Sunday political 🧵: Federalism is the hope and the scourge of progressivism in America. The U.S. has a federal system of political power division; conservatives understand this on a practical political leverage level, progressives don’t. Up until recently, every school kid learned about the federal system (I don’t know if they still do; schooling has changed a lot since I went), but mostly in our daily lives we ignore it and think we live in a unified nation governed by a single set of laws. We actually don’t.

A question I’m often asked at conventions is “How do you break into comics?” I have no idea— the last time I tried it was 1967. But a better question might be: “How do you write a ‘good’ comic?” For that, I have a few ideas. First, foremost: Read. Read a lot. Don’t just read comics, read books. Lots and lots of books. Always have a book with you and read at every opportunity. Read at lunch, be that weirdo. Read on the bus. On planes. On trains. Don’t read while driving.

People often asked me this past year*— “Gerry, how do you maintain a mostly cheerful attitude in your daily life, despite daily news accounts of misery, death, and human stupidity?”

“Well,” I tell them, “I practice the patented DDD Sanity Preservation Self-Protection System™!” *nobody asks me.

I have very loud neighbors. Just putting that here. It’s like living next to a sports bar.

Spoiler free reaction to Zack Snyder's JL: I wish the man who made this movie had made "Man of Steel" and "BvS". Maybe Snyder took to heart some of the criticism of those two movies, because tonally this is a different piece-- a paean to the power of hope and healing. I also understand why Ray Fisher was so upset by the "restructuring" of the film (aside from his reports of abusive behavior): The major human emotional arc of this film belongs to Victor Stone, and its loss in the theatrical JL cuts the heart out of the story.

I’ve heard some on the left worry @JoeBiden won’t be progressive enough, won’t fight back against #GOP perfidy, etc., because he’s always been a moderate. Hey. Who a President was, politically, before he becomes President, and what he “stood for”, is historically irrelevant. Lincoln wasn’t in favor of abolition when he ran for President; he ran as a “moderate” against slavery’s expansion, not its elimination. He fought against emancipation for months until he finally came around. His opponents in the South forced him to change.

Comic book thread. Talking with @johnwordballoon on YouTube live yesterday, we had a “what I would do if I ran the world” conversation about the future of comic book publishing that I think is worthy of expansion. So here we go. Background: To state the obvious, comic book publishing is in serious trouble, with a business model that almost literally has no future. Yet comic books are a source of intellectual property for exploitation in all sorts of popular media and have never have greater potential.

Even an unbiased reader of Woodward’s “Rage” would have to conclude from Trump’s verbatim interviews that the President is a complete and total moron. He’s even stupider and less coherent in private than in public. It isn’t so much shocking as deeply annoying. Trump is often compared to the angry uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. That’s unfair to most angry uncles. Trump’s verbal tics and incessant digressions to self-aggrandizement come off like the stream of consciousness babbling of a three year old on an ice cream high.

The sins of 1920 will continue to ripple through Irish history until the country is whole again. Every self-serving move Britain makes regarding Northern Ireland comes at a high cost to the Irish people. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/b… As an entity, Northern Ireland is a political myth, created with the same Big Power cynicism and self-interest that created Iraq, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and, later, North and South Vietnam. Outsiders created a ”reality” that didn't exist, for political purposes.

On a superhero comics-related note, free of political controversy, I’ve been thinking about the modern trope of first person captions replacing thought balloons and how that may undermine the narrative immediacy of story. Bear with me. Sometime in the last couple of decades, comic book writers (and editors?j seem to have made a collective aesthetic decision to abandon thought balloons in favor of first person captions. At first glance these seem to be equal in narrative effect...but they aren’t.

I haven't read the Lensmen books by E.E. "Doc" Smith since I was in my early 20s. Like, 40 years ago. Rereading then now because here we are in an actual potential fascist future and it seems about right to check out a happy-go-lucky '30s science fiction fascist version. If you haven't read these books, I recommend you do. They're poorly written and a slog, but you'll gain a deep insight into the roots of American science fiction-- sexist, fascist, racist, and ridiculously optimistic about the potential of Engineering and Technology.

