Mythology can tell you a lot about a society. In ancient Greece, they told stories about Herakles, Odysseus, and Jason that held up their strength, cunning, and courage for admiration. At the same time, these stories warned of the peril resulting from hubris and disloyalty.  Likewise, the Romans had tales of Aeneas and Cincinnatus to underscore the importance of duty and family. Here, in the United States, we have created our own mythological heroes.

In the early months of 1941, while Nazi Germany was waging a war fueled by propaganda of inborn racial supremacy, two Jewish Americans writing for Timely Comics created a mythic hero for 20th Century America. Writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby told the story of Steve Rogers, a small and sickly young man who becomes a powerful super soldier as a result of scientific achievement and his own courage rather than genetic superiority. As Captain America, he punches out Hitler on the cover of his very first issue.  An American icon, he demonstrated incorruptible virtue, and his stories depict him using his strength to promote freedom, justice, and equality.  In the 1970s, amid the Watergate scandal, the character left the service of the United States government, and opposed the President of the United States for the sake of those principals.

Since 2016, the current run of Steve Rogers, Captain America written for Marvel Comics by Nick Spencer, has depicted the character as a sleeper agent of sorts for Hydra. If you’re not familiar with the details of the comic book mythology, Hydra is a terrorist organization dedicated to world domination.  Narratively, it had origins in Nazi Germany and was created as a stand-in for the Nazis themselves after the end of the war in order to give Captain America a lasting group of antagonists. In effect, by being rewritten as a Hydra double agent, Captain America has become a Nazi. And rather than depict this as a tragedy, the storyline downplays the Hydra organization’s connections to Nazism, recasting them as morally gray.

It is impossible to overlook the parallels to the current political situation in the United States. The current president has appointed white nationalists to be his advisors, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller. He has appointed Sebastian Gorka, whose ties to a Hungarian Nazi organization have recently come to light. The president chose the notoriously racist Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to head the justice department, who has rolled back police oversight and civil rights protections as one of his first actions.

During the campaign, the president himself refused to condemn David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan or reject their support, pretending not to know anything about them. His administration has rejected civilian refugees from the Syrian civil war, but this week launched ineffectual but dramatic air strikes causing hundreds of civilian deaths while failing to destroy the targeted airbase. His press secretary, Sean Spicer explained this attack in a confusing statement that minimized the horror of the Holocaust and the war crimes perpetrated by Hitler. Days later calling the United States Armed Forces “my military,” he authorized the launch of the largest, most expensive non-nuclear bomb in their arsenal.  With a nickname right out of a comic book, the “mother of all bombs” sounds like something a super villain would deploy.

In the comic books, Captain America has become a Nazi. In real world, the White House has become headquarters for a complete cast of comic book style villains. Their ranks are filled out by Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and capped with a bombastic billionaire who gloats about taking pleasure in vengeance.  But that’s just the government. This president has the approval of a mere 36% of Americans. The American people, by contrast, voted against this regime by more than three million votes. The American people are making phone calls, writing letters, donating money and attending protests. And, while Captain America as a Nazi may illustrate where we have gone wrong, every good myth has multiple versions. The version of Captain America that fills the movie screens still speaks on behalf of justice and still punches Nazis.

Four years ago today, I put the American flag up outside my door to mark the second inauguration of a man who I felt had done the best job possible in very difficult circumstances.  Four years before that, I also hung the flag outside, not in celebration of victory – I voted for the other guy, for the war hero – but in hope that the new president could deliver on some of his promises and bring this country together, to build a stronger economy, and build a better future than seemed possible as we struggled deep in recession.

This morning, I did not want to hang our flag. A man whom the majority of us voted against – who has promised horrific things – is taking the highest office of a country I no longer recognize.  Hate crimes are flourishing. Nazis are celebrating. The Klan is back in the public eye. All of these things have become socially acceptable. The American flag had always been comforting to me, a symbol of liberty and justice, even when, as individuals and a nation, we fall short of those ideals.

I got to thinking about these symbols that comfort us and inspire us. Back around Thanksgiving, I started seeing this symbol popping up, on Twitter, on Facebook.

Not Just Resistance, Hope

It’s the emblem of the Rebel Alliance, from Star Wars.  Luke Skywalker wears it on his helmet at the end of the original film. A symbol of rebellion did not seem out of place a few weeks after that kind of election. But I did not really understand until I saw the trailer for the new film, Rogue One.  It was still a symbol of the resistance, but it had been given new context as a symbol of hope.

By that same token, in the wake of the election a coworker began wearing t-shirts every day that bore the same symbol – the Superman ‘S’ shield.

Apparently all this time, it wasn’t an ‘S,’ it was a symbol for hope.

One day after about a week of Superman shirts, I asked her about it.  Okay.. okay.. that’s not true. What I said was, “Yeah… I don’t think Superman is going to save us.”  What can I say? I’m charming. She rolled her eyes and explained that she’s not an idiot, but that within the comic narrative, it’s a symbol from Planet Krypton for hope, and she described this scene from the new Supergirl television show.  Have you ever tried to describe a speech that you didn’t know the words to? It doesn’t really work, but I looked it up on YouTube later. As storytelling goes, it’s a little corny, but I can see why it would work.

In many cases the symbols we bear, the flag, the cross, the Supergirl shield are mostly for ourselves, to find hope and comfort in what can be a difficult world.  If we want to truly cut through the pain and the despair, wearing symbols of hope on our lapels and Facebook profiles cannot be enough. We must become symbols of hope ourselves. That doesn’t mean patronizingly telling the young woman in the hijab that everything will be fine or the young mother worried about her healthcare to chin up. We do not spread hope by telling people to be hopeful. Rather, we must take action.

The former President Bush called it “a thousand points of light,” individual people working to make America, not “great again”, but better, safer, more free, more just. Almost thirty years later, it’s going to take more than a thousand points of light to turn back Neo-Nazis and authoritarianism. Every one of us will need to work.  That work will take different forms for different people. Some of us will be attending protests.  For some it will mean donating money, or volunteering time to help those in need.  All of us are able to call Congress and or attend town halls to make our views known, and urge our representatives to stand in opposition to rhetoric of hate.  Some of us may even run for office ourselves.  This country is not defined by its government, but by its people, and the people themselves can make it better.  We can all be symbols of hope.

I don’t know whether I will put the flag out this morning.  I do know that I’m going to work to make things better.  Not just today but for years to come.