Public Burning

by Robert Coover

  Something like that force seems to have been at work all over the world these past few weeks: everything tumbling irresistibly into place. Not without a bit of push and shove from Uncle Sam, of course: red-and-white striped hat cocked jauntily, blue cutaway coattails fluttering behind him like a wartorn battle flag, he’s been advancing on all fronts, sweeping away the hostile shadows of the world, stemming the Red Tide, producing miracles with gamma globulin, chlorophyll, and laminated iron duck underpants for American Marines to keep their balls safe from flying mortar fragments, securing the resources of poor nations from the Phantom’s greed, sprinkling the spirit of truth and plutocracy on the world like a purifying fallout. But some days it seems to work and some it doesn’t, and right now it’s working. That force. He has overseen the patient extermination by saturation bombing of a thousand Mau Mau terrorists, a movement described by the British Colonial Secretary as “perverted nationalism and a sort of nostalgia for barbarism,” and then back home has flown out to that wide open country that he loves, and crying out, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”, has struck the match that set off the most powerful A-bomb of all time: a frame house ten miles away collapses, acres of Joshua trees and sagebrush burst into flames, the flash is observed a thousand miles away in Canada and Mexico, and residents of Southern California feel the shock twenty minutes after the blast. Atomic Energy Commissioner Gordon Dean, admiring the 40,000-foot-high cloud of radioactive dust, reflects on the infancy of Hiroshima’s “Little Boy” and says that this year will see Atomic Power come of age. In Korea Uncle Sam has broken the intransigence of the Reds, bringing them to the conference table if not to their knees, while further down the coast pro-French candidates have won all localities except Hanoi in the first real democratic election those little yellow people of Indochina have ever known. Not far away, the fifth year of the Red War in Malaya ends symbolically with the extermination of five guerrillas, British High Commissioner General Sir Gerald Templer expressing “satisfaction” over the kill and declaring: “The struggle goes on and it will go on until we have eliminated all traces of militant Communism from this country!”

  No less a struggle is being waged in America. Police juvenile officers warn teen-age clubs in Columbus, Ohio, to be suspicious of “any new member of a group whose background is not an open book,” and in Birmingham, Alabama, the city fathers push through an ordinance banishing from the city “anyone caught talking to a Communist in a ‘non-public place,’ or anyone who passed out literature that could be traced, even remotely, to a Communist hand.” The home of the State Secretary of the Communist Party in Houston, Texas, is stoned, and outside a plant in Los Angeles, surprised workers get the piss beat out of them by a gang of aroused patriots calling themselves “Crusade Against Communism.” There’s been an abortive effort to muzzle Senator Joe McCarthy, but the Fighting Marine has hit back, seeing to it that the worst of his enemies are kicked out of Congress by the people and, if possible, ruined for life, and now his metaphors grip the national imagination utterly. Rare is that politician who fails to pay at least passing homage to the “crimson clique,” “left-wing bleeding hearts of the press,” “front men for traitors,” and “stained with the blood of our boys in Korea.” Joe launches a whole series of new investigations into heresy in high places, becoming one of the most celebrated orators in the nation. Some people believe he might even be the secret Incarnation of Uncle Sam—a heresy in itself perhaps, but one long tolerated in the democratic tradition. He is hailed by J. Edgar Hoover for his “Americanism,” cheered on by his colleagues, and awarded a “National Americanism Award” by the Marine Corps League for his heroic actions in “rousing the nation to the menace of bad security risks in our government.” The American Civil Liberties Union reports that twenty-six of the forty-eight states now have laws designed to bar Reds from running for public office, twenty-eight have laws denying them state or local civil-service jobs, thirty-two require loyalty oaths from their teachers, and across the country, suspected Comsymps are prevented from living in federally aided low-income housing projects, getting passports, holding office in labor unions, or in some states, drawing unemployment compensation. Congressman James Van Zandt of Pennsylvania asks for swift deportation to the Soviet Union of all alien Communists and fellow travelers, in or out of government. Private travel into Phantom-land is simultaneously banned and infiltration from abroad is blocked, J. Edgar Hoover’s budget is increased, and Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia drafts a bill to “grant the FBI war emergency powers to throw all Communists into concentration camps!”

  And so it goes, from one end of the world to the other, because, as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale has written in his book of Yankee Peddler’s proverbs, The Power of Positive Thinking, America’s runaway number one best seller for the thirty-second week running: “This is the one lesson history teaches… The good never loses!” Fulgencio Batista regains control of Cuba and General Rojas Pinilla, who fought with Uncle Sam as a staff officer with the first contingent of Colombian troops to Korea in 1951, pulls a quick coup in his country and ousts Laureano Gomez, who as TIME say: “slid like a wilted leaf down / history’s drainpipe.” From the Dominican Republic Generalissimo Trujillo (“an illustrious ruler,” the young Vice President Richard Nixon has called him) sends a priest as delegate to the United Nations, explaining that his country intends to use “the arms of faith and Christian charity to combat the poisonous Communist doctrine in the international organization,” and on television the Reverend Billy Graham backs him up: “Communism is a fanatical religion,” he declares, “a great sinister anti-Christian movement masterminded by Satan, that has declared war upon the Christian God! Only as millions of Americans turn to Jesus Christ can the nation be spared the onslaught of a demon-possessed Communism!” Yes, Daniel Webster expressed it long ago: “Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens!” A survey by the Catholic Digest shows that 89 percent of all Americans, including Jews, believe in the Blessed Trinity, and 99 percent believe in God—get rid of that one percent, it’s said, and the Phantom’s had it!

