Originally Posted by Mikebert

No leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima before the attack:

This site says that leaflets were dropped after the bombs were dropped:

The Smithsonian's (not to mention a far, far lefty site like Commons Dreams) bias against Truman's use of "the bomb" on Japan (they apologized a number of years ago) notwithstanding, there were pretty good reasons as to why the U.S. would not wish to issue an offical warning: had Fat Boy turned out to be a dud... well, you can fill-in-the-blanks.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

What I look forward to is the inevitable supersession of this decrepit civilization by something unprecedented. Hopefully that something will be a technically-sophisticated, mutualistic anarchy. Whatever it eventually is, however, it will not come about by any deliberate program of transformation, but by a (probably punctuated) evolutionary process. I don't even expect to live to see it, though I might witness the first.

I largely agree with this. IMO, we have been using basically the same vehicle for community bonding since the fourth millennium BC. It is the use of myth to emotionally and politically bind a large group together that is larger than a genetic family. This myth binds this community together by positing an unlikely absolute familial relation ("we are all descended from Jacob"), claiming common adherence to a divine figurehead ("we all follow the emperor, the direct descendent of the sun goddess), or declaring a common ideal ("We the People . . ."). Things of this nature.

Another aspect of this demotic level is often the phenomenon of moral enforcement via divine authority. E.g., "If I steal my neighbor's goat and eat it, he may never know it was me, but Yaweh will". This creation of a self-policing aspect to society helps large numbers of people live together in an urban environment -- a people-dense environment our paleolithic evolution never designed us for. Otherwise, civilization ("the building and maintaining of cities") would not have been possible.

Up that point, an actual reality of relatedness was usually involved with clans and smallish tribes often with no more than a few degrees of consanguinity encompassed. In short, the previous level of community bonding, the human family, had reached the furthest extent of it's use as a leading-edge basic mode of existence.

That in turn replaced the Hominin troop by expanding intimate family bonding from simply mother and child to include a father/male-mate to the equation. The inclusion of a second parent was necessary to support the development of children in the prolonged childhood necessary for the species' new strategy of employing cultural/technological intelligence to thrive in its niche. This new family and its proximate consanguine relatives, which probably developed with the start of Homo erectus, formed the basis for a new level of community that served us well until high population densities developed in certain ecumenes like Mesopotamia.

The most advanced expression today of the narrative-bound Demos is the nation-state. But it is becoming clear that this expression is dysfunctional for the tasks of our developing global reality. Certain limitations, such as language and unreconcilable myths, prevent it from solving our current pressing problems.

So it seems likely a crisis, or series of crises, will push us to evolve (mostly unconsciously) a new platform for human community. This new community will not eliminate the nation-state (or at least certain forms of mythic Demos) but transcend and include it, negating mostly just the aspects not conducive to allowing the larger entity.

Neither is it likely that this new community will come to be based on international (or even transnational) action, but rather something that transcends the nation-state altogether.

Demos did not replace the family (or even in some cases the tribe), nor did it come about by a federation of families -- perhaps in some cases, but then the new entity quickly became something more than a union of tribes in and of itself). Also, what passed for "tribe" in many societies after the advent of civilization often utilized this new mythic tool to breach consanguinity in some cases. The Mongol and Amerind "tribes", for example, were to a large extent arguably just nomadic Demos.

And the new paternally-inclusive human family did not replace the mother-child bond by any stretch of the imagination.

I agree with Akham that something new must, and will be, coming. I don't necessarily agree that civilization is "decrepit". Just not up to the task now before it.

That all said, I see nothing immediately developing or available to become this new mode or vehicle of community. I have a few candidates in mind, but nothing available now. And whatever it is will probably surprise the hell out of us anyway.

So in the meantime I contend that the nation-state, and a community of nation-states, is all we have to work with at the moment, and we might as well make the best of it. That is one reason why I am so against postmodern and multicultural prescriptions -- they would damage or destroy all we have to work with at the moment while nothing is yet available to replace it. And what they would replace it with is worse than what we have now.

Originally Posted by K-I-A 67

Yah, well, the Japs killed plenty of innocents before we were ATTACKED. How many innocent globals have the Imperial Japanese killed since? The Japs got their asses kicked one bloody island at a time. Gosh, it's not as if they didn't have plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate accept defeat and surrender before we nuked them. Well, they made a decission to ignore the truth and payed the price.

