I've read several other blogs lately that started with the exact same line but meant it in a completely different way. I guess that just goes to show how we all love this country but in different ways.

And that, quite frankly, is what is worrying me.

I don't have any problem with everyone loving this country in their own way. In fact, just the opposite. What concerns me is the tendency to believe that one version of America is the "true" one.

This came up in the presidential campaign, when Sarah Palin called small town America the "real America," thereby insulting the majority of the population that lives in cities. But I ask, in all seriousness, what makes one version of America more "real" or "true" than another?

Back in the '70s, during the Watergate scandal, Captain America had a crisis of faith. In a story that intentionally paralleled the Watergate scandal, he discovered that a high-ranking government official (assumed to be the president but never stated outright) had conspired with the Secret Empire (an organization bent on world domination, in case you couldn't guess), to put the US completely under his control. When the Cap finally caught up with him and tried to stop him, the government official (code named "Number One"), committed suicide in order to escape prosecution.

Steve Rogers - the Cap - was so distraught over the plot that he lost his faith in the country and gave up being Captain America and eventually became "Nomad: Man Without a Country" (he later returned to being Cap after realizing that the nation needed a unifying symbol).

In one issue, his friends attempt, one-by-one, to convince him to change his mine. They argued that the country needs Captain America (much in the same way that Grant Morrison argued that the world needs Batman in Comic Con last year). At the end, he finally explained his rationale.

He explained that, when he became Captain America during World War II, the country was united against a common foe. Since he was reawakened in the '60s (he had been frozen in a block of ice at the end of WWII and was rediscovered by the Avengers years later), he had always felt like a man out of time. So much had changed. People had grown different and apart. The unity that had existed when he was first created no longer existed. Now everyone was doing their own thing.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the issue he stands with a bewildered look on his face as images of several "Americas" float over him: black, white, construction worker, business man, hippie, men, women, young, old, etc. Today you could probably add Christian, Muslim, Atheist, liberal, conservative, Hispanic, gay, straight, and too many others to name. In the panel, the Cap asks, "When people look at me, which America do they see?"

Here's what concerns me: everyone today thinks that their version of America is the "true" or the "real" one without stopping to consider that other points of view are just as valid. What makes small town America "real" and big city America - where something like 70% of the population lives - less real?

There is a predominant myth in American history, called the Edenic (as in "The Garden of Eden") Myth. It is the tendency to view the frontier - the wild - as real and natural while the city is false and manufactured. In this myth (please remember that in Academia, "myth" means "metaphoric story," not "lie"), nature is closer to God, which gives it the "realnesss." It is seen as a place of peace and tranquility. The Edenic Myth fueled the naturalist movement (Thoreau on Walden's Pond, for example) as well as to the race for the west, where people hoped to find their own Eden, at first on the plains and then even further.

The Edenic Myth has also been credited for the invention of the superhero (see The Myth of the American Superhero by Lawrence and Jewett). When the American "Eden" was threatened by either internal or external forces, it required a hero outside the law to come in and save them before fading into obscurity (incidentally, the American superhero myth is based upon the Messianic tradition from the Bible - Moses and Jesus being the two biggest examples).

Whether we are conscious of it or not, the Edenic Myth comes through in our speech. For example, we refer to farmers and laborers (again, those in rural America), as "the salt of the earth," hearkening back to the biblical passage: "Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" (Matt 5:13). In other words, calling someone "the salt of the earth" is really saying that they are true believers/followers of God - they are the "good" people. The implication is that anyone who does not meet that qualification (i.e. those that live in cities) are not worthy or that they are "evil" people. The comparison seems to be "salt of the earth" vs. "scum of the earth" with little in between.

Have you ever heard a lawyer or car salesman called "the salt of the earth?" Why can't they give as much savor as a field hand? And why can't a farm be the "scum of the earth?"

I am not trying to make this just about rural versus urban, though that is one of the biggest and most obvious examples. I have lived in both the city and the small town out in the middle of nowhere and found there to be equal measures of positive and negative in both (I think that both have more positive than negative). But beyond the urban vs. rural debate, there are tons of versions of this country and none of them seem to be able to find any merit to other versions: conservative vs. liberals, for example. Which one is the "true" America? Which one is "real?" What makes the difference? Having studied both sides of the political divide, I can easily see both positive and negative in both liberal and conservative ideologies.

