I hope Pope Leo is wrong

Denied!

So the press, opponents of Israel and America and Trump, and all Catholics who swing left of center are no doubt dancing in the streets as Pope Leo has strongly and loudly proclaimed:

[Jesus] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them

Yep.  Take that George Washington.  Take that Founding Fathers.  Take that FDR.  Take that Eisenhower. Take that Pope Urban II.  Take that Joan of Arc.  Take that - any leader who has ever waged war in or out of the Bible.  Apparently God has ignored every prayer by these and others because - of course He does.  

He's the God of Love and Peace.  Not right or wrong.  Not defending the innocent against evil. Not justice.  Not good or bad.  Not anything really.  Just the assurance that as long as we don't wage war against evil, whatever evil does is small beans. Barney the Dinosaur never said it so well. 

Of course I'm reading into this.  It was likely just a swipe against Trump and the war against Iran. Likely without much thought about the larger, yet entirely logical, ramifications of what he just said.  A lazy, sloppy, social media era postmodern dig. Like most of our postmodern leadership and scholarship. It's true now because it jabs Trump.  It tells us what we want and owns the other guy.  Later it will be revised for obvious reasons that a modicum of historical studies will reveal.  Such is post-Truth modernity.  We won't even get into the Protestant anti-Catholic talking point that Catholics believe popes and God merely swap nameplates.  Which is why, apparently, popes can always say just what prayers God is and isn't listening to.  

Like his predecessor, I'm getting the feeling that Pope Leo will speak the words beloved of modern post-Western globalism, whether or not it stands up to common sense scrutiny, much less historical Catholicism.  Like Pope Francis, he speaks the words the modern World wants to hear.  The impact it has on the faithful, the faithless, or the Faith in general, increasingly seeming to be of little concern.  

Gratuitous proud Grandpappy moment

 Just for the sheer glee of it:

Because of the stupidly stupid memory problems with my PC, I've been more off than on recently.  But I realized it's been far too long since I posted pics of the little'uns. Owing to life, it's tough getting pictures of all the boys when they're together.   This might sound crazy, but when we do get together the emphasis is more on time together than clicking pictures.  But getting pics of the ever growing grandkids never gets old.  Especially as Mr. grandson is fast approaching his six month mark and his older sister is nearing yet another birthday! 

The things you find on the Internet

This is from a 1960s TV special The Music of Lennon and McCartney.  It can't be overstated the massive impact that those two young armature musicians and songwriters had on the music industry both now and back then.  Not only in the world of pop music, but beyond. The great Leonard Bernstein once lauded their songwriting skills as being right up with the best of classical composers.  And in the above clip, the brilliant Henry Mancini, of all people, gives us a rendition of one of L&M's earliest compositions that wowed the critics in the day - If I Fell.  One of the songs written for their first film A Hard Day's Night. 

The fun bit is that Mancini was a major influence on the Beatles' own record producer George Martin.  The one most often called the Fifth Beatle, Martin was a WW2 vet who was classically trained in music and, by his own accounts, dreamed of having a career scoring music for movies.  And one of his heroes in that regard was Henry Mancini.  In an interview I saw some years ago, he spoke of Mancini's almost unnatural ability to produce the most memorable music with so little effort. The example he gave was the theme to The Pink Panther. I mean, not until John Williams took the music world by storm with two notes meant to herald the arrival of a shark has a composer accomplished so much with so few notes.  

Fun stuff. For a bonus, that wizardly brilliant Pink Panther theme that can't be unheard for a least a day once you hear it: 

Note what is happening

I have no real opinions about the late Chavez one way or another, but could we at least wait until we find out if he was guilty? 

Go here to read one of a tidal wave of stories all but cheering the same thing.

The same is true of Les Wexner, Ohio's biggest bad boy billionaire.  Founder of that Playboy Mansion version of Woolworth, Victoria's Secret, he shockingly has been implicated in the Jeffery Epstein case.  Granted, there could be more behind Wexner's alleged activity than the accusations behind Chavez.  Nonetheless, note what is happening.  Like Chavez, there has been a push - aided by local media that clearly loves the new messaging - to have Wexner erased from various locations bearing his name.    The biggest being the Wexner Medical Center.  And as far as I know, Wexner hasn't even been charged yet.

