June 7,2004

Whose Hero Are You?

Today there is the feeling of mourning, en masse as American Newscasters reveal in dazzling testimonials the story of the life and death of Ronald Reagan the 40th President of the United States. Thousands of Americans will file past his coffin, and what is Heroic in Americana will be celebrated. Today, all other potential news of human interest disappears in the wasteland of not a priority. Now the headlines read Reagan Reagan Reagan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Gaza Strip. Gas Prices, west coast fires, corperate scandals.

America needs to remember her heroes, though I know that some would question whose hero R was. Clearly because he was able to live so long, looking as good as he did, to his "mommy" Nancy his beloved, Ronnie was her Hero.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I'm wondering about those who can't claim him though, the one's who've become the under class, marginalized without a clue as to how they got there. Will they care about what he might have done right, in spite of what they don't say about what he did wrong?

Yeah, America needs a hero in the 21st century but instead, we keep getting idols.

I remember when we were so afraid of what would happen when the "new" millennium came to be. So many envisioned the end of the world especially "True Believers" I was friends with some of those folks, who believed that all you had to do was charge up your credit card and kiss your future good bye.

 They were right when you think about it. The first year of the "new millennium" was the end of the world, as we had previously known it and we were so unprepared to deal with the fact that so much was truly out of our control.

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What's sad is that no one took the warning signs seriously about that huge mind altering disaster in September of 2001. I saw Bin Laden's interview on 60 minutes (I think- it was one of the network TV magazines) months before the buildings were toppled, where he said that America had better watch out. He warned us then, and as I watched this sound byte on my TV screen I said out loud is anyone listening to this, someone's gotta be paying attention to this. I'm just a dumb civilian and I knew that this brazen threat was no joke.

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Yeah, America needs a hero or two, but truly we need a hero who's alive.

For some reason I've been thinking a lot about that movie Road Warrior and Tina Turner's "We don't need anotherHero, we don't need to find a way home." The movie was quite a symbol for what happens when folks become resigned to accepting the worst of human behaviors as normal. In this end of "civilized life as we know it" there was corruption involving fuel, reckless boys driving extreme vehicles, subjugation of the marginalized and Thunderdome the futuristic down and dirty version of current underground "fight clubs" and the WWW's Smack Down. These days don't seem all that far removed from Thunderdome. We've gone from simulated war games for entertainment and a moment of downsizing military spending, to "Shock and Awe."

WMD's more lethal than the last generation's threat are not necessarily relegated to the dominion of War though. Star Wars may not even stop them. Nature will make sure of that.

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Now the makers of mass media images of life imitating art are blurring the fine line between rational and irrational behaviors amongst everyday people. Reality TV would have you believe that no one has substance here and Stepford is the true Soul of America.

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Yeah America needs a hero or two.

A nation that has unleashed what is savage from within, must not detach from its Soul. Heroes help with that keeping connecting, like Oprah, if you aren't prejudiced against the whole "talk show" circuit thing. Even though she's living large, she still embodies the message that individual and collective responsibility creates change in the body personal and the body politic. The choice is in our hands regarding whether the change is positive or not.  Creative responsibility keeps us connected to our SOUL.

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Yeah America needs a hero or two and they don't really have to be millionaires, though in some cases money can change everything. The truth is that the Heroes are out there, we just take them for granted. We are so myopic sometimes that we truly miss the little things that make one heroic.

One of my heroes is a lady who lives down the street.Once a month she picks up all the garbage in the neighborhood.  She walks up and down the five blocks in front of her house with her recycled grocery bags picking up refuse and there isn't a sign up saying that she's adopted the street. She's not a youngster either; she's someone's grandmamma.

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Yeah America needs a hero, someone we can reach out and trust/touch/trust/touch.

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Linda Joy Burke

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