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Fascism is a political system. Electioneering, fraud, voter intimidation and flat out violence aren't tactics linked solely to Fascism.
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Jan 6, 2014 02:12
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I can't contribute a lot re: postwar Japan, but I do know a little. I really don't know what to think about MacArthur as a military commander (I've read everything from 'he was a true Roman' to 'IRL Zapp Branigan') but he seems to have been a uniquely good choice to lead postwar Japan. Thanks to his far east experience, he seems to been a adept political operator in Japan, making friends despite the fact he was more a less a absolute ruler. Also, ironically for a man too conservative to join the Republican Party, he got the smartest new deal experts he could find, and did whatever they recommended, no matter how much the leftover Japanese old Guard complained. Among other things, he eliminated all vestiges of the feudal system, and gave universal suffrage for women. He also completely stomped the communist movement in Japan. He did nothing as the communists gained popularity, but when they agitated for a General Strike, the General went on the radio forbidding it, saying that he wasn't going to let anybody hold hostage the fragile economic progress Japan had made since the war. Since food (let alone employment) was still a serious problem in Japan, this stand of course was extremely popular, and turned a lot of people who were on the fence against the communists. I'm not sure if big history brains like Cyrano will consider this valid, but there is also something to be said that the Japanese militarism was not only implicitly shown to be a big failure, but was explicitly said to be a failure by the Emperor in his famous radio address to the Japanese people. He also said (paraphrasing) that Japan needed a new direction. Since that meant no more fascism or militarism, and communism was rapidly off the table, that meant a democracy by default. It is also worth noting that both Germany and Japan were occupied and defended by one of the dominant superpowers of the cold war. This was a substantial savings in resources, of course, but also it meant that the smartest scientists and engineers were being used by their resurgent industrial bases making commercial products, not cold war high tech. That gave them a considerable economic advantage.
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Jan 6, 2014 03:07
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Nebakenezzer posted:it meant that the smartest scientists and engineers were being used by their resurgent industrial bases making commercial products, not cold war high tech. That gave them a considerable economic advantage. Well, minus all the ones we and the Soviets stole, mostly to make Cold War high tech.
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Jan 6, 2014 03:16
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Koesj posted:I'm not very familiar with the direct impact of the US occupation on Japan (Embracing Defeat looks like an excellent primer though), but are you suggesting that there is a strong link between the absorption of the Meiji Constitution into the Postwar one, and the level of 'success' that Japan has had since the US Occupation? Because the stuff I've read (admittedly some time ago) about economic development suggests there wasn't that much linkage between the two. Not the economic success, no - but the quick success of full fledged democracy rather. If the common man cared at all, it seemed that their constitution was amended by their own people as opposed to having a new one forced on them by foreigners. After the war, any mention of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers role in drafting the Constitution could be subject to censorship by the Civil Censorship Detachment (which required that censored items be rewritten to avoid the offending topic, not Xed out like previous forms of censorship).
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Jan 6, 2014 04:39
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Nebakenezzer posted:Thanks to his far east experience, he seems to been a adept political operator in Japan, making friends despite the fact he was more a less a absolute ruler. Up until the point where he declared the Japanese race was a child in a room of adults, anyway.
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Jan 6, 2014 04:52
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Sperglord Actual posted:Up until the point where he declared the Japanese race was a child in a room of adults, anyway. They didn't include that in Gregory Peck's MacArthur movie.
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Jan 6, 2014 05:04
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Nebakenezzer posted:They didn't include that in Gregory Peck's MacArthur movie. To be fair, Peck is better at being MacArthur than MacArthur.
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Jan 6, 2014 05:18
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Ceros_X posted:Not the economic success, no - but the quick success of full fledged democracy rather. If the common man cared at all, it seemed that their constitution was amended by their own people as opposed to having a new one forced on them by foreigners. After the war, any mention of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers role in drafting the Constitution could be subject to censorship by the Civil Censorship Detachment (which required that censored items be rewritten to avoid the offending topic, not Xed out like previous forms of censorship). Isn't that a bit of an overly positive view of the impact of the constitutional process? The procedures of which I, again, admittedly don't know that much about. How can you quantifiably trace the influence of something that was put to paper, and which certain people could, or can, claim ownership of over others, compared to the concrete results of the Japanese economic resurgence over the medium term, which pretty much happened outside the sphere of both US occupational, and Japanese public influence? The original question posed in the other thread was how they turned into a 'successful, peaceful country', that the US 'helped to rebuild', and which is now a 'trading partners that does pretty well.' A notion that Cyrano tried to contextualise with regard to Germany, and which deserves a much broader perspective than "we nudged them towards adopting a democratic consitution!" when looking at Japan IMO. Primarily because the political dimension of the postwar Japanese success story looks a lot less enviable than their massive economic success.