It makes me think of the Kavanaugh hearing.  Remember when that batch of inquisition loving Leftists openly declared that we have to get over our obsession with things like presumption of innocence, burden of proof, and all that due process rubbish?  Oh, in dusty old courtrooms those might work.  But in the real world, we'll have no more of it.  

The motto of the whole 'woke' era post-liberal left is 'we judge, we hate, we condemn, we eradicate.'  They almost seem proud to execute judgement and pass out punishments before we even know if anything happened.  We saw that during the Minnesota ICE deflection.  A story would break that something happened, someone was shot, or anything, and those on the Left swarmed social media demanding the ICE officials' heads before we even knew if anything happened, much less what. 

Even when I was in college, there was still a certain amount of 'hurray for the West and the American experiment' sentiments floating about. Even if we were focusing more and more of the sins thereof. And chief among these triumphs was not only our legal system for all its flaws, but the ideals behind it.  Especially such ideals as presumption of innocent (a big one). 

So much so that I recall a CNN broadcast ages ago in which Larry King interviewed John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted fame.  Walsh, whose son Adam was brutally murdered, never held back his anger and contempt for criminals.  Which led Mr. King to sort of chastise him.  King reminded him of the common view I had heard my whole life, the view I learned in school and our greater societal pool: That these things transcend the courts and should be the basis for how we conduct our very lives.  Just like censorship starts in the heart before it ever reaches the State, so it was with all the values we were supposed to embrace.  We embrace them on principle, because it's upon those principles that our blessed way of living is based. 

Well, sorry Mr. King.  That ship sailed years ago.  Kavanaugh was the first time I heard sitting politicians, journalists and other activists (including, but not limited to, Christians) openly and proudly lecture me on the need to get over this whole innocent until proven guilty rubbish.  Apparently your culpability is based upon what group is accusing who and why.  Now it's so engrained that people don't even pretend to pretend.  In fact, people increasingly appear to resent even having to judge.  Just point a finger and execute the sentence.  Yet think on it.  If one of the most universally celebrated values of our civilization - innocent until proven guilty - can be discarded in barely a decade, imagine what other ideals we imagined had passed the 'no turning back' point in history will go the same way.  

Again,  not saying Chavez wasn't guilty. or that Wexner wasn't part of the alleged Epstein sex slave ring.  I'm just saying that it would be nice if we could put the Left's lynch mob and media pitchfork brigade on pause until we at least take steps to determine if there was actual guilt.  But I fear not. 

One by one, we're seeing the post-Western Left dismantle and knock down the pillars and assumptions, values and core ideals of the Christian Western Democratic tradition. Things most of us imagined were locked in and etched in stone no matter how far off the rails we went.  Whatever crazy happened in our society, I think we believed these core values would keep certain pillars of the West intact. Well, not so much apparently.  The staggering thing to see is how many Christians seem to have jumped on this bandwagon of bypassing evidence to execute judgement. But then, it's been shocking to see how many Christians have warmed up to this whole 'boy did we get obsessing about forgiveness all wrong' development in these post-BLM years.  Nonetheless, that's the people of God for you.  Just roll out a golden calf and then grab some popcorn. 

An update

So I was able to stop the disk storage bleeding at least.  After trying everything I found online and doing it to no avail, I just deleted the browsing history back a month.  That, at least, stopped the disk space from just draining out before my eyes and forcing me to reboot 48 times a day.

Nonetheless, it's still left me with barely 5 GBs left on the hard drive.  And that's after I deleted some long unused programs.  Now I'm to about 2 or 3 reboots a day.   Because, of course, as you use it even the meager free space must decrease so my frustrations can increase. 

Not sure where to go with it.  But at least it is semi-usable.  It appears you can add a hard drive, but that seems wonky.  There doesn't appear to be a way to make the hard drive itself (purchased with a hundred GBs seemed more than enough to fly space shuttles with) increase its space.  

But a lot it going on in life and this has already chewed up precious minutes, hours, days.  So I'll leave it for now unless anything crazy happens.  

I will note that a couple of times after rebooting, it did shoot up to almost normal free space.  But then promptly dropped over the next hour or so.  The big difference being it isn't dropping now down to zero space, at least not for a day or two.  

So there you go.  The ongoing saga of Dave' computer. Thanks for the input in the last post BTW.  It was appreciated. 

