Vector that's the most naïve reading of WW2 I've ever seen.
It's not that the fact are false, it's that they are taken out of context.
I have to agree with Phmcw. The world was ruled with realpolitik back then, just as it is now. Attaching desirable moral values to the pragmatic actions of any given nation is what propaganda is for.
I'm not talking about actions of a nation, I'm talking about actions of its citizens. It's not about America the Beautiful State of Free People Who Always do the Right Things, or the American Way, or whatever the hell they're talking about. State actions: I can't judge them, because as you said they're pragmatic and extramoral. I suspect very, very strongly that you're seeing my argument through the lens of what was said later in the thread, which did speak more to state action and so on. You may note that I'm not the one arguing about whether or not Russia could have beaten off Japan. The "naive" version was a simple attempt at explaining the "facts" of the situation the American citizenry flung themselves into. Rather, the perceived situation, as indeed would be expressed by propaganda.
I'm talking about citizens who made sacrifice after sacrifice. And certainly, there were plenty of war profiteers among those citizens, and there were plenty of Nazi supporters, and, as I said, there was the idiotic state attitude of "appeasement" of Hitler--indeed, as you said, to attempt a sort of Russian roulette of balances.
But I'd like to remind people, sometimes, that there were Americans (such as those who fought in the Abraham Lincoln brigade, against the Spanish fascists during the civil war) who fought a war their country was keeping out of, and there were people struggling to give everything they had to give and more. Just like on the other side. And those people acted not out of pragmatism, but out of an attempt to do "the right thing," whatever that meant. I can respect their sacrifice and good will, because even in a world without moral absolutism I choose to do so.
I'm tired of this "my country is good and your country is bad" or "this person is good and that person is bad" or "your people are cruddy because a couple of them think they're really cool" thing, when seen in nationalism, politics, religion, and so on. I have no power to judge as such. But I still think that there's no need to impugn an entire state (and, usually, the entire society under it) due to (as I said) a few loud irritants.
So, to sum up the whole of my arguments in a way that is less eloquent, but likely more informative. Some points that I made that y'all might have forgotten about are either bracketed or bolded, and you can check for precise wording in the original post at your leisure:
You can totally compare Europa and the United States, because comparing things is what people do, especially when you have mentions of 'unions of disparate governments' in two powerful and obvious examples. This should not be a big deal.
'Unfuck yourself' says nothing about who fucked whom, only about the actor and recipient of unfucking.
No one is blaming Europe as a collective for what happened in World War II. It was bad all around. Boy, I'm glad that World War I wasn't fought on American soil, because the Eugenics movement scares the crap out of me and I really wouldn't want to be on the Nazi side. If you're talking about the morality of internal social movements, we weren't exactly the Golden Boys, were we? And it's also nice to have allies off somewhere safe when you're feeling like things are bad (but don't forget about Russia). Hmm, maybe we could look at America as an asset [there's that pragmatism] rather than a bunch of hoity-toity assholes.
One of the reasons America has for its current big defense budget is a couple of overseas defensive pacts. One of the reasons for those overseas defensive pacts is prevention of war.
World War I and World War II were bad wars. You may not like our money, but that doesn't mean you should stretch the facts to change what we believe happened in common parlance.
The situation in Europe looked really bad. There were a lot of heroic people fighting in Europe, and it seemed like there weren't that many resources left. Americans coming in probably helped end the war, and a lot of American citizens acted heroically despite a really bad situation. Our civilian base was at war, too. It wasn't just a casual thing where we said "okay, war time now" and got going. I think you should be grateful when people undergo hardship to help you out, especially if that means that you have to endure less of a very bad situation. In fact, I would call them heroic. That doesn't mean that they won the day, just that they helped.
A country has no moral unity [You might have wanted to pay more attention to this point, because I did make it]. But sometimes great masses of citizens perform actions that we perceive as "good."
I respect the actions that individual people took in Europe. Rather, I can see them with compassion. I would be a happier person if other people saw our actions with compassion, as actions undertaken by individual people trying to do good, or by individuals trying to make their own lives just a little bit more bearable, and not as some sort of whip being brandished by the state independent of all personal behavior. I would like America to be seen as both good and bad, rather than just bad.
