Once Upon A Time, Even Marvel Comics Had a Conscience

In my youth, I was a reader of Marvel Comics. Among my regular reads was Captain America and the Falcon. During the years of the Watergate scandal, the Captain America character became so ashamed of the Nixon Administration that he swore off being Captain America and re-invented himself as The Nomad--a superhero without a country. At the time (I was what is called a "pre-teen"), I was both shocked and inspired by this plot twist in the on-going saga of my favorite super-hero. Looking back, I see that it presumed a certain level of political engagement on the part of America's youth--an assumption that, I fear, would be presumptuous today. In any event, there was an issue (#181 to be exact), which opened with the former Cap paying a visit to the Lincoln Memorial. He is dressed in his new Nomad togs and reading the words of Lincoln inscribed on the walls:

"I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea-coasts, our army and our navy, these are not our reliance against tyranny. All of those may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle."

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

IS THIS PROPHECY?

Nixon's crimes were child's play next to the Bush Administration's. How is it that Bush and his co-conspirators are not behind bars? Where, as old Bob Dole used to ask, WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

Why is it that there is not a general repudiation of the mass murderers in Washington? Perhaps it is as the inscrutable Bob Dylan sings (quoting Dr. Johnson):

They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail,
Steal a lot and they make you king.

I just glanced at today's NYT. A headline reads: Democrats Drop Withdrawal Dates from Iraq Bill.

DON'T YOU FEEL BETRAYED?

I feel like the Nomad.