Telescoping cultural history

Internet age style.  One of the odd quirks I've noticed over the last decade or so is how so much of older culture is being forgotten, or at least devalued.  Outside of certain fanboy circles, what once was held with reverence and revered is today almost entirely irrelevant.  It isn't that I'm shocked that the 80s are now as far away as the 50s were when I was growing up.  But I'm shocked at how aware we were of the 50s culture versus how little awareness there seems to be regarding the 80s, 40s, or any other decade today.

Let me explain.  The reason why Back to the Future worked for my generation is not that we were stunned by the cultural differences that Marty McFly discovers on his way back to his parents' teen years.  It's that we knew the references very well.  We knew the music, the TV, the fashion.  We were aware of those things.  We knew who the biggies were.  We even admired some of those old icons.  We knew the movies, the stars, Elvis and the other early rock stars.  We also knew the older stars they were replacing: Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, even older Bing Crosby. We knew the TV shows, the movies.  We knew how people dressed.  And we sometimes admired and even liked their craft.

Today, when I read sites dedicated to culture, like movies, it's as if there really wasn't a film industry before 1992.  Oh sure, some will have the obligatory Chaplin movie, or Duck Soup, or The Seven Samurai.  But on the whole, you'd think if it wasn't laden with CGI or featuring the latest, hippest, it just didn't exist.  And if older movies are mentioned, there is almost an apology for the lack of sophistication, or old standard styles that existed at the time.

Which brings me to Steve Graydanus.  He's every Catholic's favorite movie critic.  And yet?  He exemplifies what I mean.  Set aside the fact that when it comes to movies influenced by American Protestantism, you can expect at least a finger wagging, if not a drop of a letter grade.  That's just the Catholic coming out.

But go to his site here, and see what he praises, what he doesn't, and what he doesn't even mention, which to me represents everything I'm noticing.  Movies like The Godfather, Gone With the Wind*, Cool Hand Luke, Cape Fear, Psycho, and The Sting - movies considered revolutionary, influential, or among the greatest ever made, aren't even mentioned.  You might say it's because his is a family guide site, and those aren't family.  Yet he has R rated movies (see The Silence of the Lambs).  Why not these?

When he does rate classics, such as Snow White or Stage Coach, he often injects slights at them for various era based distinctives, or seems to say 'nothing special, but an A for reputation', even if he ends up praising  the overall films for reasons his review doesn't reflect.  Or he dismisses them outright.  Yet he gives a B- to The Phantom Menace.  A B+ to The Lego Movie!  Are you kidding me?  Sure it was cute, but Lawrence of Arabia gets an A-, while the Lego Movie gets a B+?

It's as if the Internet age has changed things.  Changed what we accept as good, quality, acceptable, unacceptable, classic, legend.  Sometimes it's as if things that once were the "Essentials" have suddenly been tossed on the trash heap.  What was once legend is now antique at best.  Once the medal standard is now a forgotten footnote.  I don't know why. I don't even have a theory.

I just know that when my friends and I watched 1933 King Kong, in the post-Star Wars era, we thought it was awesome.  We got that it was old, the special effect weren't up to Star Wars.  We got that the acting was different than modern acting.  We hadn't been influenced by Multi-cultural PC enough to look for racism and bigotry in every frame of every movie, but we got that it was of its time.  Unlike modern movie review sites, we wouldn't lament the special effects, acting, racism, or anything else.  We took it for its time and praised it accordingly.  And any young, budding movie critic would also have to grapple with such films, even if they didn't care for them, because they were part of the whole cinematic package.  It's noteworthy that Decent Films doesn't even review the original Kong, mentioning it only in the review of Jackson's 2005 remake, and then more or less dismissing it as uninteresting and not worth much more acknowledgement than setting up the basis for Jackson's B Graded remake. A movie that once garnered praise and adoration from critics, movie buffs, film historians, and youngsters of every generation, reduced to an afterthought.  Such is the fruits of the Internet Age.

Mr. Graydanus is not alone.  Like so many modern film critics, he seems to have little to say about anything old, unless it tickles his fancy for this or that reason.  Likewise, fanboy that he is, his respect is reserved for the latest fantasy/comic book laden stories with copious amounts of CGI.  Sure, he gives bad reviews to movies, often when they flagrantly assault a major part of the Catholic ethos.  This isn't to pick on Mr. Graydanus.  In fact, I enjoy reading his reviews, even if I disagree with many of his conclusions.  But he represents a trend that is far more common, even among older critics trying to appeal to the Internet age, than it is the exception.  Just look at the IMBD top movies list for examples.

