Instead of “The Person From Porlock, The Muslim from Morlock.”
February 15, 2016 at 10:38 pm
JohninMd.(Help!?!!)
Yes. We face a war of cjvjliations.
And there can be only ONE….
February 15, 2016 at 10:44 pm
Huddy
Wells was a progressive & socialist, who believed in the certainty of a utopian future. Still a damned good writer.
February 15, 2016 at 11:19 pm
The 300
Doesn’t mean he can’t accidentally back into the truth. In fact, when socialists actually speak truth, it seems to mostly be unintentional.
February 16, 2016 at 12:20 am
interventor
He was a socialist, who recognized the weakness and couldn’t lie.
February 16, 2016 at 5:18 am
John Greer
In his day he had something of an excuse to be a starry eyed optimist.
The progressives and socialists of today have a very well documented track record of abject failure to ignore.
February 15, 2016 at 10:45 pm
B Woodman
WELL PLAYED, Chris, WELL PLAYED (THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE)
February 15, 2016 at 11:22 pm
Spin Drift
Does the first panel sort of look like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream?” If not it is what I have been doing lately.
Spin Drift
Morlock Labe
War Damn Eagle
February 15, 2016 at 11:24 pm
NotYetInACamp
Very good. Very very good.
Sometimes one only has to look at what is to see the future.
“Possible Biblical Reference: In the Hebrew Bible, Moloch is a pagan diety to whom children are routinely sacrificed, and Eloi/Elohim refers to the God of Abraham or similar dieties, suggesting that Wells was using a biblical analogy with these names. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is said to have cried out from the cross “Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?”: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?””
February 16, 2016 at 9:57 am
Browncoat
I have made that same connection doing inductive Bible studies. It didn’t click, today, until you posted. Thanks!
Ironically, WoW was Wells’ least favorite novel of every one he wrote. He intended it as a “reverse English” criticism of British colonialism and ‘aggression’ against primitive tribes, notably in Africa. (He saw the real thing when Italy took down Ethiopia in the late 1930s, complete with two of his predictions come true; aerial warfare and poison gas dropped from aircraft.)
The trouble was, about halfway through he realized he’d written himself into a corner, by making the Martians so powerful there was no way for the British or anyone else on Earth to defeat them.
So he fell back on the deus ex machina of the Martians succumbing to Earth bacteria. Which he called “the littlest things which, God in his wisdom had put upon the Earth”.
This was especially ironic because Wells himself was an agnostic. He ended up giving credit to a deity which he really didn’t even believe existed.
There’s a lesson in there. Somewhere.
cheers
eon
February 16, 2016 at 5:25 am
John Greer
Please be fair.
Agnostics don’t Believe one way or the other. They argue that there is no evidence either way.
_Atheists_ Believe there is no God.
February 16, 2016 at 5:02 pm
Kafiroon
A Theist? Believing in a Deity. Which one(s)?
Heh Heh!
February 16, 2016 at 7:50 am
GWB
(Muir was thinking of Time Machine. Nice to be able to catch you in something – you are human after all! 😉 )
February 16, 2016 at 9:10 am
H_B
I’m pretty sure eon is just making a broader point about Wells in the context of this comments section. I doubt he was actually confusing the two novels.
February 16, 2016 at 3:50 pm
GWB
Hey, even *thinking* that eon might miss one is good enough for me! 😉
WoW is essentially a contemporized Time Machine which Chris has very aptly contemporized further still.
February 16, 2016 at 7:35 am
GWB
Huh? They were two separate Wells books. The War of The Worlds movie are contemporized versions of the book (as was Orson Wells’ radio version). Time Machine was an entirely other book.
Separate books, same gist; a society devolved into separate races of victims and victimizers…same as now, which is Chris’ very perceptive point.
February 16, 2016 at 3:52 pm
GWB
How is War Of The Worlds about a “society devolved into separate races of victims and victimizers”? I would honestly like to know, because I can’t see that in there at all.
February 16, 2016 at 8:51 pm
H_B
I think he’s referencing the above connection of Wells between War of the Worlds and European colonialism – with the aliens seriously anthropomorphized.
February 16, 2016 at 5:27 am
John Greer
I too approve of the acronym.
February 16, 2016 at 5:54 am
MasterDiver
I wonder how many Millennials or Gen-X-ers would even recognize the reference? These days, it seems if I use a quote a classic to anyone under 50 I just get a blank stare.
