Did McArthy make mistakes probably, then again who else decided to read the vast report on Marshall warts and all, he was the head of one of the missions that went to try to settle the Chinese Civil War, but because of the afore mentioned experts, he took the wrong cues, that’s one card from the deck,

as to Vietnam, its arguable that Diem’s counterinsurgency was more effective that Halberstam and Sheehan presented, according to the records that Moyar was able to dig upin the Russian and Chinese archives,
as Napoleon was wont to have said ‘don’t interrupt when the enemy is destroying himself’ or our allies,some think with perfect hindsight Diem was not the man for the job, because they found him in that Maryknoll seminary, but Lansdale who knew a damn more about insurgency then most of these clouws did,

Decently well said on the whole, but a few things.

I’m going to repeat my assertion, offered many times, that the nature of the issue is, in general, PostModern Liberalism, and it began following WWI.

I disagree, or at most it is one of the problems. Moreover I do think it began to a large extent well before WWI, though obviously WWI gave it wings. But the roots lay deeper. Marx and Engels both grew up earlier, as did many of the sort of Neo-Absolutist pathologies and the dream of an authoritarian, supposedly modern “Managerial State”. Wilson couldn’t shut up about this for most of his life.

Classical Liberals, as of 1910, were so proud of what Western Civilization had done, it felt like it was benefiting all mankind, bringing light and hope and wonders to everyone — electric lights, steam power to replace muscle power, and the wonder of human flight… And all the things that seemed to promise for the future.

Agreed there. But also not all of that promise is – from our perspective – good.

Then WWI happened. And to the horror of those Classical Liberals, they saw what a flawed humanity could do with many of those same wonders, killing millions of people trying to gain mere hundreds of feet of ground.

To be fair the fighting was usually few miles of ground, but yeah.

The UK lost 900,000 men, and had as many as another 1.5m wounded.

France lost about 1.4m men, and suffered another 4m wounded.

Russia lost around 2m men, and suffered about 4.5m wounded.

Germany lost 2m men, and suffered about 4m wounded.

All told, all nations lost about 9.5m men and suffered 22.5m wounded.

Nah, it was worse than that. Significantly worse. That MIGHT account for all the combatant deaths (and I stress combatant deaths) though I think even then it is probably low. But it doesn’t factor in the fact that at *least* comparable number of civilians died during the war, as well as the aftershock conflicts that while distinct clearly follow from it (with the wars of the Russian Revolution being the largest and most devastating). So we’re looking at something like 20-60 million dead between 1910 and 1925, which just makes it worse.

Anyone can see, those number just flat out feel insane — even with the casualness towards death that was much more common before WWI, they still boggle the mind.

Agreed, and again if anything the true numbers are even worse when you realize that 10 million doesn’t even work as a basement figure for total deaths.

I assert to you that a certain percentage of classical liberals just lost it, and turned on Western Civilization like a woman scorned. The result was PostModern Liberalism — centered around PostModernism as a concept.

I feel like this is true but that there were deeper pathologies involved. The dream of the authoritarian managerial state- whether in its Marxist (or supposedly Marxist) or Absolutist flavor – was already entrenched deep and would cause no shortage of problems. Moreover, while we like to focus on the Classical Liberals or Postmodern Liberals I think it is important to emphasize that the non-Liberals were at least as much of a problem, both in their own right and as a result of inspiration. To a man like Mussolini, Lenin, Ludendorff, or Kemal the only real “problems” with the massive death tolls of WWI was that the leadership didn’t go about it the “right” way and didn’t lead to the “right” results, or that they weren’t for the “right” cause. It does not take much to realize what a problem this would be down the line.

