The West as a culture has survived 5,000 years. If one looks at the history of the West, one finds something deeply embedded in the culture of the West and that is the idea of the hero. The hero in each era of Western culture reflects that culture, but he always brings something forward with him from the cultural past of the west. The hero is the definer of the world that the people of each era saw themselves living in.
Around the year 800 B.C. when peoples from the north in Greece were invading Sparta, a man named Homer, supposedly a blind poet sang songs about a cultural past: a golden age of heroes. What he sang about was the Mycenaean civilization, the precursor to the Greece of history. The songs or epic poems were of the Trojan War, or the Iliad and the hero Odysseus’ return to Ithaca in the Odyssey.
Homer most likely was speaking of real events. After decades of archaeology, it has been known now for quite sometime a city state did sit in the area that Troy was said to have existed and it was burned during a violent conflict.
If we look at the evidence for Troy being real then Achilles, Hector, Paris, Agamemnon, Helen, Priam, Patroclus, as well as countless other names were most likely the names of real people. The heroes of the Iliad were based on actual men. If Achilles and Hector were real we have an instance of real warriors becoming not merely heroic myths, but vanguards of a civilization.
The Greeks lived in a world where individual achievement meant everything. We have Achilles having personal issues with Agamemnon. Achilles doesn’t fight for Mycenae. The concept of a nation of Mycenaeans was probably not something these warriors, who landed on the shores before Troy had ever thought of. They fought for individual glory. To prove themselves. A man’s merits were based on his own accomplishments. In this Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, was the perfect Greek hero. Partly divine, but very human. He is angry, enraged. He hates Agamemnon and this hatred is a weakness. When Hector, princely hero of Troy kills Achilles’ friend Patroclus, Achilles seeks his own revenge which has nothing to do with Mycenae or Agamemnon, but everything with the Greek idea of individual glory. The whole duel between the two men, which interestingly enough is a duel between two opposing ideas, is one of the most seminal moments in Western Literature.
When Achilles kills Hector, and proceeds to drag Hector’s body behind his chariot, it is Achilles own triumph, his own victory against Troy, because Hector represents Troy. And the hubris that Achilles shows throughout the Iliad is his own undoing. Achilles was the most human of all of the Iliad’s heroes, his heel being the symbolism of his truly human failings.
Aeneas, one of the survivors of Troy’s destruction is the hero of the Aeneid. It was written by the poet Virgil as a celebration of Roman virtues and the Roman ideal. The Greeks likely had no idea when they first heard of Troy’s gleaming towers and her great hero, Hector, that they were seeing the first beginnings of the next phase in the Classical Age, the rise of Rome. From Troy’s ashes the Eagles Rome arise, and the She Wolf howls.
Aeneas is the ideal Roman in every way. He knows he must found a new city and he leads his band, what is left of Troy’s population on this journey. He does his duty. When you see statues of Aeneas he is seen as he has been portrayed in Roman art as carrying his father, or the past on his back and leading his son, the future by the hand. Aeneas was how the Romans saw themselves. Rome survived as a culture for 1000 years because it believed in its heroes, both mythical as Aeneas and its real heroes, like Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, and countless others. Rome may have changed from a Republic to an Empire but in the end the stalwart, stoic hero was the foundation of the greatest civilization the world had ever seen at that time.
Rome and Greece both teach us a lot about who we are as Americans. One thing that the Classical civilizations teach is that cultures survive only as long as the heroes that are lionized in both the culture’s myths and in reality are celebrated. The moment the culture begins to step away from the virtues and values that the heroes represent, the culture begins its descent into the abyss.
The United States is the epiphany of Western culture and civilization. In the short time our Republic has existed we have surpassed every culture in technology and myth and reality that came before us. An eye lash of time in the frame of history and yet here we are, a nation that would awe Rome herself. It is something to be terrified at and yet one cannot help but be proud.
What we are is Rome and Greece combined. A singular nation of nations that at once celebrates the individual, the ambition to seek fame and glory for one’s self and yet the devotion to Nation is also without doubt. The peoples who appeared on North America’s shores brought their own brand of individual identity but for the most part all of that molded it all together into what the USA has become, a leader in the world and her heroes a shining light for good and liberty.
But now, our heroes and our culture and even our history is being stolen from us. Revisionists have been looting our past and rewriting our history for decades. Only now are people becoming aware of this travesty. Columbus has become a paragon of Anglo Saxon racism, at least according to some teachers and school districts. That is merely one example of the radical revisionism going on today.
All heroes in myth are based in reality. The United States has been blessed with many kinds of heroes. The cowboy who demonstrates the American ideal of rugged individualism. The gunfighter who represents the individual in a way that shows the line between lawlessness and conscience. The truth of Wyatt Earp was that he was a gunfighter, an uncouth criminal, at times a pimp and a gambler. The myth was he and his brothers cleaned Tombstone up of a criminal gang and left that gang dead in a back ally in Tombstone, Arizona. Wild Bill Hickok was a gambling, gun fighting low life, but his legend would have made Homer weep.
The GI first appeared as the Minute Man, racing to Concord Bridge to stop the British, who morphed into a Confederate or Union soldier, who morphed into a Marine helping raise the flag over Mount Suribachi during the height of the Battle for Iwo Jima, to the cigarette smoking Marine walking the streets of Fallujah, Iraq and the Navy SEAL Lieutenant and his team waiting to depart for a mission in Afghanistan. They are all the same type of brave, man whose values and courage are rock solid.
