Alright, I have some time now and this one is too good to pass up...especially since my name was mentioned.
I love stuff like this. It is our history and our heritage. You should all know that I have added this to my favorites at YouTube. I own all of the Why We Fight films that Capra made and all the Disney docs as well. It is a pure slice of Americana which is mega cool. I wish we still had it...sadly, I agree, Kevin, but not for the same reasons, it is all gone.
Why?
Well...I should warn all of you that I am feeling a little snarky right now....:) This short has brought something out in me...
This America is gone, Kevin. I said this same thing in the post entitled "Freedom and Equality." And it's not because Hollywood is filled with liberals who won't make anything patriotic. It's because all of this happened before our country killed its own president and began an era of lying, stealing, and murder that we are still living in today. It happened. It is happening. Deal with it. Most of us are and that's why a modern day version of this feels...well...empty.
1948 was a much different year than 2008. In 1948, we didn't have a dumb ass debate about whether water boarding was torture:
In 1948 we had a president (one of our finest btw) who became president because FDR (a SOCIALIST won our greatest battle? Say it ain't so!) tasked him to put war profiteers in jail. How do all of you think Dick Cheney would fair with Harry Truman? I would buy everyone the popcorn for that one. I can just hear it now...
President Truman: Well, Dick, tell us the truth. Are your pals profiting from the war?
Dick: Uh, no sir...no...this is a fight for freedom. For the protection of this country!
President Truman: Yeah, we've heard that around a hundred times. Would it make you feel better if we said you "fibbed" instead of lying? A fib sounds better than a lie..
Ah, if only....
And you know what else they left out of this cartoon, although it was mentioned it briefly....the influence of religion. Yes, we say that people here have the freedom to worship as they please, as the cartoon says, but how does everyone here feel about Muslims worshiping in this country? Or Hindus? Or how about those "fake" Christians I have been hearing so much about lately. You know the ones I am talking about...those fairies that think that Jesus was all about peace and love...all that lily livered leftist bullshit.
Well, maybe they have the freedom but other people have the freedom to make them feel like treacherous shit every minute of every day, right?
The traditional values espoused in this short have been replaced by people pretending to have these values. Interesting that DJ mentions the mid 90s. That's right around the time we added insanity (see Republicans, Bill clinton, Monica Lewinsky, sour grapes etc) to pure evil. Now, these are the people running our executive branch right now. Yes, they talk a good game but we know who they are. To borrow from Capra, they are John Cedar, Jim Taylor, and Senator Joseph Paine. These are the heroes to conservatives in 2008.
And Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, and John Q Public (in this short) are sadly long gone...
So, Kevin, I submit you will find a studio today willing to make this film....several actually....when you begin to confront, and hopefully eliminate, the actual bad guys as opposed to the ones manufactured by the mindless sycophants of said bad guys.
Oh, one more thing. I highly recommend the following episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:
K & R Parts 1-3
If you want to know why a studio won't make films like this anymore, these shows are a well written and thoughtful expression.
Kevin, I watched this again out of sheer fascination. I was born shortly after it was made, and I grew up in a time that it describes perfectly. The differences between now and then is that we have more snake oil salesmen now than we had then, and the bell curve has a larger variance, meaning the stupid end is way out there.
Markadelphia, I'm going to assume that other commenters are going to verbally hand you your head again, and it's so entertaining to watch, so I'm going to sit back and enjoy it.
But I'm going to get some things off my chest.
You want to talk about "pure evil"? Civil rights in 1948, or lack thereof.
America has never been pure, has never been perfect. It still isn't. It's always had a cesspit (and I seem to recall that Howard Hughes was called before Congress about war profiteering, wasn't he?) How much of that was simply witch-hunting?
America killed Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, too.
Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, and John Q Public are still around, Mark. You just refuse to see it. (And, if you'll remember, the only way Jeff Smith ended up in Washington way by political appointment.)
Truman? Didn't Gore Vidal in Why We Fight say he dropped the Bomb on Japan in only because he wanted to start the Cold War?