A careful examination of the precepts of PostModernism can easily reveal how utterly PostModernism is a direct attack at the very basic, foundational elements of Western Civilization — the twin gestalts of The Greek Inheritance of Thought and Ideal aligned with the notions inherent in the Judeo-Christian Ethos. It was these two concepts which, allied together, led to Western Civilization being so amazingly successful. It gave humanity the tools to rise above our base natures and to aspire to more. But classical liberals, turned to postmodernists, saw only the downside to those gifts, not the upside. The obvious fact that slavery being abolished is a purely Western Civ notion, and only Western Civ could come up with it of all the major, successful creeds so far developed by humanity is lost to them. The notion of an empathic society, which cares about the suffering of individuals, is also unique to Western Civ.

Largely agreed with some caveats that aren’t necessary here.

These don’t matter to them, because we can also use the same tools to kill people in mass numbers, when we fail to rise up to what we can be. And because humans are not perfect, well, “Western Civ should be destroyed”. Not because they have anything better to offer.

Agreed. But it’s also worth noting that to many – such as Wilson and others – the desire was less to “destroy” it so much as to “fundamentally transform” it. That you could do so much better.

And this is why I assert:
PostModern Liberalism is a social cancer. Literally, not Figuratively.

There is no saving it, no living with it, no hope for its redemption. This is a battle to the death — either of PML or of Western Civilization. And it may be too late. I certainly hope not. But it’s going to be a long uphill battle for Gen-Z to step up and take charge. And I’m not certain they are ready, even yet, to grasp the evil they face. It feels like some of them do see it. But I think very few grasp the burden it entails.

Agreed. I also feel that in many ways this is made worse by the culture of dependence we have seen seeped in. Our deficit is insidious to me not so much because of the sheer amount of it (though that IS bad enough) but so much as what it goes into and how it has bred a dependence, a societal Stockholm syndrome. People will gladly bugger the next generation fiscally for the dream (increasingly naive) that they will get Social Security payments until they die, and devil take the hindmost.

It all started in the 1930s, as PML began to get a solid footing, as did PostModernism in general.

Disagree. D’Annunzio’s Fiume nightmare and the Bolsheviks were easily the most post-modernist of the interwar totalitarian regimes and they both emerged in the late 1910s and 1920, and drew much earlier.

You could see it in their capture of certain common outlets for ideology and thinking, as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” was Stalin, Hitler, and Stalin… yes, the two of them were MotY three times between 1930 and 1940. You could also see it in the lies from various merdia outlets made during the 1930s about what was happening in the USSR, which was every bit as nasty and vile as what the Nazis did LATER…

Agreed.

the USSR killed from 5m to 10m of their own people in their forced collectivization efforts.

Crank those numbers up by something like 2 to 3 times and you’d get it.

And you can pretty much bet they killed quite a few Jews, as well, in that same time frame, and even more when they took over parts of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Oh yeah. Like, take a look at the fate of the “Jewish Autonomous Oblast.” Also, take a look at the Doctor’s Plot.

Fast forward, again, to McCarthy. The Venona Papers have utterly vindicated what McCarthy said, which was that the US State Department was literally riddled with Foreign Spies. But the merdia, captured largely by the PML, which saw Marxism as a positive anti-western force, couldn’t have the USSR cast in a bad light. So they attacked him with everything they had, vilifying him, mocking him, and making him out to be ignorant and stupid. In the time since, they have conflated him with the blatantly anti-American actions of HUAC, which had nothing to do with him — he was a Senator, and the “H” in HUAC refers to “House”. And they took separation of bodies a lot more serious back then.

Agreed, though to be fair McCarthy made a bunch of accusations there.

Forward once more to Vietnam, and again, the PML set out to destroy the USA as the preeminent form of Western Civ. They did everything possible to undermine what was going on in Vietnam.

Agreed.

Yes, we took the wrong side in the first place, thanks to the idiot French, but that was beside the point.

