It Matters Who We Pick As Our Heroes
I am currently reading a biography of John Wayne, the movie actor. For me and many other boys growing up in the mid-20th century, he was the epitome of what being an American was.
Even to a city kid, the cowboy as portrayed by Wayne was our ideal. To the screen version of Wayne, there was no doubt what being a man was all about. Marion (Duke) Morrison, Wayne’s actual name grew up poor mostly in Glendale, California. He entered USC on a football scholarship but ultimately lost it due to a broken collarbone.
Morrison began taking jobs as a prop and stunt man in the silent film era. His early career as a movie actor was making quickie westerns. For a decade, he worked on these forgettable films that took only a few days until director John Ford gave him the lead in Stagecoach. That is when a star and legend were born.
Wayne exuded that era’s vision of American masculinity. While a rock rib conservative Republican, he was known to converse with liberal Democrats. They were his costars, employees, and friends.
For the past 50 years, America has embraced a caricature of manliness. Faux toughness and being a bully have substituted for character. It culminated in the election of Trump. The guy never had a job, born rich and privileged, didn’t worry about paying the rent, or buying shoes for his kids. He is the kind of tough guy that probably never had a fight himself.
You can see it in who Trump admires. His admiration is for strongmen Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping, but mostly Vladimir Putin. John McCain was ridiculed by Trump as a loser for being captured in Vietnam. McCain endured years of torture and pain while Trump bailed on service because of “bone spurs.”
Braggadocio is not the same as real toughness. The secret to being a real macho man is to take responsibility. To do things that need to be done even when you would rather not. It is a call to duty whether when your nation asks or just living by a standard that will not let you shirk your duties and responsibilities in everyday life.
Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, wrote a piece about the war in Ukraine. He contrasted the swaggering Putin to the determination of Volodymir Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president. So far, the unassuming Zelenskyy has done a good job in countering the boisterous Putin. Clearly, Putin is the aggressor in this grab for Ukrainian territory that Russia believes should be theirs.
Though compared to Churchill, Zelenskyy reminds me more of the determined small rancher being threatened and pushed by the cattle baron in countless westerns. The guy that loves his land and isn’t about to be intimidated or thrown off it. The small guy’s secret weapon is that he knows he has right on his side. In the end, it is not might makes right but rather right makes might.
America has clearly lost sight of the John Wayne ethos of quiet determination and embraced the one of the selfish cattle baron. In Wayne’s last movie, he plays an aging gunfighter. When explaining his character’s code of ethics, he says; “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”
I always believed those words summed up America’s philosophy. That is until some of us would rather have a demagogue as leader. What a difference between Teddy Roosevelt’s “Walk softly and carry a big stick” and Trump’s admonition “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. I’ll pay the legal fees,” Duke Wayne’s rancher or the Trump land grabbing cattle baron…who would you rather have as your American hero?
