Reds! Official Fanfiction Thread (Part Two)

The Blacklist (PNWKing)

PNWKing

Banned
The Blacklist

A TV show about former FBU analyst Raymond Reddington (James Spader) and his criminal organization across the UASR, Americuba, the FBU, and even more countries. One of the most memorable shows from UASR television in the past few years. The show follows Reddington and his criminal organization, as well as his relationship with Soviet spy Katarina Rostova, and her daughter Masha, as he hunts for other organized crime leaders on SecPubSafe's "Blacklist."
 
The Three Lives of Dr. Butler (Traveller76)
The Three Lives of Dr. Butler is a reference book chronicling the fictional life and story of Dr. Lowell Butler, who was created in 1928 and had a career of over 40 years in Print, Movies and Television. It is written by Noor Trudeau , a Media Historian based in Dallas, Texas in 2018 and features interviews with actors and writers along with a variety of pictures both official and unofficial. Comrade Trudeau has covered a variety of media topics ranging from cultural studies to sociology and social theory and has a degree from Brooklyn University.

The First Life of Dr. Butler
The author Donnchadh Thompkins*, writing as Spencer Norris*, created the character of Dr. Lowell Butler as a fictionalized version of his college friend, Dr. Leon Keyes*, a New York surgeon. He first introduced the character in a short story, "Internes Can't Take Money", that appeared in the March 1926 issue of Metropolitan* magazine. A second Butler story, "Whiskey Sour", was published in Metropolitan in April 1928. In these early stories, Dr. Lowell Butler is an aspiring surgeon who leaves his parents' farm to practice at a fictional big-city hospital, and through his work, comes into contact with underworld criminals.

In 1929, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) contracted with Thompkins to acquire the rights to the Butler character along with Thompkins's services as a film story writer. Thompkins then made major changes to the character to fit MGM's idea for a new movie series, including changing Butler's specialty to diagnostics rather than surgery, introducing the character of Kildare's superior Dr. Jordon Wragge*, de-emphasizing the criminal elements, and restarting the story from Butler's first arrival at the city hospital. Thompkins collaborated with MGM on its Butler's film series starting with the first MGM series release, Young Dr. Butler (1928) and continuing through The People vs. Dr. Butler (1931). During this time, Thompkins wrote several original Butler stories which were first published in magazines, later republished in novel form, and made into films by MGM. The stories were written prior to the films being made, and were not published as movie tie-ins.

The Second Life of Dr. Butler
After The People vs. Dr. Butler, Thompkins and MGM parted ways. Thompkins would write several additional stories and film scripts and submit them to various publishing houses and film studios however none would be published or filmed until after the Second Civil War and Thompkins death in 1933. In his will, Thompkins would sign over all rights and creative decision making to his friend Dr. Keyes as a way to support his friend's family post Civil War. In 1935 Keyes would re-submit the scripts to the new film collectives and would receive a positive response from the Workers Film and Photo League (WFPL). Dr. Keyes would travel to California and would work as a Medical Expert with a team of other doctors to make the films as accurate as possible. Already the WFPL and California People' Secretariat of Health were working on making a series of films to promote public health campaigns and remove some of the 'medical myths' that people believed. Dr. Keyes and the medical council agreed to this in return for technical credit and character credit for Comrade Thompkins. In 1936 Calling Dr. Butler, starring Asthon Prescott* would be released with Dr. Butler working at a local Dispensary after being transferred by Dr. Wragge after a heated disagreement over 'war weariness'. Dr. Butler would assist several residents of the neighborhood dealing with a 'hermit' by the name of Dwain Terrell, a WW1 and Second Civil War veteran dealing with what is now considered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

1937 would see the release of two films The Secret of Dr. Butler and Dr. Butler's Strange Case, which would see Dr. Butler deal with psychological problems with the daughter of a prominent government official and assisting Dr. Wragge in his treatment for melanoma. These films would later be used in medical classes to help show that psychological problems were not only rooted in social conditions but also were based on a person's personal health history. Dr. Butler Goes Home was released in 1938 showing Dr. Butler and several Interns setting up a clinic in a rural part of the state.