February 16, 2016 at 8:47 am
Pamela
I would not want to eat anything coming out of an M’s kitchen if they follow true to form…
February 16, 2016 at 9:16 am
H_B
To be fair, I’m a child-of-the-80s and I wouldn’t have recognized the reference if I hadn’t seen part of the 1960 The Time Machine film on television when I was young.
February 16, 2016 at 9:37 pm
interventor
Movies
February 16, 2016 at 6:49 am
Bill G
Excellent.
February 16, 2016 at 7:00 am
Dastardly Dan
May I humbly offer ‘Morlock in Chief’ as an addition to the lexicon?
February 16, 2016 at 7:53 am
Unca Walt
My word.
M.O.R.L.O.C.K.S.
Well, I mean “my word” as in: Holy shit! This HAS GOT TO GO WORLDWIDE.
Chris Muir, you are one brilliant sumbitch.
February 16, 2016 at 9:34 am
Oldguy
I have to agree how many would even recognize the morlock reference or HG Wells? The numbers who have read animal farm and 1984 is ridiculously low and they were required when I was in middle school
ELOI definitions. See TJ above. Why do you think these have been deleted from mandatory curriculum?
February 16, 2016 at 11:00 am
Old Codger
I think at least part of why the classics have been removed from the curriculum is because the inmates are now running the asylum and they hated reading that old-timey stuff. Also, at least some of them want to make sure there is no chance children might learn to think for themselves.
February 16, 2016 at 4:27 pm
John Greer
An argument I’ve always made for why there are only 3 R’s in the basic curriculum instead of four, the fourth being Reasoning.
February 16, 2016 at 7:36 pm
Pamela
Old Timey would be the Rigveda, various Greek philosophers, the Egyptian Tales of Woe, Maimonides, Hildegard of Bingen. Dr. John Dee and John Donne would be more current I think. There is a wasteland in the knowledge department in schools these days.
“The Time Machine” actually, but the point is valid.
February 16, 2016 at 11:01 am
capn
Well Done Chris.
Brilliant and appropo = amazing.
Kudos
February 16, 2016 at 11:13 am
Spin Drift
If you will allow me a segway back to yesterdays discussion about Scalia (RIP good Sir). Really really long view of political battle for heart of the country would be for the zero to nominate Ted Cruz to the SCOTUS bench.
What would this do short run. It puts the zero into the Presidential race and sucks up the air in the room during the primaries, pulls heat off of Hillary, it will require Ted to fillibuster himself or turn it down and then answer questions from the conservatives about saving the court. winDsock supports it as it moves his only PITA in the race out of the way. GOPe love getting the SCOTUS conservative pick and Ted out of the way.
The Dems get cankles running against winDsock, Bush the third or prog-lite Rubber boy. Shillary wins against that motley crew and she gets to appoint most likely two more SCOTUS picks in the next term. They get the court anyway it just takes a few more years.
Long Game people always the Long Game.
Spin
Morlock Labe
War Damn Eagle
February 16, 2016 at 11:53 am
Malatrope
One problem with the correlation here is that the Morlocks, ugly and hateful as they were, provided all the economic and manufacturing means of their world. They were the ones on top, and the Eloi were just farmed for food. Somehow, I don’t see Muslims as capable of providing an industrial base, now or ever.
As for all the people out there who don’t recognize what “Morlocks” and “Eloi” even are, well, you guys are all well on the way to being raised for your protein content.
February 16, 2016 at 12:37 pm
Lurker
Morlocks were living in the shadows, underground, out of site and raiding under the cover of darkness, maintaining the machines, going about their business, however mindless and automaton like it was. In a dystopian future, that would be us conservatives. We get up, go to work, keep voting for the same old thing. Mindlessly continuing, hoping to just be left alone. And the Eloi are the one’s living in a “utopoa”, the progs with no brains, relying on the flyover Morlocks to tend to their every need. We just haven’t started consuming them…. yet. Of course, today the shadow people and the shadow economy are the realm of the illegals and the refugees. So many ways to play this, Chris.
February 16, 2016 at 12:48 pm
Lurker
A little cross contamination in my though process. Should be “TODAY we get up,…” and in dystopia the libs are the Eloi. I’m sure y’all are smart enough to figure it out, but my anal self could no longer look at at poorly I had written it. Oh but for an edit option.
