Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent: A sorry excuse to see if the object tag will work
The revolution may not be televised, but for the first time in human history, we could if we wanted to. All by ourselves.
Choice and master spirit of the age Ben Hammersley riffs on the idea of cultural change and co-option, with the observation that the culture that participates in the internet is beholden to no one for its direction or development. Where the previous cultural “revolutions” — rock and roll, punk, hip-hop — were immediately taken up by marketeers and purveyors of lifestyle products, weblogging and its related phenomena are owned by their participants.
There’s some opining in the comments to that post that the meme of “The Greatest Generation” is all hokum: the writer suggests that rather than crediting that generation with the largest peacetime economic expansion in history, we should instead blame them for Vietnam. I disagree: that generation came of age in the Great Depression and its resolve in turning back the forces of Japan in the Pacific and the Axis powers in Europe was forged during that truly wretched period of American history.
I submit that Vietnam was not unlike the Monkees and “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” The war in Vietnam wasn’t about making Southeast Asia safe for democracy, but about opening up markets for Coca-Cola and the Big Three automakers. It was *sold* as a righteous contest, akin to WWII, but we see now it was a horribly mismanaged and wasteful exercise. The cynicism that guided that debacle was the the province of small group, not that generation as a whole. Blaming the working stiffs of the 50s and 60s for this is akin to blaming the average German or Japanese for the barbaric excesses of Hitler and the Japanese military commanders, or the average American for the war in Iraq.
The Greatest Generation’s contributions, during the last time this country experienced unity and purpose and universal selflessness to a greater good, are not to be sneered at or undermined while I have anything to say about it. My in-laws were both veterans of that time, both the Depression and the war: those who would impugn their character or purpose had better have something equivalent to three Purple Hearts to put on the table.
While I realize the other poster makes it clear that his criticisms are directed at the actions of a few rather than the character of the many, his comments seem needlessly mean-spirited and to some degree ignorant: by referencing the Greatest Generation meme with such a broad brush he weakens his argument and misses his own point.