My take ...

I haven't seen episode 2 yet, but let me say this ...

Jambo made a fair defense. I get everything he's saying. There was certainly mild to extreme racism wrapped into our fight with the Japanese, and as Jambo points out, even with that racism it still puts our humanity on a peg 1000 times above that of the Imperial Japanese Army. The Baton death march, etc (a good film while I'm thinking about it is "The Great Raid" - I even bought a WWII official replica "Marine Hack Watch" which were released in limited number subsequent to that movie).

My beef wasn't that there wasn't racism, and "how dare they" portray such a thing. It's accurate to portray that CO barking out orders with racial slurs, the pot shots (literal rounds) taken at the 1 surviving, cornered Japanese soldier. That's all accurate, I get that. My beef was why does Hanks et al start us off, in episode 1, with that? By the time we get to any maltreatment of the captured/unarmed enemy in Band of Brothers we already feel as if we know these guys, know there good intent, know their valor. In other words there is context afforded these men. Jambo pointed out the attack on Pearl Harbor shown at the onset of the episode is context incarnate, but what I mean is context for the individual men being portrayed. There isn't a lot of time spent on showing them for the decent, hard training, tough individuals they were, nor had we as the viewer seen any battle scenes prior to the racist overtones. Had they contextualized in that way, in my estimation, it would have made for a more appropriate, more accurate transition into portraying the racism demonstrated towards the Japanese (and I say more "accurate" because I think it only reasonable to assume that racial slurs are more likely to increase after you're shot at). But hey, I'm Ryan and Tom Hanks & Spielberg are, well ... Tom Hanks and Spielberg, so take my film critique for what its worth ...

I'm going on to episode 2.

The Pacific

Episode Two was last night.

Damn.

I know Ryan has issues with it. I don't understand them but oh well. There is a difference between the theaters of war and that is something as a Bund we have not really appreciated.

It always surprised me when my grandfather would speak of the war unsolicited. So when I talked to him one time about my high school buddy going to Kuwait in '91 to assist in the oil well fire fights, (and let's be honest, making STACKS of cash in the process)I shared a story about Erik coming across literal mountains of Iraqi munitions left in the desert. Rifles, RPGs, ammo, explosives, piled and left. Erik was afraid to grab "souvenirs" because the place was still littered with land mines and the potential for booby traps was real. Ray looked at me and said,

"We didn't even dig pits when we detonated ordinance. We'd blow it in place so the nips couldn't get it." He paused and sipped his drink. "Of course, that took the tops off some of the locals but we didn't have time to care."

The locals were Chinese, our allies.

Now truth be told, Ray was a screaming racist to the day he died. And he was NO fan of the French, as we've documented. But he NEVER would have endangered French civilians by detonating German ordinance without safety procedures, even if the threat of having the ordinance fall BACK into German hands was high.

The Germans and Italians had enormous cultural and historical ties to our nation. And while the Japanese did as well, they weren't nearly as prominent. The culture gap was one of the fatal flaws for BOTH the japs and us. Few people on either side understood each other. Yamamoto was one and foretold the course of events post Pearl Harbor. Halsey and MacArthur were a couple and were instrumental in leading the "total war" effort necessary to bring about the defeat of the Japanese Empire.

So when Hanks gets on TV and says that the Pacific war was as much about race as anything, he's not way out in left field. There was no grey area, no SS troops in American uniforms behind the lines, no commonality between the sides. They looked different, thought different and believed different. They committed atrocities unknown to the Americans since the time of Little Big Horn. They ATTACKED us, unawares, and for almost almost a solid calender year was WINNING the war. So when that hatred manifests itself in films like "Flags of our Fathers" and "The Pacific," we recoil a bit? Cry revisionism? Say that barbaric behavior paints our Marines in a bad light?

I say no. I say we matched ferocity with ferocity. At no time did we as a nation march POWs 80+ miles to camps. We didn't force POWs into slave labor. We didn't use POWs as human shields in shipping. And if this show doesn't give the opportunity to show the atrocities the Japanese inflicted, then that will be too bad and a borderline crime. But so far, two episodes in, I've seen plenty of Jap atrocities.

