PLATO, COMICS AND COMPETING AMERICAN VISIONS May 9, 2025

The Greek philosopher Plato and several comic-strip characters can tell us where America should be going.

Plato wrote of numina and phenomena. Numina represent the ideal. Phenomena attempt to express the ideal in physical or other form. Plato used a chair as an example. The ideal chair can’t be seen. Real chairs, whatever their design, are attempts to embody that ideal.

The comic-strip characters?

Snoopy, the wonderful beagle in Charles Schultz’s classic “Peanuts,” is always starting his Great American Novel. He begins with, “It was a dark and stormy night.” He gets no further. Snoopy has an idea in his head—the noumena. He can’t get past it to type words on paper—the phenomenon. 

“Sally Forth” by Francesco Marciuliano and Jim Keefe, presents a whacky-yet-lovable suburban family. For years, Ted, the dad, has wanted to write the Great American Novel. He’s usually never gotten past the title page. Daughter Hilary labored long and hard to write and draw a graphic novel with her boyfriend, Duncan. They recently finished it! But Hilary was afraid to let her mom, Sally, read it. What if the work on the page didn’t measure up to the idea in her head? Hilary finally relented. Sally loved it. Sadly, publishers have turned the duo down. 

Here’s where we might think about two politically competing visions trying to steer the United States into the second quarter of the twenty-first century.

The far right extols an image of a perfect America that existed in the past. It wants to create something of a time machine and take the country back to the 1950s. The 1850s might be preferable, but we’d have to give up phones, movies, TVs and cars. 

I lived through the1950s. Reality never matched the proffered illusion of an ideal decade. The mirror held up to the country by movies and TV, for example, gave us endless images of an all-white, Christian nation filled with happy middle-class families and offering vast new opportunities. It covered up poverty, racism, including segregation, and antisemitism, which placed limits on where Jews could live and work.

The far left seeks to create a paradise in which everyone not only enjoys equal rights but also equal outcomes. Should all Americans have good jobs, homes, food, education and healthcare? Of course. Sadly, far-left experiments in other countries have demonstrated that longing for an ideal doesn’t translate into a better material, social, intellectual and political reality.

Progress requires looking long and hard at human nature and embracing the art of the possible. 

Here’s a third vision: Recognize the great good this nation has provided and improve on it. Acknowledge the bad and eliminate it. Strive to build a better America in the light of realism.

Here, we might heed ancient Jewish wisdom. Mastering all of Jewish learning requires a lifetime of study. Even then, it can’t be accomplished. But you try. Pirkei Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”) states, “He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it” (2:16).

Taking Plato and comic-strip authors to heart, we’d do well to humble ourselves and adopt a piece of modern wisdom: Don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.

Please pass on this post.

Order my novel, TAKING STOCK (Kirkus Reviews starred selection) — or 2084 —in softcover or e-book from Amazon, barnesandnoble.com or iuniverse.com. Or from your favorite bookstore.