If it really was "The Greatest Generation".....

[MamaJunebug]

....then why did it result in the baby boom?

....Why didn't it successfully impute its morals to the baby boom generation?

... Why did it support the foolish conflict in Viet Nam?

... and more questions I won't ask, here.

Please understand: My folks were part of TGG, at least as defined by Tom Brokaw, Doug Phillips, Scott Brown and other people out to sell a book or two. I can make (and have made!) a few criticisms of my folks, but nobody else better.

But still. The questions above occurred to me as I thought about the slavish devotion paid to the dwindling population of WW2 vets, especially folks like Bill Brown, Scott's dad, who was a fighter pilot.

A dangerous, yet essentially glamorous and above-the-carnage role to play. He was injured over Japan, his neck was cut by a bullet or flying glass, I forget the details.

That's significant. Does it compare to the quadruple amputees who through miraculous medical advances have survived their OIF injuries? That would be for Mr. Bill and the veterans to determine.

But I keep thinking about it. When Brokaw first came out wtih TGG shtik, I grinned and thought, "yeah, babyboomer brother, I've gotten older, too, and have decided a lot of the values I rebelled against were really pretty sensible, and I want to let my folks know I honor them before it's too late, too."

And if it had stopped with Brokaw's book-related million$ of revenue, probably I wouldn't have thought about it much more.

But the whole Vf/NCFIC thing ... I'm thinking about it.

BTW, NCFIC.org doesn't have its July 4 festivities report up, but it does have Memorial Day. I'm going to look at some of the videos when I'm in a better frame of mind. ;)

[Kaylee]

No disrespect meant to any WWII vets, but I wonder if the big appeal for the VF crowd isn't that they represent the last generation before feminism and civil rights (for most) became a part of mainstream American values.

Also, patriarchy seems to value war, so of course they would have to hold soldiers up as heroes. Most of America still doesn't really give much respect to Vietnam vets and don't even acknowledge the Korean War, and honoring more recent vets would include too many women for their tastes (I know women served in most American wars, including WWII, but they are easier to ignore because they were in gender-segregated units).

[Antigone]

I'll have to go with Raine there. Both of my grandfathers served in Korea, and it changed them. You couldn't sneak up on them, unless you wanted to risk getting hurt big-time. I made the mistake of playing around and going "BOO!" from behind my grandfather. Never made that mistake again, after having the bejesus scared out of me by a 60 year old guy suddenly turning into Chuck Norris. No one was hurt, he stopped before he actually did anything, but GEEZ. My other grandfather talked a bit about his experiences, but never anything beyond generics.

I really dislike the concept of going "backwards". Isn't the point of history to teach us about where we went wrong so we do not repeat our mistakes? That's just me at least. I don't really fancy having to un-learn most of my own edcuation. I've always enjoyed learning new things, but un-learning? No. Not unless it is required by the laws of brain bleach.

If this is gonna be a trend, I honestly wonder about my daughter's generation. What will we and our parents be to her? I know there was a thread about generations, but the names are just the tip of the iceberg. Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials... I do hope THEY learn from history, instead of wanting to ignore/rewrite it.

Bleccch. I feel weird, maybe because I haven't used my brain in so long. Maybe that's why I sound so rambly, too.. :) ha.

[Brainsample]

I'll have to go with Raine there. Both of my grandfathers served in Korea, and it changed them. You couldn't sneak up on them, unless you wanted to risk getting hurt big-time. I made the mistake of playing around and going "BOO!" from behind my grandfather. Never made that mistake again, after having the bejesus scared out of me by a 60 year old guy suddenly turning into Chuck Norris. No one was hurt, he stopped before he actually did anything, but GEEZ. My other grandfather talked a bit about his experiences, but never anything beyond generics.

I really dislike the concept of going "backwards". Isn't the point of history to teach us about where we went wrong so we do not repeat our mistakes? That's just me at least. I don't really fancy having to un-learn most of my own edcuation. I've always enjoyed learning new things, but un-learning? No. Not unless it is required by the laws of brain bleach.

