Greater impact -- Pearl Harbor or JFK assassination?

tommy, I think the ‘90s were a time when people seemed like no “real” shit had ever happened to them. At least nothing substantive, nothing that made them take a step back and reexamine everything surrounding them. Middle-class Americans seemed to yearn for experiences much more intense than what suburban life offered. Middle-class disillusionment is no new thing, but it seemed rampant in the ‘90s. We had movies like Blair Witch, first-person cut them to ribbons video games, thrill rides, “reality” television. Sept. 11 changed all of that in dramatic ways. But that impact isn’t anything like what Pearl Harbor gave rise to.

 

Thank you Buck. It's not even close. I would argue that MLK assassination had greater impact on US than JFK.

 

Speaking for myself, I can agree with that sentiment, LJB. I was born in the late '60s, I barely recall Vietnam, but I do remember Nixon's resignation. The most serious threats I remember were the Iran Hostage Crisis, Libya (if you could call that a crisis), the end of the Cold War, and various terrorist threats and bombings. But this isn't really about 9/11, it's about Pearl Harbor and JFK's death. Where I disagree with you is where I feel JFK's death led directly to the civil-rights movement and the sexual revolution.

Pearl Harbor polarized us as one nation. JFK and 9/11 polarized us against each other.

 

The St. Louis Browns were set to move to Los Angeles ... but the winter meetings were to be held Dec. 8, 1941 (if I recall; the vote was to take place there and it was supposedly a gimmee) ... so from a sporting perspective, go with Pearl Harbor.

 

I wasn't a stain on the bedsheets in 1963. My earliest memory of anything even casually related to this was the assassination of Anwar Sadat, and that's not even a Top 100 defining moment of Our Century.

We've been attacked on our soil three times since 1815. That's a pretty good fucking run. Ask someone in, say, Tel Aviv how Pearl Harbor measures up to repeated shit they've gone through and it's not close. I think a number of things prompted the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, but Pearl Harbor was a flashpoint for so many things.

I bring up 9-11 because morons like Hannity associate it with Pearl Harbor and there is no congruency. None whatsoever. It will take time to feel the full effects that day has wrought on us as a people, but as I said, so far I don't see how it has given rise to anything good. For the most part, it has brought out all the worst in us.

 

LJB, I'd agree with that last part, to a point. As a singular event, I think they were pretty similar in terms of mode, and short-term death toll.

My grandmother was in the hospital on 9/11, and I went to see her. There was nothing else on TV except the endless replays of the planes flying into the buildings. Most shocking thing I'd ever seen. Ditto for my parents, who were there and who were in their late teens when JFK was killed. My grandmother laid there and said, "This is what Pearl Harbor was like."

 

You need more love for the random Red Dawn reference.

 

I remember being in class that morning and then being in traffic for about three hours.

Your story is bizarre and strangely beautiful. And better, too.

 

Speaking of argument, let's hear your comparison of these acts with the election of George Bush II. It had to ruin your day.

 

On a personal level, it's not even close.

My parents remember the JFK shooting and coverage on television.
My grandmother remembers giving birth to her first child in a Japanese internment camp.

I've been to the Sixth Floor Museum. I saw an exhibit. I left educated.
My father has been to Heart Mountain. He saw barren land where his mother once lived against her will. He left heartbroken.

That's a summary of my thoughts on this discussion.

 

Thanks for sharing, Hwy 101.

The forcible removal of Japanese-Americans from their homes in the West is a story that is often overlooked and rarely told.

 

Highway 101 - moving story about the outrage of imprisionment of US citizes of Japanese descent. When I took US history in the early 70s, there wasn't one word about this in our book. However, we had an excellent history teacher and he made sure we knew about this. We also had a book about it in summer reading (I think the title was Burma Rifles - it was fiction but it told the story of a soldier in the US Army of Japanese descent during World War 2 when his family was in a camp).

However, the Sixth Floor Museum is not a good museum to the way things happened. It is pretty much the Warren Commission version of things.