Hey, until you guys reveal the secret liberal love potion that can dispensed from our war planes, you're gonna have to be satisfied with the time we have to waste going through all the global red tape, presenting our justisfications in front of the UN, waiting for permission or a denial before we drop bombs on peoples heads or invade with force. Once we enter a conflict, you're gonna have to be satisfied with the pieces of paper that inform innocent people to get out of the city, we're gonna be bombing and shelling some buildings followed by an invasion with house to house fighting next week.

Had it not been for the massacres committed by the Japanese government during WWII beginning in 1937, including the Bataan Death March, we Americans might have been less willing to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nukes. All that keeps the Japanese Empire of 1937-1945 from achieving the infamy that it so deserves is that the Nazis got more bad publicity for their crimes.

The problem wasn't the lack of a "love potion"; it was instead the hatred that a gangster regime doled out to people who seemed to believe it because of the ferocious fighting of their soldiers. I can understand how American leadership believed the Japanese people guilty much as they had thought the Germans guilty. Some have said that Americans didn't bomb Germany with nukes because the Germans are white (ignoring that the US didn't have The Bomb until Germany had capitulated). Americans had good cause to forget that the Germans were "white".

4Ts can go very well for some countries (United States, Britain) and very badly for others (Axis Powers) and the difference is the moral quality of the leadership. Gangster leadership such as that in Berlin or Tokyo until 1945 ensured that its enemies could not surrender; decent leadership by FDR and Churchill ensured that an Allied victory would result in a lasting peace and an emancipation of humanity. The Japanese, the Italians, and the Germans (at least in the West) got the sorts of governments that would never have starved and beaten POWs, gotten thrills from seeing the effects of aerial bombings upon 'primitive' people (Ethiopia), or consigning people to gas chambers for "Jewish" ancestry.

Don't ask me to jump onto any "I hate Islam" bandwagon. I'll save my harshest judgments for persons whose behavior violates every standard of moral behavior irrespective of nationality or culture. Hokusai did not participate in the massacre of Nanjing, and Goethe was clearly a no-show in Nazi death camps.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

I largely agree with this. IMO, we have been using basically the same vehicle for community bonding since the fourth millennium BC. It is the use of myth to emotionally and politically bind a large group together that is larger than a genetic family. This myth binds this community together by positing an unlikely absolute familial relation ("we are all descended from Jacob"), claiming common adherence to a divine figurehead ("we all follow the emperor, the direct descendent of the sun goddess), or declaring a common ideal ("We the People . . ."). Things of this nature.

Another aspect of this demotic level is often the phenomenon of moral enforcement via divine authority. E.g., "If I steal my neighbor's goat and eat it, he may never know it was me, but Yaweh will". This creation of a self-policing aspect to society helps large numbers of people live together in an urban environment -- a people-dense environment our paleolithic evolution never designed us for. Otherwise, civilization ("the building and maintaining of cities") would not have been possible.

Up that point, an actual reality of relatedness was usually involved with clans and smallish tribes often with no more than a few degrees of consanguinity encompassed. In short, the previous level of community bonding, the human family, had reached the furthest extent of it's use as a leading-edge basic mode of existence.

That in turn replaced the Hominin troop by expanding intimate family bonding from simply mother and child to include a father/male-mate to the equation. The inclusion of a second parent was necessary to support the development of children in the prolonged childhood necessary for the species' new strategy of employing cultural/technological intelligence to thrive in its niche. This new family and its proximate consanguine relatives, which probably developed with the start of Homo erectus, formed the basis for a new level of community that served us well until high population densities developed in certain ecumenes like Mesopotamia.

The most advanced expression today of the narrative-bound Demos is the nation-state. But it is becoming clear that this expression is dysfunctional for the tasks of our developing global reality. Certain limitations, such as language and unreconcilable myths, prevent it from solving our current pressing problems.

So it seems likely a crisis, or series of crises, will push us to evolve (mostly unconsciously) a new platform for human community. This new community will not eliminate the nation-state (or at least certain forms of mythic Demos) but transcend and include it, negating mostly just the aspects not conducive to allowing the larger entity.

Neither is it likely that this new community will come to be based on international (or even transnational) action, but rather something that transcends the nation-state altogether.

Demos did not replace the family (or even in some cases the tribe), nor did it come about by a federation of families -- perhaps in some cases, but then the new entity quickly became something more than a union of tribes in and of itself). Also, what passed for "tribe" in many societies after the advent of civilization often utilized this new mythic tool to breach consanguinity in some cases. The Mongol and Amerind "tribes", for example, were to a large extent arguably just nomadic Demos.