Yet you wear rose-colored glasses and believe that merely electing Obama can fix all the problems.
Yup, you're an "idealist without illusions" all right. A true member of the "reality-based community."
Yes, this is true. It's my opinion that it's worse now.
"Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, and John Q Public are still around"
Yes, perhaps you are right. But they are traitors who want to destroy our country!
"Truman? Didn't Gore Vidal..."
I disagree with Vidal on this one. I think Mr Vidal needs to spend some time reading General May's journals to truly understand why we dropped the bomb. Or maybe he could talk to my grandfather who was there. Truly an awful moment in our country's history but the Japanese left us no choice. This, of course, is much different than what we face today.
"Yet you wear rose-colored glasses and believe that merely electing Obama can fix all the problems."
No, he won't solve everything. First of all, as he has said repeatedly, that's up to us-the individual-to start us down a better path. All he can do is open the doors. Second, I think he will probably make several mistakes, if elected, and one or two of them might be really bad. But I take comfort in knowing that he will a). admit that he screwed up b). learn lessons from his mistakes and c). be reflective and grow as a result.
Obama should just be the beginning. If we are going to be the country that I know we are, deep down, it's going to take a lot more than just him.
mark--the facts you use in support of the statement "America in 2008 is not the same as America in 1948" appear to be a large non-sequitur.
The difference between how Truman & company treated possible war profiteers and how current government treats them has little to do with the difference between the What we have now is better than the Ism that is being sold to us that John Q. Public said in the video.
John Q. Public would have mentioned Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates if he'd been using modern examples. All of those men took a business from small beginnings to nationwide successes within their lifetimes, developing and selling new technology to the American public.
The punishment or non-punishment of war profiteers does not change this fundamental story. Nor does it change the fact that most of the "better alternatives" sold by the "Ism" salesman will destroy or diminish fundamental freedoms of America.
Secondly, there is the question of whether "War Profiteer" accurately describes the people Truman chased.
Did he pursue Henry Ford? Ford spent lavish amounts of money, time, and energy building a monstrous plant in Willow Run, MI, during World War II. Said plant had an assembly-line a mile long, and swallowed enormous amounts of materials and labor.
Ford profited heavily from the money spent on that plant.
However, that plant produced tens of thousands of B-24 bombers which were crucial to the Allied aerial campaign over Europe. At their peak production, they were rolling a new bomber off the assembly line every 63 seconds.
Was Ford a profiteer or not?
Thirdly, are Dick Cheney's friends profiteers?
Well, I can remember at least one pundit during the '04 elections noticing that Dick Cheney's friends in Halliburton had been posting financial losses ever since Cheney left the board of directors for the job of Vice President of the United States. I don't know if they have fixed their financial woes since then.
Kind of hard to be a war profiteer if your business is posting a net loss, though.
As far as what Kevin said about an imperfect system that is still much better than the undeliverable panaceas offered by the "Ism" salesman, I agree with him fully.
I guess I don't see Dell, Jobs, or Gates' making their fortune out of the misery of others. If I am wrong, the show me. These men would be an example of what I call good capitalism.
No, Ford was not a war profiteer. Neither was General Motors. In many ways, those companies were an example of (dare I say it?) collectivism at its finest. In fact, the industrial effort, for the most part, in WWII was successful because of that sense that everyone was in it together. It was the war, like it or not, that got us out of the Depression. FDR's New Deal was a start and it did help but the real recovery was the war.
What happened after the war was the problem and I would refer you to the film that Kevin recently reviewed on here...Why We Fight (2005: Eugene Jarecki). The greed and need for control felt by men in the defense industry mushroomed because...well...they missed their profits. It was a Republican president that first pointed this out, btw..
And we are still living under it to this day. Why We Fight does a much better job of answering the rest of your questions, especially the ones regarding Cheney, than I could. Check it out!
"No, Ford was not a war profiteer. Neither was General Motors. In many ways, those companies were an example of (dare I say it?) collectivism at its finest. In fact, the industrial effort, for the most part, in WWII was successful because of that sense that everyone was in it together."
