A Liberal Dose, September 16, 2025 "Final Newspaper Column"

 A Liberal Dose

"Final Newspaper Column"

Troy D. Smith

I started writing my "Liberal Dose" column in the Sparta Expositor in February, 2021, weeks after the Jan. 6 Insurrection. In the more than 4-and-a-half years since, I have covered a lot of topics on there... and, after a brief time of optimism and relief, watched our country go backward instead of forward at a rate, and to an extent, I could not have imagined in my worst nightmares.

And, I regret to inform you, that column has come to an end -at least in print, though I will continue publishing it online on my blog.

I was informed this morning that the paper is dropping the whole opinion section -due to the increased amount, and disturbing nature, of death threats to me over the past several days. I already received some from time to time, but since the assassination of Charlie Kirk it has apparently skyrocketed, and the editor does not want to risk my life.

"Well, you know," I started to say to her over the phone, and she cut in: "Yes, I know, you'll keep doing it online anyway."

I told her that my column for this week -after the wave of professors being fired for their responses to Kirk's death, and after several VERY disturbing incidences lately of truth and honesty in higher education being imperiled -had been going to be entitled "Things it is currently safe for me to talk about," followed by a half-page of blank space.

The only comment I have made about Charlie Kirk's death was a few days ago, on social media. This is an exact quote of it: "It is sad -and deeply hypocritical -to see conservative friends celebrating Charlie Kirk as a free speech icon and in the same breath rejoicing over people being fired from their jobs for expressing their opinion of him."

To which my own sister and niece responded by cussing me out, calling me names, and blocking me -saying how dare I compare someone losing their job to someone losing their life. I would very much like to tell them that as of today my job AND my life are in danger, but I can't. Because they blocked me. Over that very innocuous statement, which neither celebrated Kirk's death nor criticized his memory.

That's the country we are now living in.

For about a week after the election in November, I was in a deeply introspective, sobered mood. I was mourning, actually. I wasn't mourning an election, or even my country. I was mourning myself. Because I knew that the results of that vote made it very much a statistical possibility I would be fired from my job, arrested, or murdered in the next year. Because I know myself, and I know I will not be silenced. Even if I tried, I would not succeed for long -like the prophet Jeremiah, the truth would cry out from my bones.

At the end of that week, I accepted the likelihood, and set back to work. I did not share with a living soul what I was feeling that week, though I have done so since. The odds of all those things have gone up considerably in just the past few days.

And I will not be silenced. I can NOT be silenced, for the truth will always live on -it spreads from ear to ear and from soul to soul to everyone who hears or reads my words, and everyone who hears or reads theirs, rippling across the universe. I am only a note in that symphony, and I intend for that note to be as full and as powerful and as true as it can possibly be.

Future generations will stand in judgment of authoritarians and the people who, either through fear, greed, weakness, or meanness, follow them... like all those who went before them. And no future efforts to scrub truth from history will endure for long.

As a youth I chose my own role models and heroes -from history, literature, and popular culture. Atticus Finch, Will Kane, Rick Blaine... William Tynedale, MLK, and, most of all, Jesus... and yes, Peter Parker. One individual standing up for truth and justice does make a difference, whether it seems like it or not at the time, and myriads of such individuals together can turn a tide.

Or to quote King Arthur in Camelot: "Less than a drop in the great, blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems that some of the drops sparkle. Some of them DO SPARKLE!!"

Or, to quote Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha:

"This is my quest, to follow that star

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far

To fight for the right without question or pause

To be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star."

Or, to quote Jean Valjean (and the whole cast) in the finale of Les Miserables:

Take my hand

And lead me to salvation

Take my love

For love is everlasting

And remember

The truth that once was spoken:

To love another person is to see the face of God...

Do you hear the people sing?

Lost in the valley of the night

It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light

For the wretched of the earth

There is a flame that never dies

Even the darkest nights will end and the sun will rise

They will live again in freedom in the garden of the lord

They will walk behind the ploughshare

They will put away the sword

The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward!

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!"

