Comic book faggots turn Captain America into a villain, media tries to destroy Chris Kyle's legacy. Can't boys and men just have heroes?
— Georgia On My Mind (@MyMindOnGeorgia) May 26, 2016
To his critics, Kyle is a serial fable-weaver at best who is quoted in multiple news outlets…lying about shooting looters during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans and about killing two carjackers in 2010 in a Dallas news magazine…. “The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?” asks Lindy West in [a] 2015 article in the The Guardian. Kyle’s supporters, including former Texas Governor Rick Perry, have blasted media outlets that have raised questions about Kyle’s record…. “This article is part of a disturbing trend in the left-leaning press to undermine the heroism of men and women who are willing to risk their lives in the defense of our nation’s freedom,” Perry wrote of the online magazine The Intercept article that first revealed Kyle’s medal discrepancy.
Even after his unfortunate and untimely murder, Chris Kyle continues to be a polarizing figure. While I don’t believe any reasonable person would deny that he was- among many things- a hero, he was also a complex and complicated person. We now know, was also prone to inflating his service record. The reasons for this dishonesty went Kyle took to his grave, but it does appear the solider lionized (practically canonized) by Conservatives had some significant integrity issues- not that his supporters are willing to acknowledge the truth that their hero is tarnished.
To some, questioning Kyle is tantamount to declaring in no uncertain terms that you hate America. To this school of Conservative myth-making, Kyle is a true American patriot, a saint who sacrificed much to serve the land he loved. While I honor his service and recognize that in many respects his record was exemplary, I do question how we define “hero”…and I wonder what should be done when a “hero” turns out to be all too human and something other than what he portrayed himself to be. As I wrote back in January, 2015,
Kyle is hardly the only Conservative hero/American soldier to become famous. Marcus Luttrell, who wrote “Lone Survivor” (later also turned into a movie) wrote openly of his disdain for Liberals, as if we were somehow “less than.” I haven’t read Kyle’s book (I couldn’t bear to finish Luttrell’s poorly-written screed), and I have no particular desire to. Someone who enjoys killing and hates foreigners is not the sort of person I’d choose to consider a hero.
Kyle served his country and met an untimely death at home, and that’s unfortunate for the wife and family he left behind. No matter how I try, though, I fail to understand how Conservatives can ignore the complexities and moral ambiguities of Kyle’s nature and service. Killing is what happens in war; that’s the nature of the beast. The problems begin when a soldier begins to enjoy taking lives. When you begin to enjoy killing, where do you draw the line? Do you draw a line? When do you pass from soldier to murderer?
So what’s to be done when someone we consider a hero is revealed posthumously to be, like many other fallible humans, prone to puffing themselves and their accomplishments into something dishonest and inaccurate? Does that lack of integrity make him less of a hero? In Kyle’s case, his dishonesty contributed to the myth-making surrounding his military career, and helped to make his book and the movie it was turned into cult classics- war porn, for lack of a better term. Conservatives needed someone they could hold up as a True American Hero ©…and Chris Kyle certainly came practically straight out of central casting to play the role the myth makers on the Far Right were convinced he was born to play.
There’s little doubt but that in many, perhaps most, respects Kyle served ably and well, doing a difficult and dangerous job that arguably saved many American lives. Here’s my question, though: Does doing one’s job under difficult circumstances make one heroic? While I’m not about to denigrate and/or dismiss his service, I don’t believe it justifies Kyle being just short of beatified as an American saint and Hero of the Cause ©.
Conservatives turned Chris Kyle into a mythic figure, and the virulence of their reaction to the news of his dishonesty and lack of integrity only demonstrates how tightly they cling to their artificially created heros. They love them some war porn, and discovering the truth doesn’t mesh with their patriotic fantasies has proven to be more than they can process.
Anyone who talks badly about Chris Kyle or veterans like him are nothing but trash who don't deserve to breath the air they fought for.
— Todd Swoope (@ToddSwoope) May 26, 2016
Regardless of which side of the ideological fence you happen to call home, or how you feel about Chris Kyle, the fact is that he greatly embellished his service record, a record that help to construct the myth surrounding him.