  Not even the innermost precincts of the Phantomized world have been immune. In the Soviet Union Josef Stalin’s heart “has stopped beating,” and his presumptive heirs—Beria, Molotov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev—are said to be at each other’s throats. As though in sympathy, Czech Puppet Klement Gottwald has “died of a cold,” and strikes and riots have crippled the country. And now, overnight, with the Rosenberg executions just a day away, the big breakthrough comes: the East Germans, who until now have been fleeing Westward at the rate of nearly fifty thousand a month, suddenly stop, as though on cue, turn back, and confront their masters…

  barehanded they gathered in the grey

  morning rain—masons in white

  carpenters in black day laborers

  and factory hands in hobnailed

  boots and raveled suits

  in mumbling columns that suggested

  disconnected centipede legs groping

  for a body they streamed from all

  directions toward the center where

  the communist proconsuls rule

  shopkeepers clanged down shutters peered

  through the slits children on bicycles

  circled in front trucks twisted through

  the crowd nose to tail like a team

  of prodding sheep dogs

  an east german perched shakily

  on an idle cement mixer

  pointed with a sneer at a tall vopo

  “hello long one!” he cried “your

  pants are open!”

  anger scudded in like a rain cloud

  “freedom” they chanted thousands

  began chanting the forbidden anthem

  deutschland deutschland über alles

  über alles in der welt!

  on both sides of the iron curtain

  the world heard with a thrill

  of east berlin’s

  rebellion
in the rain…

  “The Rebellion in the Rain”: no wonder TIME’S been inspired! This uprising in Berlin, which soon spreads to Magdeburg, Jena, Chemnitz, Rathenow, Leipzig, Halle—in Brandenburg, workers maul the Red D.A. to death on top of a police car and rip the ear off a “people’s judge,” while Czechs are pissing in Pilsen on portraits of dead Puppet Gottwald—is Uncle Sam’s crowning touch to over two years of stagecraft, prayer, and arm-to-arm Injun rassling with the Phantom’s ubiquitous agents.

  But it has not always been easy, not even for America’s mighty Superhero. The tag end of the 1940s, which began so well, has seen the Red Tide swallow up half of Europe, sweep through Cathay and threaten all of South Asia, batter at the shores of Africa, Byzantium, and Latin America.

  How did it happen?

  The score in the middle of the decade is 1,625,000,000 people for Uncle Sam, only 180,000,000 for the Phantom, and most of them in declining health, thanks to Overlord, German tanks, and the A-bomb. What’s more, no sooner has Uncle Sam, virtually single-handed, won the war and saved humanity but what he’s out inventing the United Nations, unleashing television, laying a dose of freedom and morality on the Hottentots, funding the World Bank, and humbly taking over the world for its own good—he’s had to use up one of his best Incarnations of all time to do it, but it’s worth it. With the bodies of the Nazi hoodlums still dangling warm on their ropes, Ely Culbertson the Bridge Wizard can announce to the world: “God and the politicians willing, the United States can declare peace on the world and win it!” That’s mainly because the U.S. is holding trumps, of course—and keeping them. As Harry Truman, Uncle Sam’s unusual new disguise, puts it: “The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be let loose in a lawless world. That is why Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb.” It seems like the Golden Age—like Mother Luce’s dream of “The American Century” come true!

  And yet, suddenly, by the end of the decade, the Phantom has a score of 800,000,000 to Uncle Sam’s 540,000,000 and the rest—about 600,000,000 so-called neutrals—are adrift. What went wrong? Who’s responsible? People wonder if this is what the astronomers are talking about when they speak of the “red shift”: God drifting away and losing touch. The Phantom’s dark gospel has spread throughout the world, he has acquired dozens of new disguises and devices, Uncle Sam’s most private councils have been infiltrated. Not that the American Superchief and his Sons of Light have been idle—the Truman Doctrine has wrested Greece and Turkey from the Phantom’s grasp, the Marshall Plan has saved Christianity in Europe, West Germany and South Korea have been improvised, staffed, and armed, the Strategic Air Command has been revved up with atomic weapons and NATO created, and Point Four is spreading the American Dream upon the Yahoos like manna—but you can’t argue with the scoreline. “In 1944,” as Congressman Richard Nixon of California sums it up, “the odds were nine to one in our favor. Today…the odds are five to three against us!” And worse to come: in a few short weeks, before the 1949 World Series has even begun, Mao Tse-tung chases Chiang Kai-shek’s bony behind off to Formosa and the Reds take over all of China, America is hit by its first postwar recession, the U.S. Secretary of Defense commits suicide, and on top of it all, Russia explodes her first atomic bomb!