With tensions rising in the Pacific and in Europe the People's Secretariat of Defense, WFPL and Dr. Keyes would have Dr. Butler join the military as a Major in the Army Medical Corps. From 1939-1945 Major Butler would narrate and star in six short films covering topics from Sexually Transmitted Diseases to food safety and a variety of other subjects. Copies of these movies would later be released to civilian theatres to encourage public health during wartime. The last Dr. Butler film starring Prescott would be Dr. Butler Gets Married (1946) which would see Dr. Butler return to civilian life and marry fellow Doctor Nasira Spence. Aston Prescott would retire from playing Dr. Butler and would have a successful career on stage until his death in 1959.

The Third Life of Dr. Butler
With the rise of Television both in the UASR and across the TCI there would be a revival of Dr. Butler's films in the mid 1960s with many films dubbed into a variety of languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, French and others along with similar medical dramas being made in the USSR and other countries. PBS would launch its own series in 1970 on Channel 4 called Doctor Butler which would have Lenox Alberghi* as an elder Dr. Butler, the Head of Pathology of a major Metropolitan hospital, who would mentor various Interns through their residencies. The series would last from 1970 to 1975 for a total of 191 episodes. Attempts to start another Television series in the late 90s were discussed but never completed.

In January 2014 the Workers Film and Photo League would released a DVD box set of all Dr. Butler films titled The Dr. Butler in War and Peace 1928-1946. PBS would release a DVD collection of Doctor Butler television shows in 2016.


OOC: Dr. Kildare - Wikipedia
*Fictional Person or Company
 
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Reggie Lawson, and the Disingenuity of the Bourgeois Morality and Happy Endings (Bookmark1995)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Reggie Lawson, and the Disingenuity of the Bourgeois Morality and Happy Endings.

Michael J. Gordon

University of California Film Studies Journal

March 10, 1995

Like many Canadians born in the 1960s, I held onto some nostalgia for Blue Canada during the immediate years after the Red Turn. This was more due to my naivete and the stress of transitioning from the old capitalist order to the dictatorship of the proletariat. While my mind has long been cleansed of my bourgeois outlook, as has my naive view of Canadian history, there are pieces of Canuck kitsch I still hold dear to my heart, even though I am aware of their deviant origins.

Among them is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the 1971 smash musical hit about a poor kid who visits a fantastical chocolate factory.

On Anti-Reaction movie night, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has long been mocked as a "psychotic capitalist fantasy." Willy Wonka is often accused of being a monstrous slaveowner who knocks off the naugthy kids to indulge his sadistic tendences. It doesn't help he pays what it is effectively indentured labor with cacao beans. And Grandpa Joe is often bashed as a creppily selfish man who works his own grandson to death so he can sit in bed all day.

Whatever you might say, I still enjoy the movie. Roddy McDowell's portrayal as the whimsical yet sneaky chocolatier is endlessly quotable, the Oompa Loompa songs are wonderful, the bratty children are entertainingly bad, and the capitalist consumerism is mercilessly skewered as the world is depicted as going nuts over something as petty as free chocolate.

However, upon serious examination, Willy Wonka, like all bourgeois stories, displays a troubling morality underneath its whimisical image. And it's not just Willy Wonka's illegal labor scheme.

But to understand the troubling message of Willy Wonka, you first need a comparison to a more conventional proletariat story.


Reggie Lawson

Reggie Lawson, which ran from 1979 to 1985, is often regarded as one of the best animated programs of the 1980s and for good reason. Reggie Lawson's struggle to leave his corrupt boarding school and build a new one on socialist principles while fighting off the caprices of Headmaster Byron is a story full of comedy, drama, action, heartbreak, love, and heart.

But it holds a special place in my heart for a specific reason: as a kid struggling to parse through the big fancy words of my Marxist textbook, Reggie Lawson's struggle to change his aristocratic outlook to a socialist one was incredibly relatable. Seeing a preteen go through the class struggle taught me more about socialism than some boring old textbook.

But through Lawson, I began to seriously question my old tastes in media, and Willy Wonka came under scrutiny.

