CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK PT 3

 Season the third, but without the Great Bird.

SPOCK'S BRAIN-- The argument: "Brain and brain-- males are only good for one thing; having their brains sucked out of their heads." "Sorry, my dear, we're going to KEEP our brains where they are. But as a consolation prize, we'll do away with your gynocentric dominatrix culture and restore equity between the sexes-- see later episode TURNABOUT INTRUDER for details."

THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT-- Now it's time for the Trekkers to play "KEEPING up with the Romulans" by stealing their tech. The only "sharing" is interrupted between Spock and the sexy Romulan Commander.

AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD-- Well, no. Contrary to the Isaiah quote, even godlike powers don't make a bunch of little kids into leaders, any more than it worked for big kid Charlie X. So they have to KEEP to their own lane.

IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY? -- The Trekkers think their emissary Spock ought to be able to SHARE the privilege of communing with an alien ambassador. But his "keeper" doesn't like SHARING, though in the end she's forced to do so.

DAY OF THE DOVE-- Not all energy-beings are as saintly as the Organians; here's one that wants to "keep" hostilities between Trekkers and Klingons going at fever pitch. And this time both groups make the existential decision to SHARE a common interest, if only in survival.

FOR THE WORLD IS HOLLOW AND I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY-- Once again we have a stratified civilization that must be taught to SHARE a common destiny with the rest of the universe.

PLATO'S STEPCHILDREN-- Hey, Trekkers, you can't confine your attacks to Greek gods, but you gotta go after their philosophers too? Still, nobody's going to cry for the Platonians when they're forced to SHARE parity with other sentients.

WINK OF AN EYE-- "No, thank you; we'd rather KEEP clear of your breeding-pens."

THE EMPATH-- Certain aliens demand that Gem SHARE her very life to prove herself. The Trekkers show the ETs that, "Love means never having to SHARE so much that it kills you."

ELAAN OF TROYIUS-- Unlike "Plato's Stepchildren," this time the Trekkers must teach just one arrogant aristocrat how to SHARE for the sake of her people. However, this time the Trekker captain suffers a bit for Elaan having overSHARED with him.

LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD-- "No, thank you, KEEP both your revolutionaries and reactionaries to your dead planet."

REQUIEM FOR METHUSELAH-- Neither father nor potential son-in-law get to "keep" the lady fair. All they SHARE is mutual tragedy, though Spock has a different form of SHARING-moment.

THE WAY TO EDEN-- Didn't we already do two episodes about "KEEPING off the Eden-grass?" Oh well, space hippies make everything better.

THE CLOUD MINDERS-- Now let's have the Trekkers teach the haves to SHARE with the have-nots-- and with zero mentions of socialism, to boot.

THE SAVAGE CURTAIN-- Wel, you Trekkers *said* you wanted to SHARE the glory of your Liberal perfection with everyone and everyone's dog. So why would you object to dramatizing your beliefs by acting them out?

TURNABOUT INTRUDER-- If there's one person with whom you don't want to "share" your body and soul, it's your vengeful, possibly hormonal ex. Kirk has to figure out how to KEEP his sunny side up long enough to convince his fellow Trekkers that he's not a victim of gender dysphoria and that he really wants to KEEP his male soul in his male body. 

THIRD SEASON EXCLUSIONS-- THE PARADISE SYNDROME, SPECTRE OF THE GUN, THE THOLIAN WEB, WHOM GODS DESTROY, THE MARK OF GIDEON, THAT WHICH SURVIVES, THE LIGHTS OF ZETAR, ALL OUR YESTERDAYS. 

       

 

 

CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK PT 2

 Second season, for the same reason.

AMOK TIME-- Kirk is told to "keep" his place. But if he did that, how would everyone have found out that even for a Vulcan, a mere mating-drive can't compete with the bonds forged by mutual SHARING of dangers and adventures. ("Slash" interpretations not considered.)

WHO MOURNS FOR ADONAIS? -- If earlier episodes told the Trekkers to KEEP clear of "men like gods," what chance does a mere ET-god have in the Roddenverse?

THE CHANGELING-- These mergers between mechanical devices of different power-levels rarely work out, and the Trekkers have to teach Nomad that he should have KEPT within his own lane. 

MIRROR, MIRROR-- Lurking beneath every sincere devotee of the Trekkers' humanism lies the mirror-reversed image of a Machiavellian, questing for pure power. And yet despite this fact, the world of naked power-politics must and will SHARE the same destiny of the world of squishy Liberals. 

THE APPLE-- What's the point of living in a world where you "share" everything but sex? Once again, it's necessary to KEEP all those officious gods out of the way in order to realize mankind's (almost) atheist destiny.

CATSPAW-- And while you're at it, make sure you also tell all witches and warlocks to KEEP off the Trekkers' lawns.     

  

I, MUDD-- At the same time, the Trekkers must remain ever alert to KEEP down all those upstart A.I. who can't appreciate the logic of the wreath of pretty birds that smell bad-- or was that the logic of the tweeting flowers?

METAMORPHOSIS-- You can't overSHARE more than to learn that your nice, clean first contact with an ET was actually her idea of Boogie Nights. And yet this time, the prospects for this mixed marriage look positive.

JOURNEY TO BABEL-- The SHARING of common goals by civilized races is all very well, but father and son SHARING in the (light) mockery of the wife/mother is the real standout ethic here.