And the night combat action at Guadalcanal? Every bit the equal to any combat scene in Band of Brothers.

What a pace...

With more than 1,500 posts over the last 33 months, March '10 is already our 3rd biggest (or is "busiest" a better term?) month at more than 70 posts and growing.

I know I'm still out of work, so I'm posting more now than I have in a long time, but I'd still like to hear from Jambo more... and from Baddboy at least ONCE in a while. I never wanted this blog to be the "Ryan and Titus" slap-stick routine of the ages, you know.

We've also seen a huge increase in outside hits over the last four months... not counting ourselves, we averaged 2,200 hits last year. In 2010, we are already up to 3,500 hits from non-members.

Good news, huh? Seems we do have an audience.

Irony...

I find it ironic that the Obamacare reforms passed the House on the 245th anniversary of the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765.

Parliament forces a legislative process to reduce their debt by taxing a targeted, specific group of subjects whose concerns and worries were not given adequate consideration prior to passage on the 22nd of March, 1765... which directly contributes to the feelings of distrust and animosity between America and Westminister that would finally lead to armed confrontation just ten short years later.

Pelosi and Obama completely ignore promises of transparency and honesty in government by spending 24 hours making secret deals with wavering Democrats to pass legislation that had almost no GOP or conservative input in its making, knowing that it would constitute both a doubling of the national debt and usher in a new era of high top-end tax rates and a reduction in consumer confidence in the process. Targeting individuals making more than $200k and families making more than $250k, this will constitute a 5.8% tax hike to more than 78% of all small business owners in the country, and will force millions of people out of their established insurance policies and into a government-provided option (even if it isn't a government plan... yet).

Let's see what ten years brings...

You bring dishonor to this Lotus ...

You simply CAN NOT do this sort of post less you've confirmed that all within the Bund have had TIME TO SEE THE F****ING EPISODE! I ask, are you MAD man? You sent me a text foreshadowing a "surprise" ending. But did you ask if I've even seen the episode FIRST? NO! I work Friday nights you bollix swallowing jackal! So I watch it on Netflix a day or 2 later! Do you think so little of my intellect that this text would not damage, nigh GIVE AWAY, what "surprise" the episode manifests as I watched???!!! I knew she switched the "proper Roman women" 20 minutes before Spartacus got the 14 karat gold bath! Because of Y-O-U!

DON'T DO THIS AGAIN !!!!! JERK !!!!

A simple text reading, "Did you watch the latest episode yet?" will suffice. Then unleash your rabid dog tongue!

Oh...my...God...

Look, I know that typically this forum is used almost exclusively to discuss politics, with the occasional religious debate thrown in for good measure and some spice. We will sometimes throw some personal stories or recollections about for fun, I know... but tonight I'm going to venture away from the typical and into an area we haven't played in since the old mail-group days...

I know that at least 3 out of the 4 Bund members are HUGE fans of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and perhaps some of our followers and friends are too. That is what I am focusing on tonight... the latest episode, Whore.

I'm trying to imagine a series that has so captured my imagination as this one, and the closest I can come to is either Band of Brothers or Firefly. But DAMN... Spartacus is moving up the ranks quickly. I'm not sure how they have managed it, but each episode is better than the last, and the endings for the last two have just about blown my socks off. I was SO not expecting either to end the way they did, especially Whore.

And think... Season Two is already in the works! We've met many of the central players of the "historical" Spartacus in Batiatus, Crixus, and Glaber (and, of course, Spartacus himself). Only Oenomaus remains to be introduced... but I don't know that this happens before the revolt begins. I only know that all the sources for Spartacus tell us he was one of three leaders, and that he was Thracian and the others were Gauls named Crixus and Oenomaus.

