From hero to madman

The treatment of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by the Western media. His heroism and defiance of the system were originally admired. Later on, the idea resurfaced that whoever would destroy his personal life or even inconvenience himself in any way for the sake of an ideal, must be a madman. Hence began their reports on what was wrong with him, and eventually he was shunned and ignored by the media. In the [former] East, dissidents are suppressed; in the West, they are ignored -- hence they in fact receive more attention in the East than in the West. Solzhenitsyn's fall from hero to madman can perhaps be understood in light of the previous post: the man who lives for an ideal is incomprehensible to the average person; since the gods are dead, he is simply "abnormal" -- in other words, a madman.