February 16, 2016 at 5:08 pm
Kafiroon
Note news reports a number of months ago reporting daesh fighters eating hearts and I think it was also brains.
Never count out what starving mobs will do when it comes to starvation.
And I cannot see the modern Morlocks being able to feed themselves without the currant economic world.
February 16, 2016 at 2:19 pm
H_B
The Ottoman Empire raided Christian Europe for centuries to gather not just slave laborers, but soldiers (The Janissary Legions), Engineers, Scholars, and technology they could not create themselves. Even if you quibble that the analogy has the fictional Morlocks as the “providers” (every analogy breaks down if you stretch it far enough), the muslim nation has absolutely used the the non-muslim world as prey for its entire existence.
February 16, 2016 at 5:10 pm
Kafiroon
Sorry H_B, that was supposed to be following your comment that I totally agree with.
February 16, 2016 at 8:52 pm
H_B
Always playin’ up, these comment sections…
February 16, 2016 at 9:42 pm
interventor
Construction in Mecca used closed circuit TV so Christian engineers can view work.
February 16, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Freelancer60
Wells’ analogy was that the Morlocks were the industrialists, the ones who made things work, but in payment for those functions, ate the beautiful but ignorant Eloi. While he wanted to paint Capitalists as the most evil and ugly creatures imaginable, any thoughtful person takes away from that part of the story that thoughtless dependence upon the state makes you into a snack.
February 16, 2016 at 2:22 pm
H_B
Bingo. Rather than “capitalists” versus “socialists”, The Time Machine involves “socialist government” and “socialist civilians”.
February 16, 2016 at 2:32 pm
B Woodman
And even in the 1960 movie (not sure about the book, it’s been too too long), the morlocks had degenerated to being merely the caretakers of the industrial machinery. They could no longer create new, expand, improve, or repair on that which had broken down. Much like the quoranimals since their founding to today.
February 16, 2016 at 2:52 pm
Oliver Heaviside
Much as I love Chris, and send him money, I do wish he’d add (at least once in a while) some sort of little “clue” window we could click so as to get the background on WTF the strip is about that day. I _love_ the semi-highbrow and witty references, but while I don’t think I’m the dullest knife in the drawer, I am occasionally puzzled a little. OK, a lot. 😉
Chris: this is a hint.
February 16, 2016 at 3:44 pm
Andrew Benghazi
Robert Vaughn was “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, Obama is… “The Man From M.O.R.L.O.C.K.S.”. Queue the music…
February 16, 2016 at 3:46 pm
Andrew Benghazi
Cue the music
February 16, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Alex
Saying all Muslims are terrorists is wrong and bigoted. What about the Muslims and acted like a human shield for Christians threatened by rebels, or those who raised money for flood victims and donated water to people in Flint, MI? You can’t blame the religion as a whole for the actions for a few.
71 Comments
I am SO stealing that acronym!
Agreed. Love it!
Let’s make it go viral.
Instead of “The Person From Porlock, The Muslim from Morlock.”
Yes. We face a war of cjvjliations.
And there can be only ONE….
Wells was a progressive & socialist, who believed in the certainty of a utopian future. Still a damned good writer.
Doesn’t mean he can’t accidentally back into the truth. In fact, when socialists actually speak truth, it seems to mostly be unintentional.
He was a socialist, who recognized the weakness and couldn’t lie.
In his day he had something of an excuse to be a starry eyed optimist.
The progressives and socialists of today have a very well documented track record of abject failure to ignore.
WELL PLAYED, Chris, WELL PLAYED (THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE)
Does the first panel sort of look like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream?” If not it is what I have been doing lately.
Spin Drift
Morlock Labe
War Damn Eagle
Very good. Very very good.
Sometimes one only has to look at what is to see the future.
Or have a good history text
Brilliant!
Love it. Brilliant in its literary, contemporary, and acronymal reference.
Heretofore, anytime I write of muslims, muzzies, muzbro, etc. I will be employing the term morlocks.
Hereafter of course, not heretofore…
Good idea, but I just wonder how many will know what you are talking about?
“…how many will (or won’t) know…”
That’s a feature, not a bug. 😉
Jews will know…morlock is from the Hebrew morloch; how appropriate. For an unbeliever, Wells used biblical reference often and in context.