I'm pretty sure Liz is convinced that I am only watching it for the blood and sex... but am I wrong in saying that those things pale in light of how addicting the story is getting? Did anyone else even SUSPECT that the cousin of the great Crassus (fellow consul and member of the First Triumvirate with Pompeii and Ceasar themselves!) was going to get her brains beat out on the floor of Batiatus' house as the episode progressed?

I'm forced to paraphrase Batiatus himself from past episodes and say: "F***K the sex! We'll make a fan of you yet!"

More from Ryan, via texts...

Ryan got backed up but sent me a mountain of texts last night in the midst of our stupor about why my argument for the New Deal's success are contrary to my conservative principles. So, headache and hang-over permitting, I'll try to both spell out Ryan's point and make my defense here. Bear with me, please... if I'm not perfect in my understanding of Ryan's point or in my clarity of explanation, I'm not 100% this morning.


1) Ryan asked why I feel that low taxes and less regulation is good for the nation in general, and why I am able to find examples of that through out history, but still feel that the era of the 1930's is an "exception to the rule" and that this 9 year period prior to the outbreak of WWII needed the New Deal to work.

I feel that history proves that lower taxes and less regulation on commerce is good for an economy, this is undeniably true. Maintaining the 63-70% top tax rate that Hoover implemented in 1932 was FDR's biggest mistake... that should have been thrown out with the rest of the Hoover trash. However, FDR maintained several aspects of Hoover's recovery plans, for reasons that I can only assume were political necessity at the time the determinations were made.

FDR promised a "New Deal" and that means (plainly enough, I think) that what had been being done wasn't working, whether we are talking in actuality or in the perception of the American people. The contemporary conservative viewpoint of the day was held exclusively by the Hoover Republicans, and in 1932 they constituted less than 24% of the ENTIRE scope of US Government. They had lost the confidence of the American public, and the demand that something be done to fix what wasn't working was very real, indeed.

Reagan raised taxes. Lincoln instituted an income tax and a draft. Washington instituted new taxes on products that previously hadn't been taxed before, and started an armed rebellion in the process (the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791) and ushered in the era of high Federal alcohol taxes ever since. Jefferson quadrupled the Federal deficit with one sweep of his quill... which many at the time felt was just as unconstitutional an act as anything FDR did as President. In one manner or another, each of these "great" Presidents broke with the established norm to achieve ends they felt were in the greater interest of the nation, not with the intention of setting some evil precedent or corrupting the Constitutionally established status quo, but with the hopes of seeing the nation through a particular crisis in its history. Furthermore, NONE of the Presidents listed above were able to completely follow the model of "Reaganomics" 100%... not even Reagan himself! Does this negatively impact their legacies? Does this negate their efforts to see the nation through a crisis? Is it fair to place the yardstick of Reaganomics, as we understand it today, on their efforts decades or centuries past? Does this make them ALL "failures"?

What I think benefited the economy from the New Deal most was the ability of the Federal government, in the time of a national (even global) crisis, to stabilize the volatile nature of our markets and to act the role of the largest "consumer" to be found. The Feds sought to defeat the Crash by being the entity that hired people, built roads, expanded power grids, planted or cut down forests, dug canals, improved railroads, paved airports... when no one else would or could. This was a progressive, centralized plan that was (and is) counter to much of what I now know to be sound economic national theory, but it was what they saw as the quickest and easiest means to solving the problem... and it worked.

It was EXACTLY the same theory and methodology that saw us to the successful conclusion of WWII, as well... and Ryan even credits FDR with that success, but it would seem that the "stand back and do nothing" approach of the Hoover years was a better alternative to a purely economic crisis (no matter how global in scope) than the "hands-on" approach that eventually won us a war the literally covered the globe and pitted us against TWO despotic empires bent on global domination.

While nations across the globe were falling to despotic leaders promising better futures and delivering tyranny and death by the truck-load, the New Deal kept peace and maintained the American way of life while delivering real and measurable benefits to our lives. Yes, this was accomplished at the expense of a purely-theoretical model of minimalist government that Reagan gave his name to, and a greater degree of centralization and Federal control, but it wasn't anything that couldn't have been reversed once it was found to NOT work. The aspects of New Deal that hadn't proven their worth before the end of the war were allowed to expire, were disbanded, or were found unconstitutional through a fair and democratic process that was not allowed FAIL because of a loss of confidence in our nation's fundamental principles.

