"Hero" - What IS That?

I’ve added this to my www.judoknighterrant.com website: it’s sincere, the respect of one warrior to another. It’s also the sharing of status and experience with those being used like grease on an axle by the regally, capitalistic, corporately powerful:

Hero - "A man of exceptional quality who wins admiration by exceptional deeds, esp. deeds of courage." --- Webster's Dictionary of the English Language.


In Tribute and Thanks . . . .

The co-opted United States news media having become totally unreliable for the purpose, the first thing I do every morning upon rising is go to the World Wide Web and to my sources there, in order to learn the latest casualty count of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. To that know fine troops are being used like that, by a swaggering scion of the nation's wealthy elite who himself dodged the draft, together with another, an archetypical plutocrat who also dodged the same military service he eagerly impresses upon others by seeking and obtaining five deferments from the draft, is all but unbearable.

Never in the entirety of my seventy-one year life have I known such contempt for any two men as that which I feel for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The possible exception is the entirety of the United States Congress, the posturing coward sycophants who stand by while the travesty that is war in Iraq continues. I take consolation only from the certainty that history will hold these craven, crawling cowards in the disrepute they so richly deserve. I hope our posterity, our children and grandchildren, remember them with the salute Benjamin Franklin reserved for their kind: "Your children will piss on your graves."

In point of fact, I hope that one day or posterity establishes a tradition, one of remembrance dedicated to peace, and that the ceremony attendant the day include urination on the tomb or tombstones of those responsible for the inane and insane slaughter in Iraq. I speak, of course, of the members of today's U.S. Congress, the U.S. President and Vice-President. Decoration of the sites with sacramental garbage and any other symbol of opprobrium should be made optional.

And then, there is the nation's pusillanimous public. What can one say about a people who have come to this . . .? Much comes to mind. The ancient Athenians, wrote Eighteenth Century historian Edward Gibbon, ". . . more than they wanted freedom, wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

Another apropos observation, one as appropriate as a matter of fact as I can imagine, comes from French essayist Michel de Montaigne:

"People usually have the government they deserve."

One might expect me, a former soldier myself, to recite "war stories" and a history of the heroism of our men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sent again and again - as many as five year-long tours - back into a hell the like of which none of their Commander in Chief or theater commanders has anything like the ability to contrive by anything but mind-boggling stupidity, bungling, and bumbling, they are reminiscent of no one so much as the German soldier, seaman, or airman who was sent by Fuehrer Adolf Hitler back into combat again and again until they were killed.

If there are any capable of seeing such an atrocity as anything but the machinations of megalomaniacal arrogance, the arrogance of one who holds his fellow citizen and human being in such utter contempt as to deem him a commodity for his personal use, I can't imagine it.

No, ladies and gentlemen, I do not blow smoke up your ass the like of calling everyone who wears a military uniform or goes to combat in Iraq or Afghanistan a hero. I was a soldier once, too, remember. I did not, for once second, consider that because I had gone in harm’s way I was a hero. That would have been absurd, as absurd as the cynical pronouncements of today’s White House-sycophant and pandering media. You've gone because you were sent. More, if everyone is a hero, then what do we call those whose actions " . . . distinguish . . . conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty"?

But I also know you could have "bugged out" - like the members of the U.S. Congress (and, for by far the most part, their own sons and daughters), our smirking President, and his Machiavellian Vice President. I might have; there is no way in hell I would ever pay with my life the price of saving face for a government like this one. Call it a matter of pride, of honor.

But you didn't "bug out." As bad as the bargain you made was, you kept your word. It's what honor is all about, and I salute you for it.

But honor is also about telling the truth when you know damned well it will draw fire (and for me - in another situation not so much unlike this one - it has already). I have to say also that I respect Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy to Iraq. The deadline for reconvening a court martial against him has again been rescheduled for October 9, 2007. The Army, of course, will in order to prevail and/or hide the truth, do whatever is necessary. Take the word of one who has had the U.S. over a barrel and hoist on its own petard of law, don't expect anything legal - or honorable. The character of this government is already thunderously well-known, after all. It will repudiate any and all law necessary to save face.

It is still, nevertheless, very possible that the U.S. and its execrable president, a president already impeached by his own actions, will finesse the situation, then Operation Mockingbird its way out of the harm's way represented by the truth.

