“We no longer glorify heroic deeds, we glorify heroic suffering.” — Greg Cochran
Yup. To be a member of a “victimized” class (women, Blacks, LGBTOSHTFU, etc.) is the sine qua non of modern heroism. But the holder of a Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross? War criminal.
All of which reminds me: it’s Range Day at this address.
According to the new standards for heroism I should be a hero several thousand times. But I ain’t.
Is there a day when it isn’t range day at the duToit household?
The SJW fixation on victimization and heroic suffering has stripped us of two things. First, real role models and real people of genuine accomplishment. Where are the Neil Armstrongs? Where are the Winston Churchills and Ronald Reagans? Where are the Nicola Teslas and Thomas Edisons (Steve Jobs being probably the closest we’ve seen in decades)? Where are the Milton Friedmans? Hard to be a person of significance if your philosophy demands everyone continually navel gaze due to how they’ve been victimized or how they have oppressed.
Second, is our culture’s ability to dream big dreams. It wasn’t all that long ago that a President challenged us to put a man on the moon in 10 years. Since then, no President has challenged anyone to anything of significance that we have risen up and accomplished. One can’t dream big dreams if one’s philosophy demands that before big dreams can be even considered, we must chase ghosts until we can insure the outcomes for all 7.5 billion of us.
What do these people even dream anyway? Besides, the assassination of President Trump, these people don’t dream much of substance. They chase after the Climate Change phantasm, but even there the goals are either laughably absurd (e.g. the Green New Deal) or they are laughably ineffective (e.g. the Paris Climate Treaty). They chase after notions of inequality as if it is even remotely practical to insure all outcomes for 7.5 billion people of wildly varying abilities. They pursue a legislative agenda that is at best redundant (e.g. how does one make discrimination in pay based on gender more illegal-er?). They gut the arts by creating utterly banal characters (e.g. Star Wars and Marvel) and by creating art that can only glorify the disgusting, macabre, or sacrilegious. The raise offense to the greatest sin one can commit, and then make it a competition who can be the most offended by ordinary speech. In essence, they’ve become people so entirely defined by their misery that they’re like Atreyu’s horse in Neverending Story.
The result is miserable people dreaming mediocre dreams.
*clap-clap-clap*
IOW, Leftists are never happy unless they have something to complain about; i.e.; they can’t be happy unless they are unhappy.
The real irony is that they never work to fix the so-called problem themselves, but expect someone else to labor and pay for their fix.
My word, that’s true. The MOH and VC have always been awarded for exceptional valor and self-sacrifice…but they used to be awarded for exceptional feats of arms, too. We’ve forgotten about that.
And if you don’t recognize those feats, you’ll get a lot fewer of them.