The Blue Meanies Have Taken Over the World!

In recent years it has occurred to me more and more that the recent trouble in the world can be explained by the simple fact that most of the planet has been taken over by the Blue Meanies.  Surely no one who ever saw the Beatles’ 1968 film Yellow Submarine has forgotten them.  The film’s only defect – if it is a defect – is a function of the same fantasy that made it so much fun – that things end happily, with the Blue Meanies and their armies and acolytes converted into nice folks.  If only things happened like that in real life. 

We have Trump in the US, Putin in Russia, Xi in China, Modi in India, Salman in Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu in Israel, Erdogan in Turkey, Kim in North Korea, el Sisi in Egypt, Khan in Pakistan, Duterte in the Philippines, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbàn in Hungary, Salvini in Italy, and Assad in Syria, just to name some of the more conspicuous heroes in evil.  All of them thoroughly negative-thinking, authoritarian, dictatorial types who will stop at nothing to accomplish their evil ends, not even mass killing (whether immediate or long-term), oppression of the citizenry, disregard for the rule of law, and abuse of the public trust.  Understandable, since power, money, and their vicious beliefs are the only things that matter to them.  To the extent that any of them have religious pretensions, they are hypocrites.  They are loathsome individuals personally.  You’d never want be in the same room with any of them. 

If you want to refine the typology a little further, to apply it to our present situation, consider the categories of Blue Meanies:  the Storm Bloopers, the Apple Bonkers, the Butterfly Stompers, the Countdown Clowns, the Snapping Turks, the Hidden Persuaders, and the Jack-the-Nippers.  The various things they do are horrifically evil, but at the same time they are all quite ridiculous in their evil.  In this, Yellow Submarine does not much exaggerate the silliness and plain stupidity of the aforementioned oligarchs and their lackeys – their abysmal poverty of mind, their utterly dead powers of imagination, their lack of common decency, honesty, and humanity.  To make fun of such people is exactly right, since ridicule is one of our most powerful defenses against evil. Ridicule is what the Blue Meanies all deserve, and more, and worse.
 

Seriously.  Because even though Yellow Submarine is a fantasy, the Blue Meanies are real, and they are with us. 

Allen Schill, July 2019