If this is gonna be a trend, I honestly wonder about my daughter's generation. What will we and our parents be to her? I know there was a thread about generations, but the names are just the tip of the iceberg. Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials... I do hope THEY learn from history, instead of wanting to ignore/rewrite it.

Bleccch. I feel weird, maybe because I haven't used my brain in so long. Maybe that's why I sound so rambly, too.. :) ha.

OOhh, Antigone, you're quoting Santayana's great aphorism: "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again." I don't know much about him other than that he was a Spanish philosopher, but he must be evil because his name sounds like satan!

Jungle wars with Asian peoples... My husband said, after hanging around some vets in military school that, based on talking to them, that it's the jungle that makes a Westerner a little crazy (or a lot, depending on where you were). WWII was a war with Europeans, and fighting them is different. I don't think it plays with an American's head as much -- or at least in a different way. And each generation manifests their trauma and shell shock in a different way. People had more compassion for the WWI and WWII vets with more outward disability and symptoms, even when you look at the people who served in the Pacific. (But if you look at Rod Serling, for example, he was much different than the guy who fought in Europe, and he had a lot of ongoing PTSD -- what the Twilight Zone is all about.)

People aren't as comfortable with the Korean and Vietnam war vets whose symptoms were less demonstrative and almost latent. The earlier problems people had were problems you could readily see.

Bill Gothard and these guys all idolize some part of the past as a fantasy, and life seemed pure and simple then. It was all because men were men and women were women and everyone read the Bible in public school. Those were the days... You don't have to live in the real world entirely if you're looking over your shoulder all the time to visualize a better place.

Your kids will be fine because you will not teach them a fantasy and will teach them to be well informed about the past.

[DamnPrecious]

Oh the good ole days! My dad must be mistaken about being hungry and destitute as a kid. My grandma didn't eat backfat because that was all there was and when her husband died there was a man to swoop in and save the day. 2 of the 3 girls didn't die from what would now be easily curable diseases. My great aunt didn't die from a back alley abortion.

That doesn't even begin to chip away at the lies my Dad told me and my mom had it worse.

So Thank You, Doug! Seriously FUCKING thank you! I would have never known that's what the good old days if it wasn't for you.

[Patsy]

DamnPrecious, there might have been suffering, but it was NOBLE suffering! They were all wearing pretty dresses and using nice manners when they were hungry!

[Marchpane]

They are sooo simplistic about history. Maybe more understandable when it comes to Victorian times, but when it's within living memory? Sheesh, try harder, guys! Just paying homage to a few veterans, however rightly, won't cut it.

In the UK, in WW2, there was a concept called The Home Front, which acknowledged the fact that EVERYONE was working hard and making sacrifices for the war effort. And many people were in danger of death and injury, too. My mother's family were evacuated to the countryside to escape the incessant bombing of London. Other cities were blasted night after night as well. Even some small towns were bombed, if they seemed to be strategically important.

This week I attended the funeral of someone who, along with her older sister, was a survivor of a WW2 air raid. The destruction of their home by a huge bomb, her rescue and the loss of her mother and father and siblings must have been among her first memories. It doesn't bear thinking about. After air raids, some people were never found, as they were just completely annihilated. Bodies ( and parts of bodies) were found in trees, on rooftops and on the street. People at the time were encouraged not to speak of these grim realities, so as not to spread despondancy.And of course, there would have been innocent German children suffering the same way.

I'm wandering a bit here because I'm feeling emotional, but what I'm trying to say is that these high profile spokesmen for their cause are so extremely glib, smug, narrow and self-satisfied that it makes me totally sick. How can anyone be fooled into thinking that anything that they say has any more depth than a shallow puddle? They are a bunch of self-serving shysters, who have no shame in latching on to anything or any person that they think will make them look good.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

So great they did not fight segregation till well after the war.

