WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Shortly after terrorists leveled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, President George W. Bush began calling the underlying conflict a struggle between civilization and terror, a battle between good and evil.
In the days since, he has placed greater and greater emphasis on that dichotomy, with his rhetorical punches getting stronger.
In his Oct. 10 remarks at FBI headquarters, he twice called the terrorists "evildoers." He called them "evildoers" again at the Pentagon memorial service on Oct. 11 and, in another speech, he said it five times. In Thursday's prime-time news conference, he called them "evildoers" three different times.
"The truth of the matter is, in order to fully defend America, we must defeat the evildoers where they hide. We must round them up, and we must bring them to justice," he said.
Perhaps without even realizing it, the president is using language that recalls a simpler time when good and evil seemed more easy to identify -- a time when issues, television programs, and movies were more black and white, not colored by subtle hues of meaning.
The word has a pop culture sense about it. That's appropriate as it is closely associated with pulp novels and comic books -- high points of an earlier pop civilization.
The Shadow battled doers of evil in comics, in pulp detective magazines, and on the radio in the '30s and '40s. Listen to the announcer: "Blue Coal presents The Shadow! A man of mystery who strikes terror into the very souls of evildoers everywhere. Lamont Cranston, master of other people's minds, devotes his life to righting wrongs, solving crimes, protecting the innocent, and punishing the guilty ... never seen, only heard -- as haunting to superstitious minds as a ghost; as invisible as a guilty conscience."
This is just the kind of hero America needs right now.
Bulletman, a member of Fawcett Comics' Shazam's Squadron of Justice, was a former police chemist who "wishing to strike terror into the hearts of evildoers everywhere ... fashioned a uniform for himself and, donning his newly invented (anti-gravity) helmet" assumed his superhero identity.
Lex Luthor, arch-foe of the greatest of all heroes, Superman, is "an evil genius and avowed enemy of humanity. He is the greatest renegade scientist of all time and one of the most dangerous evildoers in the universe."
He is so evil, his personal "Hall of Heroes" is filled with full-color, life-sized statues of his "personal heroes, evildoers such as Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Captain Kidd, Al Capone, Nero, Blackbeard and Benedict Arnold," birds of a feather.
Even modern comic characters like the Powerpuff Girls "protect Townsville from evildoers like Mojo Jojo, King Roach and Sedusa."
Evildoers are ever-present in the world of the comic strip. They are super-intelligent, powerful villains capable of extraordinary feats. Their abilities are "far beyond those of mortal men," as the opening to Superman used to say. And so to the superheroes the nation must turn.
A companion to the 1960s television version of Batman describes millionaire Bruce Wayne, the true identity of the Caped Crusader, as "obsessed with fighting the evildoers who plagued Gotham City."
Bush, harking back to his Midland, Texas, childhood of Captain Marvel comics, The Lone Ranger, Superman and other serials and television programs, calls forth childhood demons of an earlier time as he labels bin Laden and his terrorist allies.
Like the fight-scene graphics from the Batman program, Bush punctuates his rhetoric with verbal "Whams," "Pows," "Biffs," and "Whaps" to make clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
The term "evildoers" conjures up images of nefarious villains in shady haunts raining terror and bad works down on a helpless society. In times of great national stress like the Depression, World War II and now, empowering foes with great strengths rallies the nation to even greater accomplishments and sacrifice, bringing forth great leaders to rescue the country.
The word often appears in religious texts as a supercharged description of enemies of God, much like the supervillains in comic books. And they are likewise condemned and pursued.
In the New International Version of the Bible, Job 22:34 says, "There is no dark place, no deep shadow, where evildoers can hide." Psalm 27:2 in the New American Standard Bible says, "When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell."
The Koran, according to "A Philosophical Explanation of the Doctrine of Hell" from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Silver Spring, Md., "mentions hell as the abode of evil-doers."
These contexts are probably not lost on the president, as he may be trying to send a message to bin Laden. For the most part however, "evildoers" conjures up Hollywood, comic books, popguns, and Kool-Aid, a simpler time when right and wrong were clear and America was the most powerful nation on Earth.