And the new paternally-inclusive human family did not replace the mother-child bond by any stretch of the imagination.

I agree with Akham that something new must, and will be, coming. I don't necessarily agree that civilization is "decrepit". Just not up to the task now before it.

That all said, I see nothing immediately developing or available to become this new mode or vehicle of community. I have a few candidates in mind, but nothing available now. And whatever it is will probably surprise the hell out of us anyway.

So in the meantime I contend that the nation-state, and a community of nation-states, is all we have to work with at the moment, and we might as well make the best of it. That is one reason why I am so against postmodern and multicultural prescriptions -- they would damage or destroy all we have to work with at the moment while nothing is yet available to replace it. And what they would replace it with is worse than what we have now.

Great post!

Originally Posted by zilch

The Smithsonian's (not to mention a far, far lefty site like Commons Dreams) bias against Truman's use of "the bomb" on Japan (they apologized a number of years ago) notwithstanding, there were pretty good reasons as to why the U.S. would not wish to issue an offical warning: had Fat Boy turned out to be a dud... well, you can fill-in-the-blanks.

Not just that. American air power was far from invincible back then. A lucky shot from an forewarned AA gunner and the bomb would have been in the hands of the Japanese.

No way were they going to take that chance.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

I always figured more Japanese would eventually die had we not dropped the bomb.

Every Japanese person will die, eventually. How many of them will do so as schoolchildren by your hand?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

No leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima before the attack:


This site says that leaflets were dropped after the bombs were dropped:

Looking at Wiki's account, it seems there was a general leaflet campaign being dropped on most every city in Japan saying to move out of the cities or face general ruin and death. Hiroshma and Nagasaki did recieve their share of leaflets, but I haven't seen that they were given any special warning, that their leaflets were any different than anyone else got.

Also, note that Nagasaki was the secondary target. Kokura was the primary target. Nagasaki would not have had any special warning leaflets as the bomber crew didn't discover Kokura was clouded over until they got over Kokura.

Also, at that late stage in the war, Japan wasn't intercepting many US overflights. The atom bomb attacks were five plain raids, with two advance scouts, the bomber, and two instrumentation aircraft. There was no fighter escort. If the US had anounced in advance atom bomb raids, the Japanese could and likely would have attempted to intercept, forcing the US to radically change tactics or risk losing bombs.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

No, the only point you've made is that you've spectacularly missed mine.

I didn't miss your point. I get it. You don't like apocalyptic millenarianism. You think it distracts people from positive action that can be taken in the present to affect real change. I agree. But I also think there is a difference between a revenge fantasy, designed to console the downtrodden and terrorize the wicked, and a cautionary tale, designed to alert people to real dangers and mobilize them to action. I can't speak for the others, but when I talk of the inevitability of change, I am simply stating a truism. Change will come. The world will, at some point, be thrown into upheaval -- like a bifurcation event in an otherwise equilibrating system. And when that happens, when all the chips are up in the air, ordinary people will have the power to alter the world forever. If they wish to make a mark, though, they'd best be prepared.

My point was that it's easy to spin words to paint the other guy as an idiot. You can bitch at people for preaching doom and gloom, and they can bitch at you for channeling excerpts from Who Moved My Cheese? What, however, is the object of the pissing contest?

But, no. The reality is that the apocalypse junkies rail about how the system of the world is deficient in some way, and instead of doing something about... well... anything, they instead pray for their own hideous Raptures. One day, the oil will run out, or the war will come home, or technological change will turn the world upside down, or the Seventh Seal will break and the blare of the trumpets will be deafening. And on that day, they will be freed from their unsatisfactory, unfulfilling lives, while their wicked 'enemies' will be punished.

I've said it before in response to similar criticism: no one here has any clue what the others do with their time outside these forums, unless they volunteer that information. You can't safely assume anything about the private lives of anonymous net personas. I've made it known in the past that my work has been with the homeless and at-risk youths. I don't often go into the details, but it is safe to say I do my part, often at great cost (and sometimes risk) to myself. You perform in alternative theater. That's great. I expose myself to sickness, crime, and vice to help people the rest of society would rather forget exist. When I talk about charity and mutual aid, I'm not just spouting platitudes. I practice what I preach.