So great they often saw nothing wrong with segregation.

[My own grandfather totally changed his stance after seeing black soldiers TRYING to fight. It gave him a new respect that was alien in his upbringing. His legacy is that he CORRECTED the view on race for his children and grandchildren.]

So great that they made women give up their jobs when the war was over.

So great that, until the camps were opened, they didn't see the big deal about the "Jewish problem" [Granted, this, like segregation was mostly in the hands of lawmakers a generation or two older.]

So great....like other posters said of how they raised us boomers and the rest.

BUT THE GOOD:

So great they made unimaginable sacrifices to get thru college on the GI bill, often living in conditions that would not be allowed today.

So great they made us the #1 economy in the world for decades.

So great they didn't bitch and moan on Oprah about every wrong done to them.

So great that they worked thru marital strife and stay married, worked till the job was done, sacrificed their pleasure to give more than they'd had to their kids [with drastic results].

[bananacat]

Is this the same generation that lived through the Depression? I think they're called the greatest generation simply because they worked so hard just to survive and they suffered so much. I think that the current generation will overtake them because of our current Depression. I don't agree that they were the greatest generation and my Grandpa is so backward in his thinking AND unwilling to change. I'm a woman and I have a degree in engineering, and he is constantly amazed that I managed to be successful in any way. He treats my mom and aunt like servants while praising my deadbeat uncle. So yeah, he struggled through the Depression but he's certainly not the greatest.

And Hopewell, I really have to disagree that sticking it out through a terrible marriage is a good thing. It's not good for the kids to have two parents who hate each other but are technically married because of a piece of paper. My parents are divorced and I'm better for it. I wish they had divorced a decade earlier than they did. Everyone thinks kids are so stupid, but they know what's going on. Staying with a horrible person for the kids rarely does the kids any actual good.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

And Hopewell, I really have to disagree that sticking it out through a terrible marriage is a good thing. It's not good for the kids to have two parents who hate each other but are technically married because of a piece of paper.

Sorry Mama...I really, really didn't mean to imply NO divorce. Just that they often lasted for BETTER thru the WORSE which too many folks today (myself included) didn't try to do. That's all/...

[MamaJunebug]

[i'm wandering a bit here because I'm feeling emotional, but what I'm trying to say is that these high profile spokesmen for their cause are so extremely glib, smug, narrow and self-satisfied that it makes me totally sick. How can anyone be fooled into thinking that anything that they say has any more depth than a shallow puddle? They are a bunch of self-serving shysters, who have no shame in latching on to anything or any person that they think will make them look good.

/quote]

Ah, Marchpane. You've arrived at my second facepalm-of-the-week. The Vision Forum followers.

How can they fall for this? Jay Teeth Phillips looking Hollywood-fresh in his replica uniform, Doug Phillips with his metrosexual beard in another costume-room uniform ... the old man carrying the flag while some kid in a t-shirt chomped gum like a cattle with its cud and the VF film crew left that in...

And people paid to go on this "historic, learning experience"???

And other people stayed home while donating money so Phillips could make his silly, puddle-deep travelogue?

Who buys this stuff? how un-informed are they about the real world, that this is how they invest [sic] their homeschooling curricula budget? DVDs that reduce WW2 to doctrinal differences?

Hitler aimed to eliminate Christianity along with Judaism so that he could replace it with his version of the old germanic pagan religions. His version would permit him to carry out his beneath-evil schemes and install himself as god-ruler.

That's not doctrinal. That's evil versus good. OK, ok... maybe the DVD makes those points. If so, good on them.

But back to the VF.com consumers. Do they never look at TV news? Or a newspaper? or an electronic version of a newspaper? Do they not understand the pointlessness of showing their children videos of well-fed, tidily groomed actors in well pressed suits with a little black makeup on their faces, and calling that the history of the second world war?

