WHERE HAVE ALL THE WHITE HATS GONE?

To write this you have to admit to the pride and prejudice of your own generation. In this case the Silent Generation [by some ratcheted up to the Greatest Generation] who grew up in the 30s & 40s. In sharp contrast to the Boomer Generation [1946-1964]. The first tended to believe in guys-in-white-hats; the second and those that followed tend to skeptically say, lets face it, every hat is really gray.

Something to be said for that, although it's hard to think of any great historical events led by fluttering flags of smudgy gray. Not only was WWII thought of in stark black&white, so also was the Boomer's own Sixties. Movements need heroes, and heroes only wear white. At least when they're busy being heroes.

Today's culture has come to suspect that no one or nothing comes in white. Or that there even is white. Who can argue? On the other hand, who can argue that in a culture when skepticism rules, the fire of heroes is damped down to a flicker. And flickers light few paths to glory...!

The same media and authors who once found heroes to place on pedestals, now relish [and profit] from smashing the pedestals [calling their hammers scoops in the name of truth]. Had these hammers been more acceptable in other times, how many guys-in-white-hats would we have had? Aristotle...Alexander ... Caesar...Charlemagne...Joan of Arc...Luther...Newton...Jefferson...Emerson...Lincoln...Whitman...Carnegie ...Ford...Einstein...Lindbergh...Hemingway...FDR...DiMaggio...MacArthur...Patton...JFK...Mandela?

Not a one deserves their white hat. The truth mongers have seen to that.

So as my generation surveys the journalistic terrain, I see furled flags and soiled hats. We are left with the mowed fields in the slashing wake of the brigades of truth. The truth is supposed to make us free. Sounds good to the ear, but what of the heart? What of the hungering hearts who have always needed flying flags and white hats to spark them out of their lethargy? To ignite their passions and devotions? To beg of them their slumbering greatness?

Today's truth-whoring skeptics will righteously point to a Napoleon, a Hitler, or a Manson to make their point. Who is to deny them their facts? Or their truth? But when left with only the surgically dissected remains of our dreams and dreamers, how many of us will still dare to dream? I need our truth mongers to help me here.