Charlie Bucket, the Passive Protagonist

The propaganda I grew up in the twilight years of Blue Canada depicted the UASR as a nation full of sexed-up lazy indolents.

While this propaganda stirred confused emotions in the deceived Canadian proletariat, my teenage brain didn't see anything to fret about that. I assumed that living in the UASR would be like a vacation.

Oh boy was I dead wrong.

If you grow up Red, you can be surprised to learn the Blue life can actually seem a lot easier: having to go through public meetings, doing hardcore milita training, and sifting through pages and pages of Marxist doctrine can be a chore when you come from a bourgeois individualist society where civic society isn't as central to one's daily life. Even a lot of poor Canadian kids who stood to benefit from the revolution actually felt their lives got harder.

Paradoxically, having freedom means having more responsbility. One is allowed to indulge with sex and drugs, and you get lots of time off, but you have to contribute more.

But through Reggie Lawson I learned why that is: indolence is one of the things capitalism feeds off of. It is not enough to be a good person. You have to be an active participant, because not taking part in your community allows the corrupt and active to take in part instead.

This is what makes the character of Charlie Bucket so troubling.

Charlie Bucket is a character who is seemingly designed to invoke our sympathy. He is a poor kid living in the poorest part of the English Midlands forced to raised his four disabled grandparents alongside his also struggling mother. His diet consists of cabbage soup and one chocolate bar a year (if he is lucky), and all the money he earns delivering papers is given to support his family.

He is practically Oliver Twist with a paper route.

But what is Charlie Bucket's action in the story: does he try and fight against the corruption around him and lead his comrades to a better future?

No.

He simply acts nice, wins a golden ticket by luck, and inherits capital from Willy Wonka simply by being an inoffensive child.

This is essentially a modern day fairy tale meant to encourage children to behave.

But the problem is that Charlie does nothing to actually better his condition. He doesn't learn to overthrow the corrupt system that keeps his family his such poverty, he doesn't learn about how capitalists steal wealth from his family and prevent his grandparents from enjoying a good retirement.

He is simply a child who acts polite and waits for the world to get better.

One of Reggie Lawson's reality checks is learning how him simply being good is not a virtue in itself. And this goes into the next serious flaw of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Disgenious Sentamentality of Capitalism

The fairy tales of capitalism promote a disingenious world view: be polite and society will treat you well.

The image of Charlie is that he is rewarded for basic courtesy. Simply not stealing chocolate from a river or throwing a tantrum is considered by the capitalist world to be the pinnacle of society. Roald Dahl, through his uniquely twisted sense of humor, promotes this morality through much of his works.

But history has taught me anything, it is that politeness toward an oppressor merely enables the oppressor. And that the bourgeois regime will always throw away its supposed values to achieve its own goals.

From the Prussian aristocrats appointment of Hilter to chancellor, to the overthrow of American democracy, the capitalist monster is one that will even hurt children to get what it wants.

Reggie Lawson learnt this lesson as the end of season one, when his first attempt and building a school is destroyed by the machinations of Headmaster Byron and his gaggle of scabs, and his own younger brother is beat into a coma.

Reggie learns that you cannot play the rules to improve society, for the capitalist feeds off of your oppression.

The Villains are Mere Caricatures.

Veruca Salt could very well be a poster child for the capitalist youth: concerned only with petty luxuries, replacing meaningful activites with the vapid pursuit of material things, and abusing and mistreating those around her.

All the bratty children are, in some respects, embodiments of vices. Per Roald Dahl's form of the morality play, they are forced to simply endure horrible fates after being shamed by an admittedly catchy song by the Oompa Loompas, and then vanish from the story all together as a warning against too much eating, too much greed, too much TV, and too much gum-chewing.

But there is little explanation in the story for their behavior, beyond irresponsible parenting and an excuse to make Charlie seem like a good kid.

No human being is a cariacture, and while the capitalism system is one to be condemned, one must not forget that its promoters are themselves victims.

The Reggie Lawson version of Veruca Salt is Fiona Goldplate, the niece of Headmaster Byron.