If such people turned the time and energy they expend on justifying their own lack of engagement doing something, they might find not only that their lives aren't that unfulfilling, and that they have more power than they thought.

See above.

No doubt, you'll still find some way to recast such activities as meaningless, but that's your problem. And to me, at least, it looks a lot less like an indictment of whatever system you're railing against, and more like excuse-making for your own inability to see past the frustrations of daily life -- whether that inability stems from fear, apathy, or old-fashioned laziness.

That's amazing! Quick, what number am I thinking?

So, I'm not upbraiding people here for upbraiding others. I'm calling "bullshit" on the apocalypse-mongering that's so common here, and suggesting that it grows not from defects in the system of the world, but defects in the individuals who sit paralyzed, unable to act in their own defense beyond tapping their fingers on keys as they pray and call for Rapture.

And I'm calling bullshit on your assumption that action isn't taking place off camera.

Do I believe that social clubs are the solution to the problems of modernity? No. I do believe, however, that they are one solution to the alienation that modernity (or post-modernity, or whatever) seems to breed. It's common sense, really -- forging unmediated connections with others is the only certain antidote to alienation. That you write this position off so blithely, especially since you display a marked penchant for mutualism, is kind of intriguing.

I don't write them off. I've joined plenty of clubs in my time and even served as an officer on occasion. Clubs are great. But clubs don't thrive well in an environment full of enervated wage-slaves. (I know. As an officer, I've been involved in recruitment and retention drives, and with each passing year they draw fewer and fewer people. The most common excuse: not enough time/energy, usually due to work.) When you're pulling 60 hour weeks because your wife is on maternity leave and you need the income, or your schedule constantly fluctuates because your employer expects you to be on call for that entry level service-sector job, it's hard to be active in a social club.

What I find intriguing is your seeming inability to acknowledge that power relations contort people's options.

Now, maybe something like a Stitch & Bitch Circle appears unserious to a dedicated revolutionary such as yourself, but nonetheless, young women are manufacturing their own apparel with their own hands, creating gifts (read 'material favors') others, and through conversation and companionship are providing support to people who would otherwise float disconnected and alienated through their day to day lives.

That's a fine idea. But how to make it contagious? One circle is an anomaly; a thousand is a phenomenon.

However, I'm not a hairy-eyed dedicated revolutionary, like yourself.

Cute. What is your aversion to big-picture thinking? Some people have to be architects so that others can be engineers. And vice versa.

I'm the type of guy who sees the words "meaningful" and "activism" as oxymoronic in this context. So I have no problem giving those kinds of voluntary associations an enthusiastic thumbs up. At the very least, the people who participate in them will have relationships more meaningful than the kind that people who bitch and moan in helplessness and frustration tend to form.

Fine, I get your point. "Meaningful" can sound dismissive if used too expansively. I'll be more careful with it in future.

And, as far as my own project goes? I don't see it as "meaningful activism". Nonetheless, the people involved are already exchanging favors with each other to get larger side-projects done (living the mutualist dream, so to speak), and a sense of community is already beginning to form. When we're done, a group of people who've never been involved in putting on a theatrical production will have done so. And I'm fairly certain that the experience will be more fulfilling than praying for apocalypse on a message board.

How long to you intend to flog that charicature?

Sure. When I have the time to weed through your hundreds of posts to these forums for the ones I'm talking about, I'll do that.

I meant, if you were referring to someone else, I would like to see their posts.

For now, you'll get,

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

I'm waiting for the first really big mutinies. There have a few little ones already, but what I'm looking for is a battalion-sized unit or larger to simply stop acknowledging orders. That would be absolutely beautiful.

Yeah, I remember that one too. It was cranky of me, and I underestimated the stamina of the troops, regardless. Still, mutiny ≠ apocalypse.

Even so, you're not one of the worst offenders, and you're far from the most annoying.

Um, thanks. I think.

Now, on the other hand, I've spent a fair amount of time poking at you in particular (both here and during one of our earlier discussions) because you should be doing more than getting into pissing contests on internet forums. You're principled, intelligent, and you have some very good ideas -- and I say that despite the fact that I frequently disagree with you. You could be doing more. But I'm pretty sure you're not, and I'm pretty sure that you're not because a lot of what you put forward as essentially political beliefs are, in fact, projections of the way you see your own life overlaid onto other people.