Note that I said "positive and negative," not "good and bad" or "good and evil." Too often we cast things in starkly moral terms. I have heard commentators from both sides of the political divide use the word "evil" to describe the other side. But is the other political side really evil? Really? Evil is a big word. It conjures to mind comic book and movie villains like Lex Luthor and Darth Vader. So we're saying that [insert opposing political party] are just as bad as Lex Luthor and Darth Vader who mercilessly kill millions? Really?

In the now-cancelled (and, for me, sorely missed) TV show, Joan of Arcadia, which was about a girl that routinely talks with God, Joan is instructed by God to ask a particular boy to a dance. The boy is a bully with a lot of hate and anger built up inside him. He is not a nice guy - definitely not "the salt of the earth" - and frequently lashes out at others, both verbally and physically. Joan protests to God that the boy is "evil," which leads to the following conversation:

GOD: Evil is not a word to use lightly. It's only the darkest end of a broad spectrum.

JOAN: You mean like light?

GOD: Exactly like light. Nobody is born in total darkness. Most of you live on the gray end of the spectrum, a lie here and there, jealousy, wrath. But you only get to absolute evil by doing one thing after another 'till, eventually, you're transformed.

JOAN: Like . . . into a monster?

GOD: A monster is a creature with no conscience. They're extremely rare, but they do exist.

JOAN: Have you watched the news? I'm not sure they're so rare.

GOD: Almost everyone has light somewhere. And that light is always worth fighting for."

I am not saying there isn't bad or evil out there. And I'm not saying that some points of view don't have more merit than others. What worries me is the absolutism. "I'm right, you're wrong. I'm good, you're evil."

We are dividing. We are turning into individual tribes with separate ideals, separate leaders, and separate destinies. We no longer seem to have the ability to look for the good in others. All we see is the bad. And it is that division that worries me. After all, to quote another scripture, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand" (Matt 12:25).

Last week, in church, I gave a lesson on living in harmony with others. I asked if anyone knew what harmony was. There was a long pause before someone finally said, "singing together." And, yes, that is true, at least to a point. Harmony is singing together, but it doesn't mean singing the same thing. In fact, "harmony" means singing many different things at once. Dictionary.com defines it as "the simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when blended into chords pleasing to the ear." When a choir sings in harmony, they are all singing different notes but they blend together in a way that is far more beautiful than any single note could ever be on its own.

The same can apply to life. Just because we are singing different notes doesn't mean that others are singing wrong. And just because they are singing something different it doesn't make us wrong either. If we can come together, with all our distinctness and diversity still intact, it can be very right and very beautiful.

To me, it is in that harmony, that we find the "real" and "true" America.

On Saturday, I went to see Watchmen. My purpose in going was research. The last chapter of Fallible and Flawed is going to be about Watchmen, the graphic novel, so it was important for me to see the movie. I'm glad I did, because they made some significant changes that speak directly to my thesis. But more on that later.

Honestly, I was expecting to dislike the movie, largely because I have never actually decided whether I like the book or not. I fully respect what Alan Moore and David Gibbons succeeded in doing with the book, but the whole thing made me feel very uncomfortable. The story is extremely dark and very violent. To top that off, it has a very low opinion of humanity and, more than anything else, that really got under my skin. So I was surprised that I actually enjoyed the film.

That being said, I don't really recommend it. It is kind of like The Passion of the Christ. Both of them are very good movies. They are exceptionally well made and have the ability to reach their audience in profound ways. However, they are both extremely difficult to watch. The violence in Watchmen is over-the-top (it is so gut wrenching in a few places that I actually gasped), the sex and nudity are as explicit as they can be without getting an NC17 rating, and the story is a real downer. It isn't really a fun experience.

So you may be wondering why I enjoyed it if is was so bad. I think that the only answer to that is that I knew what I was getting into and, even more than that, I knew what the story was trying to say. I have no idea what someone without any background in the novel or the philosophical debates around it would think of the movie. My guess is that they wouldn't get it and, as a result, would hate it. But that is just a guess.

The story is a perfect example of post-modernism. It is an incredible example of deconstruction focused on what really lies beneath the mask of a superhero. Alan Moore said that he wrote the book as a statement against hero worship. He said that he couldn't believe that anyone would trust their lives or their salvation to some of these "heroes" and he set out to show that heroes aren't all they're cracked up to be (incidentally, this dovetails nicely with my recent post about flawed heroes ). And so the book is an examination of what it would be like if superheroes existed in the real world.