All those musicals and movies, and characters, have meant a lot to me. 30 years ago, at the dawn of the internet age, I chose the chat name Paladin... in part because of the TV western hero, but mostly for the meaning of that word (which people younger than me, sadly, only know as the very skewed role-playing type): A knight without a master, looking for a righteous cause to lend his sword, and his life. Not right MAKES right, to again quote from Camelot, but might FOR right. That is among the highest aspirations of humanity.

With these few words, most of them not my own, I have told you who I am. As, I hope, my actions have shown you. I will not betray who I am, and what I believe, even though the world crumble around me. And all my words, and all my actions, come from a place of love and not a place of hate.

Godspeed. And power to the people.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE 

A Liberal Dose, Sept. 5, 2025 “American Carnage -But Only in Blue States”

 

A Liberal Dose

“American Carnage -But Only in Blue States”

Troy D. Smith

 

Last October, on the first of two trips I took to the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina to deliver donated food supplies after the hurricane, one of my undergrad students volunteered to come along to help load and unload. This was, of course, a wonderful thing for him to do, and speaks highly to his character. We had about a four-hour drive each way, which gave us plenty of time for conversation. We talked about many things, and it was very enjoyable.

At one point, the topic of conversation turned to places he would like to visit, and New York City came up. He hesitated on that one, though, because (he said) he knew that the city was unbelievably violent, and that the murder rate was through the roof and getting worse every day. I asked him where he got his information, and he said it was all over the news. Of course, it was NOT all over the news -it was only all over CONSERVATIVE news outlets.

I told him that I lived in New York City in 1988 and 1989, and that back then it WAS a very dangerous place, much like what he was describing, and that when I was his age and living there I’d had about a half-a-dozen threatening and potentially violent encounters. However, I pointed out, my wife and I had recently spent a week there -so I could show her the neighborhoods where I lived and worked -and I had been amazed at how SAFE everything seemed. I did not feel endangered once the whole week, and 35+ years ago there had never been a single week when I had not.

“Well,” he said, “you must not have been in the right parts of the city.” I responded that I was in the exact same parts where I had felt so unsafe in the 1980s, and that the change was undeniable and incredible. I looked up the stats after our conversation- the last year I was there, 1989, there were 1,905 murders. That was the second-highest in the history of the city -the first highest was the following year, 1990, when it reached 2,245. Know how many there were in the past year? 375. One-fifth as many. Despite my personal, eyewitness experience, my student did not quite buy my assertion that the city was generally much less dangerous and I would feel perfectly safe living there now.

Another story. Last year I had a grant to do a crime statistics study, and was able to hire several of my students to work on it. At one point I overheard their conversation in the computer lab; one of them, who had identified himself as extremely conservative, was confused by the results they were finding. “These numbers must be wrong,” he said, “they’re way too low, everyone knows we have been in a huge crime wave the last few years.” “Where did you hear that?” his classmates asked, and he replied, “it’s been all over the news.” “No it hasn’t,” they said, and one of them added, “you should get better news sources.”

Another story. My wife and I are close friends with a couple who live in Los Angeles, and talk with them on the phone often. I would describe this couple as moderate, slightly right-of-center. The husband works in the entertainment industry and the wife is a police detective. A few months ago we called them while the protests were going on -at the point of our conversation, Trump had mobilized the National Guard, and within a week afterwards he had sent in the U.S. Marines. You may have heard one of his spokespeople last week saying he had rescued the city from complete destruction despite the mayor and governor trying to refuse that.

During our conversation with our friends that particular week, I asked if they felt safe. The response from these folks (that I am pretty certain voted three times for Trump) was that, if they hadn’t seen so many news items and video on conservative networks, they would never have even known anything was going on. The protests that triggered Trump’s response were in one small neighborhood. They were honestly flabbergasted that the military was being sent in.

You may have noticed a theme -I have. People who follow the president’s social media and/or watch conservative news outlets have a vastly misinformed idea of how dangerous the world around them is. They have a vision of, as Trump put it in his first inaugural address, “American carnage” which the rest of us don’t experience. This is managed by finding isolated incidents and amplifying them over and over, making it look like that is the norm -when the facts indicate differently.