Are they cosseted? Isolated? Were their own upbringings so chaotic and malicious that they cling to any shiny thing where the narrator appears cocksure, and parades his unfailingly smiling wife and 8 kids?

I just don't understand it. I don't understand how people can buy this sort of thing!

[IReallyAmHopewell]

Do they never look at TV news? Or a newspaper? or an electronic version of a newspaper?

For many, in a word: NO

That's being "in the world" and not "of" the world. Remember the piece "Life in Perfect"--that's why they buy into VF and Gothard--6 easy steps to a perfect life, perfect marriage, perfect children, perfect home.....

[GenerationCedarchip]

For many, in a word: NO

That's being "in the world" and not "of" the world. Remember the piece "Life in Perfect"--that's why they buy into VF and Gothard--6 easy steps to a perfect life, perfect marriage, perfect children, perfect home.....

True - but then there are the ones that truly blow my mind. I personally know of very well educated people(we're talking engineers, accountants, etc..) who buy into VF and think it's wonderful. I don't know if it's a yearning for the kind of sepia-toned fairytale life Phillips is shilling, but the idea that people with the tools at their disposal to know better would jump on this bandwagon just chills me.

[dcmhejbl62]

Back then it WAS the best of times for the people now promoting it -- middle and upper class white men. They didn't have to compete with women or blacks or Hispanics for jobs, they had a houseful of servants at home (ie, women and children), and almost unlimited freedom in every aspect of their lives.

(PS Despite my current feminist rants, I do not hate middle class white men. My husband is one, as is my father, as are all my children, and I love them to death. My friends tend to be male. My aggravation right now is directed at VF / patriarchal jerks and the moronic women who follow them.)

I think the reason people felt differently after more modern wars than they did after I and II was because of the media; it had a larger presence and was more available to the average person, and the propaganda machine couldn't fight against the truth that the media brought. By Vietnam we also had a more widespread teenage population who were just becoming socially and politically active.

[O Latin]

I think part of the romanticizing of WWII comes from the people who lived through it. My grandparents grew up during the Depression and WWII provided them with opportunities to get education and make their lives better.

Also, I think a lot of the appeal is the unity. Today, war divides people, and the two-party system uses that division to make their opponents look like the bad guy, thereby causing even more division. I think a lot of people probably long for that image of everybody pulling together to get the job done.

I think it's natural to idealize the past. I know I do it even with my own life. Like I might have a really crappy semester at school where I hate all my classes and I'm depressed and crying myself to sleep every night. But a few months later I'll be remembering all the good things that happened during that semester and how happy I was and wishing I could go back to that. I think we like to remember things as being good and happy, even if they weren't, necessarily, so I can forgive people for a little bit of historical idealization.

[medievalist1980]

meandering here, but i think everyone is spot-on with the "idealizing the past" idea. WWI and II vets weren't considered as great back when they were returning - or at least WWI. I like to use fictional books to get at actual feelings events. For example, in the "Body at the Bellona Club" by Dorothy L. Sayers (as well as some of her other works) older war vets from the Crimea and Boer war mock and deride those suffering from shell shock and mustard attacks as not real men. In L.M. Montgomery's "Rilla of Ingleside" we find the antagonists and those worthy of community derision to be the vocal pacifists. Division and mockery that we had it tougher/we were better/we were true men/women/countrymen/soldiers/etc has always been around. I'm sure we call all find many more examples.

[BlondeAgent007]

And they have completely forgotten that during WWII while everybody was outraged at the Holocaust, there were thousands of Japanese-American citizens that for no reason were forced to abandon their homes and belongings and move to internment camps themselves. They weren't made to massively kill people, but they were in no way acceptable, much less constitutional. You know, the document fundies love so well?

[Brainsample]

Sorry Mama...I really, really didn't mean to imply NO divorce. Just that they often lasted for BETTER thru the WORSE which too many folks today (myself included) didn't try to do. That's all/...

But up until the wild '60s, it was scandalous to get a divorce. Women did not have the opportunities that they do today to leave and support themselves (still a problem today), and they didn't have the moral support, either.

