Captain America is Dead

Captain America died today; I heard on the way here and I knew I had to write this out just to get over the shock.

Captain America is dead.

Long live Cap.

I almost wore black. But then again, there are at least three more appropriate colors I could have worn.

Captain America, Steven fucking Rogers, the man who fought Nazis back in the day before we even joined World War II. Today he lay along the courtroom steps, a sniper's bullet through his gut, not looking a day over thirty, yet his face was grizzled with the age of experience.

I don't believe it.

Everyone knows this story, the sotry of the weakling who, drinking a secret formula became strong. He became a man when he stood, proud as an American, and did what needed to be done. Until finally, he died facing a threat we'd never seen, when he died in that fateful explosion in 1945.

Only to wake up in a block of ice, finding a nation changed by the scars of Vietnam -- the young country's innocence long lost.

Captain America is dead.

I still don't believe it.

He died because he became a man by doing what needed to be done. When America chose to give up freedom and liberty in exchange for security, he drew his line in the sand, brought friend against friend, hero against hero, and lead the Revolution, like the minutemen who founded his Country, his Nation, his Ideals.

They captured him. Tormented him. And finally, shot and killed him. Only because he did what he needed to do, he stepped up and did the only thing truly American -- he became the voice of dissent.

A secret formula can make you a super-soldier, but it can't make you a hero.

Captain America is dead.