If, therefore, you choose like Lieutenant Watada to refuse and reject illegal orders, I will also salute you. Soldiers, you see, also have the command they deserve. Any officer of the U.S. military knows an illegal order when he receives it and when he gives it. The U.S. Army itself knows an illegal order when it receives it – where, in other words, was the Judge Advocate Corps when the President issued orders to attack Iraq?

If Lieutenant Watada is as right as events have shown him to be, what of the rest of the U.S. Military? The U.S. Congress? The Public?

Soldiers, I wouldn't be in your shoes for all the wealth and fame on earth. Yours are some hard choices, choosing that will take awesome courage. "Loyalty," a grandfather taught me, "above everything - except honor." Honor is always the hardest part.

Before beginning anew with my essay, let me parenthetically remind the reader of something, something voiced eminently well by author George Orwell: “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Remember that as we proceed.

Of all the great needs, the great wants, the great absences of human history, none is more pivotal, more momentous, more ineluctable and more demanding than that having to do with the question, “When will the common man refuse to be used by his fellow man – the fellow man who forgets as soon as he somehow obtains ascendancy the humanity he shares with those he now exploits?”

What will it take, when will the common man citizen of the United States ever get it through his Operation-Mockingbird-stupefied and stultified intellect, that to the corporate rich and powerful – the nouveau riche and royalty – he is a commodity, an asset like minerals, like land and the like, to be exploited, and used? A man like George W. Bush or his eminence gris, Dick Cheney – like corporate CEO Dennis Koslowski – will send as many of those less fortunate, the peon and peasantry of whatever society he rules, to their deaths without the slightest compunction.

Nothing in history tells us anything as incontrovertibly as that one fact.

Still, here we are. Again, and again, and again. And again. Almost countless times – history only goes back a few thousand years, you know – a George W. Bush or a Richard B. Cheney has insinuated his meretricious, pandering way into power, and a position from which he exercises the power of life and death over those who have not, for one reason or the other, done the same, prostitute positioning. The process having to do with that of political power, after all, is one not most like that of the sexual prostitute – research the meaning of the term – something observed by no less that a President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

The central, sine quo non, ingredient in power derived from the masses is stupidity - more precisely, gullibility - the faculty or faculties that permit such corrupt and decadent deception. History increasingly begins to demand, that mankind, in turn, demand a say in the choice of a U.S. President. The President of the United States, after all and by our own definition is the “leader of the (free) world.” Mankind now deserves – and it must demand – to know how a monumental mediocrity like George W. Bush (or, for that matter William J. Clinton) somehow rose to the peak of political and economic power in the world.

How did the town drunk – more appropriately, the girl who offered her favors to everybody - become mayor?

Why, by what logical or scientific system or algorithm, would an individual like George W. Bush, whose intellect, competence, and ability otherwise are exceeded by as many as seventy-five to one hundred million of his own society and many multiples more of that where his species is concerned have been chosen for rule? The question not only matters - our prostituted and co-opted election process can no longer to be tolerated as it is - it has become determinative of the future for mankind. We find a better way to pick those who will hold in their hands the fate of the planet and its people - and the fact of that is being demonstrated to us today in no uncertain terms – or we die as a nation. We probably die as individuals, too – and by the millions.

Perhaps our choice of the current administration and congress has been a fortunate one in that regard.

There is still another consideration for mankind, likewise determinative of the future. How much longer may Homo Sapiens tolerate the pogroms and depredations of religion (a factor, let us not forget, in the elections of people like George W. Bush and William J. Clinton)? In human history, just two mental forces have been determinative sociologically - religion and science. Religiously, a fact – perception of reality - is established simply by saying so (the word, of course, of god). Scientifically, on the other hand, a fact was and is established by its opposition with reality - the palpable, tangible, testable, and effective world. Faith, opposed to experience.

It may be that Islam is the last (if enormous), gasp of reality constructed of and by written and spoken language alone. This last attack of nonsense – i.e., not of the senses – may result, in a manner similar to that of its brother and sister ideologies in decimation or worse of mankind. That makes no difference whatever to the religious (the will of god is paramount, however destructive and murderous it may prove), and the memory and thought process that is history is hard on the heels of behavior disordered by religion and self-serving ideologies group and cultural otherwise. Corporate capitalism, for instance, is the economic equivalent of evolution’s Tyrannosaurus Rex, inasmuch as its all-consuming appetites are in effect self-consuming: if it succeeds in what it desires and demands, it will have eaten itself to death.