The story, which takes place in an alternate 1980s universe where America won Vietnam and Nixon has been elected to a fifth term (he asked Dr. Manhattan to intervene in Vietnam which won the war within a week and, as a result, became so popular that he got the term limits repealed), focuses on a group of masked "heroes:" the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, the Silk Specter, Ozymandias, and Rorschach (for the uber-fans out there, yes, I do know that it is actually "Nite Owl II" and "Silk Specter II"). Of them, only Dr. Manhattan, who was created in an accident in a nuclear physics laboratory has any super powers. And, due to the Keane Act passed by Congress years earlier, only Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian, and Rorschach are still active - Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian because they are government sponsored, and Rorschach because he refuses to give up.

The heroes are amalgams of popular superheroes. Both Rorschach and Nite Owl are parts of Batman. Dr. Manhattan is a take on Superman. And the Comedian is something like Captain America in that he goes to war for the country and has the government's backing. But the most important aspects of these characters are their problems. That is what it is all about, and to miss that is to miss the entire crux of the story.

Dr. Manhattan (the blue one) is a perfect example. After the accident, he becomes, essentially, a god. What would happen to someone who was given limitless power? Would they be able to maintain their humanity? Would they have any connection to Earth at all? As Dr. Manhattan says "In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon." As the story progresses, he moves further and further away from humanity. Visually, this is shown by him losing more and more of his clothing until he wears nothing at all.

Rorschach, on the other hand, is mentally deranged but morally exact. He enacts retribution on the guilty in the most violent manner possible, typically ending in their death. But he is certain in his morality and never wrong. When he attacks someone, you can be sure that they are, indeed, guilty. In the same way that, when Batman takes down a criminal, you know they deserved it. The difference is Batman's "one rule" to not kill, which Rorschach abandons after he tracks down a kidnapped child and finds that her kidnapper raped her, cut her into pieces, and fed her to his dogs. After that, there is no mercy for him, only justice.

The Comedian is, as Dr. Manhattan says, "the most amoral man" you have ever met. He believes that humanity is one big joke and relishes in retribution and anarchy. In the course of the movie he rapes two different women and, when one becomes pregnant, he murders her in cold blood. And yet, his actions are fully sanctioned by the government.

Ozymandias, the world's strongest/smartest man, on the other hand, is a megalomaniac that only wants to make the world a better place. This is actually brought out more in the film than in the book. In the book, he is just a very successful businessman who capitalized on his alter ego. In the movie, he working with Dr. Manhattan to find clean, renewable energy. He wants to make the world a better place but is willing to pay any price for it. In this way, Ozymandias is the most like a comic book villain. He is like Lex Luthor if Luthor's intentions were noble instead of selfish.

Nite Owl and the Silk Specter are the normal of the group, but even they have their issues. The Silk Specter has mommy issues (and daddy issues when it turns out that the Comedian, who raped her mother, is her father) and Nite Owl has adequacy issues which he compensates for with the costumes and violence.

All in all, not the nicest bunch of people. And they're the "Watchmen," those set up to protect humanity.

And, in the end, they do - sort of. To prevent nuclear war and the complete elimination of mankind, Ozymandias orchestrates a scheme that wipes out millions of people but unites the world against a common - albeit, imaginary - enemy. This was the one place where the movie differed dramatically from the book. In the book, the plot involved a giant squid and a supposed invasion from outer space. The movie, it involved framing Dr. Manhattan.

This change - which fans will no doubt debate for all time - was very interesting. It was definitely a statement, though an obscure one. It is almost a philosophic statement about religion in that Dr. Manhattan is set up as a god who is "up there watching them" and who punishes the wicked. It suggests that belief in God is just as risky as trusting these heroes - that mankind must look to itself for salvation. Very interesting given the political climate today.

As I said, this isn't a fun story, and anyone who heads to the theater thinking that it is going to be just another superhero flick is going to be seriously put out. Instead, it is an examination of what makes people heroic, what makes people villainous, and what makes people human. Like the superhero stories it deconstructs, it uses archetypes - amplified examples - to prove its point. The only difference is that these archetypes are not the nice kind.