  The news rocks the nation. “Treason!” cries the press. Others agree. “If the President says the American people are entitled to know all the facts,” declares Congressman Nixon, “I feel the American people are also entitled to know the facts about the espionage ring which was responsible for turning over information on the atom bomb to agents of the Russian government!” Espionage ring?! Here Uncle Sam’s been seeding the rubes gathering outside his tent all these years with whole pressruns of fresh greenbacks, and now that his wares are out on the table and it’s time for the payoff, not only have they pocketed the bait and wandered off, making ungrateful ridicule the while of his “Yankee notions,” but some bastard’s even picked his pockets while he was watching them go! “Sweet Betsey from Pike, 1 been hit by a pooper!” cries Uncle Sam as the Russian bomb mushrooms into the ether. “Thar she blows, goddamn it, our just and lasting peace with honor in our time, shot to shit, it’s most enough to make a deacon swear! Ed-GAR!”

  Deep in the inner sanctum of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, high up on the fifth floor, J. Edgar Hoover, the world’s most famous policeman, lost for a moment in reverie and congratulatory telegrams (he is this year celebrating his Silver Anniversary as America’s Top Cop, his career being contemporaneous with that of Mickey Mouse), jumps clean out of his chair. What? What! He stumbles about confusedly, scattering dossiers, old $2 betting stubs, and comic books depicting his own life saga every which way. Holy Moley! This is terrible! His heart is palpitating, his florid face is splotchy, his trigger finger has gone cold and limp as a wet noodle. It’s times like these when John Edgar Hoover of the FBI wishes his mother were still alive. Of course it’s a spy ring, has to be, it always is. I mean, there’s only one secret, isn’t there? We had it, now they’ve got it, it’s that simple. He’s been warning them this would happen since 1937. The enemy within. Now, just look! Jumping Jehoshaphat! And if they could penetrate Los Alamos, they could penetrate Congress or the White House, or even—he pushes the thought out of his mind and, glancing edgily over his shoulder, scrambles frantically for the intercom buttons. Goodness! he’s all thumbs! This is worse than the day he tried to put the cuffs on Old Creepy Karpis! He whacks the intercom with his thick fists and cries: “The secret of the atom bomb has been stolen! Mobilize every resource! Find the thieves!” He cries:

  Call up yer dog, O call up yer dog,

  Le’s go a-huntin’ to ketch a groun’-hog!

  Whet up ye knife an’ loaden up ye gun,

  Away to the hills to have some fun!

  Up on Capitol Hill, Early Warning Sentinels Mundt, Bridges, Nixon, and Hickenlooper take up the chorus: “To-my-rang-tang-a-whaddle-linky-dey!” It mushrooms into a countrywide singalong, orchestrated by the national press. G-men, whistling along softly, scurry through the FBI building and out secret exits, buttoning up their trench coats…

  They picked up their guns an’ went to the brash,

  By dam, Joe, here’s the hog sign fraish!

  Git away, Sam, an’ lemme load my gun,

  The groun’-hog hunt has jist begun!

  FBI double agent Herbert Philbrick breaks his cover, and eleven top U.S. Communists are nailed as fanatical schismatics. Spying charges and naughty rumors are slapped on Judy Coplon from Justice and a Russian plant in the U.N. Wartime New Dealers are implicated, and the shadow of suspicion falls heavily on apostate Henry Wallace—once but a heartbeat away from the Incarnation—plus the million people who voted for him in 1948. And, thanks to the untiring vigilance of Congressman Nixon—who has already helped to sanitize Hollywood and the labor unions, and co-sponsored a tough-fisted Communist registration bill, which even Harry Truman has to admit is the equal of the Alien and Sedition Act of John Adams’s heyday—the slippery Alger Hiss is run to ground at last…

  He’s in here, boys, the hole’s wore slick!

  Run here, Sam, with ye forkéd stick!

  Stand back, boys, an’ le’s be wise,

  Fer I think I see his beaded eyes!

  “The only sensible and courageous way to deal with Communists in our midst,” declares Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler, “is to make membership in Communist organizations or covert subsidies a capital offense and shoot or otherwise put to death all persons convicted of such!” Congressman Harold Velde, an ex-FBI agent elected to the House on the slogan GET THE REDS OUT OF WASHINGTON AND WASHINGTON OUT OF THE RED, has a celebrated vision of Russian espionage agents running amok all over the country, and his Pennsylvania colleague Bob Rich, speaking in tongues, lets fly the suspicion that Secretary of State Dean Acheson might be working for Stalin himself! “The great lesson which should be learned fro
m the Alger Hiss case,” Dick Nixon warns, “is that we are not just dealing with espionage agents who get thirty pieces of silver to obtain the blueprint of a new weapon…but this is a far more sinister type of activity, because it permits the enemy to guide and shape our policy!” To that, Mr. Republican himself, Senator Bob Taft, says: “Hey! to-my-whang-fol-doodle-daddy-dey, Dick!” And in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joe McCarthy, the Fighting Marine, waves a piece of paper—“I have here in my hand a list…!”—and launches an Era…