Thank You, Heroes

We finally have a sign acknowledging the heroism of essential workers in our society.

Sign installed on our lawn.

Heroism is a concept that's very appropriate, in my mind, for many of the workers who are risking their own well-being for the sake of others in this terrible pandemic. The medical professionals who risk their own health in order to help sick people come to mind most readily, but many others are also working in dangerous conditions. Whether their prime motive is altruism or just making a living and providing for their families, I see an element of heroism in what they are doing.

Sadly, some of their sacrifice is needed as the result of poor leadership and greedy business practices that started long before the emergency. Our federal government could have decreased the high number of infected people by taking action earlier, making the work of governors like ours (Michigan) more effective. For years, American industrial practices, notably in meat packing plants, could have been regulated to be more humane to workers, but it's too late now. That doesn't diminish the heroic actions by workers!

Another of the many signs in our neighborhood

Heroism has fascinated writers throughout the ages, elevating self-sacrificing behavior through literary admiration. While wartime heroics are more often cited, many writers have seen a broader picture. Take for example this quote from Henry David Thoreau, upon seeing a "panorama" which would be a large painting shown in some sort of temporary exposition:

"I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff, - still thinking more of the future than of the past or present, - I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Walking," THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. VOL. IX.-JUNE, 1862.-NO. LVI., p. 664-665. (https://www.walden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Walking-1.pdf)

Or consider these often-quoted lines from Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo:

Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes!…
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.

Finally, a quote that applies to the self-designated heroes (with or without guns) pressuring for reckless reopening of inessential businesses and recreations:

"The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives." -- Salman Rushdie, quoted in Der Spiegel, Aug. 28, 2006

Or as Joe Biden says:

"President Trump's ... goal is as obvious as it is craven: He hopes to split the country into dueling camps, casting Democrats as doomsayers hoping to keep America grounded and Republicans as freedom fighters trying to liberate the economy." (Washington Post, May 11, 2020)

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