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The Dangers of Hero Worship
Before I moved to Hilton Head, I practiced for 20 years in a small town in the mountains of east Tennessee. I loved it there. Everybody knew everybody, the schools and churches were wonderful, and it was a great place to raise my kids. It had a cute little downtown (pictured at right), with cute little shops on each side of the road, and a traffic circle with a war monument in the middle. Like every other small town in America. Lovely.
One day when I left the office on my way home, I pulled out right behind a big green military truck, which was going maybe 25 miles per hour. I grumbled as I followed for nearly a mile through town. When we got to downtown, the military truck pulled off to the side, revealing a roadblock and lots of cops right at the entrance to downtown. One of the cops walked up to my window and greeted me warmly:
Cop: “Hey, doc! Great to see you!”
Me: “Great to see you too! How have you been?”
Cop: “Doing pretty well, thanks. Hard to believe it’s been almost 6 months since Mom died. She thought the world of you, by the way. We all really appreciate everything you did for her.”
Me: “It was an honor.”
Cop: “I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking care of my Mom. My whole family loves you for everything you did.”
This reminds me of one of the downsides of being the doctor in a small town. Everybody knows exactly who you are, but you can’t remember the names of several thousand people.
So we continued for a while, having a very odd conversation, in which he was reliving the step-by-step details of a medical case which I couldn’t remember, involving a patient he didn’t name, from a disease I couldn’t recall.
Eventually, I changed the subject and motioned toward the roadblock.
Me: “So, what’s going on?”
Cop: “Oh, yeah. The 167th is getting back from Afghanistan today. We’re having a parade for them. Didn’t you see it in the paper?”
Me: “Ah. I missed the story in the paper. I’m glad they’re coming home. Ok, no problem. I’ll just turn around, and go across the other bridge. No sweat.”
Cop: “Oh, no doc – they don’t get here for another half an hour! You can just pull right through!” He starts motioning to the cops up by the barricade.
Me: “No, really, it won’t take but two minutes to just swing down past the piano string factory. No trouble at all, really!”
By this time, the cop was purposefully striding away from my car, toward the cops at the barricade, and yelling at them in his thick Tennessee drawl.
Cop: “Hey, guys! Get that barricade open – on the double! This here’s Doc Bastiat! Very important man! Let him through!”
Me: “No, really…”
Cop: “Don’t you worry about a thing, Doc, I’ll get this straightened out for you right away. You just pull right on through. Have a good day, sir. And thanks again for helping my Mom.”
They moved the barricade aside, and there was really nothing for me to do but pull through. As I started to pull through, I saw the high school marching band in the furniture store parking lot, and lots and lots of people on both sides of the street, all the way down to the monument.
As soon as the barricade opened, the marching band started playing patriotic music, and all those people started to cheer. Everyone was waving American flags and crowding closer to the street, to see the returning heroes. As I drove through town at 10mph, I saw little kids on their mother’s shoulders holding signs, saying “Welcome Home Heroes!” and things like that. I thought, yes, I’m going home. Thank you for recognizing my heroic deeds.
Actually, no. I didn’t think that. All I could think was that I wanted to just disappear. I was getting a hero’s welcome, when all I was was just some guy driving home from work. I’ve never felt so inadequate. As I drove through town, I slipped lower and lower in my seat, trying to hide beneath my steering wheel. Those cheering kids were probably wondering what the big deal was about some middle-aged guy in a 20-year-old Mercury sedan.
I’ve never felt more inadequate in my life. In retrospect, it’s funny. But at the time, it was horrifying.
I worry about people who don’t share my revulsion toward inappropriate praise.
Here in Hilton Head, there is a pharmacy nearby that has a sign out front saying, “Heroes work here!” I guess they’re trying to ride the wave of popularity of those who help treat COVID, even if they’re just giving vaccines all day. I don’t understand. You work in a pharmacy. Then you go home. It’s called doing your job.
Soon after the parade, I shared my story with a couple of my patients who were in the military unit that was honored that day. A couple of the National Guard troops who returned on the day of my humiliation. Interestingly, they were also uncomfortable with all the fanfare. One guy said, “I went over there, I did my job, I came home. There were heroes over there, but I wasn’t one of them. I fixed trucks.”
Me: “Well, yeah, but the trucks needed to be fixed, right?”
Him: “Dang right. Especially after those yo-yos drive them. You just can’t imagine. But again, that’s my job.”
I told him that I understand. “Now, step aside while I heroically fix your blood pressure.” We had a good laugh, sort of understanding one another.
Don’t get me wrong. I greatly admire those who do their jobs. Whatever they are. But when you call a pharmacy tech (or a doctor, or a mechanic) a hero, and they respond, “Yes, yes, thank you very much…” that makes me uneasy.
