It happens on a Tuesday
and everybody calls it Black Tuesday
and then it happens again on Black Thursday
also Black Monday.
Everyone is so poor
they have even pawned their creativity.
But it’s still not that bad
banks are still in business and whatnot
OH WAIT, I SPOKE TOO SOON
because then some guy goes into a bank in NYC
a bank that has made a foolish promise
to buy back their own stock
at the amount it was worth when they gave it away
and the dude is like “Hey
this stock is worth a quarter of what it used to be
gimme all my money back.”
And the bank is like “Uhh, are you suuure?
That stock is a reeeeally good investment
maybe you should keep it so we don’t hafta pay you.”
And the dude is like “I SEE YOUR GAME.
YOU’RE OUT OF MONEY.
HEY, EVERYBODY:
THIS BANK IS OUT OF MONEY
COME GET YOUR MONEY OUTTA THIS BANK.”
And everybody does.
It turns out the bank has been being mega shady
and doesn’t have nearly enough money to pay people
so it closes down
and seeing as it’s one of the biggest banks in NYC
it’s sort of like knocking down a domino
onto a series of other dominoes
except the dominoes are the size of skyscrapers
and are full of napalm and EVERYONE’S MONEY.
So the Federal Reserve is watching this happen
(the Federal Reserve is a bank
whose main job
is to lend money to the U.S. government
except by lend money
I mean print totally new money
and then hope the government pays it back
which it NEVER EVER DOES)
and the Fed is like “All these banks are dying
should we do something?
Maybe print them out some money
so they can pay all these people
thus averting this crisis before it destroys America?
. . . Meh.”
So America gets destroyed
also the rest of the world
because remember, nobody has money.
Everybody is very sad about this
you might even call them
. . . DEPRESSED?
Seriously though, lots of people kill themselves
and the rest of them move into big tent cities
wearing patched-up clothes and eating canned beans.
It’s a hipster’s paradise.
But it’s okay
because this is when Franklin Roosevelt shows up.
He’s like “OKAY, GUYS
I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ECONOMICS
LET’S DO THIS.”
And he manages to sort of fix the Depression
basically by issuing a giant patch to capitalism:
no more gold standard.
So people read the patch notes on Capitalism 0.2
and they’re all like “WTF, GOLD GOT NERFED”
and Roosevelt is like “Haha, fuck you guys
now I can make dollars as cheap as I want
and tons of money will be available
and everyone will start buying things again
CAPITALISM IS SAVED.”
This . . . actually works.
In fact, everyone else in the world does it too
and that is why
to this day
when a bunch of shitty banks get the world in trouble
the Fed can just print enough money to save them
which seems to piss everybody off
but hey
it’s better than eating your shoes.
So I guess the moral of the story
is that capitalism works
it’s just super buggy.
FDR DOESN’T LIKE ASIANS VERY MUCH
So there’s this dude Hitler
he does the world a tremendous public service
by being basically the worst person ever
thus giving us a way to calibrate our evilometers
for all future bastards and despots.
He does this by selecting a subset of German people
and then attempting to kill
LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PERSON.
Somehow, probably with hypnotism
he is able to convince Japan to go with him on this
AND SO BEGINS WORLD WAR TWO
(man, wouldn’t it be hilarious
if someone traveled back to the 1920s
and accidentally referred to the Great War
as World War One
like ha ha!
Spoilers!).
But to start out, it’s not really a world war
because you know who’s not involved?
AMERICA, THAT’S WHO
(by that measure, WWI wasn’t a world war either
because Asia wasn’t really involved
but everybody loves a sequel).
Most people in America are happy to sit out
and let the rest of the world blow itself up
because America at this time has not yet discovered
that it is actually the world’s police force.
Luckily, America has a president who does know this
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT.
Yes, the same FDR who killed the Depression
and the same FDR who will STAY administratin’
until his brain literally explodes
and they change the constitution
so no one can ever do that shit again.