OBSESSION-- Kirk as Ahab? Or once again, is he saved by SHARING the eminently sane priorities of all faithful Trekkers?

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES-- See what happens when you "share" too much? You learn you to KEEP your decks clear of those verminous critters that'll eat you out of house and home if you let them. You know. Progressives.

THE GAMESTERS OF TRISKELION-- Just like the Mirror Universe, all big-brained aliens must learn to SHARE in the glories of representative democracy.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION-- On the other hand, "sharing" scientific innovations with gangsta ETs might make you wish you'd just KEPT traveling past that particular planet.

A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR-- Call this one "KEEPING up with the Klingons," not in terms of conspicuous consumption but rather military escalation. "Sharing" a disease isn't altogether ethical.

BY ANY OTHER NAME-- As in "Arena" and "Mirror, Mirror," the very process of "keeping" your borders can lead to mutual respect and the SHARING of common humanity.

THE OMEGA GLORY-- Nothing says SHARING like worlds so parallel they even have the natives mangling their Latin.

BREAD AND CIRCUSES-- Only some minor SHARING of parallel evolution-- regarding, of all things, revealed religion.

ASSGNMENT EARTH-- The Trekkers learn that they're not the only cosmic busybodies seeking to SHARE beneficent ethics with lesser worlds-- even such primitive frontier-planets as 1960s Earth.

(Second season episodes excluded: THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE, FRIDAY'S CHILD, THE DEADLY YEARS, WOLF IN THE FOLD, THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME, RETURN TO TOMORROW, PATTERNS OF FORCE, THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER.)

               

CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK PT 1

In my original essay-series KEEPING VS SHARING, starting here, I provided an overview of the ways in which Liberal ethics prioritized "Sharing" while Conservative ethics prioritized "Keeping." The nature of that overview, though, meant that I could not address certain fine points.  

One personal point is that for most of my life, I considered myself a Liberal. However, I belonged to that now almost extinct subspecies known as the "Classical Liberal," a species almost been crowded out of existence by a toxic form of Liberal known as "the Progressive." Though the Classical Liberals were never perfect, they had a definite ethical compass validated by many (though not all) historical events. I am proud to say that I was never sucked into the barren pseudo-ethics of the Progressive, who has nothing to say but "Share what we tell you to Share, even if we, the movement's leaders, often don't practice what we preach." Still, rather than flipping completely to the ethics of Conservatism, I consider myself a Centrist, seeking to chart a course between the extreme virtues and vices of both systems.

Classical Liberalism may never return to the political sphere, but its distinctions from Toxic Progressivism can be well illustrated by sussing out the ethical stances depicted, episode by episode, in STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES. Under the aegis of both Gene Roddenberry and his successor Fred Freiberger, the series demonstrates that the Liberalism of that era was not manically fixated only upon the Sharing-ethic. The makers of Classic-Liberal Trek knew that sometimes even the generous had to watch their borders.

Not every episode shows a strong ethical orientation toward one system or another. Some stories are just life-and-death conflicts for the starring characters, who of course engage the sympathies of the audience on a visceral level. But the majority of the TREK tales seek to align the sympathetic characters with either Liberal ("Sharing") or Conservative ("Keeping") ethical attitudes. Taking each relevant episode in broadcast order, I will sum which attitude the narratives seek to represent. To keep the story-summaries concise, I want to avoid breaking down specific actions by specific characters, speaking of the totality of the sympathetic characters as "The Trekkers." It's not the best of all possible cognomens, but the writers never supplied a usable substitute.

And so we begin with THE MAN TRAP, in which the Trekkers face "The Salt Vampire," a genderfluid alien that devours humans. Even though the beast is the last of its kind, the Trekkers must KEEP loyalty to their own kind and exterminate the brute.

In CHARLIE X, the Trekkers seek to "share" human culture with a shipwrecked human. But Charlie's been given god-like powers, and the Trekkers must KEEP clear of all teen deities with anger issues.

Going WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE-- if you don't count Adam and Eve, right after they ate of the fruit of knowledge--the Trekkers learn the same lesson seen in CHARLIE X: KEEP away from "men (and women) like gods."

THE NAKED TIME is the time in which everyone casts off the chains of the social contract and begins "sharing" whatever they feel like sharing. The Trekkers use time-travel to beat devolution and to KEEP their psyches in good working order.

THE ENEMY WITHIN-- Through the example of one Kirk too many, the Trekkers learn that every man must SHARE the good and evil in his soul to be able to function in the world. 

MUDD'S WOMEN-- Though feminists probably don't like the idea of women being both goddesses and queens of the kitchen, at base the Trekkers recapitulate the old saw that men and women must SHARE the burdens of existence (and without even getting into the topic of progeny).

WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF? is the question, but the answer is, "Not being so nice that they don't KEEP away from robots posing as humans." (Data would be mortified.)

THE CORBOMITE MANEUEVER-- The Trekkers use guile to "keep" a potential enemy at arm's length, only to find that they both SHARE in the implicit brotherhood of ETs.

THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING-- "Neither a borrower nor a 'sharer' be:" justice must be KEPT by unearthing the sins of the king, even when those sins have passed on to the next generation.

BALANCE OF TERROR-- Who will KEEP sovereignty in a war of rival powers?  

