Normal

As actual patriotism seems to harder to find, Memorial Day amps up the maudlin version of military valor. The 35^th version of the Memorial Day concert on the Mall gave us almost cartoon versions of the now-aged heroes and heroines.

Military valor should be normal, not exotic. I have family in Arlington; my sister’s husband Spence, a no kidding combat hero in Korea. He was always dismayed that his behavior was not more normal. My dad did not go abroad because the army needed a normal railroad as well as the occasional superhero.

Recently, TC and I saw military valor that was shocking in the same way a good railroad is.

We were disgorging from the airport bus to pick up a rental car when TC noticed that a woman was stranded behind. Not elderly, but a bad knee made the step just a tad too much to navigate. Her husband, just short of a MAGA hat, wasn’t much better off. A hefty African-American man had already turned and offered to help her; “just put both hands on my shoulders and I’ll get you down. For him this was military muscle memory ethic: “never leave your wounded behind.” A committee formed, of course, with helpful variations. Nobody asked about voter preferences. The bus driver poked a button to lower the vehicle 6 inches. Soon on the sidewalk, the woman turned to thank TC and complement on her on her shoes as everyone headed to the counter to get the rental cars.

Normal, not exemplary. That’s what makes actual valor so essential to the human prospect. As normal and essential as a bee giving its life to defend the hive.

Later in the evening, we were present as 31 Randal Lewis Fellows demonstrated intellectual valor as they graduated from their internship that they had stack on top of already rigorous graduate training in health-related fields. Partners for Better Health imagines academic health Green Berets. Their internships demanded highly technical analysis of some problem that turned out to be solvable they brought ethics and intellect to see the hopeful path. This is what normal humans do in the presence of possibility.

The next morning Stakeholder Health recognized three similar exemplars, Kevin Barnett, Lauran Hardin, and Maria Hernandez. Their awards were named after other exemplars, Ruth Temple, Jerry Winslow and Soma Saha. Brilliant leaders all, but as role models, not cartoons. Like Mandela, Tutu or Carter, or those on the Mall, really. Circumstances—sometimes extraordinary–offer different opportunities to do the right thing. As King noted, all work is honorable, if it serves the whole.

When we describe these choices as “moral courage” we risk elevating them to something only expected of rare heroes—and not ourselves. This only helps the venal ones who want their smallness to be the norm. Normal people don’t kidnap innocents, bomb and starve babies, gas civilians, twists the courts or stand by in the presence of horrible behavior.

I doubt that Mr. Netanyahu would do to children in person what he is ordering others to do by email. I doubt you or I would offer to chip in for a 2,000 pound bomb to drop on them, either. Or pour bleach on the last of the coral reefs, strangle the last caribou, spray neurotoxins on the garden honeybees.

Democracy swings in the wind. It always does. It helps the venal for the rest of us to wait for a superhero. They want us to stay behind our flat screens so that we are less likely to act normal. Normal people do love mercy. They do act justly. They tend to walk humbly. Those qualities are in the Bible precisely because they are expected of all of us.

Every day, whether we are on a New York jury the whole world was waiting for, or another down the hall on a case we’ll never hear about.

So it is not delusional to expect Joe to stop giving Bibi two-ton bombs in our name. Any normal guy from Scranton knows that. Somebody in Moscow knows to not gas their neighbors. Somebody in Winston-Salem knows how to build a house for poor people. And anyone on the bus could have helped the woman with a bad knee.