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Those guys are and were courageous and competent and deserve recognition, but I have to ponder at making such a spectacle of celebrating people who dropped expl
by leokun 13y ago
Those guys are and were courageous and competent and deserve recognition, but I have to ponder at making such a spectacle of celebrating people who dropped explosives on people, people who are now our allies. We are an incredibly militaristic society.
- mikeash 13y agoI think I support your sentiment in general, but in this particular case, the struggle against Imperial Japan was about as close to a storybook fight of good versus evil as we're likely to find, and I think celebrating those who put a stop to it is worthwhile.
- aaronem 13y agoIf you're looking for examples of "an incredibly militaristic society", you might want to start with, say, Prussia under Frederick the Great, or Imperial Japan circa 1942. Once you've familiarized yourself with at least those two, you'll be better equipped than you are now to recognize the risibility of using that phrase to describe the United States in 2013.
- leokun 13y agoBetter equipped than I am now? You assume to know quite a bit about me from a simple sentence.
- aaronem 13y agoNot at all, and no assumption is required; from the sentence in question, I conclude merely that you don't know what "an incredibly militaristic society" looks like. Otherwise, you wouldn't have mistaken the United States in 2013 for anything of the sort.
- leokun 13y agoMaybe we don't all go around wearing uniforms or worshipping the emperor, but our police is becoming more militarized, and we definitely are people who celebrate war. Finding me "risible" based on a harmless observation probably means you are quite emotional on the topic so I'm not inclined to respond to you any more.
- aaronem 13y agoIt was (and is) the observation I found risible, not the person who made it. And of course we celebrate war! Who, having examined the public reaction to our recent outings in Afghanistan and Iraq, could possibly draw any other conclusion?
- mercurial 13y agoI'd argue that Sparta trumps them both, but I agree with your sentiment. Clearly the US in particular and western countries in general are more leaning toward the Eastern Germany model of internal surveillance, except with SIGINT instead of HUMINT.