I wonder if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris ever look out over those cheering, adoring crowds, and wonder, “Why are they cheering?”
In Joe Biden’s case, he made no sacrifices to get to this point. All he did was enrich his entire family with corrupt money for decades, waiting for his turn at the presidency. Granted, Kamala Harris made significant sacrifices to get where she is (*cough* Willie Brown *cough*), but still, it’s not quite the same as working in a war zone for several months.
This is a problem on the right as well, but much less so. We don’t idolize our leaders the way the left does. Even Reagan was heavily criticized by many on the right throughout his entire political career. Because conservatives wanted something done, and they didn’t care quite as much who did it. Heck, conservatives even tolerated Donald Trump for the most part. We didn’t like him as a person, but he did a good job. So fine. He’s not my hero. I’m just hiring him to do a job.
But the left has always been susceptible to the cult of personality of its leaders. Which predictably leads to flawed leaders.
The type of people who would have smiled and waved to the crowd, as they drove through the downtown parade route. Accepting the praise that they knew they didn’t deserve.
To me, that is evidence of a serious personality flaw.
And a lot of leftist leaders have that personality flaw. Because leftist voters select it, over and over again.
So we get Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. And Fidel Castro, and Adolf Hitler, and Hugo Chavez, and Kim Jong Un.
They’re not worthy of such hero worship. And they know it. And they don’t care.
Or worse yet, they think they are worthy of it. That’s when things go really wrong, really quickly.
Having been on the receiving end of such inappropriate praise, I don’t understand those who relish it.
I don’t understand them. But I do fear them.
What I really don’t understand is leftist voters, who don’t fear them.
They’re creating monsters. Over and over again.
Published in General
I suppose that since Leftists have largely discarded religious belief (Karl Marx: “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.”), they have glommed onto “heroes” such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as a substitute.
They have, indeed, “created monsters”.
Until I became an ER nurse, I saved more lives as a teenaged lifeguard than I ever did in my “heroic” jobs: Army officer and cop. How many swimming pools have “Heroes Work Here” signs?
My military “career” was eight years in the reserves and National Guard. I still feel uncomfortable when people thank me for my service. Yea, I did a great job supervising training and maintenance on WWII vintage antiaircraft guns.
Even the lives I’ve “saved” as a nurse have been a group effort. I recognized a problem, called a code, started treatment, and the cavalry arrived.
I’ve still done more than Kamala and Mumblin’ Joe.
Last summer I drove through a neighborhood that I normally don’t. A house had a sign in the yard, “Heroes live here”. I wondered if the couple was so egotistical that they installed the sign themselves or did a neighbor put it up.
After Benghazi, why would anyone think of Hillary as a hero?
As have most decent people.
Or maybe an exercise in sarcasm.
Because they still believe her story.
Now, just a d*mn minute…After all, she was under fire in Bosnia. If she hadn’t pulled that grenade pin with her teeth and heaved it into that sniper’s nest, who knows what might have happened? /S
cavalry != Calvary.
Ooops! You definitely wouldn’t want Calvary to arrive.
It’s been eating at me for a while. The opposite of a Two Minutes Hate is what they seek to be able to command. Exemplars are few and far between.
Amen. In something like 16 years active and reserve, I drove a desk probably 90% of the time. I have to remind myself that it is better that they do this than how it was after Viet Nam. But still don’t have a comfortable response. “You’re welcome” doesn’t seem appropriate, somehow.
I’ve heard some use “It was my privilege” or similar.
Boy, you’ve really hit on one of my hubby’s pet peeves. Last year the local evening news would salute all the “heroes” every day – grocery workers, meat packers, etc, in addition to the doctors and nurses. He’d say they’re just doing their damn jobs, they’re not heroes. What, if you’re a doc or a nurse you never expected to have to treat sick people? Like all the kids who had joined the army, got sent to Iraq, then were complaining that they had to go to war. Duh.
I appreciate everyone’s efforts but the word hero should be used rarely.
Yup, me too. And sometimes the parade was actually for me/my unit. Still hated it. Really hated it. Can’t I just go home and have some of my wife’s spinach manicotti?
Out of all the myriad of awards and decorations that are out there, there is only one that is for conduct “above and beyond the call of duty.” A significant percentage of those are awarded posthumously.
American recognition of valor is, I think, unique. Just do your job, whatever the conditions. Don’t take scalps, or count coup, or challenge the other side’s champion to single combat. Just. Do. Your. Damn. Job.
No matter what.
I rather like that perspective.
Well I pulled a jumper from a bridge railing. I did what I was trained to do, nothing more, and nothing less. That did not bring me any fanfare, and I didn’t want any. To paraphrase the song from Rob Long’s Cheers, sometimes it is better to be in a place where no one knows your name.
