Wonderful Dementia

There were many feelings that rushed forward after I saw an op-ed from my alma mater's daily newspaper featured on Drudge. All of them required me to take a deep breath as I read the piece, entitled "Pat Tillman is not a hero: He got what was coming to him"

When the death of Pat Tillman occurred, I turned to my friend who was watching the news with me and said, "How much you want to bet they start talking about him as a 'hero' in about two hours?" Of course, my friend did not want to make that bet. He'd lose. In this self-critical incapable nation, nothing but a knee-jerk "He's a hero" response is to be expected.

Sadly, this was written by a doctoral student in political science -- someone who should be able to write arguments in more complexity than this. When Pat Tillman died, I knew that there would be that chorus of "He's a hero" repeated by many. But I also suspected we'd hear its inverse from an equally single-minded group: "He's not a hero." Congratulations go to writer Rene Gonzalez for being as predictable as the uncritical simpletons he tries to skewer. If this is the kind of lazy thinking and muddled logic our graduate schools are turning out, then perhaps Gonzalez is right about America being in trouble.