This dude serves as president for thirteen years
and this is an example
of the sort of behavior that let him set that record:
So Japan is allied with Germany
and they’re like “Sweet
the rest of the world already hates us
let’s take their land!”
So they start invading China
and Malaysia
and the Philippines
and just whatever else
but then they’re like “Hmm
what if America tries to stop us?
Ooh! Let’s surprise attack Hawaii!”
So that’s exactly what they do.
The attack is very successful
but only in a strictly technical sense.
To put it in perspective, let’s try a metaphor.
Let’s say you’re having a barbecue
but you don’t want to get stung by any bees
so you find your local beehive
and just go crazy on it with a baseball bat.
Make sense?
THEN YOU MUST BE JAPAN IN THE ’40s.
WHO ELSE WOULD EVER DO THIS?
So the U.S. swarms on Japan, obviously
but that’s where our bee metaphor breaks down
because while bees can sting you
they cannot put you in concentration camps
(or at least, I haven’t met any bees that can do that).
Yeah, after that surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
everybody on the West Coast is like “OMG
WE’RE AT WAR WITH JAPAN
AND THERE ARE JAPANESE DUDES
LIVING ALLLL AROUND US.”
I mean, they already banned Japanese immigration
like a decade before
but there are still Japanese dudes all over the coast
and what’s more
those Japanese dudes are living right next door
to all the important aircraft factories
and landing strips
and shipyards
and farmland
and forests
and bridges
almost as if those types of things are
EVERYWHERE
and thus impossible not to live next door to.
Whatever, it’s pretty suspicious.
Now, at this point, nothing has been sabotaged
and some people think that means they’re safe.
But not military geniuses like Earl Warren
who points out
that the only reason there’s been no sabotage
is that the Japanese are waiting for their moment
and the fact that there has been no sabotage yet
is ALL THE PROOF WE NEED
to determine that sabotage is being planned.
Frank Roosevelt hears this
and he’s like “That’s some pretty shaky logic
but I really don’t like Japanese people.
Okay, go ahead.”
So he passes an executive order
that just says “Any enemy ex-patriots
can be kicked out of any war zone I designate.
P.S.: California, Oregon, and Washington are war zones
have fun with that.”
So they kick all the Japanese off the coast
forcing them to sell everything they own
but people are still not satisfied.
They’re like “Those guys look funny!
We can’t have funny-looking dudes roaming around
this is wartime!
We gotta lock ’em up.”
And FDR is like “Okay, sure.”
So they herd all the Japanese into big camps
where they are concentrated in large numbers
like a hundred and ten thousand people total
and then the military is like “Okay, guys
we will let you go
if you fill out this loyalty questionnaire
that says you love the United States
and are totally down to be in our army”
and some dudes are like “Sweet, free release!”
but some dudes are like “Seriously?
You just put me in jail for being Asian.
This country is just one giant asshole
and it’s squatting directly over my head.”
And the military is like “Ooh, sorry to hear that buddy
looks like you’re gonna stay here for the whole war.
Meanwhile your friends get to go fight and die
FOR FREEDOM.”
Some dudes go to court about this
and the cases get all the way to the Supreme Court
who are just like “Sorry guys, our hands are tied”
and all the Japanese are like “Really?”
and the Supreme Court is like “Really
as in we are being denied crucial information
that would prove that you guys aren’t a threat at all
and make the military look hella foolish.
This is what happens
when you elect a general your first president
and then constantly fight wars for 150 years:
the army starts to get out of hand.”
and the Japanese are like “Okay, I guess we understand
NO, WAIT, FUCK YOU GUYS.”
And the Supreme Court is like “HAHA
FUCK YOU.
JUSTICE, BITCHES.”
Then they fly away with their magic robes.
The good news is that the war ends pretty fast.
It turns out that pissing off a huge neutral party
that has been constantly fighting wars for 150 years
is not a great way to win wars
so the Japanese get to go home eventually
but they’re none too happy about it
until later, when Jimmy Carter becomes president
and he decides that the whole thing was a mistake
and gives $20,000 to every camp survivor!
