Word: heroisms
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Displaying the heroism that comes quick and easy from Herbert's stock, he emerged the most decorated enlisted man of the Korean War. Eleanor Roosevelt advised him to get out of the army and get a degree, and he did. But Herbert was restless in civilian life, and decided to get a commission and get married. His life was in the Army...
This sort of vicarious heroism repels me. What kind of person would feel no unease as he remembered his village burning to the ground? How many Vietnamese mothers felt no qualms when American bombers killed their sons? If all Vietnamese combined the best qualities of Edith Cavell, Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh, maybe their revolution would be successful enough to outweigh the individual tragedies of 1.6 million dead, at least for people--if there are any--personally untouched by the war. But however appalling they found the prospect of indefinite misrule by the United States and its Vietnamese collaborators...
...QUESTION Vietnamese heroism, which, like all heroism, will live forever. But too many of the heroes are dead for us to rejoice in them. Once more the embattled farmers' shot is heard around the world, but those who lie fertilizing their own farms will never hear the echoes...
...admiration for people who could fire hopelessly and calmly at phalanxes of B52's is not therefore less. Quite the reverse, since superhuman heroism has as little meaning to ordinary people like us as the subhumanity to which Nixon would reduce his victims. But our shame is greater. For we allowed the bureaucrats to send those phalanxes in our name...
...does not happen, Ivan's recourse is to become a dope dealer and, almost by accident, a desperado. This means of escape turns out to be a true means to an end. It kills him and it makes him famous, lets him live out his fantasies of movie heroism with childish pleasure and flamboyance until he dies, gun in hand, on a secluded beach...