That is a trap. Any effort on my part to refute you becomes further evidence of "projection". I see the world the way I do because I see the world the way I do. A tautology.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Don't ask me to jump onto any "I hate Islam" bandwagon. I'll save my harshest judgments for persons whose behavior violates every standard of moral behavior irrespective of nationality or culture. Hokusai did not participate in the massacre of Nanjing, and Goethe was clearly a no-show in Nazi death camps.

Well, I'm on the "I don't love Islam" bandwagon.

Question - not original with me -

Suppose some enemy you detest is accused of hideous atrocities and you find out later the accounts have been exaggerated. What is your first FELT reaction?

1) Relief - "Even they can't stoop that low!"? or

2) Disappointment that they're not, after all, the Devil incarnate?

BTW, I freely confess to flunking this test.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Looking at Wiki's account, it seems there was a general leaflet campaign being dropped on most every city in Japan saying to move out of the cities or face general ruin and death. Hiroshma and Nagasaki did recieve their share of leaflets, but I haven't seen that they were given any special warning, that their leaflets were any different than anyone else got.

Also, note that Nagasaki was the secondary target. Kokura was the primary target. Nagasaki would not have had any special warning leaflets as the bomber crew didn't discover Kokura was clouded over until they got over Kokura.

Also, at that late stage in the war, Japan wasn't intercepting many US overflights. The atom bomb attacks were five plain raids, with two advance scouts, the bomber, and two instrumentation aircraft. There was no fighter escort. If the US had anounced in advance atom bomb raids, the Japanese could and likely would have attempted to intercept, forcing the US to radically change tactics or risk losing bombs.

The atom bombs upon Japan were the last hateful attacks upon Japan. Soon afterwards, Japanese capacity for waging war was shattered. The country was on the brink of famine and hence industrial collapse. Without munitions, even the most fanatical fighter is no match against well-organized, modern weaponry. The gangsters who had come close to defeating the United States and invading Australia with an unstoppable force had been discredited.

At the start of the occupation of Japan, the young soldiers in the lower ranks increasingly became members of the Silent generation who had never experienced the full ferocity of the war. They saw a different Japan... one of docility and not danger. They were more likely to see the effects of wartime damage and to see the civilian population of Japan instead of the fanatical warriors that GIs had faced. To be sure, older GI officers could adapt to the official line -- but you can be sure that the occupying army wasn't composed of survivors of Japanese atrocities. Those went home.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Every Japanese person will die, eventually. How many of them will do so as schoolchildren by your hand?

Great. Now I'm confused again.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Question - not original with me -

Suppose some enemy you detest is accused of hideous atrocities and you find out later the accounts have been exaggerated. What is your first FELT reaction?

1) Relief - "Even they can't stoop that low!"? or

2) Disappointment that they're not, after all, the Devil incarnate?

BTW, I freely confess to flunking this test.

Probably somewhere between hoping for 1) and wondering...

3) Were the accounts of exaggeration not, in fact, exaggerated? IOW, were the atrocities really blown out of proportion, or is this just revisionist-history b.s.?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Every Japanese person will die, eventually. How many of them will do so as schoolchildren by your hand?

The answer, as many as the Japanese people were willing to sacrifice on behalf of their emperor.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Probably somewhere between hoping for 1) and wondering...

3) Were the accounts of exaggeration not, in fact, exaggerated? IOW, were the atrocities really blown out of proportion, or is this just revisionist-history b.s.?

Re: Japan? One of the local parks is Bataan Memorial. The old soldiers will tell you how nasty the Bataan Death March was. Plus the Japanese soldiers' view of being taken prisoner and/or surrendering was that it was so thoroughly dishonorable they would sooner die, and they despised anyone without that particular belief. Not to mention the fact that wherever they occupied a country they treated it as if they were sacking a city - which in some cases was the truth.

Likewise across the sea the Nazi regime's crimes and those of Stalinist Russia are extremely well documented.

Anyone who says otherwise about any of those nationals (or their governments?) or their behavior is peddling revisionist b.s.

How the people behaved - always remembering that on some level people support their governments, but on another if said government is a dictatorship, their choice is less - is another matter.

Oh, yes. My Boomer friends (and enemies!) would kill me for saying so, but dropping The Bomb was probably the right thing to do, even though it let the nuclear cat out of the bag. And remember, we also planned to use it on Germany if they didn't surrender first. Again, barring unforeseen consequences like fallout al over Europe, agreed.

