JackEngelhard
JackEngelhardצילום: מתוך האתר האישי

Hank Greenberg, the Hebrew Hammer, became the first American League player to register for the draft, and thereafter served 47 months in the military during World War Two.

Those would have been the best years of his life as a ballplayer. As a slugger, he posted numbers near-equal to Babe Ruth.

Instead, he chose to fight for his country. He wasn’t alone. Following Greenberg, came Ted Williams and some 500 Major Leaguers who joined the fight.

(Imagine today’s millennial ballplayers in the same spot.)

Movie stars likewise suspended their careers to join the real world as World War Two soldiers, notably Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, Mel Brooks, James Stewart, and Paul Newman.

(Imagine today’s Hollywood or Broadway.)

Sacrifices like that were assumed. Heroism like that was expected. This was America, after all.

Is it still?

We have to believe that under the same circumstances, the same type of man or woman would arise, and in fact in many cases cops and soldiers of our day are still heroic.

But you have to wonder about the trend.

Case in point…Uvalde, Texas, There, on May 24, at Robb Elementary School, a crazed gunman broke into a class and murdered 19 students and two teachers.

But that is only the beginning of the story. The rest of the story continues with no end in sight due to investigations as to what went wrong.

Where were the police?

Turns out scores of them were in the hallway, fully equipped, but trembling? Whatever else explains what they did, or rather, what they didn’t do?

They could have shot the killer “within three minutes of his arrival,” according to the latest probe, but waited an hour before someone acted.

But too late. The massacre was done.

What kept them?

The obvious answer? Cowardice. But that’s too simple.

More complicated is the question…how they got that way, that is, how they failed to perform for whatever reason.

How were they raised? How were they trained? Is the fault within themselves, or within the system?

Remember, thanks to the Left, we live in an age of confusion.

Ask not what is a Woman, ask likewise, what is a Man?

Not what it used to be.

On a sinking ship, the rules were clearly defined. The women first into the lifeboats. Today, in a sinking ship of state, “men can menstruate,” so who knows?

At this rate, we all sink together.

The old rules don’t apply.

Accordingly, it has become an article of faith from Leftist/Democrat dogma that any sign of male bravery is ipso facto “toxic masculinity.”

What comes from that?

Uvalde comes from that…and so does a generation that has become godlessly conflicted between right from wrong, black from white, male from female.

John Wayne and the Cavalry can’t come to the rescue.

Too late, perhaps, to save us from a Woke-dominated culture that has driven the nation away from clearly-defined norms to the blasphemy of role reversal and role bedevilment.

Men can have babies?

Do not be amazed, then, to learn that Woke Culture has entered not only our classrooms, but has also snuck into our military.

It’s been happening from one branch to another, and this includes force-feeding CRT, Critical Race Theory, plus gay and transgender activism, all that into the hearts and minds of men and women who should be taught less about becoming morally confused Leftist wimps, and more about how to kill the enemy.

Critical Race Theory is a 1619 Project that traces American history through the history of slavery, but in fact intends to keep the pot boiling hatefully between the races.

As does Juneteenth, according to the sensational Candace Owens, herself black, but wisely Conservative.

That national holiday, she says, is meant to keep black people angry.

Defunding and declawing and disrespecting the police continues apace, all across the country, even under Biden. Especially under Biden.

Now, cops in Chicago are under orders never to go chasing on foot when they see someone running from a crime.

Imagine what this does to morale and resolve.

Uvalde, then, is a snapshot of a much bigger picture, a picture that has become America.

Hank Greenberg and his generation would hardly recognize the place.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com

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