MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS

Hopalong Cassidy, Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry

These cowpersons had many things in common, not the least of which was they were the good guys and they always got the better of the bad guys. In the end, good triumphed over evil. Some current examples in the movies are the invincible Denzel Washington in The Equalizer, Liam Neeson in Taken, Keanu Reeves in John Wick, and everybody in The Expendables. Sadly, this is not always the case. More often today our movies are more "realistic," and we find our heroes, like Liam Neeson, getting punched out by almost every bad guy in A Walk Among the Tombstones. Liam prevailed in the end, but it was rough going to get there. Then, of course, we have the movies where the stars don’t even make it to the credits, (spoiler alert) Fury and American Sniper. For the most part, we are leaving the Hopalong genre and are, more often than not, living in the reality of good not always winning.

Recently it struck me how much I missed a prevailing good. I don't want my hero to be successful some of the time, I want him or her to be successful all of the time. If they are not successful, and evil triumphs, I might as well be watching the evening news. But life is messy; it's complicated; it's not black and white. Good is subjective. If I put MMA champ John Jones in the cage with Peewee Herman, it's good for John, not so good for the Peewee.

I guess a big part of not always having good triumphing in our lives is we seem to have lost the clarity of what "good" is. We can't do good if we are not sure what good is. This is complicated because good is not an absolute. I'm sure Peewee would agree with that. In the days of our cowboy heroes, good was easier to determine. If you didn't rob a bank, rustle some cattle or kill somebody, you were good. Not necessarily today. Today, if the Lone Ranger were to put a silver bullet into a minority robbery suspect who was attacking him, and after explaining the minority thing to Tonto, the rest of the program would be about protests, riots, and federal government investigations. Mr. Ranger will, by many, be made out to be the bad guy by doing something he felt was good.

Today we have ISIS beheadings, burnings, assaulting, kidnapping, raping, hanging, etc. of people who don't believe what the beheaders believe. That, to me, is flat out "not good." and I would instinctively place myself on the opposite side of the butchers. Am I wrong? Maybe, because according to our President, who we are told is a very smart man, all the beheading stuff is not really that bad because hundreds of years ago Christians were not very kind to the ISIS type people, and also a hundred plus years ago Christians didn't do anything to stop brutality towards slaves. I thought it was pretty clear cut that ISIS are the bad guys and we are the good guys. I did not think there could be much doubt about that but I bet ISIS believes just the opposite. Now, the President who seems to be able to see both sides of any Muslim issue, clouded up the good/evil waters by providing a gonzo excuse attempting to rationalize all the beheadings, burnings, assaulting, kidnapping, raping, hanging, etc. going on today. Like I said, It's "complicated."

When the police have a conflict with a minority community my first inclination is to side with the police until I learn otherwise. (I think Gene Autry would also.) When I was growing up the police, were the "good guys." Today whenever conflicts happen, our leader comes down on the police. I guess the police must be solely responsible for most of the negative encounters. Also, teachers in the past were the good ones, the professionals we parents looked up to educate our children. Today it seems when the student has trouble in school the teacher is the one to wear the dunce cap. (Roy Rodgers would be dismayed at how we treat our schoolmarms.) Clergy must pay for the perverted actions of the few. Parents, disciplining their children, are open to harsh criticism, or worse. Lawyers and politicians are not to be trusted. Our athlete heroes are doping up. Journalists don't seem to just report the facts, their personal biases creep into much of their reporting obscuring the realities of the story. Any professions around today that haven't been blemished with some kind of scandal?

In the frontier day's the cinema good guys wore white hats (except Hopalong the contrarian), rode light colored horses, said, "Yes Mam," "No mam," tipped their hats to the ladies, beat the bad guys to the draw, and righted wrongs. They were able to do good and overcome evil because they had a common standard of right and wrong. Today, if we have standards at all, you can bet they aren't common.

If our police, teachers, clergy, parents, lawyers, politicians, athletes, and journalists can't be viewed as good, how can good be expected to prevail in our society?

For a society to advance, good must win over evil, even if in reality that doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen because today it seems harder than ever to know when we are on the side of good. Our cowboy heroes had only their experiences to direct them, but we are not that lucky since we have 24/7 radio, TV, newspapers, Facebook, Tweets, texts and Instagrams that create so many people bloviating their opinions based on real facts, no facts or pure ideology. With information overload, it is more important for each and every one of us to know viscerally what for us is "good."

As I said, I'd like to live in a world where good prevails all the time, but I'm pretty sure everyone else does also, and that's where the rub comes in. We each look for the world to match our conception of a subjective good, and as long as it does, I guess we're as happy as Hoppy.