“Speaking the truth about the ‘Greatest Generation’ will get you in trouble. But it IS the truth. They let this happen.”
Well, they’re mostly gone now, so I haven’t been attacked on it (yet). I will say, in their defense, that they certainly did NOT want this outcome. After all, they didn’t spill their blood and guts, while watching their buddies get blown to bits, just to hand this country over to our enemies.
What I do think happened is that they thought (really hoped) that they had put the final nail into tyranny and the world wouldn’t have to worry about it in the future. There were 2 major problems with that theory:
1) They hadn’t. The Soviet Union was still in business after WW2, big time, and they were certainly tyrannical.
2) Tyranny is VERY ATTRACTIVE to people who either don’t know better, or simply lust for power over others. The only real way to fight tyranny is to EDUCATE young people, so they understand just how evil humans can be to each other, if given the chance. The ‘Greatest Generation’ simply failed there. They wouldn’t talk about what they saw during the war, and they allowed sanitized histories to be written, instead of giving the gory details. So the Baby Boomers grew up thinking that people and governments were inherently good, and therefore Socialism/Communism could work, providing you didn’t let the bad elements take control, and that has gotten us to where we are now.
On that note, I remember watching Get Smart when I was younger. Max would be tough as nails against Kaos threats...that was until they threatened torture. Then Max would say something “...that, I,m not too crazy about”. It confused me then, as I thought of torture as simply bamboo under fingernails or bending back someone’s fingers until they said “uncle”, and then it was over. It never occurred to me how horrific it could be (and was) until, decades later, when I read books on what Stalin’s goons did to their own people. Death wasn’t only assured, it was DEMANDED by those who were under torture...it put them out of their misery.
The needs of the few, are to oppress the many.