ARENA-- Though the source material was all about "keeping" the upper hand against one's enemy, here the Trekkers learn to SHARE the universe with an apparent rival.     

COURT MARTIAL-- "In the name of a humanity that KEEPS truth, as against those damn dirty machines that can be programmed to lie, I demand the correct verdict!"

THE RETURN OF THE ARCHONS-- The Trekkers must teach a whole planet, warped by the control of another damn dirty machine, to KEEP the counsels of the Federation on how to run one's civilization.

SPACE SEED-- Even though the Trekkers cannot allow an autocrat to return to power, they still find a way for him to SHARE in the manifest destiny of taming the spatial frontier.

A TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON-- This time it's a planet whose people think they can regularize the death-toll of war to avoid armageddon. The Trekkers show them how to KEEP an existential awareness of how messy death is.

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE-- No flaming sword needed here, to KEEP the Trekkers away from the perils of Eden.

THE DEVIL IN THE DARK-- Kill the monster! Oh, it's really a mother? And a mother who can save humans from loads of labor? Why, sign her up for a role in "The Not So Secret SHARER."

ERRAND OF MERCY--  "Who will 'keep' sovereignty in a war of rival powers?" Well, it would be either the Trekkers or the Klingons, except that a third power compels them to play nice and SHARE.

THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER-- "Though they're disapprovin', KEEP them time-dogies movin,'" so that they run in the right direction and make certain that the good guys won World War Two-- even if a sacrifice proves necessary.

(Season One episodes omitted: MIRI, DAGGER OF THE MIND, THE MENAGERIE, SHORE LEAVE, THE GALILEO SEVEN, THE SQUIRE OF GOTHOS, TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY, THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR, OPERATION-- ANNHILATE!)

         

SUPERHERO REPLACEMENT THEORY PT. 2

Earlier I examined the two ethical systems, of conservatism ("Keeping") and of liberalism ("Sharing"). in terms of the dynamics of human societies from ancient times onward. The same systems apply equally to the ways in which those societies determine their identities in terms of cultural matrices.

No one ever really knows why a given society, whether of antiquity or modernity, decides to dominantly pursue one cultural course over another: whether the tribe should worship one god or several, or whether it's good or bad to seethe a kid in its mother's milk. Even in modern times, pundits can make anterior comments about how some cultural development MAY have come about, but that's not the same as KNOWING how a dominant majority chooses that course. But it can be fairly stated that once the course is chosen, the Ethos of Keeping comes into play, as the majority members of the culture continue to "Keep Faith" with the choices of their ancestors. Minority cultural developments can still exert some historical influence. For instance, certain citizens of one culture may embrace the religion of another culture, ranging from Romans flirting with the worship of Cybele or George Harrison converting to Krishnaism. This can be seen as an articulation of the Ethos of Sharing, in that the majority culture shows tolerance for the tastes of the minority by not requiring absolute fidelity to the majority rule. 

Conservatism does rule the roost in most if not all societies when it comes to allowing members of other societies to join the ingroup, and in ancient times there would be zero examples of dominant societies that voluntarily changed to accomodate either migrants joining the dominant society or separate vassal societies. Minority societies did not manipulate but were manipulated. Minority "outgroups" could be (1) transported away from their native land to some other location, (2) absorbed into the majority culture under various restrictions, or (3) allowed to function in the majority culture as sojourners but subject to random expulsion. The Ethos of Sharing arguably grew somewhat stronger with the rise of pietistic religions like Buddhism and Christianity. These systems of faith stressed a latitudinarian approach to cultural differences, though one could argue that this ecumenical approach had the ulterior purpose of spreading a particular religious credo through the medium of cultural tolerance.

All of this groundwork concerning the inherent conservativism of human societies should provide context for the fact that the United States of America, for the first 150 years of its existence, tended to exclude potential immigrants who did not resemble the dominant culture. The Naturalization Act of 1790 specified that naturalization of aliens was limited to "free white persons." Isolated members of various minority groups did gain citizenship over the course of the next 175 years. Yet America immigration law was not substantially affected by any Ethos of Sharing, except in special cases, such as the Truman Directive of 1945, which fast-tracked visas for displaced persons from war-torn Europe. 

Then in 1963, President John F. Kennedy attempted, but failed, to overthrow the exclusionary strictures. Roughly two years after Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the 1965 Immigration Act, thus ensuring a greater liberalism in terms of making American immigration law less exclusionary.

Now, exclusion on the basis of race was always wrong, so I don't take issue with the 1965 act on that basis. It's demonstrable that human beings of all ethnicities were able to assimilate to the American culture and to become valuable members of the society, and that without being as legally restricted as, say, Jews and Christians in Muslim societies. However, buried within the Democratic imperative of liberation was the assumption that immigrants of other cultures would ALWAYS be willing to assimilate to established American culture.

As with the contemporaneous Civil Rights Act, political advantage, as much any sincere beliefs in societal tolerance, informed the changes in the older exclusionary immigration policy. However, the admission that "exclusion was wrong" led to the unjustified corollary that "inclusion must always be right." Liberals promoted the sophistry that, because the majority culture had been unforgivably racist and/or sexist, members of minority cultures had no responsibility to assimilate with the majority culture. This would slowly morph into the idea that the federal government could (and should) be blocked by so-called "sanctuary policies" at the state level. In the 21st century has become an "Ethos of Sharing" in which the state expects the federal authorities to accede to the wishes of the "minority culture" of that state.