Of course, Hell hath no fury like that directed at anyone who gets between a committed Conservative and their mythology.
I have no problem getting behind someone who’s a legitimate hero, someone who actions HONESTLY went above and beyond the call of duty. There’s no lack of that in today’s military. We don’t need to construct a dishonest partisan mythology around someone known to egregiously inflated his accomplishments. As I wrote in May,
Conservatives constructed a false mythology around Kyle after his unfortunate death at the hands of a fellow veteran he was mentoring. The Far Right’s addiction to “war porn” fed the rush to canonize Kyle as a True American Hero. That it was an exercise in self-interested revisionist history designed to support the prevailing propaganda was beside the point. Conservatives believed the mythology to be true; ergo, Kyle was a selfless hero and brave Defender of the Faith.
This mythological construct became inviolable and beyond reproach (Goebbels’ Big Lie theory writ large). God help anyone who dared to question the “official” beatific version of Kyle’s story.
This is by no means intended to belittle Chris Kyle, who sacrificed much for his country and returned from war a profoundly damaged human being trying to make his way as best he could. He was killed while trying to help a fellow vet, and he should be remembered kindly. My beef isn’t with Kyle, though his dishonesty is troubling. No, my problem is with Conservatives who elevated Kyle onto a pedestal as a Hero of the Cause © and refuse to accept or process the news that their inamorata was deeply flawed and dishonest. Their addiction to war porn and a wholly fictional Amerika uber Alles fantasy dishonors the memory and service of the man they’ve canonized.
War isn’t a black-and-white proposition. War is a terrible, awful, horrific undertaking which often calls on those who take part in its butchery to live in morally ambiguous gray areas. It’s not Good vs. Evil or Right vs. Wrong; when you get down to it, war is about, in the words of Gen. George S. Patton, “making the other dumb son of a bitch die for his country.”
I reject former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s characterization: I’m in no way “part of a disturbing trend in the left-leaning press to undermine the heroism of men and women who are willing to risk their lives in the defense of our nation’s freedom.” I have no desire to undermine anyone or to question their heroism. I just want to inhabit a landscape carpeted with facts and honesty. I want to know that what and/or whom we’re honoring is the truth, not some contrived Right-wing mythology/war porn/masturbatory bloodthirsty fantasy that’s been fabricated in order to advance someone’s agenda.
Or perhaps Kyle’s mistake, as I wrote last month, was that he didn’t lie enough?
Should you ever find yourself struggling to define “moral bankruptcy,” you’d do well to consider Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who’s making the argument with no sense of irony that Chris Kyle DIDN’T LIE ENOUGH.
In conventional Conservative mythology, the veracity of a story matters far less than the question of whether sheeple can be convinced that it’s the unvarnished truth. “Truth” is not about what actually is or was, not what someone actually said or did. It’s about what the American sheeple are willing to believe to be true. Belief CREATES truth. History? Well, that’s just so many confusing details.
You can be forgiven if the above sounds as if it’s straight out of Josef Goebbel’s Propaganda 101…because it might as well be.
Given the mythology and the wholly fabricated aspects of Kyle’s record, I think Americans (yes, even those of us who might be described as “left-leaning”) deserve the truth. We’ve already devoted far too much attention and adulation to the “war porn” version of Chris Kyle. Now we know that he inflated his service record (what we don’t know, of course, is whether that was deliberate and calculated or merely something-close-to-honest oversight), it’s no stretch to believe that this isn’t the end of Kyle’s dishonesty and lack of integrity.
The person I feel sorry for is Kyle’s wife, who deserves better. She lost a husband and partner and is now seeing his reputation, honesty, and service record questioned, though metaphorical mortal wounds to Kyle’s legacy are self-inflicted. That said, she benefitted materially from her husband’s dishonesty, and I find myself wondering what she might have known about the veracity of the mythology surrounding his service. DID she know, and if so, WHEN did she know it?
A very wise person once told me that if you start by telling the truth, you’ll never have to worry about making certain your story holds up. Would that Chris Kyle had just told the truth…and that the Conservatives who wish to beatify him as an American saint could be honest enough to admit their error.
Like that’s going to happen….
