JCC Ender Sigh rags on 'Murica

A piece of historical revisionism, you mean?

 

Are you really going to argue that the generation of teenagers and 20-somethings in the US in 1945 were responsible for the nuclear bomb decision? Really?

 

Well, I think it's more the genuine belief in the supposed American version that allows systemic racism to remain unchecked. It was ended forever after the Civil War, dontcha know?

More like:

Northern whites walked away from the war and clapped the dirt from their hands, rather satisfied, and declared centuries of slavery undone and fully redressed, just like that, requiring no further attention. What's that you say? Racism? Inequality? We had ado with that in the Civil War, young man, and got the best of it. Don't you know cousin fought cousin, and brother fought brother? I assure you much blood was spilled to end the evil of racism, the price was severe...perhaps too severe even for a cause as just as abolition...indeed perhaps our black brothers were better off under our guidance...well, I suppose no cost is too high for Freedom, even for our black brothers and we northern whites paid more than our fair share, a buck oh five from every last one of us, to be sure, a nickel being worth far more in those days. Now, if only our black brothers hadn't wasted our sacrifice with such laziness, all would be perfectly well. There is only so much one can do, you know.


White guilt? Or a genuine belief that no such problem exists? You hear far more of the latter.

 

This. Plus, you know, the fact I mentioned Americentrism before revisionism. Which if you did logic, you'd have followed.

 

You could argue under ius ad bellum we had no justificaiton either.

But in answer to your question, German/Axis breach of Kellog-Briand.

 

also lol @ the idea the US needed justification before coughentirecoldwarforeignpolicycough

 

Okay Ghost, GrandAdmiralJello, I stand corrected. My whole nuclear bomb tangent was apparantly unnecessary.
I still think the term is dumb, though. Precisely for the reason you cite for my being wrong. If they didn't make the decisions, what made them the greatest? They were drafted. They had no choice.
Also, it's painting with a broad brush.

 

"Greatest generation" does sound absurd to foreign ears. It's all a bit too grandiose for my tastes.

 

It sounds a bit much even for my domestic ears.

 

SuperWatto, by Hiroshima children, do you mean the survivor orphans that were taken by American scientists for study of radiation sickness? I once watched a recount of this by an old woman (she was an 8 or 9 year old child at the time). By her description, beyond being fed and given shelter, they were otherwise treated as lab animals. She would be instructed to stand naked alongside a senior researcher up front who would demonstrate her burns etc, in front of a scientific staff sitting in a classroom taking notes, and no one would make any human connection with her. They would all discuss and observe as if she wasn't there, or as if they were studying an animal, and this went on over several months as they were studying effects over time. She didn't learn any English while they were there, because nobody made any attempt at communication. They probably considered them already dead, because no treatment of any kind was even attempted either. They were only there for observation. She only learned English after the project was over and eventually became a US citizen.

 

The term was coined, iirc, by Tom Brokaw, a former TV news anchor who leans fairly far left. To be fair to him, I believe his reference was meant as an internal US reference, and not just for their contribution in WW2, but in their contributions to Americas leadership thereafter. By no means perfect, but admirable in many ways.

 

EnderSai: Why are you so highly critical of America for its comparatively late entry into the war when the French and British were themselves so reticent in confronting fascism throughout the 30s...in their very own backyard? Hell, Stalin was the one making overtures to both governments to forge alliances (for obvious reasons), and was rebuffed.

Until learning of the fall of France, I myself would have been an isolationist, after having seen 100,000 American boys needlessly lose their lives in the first European civil war.

 

The Greatest Generation also created the serial killer boom of the seventies/eighties.

 

Maybe they were ensuring no rivalries would emerge...

 

VVM, ugh that sounds horrible. I just meant what you get when you google it, probably the same kids. Pretty shocking.

 

Not drafted. My grandfathers volunteered to join the Navy at 15 years old and 16 years old.

The term was coined by Tom Brokaw, but it's not just about the selfless service during WWII, it's more about what followed after. The rebuilding, at home and abroad. Choosing to embrace Japan and Germany as allies and helping them rebuild. The post-WWII consensus. Leading the charge for civil rights and environmentalism. Etc.

 

Yes, I mean, why would they be reluctant to be confrontational when you know, WWI was fought on European soil plus Kellog-Briand.

The simple reality is you guys were war profiteering cowards and that's fine if you don't then go and pretend you were somehow doing people a favour, saving them from not only evil but themselves, or somehow Special, Exceptional, and Unique. We joined the war in 1939, so you have no excuse. You're a nation of spectacularly ordinary, unexceptional people - the human personification of the colour beige - that has to keep rewriting history to make itself look special. Which you're not.

Hence why you masturbate terms like greatest generation for a group of people who literally had the only strong economy after the war and built the engine of American Imperialism. Ghost is so blinkered at this point that I feel like feeding him an apple or sugar cube from the open palm of my hand.

 

EnderSai: I understand how the scars of the Great War would engender reticence on the part of the French and British people; I only ask that you empathize with an American populace that was itself scarred by the same war (to lesser degrees, but with absolutely nothing to show for it, apart from 100,000 dead, hundreds of thousands more mutilated, and a Nye Committee exposing the war as a grotesque enterprise for big business and weapons manufacturers).

Nearly everyone suffered from those two catastrophes.

GrandAdmiralJello: Why valorize one generation over another? Yes, the "Greatest Generation" (a noxious descriptive) endured a depression, fought a global war against fascism, and planted the seeds for fostering a social democracy at home. But they could also be pilloried for bolstering a new American empire, signing on to a global war against the Dreaded International Communist Conspiracy, and sending their own children into the jungles of Indochina to murder and die. (Of course, a fair number of them weren't keen on arms races or imperialist ventures and marched alongside their young, so this would be an over-generalization.)

The Baby Boomers, whom you decry, served as the foot soldiers to many of the social justice crusades--radicalizing incrementalist civil rights/feminist/environmental movements--and stopped two mad presidents from reducing the whole of Indochina to a crater. (Of course, a fair number of them weren't much involved in these battles, so this too risks over-generalizing.)

 

grd4, we entered the war in 1939.

We also entered World War 1 in 1914, not 1917; and are hugely defined by this. Whole towns lost a generation of its males due to the Great War.

You have no excuse.

 

No, Ender's got a point here. Brokaw's own take on it:

It's a pretty nonsensical claim, but then I also think generational crap is... well, crap.

 

C'mon, Ender, this "we entered first!!!" crap is worthy of Donald Trump.

 

No, it just says "you can stop patting yourselves on the back, America. You're not special".

The pathological need to recolour your history is a sickness.

 

Ok but we still won the war though.