In Part 1, I mentioned how most Liberals who addressed the phenomenon of illegal immigration almost invariably resorted to the "Honest Juan" paradigm. Said paradigm always portrays the illegal as a wholesome, honest person who's just trying to make a better life for himself and his family. I will admit comic books and films didn't promote this idea nearly as much as television shows, particularly legal dramas, where the sympathetic lawyer is always on the side of the poor but honest illegal. Even TV shows with a conservative slant, such as 24 (2001-2014), didn't tend to critique lax Liberal policies with respect (say) to admitting dangerous aliens into the country.    

I don't doubt that many of the Libs who support illegal entry sincerely believe that by assisting illegals, they're atoning for the sins of "Racist America." This is currently most evident in the fanatical anti-ICE protests of the past year, both in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, though in some ways these protests are a side-development of a general Democrat meme, in which everything the opposing party does today is irredeemably racist in nature. The upshot of this Ethos of Sharing, which resulted in the growth of sanctuary cities as a consequence of the 1965 Immigration Act, is that its proponents cannot deviate from the falsehood that every illegal must be an Honest Juan. Thus, Minnesota Liberals have made the not-quite-conscious decision to share their state with a wide variety of criminals, from rapists to drug-dealers to child molesters. I've even come across a few Liberals who defend this policy on the basis that there are an equal proportion of criminals within the ranks of legal American citizens. It's as if they think there should be "equal opportunity" for criminals from, say, Somalia to rip off the majority culture, because that culture is so irredeemably evil in nature. 

While it's not totally incorrect to critique the ethics of the dominant majority, there's no concomitant guarantee that the minority is going to be any more virtuous. Surprisingly, one of the few places I saw some pop-cultural pushback against the one-sided vilification of the dominant majority appeared in the 2017-18 Marvel series called FALCON. This eight-issue series appeared in the same year that "Black Captain America" failed to replace "White Captain America" in the hearts of comics-fans. Marvel then put Sam Wilson back in his Falcon outfit, and in the first issue, Falcon-Sam explains his ethical compass to a friend in terms that reference then-recent developments in the "Secret Empire" arc:

Steve being a traitor validated every cynic who felt America was an idealized metaphor for the dominant culture's survival and the minority's suffering. I can't let that idea take hold. People need HOPE"-- FALCON #1, writer Rodney Barnes, 2017.

To be sure, that ship had already sailed. The very agenda of Superhero Replacement in the 2010s showed that some people believed the very thing Barnes' Falcon wished to tamp down, and grievance-based anti-Americanism had been around since the rise of liberation movements around both Blacks and women. The chaos in Minnesota continues to validate protesters who have subscribed to the notion that their minority opinion re: illegal immigration "trumps" the opinions of the dominant majority, to say nothing of federal law. I don't agree that this belief is, as Barnes said, merely "cynical." Rather, false idealists like the Minnesota protesters have convinced themselves of their rightness by drawing upon a very old formula relating to uncritical liberality.             

SUPERHERO REPLACEMENT THEORY PT. 1

The term "replacement theory," a designation for a Right-leaning conspiracy theory, didn't come into vogue until French author Renaud Camus coined the term in 2011. In that context, Camus argued that vested interests in Europe were attempting to replace White Europeans with immigrants, legal or otherwise, the better to control the population. Camus made the interesting remark, derived from Brecht, that "the easiest thing to do for a government that had lost the confidence of its people would be to choose new people."

In September 2025 I argued that many of the political disagreements in American society stemmed from a conflict between two ethical systems: the Ethos of Keeping and the Ethos of Sharing.  In that three-part essay-series, I concentrated on explicating the idea first and then provided particular examples of the idea's application in pop culture. This time, I'll go the other way and start with an example.

Since I won't address "replacement theory" in terms of immigration law and politics until Part 2, here I'll concern myself with "the superhero replacement theory" that arose at Marvel Comics in the 2010s. This was a loose editorial policy aimed at portraying the Marvel Universe as having been too dominated by the Dreaded White Male, a tendency that the new breed of editors, like Axel Alonso, proposed to correct. TIME thought it worth covering this replacement of old characters with new ones, supposedly more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and gender-- and all this roughly a year before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became heavily invested in its own replacement theory.

Alonso, a journalist turned modern-day mythologist, is leading the world’s top comics publisher during a time of great disruption. In an industry historically dominated by caucasian males, Alonso is breaking the laminated seal of stodgy tradition by adding people of every ilk to the brand’s roster of writers and dramatis personae. Under his watch, the Marvel universe has expanded to accommodate costumed crimefighters of myriad ethnicities: a biracial Spider-Man, a black Captain America, a Mexican-American Ghost Rider, to name a few.-- "Meet the Myth-Master Reinventing Marvel Comics," 2017.

It's ironic, though, that the TIME essay appeared in 2017, for by that time, the most famous/infamous replacement-- that of White Captain America by Black Captain America-- had utterly failed. According to the first collection of SAM WILSON CAPTAIN AMERICA, there were about a dozen stories in which Sam Wilson, formerly "The Falcon," assumed the mantle of star-spangled avenger. Following those dozen appearances, Marvel launched CAPTAIN AMERICA: SAM WILSON. This title lasted 24 issues from 2015 to 2017, with all scripts written by Nick Spencer. Spenser made his biggest splash with the notorious "Secret Empire" plotline, in which White Captain America was revealed to be an agent of Marvel's Nazi-adjacent terrorist cabal. Hydra. But I only read the first six issues of Spenser's WILSON, which just happen, in a serendipitous manner from my POV, to concern illegal immigration.

