What kind of man was Steve Rogers, to fight for America with his background?
In the original comics, he was Irish from the Lower East Side. This means he was probably Irish Catholic from the tenements, which meant he was considered by most Americans with power (maybe) one step above dirt.
On the other hand, he was a tall, blond, blue-eyed man, the Nazi ideal. The Catholic church coexisted with the Nazis without severe discrimination. Many Irish were allied with the Nazis.
He grew up in a multicultural multiracial neighborhood and would have known many people that the Nazis considered less, but he would not have been one of the people they considered less due to their genetics.
So what kind of man could look out, see the horrors that are being done to other people, and choose to ally with the people who treated him and many others like dirt instead of the ones who would treat him extremely well but commit atrocities against others, and continue to do so over the course of an entire war?
And for a laundry list of references related to this...
https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/92559081749/protestant-steve-rogers-v-catholic-steve-rogers
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/captain-america-getting-real-life-statue-some-say-its-wrong-place-180959706/
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements
https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/irish-immigration-beyond-potato-famine
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-racism
https://markhumphrys.com/sfira.nazis.html -- Neemers
[AN: Owing to my dreams of actually putting a price tag on my anthology, I can't actually write about Captain America. So let's make up a strikingly similar hero]
A hero fights, not because they like fighting, but because some evil must be stopped with brute force. Two factions are at war, and in some ways they are alike in villainy. However, there is a key difference. On one side, the downtrodden are still permitted to have a voice. People have the freedom to speak. The freedom, also, to choose who they listen to. The freedom to act upon their convictions or to choose to remain complicit in tyranny.
Interestingly, the nation with those freedoms had the other crib notes from it and turn the philosophies just three degrees more evil. But that's not why we are here.
Picture a hero. Good. Now picture almost the exact opposite of that. Scrawny, weak, always sick. Culturally, they are the lowest of the low. The most reviled. The hated. However, this hero is lucky enough to exist in the nation that allows such people to live their own lives. This hero can speak. This hero can listen. This hero lives in a cluster of other such reviled and hated folks, but they do not hate. These rejected persons are their neighbours. Friends, allies, connections to acquire what is needed. A network who shares what little they have, for the betterment of all.
In any other chain of circumstance, this hero would remain sick, weak, hated, and reviled. In this case, the hero would continue to do whatever small thing they can because they are a good person who never needs to remind anyone of it[1]. This hero wants to stop evil, not just merely support good.
While it is true for evil to persist whilst good people do nothing, it's also possible for evil to flourish under the surface whilst good is openly supported and advertised. Corruption often spreads like mould in such circumstances and a hero like this... in their current state... can do very little at all.
Little though that is, the hero does it anyway. It costs them greatly, but they do it because it is the right thing to do.
Because of this, the hero is noticed by another. This other has the power to turn the lesser into something greater. A hero that would be easily recognised by all. A hero with the power to smite evil in every way possible way. Call them a magician. Call them a scientist. Call them a fae godparent. No matter what, they cannot take up the mantle, but choose to transform the hero because of their incorruptible heart or spirit.
What kind of person chooses to become such a hero? To decide where force is vital and where other means can suffice? What sort of person constantly fights the forces of evil in everything they do, at every breath, in every action, and with every word?
In brief, the kind of person who's an immense pain in the butt for everyone trying to maintain the oppressive status quo that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
Imagine a hero. Good. Now imagine that very little at all can stop them from fighting the good fight.
Imagine what that would do for a country that inspired the greatest evil ever seen.
A paragon of virtue, an established citizen. A good soul and an incorruptible spirit, determined to eradicate every single evil they can find. It's small wonder that the powers in charge attempted to keep them on the front line for as long as possible. Which wasn't very long, because this particular hero was smarter than the average bullet sponge. They could recognise a criminal order and worse - inspired others to recognise them and act against them as the situation granted.
That was ten years ago.
Now? They are running for office. An official citizen of the nation, they had studied law and learned everything they could about how their fair nation was not and had never been that fair at all. They were on the side of the underdog because they remembered what being an underdog was like.
The intervention had made them eternally healthy. Eternally fit. Eternally handsome. What could the voters do but flock to such a paragon? Those on the side of morality supported them because they had been a soldier. Those on the side of equality supported them because of their policies. So naturally those on the side of money attempted to sabotage them.
They failed.
The Hero had done their homework. For every attempt to besmirch their honour, the hero went after the accuser's own lack of morals. For every attack of virtue signalling, the hero could point to their actions in the past, and how they had always sided with the less advantaged, and the literal years worth of footage of the hero actually being virtuous, never taking a bribe, always helping out where they could, and otherwise being a fine and upstanding citizen.
Once a fine and upstanding citizen is in charge, evil goes scurrying for the wainscotting.
The hero would even listen to those who wanted a return to evil in favour of profits, and the argument always seemed to end the same way. "I understand why you want me to see it that way," they would say, "but that way clearly hasn't been working all this time. The other way around is benefitting more people for longer."
The most annoying thing? They were absolutely correct.
[1] It's generally accepted that, if a person needs others to be reminded that they possess a quality, they do in fact lack it.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / photocreo]
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