Today I am taking off from work to offer myself to the crowd scene that will be the festivities surrounding the opening of the new D-Day museum here in New Orleans, Louisiana. The rain that has been lacking down here for over a year has arrived so it is not ideal parade weather, and on top of that I am not a huge fan of parades, but today I will buy an umbrella and pay my respects to the men and women of the last great fight. I am feeling inexplicably patriotic today, yearning for something that may only be a myth, but what a myth it is.
for some reason the mixture of precipitation (here as well as there) and d-day has got the pointer sisters song, its raining men, stuck in my brain. my favorite d-day story, other than the fact of its success, was all the disinformation that the allies employed to try and confuse the germans. i think they had entire dummy encampments in england to make it seem like there was nothing going on. somehow the idea of a ghost encampment with fake sounds and inflatable tanks is hilarious to me. its not quite the trojan horse but still an effective prophylactic. how about the supposed rationale for choosing new orleans for the memorial? i guess the guy who designed the amphibious landcraft hailed from the big easy. does anyone from new orleans actually call it the big easy?
Here's the D-Day Museum site.
We've had a lot of WWII remembrance, going back to 1989, 50 years from the start of the war. I suppose it goes down as the main event of the 20th century (if only because WWI, the "Great War", is gone from living memory). I guess most of us would call it a just war, though I'm still looking for a link to that Scottish historian (respectable, not one of those holocaust nuts) who says that the west would be better off today if the US never intervened, allowing European consolidation. Military history can be quite compelling. It's amazing, how big geopolitical events come down to unpredictable collisions of theory and reality, often determined where human idiosyncrasy collides with peculiarities of landscape and weather.
I think it's worthwhile to honor the occasion, and thank the living remnant for their efforts. I once said as much to some relatives of mine from that generation, and they seemed genuinely appreciative; I don't think they hear it expressed often, at least not on a personal level. Still, I've got some problems with the whole thing. I don't like the way that Tom Brokaw and NBC have made a personal fiefdom out of these observances. They've milked it past the point of appropriateness. It's hard to argue with any given element of their coverage, but taken as a whole, the sincerity has disappeared into just another ratings hungry franchise. More to the point, I don't like this "Greatest Generation" crap. Truth is lost when turned into cant. I guess it comes down to some sense in which we are still honoring War, as such. I have the highest regard for those who fought, but my understanding is that this has happened generation after generation. The soldiers are always young men doing as they are told. Is one generation better than the others? I would like to believe that my generation would have responded just as well, given similar circumstances. Instead, we are made to feel ungrateful and irresponsible, because we have argued "our" wars, notably Vietnam. There has always been a tiny corner of my mind that wonders whether it would have been a good thing for me to have been in the military; perhaps everyone should be, ala Israel or Switzerland. Did our parents fight so that we wouldn't have to? If a generation is not tempered in war has it missed something fundamental? I would hope not, but it's sometimes implied: "We shed our blood for you, and now you have it too easy. Because you didn't go through it, you forget. Because you forget, it will happen again." But WWII was foreseen in the immediate aftermath of WWI. Any critical analysis of a war will diffuse its righteousness, something that those in power cannot afford, even while more civilians are killed than are soldiers. I suspect plenty of "our boys" were in the military for less than altruistic reasons. Poverty and pathology have ever swelled the armies' ranks. I'm just as proud of those who opposed Vietnam as I am of those who fought any war. There has to be a way to hold both positions.
more fractured thoughts....what say you -- do you think tom brokaw is just trying to up his book sales? are you saying our news anchors have no credibility? this truly is a disturbing universe. as for all of us being better off had hitler been successful, that might depend on your point of view. i think pat buchanan harbors such a historical perspective. now theres a comforting ally. im not trying to be flip but it sure would take alot of convincing to prove we would be better off. but im sure you would agree.
i was having similiar thoughts about everyone going through a little boot camp between highschool and college. was trying to tie it together with our gun control debate. it would seem to make sense that if you are exposed to war then would be less inclined to engage in it. sort of works like a vaccine. the only problem is will that mutate and create virulent strains of warmongers and highly trained criminals? obviously hard to say. as for "our boys" fighting for less than altruistic reasons, conscription has a way of doing that to you. would you prefer executive outcomes? lastly, i viewed the john mccain phenomena partly as some boomer guilt remover over their dissing the gi joes when they returned from vietnam. i dont know to what extent that dissing is a myth but since when do the losers get parades anyway? im still working on the ww1 v ww2 question. my first instinct is to say that the us was far more engaged in ww2 and lost more lives. the red baron likely never heard of pearl harbor. and the cargo of the enola gay has cast an even longer shadow than lenins tomb.