Spenser doesn't bestow individual titles on any stories in the six-issue arc. So because Wilson-Cap's main opponents are the Sons of the Serpent and the Serpent Society, I'll give the arc the arbitrary Marvel-style title "Serpents in Eden," albeit with the caveat that my ideas of who the serpents really are isn't the same as Spenser's. I'll pay Spenser a small compliment: while "Serpents" is a one-sided Liberal take on immigration, it's not nearly as stupid as either of the MCU stories focused on Wilson-Cap: 2021's teleseries FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER and 2025's CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD. But Spenser is unapologetic about slanting his discourse on America's unsecured borders by relying on that hoary old Liberal cliche. the "Honest Juan" paradigm.

So Wilson-Cap is approached by the grandmother of one Joaquin Torres about her missing grandson. I think Spenser meant to imply that both Joaquin and his grandma were US citizens, though the writer doesn't actually say so. But Joaquin does resemble just about every other illegal-lover in American pop culture. Joaquin sets up resources to help migrants survive their attempts to illegally cross the border-- which proves he's a good guy, because he's saving lives but not directly providing aid in said crossings. (The grandma is careful to say that Joaquin is not a coyote.) Wilson-Cap soon discovers that a new incarnation of the Sons of the Serpent-- originally an American-nationalism group introduced in the 1960s-- has been kidnapping migrants to use for the subjects of mutation experiments. 

However, these Sons are only hired thugs, working for the Serpent Society, rebranded as "Serpent Solutions." The new snake-fiends are oriented upon getting rich White conservatives to invest in their villainous schemes-- because, as we all know, there are no Liberals who ever promote massive illegal schemes. In the midst of all this politically tinged superhero actions, not much is said about most of the migrants victimized-- except Good Samaritan Joaquin. As it happens, when he gets mutated, he gets turned into a guy with natural arm-wings, so that by the climax of "Serpents," Joaquin gives up helping illegals and assumes Wilson-Cap's old ID of "The Falcon." Not that Wilson-Cap ever totally dropped the avian part of his identity. I think two crusaders with wings, but not with a mutual bird-motif, feels a lot like gilding the lily, but that's me.

There are certainly some entertaining bits in "Serpents." Wilson-Cap has a "will they-won't they" thing going in these six issues with old femme-favorite Misty Knight, and for a good portion of the story the hero gets transformed into a wolf-man, which is a callback to a nineties CAPTAIN AMERICA arc, "Man and Wolf." But naturally Spenser's political take on illegal immigration is completely dishonest. He puts into the mouth of the villains' leader the standard claim that objections to illegals is all about xenophobia: "Afraid of losing your job? Perhaps you'd be interested in a border wall to keep out immigrants who might undercut your current pay." The presumption here is that average Americans ought to be willing to let their wages be cut by greedy corporations-- the same ones Spenser excoriates-- because the presence of cheap scab labor makes such wage-cutting feasible. As with most Leftist racial theories, the persons thought to be "marginalized" are incapable of causing harm, even unintentionally. They can only be framed as victims, even if real-world victimage doesn't involve getting turned into human-animal hybrids.

As an ironic conclusion to this particular part of Marvel's replacement experiment, after the final issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA SAM WILSON in 2017, another group of raconteurs came out with an eight-issue FALCON series running from 2017 to 2018, possibly in an attempt to please the readers who wanted Sam Wilson to return to his previous super-ID. However, Axel Alonso was only credited as Marvel's editor-in-chief for the first three episodes of this series, and by issue four he had been ousted from the position by his successor C.B. Cebulski, whose editorial credit appears on the remaining five issues. I didn't read this series any more than I read the rest of the Spenser issues of WILSON, so I don't know what rationale was used to restore the status quo. But clearly the failure of Wilson-Cap indicates that the Marvel readership wanted to "Keep" Steve Rogers as their Captain America and didn't support the commandment that they ought to "Share" their entertainment with Liberals seeking to rewrite superheroes to be one-dimensional expressions of political correctness.

Next up: more stuff about "Sharing" when it takes the form of shoving messages down the mouths of consumers.

                     

KEEPING VS. SHARING PT 3

 In my previous recent essays, I've been examining the way two ethical systems, the Ethos of Keeping and the Ethos of Sharing, have interpenetrated human history in the past and continue to do so. principally through their modern manifestations as "conservatism" and "liberalism." However, I added a couple of subdivisions to the mix. Keeping and Sharing can both manifest into extreme forms, both of which can be subsumed under "radicalism." The less extreme forms of both are best described as "meliorism"

Routine political discourse often distinguishes between radical and meliorist forms of liberalism. In the meliorist form, the ethic recommended to those that hold power can be summed up as "You Should Share" such things as rights and privileges with those that do not have (or do not think they have) said capacities. In the world of American civil rights, it's almost de rigeur to name Martin Luther King Jr as an exponent of persuading powerholders to cede power to the marginalized. In the radicalist form, the prevailing argument says, "You Must Share" and the best-known advocate from the same Civil Rights era, Malcolm X, favored the stick rather than the carrot.