Sorry, but I’m going to have to refuse that. Part of it may be my more colonialist/imperialist biases or Francophillia, but I think many people arguing we “picked the wrong side” in Indochina overlook just what we knew (or didn’t know) of the factions and conflicts. There’s a reason why while much of the OSS team that embedded with Ho Chi Minh and the early Viet Minh during the Pacific War came to oppose the idea of a continued French colony, only their leader came to champion Uncle Ho. And the rest of the team took to making secret reports back noting they believed their leader had “Drunk the Cool Aid” and basically been taken in by the charisma and posturing of Uncle Ho, in spite of knowing he was a Communist. It also overlooks how the Communists drew first blood even before WWII was done, attacking the Free French Jedburgh commando teams at Nape and going on to betray and purge the supposed Broad Nationalist Provisional Government in Hanoi during 1945.

(I find it grimly ironic how many conventional narratives of the Vietnam War play up Ho Chi Minh’s imitation of the rhetoric behind the US Declaration of Independence and admiration of it in his declaration of the Orwellianly named “Democratic Republic of Vietnam” while COMPLETELY IGNORING the context: that it was a betrayal of a previous agreement to make a constitution and broad coalition government at a certain date, and that it coincided with Communist purges of the Royalists, Vietnamese KMT, pro-French elements, Trotskyites, and most that did not submit to his will. If people wish to compare the declaration of the DRV to Jefferson, it’d be like if Jefferson and a bunch of Phrygian Capped paramilitaries walked into the Constitutional Convention, declared the creation of a Jacobin American Republic and Constitution, and proceeded to SHOOT or Guillotine anyone who objected and could not get away.)

We had a side, and they were doing everything possible to undermine it, and they did. The Tet Offensive was a disaster for the NV, and they were preparing to surrender after it… then they heard how the US media was playing it… and fought on…

Agreed.

I’m going to also offer the article which put me onto this line of thinking, once more… It has little of what I have said, but it did put me into the frame of mind from which I began the journey:

What We Lost In The Great War

It is an interesting article worth taking seriously, but with some truly massive flaws. In particular I think it greatly overlooks the problems deeply rooted at the time. In particular, it massively underestimates just how deeply several of the pathologies already rooted (and how some dress rehearsals that – with intensification and development – would help give rise to “Dekulakization” and the Holocaust were already playing out). And above all, how many people and indeed REGIMES truly wanted war.

I might have to analyze it more later.

Classical Liberals, as of 1910, were so proud of what Western Civilization had done, it felt like it was benefiting all mankind, bringing light and hope and wonders to everyone — electric lights, steam power to replace muscle power, and the wonder of human flight… And all the things that seemed to promise for the future.

Then WWI happened. And to the horror of those Classical Liberals, they saw what a flawed humanity could do with many of those same wonders, killing millions of people trying to gain mere hundreds of feet of ground.

The UK lost 900,000 men, and had as many as another 1.5m wounded.

France lost about 1.4m men, and suffered another 4m wounded.

Russia lost around 2m men, and suffered about 4.5m wounded.

Germany lost 2m men, and suffered about 4m wounded.

All told, all nations lost about 9.5m men and suffered 22.5m wounded.

Anyone can see, those number just flat out feel insane — even with the casualness towards death that was much more common before WWI, they still boggle the mind.

I assert to you that a certain percentage of classical liberals just lost it, and turned on Western Civilization like a woman scorned. The result was PostModern Liberalism — centered around PostModernism as a concept.

A careful examination of the precepts of PostModernism can easily reveal how utterly PostModernism is a direct attack at the very basic, foundational elements of Western Civilization — the twin gestalts of The Greek Inheritance of Thought and Ideal aligned with the notions inherent in the Judeo-Christian Ethos. It was these two concepts which, allied together, led to Western Civilization being so amazingly successful. It gave humanity the tools to rise above our base natures and to aspire to more. But classical liberals, turned to postmodernists, saw only the downside to those gifts, not the upside. The obvious fact that slavery being abolished is a purely Western Civ notion, and only Western Civ could come up with it of all the major, successful creeds so far developed by humanity is lost to them. The notion of an empathic society, which cares about the suffering of individuals, is also unique to Western Civ.