2) Ryan asked why, knowing that the majority of New Deal programs were deemed "unconstitutional", and that the National Recovery Administration was the "corner stone" of the entire New Deal, how can the New Deal still be seen as a success?

My response is that I can find only TWO major New Deal programs that were found to be unconstitutional by the SCOTUS... the NRA and the AAA, and the AAA was disbanded and reconstituted in 1939 to meet the requirements laid down by the SCOTUS in 1936. The program then went on to be instrumental in our nation's ability to meet agricultural needs during the war years, and Ike praised it as part of the Arsenal of Democracy that finished the jobs in Europe and the Pacific.

So, that leaves only the NRA (what Ryan deemed the "center-point" of the New Deal) as glaringly unconstitutional in its nature because it violated the Constitution's clear separation or powers between the various branches of government.

The NRA was a key piece of New Deal legislation, but I think that like MOST of the New Deal, it was always seen as a temporary measure. Of the (literally) dozens and dozens of programs that the New Deal instituted, only SEVEN have remained in place past the New Deal era. ALL the rest either expired or were disbanded once the need for the program was gone. In the two years that the NRA was functioning, national industrial production capacity rose 55% above its pre-Crash level. That alone shows that something in the national infrastructure was broken and needed a fix, doesn't it?

Look, I'm not an apologist for the NRA, or for the entire ideology of progressive politics. Once again, we began this debate by asking if FDR was a good President or a bad one... and what portions of his policies were responsible for that "grade". We have agreed that unemployment remained too high all through the era, and that the true end of the unemployment problem didn't come about until the US military grew to its full height of 17 million (from a 1938 figure of 300,000).

However, to continue to blame what is wrong with the remaining aspects of New Deal (Social Security, for example) solely on FDR is no more a fair and just proposition than blaming what eventually became Reconstruction on Lincoln, who started the process before he was killed. Both FDR and Lincoln employed means that were later determined to be unconstitutional in their nature to reach the successful conclusions of their respective crisis', and real cases can be made that Jefferson and Madison did the same things (although I don't know that the cases ever went before the SCOTUS). Thus, I feel Ryan is holding FDR to an unrealistic and unreasonable measure of success/failure that he is not employing with any other Presidents in our history.

Finally, I want to say that I truly do understand what Ryan (and such pundits as Beck and Limbaugh) keep saying... that FDR was "bad" because he started a ball rolling that we haven't been able to completely stop in the nearly 80 years since he took office, but that doesn't mean that he should be vilified for making the effort. To do so then causes us to question the perceptions AND efforts of people like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and any other President that was acting out of genuine concern for the nation but employed questionable or unorthodox means to gain them. FDR was elected to do whatever he could to fix what wasn't working... and some of those things worked, while others didn't. What can be determined without question is that the vast majority of symptoms of the Great Depression were completely reversed by 1939, and ALL OF THEM showed vast improvements over what had been done to fix them in the past. If we all agree that Reagan had the "right stuff" in hand when it came to understanding how to run an economy, why didn't he end SSI once and for all? Because he would have been crucified in the court of "public opinion" that's why... which means that even the greatest of Ryan's "Great Presidents" list have to bow to what the people demand and that compromises have to be made to further the causes that reach the goals that benefit the nation the most.

FDR was a progressive, I do not argue that point at all. He was also the President that saw us through 15 years of the toughest times the US had to face in all of the last century, and he did it the best way he knew how... through the implementation of progressive programs and policies that did what they were intended to do, and either became the footnotes in history that they are now (NRA, CCC, WPA) or are still with us today (SSI, FDIC). We have not seen an actual "depression" since his terms, and what he accomplished in the '30s led directly to the success we saw as a nation in the '40s and '50s. Progressive or not, he ranks as a "great President" in my book for those reasons.