Pedestal Problem

I forget the first time I heard the warning about putting anyone on a pedestal - that the only direction they could go from the perch was down - but I remember feeling surprised by my ignorance. The more idealized we make someone, the greater the fall.  We sometimes want to forget about our clay feet because their banality doesn't lift us up. The same goes for those we admire. Admitting they are human derails our fantasy.  To stretch the current vernacular - keeping it real, keeps it real.

In his recent NYTimes essay titled "An Empty Regard," author William Deresiewicz presents a reflection on the over-sentimentalized regard we Americans have for our soldiers. It is a concept I have long considered but have just as quickly dismissed it.  Mr.  Deresiewicz offers a clear, well thought out position about what he calls the 'the cult of the uniform.'  He sees the unnecessary positioning of those in uniform onto a pedestal as dangerous and goes deeper into how we Americans could be better citizens. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/americas-sentimental-regard-for-the-military.html

From the outset, Mr. Deresiewicz is crystal clear. "There is no question that our troops are courageous and selfless.  They expose themselves to inconceivable dangers under conditions of enormous hardship and fight because they want to keep our country safe."  What the author challenges is a film of hyper-reverence by Americans who place those in uniform on a platform almost without question.

As we near the tenth anniversary of the events of 9/11/01, it is worth taking an unemotional look at how we view our military.  Mr. Deresiewicz  believes in the discourse of questioning and choosing transparency that makes the truth visible.  "Pieties are ways to settle arguments before they begin," he writes. If we worship it, then there is no reason to question it.  It seems we are overfeeding a national need to cling to a belief that we haven't been knocked off our patriotic pedestal.


Like most Americans, I recall the enormous outpouring of patriotic symbols after 9/11. Our psyche was mortally wounded. We raced to our flags and waved them with vigor. My daughter and her friend made and sold patriotic pins shortly after September 11 donating the proceeds to a fund to help victims' families. Americans united viscerally and sprung into action at all levels.


Traveling back from Pakistan in late October 2001, "Three Cups of Tea" author Greg Mortensen recalls the conversation with his wife as he describes the visual impact upon emerging from US Customs in Denver. He writes:

"It was Halloween. Walking through a forest of American flags that had sprouted from every surface, adorning every doorway and hanging from every arch, he wondered if the explosion of red, white, and blue meant he hadn't arrived on a different holiday."What's up Tara? It looks like the Fourth of July here.  'Welcome to the new America, sweetie,' she said."

Was it the new America?  Our wounds were fresh then but ten years later, do we demand a narrow patriotic view still? Mr. Deresiewicz notes, "The cult of the uniform began with the call to 'support our troops' during the Iraq war. The slogan played on a justified collective desire to avoid repeating the mistake of the Vietnam era, when hatred of the conflict spilled into hostility toward the people who were fighting it." I grew up during the Vietnam War.  While my immediate family had no sons drafted into that conflict, my strong memories are of a country deeply divided over it.  The returning soldiers were unwitting victims of this violent national rift.  

My daughter's recent high school summer reading included "Letters from Vietnam." Her remarks about this compilation of soldiers' letters home included surprise at their youth and shock at the horrors they witnessed.  Imagine their return to an ungrateful nation.

It does not surprise me that years later, in 2003, President Bush's premature swagger under a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln answered our immediate need to be victorious, but its ultimate untimeliness and naivete served no one in the long run. Traditional symbols of victory did not add up this time and yet dissent was not tolerated.  Americans who questioned the post 9/11 burst of patriotism were summarily silenced. Comedian Bill Maher's comments regarding cowardice and the terrorists resulted in the cancellation of his show aptly named, Politically Incorrect. 

What to do?
"It seems little doubt that our armed forces today are more professional, and at the small-unit level, at least, more effective, than they were in Vietnam," Deresiewicz states.  Yet fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan continues.   Deresiewicz notes, "At the very least, our generals ought surely to come in for some criticism as they did when it was appropriate in other wars.  Yet the cult of the uniform has immunized them from blame, and inoculates the rest of us from thought."   


The term "hero" also receives attention by the essayist, noting, "Perhaps no word in public life has been more thoroughly debased by overuse."  He cites the skewed accounts of Jessica Lynch's rescue and Pat Tillman's death as examples of a duplicitous, overreaching by government and military leaders to manufacture heroes or heroic fiction and bury the truth to feed a nation of hungry patriots. 


"The irony is that our soldiers are the last people who are likely to call themselves heroes and are apparently very uncomfortable with this kind of talk," the author notes.  "The military understands itself as a group endeavor."  Maintaining a balance of appropriate praise and persistent questioning removes us from a juvenile posture and empowers us as citizens.  Deresiewicz adds, "It was wrong to demonize our service members in Vietnam; to canonize them now is wrong as well. Both distortions make us forget that what they are are human beings."  It is this kernel in the author's argument that resounds most for me. 

We need to stop looking to Daddy for the fix.  We need to look inside ourselves for strength and be better citizens instead of citizen cheerleaders.  Deresiewicz adds, "What we really need are citizens, who refuse to infantilize themselves with the talk of heroes and put their shoulders to the public wheel instead." Military families have their shoulders to the wheel.  We must continue to honor their sacrifices with constructive citizenship that looks unflinchingly into the eyes of a country at war.  There is no room or need for pedestals here.

William Deresiewicz is an essayist, critic, and the author of "Solitude  and Leadership," an address delivered at West Point in 2009 and widely taught in the armed forces.