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.
As to the slapping incident, the American senior leader ship were acutely sensitive to the fact that they had an army of draftees, that the support of the American voters and the families of those drafted soldiers was politically delicate. A perception that the young men were not being properly cared for would cause alarm bells to go off. Remember, this was a New Deal era America, this was the era of mass trade union organization, and mass democratization of the economy and politics, and it was anti-elitist. The army was not popular in the interwar era. Also, there was an understanding after the first world war of battle fatigue or what was called shell shock. However there was always a fear among military officers that this could be faked, and Patons claim that he thought the young man he slapped was amenable to being “shaken out of it” may have been true. Patton was a world war one veterans and he had seen shellshock cases, so he knew about them, and he knew they were real. Patton was also suffering from stress and exhaustion, and he just seen dozens of young men whose bodies had been smashed beyond repair by German weapons, and he was clearly not in his best mental state when he encountered the shellshocked soldier.
Rick Perlstein is not a reliable guide to that era. He is a reliable guide to a leftist perception of that era. I’m old enough to remember when Patton came out. It was a quite different world. It requires a little bit of historical imagination to put yourself into those times. The United States has not yet gotten used to the idea that it was a vicious illegitimate country that went around the world slaughtering people and that it always lost its wars. The people who were the core demographic in the country, were military veterans, or knew people who were, and everyone had friends neighbors and relatives who had served, and everyone knew people who had been killed in the war. Also, it was the height of the Cold War, and Soviet communism was perceived as evil, and powerful, and the conflict with them was undecided, and we might lose. In the Northeast and in the Midwest where you had ethnic communities, everyone knew people who had fled from Soviet communism or who had relatives who had. The incapacity to win in Vietnam, and the sense that we might lose, was a genuine shock to people. It made no sense to them. And it suggested that we could lose the global conflict with communism as well. None of this was a joke, or taken ironically at the time. No one knew how it was going to come out. 1989 had not happened yet. Everybody was aware all the time that a nuclear war could break out in civilization would be destroyed, and this was something that was in the back of everybody’s head all day long, all the time, as well. The idea that we should have let Patton do what he wanted in 1945, and destroy the Soviet union while we had a chance to do it was not considered a joke, by many people it was considered a tragic missed opportunity. In reality, it was not a possibility, but we’re not talking about reality from an objective historical posture, but what public perception was at the time. It was a different world.
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.
As to the slapping incident, the American senior leader ship were acutely sensitive to the fact that they had an army of draftees, that the support of the American voters and the families of those drafted soldiers was politically delicate. A perception that the young men were not being properly cared for would cause alarm bells to go off. Remember, this was a New Deal era America, this was the era of mass trade union organization, and mass democratization of the economy and politics, and it was anti-elitist. The army was not popular in the interwar era. Also, there was an understanding after the first world war of battle fatigue or what was called shell shock. However there was always a fear among military officers that this could be faked, and Patons claim that he thought the young man he slapped was amenable to being “shaken out of it” may have been true. Patton was a world war one veterans and he had seen shellshock cases, so he knew about them, and he knew they were real. Patton was also suffering from stress and exhaustion, and he just seen dozens of young men whose bodies had been smashed beyond repair by German weapons, and he was clearly not in his best mental state when he encountered the shellshocked soldier.
Rick Perlstein is not a reliable guide to that era. He is a reliable guide to a leftist perception of that era. I’m old enough to remember when Patton came out. It was a quite different world. It requires a little bit of historical imagination to put yourself into those times. The United States has not yet gotten used to the idea that it was a vicious illegitimate country that went around the world slaughtering people and that it always lost its wars. The people who were the core demographic in the country, were military veterans, or knew people who were, and everyone had friends neighbors and relatives who had served, and everyone knew people who had been killed in the war. Also, it was the height of the Cold War, and Soviet communism was perceived as evil, and powerful, and the conflict with them was undecided, and we might lose. In the Northeast and in the Midwest where you had ethnic communities, everyone knew people who had fled from Soviet communism or who had relatives who had. The incapacity to win in Vietnam, and the sense that we might lose, was a genuine shock to people. It made no sense to them. And it suggested that we could lose the global conflict with communism as well. None of this was a joke, or taken ironically at the time. No one knew how it was going to come out. 1989 had not happened yet. Everybody was aware all the time that a nuclear war could break out in civilization would be destroyed, and this was something that was in the back of everybody’s head all day long, all the time, as well. The idea that we should have let Patton do what he wanted in 1945, and destroy the Soviet union while we had a chance to do it was not considered a joke, by many people it was considered a tragic missed opportunity. In reality, it was not a possibility, but we’re not talking about reality from an objective historical posture, but what public perception was at the time. It was a different world.
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.