ELAYNE RIGGS: I want to believe
“We’re never gonna beat this if belief is what we’re fighting for.” – John Mayer
As Americans gather today to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence 231 years ago, many of us find ourselves in quite a different place than we believe our founders envisioned for this country. Each day brings more tragic results of the radicals currently in power thumbing their nose continually at Benjamin Franklin’s observation that “Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security” and frightening the populace into constant submission so they can retain this ill-gotten power. (Hang on — creating a climate of fear, isn’t that what terrorists try to do? Guess that means They’re Winning.) And without the assurance that our government will (or even can) do its job of seeing to the well-being of its citizens, many Americans do what people in their situation have done for centuries — they turn to institutions they believe will care for them, mostly institutions that “answer to a higher authority” in which they believe.
We’ve been talking a lot about perception and belief on ComicMix this past week. First Mike Gold tackled how people misperceive personal threats to their way of life when no such threats exist. For the life of me, I cannot imagine how these ideas get into their heads, and neither can anyone in the all-pervasive corporate-sponsored conservative-pandering media. Then I talked more about subjectivity and how some folks amazingly find the exact “evidence” to support their pet beliefs, rather than the other way around (using actual scientific procedure to observe first and then create a theory based on those observations). And the capper was John Ostrander’s column about dogma, rigid belief systems (whether religious or no) whose adherents will brook no dissenting opinions. The danger of dogma is the same as that of any fanaticism — that subjective perceptions are suddenly presented as objective ones, and individual beliefs replace reason and compromise with authoritarian systems such as theocracies.
And it ought to be obvious that theocracies are not Good Things in pluralistic societies because they leave no room for diversity of opinion. (more…)
According to the BBC, Runaway Bride star Catherine Tate is set to return to the TARDIS for the complete 13 week run of series four (a.k.a. season 30) of Doctor Who, reprising her role as Donna the runaway bride from last year’s Christmas special.
Yes, it’s the 60th birthday of Mr. Language Person himself, 
I should warn you about these link-lists: Mondays tend to be longer than usual (since there’s a lot of content that goes up on the weekend, or early on Monday), and the beginning of the month tends to be longer than usual. Since we’re just past both of those things, this is going to be a really long one…
In last week’s installment of what some of you may be beginning to think is an endless blather, when I was discussing movie serials I neglected to mention that serials were among the first non-comics forms to use superheroes. During that decade, lucky young popcorn eaters could see Superman, Batman, Captain America and, in my opinion the best of them all, Captain Marvel in the continued chapter plays that were a staple of Saturday matinees. (That probably doesn’t exhaust the list, but memory is not my greatest gift… At least I don’t think so…) Having seen some of the above-mentioned entertainments, and having, within the past two weeks, seen the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four movies, I realize that the serial makers were born too soon.
Consider the preceding two paragraphs a digression, please. And now we return to our regularly scheduled topic –
