Heroes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCt0x98Y2SY

As a boy I grew up imagining that characters portrayed in comics were heroes. Dan Dare was there to protect the Earth from the Mekon, Roy of the Rovers was a hero on the football pitch and then along came the Marvel superheroes like Superman and Marvel man. Almost exclusively the heroes were men and they were there to inspire. I guess they did and like the newspapers, they manipulated those young minds.

So what is a hero?  I think that we can all recognise real acts of heroism; a fire fighter risking his own life to rescue someone from a burning building for example but there are many uses of the word hero that seem much overused and out of place.   Let me be controversial and take the armed services. Mostly people go into the services as a career move and a way to see the world. Some may go in wanting to kill other people, but there are psychopaths in all walks of life.  Today most troops who are sent to fight do so in middle eastern countries defending the interests of big business and yet whilst everything is done to keep them safe, some do get killed. Does being killed defending oil interests make someone a hero?

The propaganda machines in 1913 and in 1939 convinced many young men to enlist in the forces and go to war defending the interests of the rich, and later in both campaigns huge numbers were conscripted and had no choice in meeting the butchery that they were led to. Wars are inevitably futile and the carnage on both sides serves to make rich people even wealthier. 

Conscientious objectors who refused to go along with things were branded as cowards and imprisoned or shot, they suffered and died for their convictions, maybe they were heroes.  

Women who became the Suffragettes refused to endure the status quo any longer and made personal sacrifices in order to bring about change. Maybe that is an act of heroism.  

When I see footage of football teams returning after a successful campaign being referred to as heroes, or even those who have been maimed in action; serving not their country but those who own it; I cannot see them as real heroes at all. The former are overblown, overvalued athletes while the latter are just victims of propaganda.