President Trump followed up the military occupation of Los Angeles with the military occupation of Washington, D.C. He is now ramping up to do the same in Chicago, and has indicated Baltimore will be next. D.C., by the way, has their lowest crime rate in thirty years, and the crime rates in Chicago and Baltimore have been steadily falling. Of course, even one violent crime is unacceptable, especially if it involves you or a loved one -but the numbers do not support a need for practical martial law.

Know where the crime rates are much higher than in those cities? New Orleans. St. Louis. Memphis. Have you heard any threats to send the military to occupy those cities? Of course not -they are in red states. Trump and his supporters have convinced a good portion of the country that “American carnage” is unfolding in specifically BLUE cities and states, and so far every one of those cities has a Black mayor.

Gee, I wonder what that could all mean?

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE 

A Liberal Dose, August 15, 2025 “Neville Chamberlain and the Appeasing of Dictators”

 

A Liberal Dose

“Neville Chamberlain and the Appeasing of Dictators”

Troy D. Smith

 

I was only nine years old when my uncle Edgar passed away, but I remember that he hated Neville Chamberlain.

He talked with me often about history. I distinctly remember his explanation of the fall of the Roman Empire. He had all 25 volumes of the 1972 Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia of WWII, which I read from cover to cover multiple times (and which now have a place of honor in my campus office).

Classical Rome was an interest of his -but WWII was personal. You see, my uncle Edgar (he married my mother’s sister) was a Czech Jew, and a Holocaust refugee. He was 23 years old when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. He and two of his brothers escaped from  the country -his older brother and him to Cuba, and from Cuba to the U.S. (at that time our country was not allowing Jewish refugees entry, and their ship from Cuba was one of the last we allowed in). His younger brother went to North Africa and joined the French Foreign Legion to fight Nazis. Almost all of their extended family were killed in the Holocaust. That younger brother’s wife survived Auschwitz -I remember seeing the numbers tattooed on her arm.

Starting in 1936, Hitler started occupying lands Hitler had lost in WWI, such as the Rhineland, and then strong-armed Austria into being annexed to Germany. Then, in 1938, he demanded that the Sudetenland -a region of Czechoslovakia where many Germans lived -be given to Germany. Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, met with Hitler -without inviting any Czech government officials  -and basically gave the Fuhrer everything he wanted, receiving nothing in return except a promise from Hitler that he would now be satisfied and not try to take away anything else. Chamberlain and the Royal Family declared the agreement a guarantee of “peace in our time”, while some -including Chamberlain’s political rival Winston Churchill -said that appeasing a bully would do nothing but embolden them to take more. Czechs, meanwhile, felt -rightly -that they had been thrown under the bus. Sure enough, within six months Hitler had invaded and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia and started rounding up Jews and sending them to concentration camps. Including my uncle’s family. Within six months after that Hitler invaded Poland, and WWII was officially underway.

In the almost nine decades since then, the name of Neville Chamberlain has been a code word for weakness, cowardice, and appeasement of dictators. To be compared to Chamberlain has been about as big an insult as any politician could suffer (other than being compared to Hitler).

This week, a lot of observers have been comparing Donald Trump to Neville Chamberlain. Trump, of course, promised to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict “on day one”, and has been angrily writing letters demanding to know why he hasn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize yet. In his recent meetings with Putin and Zelensky, he has blamed the war on Ukraine, saying that Zelensky is at fault for not simply giving Russia all the Ukrainian land they want, and that Zelensky has the power to “end this war right now.” Of course, the reality is that Russia has invaded a sovereign nation in an effort to take their land away (starting in 2014 with Crimea). PUTIN could end the war today, by simply going home. Blaming Ukraine would be like calling FDR selfish and irresponsible for sending thousands of his people to their deaths instead of simply handing Hawaii, and maybe California, over to the Japanese in 1941. It would be like saying a mugging victim is at fault for not handing their money over faster, and making them give the mugger more in compensation for their trouble. The fact is that Ukraine voluntarily gave up all their nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War, because the U.S. promised to protect them from Russia. But that happened more than two days ago, so Trump has no concept of it.