Goldplate herself is like Veruca Salt: hilariously self-centered, greedy, snobbish, and only obsessed with luxury. And she hurts and attacks Reggie and his friends.

But overtime she becomes a tragic villain herself: she is the product of an upbringing that priortizes wealth above people, and living Byron has warped the girl's mind.

Her actions are not excused, but through her, we see how the capitalist system forments such antisocial behaviors among even its supposed beneficiaries, and we cheer when Fiona breaks free from her oppression.

(That's not to say socialism eliminates antisocial behavior. I've still faced bullying for being a Canadian. But socialism tampens on the cruel behaviors found in Blue education by encouraging camraderie and unity).

In short, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one that instills in its audience passivity, indolence, and a failure to understood societal issues like poverty and bullying.
 

PNWKing

Banned
Why does Fiona Goldplate sound like what Pacifica Northwest would look like if Alex Hirsch was a hardcore Communist?
 
Why does Fiona Goldplate sound like what Pacifica Northwest would look like if Alex Hirsch was a hardcore Communist?

That’s pretty much what I had in mine. OTL Alex Hirsch explores how one’s upbringing can turn them into a Queen Bee. ITTL Alex Hirsch would the sociological reasons for how someone becomes a mean bully.
 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Reggie Lawson, and the Disingenuity of the Bourgeois Morality and Happy Endings.
I don't necessarily dislike this, but it does contradict some of the plans that were in place for Wonka TTL, courtesy of @Mr. C (among them, Spike Milligan was going to play Wonka, and the first film was going to be animated, with a George Miller directed live action remake years later.)

Also, as was planned but never executed OTL, Charlie is black/West Indian TTL.
 
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I don't necessarily dislike this, but it does contradict some of the plans that were in place for Wonka TTL, courtesy of @Mr. C (among them, Spike Milligan was going to play Wonka, and the first film was going to be animated, with a George Miller directed live action remake years later.)

Also, as was planned but never executed OTL, Charlie is black/West Indian TTL.

I apologize.

I wasn't aware of that.

Should I take down the thread?
 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Reggie Lawson, and the Disingenuity of the Bourgeois Morality and Happy Endings.
It does not help me fully appreciate this post that I have no idea what or who a "Reggie Lawson" is. But certainly it is in the spirit of the TL to have an ATL production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that hews more closely to the OTL version with Gene Wilder--perhaps there are two versions in the ATL, why not?

Anyway the shoe I was waiting to see drop was how Dahl replaces the OTL Mike Teevee, the only American in author canon and the OTL Wilder movie. One way to go would be to make him Blue Canadian of course, but that might not work with pre-proletarian takeover Canada presumably diverging in important ways both from OTL Canada and OTL Canada's reflection of US culture.

Mike Teevee can presumably be transported to any British settler colony, or be a Briton I suppose--though the peculiar form of his over-the-top cowboy personality is of course distinctively American as is the unchecked extremism of OTL American capitalist society as reflected in our relentlessly for profit and sensationalist media culture, such as it is.

A more challenging way to fill in the gap--Mike (Something else? Teevee with Dahl blaming American Redness surviving on media propaganda?) being the expy of whatever vice Dahl would hold most repulsive and most representative of UASR/Comintern wickedness. Perhaps in the ATL version Mike Peepkom (for People's Committee dontcha know, or "Workerkom" or something more cleverly imaginative) is an obnoxious glorifier of the Revolution always spouting Debs-DeLeonist propaganda slogans in the most ironic and awkward and counterproductive contexts possible, and his mother (or let us say because these Reds have no love of family whatsoever, some random Commissar) is even worse in a sneakier way. And so when Mike Peepkom sees Wonka is developing teleportation tech he is bound to try to steal it for the triumph of the working class and gets his Truffle-Eater style comeuppance that way.
 
It does not help me fully appreciate this post that I have no idea what or who a "Reggie Lawson" is. But certainly it is in the spirit of the TL to have an ATL production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that hews more closely to the OTL version with Gene Wilder--perhaps there are two versions in the ATL, why not?

Reggie Lawson is an in-universe cartoon I've created.