Conservatism, though, displays the same two subdivisions. Liberals are usually only able to recognize the extreme form, so that everyone from the KKK to the guy running the Christian cake-shop are viewed as equals in tyranny. Naturally there are specific agents who want to Keep Power under all circumstances and cede nothing.  However, meliorist conservatives display the ethic that "You Should Share," albeit only under the right conditions. Franklin D. Roosevelt earned the reputation of a Liberal for measures like empowering the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Yet, the act of interning Japanese-Americans was fundamentally a conservative act, even if one takes the most charitable view of FDR's action.

And so I come to my first fictional example, that of the opposition between meliorism and radicalism seen in SPIDER-MAN #68-70 (dated January, February and March 1969). Yet to examine this scenario, a little grounding is necessary, since the conflict revolves around one of Spider-Man's support-cast, Joe Robertson. Though introduced in ASM #51, not until issue #55 does Stan Lee set up the newsman's role as a regular character, where he's a voice of reason as against the mule-headedness of publisher J. Jonah Jameson. He's also the epitome of a Liberal meliorist view: Joe Robertson ascends to his position of authority purely on the basis of merit. 

Jumping forward a year and some months, Joe's son Randy Robertson is briefly seen in ASM #67, but only in #68 do we see Randy's purpose: to show Stan Lee's negative view of radicalism. Thus, almost as soon as Peter Parker encounters Randy on the campus they both attend, up comes the shadow of Randy's friend Josh-- who, since he never has a last name, might as well be called Josh X.

Though Lee was often criticized for the piddly nature of the "campus protest" involved here, he shows considerable acumen in showing how militant Josh X is. There's no "hey, how they hangin,'" just, "are you joining the cause?" Lee obviously means readers to find Josh abrasive here and later, even though Peter Parker nominally approves of his cause. The campus protest will tie into Spider-Man's adventure with his frequent foe The Kingpin, but the cause is less important here than showing how Randy, the offspring of a meliorist parent, is being influenced by a radical who demands that the campus authorities "Must Share," while said authorities are taking the radical conservative posture, presumably currying favor with alumni to garner donations (though Lee does not say this).

Josh X is even less appealing in his second scene in the story. Though Randy is the first to invite Parker to help the students fight the good fight, Josh not only acts like Parker owes him allegiance, he addresses a near-stranger as "Whitey" as if he doesn't owe Parker the slightest courtesy. Stan Lee doesn't have Parker react to the racial slur, but rather to Josh's statement that the young militant doesn't think he has to listen to, or account for, the response of the authorities to the protesters' demands. On the next page, an unnamed Black protester casts aspersions on Randy for being "the son of an Uncle Tom," and Josh, for whatever reason, defends Randy as a "soul brother." But it's not hard to imagine Josh flinging the same insult if Randy failed to follow Josh's lead.

The battle between the spider and the gang-lord continues into ASM #69 and #70, but Stan Lee devotes just a handful of scenes to winding up his mini-debate about meliorism and radicalism. In the first of the two scenes above, Joe is aghast that a son of his was involved not just in protest, but in causing damage to personal property, which is something neither Randy nor Josh apologizes for. (In the next issue, Lee changes his mind and says no damage was caused by the protesters.) Randy, probably channeling whatever Sidney Poitier movies Stan had seen, complains that he has to be more "militant" because his meliorist father is part of "the White Man's establishment." Joe makes the more reasonable argument about proving oneself, though oddly, Josh gets the last word, claiming that "we" (meaning Black people) won't get anywhere unless they "kinda shake Whitey up a little." Given that Stan Lee was almost certainly a meliorist, it's fairly generous that he at least acknowledges the rationale of the radicalist in this issue. In #70 the voice of the "Must Keep" authority is at last heard, as the dean admits having failed to listen to the voices of his students, and that he was on their side but was busy fighting the real entrenched interests. the college's trustees. Josh admits the need to think about things a bit more, but no one's ever privy to his thoughts since I don't think he ever appears again.  

So in this late 1960s tale, some respect is accorded the "You Must Share" ethos even if the "You Should Share" is clearly the superior ethic. Yet what about one of the principal franchises of the era of identity politics?

The 2018 MCU film BLACK PANTHER presented audiences with a world where "You Must Share" is the only game in town. However, it's not a power structure based on the racial politics of America. Rather, Wakanda, an idealized African fantasyland, is called upon to pledge fealty to the radicalist ethos. In a loose way Wakanda is also governed by an Ethos of Keeping, though it's implied to be a world without the racial divisions found in the outside world, only a heritage of tribal quarrels that can be solved with rituals of combat. Wakanda keeps its miracle element vibranium out of the hands of the powerful and the powerless alike. However, their isolationism takes a major blow thanks to a poor relation of the realm's hereditary ruler, The Black Panther.   

