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I’d been thinking a lot about V for Vendetta in the past few days, as the US election came closer. Partially, it was the November 5 coincidence — the election was happening in the same date that Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the UK government! The irony! — but, really, it was the fact that V for Vendetta is a story about fighting against fascism, sure, but also just surviving in a fascist society, a subject that has obviously been on a lot of our minds lately.

By that, I don’t just mean that V and Evie —the protagonists in the comic’s then-futuristic Fascist Britain of 1997 — are struggling to exist in a totalitarian regime surrounded by disinformation and institutionalized cruelty and casual hatred that’s been compacted and formalized into slogans and belief and credo, although that’s very much the subject matter of the story. Instead, I was really thinking about the way that V for Vendetta was Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s reaction to the political realities of 1980s Britain as they lived in it, with Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party trying their hardest to deconstruct society-as-was and create a country more selfish, more venal, more harsh in its wake. At its heart, it’s a comic where their frustrations and fears and hopes were given life and the heroic fantasy took on a particular shape for a particular time.

I don’t believe, inherently, in the idea that times of struggle automatically translate into great art; I think it’s a lie that gets shared in the hope of offering the comforting idea that, “something good will come from this” if we’re patient enough. What great art came from the first Trump presidency that was worth that experience? What came from the pandemic of 2020? 

Yet, I think about V for Vendetta and much of the art from the UK of the 1980s. For that matter, I think about the creation of the superhero in the 1930s, as Jewish creators invented literal kind gods with moral codes that stood up for the little guy in the face of creeping fascism internationally. Superman may not have been a conscious anti-fascist creation in the way Moore and Lloyd’s V was, but he was certainly an unconscious one. The purity of his intent, the simplicity of his kindness and his unending ability to serve and share that kindness, is what makes him my favorite fictional character, a fact that only becomes more true as I get older.

I am, bluntly, heartbroken by the result of this year’s Presidential election. Perhaps not surprised, although I certainly hoped my cynicism would be proven wrong, but definitely heartbroken. It feels in many ways as if the majority of people in this country I adopted have chosen a leader that harkens back to Thatcher and, yes, worse back in history: more totalitarian, more fascistic, more rooted in hate. I fear for my friends, my loved ones, my chosen family who’ll suffer worse than I will across the next few years as a result. (I may be an immigrant, but I’m also a cis white male, after all.)

Maybe we’ll get amazing art out of what’s to come, but it won’t be worth the pain and the struggle. For all that I’ve been thinking about V for Vendetta in the last few days, I’ve also been thinking about the Kurt Vonnegut quote from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, as well: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - ‘God damn it, you've got to be kind.’”

Here’s to finding a way to be kind in the face of what’s coming, as Vonnegut and Superman would want. And here’s to not giving into a hateful society, as Moore, Lloyd, and V would expect of us, too. We need to be able to do both.

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