Anyway the shoe I was waiting to see drop was how Dahl replaces the OTL Mike Teevee, the only American in author canon and the OTL Wilder movie. One way to go would be to make him Blue Canadian of course, but that might not work with pre-proletarian takeover Canada presumably diverging in important ways both from OTL Canada and OTL Canada's reflection of US culture.

Mike Teevee can presumably be transported to any British settler colony, or be a Briton I suppose--though the peculiar form of his over-the-top cowboy personality is of course distinctively American as is the unchecked extremism of OTL American capitalist society as reflected in our relentlessly for profit and sensationalist media culture, such as it is.

I can't believe I never considered that.

Well in the original OTL book, Teevee loved gangster shows. So he could potentially a Londoner who has a love of London's gangster subculture.

A more challenging way to fill in the gap--Mike (Something else? Teevee with Dahl blaming American Redness surviving on media propaganda?) being the expy of whatever vice Dahl would hold most repulsive and most representative of UASR/Comintern wickedness. Perhaps in the ATL version Mike Peepkom (for People's Committee dontcha know, or "Workerkom" or something more cleverly imaginative) is an obnoxious glorifier of the Revolution always spouting Debs-DeLeonist propaganda slogans in the most ironic and awkward and counterproductive contexts possible, and his mother (or let us say because these Reds have no love of family whatsoever, some random Commissar) is even worse in a sneakier way. And so when Mike Peepkom sees Wonka is developing teleportation tech he is bound to try to steal it for the triumph of the working class and gets his Truffle-Eater style comeuppance that way.

That's actually a really good idea.

Dahl was known to be somewhat racist and antisemitic.

I can imagine he would have a deep loathing for the Reds across the pond, and would also make unflattering portrayals of them in his story.

You would make an excellent book editor.
 
So, Reggie Lawson is just Gravity Falls without what the Communists would consider "superstition".

Eh...

Aside from the character of Fiona Goldplate, that's not what I was going for.

I'll write a Reggie Lawson entry one day soon, but I was trying to explore what themes cartoons in the UASR would instill in children: the revolutionary spirit, and the need to rise up against a corrupt regime.
 
Cynicism, Hobbes and the Leviathan, and the Acceptance of Tyranny-William Golding's Lord of the Flies (Bookmark1995)
A Red American Analyzes Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books. It is a book that can, in my opinion, be of all things to all men: a brilliant social commentary, a pessimistic analysis of the human character, an answer to the debate about humanity's natural tendencies.

I wonder how Red America would view this chilling commentary on civilization and chaos.

Note this isn't my personal view of the book, or any attempt to make a definite statement about the state of nature. I don't believe I am qualified to make that kind of judgement. This is how I feel someone would view the message of the book from a red-tinted perspective. And if some things aren't fully accurate, then it is the reflection of the in-universe bias of the writer.

The Miami Herald-Literary Section

Cynicism, Hobbes and the Leviathan, and the Acceptance of Tyranny-William Golding's Lord of the Flies


March 10, 2005

Harold Martinez

Coming to London was...an incredible shock to say the least.

My grandparents on both my parents' sides were refugees from Cuba during the late MacArthur years.

The stereotype of Cubans being more Red than Marx himself was no exaggeration in my flat. My parents and family friends would often gush about the day when they would bring revolution to the "cochinos", as I often heard them describe the Cubamerican elites. (Along more colorful language I will not describe on this review.) Whereas most kids practice the violin on Sunday, my parents were giving me combat practice just in case the eventual liberation of Cuba would come.

This all the education I received made me think every Blue country as this evil and wretched place.

So when my class trip to Spain had to be diverted to London Heathrow due to...turbulence, I was scared out of mind. My first instinct was "the bobbies are gonna kill me" [1], as I was always taught that the British government were tyrants who were ready to slaughter the first Red they came across, since my grandparents themselves had been nastily persecuted the bougies.

So I was in for a massive shock when the first British person who ever approached me wasn't some bougie thug, but a kindly stewardess who escorted me to a terminal.

Then we learned the plane was grounded for a few hours, so we were allowed to explore the city of London. Under supervision, of course, for "reasons."

