Destroying our heroes -- William Lehman on Captain America, a Guest Post

After my little piece on Steve Rogers going Hydra agent from forever ago, (because you know, that makes such perfect sense), William Lehman wanted to take a crack at it, too.

For those of you who may not recall Mister Lehman, he made a brief appearance in Sad Puppies Bite Back. He's also one of the folks I work with over at Otherwhere Gazette, and he's the author of Harvest of Evil, and the upcoming sequel, Keeping the Faith, which I've had the honor of reading for review (it'll come up after the book hits on Amazon).

The really short version is he's a former navy man (submarines) and has been reading SF since forever. And I'd like to thank him for putting this much thought into a guest post.

Enjoy.

Destroying our heroes

So now, I’m told that Steve Rogers is, and always was, a Nazi. Ya know, in the great circus that is life, such a little thing as this, and compared to a possible war with China, the disaster that this presidential election is, a Submarine nuclear missile capable North Korea, a president that's selling our country down the unsanitary estuary, the trials and tribulations of my own life etc. et al. This is really a little thing, should not bother me, but it does.

I quit reading comic books in fourth grade or so (that would have been in the 1970s) so it's truly only of academic and theoretical interest... But it still pisses me off, and way more than it should.

The thing is this: we (and by we, I mean society and specifically you rat bastard self-designated keepers of society's values, IE the media) have gone about utterly destroying anything like a good role model, first:

By destroying any dead man's legacy, if they were the sorts of role models that existed in the era prior to 1970, which could be found.

Then by making sure that everyone knows the failings and falling short of any living man who might step up to be a hero.

Now because that isn't enough, we're going to destroy any FICTIONAL character that may be considered a role model!

Then we (again that societal we) will sit around and wring our hands at how the criminal element is so strong, the men are brutes, the women are sluts, drug addiction and crime in the streets etc etc etc.

The author of this particular bit of buggery says: “We knew it would be like slapping people in the face," confessed Brevoort. "The idea of Captain America means something very primal and very strong to the people of this nation, and they have a very visceral reaction when you get to something like that. You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.” OK so he admits that he’s trying to piss off his audience…

Now I am aware that there is a certain section of the artistic community that feels that if they’re not offending and shocking their audience, they’re not making “art”. As an aside, I note that this same set of Avant Guard morons can’t figure out why they aren’t making any money, and write it off to “the fools just can’t understand my work”. This mind set has however, no place in Comic books for pity’s sake!

I can’t say that I’ll make the coffers of Marvel any smaller by boycotting their work, because as I mentioned, the last time I bought a comic book it was with lawn mowing money. Still, I think this goes to damn far.

Further I see this as part of a grand conspiracy. Now, hold on, before you tell me my tin foil hat is too tight, I’m not saying that the members of this conspiracy ACTIVELY conspired, each and every one of them, to tear apart the values of the nation. It’s not that simple. What I am saying is that the news headquarters for all the major news networks, newspaper conglomerates, publishers, etc (the self-designated arbiters of culture) are clustered in two relatively small areas (I’m talking 40 miles square or so each) and they all know and party with each other. They all go to the same schools, send their children and protégés to the same schools, and have a “group think”.

We saw our first evidence of that group think back in 1968, when someone that I had admired, and as the child that I was then, believed, told me that the Tet offensive was a horrible defeat, and we had lost Vietnam. I was raised thinking that Walter Cronkite was “the most honest man on TV”, so when he says we got our butt kicked in ‘Nam, well of course I and my family believed him. As we know now, that was bullshit. The Tet was a massive disaster militarily for the NVA, and in fact we never again faced them on the field of battle. The Tet should have been their Collodion Fields. It wasn’t, because after we destroyed over half their troops on the field, in exchange for casualties that were damn light in comparison we allowed ourselves to be told we had lost the battle and the war.

It was shortly after that, we started seeing the rise of the “anti-hero” in the media, and on the screen, and we started reading articles about how Audi Murphy was an alcoholic and general dirt-bag, Babe Ruth was an alcoholic womanizing racist, Captain O’Kane and Adm Burke where genocidal, etc…

Oh I’m sure that there’s no one guy sitting back in a room somewhere orchestrating this stuff (though if I had to list a suspect, George Soros leaps immediately to mind) No it’s more of a group think thing, done by conversations at dinner parties, and over drinks. It’s created by contempt for the masses of this country that live in what these folks dismissively call “fly over country”.

It’s an attempt to “fundamentally change” America (now where have I heard that before?) And now that they’ve destroyed all the living and dead heroes that they can, they’re going after those that exist only in our imaginations, because in spite of everything they’ve done to date, there are still those that cling to their values of honesty, loyalty, patriotism, liberty etc… and these things are anathema to the left.

There seems to be this idea that if we can just get the kids early enough, we’ll have achieved our goal of making the nation over in our image. So suddenly we get dark and brooding superman, who wonders if saving the nation and the whole “Truth, Liberty and the American way” thing is right after all. And we get THIS SHIT, a Captain America who’s secretly a Hydra agent. (of course all of his story to date would indicate that he’s the WORST secret agent in history, as he’s foiled more plots by Hydra, and stopped more global domination schemes by them than Michael Moore has eaten cheeseburgers) I say ENOUGH. These clods have not only declared a social-political war for the heart of America, they’ve decided to use my children and grandchildren as pawns in the fight.

Folks it’s time to fight back. Fight with your wallet, fight with your stories and tales of heroism and bravery, and if it comes to it, fight with that fourth box we really don’t want to break open.