That seems to be one of those unfortunate side effects of television--that to get any news at all you have to put up with all the sickening ratings grabbing bs whenever a big story comes about, until it gets to the point where you realize you're not actually being given any news but you watch anyway because you know deep in your heart that eventually someone will say something important, only no one ever does. So you watch transfixed by the local anchor's facial expressions trying you're hardest to come up with a single real person you know who talks or acts like that.
I don't know why I took a day off to witness the spectacle except to say I was looking for something, didn't really find it but met an elderly lady named Joyce and (possibly much to the horror of her son) had a real nice conversation waiting for the parade to begin. She lost her brother in the war. I think I read at CNN that WWII veterans (at average age 77) are dying at a rate of 1000 per day so maybe this will be there last big hurrah. And I know that unrealistically I was hoping to just bump into my dad's old war buddy, Stinky Burchette, and he was going to tell me a bunch of stories and maybe we'd hit that oldtimers bar on Dumaine near the river and have some whiskey and a beer or two and I would have smoked a cigar had he offered me one.
Anyway, I think a person can reasonably honor the front line warriors and the concscientous objectors, in fact I think it a person's duty to honor such diversity. As for the hardline vet with his "let me tell you son, it was no picnic," what can you say, "no shit pops?"
Here's some of what I was looking for, with an overview of "counterfactual history", which gets to the point about whether this memorial business is actually about "taking an interest in history": "Political
counterfactuals look backward from the present, not forward from the
past. Though framed in terms of the contingent, these what-if
questions are designed to have only a single answer. They are false
counterfactuals, polemical devices intended not to open examination,
but to close debate."
this
also
i havent read your links yet but if you are implying that its some sort of revisionist agitprop mythmaking thats sort of what i was alluding to with jingotourism. i just figured any sort of educational endeavor was better than none. thats probably not necessarily true but i like to think so. and that alone may be proof of your assertion as i have understood it. oh, by the way, some other august body was questioning what is to be considered a just war.
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- jimlouis 6-06-2000 2:10 pm
for some reason the mixture of precipitation (here as well as there) and d-day has got the pointer sisters song, its raining men, stuck in my brain. my favorite d-day story, other than the fact of its success, was all the disinformation that the allies employed to try and confuse the germans. i think they had entire dummy encampments in england to make it seem like there was nothing going on. somehow the idea of a ghost encampment with fake sounds and inflatable tanks is hilarious to me. its not quite the trojan horse but still an effective prophylactic. how about the supposed rationale for choosing new orleans for the memorial? i guess the guy who designed the amphibious landcraft hailed from the big easy. does anyone from new orleans actually call it the big easy?
- dave 6-06-2000 3:08 pm [add a comment]
Here's the D-Day Museum site.
We've had a lot of WWII remembrance, going back to 1989, 50 years from the start of the war. I suppose it goes down as the main event of the 20th century (if only because WWI, the "Great War", is gone from living memory). I guess most of us would call it a just war, though I'm still looking for a link to that Scottish historian (respectable, not one of those holocaust nuts) who says that the west would be better off today if the US never intervened, allowing European consolidation. Military history can be quite compelling. It's amazing, how big geopolitical events come down to unpredictable collisions of theory and reality, often determined where human idiosyncrasy collides with peculiarities of landscape and weather.
I think it's worthwhile to honor the occasion, and thank the living remnant for their efforts. I once said as much to some relatives of mine from that generation, and they seemed genuinely appreciative; I don't think they hear it expressed often, at least not on a personal level. Still, I've got some problems with the whole thing. I don't like the way that Tom Brokaw and NBC have made a personal fiefdom out of these observances. They've milked it past the point of appropriateness. It's hard to argue with any given element of their coverage, but taken as a whole, the sincerity has disappeared into just another ratings hungry franchise. More to the point, I don't like this "Greatest Generation" crap. Truth is lost when turned into cant. I guess it comes down to some sense in which we are still honoring War, as such. I have the highest regard for those who fought, but my understanding is that this has happened generation after generation. The soldiers are always young men doing as they are told. Is one generation better than the others? I would like to believe that my generation would have responded just as well, given similar circumstances. Instead, we are made to feel ungrateful and irresponsible, because we have argued "our" wars, notably Vietnam. There has always been a tiny corner of my mind that wonders whether it would have been a good thing for me to have been in the military; perhaps everyone should be, ala Israel or Switzerland. Did our parents fight so that we wouldn't have to? If a generation is not tempered in war has it missed something fundamental? I would hope not, but it's sometimes implied: "We shed our blood for you, and now you have it too easy. Because you didn't go through it, you forget. Because you forget, it will happen again." But WWII was foreseen in the immediate aftermath of WWI. Any critical analysis of a war will diffuse its righteousness, something that those in power cannot afford, even while more civilians are killed than are soldiers. I suspect plenty of "our boys" were in the military for less than altruistic reasons. Poverty and pathology have ever swelled the armies' ranks. I'm just as proud of those who opposed Vietnam as I am of those who fought any war. There has to be a way to hold both positions.