It's post-modern, mixed with the Internet cubicles of a fragmenting generation. I owe nothing to anything greater than myself or the particular clique to which I belong. If I'm a movie reviewer, and don't care about or want to look at a given movie, then so be it. And woe betide anything other than a small handful of old offerings that fail to measure up to the awesomeness of Now (compare his C rating for the delightful 1977 The Hobbit animated movie with his B level rating for Jackson's 2012 cinematic version - what was better in Jackson's other than the use of CGI?).  Back in the day, a movie critic who didn't include The Godfather would be like a Revolutionary War historian who had nothing to say about Washington.  But not today.  What that says about the greater trends of our post-modern Internet age, I don't know.  But I'm 100% convinced it says something, and eventually will say it loudly.

*It's worth noting that Decent Films has few reviews of the greatest movies from 1939, considered for almost all time as the Greatest Year in Movies.  Including Gone With the Wind.  Again, it says much, IMHO.

NOTE:  This is an old post from about a decade or so ago.  This was well before Deacon Greydanus banned me the first time, when we used to get on well even when we disagreed.  So this was not some slap at him over his clear swing to the Left of center.  This was when we got along, and he sometimes would admit I made a good point or two, even when we disagreed.  It just came up with a slew of visits, and I found it interesting.  Especially as I pondered how he did exemplify many of those old 'postmodern' traits, well before his shift left. I wondered if there might be a connection, somehow postmodernity being a gateway drug to the left of center so to speak.  Perhaps that's the loud statement I was expecting.  

A little difficulty responding

Or posting or doing anything on my PC for now.  Windows updated earlier this week, and we all know what that means.  Something is bound to go goofy.   In this case, almost all disk storage is kaput.  Well, not at first.  At first when the PC reboots, it has about a GB of storage left.  Then it goes back to normal.  And then, like my savings account, you can watch it drop within about a handful of minutes until the inevitable warning sign of 'not enough memory' pops up.  At which point I reboot and, if fast enough, check a few things and emails and get a post like this out before it all starts over.  Hopefully something will fix it soon, but that's about it.  Already I can see the GBs have dropped since I started this post, so again, when it's back to normal (sooner the better), I'll be able to get caught up with comments.  In the meantime, take care and thanks for visiting. 

So what was that Corporatism post about

What more and more young people see

It came to mind this last Christmas when we realized we were out of tags for last minute wrapping.  So I went out to the stores, knowing it was a long shot.  No doubt this happened to us late Christmas eve, right?  No.  It was a few days before Christmas Eve.  So why the trouble?  Because, just as stores begin putting up the first Christmas paraphernalia before football season properly begins each year, so they begin taking down their Christmas paraphernalia sooner and sooner just the same.

The first time I saw this was way back in the late 90s when we were still living in Louisville.  Being me, I had a few last minute things to get.  It was 1998 I believe, when our second son had been born.  I went out to buy what I needed and noticed that the stores were already packing up.  As one who had made a life long habit of shopping late on Christmas Eve, that was the first time I recalled seeing the decorations being removed in force before Christmas proper.

Over the years, it has crept slowly on. Sometimes there might be a rebound.  Some years it might seem closer to Christmas Eve that they are removing things, only to see the following year be even earlier. Of course putting up Christmas decorations ridiculously early isn't anything new.  The 1974 It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown addresses that very thing. 

But the symbolism of tearing things down, even as - from a traditional Christian perspective - the holiday has yet to formally begin, seems to me symbolic of the problem with our modern corporate structure.  In the days of consumerism or commercialism, corporations at least had to pretend they cared.  Oh your average person of even limited intelligence could guess it was always about the money.  But commercial enterprises had to put on a good show.  They had to entice.  To sell.  To put up a good front. To occasionally pander to the wishes of the all important consumer. 

But today?  Not really.  They don't even pretend to care.  In the old days, they had to put on a good face and act like it was important to appease the consumer.  The customer, as they used to say, was always right.  But today?  Nowhere close.  And I fear it isn't just the trappings of a Christmas holiday that is on the block.  It's anything really, and not even apologizing or trying to excuse. It's just 'we do it to make billions, so suck on it.'  Whether it be the consumers, the employees, the national well-being, the common weal, it matters not.  