I’m not finding a definition for “morloch”. What does it mean?
“Possible Biblical Reference: In the Hebrew Bible, Moloch is a pagan diety to whom children are routinely sacrificed, and Eloi/Elohim refers to the God of Abraham or similar dieties, suggesting that Wells was using a biblical analogy with these names. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is said to have cried out from the cross “Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?”: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?””
I have made that same connection doing inductive Bible studies. It didn’t click, today, until you posted. Thanks!
Worshipped by Carthage.
Who’s John Galt?
Old man Galt’s boy, obviously… 🙂
Masterful. My compliments, sir.
Ironically, WoW was Wells’ least favorite novel of every one he wrote. He intended it as a “reverse English” criticism of British colonialism and ‘aggression’ against primitive tribes, notably in Africa. (He saw the real thing when Italy took down Ethiopia in the late 1930s, complete with two of his predictions come true; aerial warfare and poison gas dropped from aircraft.)
The trouble was, about halfway through he realized he’d written himself into a corner, by making the Martians so powerful there was no way for the British or anyone else on Earth to defeat them.
So he fell back on the deus ex machina of the Martians succumbing to Earth bacteria. Which he called “the littlest things which, God in his wisdom had put upon the Earth”.
This was especially ironic because Wells himself was an agnostic. He ended up giving credit to a deity which he really didn’t even believe existed.
There’s a lesson in there. Somewhere.
cheers
eon
Please be fair.
Agnostics don’t Believe one way or the other. They argue that there is no evidence either way.
_Atheists_ Believe there is no God.
A Theist? Believing in a Deity. Which one(s)?
Heh Heh!
(Muir was thinking of Time Machine. Nice to be able to catch you in something – you are human after all! 😉 )
I’m pretty sure eon is just making a broader point about Wells in the context of this comments section. I doubt he was actually confusing the two novels.
Hey, even *thinking* that eon might miss one is good enough for me! 😉
Eloi
Education by Liberals Originates Ignorance
Ennui Leads to Obsessive Inferiority
Anyone have a better idea?
Every Life Our Inventory
Outstanding.
However, MORLOCKS were “Time Machine”.
WoW is essentially a contemporized Time Machine which Chris has very aptly contemporized further still.
Huh? They were two separate Wells books. The War of The Worlds movie are contemporized versions of the book (as was Orson Wells’ radio version). Time Machine was an entirely other book.
Separate books, same gist; a society devolved into separate races of victims and victimizers…same as now, which is Chris’ very perceptive point.
How is War Of The Worlds about a “society devolved into separate races of victims and victimizers”? I would honestly like to know, because I can’t see that in there at all.
I think he’s referencing the above connection of Wells between War of the Worlds and European colonialism – with the aliens seriously anthropomorphized.
I too approve of the acronym.
I wonder how many Millennials or Gen-X-ers would even recognize the reference? These days, it seems if I use a quote a classic to anyone under 50 I just get a blank stare.
I would not want to eat anything coming out of an M’s kitchen if they follow true to form…
To be fair, I’m a child-of-the-80s and I wouldn’t have recognized the reference if I hadn’t seen part of the 1960 The Time Machine film on television when I was young.
Movies
Excellent.
May I humbly offer ‘Morlock in Chief’ as an addition to the lexicon?
My word.
M.O.R.L.O.C.K.S.
Well, I mean “my word” as in: Holy shit! This HAS GOT TO GO WORLDWIDE.
Chris Muir, you are one brilliant sumbitch.
I have to agree how many would even recognize the morlock reference or HG Wells? The numbers who have read animal farm and 1984 is ridiculously low and they were required when I was in middle school
ELOI definitions. See TJ above. Why do you think these have been deleted from mandatory curriculum?
I think at least part of why the classics have been removed from the curriculum is because the inmates are now running the asylum and they hated reading that old-timey stuff. Also, at least some of them want to make sure there is no chance children might learn to think for themselves.
An argument I’ve always made for why there are only 3 R’s in the basic curriculum instead of four, the fourth being Reasoning.
Old Timey would be the Rigveda, various Greek philosophers, the Egyptian Tales of Woe, Maimonides, Hildegard of Bingen. Dr. John Dee and John Donne would be more current I think. There is a wasteland in the knowledge department in schools these days.
I like the bangs.
