a voice they don’t yet have, I want to fight for the minorities that are opressed simply due to how or where they were born. I know I struggle, but I think I still have more to offer in life. I just have to find a way to deal with the past so it doesn’t interfere with the future. Hugs
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Hi Randy. My comment on your grand post might be long. I hope you won’t mind, but you do call them conversation starters, so let’s talk.
Randy I understand your love of the Saturday cartoons. The few times I was allowed to watch them on the few channels we got I loved them. When I got my first home and got cable after getting home from the service, I loved watching the old reruns and talks about them. I wonder what it would have been like to enjoy them as a kid. The only time I was allowed to watch cartoons, I had to pay the price. I think you understand what the price was. Of course I would pay that price regardless of what was on TV or what day it was. It was just part of my life, if I wanted it—to see it, to eat it—I paid the price or got denied.
First let me say I love how you put the memes and words you write into your posts. I remember when you sent them to me asking me to do it, and you do it far better than I could. You have a skill and ability I did not have when I tried to do it for you. I wish I had your way with words. I remember the story you wrote that brought us together. The story of an abused boy was so true and believable I was in tears reading it. You apologized, but I told you then that your writing was so grand you should try writing novels, you would be grand at it. Oh, when you start publishing your books I can say I knew you before you were famous.
Now to the substance of the post. You ask, Is it comforting to know the good people are always good and the bad guys stick out and everyone knows they are the bad or good people by the hat they wear? Remember in the 1950s westerns, the good people always wore white hats and the bad people always wore black ones? Not sure of the color choice, but hey it was that era.
I have never known people to be all evil or all good. I try hard to be good but according to some Christians my being gay makes me evil. I have made mistakes in my life, and even though I try very hard to uplift and protect those without a voice to protect themselves, I sometimes slip up, say something demeaning I did not know about or forget the needs of some I did not know about. It is much harder to be a good person uplifting others than it is to be a bad person demeaning / harming others. It is far easier to be mean and hurtful than to be helpful and uplifting.
You say the cartoons were only for children, but with the passage of time those children become adults, and they keep the ideals hopefully that they learned in the cartoons. Take Captain Planet. How many adults kept the idea that climate change was real? I think a lot of them did. Cartoons influence how so many of us live. At least for adult Scottie they did before I met Ron. After that I did not have much time for cartoons.
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Now we get to the real meat of your post. How do good people fall for tRump’s hate and bigotry and allow him to be so corrupt? My answer is simple. Right-wing news media. Starting with Fox news. Until the last few years it was on in every doctor’s office here in Florida. It played to people’s emotions, not their rational thinking or reason. It felt right how the hosts lied and misinformed the people, how they hammered the same talking points over and over and over again. Each show repeated what the show before said before moving on to new outrage points, so it must be true… right?
For some people it just sounds correct and it makes all their problems and issues not their fault, not the fault of how they voted… but the fault of those people. The people those in charge tell you to hate. Oh sure you may know a few good ones, but the rest of them are the reason for everything that has gone wrong in your life. Heck each Fox entertainment outrage host can list off in ever-increasing volume just how bad those folks are and how they have harmed you, even if they were not in your area or your grandkids school, those people were why your grandkid did not get better grades, better ranking in sports, or why they felt bad in gym class.
The president may have problems but they are lies told by the Democrats and liberal press because they hate all he has done to make lives better for regular older white Americans. What you ask, well Fox Entertainment constantly tells them how prices are down except where the brown people are causing the rents to go up, causing your paycheck to stay low, and making gas prices higher. How well that is never stated. It just is presented as a fact so you better accept it or the liberal communists win. The DSA wanting to give you healthcare and “free” stuff for your tax dollars are Marxist and communist wanting to stop you from worshiping the white Jesus.
Which gets to the point you were trying to make I think, the loss of privilege by being made to share equality with others is oppression and persecution in the minds of the same people who watched the same cartoon good guys you talked about. But again the good guys were the same color and had the same hair tones / hung straight like theirs did. Not like the new villains skin color and hair.
You write that the hateful would rather have their chains than the hope of a better future. That is true, because they have had it drilled into them every day with ever-increasing intencity as the day turns to night that everything wrong is due to those people, the brown people, the gay / trans people. The communist Democrats that want to end society and capitalism, making your life even worse than it is. Listen to us not anything they might say because they lie to you while we always tell you the truth about how bad those others are!
Lastly Randy you say you feel this Land of Liberty is lost for an inability to understand right or wrong and those trying for a better country for everyone are doomed as they are mocked on the right-wing media. But as I have posted even with ever-increasing large sums of money the right-wing hysterical media is losing and being mocked by even the right-wing who see the lies told by that media against their own lives. The hope for the future is the younger people and by younger I mean those 40 or 50 and below in years. I am seeing on TV broadcast stations even 50 year old congress members saying the old way of doing things has to change and agreeing with the “new socialist” agenda which really is what Ted Kennedy was trying to push back in the 1980s. Do not lose hope brother, the young people did not miss the message of the cartoons as the older people did. They outnumber the older voters more every year and they are as passionate about wanting change as the older voters used to be about protecting social security. That is the message I wanted to get to and leave you with. I guess I could have done it with this last paragraph, but I loved reading your post and talking about it. You have such grand thoughts. But please don’t dispair, even as the weathy try ever harder to keep theirhold on government and get their way, it is costing them more and more all the time as they are losing ground. Because the young people want what their grandparents had, they want the homes, the freedom, the retirement. They are tired of being told they are lazy as they work 2 or 3 jobs, they are done with being told to just give up every luxury to have money to eat or for rent while the wealthy rub their extravagant lifestyle in their faces. Things will change Randy, the good guys will win. I just hope it won’t take blood shed to get there.
I hope you won’t mind the length of my comment. I had fun and enjoyed thinking about what I felt you were trying to say. If I misunderstood you, please write and tell me. I love your posts and the conversations they start. Have a grand new week. Hugs
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