Having grown up the way I did, my impression of England was Oliver Twist being punished for asking for more, or streets full of impoverished beggars being mistreated by a corrupt ruling class, and where all children were chimney sweeps who never got to go to school. Instead London was...nicer than I imagined. The streets seemed clean, the people were well-dressed, and there were plenty of cars.

For a small moment, I wondered if maybe, just maybe, my parents exaggerated when talking about their time in Cuba. Maybe the capitalists were not nearly as they said, and peaceful coexistance was possible, as my more mellow friends debated with me.

But then we saw a homeless man lying in the street, I asked my British tour guide, this dark-haired 20 something with a posh voice and the name "Alistair, who was going to help that poor man stay alive.

"Nothing you can do," Alastair muttered with a shrug and a small smile, and then he immediately changed the subject, asking me if I was a Venezuelan. And with that, I suddenly realized my parents were right all along. All their invective, their diatribe, their tongue-lashings didn't do it justice. Things were as bad as they said. My inner Cuban was prepared to give me a tongue lashing, but my teacher kept me under control. Still I couldn't help but notice, to my deeply-hidden outrage, the complete disregard other passerbyers showed for the man lying in the streets. Had it not been for our schedule, I was sorely tempted to go and help that poor man up.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, and the Culture of Apathy

There are two reasons, in my opinion, why the tide of revolution has been slowed and much of the world remains under capitalist rule.

The ruling classes of today in Blue nations understand the maxim of Robert Kennedy: he who make a peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. While they bash Red subversion, they embrace just enough elements of socialism to deter the revolutions that destroyed the Romanovs, the 1776 Constitution America, and the old French monarchy under Louis XVI.

But this does not make them good people. The British aristocracy especially only change when their selfish interests are threatened. They didn't clean up the filth its residents had been living with until the smell got so bad, they couldn't work in parliament.

In the London I saw, most people have enough of a good life that they don't feel the need to overthrow their government. Their children aren't being fed gruel and forced to work in dangerous factories. Unions do exist and get some concessions from the ruling class. The streets are clean enough. The food isn't too toxic. And people have just enough TV and beer to distract them.

Modern day capitalist nations are "bread and circuses" brought to perfection.

But the other issue is that capitalist nations are able to convince their subjects this: that this is the best things can be. Not that Red nations are bad, but because the idea of something better is impossible to achieve. Alistair wasn't a sadist or some aristocrat. He, like many British, accept the excesses of the ruling class.

This attitude is best typified by Thomas Hobbes, and his believe that humans, without some kind of structure, would lead lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes was a man who lived through the horrors of the English civil war, and what he experienced convinced him that the only way human beings can be structured, the only way to avoid the chaos he so dreaded, was Leviathan: an absolute government to whom all would supplicate themselves too. That human history is not class warfare, but simply a war between utter chaos and those trying to bring order to society.

Underneath their democratic veneers, the Blue nations of the world are in fact Leviathans. But their power comes not from merely conditioning the masses to distrust revolution, but to simply believe that the boot on their necks is the best way, and the only way human beings can live.

One man in particular came around to this idea, William Golding. Like Hobbes, Golding himself was traumatized by the horror of war. The Second World War saw the most "civilized" people in the world commit the most horrible crimes of modern history. But while the Second World War was pure capitalism run amok in its evil, fascist interpretation, Golding remain wedded to the cynical mindset instilled into him by his capitalist overlords, and wrote a book which argued that man without absolute authority was a pure savage beast.

Lord of the Flies, the Modern Day Leviathan

Lord of the Flies has a relatively simple plot: several school boys end up on a deserted island and attempt to build a functioning society while also looking for ways call for help.

But they gradually lose their minds over the course of the story: they start believing in the existance of a "beastie", the head choir boy named Jack gradually becomes a power mad dictator, they forget about their attempt to be rescued, the boys who argue for civilization are brutally murdered, and eventually the boys set the entire island on fire, and while this leads to them being inadvertantly rescued, they weep over what they've become and are made aware of the true darkness that lurks inside every person.