/me slaps forehead
And once again Markadelphia shows that he cannot discern between cooperation and collectivism.
To help you in the future, here is a hint.
Cooperation is entered into freely by all parties.
Collectivism is forced on all parties by the government.
This is why cooperation works and collectivism does not.
"Cooperation is entered into freely by all parties."
Well, we really didn't have a choice back in the 40s, did we? We had to do what we did or a madman would've been in control of the world. There was also a draft which most people accepted because they knew the consequences if they didn't. We cooperated collectively, how's that? But entered freely? Nah, don't think so...
The corporations that built the planes, and tanks, and guns, and ships that the government's armed forces used to win the war built those items by CHOICE. They were given designs to build, and PAID by the piece they produced.
You equate taking a government contract to being drafted? If you did not fulfill a government contract in the 40s, you lost it. The government did not TAKE your factory. If you refused to serve when drafted, barring familial or conscientious need, you were sent to PRISON. Is PRISON the equal of not having a contract in your little world, Mark?
And yes a draft is coercive, which is why most of the people on this site are not big fans of them.
The Ford and GM plants in Germany were used to build weapons for the Nazi armed forces. Those factories were SEIZED by the Nazi government when the owners CHOSE not aid that government, even for PAY. Thus Ford and General Motors' property was COLLECTIVIZED to aid the Nazis.
Exactly which plants did the US government SEIZE, Mark?
I used to wonder why it was that you could not see. I know understand that it is that you are willfully BLIND.
I also noted that you avoided answering my question as to how Obama would "create a culture of responsibility". So I suspect that I should not expect an answer from you in this case either.
Thanks, Unix. That was more or less the answer I was expecting from Mr. "Reality-Based Community".
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2008/01/i-want-to-show-this-to-every-body-i.html (14 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
It's strange that it hasn't been part of the national vernacular since the mid 90's, isn't it?
Words. Fail. Me.
Brilliant. Utterly Brilliant. And Beautiful.
um, Kev........this one belongs in the "Large Cities" post, below.
Kindly move the previous, and delete this one?
Thank'ya.
Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX
(Jim: Moved - Ed.)
Edited By Siteowner
Alright, I have some time now and this one is too good to pass up...especially since my name was mentioned.
I love stuff like this. It is our history and our heritage. You should all know that I have added this to my favorites at YouTube. I own all of the Why We Fight films that Capra made and all the Disney docs as well. It is a pure slice of Americana which is mega cool. I wish we still had it...sadly, I agree, Kevin, but not for the same reasons, it is all gone.
Why?
Well...I should warn all of you that I am feeling a little snarky right now....:) This short has brought something out in me...
This America is gone, Kevin. I said this same thing in the post entitled "Freedom and Equality." And it's not because Hollywood is filled with liberals who won't make anything patriotic. It's because all of this happened before our country killed its own president and began an era of lying, stealing, and murder that we are still living in today. It happened. It is happening. Deal with it. Most of us are and that's why a modern day version of this feels...well...empty.
1948 was a much different year than 2008. In 1948, we didn't have a dumb ass debate about whether water boarding was torture:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492.html?sub=new
In 1948 we had a president (one of our finest btw) who became president because FDR (a SOCIALIST won our greatest battle? Say it ain't so!) tasked him to put war profiteers in jail. How do all of you think Dick Cheney would fair with Harry Truman? I would buy everyone the popcorn for that one. I can just hear it now...
President Truman: Well, Dick, tell us the truth. Are your pals profiting from the war?
Dick: Uh, no sir...no...this is a fight for freedom. For the protection of this country!
President Truman: Yeah, we've heard that around a hundred times. Would it make you feel better if we said you "fibbed" instead of lying? A fib sounds better than a lie..
Ah, if only....
And you know what else they left out of this cartoon, although it was mentioned it briefly....the influence of religion. Yes, we say that people here have the freedom to worship as they please, as the cartoon says, but how does everyone here feel about Muslims worshiping in this country? Or Hindus? Or how about those "fake" Christians I have been hearing so much about lately. You know the ones I am talking about...those fairies that think that Jesus was all about peace and love...all that lily livered leftist bullshit.
