Hail Lobster!

"Clean your room." - Adolph Hitler (Supposedly)

Many other people have been rightfully mocking Ta Nehisi Coates' latest issue of Captain America for its risible - and not at all camouflaged - take on Jordan Peterson (including Peterson himself). But I'm going to jump in too in the hopes that, at the very least, some of my remarks will entertain my regular readers (and any newcomers who happen by).

Coates can write opinion pieces with some felicity of expression. But he is neither a deep thinker nor - more importantly for the subject of this post - a good storyteller. A good storyteller approaches the world and the people in it with a fundamental humility and a desire to understand. He realizes that his subjects are complex (because they are human subjects), seeks to dig up and display the contradictions and oddities that make his individual characters who they are, and leaves himself open to surprise. He doesn't regard our earthly existence with the airs of a know-it-all. And if he has a message, he certainly doesn't insult the reader's intelligence by stacking the deck in his own favor or by making his designs so blindingly and obtrusively clear that no thinking (on the part of the reader) is necessary.

The best Marvel comics of earlier eras were written by good storytellers. Said creators dreamed up disabled heroes like Iron Man (in his earliest iteration) and Daredevil -- and then proceeded to think about their likes & dislikes/their foibles/their deepest desires/etc. instead of seeking congratulations for being "inclusive." Moreover, they tackled real-world issues with at least some subtlety. Yes, older X-Men comics did highlight the evils of prejudice -- but they did so with universal depictions that the marginalized of all stripes could recognize and appreciate. (For more of my commentary on the "political" comics of yesteryear, please see this post in particular.)

Coates, on the other hand, doesn't have the talent - or the desire either, probably - required to craft an ingenious, suggestive allegory. Instead, he smacks us in the face with his opinions in the clumsiest way possible, thereby leaving himself open to deserved criticism:  

So let's beat this down, shall we?

1. Steve didn't embrace service to his country because he was weak and looking for purpose. His desire to enlist was a function of his greatest strength: his steadfast morality. Yes, he was shrimpy before the serum, but that had no bearing on his motivations. He's Captain America because he recognized evil and cruelty in the world and desperately wanted to confront it head on. And actually, if you really think about it, the whole story of Steve's transformation and proceeding commitment to upholding liberal values in every corner of the world is pretty damned Petersonian. Steve had to become dangerous (i.e. take the serum) before he was fit to do good.

2. "He tells them what they've always longed to hear. That they're secretly great." No: Peterson says the opposite -- repeatedly. Though he believes that each person has a capacity for greatness, he also stresses - in all of his books - that each person has a coequal capacity for malevolence that must be acknowledged and controlled. And he further argues that such dueling with the Adversary (a.k.a. our evil inclinations) is a laborious and often painful endeavor. Peterson, in short, doesn't puff people up with phony praise; to be heroic in the Petersonian frame is to work towards genuine goodness and competence.

3. "That the whole world is against them. That if they're truly men, they'll fight back." No: Peterson says the world is against everybody -- in the sense that life for every human being is unavoidably difficult and tragic. And then, crucially, he adds that our response to this misery should not be resentment but gratitude for what we do have and a firm determination to better our own little corners of the cosmos by focused work on our own flaws. He would absolutely condemn Red Skull's followers for indulging in their anger and sowing mayhem.

4. If I recall correctly (it's been a while since I've read Maps of Meaning), Peterson originally became interested in archetypes and stories because he was horrified by the evils of Nazism and Communism and wanted to explore the mental architecture that led to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Holodomor, and other such atrocities. As he tells it, confronting those 20th century horrors disturbed him so profoundly that he decided to embark on a life-long project to examine and comprehend them. So: maybe you think all that talk about rescuing our fathers from the underworld is weird. Maybe you take issue with his use of Jung and Nietzsche. Maybe you think he's wrong when it comes to feminism or novel pronouns or other controversial issues. Or maybe you simply think his Kermit voice is annoying. Whatever: I'm not some starry-eyed idol-worshipper who thinks no one has a right to dislike the man. But to insinuate that Peterson's thought has anything in common with the Nazi ideology of the Red Skull is to utterly invert his intentions. He pleads constantly for moderation and balance and decries extremism on the left and the right (though his criticisms of the radical left are more visible because, quite frankly, it's the left that's presented the biggest threat to our liberal order in recent years).

In sum, what the incurious Coates has done here - besides revealing his utter inability to write a story worth reading or to grok Cap's essence (see point 1) - is attack Straw Peterson and his purple-monkey-dishwasher remarks.* (Straw Peterson may be even more diabolical than Straw Larry Correia, International Lord of Hate. Damn that monster!) Oh: and he's engaging in IMAX levels of projection too -- because what is his leftist ideology but a worldview that insists the entire world's arrayed against you (if your "identity" puts you near the top of the progressive stack) and that you should rise up and overturn the "system" that keeps you down? Peterson has actually helped people**; it's critical social justice that's a refuge for the weak and incompetent. It's critical social justice that's stoking the lion's share of our present-day hate.

But here's the good news: at least the memes are fire -- and so is the merch. Hail Lobster, indeed! 

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*a classical reference 

**The most appalling thing about Peterson's detractors is their open disgust that Peterson would dare care about men or seek to inspire them. (He actually cares about human beings in general and has inspired people of all genders -- but that's neither here nor there.) How heartless and depraved must these people be that they 1.) deny that men could ever have challenges deserving of our sympathy and 2.) howl down anyone who looks at a guy in trouble and decides to lift him up?  It just goes to show that Peterson's right about ideology at the very least: it really does twist your soul.