I had to go to a local auto parts store recently.  I stood in line for over half an hour because there was only one guy working in the whole store.  He apologized to everyone as we made our way to the register.  Then someone in front of me asked him why he was alone.  Apparently they just cut staff and hours.  Not that they're hurting.  I looked it up and nothing about the company tanking or anything.  In fact, it has had a financial turnaround.  Apparently, that includes closing stores and cutting staff and hours to save money, at least for the uppers.   Does it hurt the customer experience?  Sure.  Does it decrease the quality of service? You bet. Does the corporation appear to care?  No more than it does putting on airs about Christmas time any longer than financially needed, no matter what people might want. You might say it obviously is no big deal.  The company in question has seen a financial turnaround, so apparently the consumer isn't bothered.  Or in our neck of the woods, there aren't many alternatives.   

Yet that's the big thing I see.  On the short term, it does appear corporations can almost flip everyone the bird today and people just keep coming back for more.  But what of longer term consequences?  Conservatives are running around with their hair on fire as poll after survey after study finds more and more youngsters up and coming are at least open to the possibility of socialism, Marxism or even by name communism!  How can this be?  How can they be so stupid?

Because of this.  Somewhere along the line corporations found a way to game the system; an out from the old 'it leads to competition and innovation and creates wealth' paradigm.  Giving less for more, lowering quality, slashing quantity, and all while shellacking the consumer and frequently screwing over their own employees willy-nilly makes it somewhat easy to explain the average younger person's skepticism about the bountiful blessings of the private sector and that all important Capitalism experience.  

In fact, I also hear a lot of people harp on your Gen-Z types as being lazy and entitled and having no loyalty to their employers. But that door swings both ways.  As I said here, what used to be the season for Christmas bonuses and office parties has become, in many sectors, when employees cower down with targets on their backs.  And seniority doesn't cut it.  A fellow I talked to a few years ago said that in many companies today, seniority and experience make you feel like a prime target. After all, ditch you and a couple others, consolidate your positions, and hire some newbie for a fraction of the cost.  But doesn't that cause a glitch in quality and harm the potential consumer?  See 'pack up Jingle Bells whatever the shmuck consumer base thinks' above. 

One of the reasons we have Trump is best described by my oldest son:  Trump is the wrong answer to all the right questions.  And those questions involve a growing segment of the population feeling that things are getting worse, not better; that more and more are being left behind; that fewer in our younger generations have hope for the future - and worse than anything, our leadership and institutions including, but not limited to, corporate America don't seem to care.  In fact, until 2016, it increasingly appeared that they didn't even have to pretend to care.  Which is why, as my one son likes to say, the biggest booster for communism today is corporate America.  Will it change since the era of Donald Trump?  Perhaps.  But it better change, or the unthinkable for so many of us older folks will become the acceptable option going forth for the younger ones. 

An armchair quarterback generation

Captain Hunnicutt.  Note the red suspenders

I can't find a video of it.  Appearing in the final season (which some call MASH's Repentance Tour), the episode  I'll be referring to has a two-fold story line.  One, a light hearted story, is how a false rumor that Marilyn Monroe will visit the 4077th MASH gets out of hand.  

The other storyline, much more serious, involves BJ Hunnicutt.  His character was a replacement for the character Trapper John when actor Wayne Rogers left the show.  Over the course of the series, BJ changed from a light hearted, witty, family friendly companion of  Alan Alda's Hawkeye Pierce, to a more dour, cynical and at times caustic character.   

In this episode, he and a chopper pilot abscond with a helicopter to find the best fishing in the area.  On the way, they see a hapless American soldier on the ground, being set upon by the enemy.  They try to go down to rescue him, but the enemy is near.  BJ insists they try again, so they fly low and throw him a rope.  The soldier grabs it and begins to climb.  Just then, gunfire rings out and hits the helicopter.  The pilot yells to cut the rope, they're hit, the engine is damaged, and the soldier is too heavy.  Being a doctor back then and sworn to protect life, BJ objects, but has to cut it, watching in horror as the young solder plunges back down into the enemy surrounded countryside. 

Through the rest of the episode, intermixed with the lighter Monroe storyline, BJ frantically calls and searches everywhere to find out what might have happened to the solider in question.  He calls aid stations, evac hospitals, other MASH units.  He even travels to one when he is told a patient there matches the description, only to be shattered when he finds out it isn't him.  To make matters worse, he finds out he has been nominated for a medal for what he is torn up about doing. 

