Posted by
dolfinwriter on Saturday, March 17, 2007 4:54:38 AM
It’s been a tough week at work and at home—Lots of meetings and not much time for getting work done.
But I did notice that Marvel Entertainment has killed Captain America, and my mind has been kicking this around ever since.
Some people might say “So what?” He’s just a comic book character, and in real life, he would be 80 or 90 years old by now.
To me, it’s symbolic of something much more important happening to our country.
I liked Captain America as childhood comic book heroes go, but he wasn’t my favorite. Superman was my favorite. He grew up in Smallville, Kansas, and my own Kansas hometown was very much like Smallville.
But on another level, Superman wasn’t human. He was an alien, and he was invulnerable. It was easy for him to be gallant—seemingly nothing could touch him, let alone hurt him. Yet, he was ultimately willing to give his life to defend this planet. In that sense, I believe he represented everything that is good and decent about America, and about the American soldier. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Coast Guard have not once but twice defeated a German war machine bent on world conquest, saved much of the world from fascism, defeated expansionist Communism, and continue to find themselves fighting across the globe, defending not just America’s interests, but keeping the peace, running drug interdiction operations, and both delivering and protecting humanitarian relief efforts after disasters such as the 2004 Tsunami.
Captain America was endowed with super-human strength and an amazing shield, but he was still human. He knew he could be killed any time he fought. In that sense, he was probably more like the American soldier than Superman.
The death of Captain America represents to me the death of a spirit that united this country in a gargantuan effort to defeat the Japanese Empire and the Nazi war machine while continuing to supply our allies fighting by our side, and then to face down the Soviet Union and the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) for nearly 50 years.
Sadly, I’ve said before, though maybe not here, that if we had to fight WWII today, we would lose. We would not lose because our military is not up to it. No other nation in the world can match us today in our ability to quickly and massively project our military strength to the furthest corners of the globe, and if somehow there arose of a massive alliance of rogue nations against us (“Axis of Evil” + Russia + China?), we could quickly mobilize and ramp up production of the necessary equipment to fight such a war. Furthermore, just one of our Trident missile submarines could in about 30 minutes render an area the size of Central and South America uninhabitable for 150 years.
What is lacking today is the will to “…win through to absolute victory”.
The news media today has tried almost desperately to paint the American soldier with the same brush from the Vietnam conflict—that of “baby killer.” Many people I know will deny this charge. But I have one question for them—How many stories have we seen on the bravery and courage of our soldiers in facing down some of the most barbaric and evil people that the human race has ever produced, compared to how many stories we have seen on Abu Ghraib and Haditha? How many stories have we seen on the building of hospitals, schools, roads, sanitation facilities, power plants, and saving and transforming children’s lives with modern miracle surgeries that were not available in Saddam’s Iraq? We have a U.S. Congressman condemning and convicting the marines of the Haditha incident, even before they were formally charged. This man is a former marine officer, and I think that makes his words all the more disgraceful.
I’ve heard some say that it’s just politics, a Democrat/Republican thing. I disagree. I think it’s all about the irrational and pathological hatred of George W. Bush, tracing back to the November 2000 election where he was accused of “stealing” the election. If people were able to study that event with an impartial mind, they would learn that when the Supreme Court determined Bush the winner, it was Al Gore demanding recounts and seeking to exclude votes such as military absentee ballots, so that HE would be declared the winner. There was a great fuss made about the fact that Al Gore actually got more votes and thus won the popular vote.
These claims illustrate only one thing—a willingness to exploit widespread domestic and global ignorance of how our Electoral College System works. Presidents John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in 1888 all defeated opponents who actually got more popular votes. Our Electoral College system is unique in the world, but similar to the systems in countries like India, Germany, and Israel. This explains why much of the world does not understand how George Bush became President even though Al Gore had more votes.
(NOTE: Today’s Democrats would do well to remember that at the time of the 1824 election, the U.S. had basically a single party system after the Federalist party dissolved in shame due to its condemnation of James Madison in the War of 1812.)
So maybe they’re right—it is all about Dems vs. the GOP. Whatever... The point of the thing is, it illustrates a nation divided rather than a united national fighting spirit.
9/11 was this generation’s Pearl Harbor, but it was not the first time that Islamic fanatics have attacked this country. Yeah, we saw Democrats and Republicans standing together on the Capital steps, but that lasted for about two days. In the long run, 9/11 has failed to unite us in “our righteous might” to “win through to absolute victory” against this new barbaric and evil enemy. I think many of the founding fathers, as well as Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and JFK would be moved to tears of sadness at what BOTH major parties have become at a time when our nation and civilization itself is in peril.
So maybe Captain America really is dead.