Superman has known for a long while

[Hekate]

6. Growing up right after WWII this message came from many sources, including comic books...

Looking back on the ebb and flow of US culture since then, I realize a lot of the message's general acceptance came from revulsion toward Nazi Germany. We were not going to end up like them.

And then with the passing of time and the birth of new generations, "we" forgot. We went into not just one but a whole series of failed wars and were no longer unquestioned heroes. The forces of backlash to advances in civil rights for all gathered themselves... And here we are, taking a gigantic step backward into what? The 1930s? The 1860s?

While MAGATs seem to be pointing to the 1950s as their Golden Age, when everybody knew their place and a white guy with a high school education could always find a job capable of supporting his family, what I think of is the persistent message of our ideals -- like this Superman poster, and all those "foxhole" comic strips and movies that always included the guy from the Bronx (Jewish), and the guy called Reb from the Deep South, and the generic white farm boy, and the guy from Chicago (black). We Americans were never going to be the Nazis.

Once my family got a tv, I watched the kids' shows. I can still recite the opening dialog of Superman, which ends in "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Not a bad thing, Tlaloc. Not a bad thing at all.