Toward the end of the episode, Hawkeye tries to console him.  He tells BJ he did what he had to do.  Had he not cut that rope, he might have gotten that medal posthumously.  BJ fires back that thanks to his own selfish decision, someone is going to get a medal posthumously.  Hawkeye then admits he would have cut the rope had he been in BJ's situation.  At that point BJ snaps  He tells Hawkeye that he doesn't have a damn clue what he would or wouldn't do, and he hopes to God he never finds out.  And then he says this: 

“We sit around here in our Hawaiian shirts and red suspenders thumbing our noses at the Army, drinking home-brewed gin and flouting authority at every turn, and feeling oh-so-superior to those military fools who kill each other, and oh-so-self-righteous when we clean up after them. Well, good luck to you, pal. I hope you can keep it up. The minute I cut that rope, that made me a soldier."

In that one speech, he defines the entire modern era and its approach to - everything.  An era defined, let's be honest, by spending most of our time sitting in the comfort our forebears built for us, criticizing, complaining, condemning, mocking, and spitting on anyone and everyone, anything and everything, and especially the heroes - especially old dead sinful heroes who built what we are letting be destroyed.  A generation, I'm afraid, that would rather tear down the heroes than confront the villains of today.  

This all came to my mind when I saw this some time ago:

Now, I'll admit I've cooled to Karl Keating's musings over the years. As a Protestant Clergy Convert (PCC), he loomed large in the writings I was pointed to, and I was often glad of that.  But in recent years, I can't put my finger on why, I find him less edifying than in the olden crazy days of our entrance into the Church.

Victor David Hanson is a historian I sometimes enjoy, though I admit he can go historian shock jock, especially on social media.  Nonetheless he obviously has noticed something I've been observing for some time.  It's something my oldest noticed way back in his undergrad days.  He noticed that many called young conservative today would embrace things and accept things, ideals and values and lifestyles that would make a Woodstock hippy blush.  And that includes accepting many leftwing appraisals about the West and its unique evils in the world, including the evils of the good old USA. 

What Hanson is doing is heading off at the pass the growing tendency of even conservatives to accept these premises.  Including the conspiracy theory that the allies orchestrated the war – which is becoming more common to the Left of center.  Remember, even Pope Francis alluded to the old ‘We could have bombed a few rail lines and ended the Holocaust, but of course we didn’t’ canard.  Which is but a part of the whole ‘WW2 as Western Capitalist Conspiracy’ theory.  You know, we could have stopped the war at any time but our lust for global conquest and big bucks from our military industrial establishment would have none of it.  That’s what Hanson is aiming at.  That we bombed civilians is old news to this up and coming generation.  Of course we did.  We orchestrated the whole war and supported the Holocaust.  Why not bomb civilians for grins and giggles? 

From that POV, there was nothing but evil in WW2 (I forget which news outlet got in trouble back in 2022 for posting that meme showing the D-Day landings photo and then saying ‘Celebrating an army of white supremacists wading ashore to fight and army of white supremacists!’).  That is what more people are learning and saying, with even some conservatives apparently joining in (see David Brooks’ rise of the Conservative Nihilism).  Yet despite Hanson's desire to address this developing problem, what does Keating do?  Sweeps in and says not so fast buster, it's the bombings and nothing but the vile bombings.  We must ever and always address the bombings.  Be gone with your noble crusade gibberish.  

But that's us I'm afraid.  Even the thought that we should see the noble crusade element of WW2 seemed to set Keating off.  No way.  No heroes to honor, no sacrifices to remember. We zero in on the bad, the failings, the scandal, the controversy, anything other than just say 'we salute them.'  Or should I say, we sit around here in our Hawaiian shirts and red suspenders thumbing our noses at anyone in history, drinking home-brewed gin and flouting their legacy at every turn, and feeling oh-so-superior to those fools of the past, and oh-so-self-righteous when we perpetually turn from every noble cause to target their failure at being as awesome as we are on the Internet. 

I've often said that if all we do is find ways to criticize or tear down our heroes, don't be shocked when we end up with so few of them.  Which might go a long way in explaining what we see today. 

Hopefully some day, as large of a task as it would be, we'll have enough people finally stand up and say what BJ said. Hopefully some day we will realize just how shallow and self-righteous and basically valueless we've become. When all we can do is compare ourselves favorably to anyone who has accomplished great things by insisting we could have done better, yet with so little evidence to show for our claims. 

Episode 6, Season 11 "Bombshells":  He can be taught