That said, I'm quite glad we didn't get into a nuclear exchange with Stalin, and I sincerely hope not to get sucked into any Three-Minute Hate sessions whether we get into the 4T or not.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Oh, yes. My Boomer friends (and enemies!) would kill me for saying so, but dropping The Bomb was probably the right thing to do, even though it let the nuclear cat out of the bag. And remember, we also planned to use it on Germany if they didn't surrender first. Again, barring unforeseen consequences like fallout al over Europe, agreed.

That said, I'm quite glad we didn't get into a nuclear exchange with Stalin, and I sincerely hope not to get sucked into any Three-Minute Hate sessions whether we get into the 4T or not.

Well, I was recently asked about that question by Europeans, to which my response was the non sequitur "Well, why didn't the Japanese surrender after the first bomb?"

I still wonder why Churchill didn't lace Stalin's drink at Yalta with something heart-stopping, but I have a feeling he had a very tiny bit of admiration for Stalin's ability to take land and murder people. Churchill was a man of the Boer War, the Easter Uprising, and so forth.

But honestly, who am I to weigh in here? We are taking about an event 34 years prior to my birth. If I condemn Hiroshima, then let it me known that we indeed cheated our Algonquian neighbors out of their land. And, as an Italian, I'd like to apologize to the Britons for defeating their bitchen queen Boudicca in AD 61. That wasn't very nice at all.

The bottomline is that war is bad and it destroys peoples lives.

Originally Posted by Sir Osbert Sitwell

The British Bourgeoisie
Is not born,
And does not die,
But, if it is ill,
It has a frightened look in its eyes.

Originally Posted by the Ministry of Defence (UK)

in the Guardian

Marxism

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

...
Terrorism

Casualties and the amount of damage inflicted by terrorism will stay low compared to other forms of coercion and conflict. But acts of extreme violence, supported by elements within Islamist states, with media exploitation to maximise the impact of the "theatre of violence" will persist. A "terrorist coalition", the report says, including a wide range of reactionary and revolutionary rejectionists such as ultra-nationalists, religious groupings and even extreme environmentalists, might conduct a global campaign of greater intensity".

The MoD gets seriously weird.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Re: Japan? One of the local parks is Bataan Memorial. The old soldiers will tell you how nasty the Bataan Death March was. Plus the Japanese soldiers' view of being taken prisoner and/or surrendering was that it was so thoroughly dishonorable they would sooner die, and they despised anyone without that particular belief. Not to mention the fact that wherever they occupied a country they treated it as if they were sacking a city - which in some cases was the truth.

Likewise across the sea the Nazi regime's crimes and those of Stalinist Russia are extremely well documented.

Anyone who says otherwise about any of those nationals (or their governments?) or their behavior is peddling revisionist b.s.

How the people behaved - always remembering that on some level people support their governments, but on another if said government is a dictatorship, their choice is less - is another matter.

Oh, yes. My Boomer friends (and enemies!) would kill me for saying so, but dropping The Bomb was probably the right thing to do, even though it let the nuclear cat out of the bag. And remember, we also planned to use it on Germany if they didn't surrender first. Again, barring unforeseen consequences like fallout al over Europe, agreed.

My thoughts exactly. I can honestly say that I have no Boomer friends (that I know of) who feel that Truman shouldn't have dropped the Bomb. Of the handful of people I've actually met who feel that way, most seem to be GenXers... IOW, people whose parents were mid-to-late-wave Silents and wouldn't have been in harm's way anyhow. How convenient.

Regarding whether we would have dropped the Big One on Hitler, please. Have any of these people read about a little bonfire called Dresden? More people died there than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The atom bombs upon Japan were the last hateful attacks upon Japan. Soon afterwards, Japanese capacity for waging war was shattered. The country was on the brink of famine and hence industrial collapse. Without munitions, even the most fanatical fighter is no match against well-organized, modern weaponry. The gangsters who had come close to defeating the United States and invading Australia with an unstoppable force had been discredited.

This is essentially true. It is true in spirit. I would not neglect the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The Soviets taught their elementary school children that the Soviet entry into the Asian front was the reason for the Japanese surrender, and not without cause.

But famine and industrial collapse, though near, didn't mean Japan wasn't a formidable foe, still. The US doctrine of island hopping was very well known at that point. The US would not attack without air bases in range to provide ground based air support for any invasion. This pretty well told Japan exactly where the first invasion of the Japanese home islands was going to go. The American plans for said invasion were originally based on the two divisions garrisoning that area. They anticipated it would be very ugly Okinawa / Iwo Jima style fighting. Then, as they were finalizing said plans, Allied intelligence discovered eight divisions had been moved to the planned landing area.

