We Can Be Heroes for One Day — Election Day

I never shared the awe of fantastic screen heroes forged by Star Wars and its legacy, though I appreciated the return to nobility after a decade of murky antiheroes. At least you knew where Han Solo and Indiana Jones stood against clear-cut evil like the Empire and the Nazis, which appealed to the kids. Maybe because I was an older movie afficionado, I found both characters and the actor who played them just okay.

Harrison Ford was no Sean Connery, Steve McQueen, or Clint Eastwood, but a likeable enough successor. Then, 20 years behind him came a renaissance of superheroes culminating in the asexual Avengers. Their portrayers’ cringeworthy endorsement of cackling empty pantsuit Kamala Harris last week lowered my original opinion of the lot of them.

Heroes of Hollywood’s Golden Age

Hollywoke, I knew, was a far cry from classic Hollywood. During the four years between 1942 and 1945, there was also a dearth of familiar heroes. Because the actors who embodied them weren’t on the screen, they were in the War, in real combat. When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, almost every top male star took a huge pay cut to share hardship and mortal danger with nameless grunts.

They included Clark Gable — aerial gunner, five missions over Germany; James Stewart — fighter pilot, 20 missions over Europe; David Niven — British Army Lieutenant-Colonel, D-Day Normandy landing; Henry Fonda — Quartermaster 3rd Class on a Navy Destroyer. “I don’t want to be in a fake war in a studio,” Fonda said before he enlisted. Yet even his peers who did fight in the fake war served a patriotic purpose: inspiring men into military or homefront service, and women to cherish them.

Audiences cheered John Wayne in The Fighting Seabees and Back to Bataan, Errol Flynn in Desperate Journey and Objective, Burma, Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo, and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca and Across the Pacific. At the end of Across the Pacific, Bogie watches a group of eastbound U.S. warplanes and says to Japanese spy Sidney Greenstreet, “Any of your friends in Tokyo have trouble committing hara-kiri, those boys’d be glad to help them out.” (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Last Halloween for Democrat Witches)

While making They Were Expendable in 1945, honoring the brave PT Boat warriors in the Pacific theater, the brilliant yet combative director John Ford constantly tormented star John Wayne for ducking the war still in progress. Wayne was the sole superstar for Republic Pictures, which got him a deferment in order to save hundreds of studio jobs and continue the morale-boosting movie product. Wayne’s costar Robert Montgomery, a genuine naval war hero, chewed Ford out, telling him to cut the crap. Ford complied for the rest of the shoot.

Fall of the Hollywood Hero

I loved all those guys and their films growing up — even contemplated enlisting myself. Only I was too young for one ongoing war. Everything about the Vietnam War appeared ugly, especially the movies, TV shows, and news referencing it. On Hawaii Five-O, for example, it seemed every other psycho killer was a deranged Vietnam veteran.

And America showed little respect for real-life returning servicemen. Students and hippies protested to their faces. By contrast, screen “heroes” were all societal misfits like The Graduate, Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Bonnie and Clyde, and the M*A*S*H medics. I didn’t much like them either.

The return to the heroic male tradition begun by Star Wars, Superman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark in the late Seventies exploded with the rise of Ronald Reagan. Recognizable macho men and vets were back — Rambo, Thomas Magnum, Martin Riggs (Lethal Weapon), Chuck Norris, even Dirty Harry. Not by coincidence, the stars who embodied them — Sylvester Stallone, Tom Selleck, Mel Gibson, Norris, and Eastwood are conservative Republicans.

Harrison Ford hung with them through the Nineties, concealing his progressivism until the 21st Century, when the pull to the Left became too much for him to mask. In 2002, he began dating Ally McBeal Calista Flockhart, whom he married in 2010 at a wedding officiated by Bill Richardson, the liberal Democratic then Governor of New Mexico. Soon, Ford went full woke, offscreen and on, turning his two legendarily masculine characters into loser weenies, diminishing their stature and his.

In 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, Han Solo suffers the stupidest, most ignoble death imaginable. He doesn’t go down fighting. He enables his villainous son to commit fratricide. But The Force Awakens is Cyrano de Bergerac compared to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Indy spends the entire picture as a worn-out old man bested by his cleverer Girl Boss goddaughter (the inescapable Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

Last week, Ford dropped one more career embarrassment — a video ad for Kamala Harris. The video is so artificial and phony: black-and-white photography, dramatic cuts, somber tone, painful overacting, and total BS. “When dozens of former members of the Trump Administration are saying, “For God’s sake, don’t do this again, you have to pay attention.” Would that be anything like 51 former intelligence operatives signing a letter ascribing the Hunter laptop story to Russian disinformation, Professor Jones? (READ MORE: To Be or Not to Be America — After Election Day)

Then comes the seppuku thrust. “The truth is this,” Ford says. “Kamala Harris will protect your right to disagree with her.” Which must be why she picked Tim Walz as her Vice-President. “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech,” Walz told MSNBC. “Especially around our democracy.” Good call, Indy.

This Tuesday, we don’t have to storm Normandy Beach like David Niven did or land a shot-up bomber like Jimmy Stewart did. But we can sure as hell ignore the sad likes of Harrison Ford and the Avengers actors. We can vote for someone who got shot at for real, unlike them, and stood up in defiance. And we can save America. We can be heroes, just for one day.

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“If you appreciate Lou Aguilar’s column, Washington, DC intrigue, and film noir mystery, you will also enjoy The Washington Trail. It is a true page turner.”

—Leonora Cravotta, The American Spectator, on my new political thriller, The Washington Trail, the perfect Christmas read. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever exciting mysteries are sold.

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