What helped make this tough, disciplined roughneck a mythical giant among heroes is the stories built around him. Robert Taylor in the film “Bataan“, howling defiance at the oncoming Japanese at the end, John Wayne as Sergeant Striker in “The Sands of Iwo Jima“. This was not propaganda. The actors portrayed the American serviceman as he truly was. Not some robotic automaton, but a man who thought for himself, who displayed that inherent individualism but who always stood up for his country when duty called. There is more truth in Robert Taylor’s performance in “Bataan” and John Wayne’s tough Marine about who we are than we can ever imagine.
Now though it appears that a real and manufactured apathy has consumed the United States. In a country that produced men like George Patton and Johnny Finn (hero of Pearl Harbor and CMH recipient), we have begun this slow descent into a cultural abyss. For lack of the continuing heroic image, we have been forced to watch the anti-hero like most of Al Pacino’s characters take over where John Wayne once towered. Instead of a proud man protecting his own and his country, we are treated to a man whose own narcissism and lack of moral clarity drives a nihilistic vision of the world.
I look at the 90’s as being the real moment when America lost her heroes. We were offered films like the decrepit and rotten comment on society, American Beauty. Instead of a Casablanca, we get The English Patient. No visions of values that Americans hold dear, no fighting real corruption, instead an apathetic sense of its no use and there is nothing worth fighting for foisted upon an unsuspecting public disguised cynically as a new trend or style. In essence the cultural elites have forced boredom among the masses and painted it as smart commentary.
We have been seeing these revisions, this dumbing down, this disturbing apathy growing and even in the midst of determination after the events of 9-11, that apathy was still there. It is now back in full force and in fact a forced march backward to the decade of the 90‘s. The decade that R. Emmett Tyrell so succinctly observed was “..Our decade away from history“. Its as if the people we elected to power want to turn time backwards. Disguise or lie about the past. Do whatever is necessary to divert our attention and accept the pessimistic and bleak view of the world they hold.
I call these people “cultural revisionists”. They have infiltrated our schools, our media and our arts. Hollywood has been one of the chief instigators in this revising of the American identity. Kevin Spacey’s ludicrous portrayal of the bored suburbanite father in American Beauty is more evocative of the people who made that piece of cultural debris than a statement of suburban life in America. It was an attempt at manufactured apathy and it was in my mind the perfect example of that manufactured apathy.
The cultural revisionists, the people who have made manufactured apathy an art form, have tried to take George Washington down. They have tried to mute and dilute the likes of Thomas Jefferson in the spirit of truth telling. They have portrayed men like George Patton as raving lunatics, omitting his intelligence, his courage and facts. They have taken the GI and turned him into either a drugged out psychopath or a doubtful coward. They have taken the central truths of who these men are and replaced them with unsympathetic caricatures or a small weak and ineffectual caricature. There are no brazen images, no independent thought besides self loathing or moments of personality deficiencies. None of it is the truth.
The great lie they tell us is that they are seeking truth, when what they are doing is creating their version of the truth. Omitting facts to sell the American people a lie. They do not want to celebrate America or her successes. The reasons are varied amongst these cultural manipulators but they all sell a hollow, vapid lie.
An American hero is a man of bold colors. Determined, and strong. He stands in the way of a problem and sometimes that problem is the establishment. America without her heroes which highlight her own boldness is a nation with no rudder: A lost soul. After years of this black hole of indifference and outright contempt by the media and the cultural elites Americans are finally catching on.
It is interesting to note that Vince Flynn, author of the Mitch Rapp series of books has seen his star rising on the literary scene while the publishing world suffers. Why? A simple answer suffices. Americans want their heroes. We inherently know who we are, and Flynn created a character that fills the void. A nation denied its opportunity to celebrate the likes of Congressional Medal of Honor winner Michael Murphy US Navy SEAL, KIA Afghanistan 2005, and others is dying to have her real identity reflected back at her. Rapp is that identity.
Real or mythological heroes fulfill a need that people have to validate their existence. When you read a chapter in one of Flynn’s books where Rapp says the thing we all want to say to the politician who has been standing in the way of getting a job done, or tells a petty pencil pushing bureaucrat where to go and how to get there, we cheer. When Rapp saves someone from being killed by a terrorist and then proceeds to issue swift justice to the terrorist, we cheer. Why? Because we see every value we live by celebrated. Our meritocracy, our sense of honor, our black and white way of looking at issues, and our independence is displayed in Mitch Rapp. In other words, everything good about America is there. These books reflect a truth about America that only fiction could reflect.
Rapp comes from that long line of heroes that came of age thousands of years ago on the battle fields before Troy. Every mythological hero has a basis in reality. And that hero is the corner stone of the culture he represents. It’s a beautiful and tragic symphony that has played over and over again from Achilles and his dual with Hector, to Aeneas taking up his duty to found a new Troy, to Beowulf and his struggle with the Dragon and now to Rapp.
The hero’s struggle never changes and that is the red thread that connects Rapp to the rest of the heroes that have filled Western Culture since Mycenae.. It is our mythological heroes that remind us of what is important, of a way of being, and give us a bar to reach, a truth to cling to, like his real brothers whom he is based on.