But the most fascinating part of the movie came towards the end. In the beginning, Laurie (the Silk Specter) goes to see her mother (the original Silk Specter) about the murder of the Comedian. Her mother, who had been one of the women raped by the Comedian is unable to condemn him and actually speaks affectionately of him. At the end of the movie, after discovering that the Comedian was her father, Laurie's mother asks. "How could I condemn him when he gave me you?" Earlier, Dr. Manhattan is awed by what he calls miracles, including the fact that even someone as amoral and "evil" as the Comedian could produce someone like Laurie. Those two moments struck me as being more redemptive for humanity than the book was for me. They spoke to our ability to forgive, repent, and move past our mistakes. They speak of our ability to improve life, no matter how bad or how bleak.

So, in the end, I think I enjoyed it for what it was: an examination of humanity and heroism with all its warts and dark little secrets laid bare. It isn't an easy film to watch, but I think that, despite its flaws, it was a worthwhile experience. Just know what you are getting into before watching it.

It wasn't the first time I'd heard someone say something like that in the past few weeks. Earlier, I was talking to a co-worker about Phelps and she made a very similar comment. And even before that, people were saying the same thing about a cop here in Utah that, at great personal risk, saved a lot of people in the Trolley Sqare shooting a few years ago but is now being charged with sexual assault (he pled "No Contest" to the charges last week).

It all got me to thinking about my favorite topic - heroes - and why we are so disappointed to find out that they are human. I mean, if you think about it, just because a man can swim faster than just about anything alive doesn't mean he is a moral or virtuous person. And just because a man risks his life to save others, doesn't mean he is a good guy. Yet we persist in thinking of them that way and, as a result, are extremely upset when they fail to live up to our expectations.

And we don't just do this to sports figures and cops. We also do it for religious and political leaders, teachers, friends, and just about anyone else. I can guarantee that a lot of people will be very disappointed with Obama in the same way that many people were disappinted with Bush. Both are human and, as such, aren't capable of living up to all the expectations placed on them. It simply isn't possible and the fall from the pedestal can be pretty far and damaging.

It makes me think of the movie White Christmas (bet that wasn't what you expected, was it?). Specifically, I think of the scene where Bing Crosby is talking to Rosemary Clooney in the kitchen (yes, Katie, I remember the movie) and she says something to the effect that he is her white knight. He tells her to be careful who she puts up on that white horse because he's likely to fall off. Of course, in the next scene he does just that - or at least she thinks he does - when she overhears him making what seems to be a pretty coldhearted deal with a TV star. This being Hollywood - and this being Bing - he didn't actually do anything wrong, she just thought he did.

What is most interesting is that, by the end of the movie, despite the experience, she puts him right back up on the horse. Again, this being Hollywood, everything ends happily. But I wonder what happens after the fade out when he does something else she perceives as wrong - when he turns out to be human. The words "AAAAIIEEEEEEEE! Thump!" come to mind.

I think that the problem is that our hero tales deal with extreme examples. In programming, they would be called "edge cases" because they are at the extreme edge of possibility. They are examples of how to live, goals for life. It is important to remember that negative aspects have been stripped of those characters to better emphasize the desirable qualities (the goal of postmodernism is to peel back those layers and see the reality underneath - Watchmen is all about doing that for superheroes). The problem is that we often try to apply the same standards to our real life heroes. We tend to believe that, if someone does something heroic - even once - they must also be morally pure, when, in fact, they may be the scum of the earth.

Recently, Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dollhouse) released Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, an Internet TV show (of sorts). It is basically the origin story of Dr. Horrible, an "evil" genius who battles Captain Hammer, his heroic nemesis. Through the course of the show, however, you realize that Dr. Horrible isn't that horrible and Captain Hammer isn't that heroic. In fact, Captain Hammer is a jerk and Dr. Horrible is really a shy, introverted person who is just craving attention. They are really just human beings with varying levels of moral ambiguity. Their heroism and evil are really just products of how the media spins events rather than their actual actions.

While the show is far from realistic and extremely hilarious (if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it), it's take on heroes and villains is thought-provoking. Isn't that really why life is like? Aren't we all a little bit of a hero and a little bit of a villain? So why does it surprise us to learn that our heroes are the same?

In the conclusion of Heroes & Villains, Mike Alsford makes a very valid point. He says that it is important to remember that, no matter how much we strive for heroism and villainy, it is important to remember that we don't have to be heroic or villainous all the time. And while it is good to shoot for the moral surety of Superman, it is important to remember that we aren't Superman or Wonder Woman.

We are just human.