At least Neville Chamberlain -and the French who also abandoned Czechoslovakia, and who surrendered to the Germans in 1940 -did so because their countries had been devastated by world war only twenty years earlier and their people wanted to avoid any risk of suffering that again. Donald Trump is throwing Ukraine under the bus because… he wants Putin to like him. It is embarrassing how he fawns over the Russian dictator.

The whole situation tells us several things about Donald Trump. He thinks democracies are weak, but loves authoritarians -he wants to be like them, and he wants to be let into their club. He also views everything as transactional – he can not even conceive of a person, or a nation, doing something out of principles or ideals. He has on multiple occasions referred to U.S. military personnel, especially those who willingly gave their life for their country, as losers and suckers. “What’s in it for them?” he said. He cannot wrap his mind around the idea of standing up to a bully that is far stronger than you out of principle, or love of your country, instead of just giving them what they want. As he wants everyone to do with him.

It is a sad, sad turn of events when Americans chose such a morally weak, bootlicking sycophant to represent us on the world stage… and delude themselves into thinking he is “strong.” All bullies are ultimately weak little people who try to hide that weakness by picking on those smaller than them. Tossing them to bigger bullies so they will like you -that’s even weaker and more pathetic.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

 

 

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE 

A Liberal Dose, August 15, 2025 "Troubling Revelation about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein"

 

A Liberal Dose

“Troubling Revelation about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein”

Troy D. Smith

 

I’m pretty proud of myself, I haven’t mentioned Donald Trump’s Epstein problem on here in three weeks. And yet. If anything, the problem is bigger than ever. Despite everything the president has done to distract his base from the issue, and despite Mike Johnson calling an early vacation for the House of Representatives in hopes the whole thing would blow over and Congress would not have to address it, the controversy is proving to have legs with his base like nothing else Trump has been involved with.

And man, the things he has tried. Announcing plans to build a (no doubt gold-plated) ballroom in the White House that is bigger than the White House itself. Essentially announcing plans to impose martial law on Washington, D.C., under the cover of controlling violent crime -which is actually at a thirty-year low in that city. Accusing Barack Obama of treason. Yet still a significant number of his base are outraged over his refusal to release the Epstein files.

It didn’t help him that what he DID do was send the #2 person at the Justice Department to talk to Epstein’s still-living, and several years incarcerated, former girlfriend and partner in underage sex trafficking and statutory rape Gislaine Maxwell -the sort of thing that, despite Trump’s claim that it is “perfectly normal” -is unprecedented. Heck, before Donald Trump, a president acting like Justice Department officials were his own personal lawyers (and in this case, the guy actually WAS one of his own personal lawyers) was unprecedented -because the White House and the Justice Department are supposed to be strictly separate. Remember several years ago when Bill Clinton spoke briefly with a Justice Department official on the tarmac outside a plane, and Fox News went insane for six straight months about how inappropriate that was?

Now did it help him that said chat with Maxwell was clearly to engineer a set-up – as evidenced by the fact that she was immediately transferred to a minimum-security prison (near where her family lives) -something that a convicted sex offender is not even permitted by the rules to do.

Nor did it help that a quote surfaced from him saying that he “wished her well”, or the fact he was friends with her and best friends with her boyfriend Epstein for years. Nor did the video that has surfaced of him, from a few years before he ran for president the first time, hanging on a teenaged girl and talking about how he is “like an alcoholic” when it comes to 17-year-old girls. Nor did the fact that he said, just a couple of weeks ago, that the REAL reason he had a falling-out with Epstein is that the guy kept “stealing help” from Mar-A-Lago, admitting that the help in question included a 17-year-old girl. Nor does the fact that many of those girls, down through the years, have accused Trump of sexually assaulting them along with Epstein. Nor did the fact that Pam Bondi warned him that his name appeared many times in those files, or that hundreds of FBI agents were tasked with going through those records and redacting his name. All this at the same time that he suddenly reversed course from literally years of campaign promises and refused to release the files, and has been yelling at, belittling, and insulting his own supporters for not dropping the whole thing just because he said so. It has been enough for some of his ardent supporters -even the January 6^th shaman guy whom he pardoned! -to suspect that he might actually have something to hide, and that all the accusations he, QANon, and MAGA have been making for years -that liberal politicians and celebrities are part of some international child sex trafficking pedophilia ring -might actually be true of HIM instead.