“The Time Machine” actually, but the point is valid.
Well Done Chris.
Brilliant and appropo = amazing.
Kudos
If you will allow me a segway back to yesterdays discussion about Scalia (RIP good Sir). Really really long view of political battle for heart of the country would be for the zero to nominate Ted Cruz to the SCOTUS bench.
What would this do short run. It puts the zero into the Presidential race and sucks up the air in the room during the primaries, pulls heat off of Hillary, it will require Ted to fillibuster himself or turn it down and then answer questions from the conservatives about saving the court. winDsock supports it as it moves his only PITA in the race out of the way. GOPe love getting the SCOTUS conservative pick and Ted out of the way.
The Dems get cankles running against winDsock, Bush the third or prog-lite Rubber boy. Shillary wins against that motley crew and she gets to appoint most likely two more SCOTUS picks in the next term. They get the court anyway it just takes a few more years.
Long Game people always the Long Game.
Spin
Morlock Labe
War Damn Eagle
One problem with the correlation here is that the Morlocks, ugly and hateful as they were, provided all the economic and manufacturing means of their world. They were the ones on top, and the Eloi were just farmed for food. Somehow, I don’t see Muslims as capable of providing an industrial base, now or ever.
As for all the people out there who don’t recognize what “Morlocks” and “Eloi” even are, well, you guys are all well on the way to being raised for your protein content.
Morlocks were living in the shadows, underground, out of site and raiding under the cover of darkness, maintaining the machines, going about their business, however mindless and automaton like it was. In a dystopian future, that would be us conservatives. We get up, go to work, keep voting for the same old thing. Mindlessly continuing, hoping to just be left alone. And the Eloi are the one’s living in a “utopoa”, the progs with no brains, relying on the flyover Morlocks to tend to their every need. We just haven’t started consuming them…. yet. Of course, today the shadow people and the shadow economy are the realm of the illegals and the refugees. So many ways to play this, Chris.
A little cross contamination in my though process. Should be “TODAY we get up,…” and in dystopia the libs are the Eloi. I’m sure y’all are smart enough to figure it out, but my anal self could no longer look at at poorly I had written it. Oh but for an edit option.
Note news reports a number of months ago reporting daesh fighters eating hearts and I think it was also brains.
Never count out what starving mobs will do when it comes to starvation.
And I cannot see the modern Morlocks being able to feed themselves without the currant economic world.
The Ottoman Empire raided Christian Europe for centuries to gather not just slave laborers, but soldiers (The Janissary Legions), Engineers, Scholars, and technology they could not create themselves. Even if you quibble that the analogy has the fictional Morlocks as the “providers” (every analogy breaks down if you stretch it far enough), the muslim nation has absolutely used the the non-muslim world as prey for its entire existence.
Sorry H_B, that was supposed to be following your comment that I totally agree with.
Always playin’ up, these comment sections…
Construction in Mecca used closed circuit TV so Christian engineers can view work.
Wells’ analogy was that the Morlocks were the industrialists, the ones who made things work, but in payment for those functions, ate the beautiful but ignorant Eloi. While he wanted to paint Capitalists as the most evil and ugly creatures imaginable, any thoughtful person takes away from that part of the story that thoughtless dependence upon the state makes you into a snack.
Bingo. Rather than “capitalists” versus “socialists”, The Time Machine involves “socialist government” and “socialist civilians”.
And even in the 1960 movie (not sure about the book, it’s been too too long), the morlocks had degenerated to being merely the caretakers of the industrial machinery. They could no longer create new, expand, improve, or repair on that which had broken down. Much like the quoranimals since their founding to today.
Much as I love Chris, and send him money, I do wish he’d add (at least once in a while) some sort of little “clue” window we could click so as to get the background on WTF the strip is about that day. I _love_ the semi-highbrow and witty references, but while I don’t think I’m the dullest knife in the drawer, I am occasionally puzzled a little. OK, a lot. 😉
Chris: this is a hint.
Robert Vaughn was “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, Obama is… “The Man From M.O.R.L.O.C.K.S.”. Queue the music…
Cue the music
Saying all Muslims are terrorists is wrong and bigoted. What about the Muslims and acted like a human shield for Christians threatened by rebels, or those who raised money for flood victims and donated water to people in Flint, MI? You can’t blame the religion as a whole for the actions for a few.