One US response under consideration was to stop bombing Japanese cities, to use A-bombs as tactical devices to clear out the landing beaches. As the radiation hazards were not well understood, this would have involved exposing a lot of GIs to fallout. A quick look at the map suggests that other islands might have been taken, to put a lot more of Japan under an allied air umbrella, to force Japan to disperse their forces. Still, there would have been no pretty options.

All and all, it was just as well that the Allies decided to allow a powerless token emperor to stay on his throne.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

The MoD gets seriously weird.

An impoverished former middle class is of course amenable to radicalism when 'conservative' interests establish complete hegemony over the economy and politics. It's best that shareholders and managers avoid creating a pre-revolutionary situation.

Let's remember that the middle class culture itself creates much talent for entrepreneurialism and administration. When those two outlets are denied, all Hell can break loose. When forced to live in accordance with proletarian standards and in poverty, some are likely to see themselves as a natural vanguard of people that they recognize as needy, but lacking in intellectual sophistication and imagination.

Almost every revolution (except for the Nazi "revolution" if you want to call it a revolution) that you can think of was started by people well educated, at least by contemporary standards.

The working class can be cowed and it can be diverted with circuses or numbed with irrational religion. The middle class has to be bought off with opportunities.

Let's hope that should the ruling class (financiers and the executive nomenklatura) become destructively rapacious and selfish that the lessons that the disgruntled people whose good educations offer them little material benefit choose revolutionaries like Adams and Bolivar as models instead of Lenin or Mao.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

An impoverished former middle class is of course amenable to radicalism when 'conservative' interests establish complete hegemony over the economy and politics. It's best that shareholders and managers avoid creating a pre-revolutionary situation.

Let's remember that the middle class culture itself creates much talent for entrepreneurialism and administration. When those two outlets are denied, all Hell can break loose. When forced to live in accordance with proletarian standards and in poverty, some are likely to see themselves as a natural vanguard of people that they recognize as needy, but lacking in intellectual sophistication and imagination.

I have often thought, in a two party system, that one party would lean towards the upper classes, the other to the lower. The balance of power might be determined by whether the middle classes think of themselves as well off or not. Does the middle class perceive of policies that benefit the wealthy as benefitting themselves?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The working class can be cowed and it can be diverted with circuses or numbed with irrational religion. The middle class has to be bought off with opportunities.

Let's hope that should the ruling class (financiers and the executive nomenklatura) become destructively rapacious and selfish that the lessons that the disgruntled people whose good educations offer them little material benefit choose revolutionaries like Adams and Bolivar as models instead of Lenin or Mao.

OK. More snark here than anything real... Not sure there is a serious need to respond...

When you speak of 'irrational religion,' would you contend there is another kind of religion? Also, when you suggest that the ruling class might "become destructively rapacious and selfish," do you imply that they are not already sufficiently so to transfer the allegiance of the middle?

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

The MoD gets seriously weird.

Not so much, mate. Methinks another vote for a silly lefty loser ought to fix things just fine. I mean, things are a bit chilly up in your parts this time of year, no matter what the lefty loser Algore might claim.

Truth is the first victim, well, nay, I might say, Truth is a victim and hence a new class Marx has laid claim to. Imagine, Truth is as meaningless as a vote for a sure lefty loser.

Sounds like a winner to me!

Originally Posted by K-I-A 67

The answer, as many as the Japanese people were willing to sacrifice on behalf of their emperor.

Man, the whole 'personal responsibility' thing just flies right past you, doesn't it?..

Originally Posted by K-I-A 67

The answer, as many as the Japanese people were willing to sacrifice on behalf of their emperor.

And I'm sure you could read the minds and determine the intentions of every single one of those folks, couldn't you? They all deserved what they got.

One poster here mentioned the prospect of big mutinies, although none have really occurred here if you do not count some of the recent anti-war marches. I am currently reading a book about perhaps the biggest domestic mutiny of the last 4T, and that was the Bonus Army march on Washington. This summer happens to mark the 75th anniversary of that event. Does anybody know if any commemorative events are being planned?

It was on July 28 of 1932 that tanks rolled in and forcibly evicted all the bonus marchers. Wouldn't be ironic if some anti-war group happens to plan a march in Washington on that very day? BTW, that day happens to fall on a Saturday this year. Perfect timing?