An Armchair Quarterback Generation

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts has an absolutely fascinating post:

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. 

Go here to comment.  Much of what is wrong about the modern world can be summed up as a flight from responsibility and a contempt for those who do take responsibility if they are not perfection incarnate, or as TS Eliot said:  “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”