The book's message is plain: without a boot neck, we are all savage children who would murder our own best friends and burn our cities to the ground.

But within the book, the truth is this: the evils of humanity are not born from human beings having no authority to reign us in, but the very actions of Leviathan himself.

Jack Merridew is Not Anarchy, but Leviathan Himself.

Merridew is a character who supposedly represents savagery: he wears face paint, organizes tribal dances among the kids he has manipulated, hunts for meat, and is quick to kill people.

But this is not the act of a savage: this is the act of a wannabe Leviathan.

The evils of society are not born from simply the innate savage impulses of man, but from those humans sought power and pure wealth at the expense of others, and manipulated man's worst tendencies to that end.

King Leopold of Belgium claimed to be "civilizing" the people of Central Africa, but in fact created a murderous colonial regime so awful, even the racists of the time found it too terrible. The Nazis claimed they were defending the Old World from savage Judeo-Bolshevism, but in fact unleashed the most unabashed evil in modern history. The evils their armies unleashed upon their enemies were not the "savage impulses" of man being unleashed, but the result of men being manipulated into seeing their fellow human beings as vermin needing to die, or simple-minded children too feeble to know what is best for themselves.

Jack Merridew's rise to power doesn't come about because the boys on the island are eager for murder. The cadaver of a pilot lands on the island, and the children are convinced that a strange "beastie" is threatening their tiny oasis. Jack's power comes from his ability to manipulate the fear of the children to defend themselves against "the beastie".

Merridew is a wannabe autocrat, and like all wannabe autocrats, the preservation of their power is their top priority. The worst of Jack's misdeeds, the brutal killing of Piggy, the torture of his opponents, and his willing to set fire to the island just to smoke out his rival Ralph, are not a savage operating free from the constraints of society, but someone wanting to build society according to his whims.

MacArthur and his cabal rose to power because the structures of the political system ran roughshot over their interests and so they sought to destroy them. The conch ran roughshot over Jack Merridew's lust for power, and so it was destroyed along with Piggy.

Golding's book makes the argument for Leviathan, but in reality, he describes how a Leviathan-type of government is formed.

Leviathan Shall Not Endure

The UASR is not utopia. The creation of a workers' state has not eliminated the evils of man. Bullies still exist in our schools along with anti-social behavior, and superstition still affect us.

But what our society has done is to educate man to resist those caprices and to work with his fellow man. To teach him that problems do have solutions, that there is a world beyond the corrupt Levithans that have existeed since civilization, and one does not have to supplicate himself to a master to earn the crumbs of life. To teach him there is more to life beyond the vapid accumulation of wealth and power.

Capitalism teaches us that Leviathan, whether democratic or fascist, is the only mankind can organize itself.

But the Leviathan is not invincible. Even though the Leviathan of Capitalism hangs over much of the world, it still must make concessions in order for it to continue to enjoy its meals.

The Jack Merridews of the world may have power, but when faced with a mighty proletariat, history has proven they will fall. In many cases, one Leviathan replaced another, but in the UASR, we have found an alternative to that Leviathan, a system by which man's best atittudes and beliefs are allowed to spread.

While the spread of global revolution seems to be stunted, history shows that universal brotherhood is the final endpoint, and that the Leviathan itself is not the permanent condition. The truth is that all Leviathans destroy themselves. The same way Jack Merridew's Leviathan burned itself to the ground in a fit of megalomania, so did the Leviathan of Nazi Germany and Constitutional America.

Leviathan is not the rule of history, but a structure with a limited time frame. Even when Leviathan dominated, mans goodness and desire to help still shines through.

[1] My dad came from a Jewish household, and feared something similar the first time he entered a church.
 
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My first instinct was "the bobbies are gonna kill me" [1], as I was always taught that the British people were tyrants who were ready to slaughter the first Red they came across, since my grandparents themselves had been nastily persecuted the bougies.
Alright, this is definitely not the direction of most American propaganda.

It's going to be about how the Franco-British corporations and government generally oppress the people, but the people are generally not at fault. They certainly won't regard average people as bloodthirsty.
 
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