Here’s something that has been getting a lot of play on podcasts and Youtube channels lately -but NOT, that I have seen, from regular news media (who are terrified of being sued by the president, whether he has a case or not, or having their licenses revoked, or being put in jail).

Michael Wolff, who wrote a biography of Trump and was working on a biography of Epstein when the latter was arrested and mysteriously died in jail -and who therefore interviewed both of them extensively -described a conversation he had with Epstein before the man was arrested the last time. It was shortly after Trump won the 2016 election. (Bear in mind, this is me reporting on a statement made on video by Wolff on The Midas Touch Youtube channel, which has recently overtaken Joe Rogan’s show in popularity, not some assertion of my own). Epstein made a remark to the effect of the things he knew about Trump, and went to his vault and retrieved several Polaroid pictures, which seemed to be from the 1990s and which showed Trump with several very young, naked teenaged girls. In one of the photos the front of Trump’s pants were wet, and the girls were pointing at him and laughing.

Now, if what Wolff said was true… when the FBI raided Epstein’s home they would have found those photos. And who knows what else. And they are currently in the possession of Pam Bondi. Whatever she has, President Trump has made it perfectly clear that he never, ever wants you to see it. And will go to any lengths to make sure you don’t.

Does Donald Trump really seem like the kind of person who would be concerned with protecting anyone -other than himself?

He certainly hasn’t shown any real desire to protect those underage girls -some of whom have expressed, not only a willingness, but a desire, to testify about what they know before Congress.

Once they get back from vacation, if they ever do.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE 

A Liberal Dose, August 8, 2025 “Tennessee Universities No Longer Allowed to Host Native American Themed Events”

 

A Liberal Dose

“Tennessee Universities No Longer Allowed to Host Native American Themed Events”

Troy D. Smith

 

Most of y’all know I am a history professor- it says so at the bottom of my column every week. Some folks, who don’t know me and don’t know my story, assume that means I am some kind of privileged elite who doesn’t know anything about the real world -but if you do know me, you know I was raised in a very poor working family and that I, myself, did janitorial work for twenty years before I became an academic -but that’s neither here nor there, my point is, I do understand regular working people. I love the job I have now -basically, in every job I had before I got in trouble because mostly I stood around talking about history. I’m getting paid to do what I love and, even better, I get to work with and engage with young people, which gives my life purpose.

But my job has gotten a lot harder the last few years. And harder still in the last six months. First our state government and now our federal government have been trying to interfere in how I do that job (despite me, not them, having the Ph.D. in it, which I worked six years to earn, after four years in college)… and what I can teach, and how I can teach it. What subjects I can address. It is much worse for K12 teachers, in higher education we have (theoretically) the legally established protection of academic freedom. Let me tell you a little about how these government actions have affected me, and therefore by extension my students and the community, and ultimately you.

My primary area of expertise (though I have several) is indigenous history and culture. I teach many classes in that area, from basic Intro to American Indian Studies to Native religion, Cherokee history, American Indian law, and others. In addition to my work in the classroom, I work to expose students to Native culture by helping coordinate events on and off campus, and by leading student research trips to reservations. This is not just an intellectual exercise for me -I have spent half my life deeply engaged in indigenous community and causes and have been blessed to have received a degree of respect and affection from that community. I helped successfully put together an NSF grant that partners Tennessee Tech with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, a few months ago I helped organize two food drives and led student  groups out to Cherokee to help out after the hurricanes, and I spent years lobbying Tennessee Tech to set aside a small number of scholarships each year for Native American students -who, after all, would BE in-state if our ancestors had not forcibly removed them -and eventually succeeded. I say all this not to blow my own horn, but to demonstrate the depth of my dedication to the indigenous community, past, present, and future.