Considering that T'Challa's uncle N'Jobu is critical to the end of Wakanda's isolationism, the character is barely more than a bare function of the plot. We are never told what radical influencer managed to persuade N'Jobu, brother of the reigning Wakandan king T'Chaka, to betray his country's policies and try to sell weapons to radicals in that hotbed of political activity, Oakland. Nor does the film tell us why T'Challa is so traumatized by the death of his traitorous uncle. N'Jobu's main purpose in the movie is to spawn Erik Killmonger, whom many critics described as the film's "real hero." Even though Killmonger takes over Wakanda with zero concern for its people and with the agenda of using their weapons for his network of blacktivist conspirators (also never defined), all that counts is forcing Wakanda to Share with the downtrodden, "By Any Means Necessary." Of course, Whitey is still the main villain even when no White person is directly involved in Killmonger's plans. Thus CIA agent Everett Ross is automatically a "colonizer" according to one of T'Challa's guardians. Yet none of the Wakandans uses that term for Killmonger, even though he's applying CIA tactics to ruin their country for his own agenda. Even though Killmonger dies, he succeeds in ending Wakanda's isolation. And the audience knows this must be a good thing because the nation starts donating money to American Blacks-- who I guess are supposed to be way worse off than all the impoverished tribes of real-world Africa.            

It's clear from BLACK PANTHER that without any sort of compensatory ethos, the radicalist ethos loses all control of whatever moral compass it might potentially possess. I would like to think that PANTHER's success at the box office was a short-lived anomaly, since most of the radicalist MCU movies since then have tanked. But as another famous Liberal-with-Conservative-tendencies observed, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."                 

   

KEEPING VS. SHARING PT 2

 In Part 1 of this essay-series, I offered a broad characterization of the two political philosophies, conservatism and liberalism, as overt manifestations of two deeper ethical systems, the Ethos of Keeping for the first and the Ethos of Sharing for the second. I also showed just a few historical examples of how the two systems interwove, but here I'll focus on how they played out in two historical periods, the 1960s "Civil Rights" era and the 21st-century "identity politics" era, and I'll use illustrations taken more from fiction than from history.

I commented in Part 1 that the pietistic religions strongly emphasized the Ethos of Sharing, but there were different degrees of emphasis. Early Christianity did not suggest that all slaveholders should free their slaves-- even though the Jewish custom of Jubilee at least indicated that this was a beneficial act-- but rather enjoined slaveholders to treat their slaves with charity and humanity. Thus the message to conservatives here was "You Should Share." At the same time, Christianity was founded upon the template of the Old Testament, which sometimes put forth the countervailing message, "You Must Share." One can see this illustrated by the Exodus story of Moses and the Pharaoh, in which Pharaoh's desire to "Keep" the Jews as slaves was finally overthrown by God's will that the Jews must be liberated. Pharaoh himself represents the extreme of conservatism, that of "You Must Keep" one's perceived property no matter what. Yet, going back to the slavery-rhetoric from early Christianity, some masters followed a milder version of Keeping, which I'll call the commandment "You Should Keep," unless one sees a good reason not to do so. Within this form of ethical compass, even if one decides to liberate this or that meritorious slave-- as Philemon releases Onesimus in the Epistle of Paul-- that does not mean that the slaveholder releases all his slaves, or renounces the belief that slavery is a perfectly normal societal practice.

Vaulting over centuries to the American Civil Rights era, it's possible to see these commandments on both sides of the liberal/conservatism spectrum manifesting in the political persuasions often called "meliorism" and "radicalism." The radical conservative swears by the commandment "You Must Keep," which resulted (for one example) in banning free Blacks from being educated in any way, for fear that they might have a better chance at escaping a second-class citizen status. The meliorist conservative, swearing by "You Should Keep," by contrast would be okay with allowing Black Americans to be educated in Black schools, but would still want Blacks to stay within certain boundaries. The meliorist and the radical attitudes with respect to liberals have received much more commentary. The meliorist liberal wants to work within the system, to prove that he deserves a seat at the table on the basis of merit-- again, telling conservatives "You Should Share." The radical liberal insists that, on the basis of past treatment, the whole table should be overturned so that only his people (and maybe some fellow travelers) can be seated, telling conservatives that "You Must Share," even to the extent of beggaring oneself.

I'd originally planned to address my fictional examples in this post but now it seems to me that the length of the post will become ungainly, so I'll hold the rest for a Part Three.           

      

KEEPING VS. SHARING

 It's now a week and a day since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I'd heard his name off and on but only had become aware of him in the last month, thanks in large part to SOUTH PARK. I don't regularly watch the show but some podcast on YT featured Kirk reacting to a 2025 SP episode. From the clips shown, the show spoofed Kirk by having Cartman give extremely racist speeches, supposedly modeled on those of Kirk. The real Kirk was highly amused by SP's hyperbolic satire, and he stated something to the effect that he felt he'd "arrived" by getting lambasted by the famous teleseries.  

The SP episode may have been clever or stupid, but it falls within the realm of art, and so it can't be judged as pure political discourse. Not so, the dozens of contemptible reactions on the Left to the murder, in which people felt it more important to virtue signal about Kirk's alleged racism than to show common respect for a man shot down for his words. Even worse were the bottom-feeders who tried to make a hero of the left-leaning assassin, or to romanticize him, or to make him part of some convoluted conspiracy on the Right.

But this is a philosophy-blog, not a political rant blog, so I do have some thoughts about what I consider the "two ethical systems" that underlie all forms of political endeavor-- the Ethos of Keeping and the Ethos of Sharing. They are the two sides of human nature, which have taken many forms in history. In this century we know the Keeping-Ethos as "conservatism," which connotation is baked into the very word "to conserve." Now, the word from which "liberalism" descends means "to free," not "to share." But no actual liberal in modern times advocates simply "freeing" marginalized people without also letting those people "share" in whatever rights or privileges have supposedly been denied them-- ergo, liberalism is predicated on an Ethos of Sharing. The two words are even traced back to the same century, the 14th, while in another century, the 19th, they became rhetorically linked to the two dominant U.S. political parties.

