Ken Burns - The Vietnam War - The Something Awful Forums

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Enderzero: Jun 19, 2001; The snowflake button makes it
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Solaris 2.0 posted:

I want to remind everyone that this thread is about the DOCUMENTARY KEN BURNS - THE VIETNAM WAR. I know it's extremely popular, especially among internet leftists to uncritically launch into "US are all war criminals and deserved to die " tirades but that is not what this thread is about. I was hoping for a discussion about Ken Burns and his documentaries and how he is presenting the Vietnam war. You got beef for how the war was fought, or want to remind everyone how evil the western nations were in this conflict? Please feel free to go make a D&D thread about it.

Ok, here's a discussion. The aw shucks, good people with good intentions narrative is a subset of the Great Statesman narrative that allows these venal shitheads to flourish even now. We have been inculcated to accept strong men making tough choices as an excuse for imperialism nonstop in this country instead of seeing them for the selfish, provincial authoritarians they are. Henry Kissinger met with Hillary during the campaign last year and no one batted an eye! That's how complete a rehab these people go through just by virtue of being former Statesman. And I think Burns (though there's plenty of good material in there as well) advancing the "they didn't know better" argument is just another coat of paint in whitewashing American leaders and their actions. He's following in a long tradition that still has effects even today.

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Enderzero: Jun 19, 2001; The snowflake button makes it
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boner confessor posted:

it's a super bad look to call people stupid or uneducated simply because you have a different perspective in life that someone else never had because of their different upbringing. the american left is as bad as calling their political opponents brainless idiots as the american right is, this is really just a sign of an argument based in anger and spite instead of substance

before vietnam, even the academic left had difficulty articulating the idea of america as an imperialist state. there's no way joe flagwaver from rural kansas would be aware of or responsible for that idea or that he should know better that his government would lie to him

Referring to back then, I mostly agree with you. It could have been difficult to gain enough worldview by draft age to see through what was happening at a geo-political level. I am less sympathetic to how racist our soldiers and country were, and are. Nowadays, though, I don't think people have much of a leg to stand on given the wide availability of a multitude of views and critical readings - it's particularly shocking to compare how many people back then, in the full throes of racism, didn't support civil rights protests vs now. The numbers are extremely comparable, and that is a disgrace.

At no point in our history am I going to stop holding the leaders accountable though. They should have known better, and they still should today. Our institutional memory concerning our history and why things happened is terrible, and we have way too many upper crust shithead warhawks running around.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 20:14

Enderzero: Jun 19, 2001; The snowflake button makes it
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boner confessor posted:

sure, and we can say in retrospect the decisions they made lead to bad outcomes, but it's difficult to separate the decisions made by those leaders from the desires of the people (most of whom did and many of whom still do) that supported the war because of american jingoism and militaristic pride. johnson and others didn't want to be in the war but they felt carried along because they would lose elections by taking an unpopular stance like "the war is bad and we will let vietnam become communist". and we can also say that we would demand our elected officials make the unpopular but morally right choice, but one ugly aspect of a democracy is that politicians who say unpopular truths instead of comfortable lies don't get elected

there's this idea that america was mislead on the war which is true in many respects but i think that americans weren't mislead necessarily on their desire to defeat the communists in battle, that's who our spectral enemy was at the time and americans are a bloodthirsty, vengeful people - especially when we were riding the high of the righteous nazi bashing that was ww2 and gripped with paranoia about communists poisoning the water supply. i mean it's not like it took much to "fool" the american people into invading iraq a second time to depose saddam

Also pretty fair, but politicians are a primary driver in why there was communist paranoia in the first place so it's difficult to feel too bad about them having to make hard decisions due to sentiment they helped foment in the first place.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 22:01

Enderzero: Jun 19, 2001; The snowflake button makes it
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boner confessor posted:

yeah but not the same politicians. i mean we could argue that being a politician forces you to make lovely bad decisions on behalf of a lovely bad electorate but i dunno how to solve or address that really

True. We're talking along similar lines but I'm too focused on the political class as a long running concept, where you are, fairly, focused more on the events of the actual thread. Of course, in the end it comes down to Capital and politicians combining to maintain their class status through heavy handed, short sighted decisions and tragedies like the Vietnam War are the natural fallout.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 22:10

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Ken Burns - The Vietnam War