“I’ve come to send a signal out into the dark. In the end, it seemed like the only thing worth doing.
Are you there?
Can you see me?”
-Grant Morrison, Animal Man #26, 1990
I’ve recently been binge reading the work of Grant Morrison. To the people who know me, this shouldn’t be surprising. In times of crisis, some men turn to Christ, I turn to Superman. Morrison’s work is where I come when I need to be told that it isn’t hopeless. Morrison’s work frequently posits the idea of the superhero, in it’s purest form, is a way that our culture searches for, not meaning, but examples of what we can be, if we’d just let ourselves believe that better things are possible.
As I type this, 2025 begins in a week’s time. I’ve been buffeted by messages, from all sides, for weeks now, that it’s going to be a terrible, monstrous thing. It might be. I won’t pretend that it won’t be scary. I’ve met too many people who saw the Third Reich, first hand; to pretend that it won’t be. But…there’s something that keeps ticking the back of my brain. Maybe it’s grasping at straws, but I don’t think it is. It’s the idea that, unlike then…we know. In the first half of the 20th Century, the Nazi party accomplished something unheard of in human history: a complete fascist takeover and genocide on an industrial scale. No one was prepared for it, because it’d never happened before. (Yes, I’m aware that genocide was, by no means, a new thing. Bear with me, I’m making a point.) We, however, knows how this begins. We know how it ends. And that, I think, is what will save us.
All over social media, I see the predictions of an all encompassing doom, partially fueled by our knowledge of the past. We know how this works. No one seems to be stopping to think…that means we also know how to fight it. Because our grandparents and great-grandparents who saw this all, first hand. The men and women who fought the war in Europe. The French Resistance, who never stopped fighting, even when their government surrendered. The men and women who survived the Shoah. They’ve told their stories and we’ve heard them.
I’m what we’re now calling an “Elder Millennial.” My mom went back to work, as soon as she was physically able, after having me. As a consequence, I spent every day after school, during the day during school breaks, and more, with my grandfather. Granddaddy was with the 4th Infantry during the war. He was there for D-Day. He was there for Bastogne. And he was part of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. What he saw there changed him. And he’d tell anyone who’d listen. He made damned sure my brother and I knew what had happened and HOW. I sincerely doubt that I’m the only man my age who grew up hearing similar stories from their parents or grandparents. My point here is, they kept those flames lit. They kept telling the story. They made sure that, at least for one generation, it wouldn’t be forgotten. And because of that, we know how this happens. The resurgence of global fascism may call themselves something different now, but they’re still using the same playbook Joseph Goebbels wrote in the 40’s.
It’s up to us now. We keep the fires lit. We speak and write and sing and create. We refuse to be silent. We keep sending signals into the dark knowing that, on some level, that little pinprick of light will tell others that they’re not alone. That none of us are. The difference made by a single pinprick of light in the darkness, is as great as the difference between Nothing and Everything.
As we go into that dark, don’t let go of the light. Every one of us, sending a signal, finding each other, making community and refusing to give up…that’s what’ll save us, in the end. People, just sending signals into the dark.
Can you see me?
I can see you.
Well said, man.