A few years ago Tennessee passed what they call “divisive concepts” laws which seek to prohibit any meaningful classroom discussion that might “hurt students’ feelings” by making them feel guilty or responsible for the past… and the very mention of the Trail of Tears, other acts of indigenous genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, or the Holocaust could do that. Note that the concern is over making white students feel uncomfortable, they don’t seem the least concerned about how uncomfortable ignoring or minimizing those historical truths make indigenous or other children of color feel. As one Cherokee friend of mine put it, “Hey, my people were the victims of genocide- that makes ME feel bad.”

So there’s that. Then, when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, we were informed that the new policy of the state of Tennessee was that no public university could earmark scholarships based on race, so that handful of Native American scholarships was canceled right as it was about to start. I and others pointed out that enrolled tribal membership is a political identity, not a racial one, but one administrator said “that’s true, but what would the community say?” By which they meant, of course, a certain SECTION of the community. So the scholarships (which we had promised in our agreement with the Cherokees) were out.

Now Trump and his MAGA base have declared war on the very notion of diversity -NOT just affirmative action, which some have always argued gave advantages to certain minority groups (who were, by definition, disadvantaged), but even stating a DESIRE to HAVE diversity. Which led to Navajo code talkers, Tuskegee airmen, female military heroes, and anyone else who is not a white male having all mention of them scrubbed from military museums and websites.

For years, Tennessee Tech has celebrated Native American Heritage month by putting on a huge indigenous festival, usually with around 40 performers and dancers from all around the country, as well as a couple of smaller events. It is a highlight of the school year, students (and the community in general) love it. We were recently informed we are no longer allowed to do that… because it is not open to ALL groups to perform in, it is racist. So that tradition, overnight, is dead. And that means no more Hispanic Heritage events, Black History month, women’s history, Asian-American history… none of it. Because “we don’t want to be racist.” Meanwhile, NSF has been forced to go through all their grants and cut every one that has words such as “community”, “indigenous”, “African American”, or “woman” in them. Tech lost a couple of grants designed to encourage more women to enter STEM fields.

I hope you managed to attend some of our Native American events and enjoyed them. Because we will not be allowed to have them again for the foreseeable future.

Is that what you voted for?

 

 

 

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE 

A Liberal Dose, August 1, 2025 "Superman and the Meaning of Truth, Justice, and the American Way"

 

A Liberal Dose

“Superman and the Meaning of Truth, Justice, and the American Way”

Troy D. Smith

 

This week I’m going to talk about something near and dear to my heart -comic books and comic book heroes. Anyone who know me knows I have been a comics nerd my whole life. I teach a class at Tech on the history of comics, and last year Mississippi University Press published my book on race and the history of comics, “Shaolin Brew”. So, of course, I am excited about the new Superman movie.

One of my fondest childhood memories is seeing the 1978 Christopher Reeves Superman movie at the Sparta Drive-In. Reeves was the quintessential Man of Steel. Like a lot of fans, I was not impressed with Zack Snyder’s more recent film versions, starring Henry Cavill, because it didn’t FEEL like Superman. It was darker, more pessimistic, and Superman himself killed people and paid little attention to the damage and danger to civilians his fights caused. The Superman most of us grew up with was nicknamed The Big Blue Boy Scout, and STOOD for something: Truth, Justice, and the American Way (which we all understood to mean equality and fair play). He was aspirational. Although their powers are different, DC’s Superman and Marvel’s Captain America have one thing in common (besides their color scheme): their real power was their intrinsic goodness, their kindness, their inspirational attitude, their strict code of ethics. James Gunn’s new Superman has captured this once more, and made it the heart of the film.