- alex 6-06-2000 7:29 pm [add a comment]
more fractured thoughts....what say you -- do you think tom brokaw is just trying to up his book sales? are you saying our news anchors have no credibility? this truly is a disturbing universe. as for all of us being better off had hitler been successful, that might depend on your point of view. i think pat buchanan harbors such a historical perspective. now theres a comforting ally. im not trying to be flip but it sure would take alot of convincing to prove we would be better off. but im sure you would agree.
i was having similiar thoughts about everyone going through a little boot camp between highschool and college. was trying to tie it together with our gun control debate. it would seem to make sense that if you are exposed to war then would be less inclined to engage in it. sort of works like a vaccine. the only problem is will that mutate and create virulent strains of warmongers and highly trained criminals? obviously hard to say. as for "our boys" fighting for less than altruistic reasons, conscription has a way of doing that to you. would you prefer executive outcomes? lastly, i viewed the john mccain phenomena partly as some boomer guilt remover over their dissing the gi joes when they returned from vietnam. i dont know to what extent that dissing is a myth but since when do the losers get parades anyway?
im still working on the ww1 v ww2 question. my first instinct is to say that the us was far more engaged in ww2 and lost more lives. the red baron likely never heard of pearl harbor. and the cargo of the enola gay has cast an even longer shadow than lenins tomb.
- dave 6-07-2000 12:06 am [add a comment]
oh yeah. heres the esteemed nola scientist which the memorial is to honor along with those dday warriors. i guess im glad they are honoring a scientist/engineer as a war hero. how often does that happen? but do we need more memorials to the dead? whats that tomb of the unknown soldier for? i guess i should be happy people are taking an interest in history but i was much more interested in the cause and effect of history than i was in the heroism and vagaries of the battlefield. it just seems a little too much like jingotourism to me.
- dave 6-07-2000 12:30 am [add a comment]
That seems to be one of those unfortunate side effects of television--that to get any news at all you have to put up with all the sickening ratings grabbing bs whenever a big story comes about, until it gets to the point where you realize you're not actually being given any news but you watch anyway because you know deep in your heart that eventually someone will say something important, only no one ever does. So you watch transfixed by the local anchor's facial expressions trying you're hardest to come up with a single real person you know who talks or acts like that.
I don't know why I took a day off to witness the spectacle except to say I was looking for something, didn't really find it but met an elderly lady named Joyce and (possibly much to the horror of her son) had a real nice conversation waiting for the parade to begin. She lost her brother in the war. I think I read at CNN that WWII veterans (at average age 77) are dying at a rate of 1000 per day so maybe this will be there last big hurrah. And I know that unrealistically I was hoping to just bump into my dad's old war buddy, Stinky Burchette, and he was going to tell me a bunch of stories and maybe we'd hit that oldtimers bar on Dumaine near the river and have some whiskey and a beer or two and I would have smoked a cigar had he offered me one.
Anyway, I think a person can reasonably honor the front line warriors and the concscientous objectors, in fact I think it a person's duty to honor such diversity. As for the hardline vet with his "let me tell you son, it was no picnic," what can you say, "no shit pops?"
- jimlouis 6-07-2000 4:40 am [add a comment]
Here's some of what I was looking for, with an overview of "counterfactual history", which gets to the point about whether this memorial business is actually about "taking an interest in history": "Political counterfactuals look backward from the present, not forward from the past. Though framed in terms of the contingent, these what-if questions are designed to have only a single answer. They are false counterfactuals, polemical devices intended not to open examination, but to close debate."
this also
- alex 6-06-2000 10:54 pm [add a comment]
i havent read your links yet but if you are implying that its some sort of revisionist agitprop mythmaking thats sort of what i was alluding to with jingotourism. i just figured any sort of educational endeavor was better than none. thats probably not necessarily true but i like to think so. and that alone may be proof of your assertion as i have understood it.
oh, by the way, some other august body was questioning what is to be considered a just war.
- dave 6-07-2000 2:20 am [add a comment]