There's been a lot of hullaballo (so to speak) over some words spoken by Chris Hayes on his show "Up with Chris Hayes" concerning the use of the word "hero" with regard to those serving in our military. Near as I can tell, Hayes was trying to make the point that we use the word hero perhaps too frequently in terms of the military, and this feeds our too frequent marches to war. He also admits he might be mistaken.
It seems to me much of the charade of anger on the right is because of the god-awful treatment of Vietnam vets upon their return home--there's a lot of retrograde guilt on all sides for what happened, and the right, being good at exploiting, is well, exploiting this to keep the military-industrial complex humming along. This does not mean that Hayes is wrong. Nor does it mean that our service men should be vilified. But in truth, one could make the case that the guy (or gal) going to work each day and paying the taxes that helps support our defense is, in his own way, a hero as well. It also begs the question why we as a nation refuse to give equal praise to those who seek peace.
But in the end, the biggest problem is that it makes it that much harder for another type of hero, a truth teller if you will, to convince the American people that spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined is a travesty, and the good that could be accomplished with the excess of money spent on defense. And that maybe, just maybe, we all might be a lot better off if we concentrated on peace first and more weapons second.
Peace,
emaycee
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