Thread by @DavidNeiwert

I think it goes beyond simply being boring. I think the entire mythology of heroism embodied by superheroes is destroying us, culturally, ethically, and otherwise. Short thread follows.

splinternews.com/heres-a-commen…

By setting heroes up as our role models, our idealized selves, we are seizing an ethos in which the highest good is to be a hero ourselves. Look around and think about how many people you know who conceive themselves as different kinds of heroes. Especially our would-be leaders.

This happens to be acutely true of right-wing extremists. Militiamen want to heroically save us from the evil New World Order. Nativists want to save us from evil immigrants and refugees. Alt-righters want to save us from evil globalists and cultural Marxists.

I have been thinking about this for a long time, ever since I interviewed Col. James 'Bo' Gritz in the 1990s. He was supposedly the model for Rambo. Also a militia leader.

The whole assumption of the heroic mythology, FWIW, is the underlying subtext of Andrea Luka Zimmerman's wonderful documentary about Gritz:

eraseandforget.com

It really reached its apotheosis, for me, when I dove into the world of the killer Minuteman leader, Shawna Forde:

Shawna believed she was saving America from an evil brown tide that was being fueled by a nefarious New World Order.

theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/…

She constantly watched action movies. She thought she was the hero of her own action movie. She wound up shooting a 9-year-old girl in the face.

It begins when people decide they want to be heroes. One of the essential steps in the self-conception of a person as heroic is Naming the Enemy. This is the stage at which we actually manufacture enemies -- frequently out of whole cloth.

The sociologist James Aho explored all this in some depth in his study of the dynamics of far-right extremism, "This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy," which was constructed out of his data study of far-right "Christian Patriots."

amazon.com/This-Thing-Dar…

Some useful excerpts:

Moreover, as Aho observes, it's not only far-right conspiracists who conceive of themselves as heroic. I've encountered many self-described "heroes" [koffPaulWatsonkoff] in the animal-rights and environmental worlds who are in fact incredibly toxic presences in those communities.

Here's the essence of Aho's argument. Readers of #AltAmerica are aware that I make essentially the same argument in its conclusion.

FWIW, I am an old comics buff. I avidly watch these movies too. Many of them I actually enjoy. They go great with popcorn.

But I have never seen a single one of them that I thought was worth a damn thematically. The underlying message is not just garbage, it's toxic.