And… Superman is an immigrant (and not a legal one). Gunn has referenced this in interviews… and the MAGAsphere has (predictably) gone nuts. “When did Superman go woke!” some are saying (just as some say “when did Star Trek go woke!”) And the answer, of course -in both cases -is FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. Superman debuted in 1938, and in those early years he did not fight aliens or supervillains. He fought corrupt politicians, organized crime, slumlords, and evil industrialists who cheated their workers. So did most of those earliest superheroes. In 1946, in a sixteen-part storyline of his radio show, Superman took on the Ku Klux Klan (at the time trying to make a comeback from their decline 20 years earlier), exposing their methods and evil to a national audience (and curtailing their attempt at a resurgence).

Starting in the 1950s, DC ran house ads in their books that were public service announcements, often made by Superman. Here is the text of one:

“And remember, boys and girls, your school -like our country -is made up of Americans of MANY different races, religions, and national origins, so… if YOU hear anyone talk against a schoolmate or anyone else because of his religion, race, or national origin -don’t wait: tell him THAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN.”

THAT is the Superman we grew up with. A character created by two young men who were the sons of Jewish immigrants. As, in fact, most of the early 1930s/1940s superheroes were, including Batman and Captain America. As was Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit and one of the greatest comics artists of all time, a title for which he is rivaled by Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzburg to Jewish immigrant parents). As was Max Gaines, who created the comic book as an art form. And have you ever heard of Stan Lee? Real name: Stanley Lieber, son of Romanian Jewish immigrants.

These Jewish writers and artists knew about oppression. Their parents had fled it in Europe, and suffered it anew from the KKK in the 1920s when these guys were young kids. They understood the appeal of an aspirational hero who stands up for the little guy, for the oppressed, for the victimized. Who stood against oppression, even when the laws allowed it. Who stood AGAINST corruption in high places, not in SUPPORT of it. Think about the origin story of Superman, then think of Moses… saved as an infant from destruction by being sent forth by his parents in a small vessel, found by people of another race who raised him as their own, but who eventually realized he had to stand up for what is right and embrace his true identity, not the one provided to him… think on that, and realize just how Jewish the story of Superman actually is.

But many on the far right want to erase that version of Superman, and instead make him a cold agent of the establishment with no “wokeness” about him. The same way they want to change how history is learned and taught, to make it align with their own radical and racist agenda (try denying that, and then explain why every picture and exhibit in our military museums that does not show white males was taken down after Trump took office and why books about Rosa Parks and Jackie Robinson are being removed from school libraries). And they are now defining “wokeness” not just as positive attention given to women and minorities… but to the very concepts of KINDNESS and FAIRNESS.

In other words, they have declared war on truth, justice, and the (true) American Way.

I’ll quote another of those 1950s Superman ads, in which a white man assumed the white kid had acted heroically when it was actually his black friend who had, to which Superman said: “Because of his color?...You just jumped to a conclusion because of a common prejudice!”, a mistake people make “mostly because they have forgotten an elementary truth! That people are people, and should be judged as such, regardless of color or beliefs!”

I stand with the Man of Steel… not the un-American Man of Steal.

P.S. -a chapter of Young Democrats has formed in White County. If you are under 36 and interested, give me a holler and I’ll hook you up with them.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE 

A Liberal Dose, July 25, 2025 "A Historic Downfall May Be Echoed Today with Donald Trump"

 

A Liberal Dose

“A Historic Downfall May Be Echoed Today with Donald Trump”

Troy D. Smith

 

During a wave of racism and anti-immigrant hysteria, this man and his movement gained enormous power and support all around the country, but especially in the rural South and Midwest. It all came crashing down, though, when his true nature (never really that hidden) was revealed to them in the form of a lurid scandal connected to sexual abuse. He was toppled from power -many of his politician friends going down with him -and his movement was crippled as his own followers, not able to rationalize or justify this outrage, abandoned him, and it spread like falling dominoes around the country.

Of whom do I speak?

Of course, I am referencing David Curtis (D.C.) Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan and one of the most powerful Klansmen in America in the 1920s, which was the high point of KKK membership.

