The hero is never as polished as the legend that surrounds him.

"Snake, you are a legend on the battlefield."
"I'm no hero. Just an old killer."

In one of the Metal Gear Solid games, Snake has a line where he says that heros are never as polished as the legends that surround them. In context of the games, you can't really relate to this. You play as Snake so you know what happens the whole time to Snake.

However, after watching "The Truth About..." series from Stefan Molyneux, it is really easy to relate to the line spoken by Snake. Stefan has a series of videos that goes into the detail about the lives of several historical figures. Instead of repeating the sugarcoated narrative we learned from school, Stefan reveals the dark and dirty parts that history swept under the rug.

Martin Luther King Jr was a civil rights leader that won equal rights for black people in America. There is also a lot of evidence that he plagarised a lot of his academic work and was unfaithful to his wife.

Abraham Lincon was credited for freeing the slaves and fighting the Civil War for moral reasons. Abraham Lincon didn't care about the slaves either way and used his power in order to claim a lot of land to make tons of money from railroads.

Ghandi was known as a man of virtue and nonviolent protest.
Ghandi was recorded to be a terrible racist and viewed minorities as dogs.

Nelson Mandela was known for pushing against apartheid.
He was also a terrorist that had no regrets about killing women and children for his own means.

George Washingtion was know as the incorruptable and perfect leader.
He had a horrible military career where he recklessly lost his own men and poorly attacked and killed French soldiers under poor leadership.

Stefan Molyneux isn't free of criticism either despite putting all the presentations together. Diana Davison put two videos together presenting Stefan as a fraud. Diana isn't the only one criticising Stefan Molyneux.

It is pretty amazing how a populations need for a hero will create myths and legends about people. It is for this reason I try not to idolize people or put them on a pedestal. When you make someone a hero, you will probabbly learn your hero likes to punch kittens and dress up in laytex while watching My Little Pony.

These myths made gods out of ordinary people and the history only goes back a few decades to a few hundred years. It makes me wonder what the real Jesus was like. The Christian religion recognizes Jesus as God. It makes me wonder and speculate about the human side of Jesus. I wonder what terrible things Jesus the man did. Part of me could see Jesus the man and his disciples as just a good bunch of drinking buddies that wandered from town to town and were too lazy to get real jobs. That would probably make a pretty good novel.