On Heroes

Lately, I've been hearing from a reader who objected to my characterization of Salomon Brothers traders as wimps.  Some of these men risked their livelihoods every day in ways mere salary men do not, and in a sense, this reader argues, they are risking their lives. They are not mere frat boys given to speaking in hyperbolic male phony toughness, the revealing braggadaccio  of men who try to substitute tough, virile talk for real courage, but they actually are  admirable risk takers, job creators and movers of American markets. 

The reader also surmised, correctly, I had not finished the book, Liar's Poker. In this, he was correct. I could not get past Chapter Five. I just tried again, but simply could not bring myself to slog on through the depictions of grown men telling each other they have to make the right trades or they will get their faces ripped off by  piranha traders.  So, notice we have these men comparing the injuries they will suffer by making a bad trade to being dunked in a barrel of piranhas and having their faces ripped off. And there are scenes of men facing each other down on the 41st floor where the traders tell each other to "fuck off," just like real, dangerous men.

The fact is, what these men risk is the loss of income, the loss of a job. If they lose their jobs at Salomon Brothers, chances are some other firm will hire them, or they will have to open a dry cleaner in Queens. They will not have their faces ripped off. They will not starve. 
'm not saying the loss of a highly remunerative job is not a blow. 
I'm simply saying, these men are not even close to being considered admirable, much less heroes. 
Consider the risks real men face. Consider the actions of real heroes.

Consider Alexandre Yersin. The man trains with Pasteur, no easy task master, and proves himself to the master, by developing a vaccine against tuberculosis. Pasteur offers him the plum of an appointment to the faculty at the Pasteur Institute.  But no, Yersin looks for real adventure, hops a boat to French Indochina (Vietnam) and sets up a clinic there. 
Pasteur wires Yersin that there has been an outbreak of Black Plague in Hong Kong. This is the chance to apply Pasteur's techniques in microbiology to identify and possibly treat the causative organism of the plague. It is also a chance to die of that horrible disease. Yersin takes the first boat to Hong Kong, a British Crown colony. 
He speaks no English, and finds the British have already invited a famous Japanese microbiologist to Hong Kong and they've ensconced him in a hotel, given him a hospital  wing  and provide him with whatever he requires. 
Undeterred, Yersin manages to observe the great Japanese investigator do autopsies on the victims, and Yersin is astonished the Japanese doctor neglects to cut into the buboes, the enlarged lymph nodes which are the hallmark of the disease. 
Yersin sets up shop in a bamboo hut incises the buboes which are teeming with bacilli and Yersin identifies the offending bacillus, while the Japanese, who has every advantage in the investigation, totally misses it.
 Back in Vietnam, Yersin uses the organisms from Hong Kong to raise an antiserum and when plague breaks out in Vietnam, he is the first, in this pre antibiotic era, to save patients with antisera. Yersin names the plague bacillus, Pasturella pestis, because he used what Pasteur had taught him to make his discovery. Pasteur renames it Yersinia pestis.

Now Consider Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Army of the Potomac.  Grant succeeded in splitting the confederacy in two by capturing Vicksburg,  so Lincoln placed Grant  in command of the Army of the Potomac, which for three years has been beaten, humiliated and chased from the field of battle by Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia.  The Army of the Potomac had been led by a dandy named McClellan, who was wonderful at spectacle and parade but no so much at leading men in battle. In fact, what McClellan had done mostly was to avoid battle.
Grant is stuck with three horrible, inept, blundering generals--Butler, Burnside and  Warren--who fail on every occasion to carry out Grant's orders and lose battles and cost thousands of lives. He cannot get rid of them.  He is fighting a war with one hand tied behind his back.
But Grant finds generals he can count on: Sherman, Sheridan and Chamberlain and he uses these men to hunt Lee.
 Grant presides over several disasters, at Chancellorsville,  in the Wilderness, the siege of Petersburg, but he is not immobilized by his own failings,and he persists, attacks, maneuvers, knowing there are plenty of voices calling for his banishment. In the end, he sticks to his plan, to continue on the one mission he thinks is essential to ending the war, not the capture of Richmond nor crippling of railways, nor the suppression of the Southern population,  but the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia.
 In the process, he makes night rides, risks capture or sudden death, but he persists and ultimately prevails.

Now, compare the soft bellied, swearing "piranhas" of the 41st floor of Salomon Brothers. Then consider a pack of jackasses. But then, I repeat myself.