Well, maybe they have the freedom but other people have the freedom to make them feel like treacherous shit every minute of every day, right?
The traditional values espoused in this short have been replaced by people pretending to have these values. Interesting that DJ mentions the mid 90s. That's right around the time we added insanity (see Republicans, Bill clinton, Monica Lewinsky, sour grapes etc) to pure evil. Now, these are the people running our executive branch right now. Yes, they talk a good game but we know who they are. To borrow from Capra, they are John Cedar, Jim Taylor, and Senator Joseph Paine. These are the heroes to conservatives in 2008.
And Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, and John Q Public (in this short) are sadly long gone...
So, Kevin, I submit you will find a studio today willing to make this film....several actually....when you begin to confront, and hopefully eliminate, the actual bad guys as opposed to the ones manufactured by the mindless sycophants of said bad guys.
Oh, one more thing. I highly recommend the following episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:
K & R Parts 1-3
If you want to know why a studio won't make films like this anymore, these shows are a well written and thoughtful expression.
Kevin, I watched this again out of sheer fascination. I was born shortly after it was made, and I grew up in a time that it describes perfectly. The differences between now and then is that we have more snake oil salesmen now than we had then, and the bell curve has a larger variance, meaning the stupid end is way out there.
Markadelphia, I'm going to assume that other commenters are going to verbally hand you your head again, and it's so entertaining to watch, so I'm going to sit back and enjoy it.
But I'm going to get some things off my chest.
You want to talk about "pure evil"? Civil rights in 1948, or lack thereof.
America has never been pure, has never been perfect. It still isn't. It's always had a cesspit (and I seem to recall that Howard Hughes was called before Congress about war profiteering, wasn't he?) How much of that was simply witch-hunting?
America killed Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, too.
Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, and John Q Public are still around, Mark. You just refuse to see it. (And, if you'll remember, the only way Jeff Smith ended up in Washington way by political appointment.)
Truman? Didn't Gore Vidal in Why We Fight say he dropped the Bomb on Japan in only because he wanted to start the Cold War?
Yet you wear rose-colored glasses and believe that merely electing Obama can fix all the problems.
Yup, you're an "idealist without illusions" all right. A true member of the "reality-based community."
God help us.
"It's always had a cesspit"
Yes, this is true. It's my opinion that it's worse now.
"Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, and John Q Public are still around"
Yes, perhaps you are right. But they are traitors who want to destroy our country!
"Truman? Didn't Gore Vidal..."
I disagree with Vidal on this one. I think Mr Vidal needs to spend some time reading General May's journals to truly understand why we dropped the bomb. Or maybe he could talk to my grandfather who was there. Truly an awful moment in our country's history but the Japanese left us no choice. This, of course, is much different than what we face today.
"Yet you wear rose-colored glasses and believe that merely electing Obama can fix all the problems."
No, he won't solve everything. First of all, as he has said repeatedly, that's up to us-the individual-to start us down a better path. All he can do is open the doors. Second, I think he will probably make several mistakes, if elected, and one or two of them might be really bad. But I take comfort in knowing that he will a). admit that he screwed up b). learn lessons from his mistakes and c). be reflective and grow as a result.
Obama should just be the beginning. If we are going to be the country that I know we are, deep down, it's going to take a lot more than just him.
mark--the facts you use in support of the statement "America in 2008 is not the same as America in 1948" appear to be a large non-sequitur.
The difference between how Truman & company treated possible war profiteers and how current government treats them has little to do with the difference between the What we have now is better than the Ism that is being sold to us that John Q. Public said in the video.
John Q. Public would have mentioned Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates if he'd been using modern examples. All of those men took a business from small beginnings to nationwide successes within their lifetimes, developing and selling new technology to the American public.
The punishment or non-punishment of war profiteers does not change this fundamental story. Nor does it change the fact that most of the "better alternatives" sold by the "Ism" salesman will destroy or diminish fundamental freedoms of America.