Akin to religion and nonsensical ideological ideation is that related and having to do with “isms” like humanism, liberalism, feminism and their cancerous effect on this nation or any other like it. The metastasizing effect is best characterized with questions like these: what would, or will, happen to the United States, were its Congress to become controlled by a majority of Moslems? Of Mexicans? Will a United States of America devoid of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon cultural ideals that created it remain the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” or a government {of the people, by the people, and for the people”?

There isn’t any doubt about it – the invading cultures and their cultural ideation, ideology, religions, and attitudes are making no bones about it – we are now deciding what our country will be when our children are obliged to live in or leave it. Nevertheless, the social malady that is “political correctness” – a religion-like ideology, absolute and unquestionable – forbids examination by sociologists and social scientists otherwise of critical differences in race, culture, religion and the like. In a society and nation that must “celebrate diversity,” where everyone must be considered not only equal under the law, but where, in fact, thought on the subject has been silenced along with speech.

“Hate speech” has become the equivalent of feminism’s accusation of rape, the pointed finger sufficient to send anyone it accuses to opprobrium - and prison.

Has, incidentally, anybody wondered of late what has become of Crystal Mangum? Do we recall who she is? Don Imus, we know, is still in the news. Which offense, the false and spiteful accusation of rape, or the perceived “hate speech” was more damaging to society? And why may we not discuss either without fear of opprobrium or imprisonment – in the Land of Free Speech?

The expression is “down to brass tacks.” We get down to brass tacks, and right now – or the cycles of history, things like Islam and Hispano-Islamic culture and ideology, will be have to be repeated as they once were through what was called the Dark Ages.

I have a final and concluding observation, that having to do with yet another, “issue.” As I remarked earlier, I have posted on my website posted a tribute to the U.S. military. I have included Lieutenant Ehren Watada. I have also included a letter, one recently famous among right wing extremists who demand unconditional “support” for the troops, and impose their own definition of support, the Nazi-like (of course, few have read anything whatever of Nazi propaganda, certainly not enough to recognize in it their own utterances) mantra that any criticism of their Fuehrer commander in chief or the mission given them by him is a criticism of them – and disloyal.

The September, 2004 (I hope – which is a “disloyalty” in itself - the young author survived his deployment) letter from Lieutenant Kevin Brown, USMC, can be summarized with an excerpt, a single sentence: “You cannot both support the troops and protest their mission.”

The remainder of the letter says that to do so is to give aid and comfort to the enemy – to be, in other words, a traitor. Just as we may not question his commander in chief of his mission, we may not question the lieutenant. Or those who share his view (and posted his letter everywhere).

Conceding that few people in a nation as “dumbed down” as this one are capable of such, we may not even observe that Lieutenant Brown’s letter, replete with logical inconsistencies, fallacies, non sequitur statements and arguments from irrelevant conclusion as it is, speaks poorly of the U.S. Naval Academy from which he graduated. We may not observe what is even more obvious, that the young officer’s letter, with its message fashioned and timed as it was, is exploitable as propaganda in a manner equivalent to that of Fahrenheit 9/11, the Michael Moore movie the lieutenant’s letter condemns.

The letter concludes in a manner and with method as unmistakable as any of the television commercials with which we are hammered incessantly and with purpose just as thunderously obvious:

“Sleep well on this third anniversary of 9/11, America. Rough men are standing ready to do violence on your behalf. Many of your sons and daughters volunteered to stand watch for you. Not just rough men - the infantry, the Marine grunts, the Special Operations Forces - but lots of eighteen and nineteen year old kids, teenagers, who are far away from home, serving as drivers, supply clerks, analysts, and mechanics. They all have stories, families, and dreams. They miss you, love you, and are putting their lives on the line for you. Do not make their time here, their sacrifice, a waste. Support them, and their mission.”

Anyone who doesn’t recognize in the Lieutenant’s letter the same ideological appeals made by the propagandists of the major religions, by Soviet Socialism, by Nazism, by feminism, and a dozen more of the forms of human absolutism and intolerance that have inflicted themselves upon the human race has need of an intensive review of them all – and history. The language, to anyone who reads history, is unmistakable. And it, like the economic Tyrannosaurus Rex corporate capitalism, is self destructive.

Unfortunately, if destroys itself by eating what sustains it. That’s us.