I looked at my watch around noon today… “Why is December 7th so familiar?”
I kept trying to figure it out… Then it hit me…
1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor. Speeches by Roosevelt and Churchill. Our Declaration of War.
Funny how it was okay to have a multi-front war then, based on an unprovoked attack by the Japanese, and declaring it against Germany, who really hadn’t done anything to us at that point.
How different is it, really, when they fly a couple of Jets into our buildings, unprovoked, and we declare war against both their nerve center and another genocidal maniac who was killing his people by the hundreds of thousands…?
Man, Swanky, maybe it was the greasers over the weekend that got you all worked up. Maybe it was discussing politics with me where I clearly implicated both sides in screwing over the American Public. Maybe it was being tired and cranky and cantankerous (old man! heh).
But … I’ve read Lilek’s article over and over, and I can’t figure out WHAT you’re talking about.
I’ve been reading the Bleat for years now and he has gone further and further into the business of being a grumpy guy and less and less being an amusing commentator on culture. He had the sense to move a lot of it to a separate blog. But today he just lost it. It sounds to me like the rantings of an “old guy” who can’t take the notion that he is a complete square. He spends a lot of words trying to discount any sort of counter culture sensibility as being stupid and has a bad habit of justifying things by pointing out that much much worse things are happening elsewhere in the world. Sort of like “Why are the namby pamby Democrats so up in arms about the goverment spying on them without warrants when North Korea has 100,000 people being tortured to death in secret prisons?” “Why get so up in arms about blacks being kept out of good schools in the 50s when Russia was killing thousands of people every month in Gulags?” Sad. That’s not an argument. Mis-direction.
I read most of the Bleat today and over and over it was just saying, this guy is really a stiff neck jerk. “How dare you rebel against a country that feeds you, Marlon Brando and James Dean!” Lileks, you are a sad old guy. Mr. Unhip. And that seems to make you crazy. You need to start allowing people to reply to your rants on your site. Dialog.
James Dean was a product of his environment, as we all all are. We all rage against the machine, some harder than others. But when we express our displeasure at whatever’s going on, isn’t it better to focus on facts rather than lefty-nutso ridiculouslness?
And on that note, I’m gonna throw in Sinatra while I try and sleep. I hope that’s not too Republican of me, wanting to sleep at 2:41AM. 😉
Sixty-four years ago, today, President Roosevelt stood before Congress pleading for a Declaration of a State of War against Japan. The reason was simple: in a single day, December 7th, 1941, Japan had mobilized and attacked Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Phillipines, Wake and Midway Islands, and, certainly not least, Pearl Harbor. Though we watched the Western Pacific with interest, it seemed improbable that anything should happen in Hawaii.
Thus was our entrance into World War II, on December 8th, 1941. On December 11th, 1941, War was declared against Germany and Italy after they had declared against us earlier in the day.
There aren’t many veterans left from that war, the youngest being eighty years old, but there are still a few you can find who are more than happy to share their stories. Those stories, in their words, certainly mean a lot more than the watered-down accounts in most history books.