Secondly, there is the question of whether "War Profiteer" accurately describes the people Truman chased.
Did he pursue Henry Ford? Ford spent lavish amounts of money, time, and energy building a monstrous plant in Willow Run, MI, during World War II. Said plant had an assembly-line a mile long, and swallowed enormous amounts of materials and labor.
Ford profited heavily from the money spent on that plant.
However, that plant produced tens of thousands of B-24 bombers which were crucial to the Allied aerial campaign over Europe. At their peak production, they were rolling a new bomber off the assembly line every 63 seconds.
Was Ford a profiteer or not?
Thirdly, are Dick Cheney's friends profiteers?
Well, I can remember at least one pundit during the '04 elections noticing that Dick Cheney's friends in Halliburton had been posting financial losses ever since Cheney left the board of directors for the job of Vice President of the United States. I don't know if they have fixed their financial woes since then.
Kind of hard to be a war profiteer if your business is posting a net loss, though.
As far as what Kevin said about an imperfect system that is still much better than the undeliverable panaceas offered by the "Ism" salesman, I agree with him fully.
I guess I don't see Dell, Jobs, or Gates' making their fortune out of the misery of others. If I am wrong, the show me. These men would be an example of what I call good capitalism.
No, Ford was not a war profiteer. Neither was General Motors. In many ways, those companies were an example of (dare I say it?) collectivism at its finest. In fact, the industrial effort, for the most part, in WWII was successful because of that sense that everyone was in it together. It was the war, like it or not, that got us out of the Depression. FDR's New Deal was a start and it did help but the real recovery was the war.
What happened after the war was the problem and I would refer you to the film that Kevin recently reviewed on here...Why We Fight (2005: Eugene Jarecki). The greed and need for control felt by men in the defense industry mushroomed because...well...they missed their profits. It was a Republican president that first pointed this out, btw..
And we are still living under it to this day. Why We Fight does a much better job of answering the rest of your questions, especially the ones regarding Cheney, than I could. Check it out!
"No, Ford was not a war profiteer. Neither was General Motors. In many ways, those companies were an example of (dare I say it?) collectivism at its finest. In fact, the industrial effort, for the most part, in WWII was successful because of that sense that everyone was in it together."
/me slaps forehead
And once again Markadelphia shows that he cannot discern between cooperation and collectivism.
To help you in the future, here is a hint.
Cooperation is entered into freely by all parties.
Collectivism is forced on all parties by the government.
This is why cooperation works and collectivism does not.
"Cooperation is entered into freely by all parties."
Well, we really didn't have a choice back in the 40s, did we? We had to do what we did or a madman would've been in control of the world. There was also a draft which most people accepted because they knew the consequences if they didn't. We cooperated collectively, how's that? But entered freely? Nah, don't think so...
Mark,
The corporations that built the planes, and tanks, and guns, and ships that the government's armed forces used to win the war built those items by CHOICE. They were given designs to build, and PAID by the piece they produced.
You equate taking a government contract to being drafted? If you did not fulfill a government contract in the 40s, you lost it. The government did not TAKE your factory. If you refused to serve when drafted, barring familial or conscientious need, you were sent to PRISON. Is PRISON the equal of not having a contract in your little world, Mark?
And yes a draft is coercive, which is why most of the people on this site are not big fans of them.
The Ford and GM plants in Germany were used to build weapons for the Nazi armed forces. Those factories were SEIZED by the Nazi government when the owners CHOSE not aid that government, even for PAY. Thus Ford and General Motors' property was COLLECTIVIZED to aid the Nazis.
Exactly which plants did the US government SEIZE, Mark?
I used to wonder why it was that you could not see. I know understand that it is that you are willfully BLIND.
I also noted that you avoided answering my question as to how Obama would "create a culture of responsibility". So I suspect that I should not expect an answer from you in this case either.
Eric:
Here's an answer for you..
HTH.
Thanks, Unix. That was more or less the answer I was expecting from Mr. "Reality-Based Community".
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>