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Jan 6, 2014 13:31
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We need some cold war as gently caress movies to dispell the gloom here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg A huge sub-glacial US Army base on Greenland! Complete with cute doge, vintage snow cats, and pipe smoking.
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Jan 6, 2014 14:31
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Agean90 posted:To be fair, Peck is better at being MacArthur than MacArthur. He's no Laurence Olivier...
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Jan 6, 2014 15:49
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Groda posted:He's no Laurence Olivier... Obscure, but effective.
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Jan 6, 2014 15:51
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Cyrano4747 posted:Hah, so the East German model then Japan's major political parties prior to WW2 were also literally the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy, for what it's worth. Military expenditure had so completely consumed the Japanese government that the rival services formed political parties to better ensure that they got the resources they needed.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:03
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More-or-less single party politics backed up by the continued presence via long-term basing of a big loving army owned by a recent occupier and only slightly less recent enemy.
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Koesj posted:How can you quantifiably trace the influence of something that was put to paper, and which certain people could, or can, claim ownership of over others, compared to the concrete results of the Japanese economic resurgence over the medium term, which pretty much happened outside the sphere of both US occupational, and Japanese public influence? This is the part of any cross-disciplinary conference where the historian, the economist, the sociologist, and the political scientist almost come to blows. The tl;dr on what would otherwise be 10+ pages of me rambling on about what amounts to philosophy is that there is no answer to this. We have never found a good, quantifiable model for expressing human behavior. The problem with economics is that it looks great on paper and works WONDERFULLY for explaining things in a vacuum, but it works less well for explaining really big, complex processes or questions. It also assumes that humans are rational actors, which is a pretty loving big assumption. Even assuming that we are, I've yet to get a good answer from an economist about how they account for the way that people prioritize their needs and desires. I'm not saying that history is the perfect discipline and that it holds all of these answers, either. History is nothing more and nothing less than an interpretive approach to understanding the past. You take what facts you know, apply some critical thinking skills, and try to come up with a plausible idea about why this or that turned out the way it did. But, again, the bigger the question the more complex the answer and the more inevitable that your grand philosophy will have holes in the weave. When it comes to any kind of behavioral questions at best we're left groping in the dark with analysis and interpretation as our only tools. Quantifiable answers with mathematically repeatable results aren't something we've ever been able to achieve in this arena, and those who claim to have done so usually are working with exceptionally small models of very basic questions, or their work isn't as quantifiable as they would have you believe, or there are some significant problems with it. poo poo, it may very well be that at the end of the day we are simply incapable of developing or grasping the models that are necessary to explain complex behavior. Maybe the problem is so complex that the human brain, for all its sophistication and power, just does not have the right wiring for puzzling it out. It may be a problem that we can no more successfully hope to grapple with than a chimp can attempt to solve differential equations. Right now we're left with much less satisfying interpretive models, so it's what we struggle along with when trying to explain why the gently caress it is that we behave the way we do, especially when large groups of us attempt (either by design or by blundering forth blindly) really big endeavors.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:59
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I make word salads even when writing in my own language  Qualifiably then!
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Jan 6, 2014 17:10
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Fearless posted:Japan's major political parties prior to WW2 were also literally the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy, for what it's worth. Military expenditure had so completely consumed the Japanese government that the rival services formed political parties to better ensure that they got the resources they needed. Oh man, imagine if this literally happened in the US within our lifetimes. VOTE MARINES - TWO OSPREY IN EVERY LHS AND AN F-35B IN EVERY POT
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Jan 6, 2014 17:17
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Forums Terrorist posted:Oh man, imagine if this literally happened in the US within our lifetimes. Welcome to Imperial Germany ca. 1880-1910 or so. Honestly nothing's really changed in that regard, it's just that the big contractors lobby directly to every representative to make sure that we keep pumping out bloated projects of questionable value. Why bother with a political party when parties can lose elections? Just buy the whole loving government and guarantee yourself a win.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:28
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Fearless posted:Japan's major political parties prior to WW2 were also literally the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy, for what it's worth. Military expenditure had so completely consumed the Japanese government that the rival services formed political parties to better ensure that they got the resources they needed. That poo poo got so serious that the Army tried to have Admiral Yamamoto assassinated because of his opposition to war while he was Deputy Navy Minister.
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Jan 6, 2014 20:07
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Forums Terrorist posted:Oh man, imagine if this literally happened in the US within our lifetimes. Let's keep it real - the Marine Corps would be the Libertarian party in this situation, a party of no import.
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Jan 6, 2014 20:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:This is the part of any cross-disciplinary conference where the historian, the economist, the sociologist, and the political scientist almost come to blows. If we assume a perfectly spherical political system in a vacuum ...
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Jan 6, 2014 20:44
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Ceros_X posted:Let's keep it real - the Marine Corps would be the Libertarian party in this situation, a party of no import. Let's look at which services are actually getting most of what they want... Edit: V 
Godholio fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 20:54
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Godholio posted:Let's look at which services are actually getting most of what they want... Lockheed?
