Paul Olson
UNL Emeritus Professor
My parents didn’t believe in comic books or Big Little Books. They were frivolous, unchristian and expensive. In the age when Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel came to life (the 1930s), I had to bum books off my friends, read them at recess and dream the rest of the day of rescuing the world from evil. One of my favorite comics was Buck Rogers, a space warrior repeatedly forced to battle the villainous Killer Kane and his paramour Ardala. Fighting with Buck to save the world were Lieutenant Wilma Deering and Prince Tallen of Saturn.
Read morePosted In: Speaking Our Peace
Paul Olson
UNL Emeritus Professor
When Gulliver comes ashore in Lulliputia and immediately goes to sleep from exhaustion, the mite-sized Lilliputians bind him to the ground with tiny ropes, then loose “a shower of above a Hundred Arrows, discharged on my [Gulliver’s] left Hand, which pricked me like so many needles.” The Lilliputians disrupt Gulliver’s life temporarily and cause him pain, but cannot destroy him. They are, I think, a metaphor for modern post-Cold War conflicts: insurgencies waged through small-scale sorties and provocative threats that annoy and create disruption. They cause hurt and upend our sense of security and feelings of control. We respond with modern military assets: smart bombs, surges, drones, counter-insurgencies, bribes, frontal attacks, and efforts to capture the ‘hearts and minds’ of the enemy. As with the Rome’s pax romana, we wish to teach total peace through total control.
Read morePosted In: Speaking Our Peace