The KKK was started in Pulaski, TN, right after the end of the Civil War (with Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest their first major leader). Fighting  against Reconstruction and civil rights, they targeted former slaves and Republicans (the Party of Lincoln) for violence, to suppress their votes. In 1871, at the request of President U.S. Grant, Congress passed the Force Act, also called the Ku Klux Klan Act. In modern terminology, it identified organized attempts to deprive people of their civil rights by violence to be an act of terrorism, and authorized the use of federal troops to root it out. This was done, and the KKK faded into the history books -for a while.

In the early 1900s, a writer from North Carolina (whose father and uncle had been prominent local Klan leaders in the 1860s) named Thomas Dixon wrote a series of popular novels set during Reconstruction, culminating in “The Clansman” (1905). That novel was popular and compelling enough that visionary filmmaker D.W. Griffith made it the basis of the first full-length motion picture in 1915, “Birth of a Nation.” This is considered a very historically important film, because it established what would become norms for historical epics and movies in general afterwards, especially in filming techniques.

 The movie, and the book that inspired it, celebrated the “Lost Cause” ideology, whose tenets include claims that the Civil War was not about slavery at all, that slaves were generally happy and well-treated and slavery was actually not that bad. The plot revolved around a Confederate officer returning home to SC from the war, only to discover that the evil Yankee carpetbaggers -using the evil ex-slaves as dupes and thugs -have cheated and elected a bunch of black guys to public office, and they have done horrible things such as legalize interracial marriage. The black men are also ravishing white women left and right. The hero responds by forming a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, and the story revolves around the heroic Klan members chasing out the carpetbaggers and ex-slaves.

The movie was unbelievably popular -and it led to a major resurgence of the KKK, stronger than it had been in the 1860s because it was not confined to the South. It was all over the country. It is estimated that one out of every seven white men in America were Klan members by the 1920s. The strongest enclave was in Indiana, where one out of every THREE white men was a member. It became socially acceptable all over the country- many major universities had official Klan student groups. It was in this time period, 1915-1925, that statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest started going up all over the country, including the north and the west.

This version of the Klan hated immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as much as they hated African Americans. They didn’t use the Confederate flag at their actions, they used the U.S. flag. And D.C. Stephenson rose to the top in their stronghold state, Indiana, and was in charge of recruiting in seven other states. Many politicians in Indiana (and elsewhere) were either members or contributed money to the cause. Their stated purpose was protecting the purity of America -and especially the purity and safety of white women.

Then Stephenson was arrested in 1925 for the kidnapping and rape of Madge Oberholtzer, a young state employee and educator. She attempted suicide while in his captivity, but it was the staph infection caused by the many savage bite marks Stephenson left that killed her and led to his murder charge. During his trial it was revealed that many in the top ranks of the Klan, who preached moral purity and the sacred status of white women, were doing similar things… and Stephenson’s connections to major politicians, including the Indiana governor, were revealed.    

People quit the Klan in droves. They had not minded the hatred of and violence toward immigrants and religious and racial minorities… but they had framed their very identities, and their sense of heroism, on the protection of white women, and their own leaders violated that ideal in huge ways. The rank-and-file members could not justify the contradiction, and felt betrayed. The Klan did not start coming back until the 1950s and the Civil Rights movement.

Which brings me to Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and MAGA. Absolutely nothing has shaken MAGA’s faith in Trump -until now, with strong indications he was part of Epstein’s underage girl sex trafficking. MAGA has framed THEIR identity and sense of heroism on the protection of CHILDREN (specifically white children, they never seem too concerned about others), and in fact have used that as the justification for many of Trump’s actions. Ban trans people to protect our young girls, in the bathroom and on the playing field. Ban immigrants because they are champing at the bit to rape our children. Attack Democrats from Hillary Clinton to Tom Hanks because they are allegedly part of a child sex ring. They were foaming at the mouth to get at the Epstein documents, because they were convinced all the libs they hated were on it.

But now it looks like their hero is. And for the first time, they are questioning him, some even abandoning him. Because he seems guilty of the one thing they framed, and justified, their whole identity on, and for some it is a bridge too far. Just like D.C. Stephenson.

Stay tuned.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE