Heroes?

Originally posted on Myspace on 6/11/2006. I moved it here as I’ve decided to establish a new blog home.

Do heroes have heroes? I mean the real life ones; we have all seen the various public service broadcast where some prominent sports figure or otherwise says that some ordinary person (usually a teacher) was their hero. Sports figures are not really heroes anyway. They are little more than a means of misguiding young minds towards unproductive careers.

Not everybody can be a football star; the world needs ditch diggers too and that is how they are made. A young mind is given some lofty image to aspire too and from the beginning they get set up for failure. Why do you think that Jesus is not depicted as a hero? I never saw any Jesus lunchboxes when I was in grade school. No Saturday Morning Cartoons depicting Jesus thwarting the evils of Hell or mending the ills of society. Much less I have never seen a Jesus costume on sale for Halloween, and that is a great idea for a costume! Is not the Halloween costume the ultimate expression for a kids appreciation for a hero; dressing like them and emulating them? Maybe next Halloween I will dress as either Jesus or Osama Bin Laden; not for the hero worship, I would do it for the sheer shock value.

But I digress, the reason Jesus is not a hero is because any kid knows that they could never grow up to be him. I mean come on; your dad has to be other worldly and your mom has to be a virgin. Heh, they both may as well be from another planet. . . like Krypton. Any kid though could get bitten by a radioactive spider, see their parents die at the hands of a bloodthirsty gangster or be solicited by aliens to act as law enforcement for this part of the galaxy right? You mean they cannot?

See here I go on my rationale on why Lex Luthor is my hero. He had no special circumstance surrounding his coming up in the ranks of super villainy other than he blamed Superman for his male pattern baldness. He was just a man like any other yet he was driven by internal principles to succeed. Imagine the tenacity it takes to wake up each day and say to yourself, Today is the day that I kill Superman; der Übermensch .

I recall when I was a child being raised as a fledgling mormon I was told that evil was easier to do than good, that is why there are evil people. You know what; it is damned hard being evil even for the comic strip villains. First off there is that continued trial and error especially when you know that the deck is stacked against you. Then you have issues with the Justice League, the unlimited resources of Bruce Wayne, labor and logistics, not to mention the backing of the American Military. We all know how rare sample rocks from Mars are on this planet; do you have any idea what a rock from Krypton would cost? What choice do you have but to form the Legion of Doom and take on a bunch of other freaks as co-workers?

Now let us take a look at real life Super-Villains. No I am not counting the serial killers and various thugs in American society or religious fanatics and cult leaders, they would not even make middle management in the Legion of Doom. I am not sure how the Joker got a chair in there, but we are past that conversation.

The people I am talking about Ill take from what we as Americans have been spoon fed to believe are realities villains. Most immediately that come to mind would be Osama Bin Laden, Sadam Hussein, Mullah Muhammad Omar, Fidel Castro and former Panamanian Dictator Manuel Noriega. This carries us from the present back to the 70s with the exclusion of the Ayatollah Khomeini, more on him later. But what these guys have in common is that they ruled countries with an iron fist and they came to power by a sole force, the backing of the American Military. Guess that places them firmly on the side of the Justice League then even if they did not turn into the puppet governments we had hoped for.

So then the Anti-Heroes; or as Id like to call them, the underdogs must be the people who ran counter to this modern day Justice League; the Ayatollah Khomeini, Nikita Khrushchev and the former Japanese Emperor Hirohito. Already I am seeing problems in this group. Though a formidable opponent, Hirohito remained Emperor of Japan until his death in the 80s and very much enjoyed the support and presence of the Americans Military in the 40 plus years following the end of World War Two. Khrushchev fought on the side of the Allied Armies in repelling the Nazis so he is out. I am not even going to option the Nazis considering the strong American support their party had in taking power. Then there is Khomeini whom had his convictions and ideals which helped to overthrow a government and made him a constant thorn in the side of the Justice League until his death in 1989. But that association of with the Justice League makes him like the Joker which in turn makes Hussein out to be Batman and we already know that I do not approve of the Joker having a chair in the Legion of Doom; although it does make sense to associate Hussein as Batman; darkly sociopathic and operating under his own rules to the same ends as the Justice League.

All those leaders ruled with an iron fist too. Maybe I need to start working with that quality which I found most admirable in them all; like doing what I feel is right for me and fisting the masses.

Yeah I’ll work it out.