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Jan 6, 2014 20:56
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Vindolanda posted:Lockheed? Lmao I'd vote for Lockheed, they'd be all about make-work programs.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:00
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McNally posted:That poo poo got so serious that the Army tried to have Admiral Yamamoto assassinated because of his opposition to war while he was Deputy Navy Minister.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:06
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Ceros_X posted:Let's keep it real - the Marine Corps would be the Libertarian party in this situation, a party of no import. The Marines would be the Tea Party: wish it was still the 1940s, disproportionally influential due to our political system, bound and determined to break everything rather than compromise their obsolete and unrealistic ideology, terrified of their continuing slide into irrelevance.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:06
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Dead Reckoning posted:The Marines would be the Tea Party: wish it was still the 1940s, disproportionally influential due to our political system, bound and determined to break everything rather than compromise their obsolete and unrealistic ideology, terrified of their continuing slide into irrelevance.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:52
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Dead Reckoning posted:The Marines would be the Tea Party: wish it was still the 1940s, disproportionally influential due to our political system, bound and determined to break everything rather than compromise their obsolete and unrealistic ideology, terrified of their continuing slide into irrelevance. This is especially good since the commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Amos, was the only branch leader to say his branch of service was too loving juvenile to handle gays. Fortunately, he has since recanted and said his previous position proved unfounded.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:59
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Dead Reckoning posted:The Marines would be the Tea Party: wish it was still the 1940s, disproportionally influential due to our political system, bound and determined to break everything rather than compromise their obsolete and unrealistic ideology, terrified of their continuing slide into irrelevance. First part is right, at least  . I was looking for an analogy for 'does 50% of the work with 10% of the budget' but there isn't a political branch that gets anything done so.. lol
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Jan 6, 2014 22:02
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Also, when someone joins they will not shut up about it, and they produce a ton of eye-roll worthy bumper stickers & Facebook posts.
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Jan 6, 2014 22:07
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Ceros_X posted:I was looking for an analogy for 'does 50% of the work with 10% of the budget' Coast Guard. They do an amazing amount of work despite being chronically underfunded.
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Jan 6, 2014 22:10
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 Keep the Navy out of my Blue Dollars!!!
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Jan 6, 2014 22:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:Right now we're left with much less satisfying interpretive models, so it's what we struggle along with when trying to explain why the gently caress it is that we behave the way we do, especially when large groups of us attempt (either by design or by blundering forth blindly) really big endeavors. The human brain can produce randomness, albeit not very well numerically due to hundreds, thousands, of itty bitty little biases loving up the selection. But it can certainly produce stuff that is random enough in an information theory or mathematical philosophy sense, such that we may have for instance art. Take that capacity for unpredictability and apply the multiplication principle when several random-capable individuals meet and interact and suddenly the river of history starts taking some weird turns at the most unexpected of times. You cannot predict history accurately due to this, but you can make at least broad and generic, at the rare best quite strong and narrow, projections based on current trends and knowledge of human behaviour, sociology and so on. Just don't crap your pants when some weird quantum poo poo goes down literally out of nowhere.
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Jan 6, 2014 23:51
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Sjurygg posted:The human brain can produce randomness, albeit not very well numerically due to hundreds, thousands, of itty bitty little biases loving up the selection. But it can certainly produce stuff that is random enough in an information theory no we loving can't god drat
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Jan 7, 2014 01:15
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Okay, Ignition! is loving insane. Cold War scientists were flat-out balls-to-the-wall holy poo poo I can't believe you tried that insane. Rocket Scientists are one thing, Propellant Chemists are loving off the charts.
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Jan 7, 2014 05:32
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Only loosely related but here's a question about the Falkland war: After a Exocet missile damaged the British destroyer HMS Glamorganof in the Falkland war the French were allegedly forced by Thatcher to give up their "missile codes", basically disabling that system. But how would these codes reach those missiles anyway? In flight (how)? Before that? Just wondering.
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Jan 7, 2014 07:53
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"She's threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don't provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind." The 'codes'here are almost certainly related to the exact jamming frequencies for the missile's on-board seeker. You can infer it even from that Guardian article, which is nothing more than a sensationalist headline really.
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Jan 7, 2014 08:08
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So was this an intentional backdoor or something they found out to be possible later? In any case, thanks! \/ Thanks to you too. lllllllllllllllllll fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 08:30
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It's more like if someone knew the exact shape of your housekey. Y'know, assuming that article isn't total horseshit. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 10:29
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Atomic weapons against Argentina? I would say lol but it was Thatcher.
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Jan 7, 2014 15:33
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Jan 7, 2014 15:50
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Oxford Comma posted:Atomic weapons against Argentina? I would say lol but it was Thatcher. The story goes that she wanted to launch a single, inert Polaris at Buenos Aires with a note saying "Next one is live".
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Jan 7, 2014 15:54
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