Bob Schwartz

Dad: BRAINS alone won’t preserve freedom, Billy! You can’t reason with a TYRANT!

Billy: Then I guess it’s up to us to HELP!

Historical context: This comic is dated December 1941. It was published right before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II. Americans were well aware of tyrants ruling in Germany, Italy and Japan, but many Americans were still reluctant to get involved.

Dad was right. Billy was right. Though could they imagine that tyrant at home?

The story of prisoner Crista Pike in Tennessee, left in a coma by a failed lethal injection, has raised the issue of capital punishment, again. The issue rises and falls, depending on high-profile events, such as reinstating firing squads in some states and in the military, and now Christa Pike.

About half of Americans support the death penalty, half oppose it. About 145 nations have abolished the death penalty. America has not.

Some religious people turn to the Bible for guidance: “The punishment must match the injury: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise. (Exodus 21: 23-25). (Some interpreters find this a limit on punishment, so that it does not exceed the wrongdoing.) On the other hand, the Catholic Church declares the death penalty “inadmissible in all cases.”

Whenever I hear that issues with a moral component are “more complicated” than a simply drawn line (tell that to the Catholic Church and 145 nations), I suspect that people, not surprisingly, are challenged by working through difficult philosophical questions.

Here is the bright line. The death penalty is about mercy. In our lived lives we consider mercy to be conditional, situational and subject to degrees. But the wisest and most enlightened view, promoted by the religious traditions so many of us claim to follow, is that we are at our best, or on our way to being our best, when we put no conditions on mercy. Otherwise, what is our mercy at all?

As I look back at previous posts, I’m not sure how to describe my reaction to seeing how relevant some of them remain. Astonished? Surprised?

Seven years later, is the White House still a car crash we can’t take our eyes off of? What do you think?

There are many who say the occupant of the White House is incompetent, ignorant, corrupt and crazy, at the least. Yet when we try to stop thinking and talking about him, many of us utterly fail.

It is a cliché to say that people often can’t take their eyes off a car crash, particularly a gruesome one. Clichéd and true.

For better or worse, American civic life is centered on the White House. The situation there can be described as a horrible and chronic car crash. The fire department never arrives to put the fire out. The tow truck never arrives to haul the wreck. The ambulance never arrives to carry the sick and injured away.

We keep calling 911, but no one answers. So we just keep gawking.

Religious traditions tend to grow into specialness or spectacle. It is a combination of leaders wanting it that way, believing that it helps expand the following, and followers who want and appreciate it. If it is special then they too are special. Every tradition is susceptible to going and growing this way.

Religion at its heart is ordinary. Every tradition has had those who question and reject the extraordinary and the special. It is simple, they say, though years, decades, centuries of add-ons have embellished and sometimes hidden that. It’s like a spring of refreshing and clean water around which a huge and complex and even polluting bottling plant has been built.

If you are a leader or follower, consider the original simplicity of your tradition. You may find that the ordinary is at its heart. “We are special” or “We are spectacular” or “We are better and above others” is not what the originators knew and had in mind.

Believe in the ordinary. Believe in nothing special.

“Put even more simply, the German Parliament would be requested to turn over its constitutional functions to Hitler and take a long vacation.”
—William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Williams L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich remains the single most readable one-volume history of Nazi Germany. If you like history, but don’t think the story is relevant today, it is still a good read. If you think it might have some relevance, it is essential.

Hitler came to power without ever winning the presidency (he came in second in 1932) and without the Nazis ever having a majority in parliament. Yet in 1933, the Nazis were in control, all civil rights were abrogated, and Hitler would remain until 1945 dictator of one of history’s most infamous, oppressive and deadly regimes.

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag, home of German parliament, was burned down. It was blamed on Communists, but it was actually the work of the Nazis. The Reichstag fire was an excuse to seize absolute power. Shirer writes:

On the day following the fire, February 28, he [Hitler] prevailed on President Hindenburg to sign a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State” suspending the seven sections of the constitution which guaranteed individual and civil liberties. Described as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree laid down that:

“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

In addition, the decree authorized the Reich government to take over complete power in the federal states when necessary and imposed the death sentence for a number of crimes, including “serious disturbances of the peace” by armed persons….

With all the resources of the national and Prussian governments at their disposal and with plenty of money from big business in their coffers, the Nazis carried on an election propaganda such as Germany had never seen before. For the first time the State-run radio carried the voices of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels to every corner of the land. The streets, bedecked with swastika flags, echoed to the tramp of the storm troopers. There were mass rallies, torchlight parades, the din of loudspeakers in the squares. The billboards were plastered with flamboyant Nazi posters and at night bonfires lit up the hills. The electorate was in turn cajoled with promises of a German paradise, intimidated by the brown terror in the streets and frightened by “revelations” about the Communist “revolution.” The day after the Reichstag fire the Prussian government issued a long statement declaring that it had found Communist “documents” proving:

Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down… Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups… The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war… It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.

Publication of the “documents proving the Communist conspiracy” was promised, but never made. The fact, however, that the Prussian government itself vouched for their authenticity impressed many Germans….

On March 5, 1933, the day of the last democratic elections they were to know during Hitler’s life, they spoke with their ballots. Despite all the terror and intimidation, the majority of them rejected Hitler. The Nazis led the polling with 17,277,180 votes—an increase of some five and a half million, but it comprised only 44 per cent of the total vote. A clear majority still eluded Hitler. All the persecution and suppression of the previous weeks did not prevent the Center Party from actually increasing its vote from 4,230,600 to 4,424,900; with its ally, the Catholic Bavarian People’s Party, it obtained a total of five and a half million votes. Even the Social Democrats held their position as the second largest party, polling 7,181,629 votes, a drop of only 70,000. The Communists lost a million supporters but still polled 4,848,058 votes. The Nationalists [Nazis], led by Papen and Hugenberg, were bitterly disappointed with their own showing, a vote of 3,136,760, a mere 8 per cent of the votes cast and a gain of less than 200,000.

Still, the Nationalists’ 52 seats, added to the 288 of the Nazis, gave the government a majority of 16 in the Reichstag. This was enough, perhaps, to carry on the day-to-day business of government but it was far short of the two-thirds majority which Hitler needed to carry out a new, bold plan to establish his dictatorship by consent of Parliament.

The plan was deceptively simple and had the advantage of cloaking the seizure of absolute power in legality. The Reichstag would be asked to pass an “enabling act” conferring on Hitler’s cabinet exclusive legislative powers for four years. Put even more simply, the German Parliament would be requested to turn over its constitutional functions to Hitler and take a long vacation.

–Williams L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

You can’t fight and eliminate myth. You can try. You can drive it away and banish it, but it will always turn up within the city walls. Because it is inside you and all the citizens.

When I began reading comic books, I didn’t know those stories were myths. When I first heard the stories of the Bible, I didn’t know those were myths. In the big world, something about these myths proved to be irresistibly and unstoppably popular. Comic book myths became an entertainment mega-industry. Religious myths laid the foundation for the beliefs of billions.

Enlightenment and modernism took on the task of demythologizing. That project has never been wholly successful. It is instead like whack-a-mole: bash one myth down and another will pop up. You may not recognize something as myth, but there it is. Bigger than life, embodying truths that defy everyday experience and evidence. Not only bigger, but more significant.

As the essayist Joan Didion wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Maybe instead of trying to stop telling ourselves stories, maybe instead of trying to loosen our embrace of myths (both impossible anyway), maybe we keep conscious of the myths, try to let go of the unhelpful ones, and try to choose better and more beneficial ones.

© 2026 Bob Schwartz