Within the liberal view, conservatism is evil, the domain of money-hoarding tyrants, but this is false logic, and not only because there are a lot of rich liberals too. From the tribal level up, every organized society depends upon an Ethos of Keeping, particularly with respect to resources. If Tribe A has control of the headwaters of a river, then Tribe B will not be allowed to Share in this bounty, for that would mean less for every member of Tribe A. Tribe B can only access the river only through (1) reciprocal trade, which exchanges goods from B to A, which is still the opposite of Sharing since each party Keeps the fruits of the exchange, or (2) killing off Tribe A or somehow managing to merge with the other tribe consensually. Obviously small societies often merged to make larger ones, but often this strategy, like trade, was executed for mutual advantage, such as defense against a common enemy, Tribe C. The primary mode of non-reciprocal Sharing appears within families, where parents share with children and may get nothing out of the bargain except a sense of familial immortality. One may assume that some tribes extended familial charity to tribe-members who were injured or indigent, and that this eventually led to a sense of philanthropy toward the poor as tribes coalesced into city-states. But this still constitutes Sharing within a particular ingroup.         

The Ethos of Keeping also applies equally to the ethos behind slavery, which is in modern times supplies both sides of the political spectrum with a source of conflict. In archaic times no citizen would have thought that any society was obligated to free slaves. Slaves were often taken during wars with other nations, along with other plunder. The idea of simply letting enemy slaves go free would not have made any more sense than a request for the return of any other sort of plunder. Ancient citizens might have understood a slave wanting to be free, but that would not mean that the slaveholder had any moral duty to free him. The closest thing ancient societies had to the modern idea of liberation would be related to Nietzsche's concept of the largesse of the nobility. Nobles might choose to free slaves-- say, during the Hebrew festival of the Jubilee-- as a gesture of generosity. Something similar may inform the story of Cyrus the Great releasing Jewish slaves in Babylon from captivity once the Persian ruler took over the country. One does not need to believe the Old Testament's account of the event, and one may fairly speculate that Cyrus may have liberated the Jews with the notion of being able to garner a return favor from Israel down the line. But since the Jews did not to our knowledge render Cyrus any goods in exchange for freedom, his gesture is still defined as a gesture of magnanimity.    

Though one can find evidence of the Ethos of Sharing in early societies, its manifestation in the form of charity became arguably more cental to what some have called the "pietistic religions"-- Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism. With the rise of these beliefs, the Ethos of Sharing became a general commandment. It's also during this period that two of the greatest empires of the Old World, Imperial Rome and Imperial China, had their Keeping-systems of empire-building interfused with the Sharing-oriented systems of Christianity and Buddhism. Granted, Imperial Rome had to take a "fall" before it rose again in a more religiously oriented form, while Buddhism had to share China with Taoism and the secular "faith" of Confucianism. In both domains, strong limitations remained upon the Ethos of Sharing, for the institution of slavery continued in both empires. More egregiously, the later Empire of Islam turned the practice of slavery, which had most often been the consequence of warring tribes and nations, into a transnational moneymaking business.    

So when I write something about the American Confederacy and don't react with a knee-jerk excoriation of the evils of slavery, it's because I recognize that slaveholders in all of the twelve original slaveholding states were governed by the same Ethos of Keeping that applies to any other form of property. American slaveholders in the North and the South didn't bring Africans to the States for any other reason but to be slaves, the same way the captive Africans would have remained slaves had they been sold anywhere else, in Persia or Turkey or China. But in the United States, there had arisen a secular "ethic of emancipation" due to the American Revolution. This combined with the Sharing-ethos of mainstream Christianity-- as well as offshoots like Quakerism-- and so produced abolitionism. The abolitionists were far too few to have influenced the nation's course, but their aims happened to coincide with (1) Great Britain's early-19th century ban on slave-trading, and with (2) the desire of Northern politicians to nullify the congressional power of the Southern states. The "liberals" of this period were no less devoted to their Ethos of Keeping than were the "conservatives." Aside from real abolitionists, who often sacrificed life and property campaigning for slaves' rights, most Northerners had only one real goal: to bend the Southern states to their will. These early "liberals" sometimes wrapped their quest for power in an alleged Ethos of Sharing. But they often expected the South to do all the sharing of resources, by enforcing codes that kept even free Blacks from emigrating into certain states, such as Illinois.  

And now, about a hundred and fifty years after the close of the Civil War, modern liberals are still telling conservatives that they Must Share whatever liberals think ought to be shared. To that imperious command, conservatives reply that they Must Keep what they hold rather than becoming de facto slaves to the Left. While there are real racist movements within the Far Right, and while there are reactionary elements within the "Center-Right" that I don't always countenance, the anti-racist screed of modern Liberals has become removed from all practical considerations. Thus, they only command others to Share on their own terms-- yet they cannot share condemnation of the political murder of a man who only contended against them with words. Thus the Left's alleged narrative of Sharing becomes that of Keeping one's political stance in place, no matter what. I'll add that I imagine a lot of Righties want to keep the controversy boiling too. But the Left missed a real chance to participate in a Sharing that would have made them look a lot better than they do now.