Always late to the party, that’s me. Since I don’t shop at Walmart, I didn’t follow @GailSimone and Clayton Henry’s run on The Flash Giant when it first appeared, but catching up with the series in “The Flash: United They Fall” has been a real treat. EXCELLENT work! And here it is in digital on @comiXology — comixology.com/The-Flash-Unit…

For a change, on this Labor Day weekend, I wanna talk about comics. Ostensibly the reason most of you follow me. Specifically, I want to talk about how a TV or movie creator’s age influences his interpretation of classic comic book superheroes when adapting them to TV or film. When Roy Thomas and I started writing films in the late Seventies, our background in comic books was a liability. Sure, it opened a few doors here and there but for the VAST majority of the executives and producers we encountered our history with comics was a net “meh.”

I look at the polls which include “undecided” voters and I sincerely doubt those undecided voters exist, or that they’re undecided. Maybe they haven’t decided to vote, but they certainly can’t seriously have no fixed opinion at this moment in history. So what does that mean? What does it mean, there are no “undecided”? It means, strategically, there’s no point anymore in making any arguments about whether Biden or Trump should be President. All that matters now is motivating turnout and protecting the ability to vote and then have that vote counted.

Once again, a conservative misses the point of government action, equating saving businesses to saving people’s lives, equating GDP with national purpose, and equating the stock market with human values.

If FDR “failed,” why was he reelected three times? washingtonpost.com/opinions/progr… Ever since the warped Hayek-Friedman theory of economics gave conservatives an excuse to defend greed over empathy and prioritize business efficiency over human life, conservatives have been arguing, basically, the best government is no government.

As an aside apropos of nothing, I sometimes find myself wondering what the world would be like today if Woodrow Wilson had kept the U.S. completely neutral during the Great War, rather than pursuing de facto support for the Allies. In crude terms there wasn’t much moral difference between the Imperial powers of the Allies and the Imperial forces of the Central alliance. And in military terms, both groups were criticality balanced before America’s entry.

Conservatives have always had a functional misunderstanding of how government works and what it’s for— the idea that a government should operate under business principles of profit and loss begs the question: profits for whom, and defined how?

https://twitter.com/masonbwilliams/status/1295728394328576013

The “profit” good government produces is the health, prosperity, and security of its citizenry. That form of profit isn’t measured in dollars and cents. Using business metaphors to critique government is about as helpful as using sports metaphors to critique medicine.

Politically I consider myself a Radical Progressive Realist. My goals are Radical Progressive. My methods and means are Realist. In a deeply divided country progressives will always have to compromise. As long as we compromise in a forward direction I’m okay with that. Progressives need coalition partners to accomplish our goals. Where will those coalition partners come from except from the party’s center? It’s simple math, it’s simple politics. Purity tests in the GOP led to Trump and national chaos, death and disaster.

I’m convinced Trump will lose in a landslide if mail-in voting is properly funded and implemented. So, apparently, is Trump. We better be prepared for in person voting in November no matter what. Live free or die, indeed. #Vote #VoteBidenHarris2020 washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/… You may not guess it from my sometimes angry and bleak tweets, but I’m an optimist. I believe in “darkest before the dawn”, etc. I believe in cycles of history. And I believe if Trump makes clear he’s trying to take away people’s right to vote, it will backfire big time.

What happened at ⁦@DCComics⁩ yesterday was probably inevitable once ⁦@WarnerMedia⁩ became a subsidiary of a tech company uninterested in creating new creative content, and planning only to strip mine existing IP for streaming. hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dc… It should have been clear when the incoming AT&T management told the management of the highly successful and profitable @HBO that they needed to upend their corporate culture in order to feed the AT&T cable pipeline with continuous streaming content a la Netflix.

Wait. @HBO -- are we to understand #PerryMasonHBO *suborned* a juror? Is that the task Perry asked Pete Strickland to do for him? WHAT THE HOLY F**K? Bad enough you made Perry a legal illiterate rather than a master of the law-- you have him "win" by BRIBING A JUROR?

F**K you. This was so outrageous @ConwayLauraB didn't even realize at first that was what happened-- she's not a Perry Mason fan-- but once she did she said "That undermines his entire character arc. " Yep.

F**k you, #PerryMasonHBO