On the latest Narrative Control podcast, I discuss the film Patton (1970) with Rob Henderson. We talk about what it's like in 2021 trying to understand a movie released in 1970 portraying the America of the Second World War. The discussion also addresses the military's role in society; what the movie tells us about American culture during WWII and in the generation after; and divisions between elites and the masses in the US across time.
The speech at the beginning of the movie is a verbatim transcript of the speech that Patton made to the troops before the Normandy invasion. In America in 1970 people who were 20 years old in 1944 we’re 46 years old. They were in the prime of their professional and adult life, and they still had children in the house. There were millions of men who had just fought that war, and to them it seemed like yesterday. Nixon was a World War II veteran himself. They did not look at their military service or fighting against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan with any irony, irony was not a thing yet. The antiwar movement got a lot of attention, but it was far from a majority of the people in the country. Most people supported the war as late as 1970.
This is simple, if you want to understand Nixon's arrogance and the nation under him, just like to Putin. Same personality, same megalomania, same bizarre narcissism, same fascistic followers. Dmitry Simes and Richard Burt link the two for a reason.
Vietnam is the main reason why JFK was murdered he never would have escalated the war the way LBJ did and LBJ did that to help his Texas business pals make Big Money. LBJ also knew he was soon going to be exposed in Newsweek magazine as a lifelong criminal so he gave the Go order to the hit team in Dallas. Newsweek was going to expose Johnson on the following Monday or Tuesday they had the entire issue ready to go to press but after the Friday assassination in Dallas and Lyndon being sworn in as President that issue of Newsweek was spiked never to be printed.
Vietnam was never meant to be "won" it was designed to last at least 10 years to make Billions of Dollars for the Military Industrial Complex. And it was a great success in that regard.
The speech at the beginning of the movie is a verbatim transcript of the speech that Patton made to the troops before the Normandy invasion. In America in 1970 people who were 20 years old in 1944 we’re 46 years old. They were in the prime of their professional and adult life, and they still had children in the house. There were millions of men who had just fought that war, and to them it seemed like yesterday. Nixon was a World War II veteran himself. They did not look at their military service or fighting against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan with any irony, irony was not a thing yet. The antiwar movement got a lot of attention, but it was far from a majority of the people in the country. Most people supported the war as late as 1970.
This is simple, if you want to understand Nixon's arrogance and the nation under him, just like to Putin. Same personality, same megalomania, same bizarre narcissism, same fascistic followers. Dmitry Simes and Richard Burt link the two for a reason.
Vietnam is the main reason why JFK was murdered he never would have escalated the war the way LBJ did and LBJ did that to help his Texas business pals make Big Money. LBJ also knew he was soon going to be exposed in Newsweek magazine as a lifelong criminal so he gave the Go order to the hit team in Dallas. Newsweek was going to expose Johnson on the following Monday or Tuesday they had the entire issue ready to go to press but after the Friday assassination in Dallas and Lyndon being sworn in as President that issue of Newsweek was spiked never to be printed.
Vietnam was never meant to be "won" it was designed to last at least 10 years to make Billions of Dollars for the Military Industrial Complex. And it was a great success in that regard.