Watchmen really is a lot of overblown nonsense. It certainly fails as a philosophical treatise, generating discussion in the same way that making outrageously abusive comments about people on a crowded room will elicit responses. Moore has some really offensive and insulting things to say about the American public and American culture in general, especially in regards Reagan Republicans. None of it is defensible outside of an ISO meeting or the like, so it's no wonder he uses a comic book to try to pull off his propaganda coup. From what I hear, he enjoyed mixed success at the time – the comic was popular, true, but mainly because most American readers liked his "villains" (mainly Rorschach). Likewise most people misinterpreted Veidt to be a classic Leftist rather than the corporate leader he was meant to represent.

On a related point, I find it funny that the left use to HATE the idea of mutally assured destruction. They pinned this theory on Reagan in the 80's and just blasted him as an insane, crazy old man who would kill us all. Used to really annoy me.

But now that we're looking at doing missile defense, and the left claims that MAD was the one thing that kept us safe!! And they act like it was their idea. So much for intellectual honesty.

Regarding this Alan Moore's anti-Reagan subtext of "Watchmen", I always thought Dr. Manhattan was analogous to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and like SDI, it is strongly implied that Dr. Manhattan was a de-stabilizing factor in the Cold War, particularly regarding American-Soviet relations.

This was very explicit in the supplemental material for Chapter 4: “Watchmaker”, which was “Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers”, an essay by Dr. Milton Glass, who was Jonathan Osterman’s boss before being transformed into Dr. Manhattan. This included a reference to Dr. Manhattan’s ability to destroy up to 60 percent of Soviet ICBMs in flight, and how strategically de-stabilizing Dr. Manhattan was.

Sounds like Moore’s talking about Reagan and SDI.

Thanks!

Marc

I know governments often use the terms anarchist and terrorist interchangably, the dictionary definition of terrorist necessarily involves the targeting of civillians. As such, targeting the government is incidental; what matters is whether there are civilian casualties. V should be referred to as a traitor, a criminal, or an enemy combatant. Not a terrorist.

By the way, what disturbed me about V for Vendetta was that I had just finished reading Macbeth at the time, and was therefore all too aware of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot. Shakespeare had a much better moral hold on the issue.

I half-heartedly admire Rothbard both because we have a common enemy (socialism) and because I love Austrian economics. However, his anarchism is far too utopian for my taste. Fine, pure libertarianism is more logically consistent than conservatism. Government is organized violence and there's no such thing as a public good. But can you tell me with a straight face that private security forces won't go to war with eachother and create a new feudal system? Are you that naive?