America: Not everything we think it is

I tried to read this a while ago and got about halfway through. While I agree that America is not nearly as great as some make it out to be, this guy does a really shitty job of making his arguments.

 

Remember that "This Land Is Your Land" was written as a critical response to "God Bless America"

 

This Machine Kills Fascists.

 

As long as we keep soccer in its proper place, we'll be fine.

 

Ever see that movie "Under the Tuscan Sun"? Will never forget the closing ceremony as depicted there. Just a stamp or two and here are the keys. The heroine looks confused, to which the closing agent responds, "It's a house, not a Vespa!" Just a very amusing depiction of the difference in the legal/regulatory climates.

 

Although the author comes across as a bit of a self-absorbed consdescending twit, his overriding point is valid--our place in the world is nowhere near where it used to be, but we haven't adjusted the chest-pounding rhetoric to account for the change.

We grow up getting this "greatest nation in the world" mantra pounded into our head--largely because we once actually were that when we first started teaching it--but few have noticed the facts really don't support that contention anymore with the way we've been dropping like a lead balloon in all the quality of life, health care and education indexes in recent years. Compared to most other first world industrialized nations, we now on average are more poorly educated, have worse average health care, die younger, are more prone to diseases, have higher infant mortality, work more, get less leisure time, are more stress ridden, carry more personal debt, have higher incarceration rates, and are more likely to be victimized by violent crime. The only area where we still tower above everybody else is military strength and weaponry.

So how again is life so much better here? Because he have more bombs, tanks and killing capacity? Yippee!

 

It's all about time and place. The U.S. rise to greatness was predicated on both its expanding industrial base and the wreckage of other global industrial centers during the world wars.

 

It also helped that China basically slept through the 20th century.

 

That's nice. Think i'll stick it out anyway.

 

No doubt the Russians helped bleed the Germans by bleeding themselves. The battles between the Germans and Russians, in my mind, were more like WWI trench warfare but with more lethal weapons.

Our industrial might helped Russia and Great Britain because it was able to produce massive amounts of equipment and ordnance. And regardless of the difference between Stalingrad and D-Day, the Allies' invasion required great planning, sacrifice and luck. Stalingrad was a drawn-out horror. On one day, the fate of the war changed.

Our casualties in the Pacific can be attributed to a different kind of war. More naval action, island hopping, strategic invasions. Yes, we did carry the ball in the Pacific, no doubt, and the horrors/sacrifices of our troops should never be forgotten.

 

Not quite, SP. The Eastern Front -- outside of the horrific slog that was Stalingrad and the siege of Leningrad -- was a back-and-forth, parry-and-thrust affair once the Russians absorbed the initial shock and got their shit together.

The difference between the way war was conducted on the two fronts was that once Stalin pulled his head together and gave Zhukov, Koniev and Rossokovsky carte-blanche to wage total war, they could do whatever they needed to do without any interference -- just as long as they produced results. Which they eventually did.

On the Western Front, Eisenhower had to walk a political tightrope between his generals (Bradley, Patton et al) and the British (Montgomery, primarily). And aside from the many masters politics demanded he serve, he was under tacit orders -- produced from public opinion in the U.S. and conveyed through FDR and George Marshall -- to keep casualties as low as possible. So the total war as fought over the bloodlands of Eastern Europe wasn't possible.

This neatly explains why 90% of the Allied casualties in the ETO were Russian. It also neatly explains why the war in Europe didn't end by 1944 -- but lasted five months longer.

There is a great book by British writer Max Hastings called "Armageddon" that chronicles the Eastern Front. Hastings makes the claim that the only Allied generals worth a damn outside of Patton were the Russians because of this penchant for balls-to-the-wall/damn-the-casualties tactics. I'm not sure I go all-in on that, but it's an interesting point.

 

I have no opinion, but this is a very interesting and informative thread. Thanks.