Sweet deal!
Which brings us to our moral:
If you’re down on your luck
just have your entire race subjugated
by a country that prides itself on equality.
It’s a great way to get rich quick
or, you know, eventually.
SUPERMAN IS THE DEFINITION OF AN ILLEGAL ALIEN
So while some people are busy making history
which they hope will eventually become mythology
a group of shrewd young entrepreneurs
discover that it’s possible
to skip straight to mythology
through the simple expedient
of drawing a bunch of very muscular people
in very tight clothing.
These muscular people are called “superheroes”
and they are like ancient heroes in many ways:
They are capable of incredible feats
they have impossibly sexy bodies
and they are born in nonstandard ways.
EXAMPLE:
SUPERMAN.
So there’s this planet full of superheroes
and it’s going to explode
You’d think that if they were so great
they would have figured out a way to not explode
but you shouldn’t complain
because their loss is our gain
in the form of SUPERMAN.
Okay, actually he’s not called Superman yet
that would be silly on a planet full of super people
except I don’t think they have powers there
because their powers require Earth’s yellow sun
and their sun is green or some other dumb color.
But anyway I guess baby Superman is important
(he’s named Kal-El though
in honor of Nicolas Cage’s son)
so his parents put him on a rocket ship
and shoot him toward a planet
because that’s what you do with babies?
This planet they send him to
has a pretty good track record
of hating anyone even remotely different
and expressing this hatred
with stuff like witch trials.
Yes, I’m talking about Earth
specifically the America part of Earth
and Superman arrives JUST IN TIME
for the beginning of World War Two.
It’s sort of a terrible introduction to Earth culture.
So Superman crashes his space raft
in the middle of the most xenophobic part of Kansas
and he gets picked up by these two old people
and they don’t want to piss off the freaky space baby
so they make it their own
and anyway I think they both have cancer now
or are at least sterile from radiation poisoning
because the spaceship Superman crashed in
is like COVERED in kryptonite
which Superman is totally allergic to
so bad luck, huh?
But anyway they raise him
and teach him solid American values
like honest sweat and war and heterosexuality
and they eventually figure out shit is fucked up
when he starts lifting tractors
but by then it’s too late to do anything about it
without getting hit with a flying tractor.
So Supes gets bored of his shitty podunk parents
kicks the shit out of his high school
and flies to Mars or New York or something
and gets a job as a dude who . . .
writes newspaper articles?
Because if you’re an invincible force for good
with the capacity to save ANYONE at ANY TIME
what you really need to be doing
is wasting time writing about the Kardashians
and hitting on your coworkers.
But he still does save a lot of people /
shoot a lot of people with laser vision
also he can fly.
The U.S. finally decides to enter World War Two
and Superman takes some time off journalism
to just punch Nazis for a decade
but then he runs out of Nazis to punch
and he uses his influence as Best Hero Ever
to create a high council of more interesting heroes
like Batman and the Flash and Wonder Woman.
This council is not democratically elected
admission is granted based solely on genetics
(although to be fair, Batman doesn’t have powers
he just buys his way in with his immense wealth)
They are not accountable to any higher authority
and most of the members are not even human.
As a matter of fact
when Superman’s arch-nemesis becomes president
Superman goes to the oval office and KILLS HIM
starting a worldwide nuclear catastrophe
which his friends have to fix using time travel.
God bless America.
The moral of the story
is that if you wear a lot of red and blue on your body
people will just assume whatever you do is patriotic.
ELVIS LIVES!
Still not convinced that America has a mythology?
EAT COUNTEREXAMPLE, DOUBTERS.
This counterexample is from the 1950s
and is named ELVIS PRESLEY.
This guy is equal parts Orpheus
Dionysus
and Hercules.
(Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense by the end.)
Like all great heroes, his family is super poor
but when he is still a wee lad
his family somehow scrapes together enough cash
to get him his first guitar
which he is actually pretty disappointed about
but only because what he really wanted was a GUN
and how American is that?
Still, he gets the guitar