If it wasn't us with the bomb, it was probably going to be Germany. I may be slightly biased, but at that moment of that war, I'm glad America wound up with it. I don't know about now.
We act through pragmatism every day, and even when we have systems of morality in place we cannot trace the ultimate effect of our every act. We can only hope and do our best.
Don't be ashamed of your country because of what one man did. I'm not ashamed of mine, and I'm not ashamed of yours either. That's senseless. Instead, I can find beauty in the great chaotic boil of humanity's individual actions.
Don't paint us with one brush. We are a great people, just as you are a great people. Let's be equally great people, and shallow people, and horrible people, and cruel people, and gentle people, and loving people--because all of those words apply in equal measure, and we should not forget any of them.
Or, if you like: LOOK MA, I'M MUDDYING THE WATERS OF YOUR ANGER. Let's be friends!
There was no effort to perform a nationalistic argument (other than a balancing one), but a populist argument focusing on the United States as the point of contention. And that's basically it. Though I realize now that the main thrust of my argument may look like it's making an attempt at a "HURRR AMERICA" to counter the "HURRR DENMARK" present, I'm mostly arguing for "HURRR PEACE AND MORAL NON-ABSOLUTISM."
The only state argument I attempted to make, so far as I can remember, were a couple of attempts of reminding folks of resistance groups that are often forgotten about--and the statement about the grammatical precision of "unfucking oneself," because I thought that was a case of understanding (probably should have explained that I wasn't necessarily condoning the point of view expressed). Okay, and the statement about the defense budget. Maybe there are a lot of state arguments.
I think the defense budget is ridiculous. It makes us look like a bunch of dick-waving internet nerds. All the same, I can see one of the reasons why it is so large, outside of "we like having an enormous missiledick." We did agree to protect Japan and Germany, and outside of the "if Japan and Germany can't invade things, then they can't become superpowers and mess with us, and they'll be awesome states aligned with Capitalism trolololo <3" aspect, there is also the "if we protect them, then maybe everyone can be okay with their being unable to invade things" aspect. There's loads of reasons, loads of arguments, and I only provided one--because I figure that for one stupid accusation one can provide one stupid defense, and leave it at that.
Of course, you're right that I should have said "... and there were other reasons for what happened, which were obviously not funded by gentle sentiments of the human heart." You're also right that I should have just ignored that, but I thought "hey, this is interesting, I'll throw it in."
The other "state information" I provided was, again, in an attempt to tell the other side of an argument. Because I don't want to forget the contras in Spain, or the resistances in France and Poland, or the acts of the cryptographers in Bletchley Park (and Alan Turing, whose death is seared on my memory), or the Rape of Nanking, or the sieges in Leningrad, or that Finland fought on "the wrong side" for a while, or that a lot of the Germans knew absolutely nothing about the Holocaust, or that Stalin was in fact not an all-around-swell-guy in so many ways. I'm not trying to argue any position but counterbalance--not even devil's advocacy, but counterbalance.
So I can say very firmly that I feel the United States government was, officially speaking, on the "right" side of the war--as in, the side that wasn't committing actively genocide against its own people en masse and invading everything. But this is a statement made in a vacuum, with no statement of historicity. I am intentionally speaking to propaganda, and I remember reading about the internment camps, just as well as I remember all of our sterilization of theoretically "feeble-minded" individuals, and detainment of immigrants in horrible conditions, and a shitton of other things I'm just not listing here because I could take all day. Forever. Until I died.
We were on the side that's more comfortable to support if you're not looking at things closely. We helped to end a war we helped cause. I can be glad for the act of ending at the same time as I mourn the tragedy of our inaction, because a lack of moral absolutism does not require a lack of emotion and personal assignation of moral value.
And there you have it.
PPE:
They're still not the single fantastic saviors of the world I'm tired of hearing the preaching off.
Well, I think we can all agree on this >_< I guess that your anger and my lack of sleep kind of ended up stewing up into a bit more argument than either of us intended to have. Sorry about that.
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