It may not have been a good thing to stay in a bad marriage, but you have to consider that when you look back into another time to think about what they did or what they didn't do.

EDIT: I have a miserable sinus headache, got off topic and sounded miserable, so I deleted stuff! And I apologize if what I left here sounds miserable. Not communicating well today... But I'm miserable so I'm inclined to post cantankerous comments.

[Brainsample]

Idealizing the past is a great gift if you think about it. It is what helps us move through our pain. When we resolve it and allow it to help us grow, we don't stay in the negative aspects of it. When you can look back and remember the good stuff and have only vague, descriptive memories of the bad stuff, that is a sign that you've healed and "integrated" the experience.

Like forgetting the pain of labor when they put that little amazing baby in your arms.

We always look at history through our perspective, whether it is our history or our collective history. We also have confirmation bias, too.

These things are gifts because they help us cope with situations that are unbearable or tragic. It's when we forget that we are bound to perspective and do not always see things in the same way as others that we get really messed up. You certainly can't build a religion out of history, especially when it eclipses your other religious principles. And you really get messed up when you're working with an American Folk Religion like VF's patriarchy.

[duplessis3]

In all fairness, the "greatest generation" didn't have Oprah to go on, and gripe. Be assured that many would have if they could have. "Queen for a Day" anyone?

[Guest Anonymous]

This was also the generation that allowed thousands of fellow Americans to lose their livelihoods and have their lives destroyed by following Sen. Joseph McCarthy. On suspicion that they were Communists or were friends with others who were, people lost their jobs, had friends and family turn against them and were hounded out of their neighborhoods on the mere suspicion of subversive thought.

I can think of several instances in the entertainment industry. During the first season of "The Honeymooners". Alice Kramden was played by an actress named Pert Kelton. Soon after the season ended it was announced that Kelton had had a massive heart attack and was leaving the show on her doctor's advice. Part of the statement was true, Kelton did have a heart attack but it wasn't serious enough to permanently incapacitate her. What actually happened was, Pert Kelton had been blacklisted as a Communist and was forced to leave the show. To their credit, Gleason and her castmates did stand up for her, but even a hit show under their belts was not enough to neutralize the McCarthyist hysteria. It took Kelton over nine years before she made a comeback, playing Marian the Librarian's mother in "The Music Man".

Another victim as Philip Dorn, who played the grandfather in "The Goldbergs". He. too, was denounced as a Communist and forced out of the show. Unable to get his old job back, and blacklisted from finding any other jobs, Dorn became disheartened enough to commit suicide.

[bananacat]

But up until the wild '60s, it was scandalous to get a divorce. Women did not have the opportunities that they do today to leave and support themselves (still a problem today), and they didn't have the moral support, either.

It may not have been a good thing to stay in a bad marriage, but you have to consider that when you look back into another time to think about what they did or what they didn't do.

EDIT: I have a miserable sinus headache, got off topic and sounded miserable, so I deleted stuff! And I apologize if what I left here sounds miserable. Not communicating well today... But I'm miserable so I'm inclined to post cantankerous comments.

I didn't mean that people should have left their horrible spouses en masse, only that they shouldn't be idealized and praised for sticking it out for the sake of suffering.

[Brainsample]

I didn't mean that people should have left their horrible spouses en masse, only that they shouldn't be idealized and praised for sticking it out for the sake of suffering.

I didn't think you did, and I know what you were getting at. Even the Jews could get a get if they wanted one, and there was a provision made for people who lived in misery in a terrible marriage. They happen, and even the Jewish Law provided for relief from them. I don't see you advocating divorce or dividing families in what you said.

But God knows what other people think when they read about a hard topic like this. If Kelly's online, this could be good fodder for her to use to prove that anyone who believes this was responsible for the mutation of a killer virus in Africa, and somehow, your original statement probably insults Lady Lydia somehow.