Heroes and Villains, Patriots and Puppets
This is in response to all the posts I have seen where (insert blank) is a hero.
Part of the problem is that very few of the people are actually full blown heroes and villains of any sort. A lot of what people become depends on the choices they are given, and the circumstances that affect them, a lot of which they have NO control over. Does this excuse bad behavior?, absolutely not. It does mean that whatever control we do have in our lives comes only at the cost of analyzing everything about ourselves, especially the things that we take for granted.
Obama is someone who walked into the White House with some assumptions, like Clinton's famous line "there is nothign wrong with America that cannot be fixed with what is right in America." Unfortunately, his kept these assumptions, so that when Wall Street, the Pentagon, and the NSA came calling, he really believed that he could control them and set them right. Of course, they laughed because he was one more dupe who thought that America would not do things like other countries do. No, Clinton would not have done any better, because she would have thought she could keep Wall Street and the War Machine under control, forgetting that, despite all the WWE style Kabuki Theatre, the powers that be got most of what they wanted from her husband, and, just as they were set for Obama, so would they be set for her.
The point is that if we look for Heroes and Villains, we will miss the point. We need to keep an idea of who we are, minus the vanity that, if WE had the guns, we would be heroes. That is the trope our entertainment feeds us, although the better artworks turn that around. We do not need to look for heroes, as most people who do the things that matter are simply people whose illusions break, and who realize that illusion cannot work anymore. Snowden, at his best, is an example of such. If the lies that our enemies use will break, it will not be just because of some hero, or some moment, it will be bit by bit, where we as a mass, and as individuals, break a thousand little cracks that bring the wall down. Anything less willmean that those whose job it is to repair the illusion just sit back and wait with the reapir plan they have before any hero or heroine even steps near the office.