I totally agree with your perspective. I wonder if some of this hero treatment stuff is a backlash to our longstanding tradition of treating movie stars and top athletes as heroes?
You forgot Mao!!!!! Mao loved a good parade!!!!
The constant “COVID hero” talk came about because the Left was embarrassed and scrambling to look relevant again after people pointed out how annoyed everyone was seeing, for instance, Madonna supposedly trying to comfort us by singing to us as she soaked in her luxurious bathtub .
They (the left) realized their celebrity thing had gone over like a led balloon. (What’s a mother—-laid off from a job that certainly wasn’t “non-essential” to her family’s income; worried about how she’s going to feed her kids, never mind educate them; unable to let her kids see their friends—-supposed to think of Madonna sitting in a nice, relaxing bath? For once, we were laughing at the statements of the stars, as we always should be.) So they (the left) set about to greatly outdo remarks made on the right—-remarks made to the effect that ordinary people doing their jobs, under the circumstances, were much more heartening and infinitely more helpful than movie stars from their mansions telling us how much they were suffering with us, and how much we were all in this together. So the Left started calling different ordinary people “heroes” all the time.
Naturally, that morphed into the left saying that different groups of “heroes” should get more pay etc. But it all started just with people realizing that, under the circumstances of the lockdown, celebrities giving us their canned empathy suddenly looked useless, pretentious and out of touch.
I do too. I wear my Navy Veteran tee shirt every Veterans Day, but I never eat out that day because I’m afraid someone will pay for my meal. I’m also afraid when the waitress tells me someone else paid for my meal, I’ll slap myself on the forehead and say, “Dammit, I shoulda ordered the lobster!”
Mr AZ usually wears his ship’s cap when we’re out and he does get a lot of ‘thank you for your service’ comments. And there’s not a lot of fanfare. He does say ‘thank you for honoring it’. But we do get in conversation with other old guys who have interesting stories. These old sailors do like to share their stories. The recognition is almost always in the context of sharing a common interest.
Not only sailors, but it’s fun to swap stories with guys in the other branches. One of my cousins flew F-15s, then switched to A-10s. Flies for UPS now, probably not as much fun . . .
Mr. TreeRat,
I share your anxiety. I rode a desk, as well, during my military service. I finally resolved my discomfort by telling myself that the people who were thanking me wanted or needed to thank someone, and I was representing others who actually deserved the thanks. As I was representing real heros, I needed to be gracious, in acknowledging their need to thank someone. I was playing a role and must be a good ambassador.
Regards, Walter
Look at it this way: You didn’t know that you would be safely behind a desk most of the time. Those who serve go where they are sent, and they may be sent into harms way.
My son drives a desk for the Air Force (he has noted that his branch is sometimes referred to as the Chair Force) as an officer in an engineering role. It is unlikely that he will see combat action, but we and he (and his wife) know that combat action is a possibility. At his commissioning ceremony eleven years ago, the commissioning officer made sure to emphasize that.
My neighbors, active military and civilian, were attacked at their desks and conference tables in the Pentagon on 9/11. A husband and a father of three left a conference room that was completely and instantly destroyed three minutes before the attack. Friends crawled blind down smoke filled stairwells to safety. When I worked in Crystal City an armed man forced his way past security and we were in lockdown until he was tracked down and dealt with. Coworkers of mine at the DC Navy Yard were cut down as they left the cafeteria where they just had lunch. Just because you weren’t at Normandy or Da Nang doesn’t mean you weren’t in harm’s way.
Just giving the benefit of the doubt…maybe they mean the broader, community, meaning of “here.” Like “Heroes live in this community.” Maybe? Like I said, benefit of the doubt. Otherwise it is awfully egotistical.
I suspect they think they deserve it.
re those of you who felt your support roles in the military weren’t as deserving of thanks for your service, that is a humble reaction from good people; however, it takes the whole team to have a team. All military service has risks. When I was in Germany in early 1980s, there was a cute young announcer on the Armed Services TV news. He was killed heading to cover a story when an “eggbeater” had engine trouble and crashed near Frankfurt. Supply troops convoying in Iraq were killed or captured after taking a wrong turn. Military moves are hardships for your family. Spouses can’t keep jobs and children can’t keep friends. All the jobs are hard. That is why so few volunteer. Those thanking you know that.
There was a study during the “surge” back in W’s day that showed that there were more serious injuries and fatalities occurring in state-side training than there were overseas. Vehicles collide, aircraft crash, and fail-safes don’t. Putting on the green duds every day involves more risk than flipping burgers. If I know that then any idiot can, and we idiots are appreciative.
It does take a team. A team motivated by the will of the nation. I don’t like and am a little embarrassed by the “Thank you for your service.”
Best response, and the one that I use, always (not a Mongo original, but I forget where I got it):
“Thank you for being worth it.”