These don’t matter to them, because we can also use the same tools to kill people in mass numbers, when we fail to rise up to what we can be. And because humans are not perfect, well, “Western Civ should be destroyed”. Not because they have anything better to offer.

And this is why I assert:
PostModern Liberalism is a social cancer. Literally, not Figuratively.

There is no saving it, no living with it, no hope for its redemption. This is a battle to the death — either of PML or of Western Civilization. And it may be too late. I certainly hope not. But it’s going to be a long uphill battle for Gen-Z to step up and take charge. And I’m not certain they are ready, even yet, to grasp the evil they face. It feels like some of them do see it. But I think very few grasp the burden it entails.

It all started in the 1930s, as PML began to get a solid footing, as did PostModernism in general. You could see it in their capture of certain common outlets for ideology and thinking, as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” was Stalin, Hitler, and Stalin… yes, the two of them were MotY three times between 1930 and 1940. You could also see it in the lies from various merdia outlets made during the 1930s about what was happening in the USSR, which was every bit as nasty and vile as what the Nazis did LATER… the USSR killed from 5m to 10m of their own people in their forced collectivization efforts. And you can pretty much bet they killed quite a few Jews, as well, in that same time frame, and even more when they took over parts of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Fast forward, again, to McCarthy. The Venona Papers have utterly vindicated what McCarthy said, which was that the US State Department was literally riddled with Foreign Spies. But the merdia, captured largely by the PML, which saw Marxism as a positive anti-western force, couldn’t have the USSR cast in a bad light. So they attacked him with everything they had, vilifying him, mocking him, and making him out to be ignorant and stupid. In the time since, they have conflated him with the blatantly anti-American actions of HUAC, which had nothing to do with him — he was a Senator, and the “H” in HUAC refers to “House”. And they took separation of bodies a lot more serious back then.

Forward once more to Vietnam, and again, the PML set out to destroy the USA as the preeminent form of Western Civ. They did everything possible to undermine what was going on in Vietnam. Yes, we took the wrong side in the first place, thanks to the idiot French, but that was beside the point. We had a side, and they were doing everything possible to undermine it, and they did. The Tet Offensive was a disaster for the NV, and they were preparing to surrender after it… then they heard how the US media was playing it… and fought on…

I’m going to also offer the article which put me onto this line of thinking, once more… It has little of what I have said, but it did put me into the frame of mind from which I began the journey:

What We Lost In The Great War
https://www.americanheritage.com/what-we-lost-great-war

The longest legit “standard usage” word that is not a common word (Thank you, Robert Heinlein… It appears in the Oxford English Dictionary but rarely anywhere else) that I am aware of is:
floccinaucinihilipilificator
And it’s only 27 letters long, though the feminine version adds 2 more letters. It’s a really longwinded way to refer to someone who belittles things routinely.

P.S., it’s pronounced pretty much like it looks like it should be pronounced, and you can break it into about three or four sound-segments for that purpose. And it’s one of those fun words whose feminine form is -trix, hence the two extra letters. 😀

Treppenwitz… amusing, French also has a term for it, that sounds much nicer: “l’esprit de l’escalier”… The spirit of the stairs..

=====

}}} you get that tone in pink floyds the wall, ‘we don’t need no education’ well in point of fact you do need education,

Well, one of the issues here is that it is, in fact, justifiably criticizing the rather obnoxious form of the brit school system, which, by all indications rewarded bullying, class consciousness, and what qualifies to me as a pretty fascistic undercurrent. The UK school system was much more about rote regurgitation than about learning to think critically and argue for a position. The US school system, until around the 1990s, was far far better in almost every way, even though it was steadily trending downward starting in the 1960s. By around the late 1980s, the PostModern disease had gotten its long-term foothold and started replacing the classical Greek traditional concepts with multiculti and moral relativism, the initial foundations of “woke”. Add to this the resurgence in “Racism everywhere, and not a thought to think” in the 1990s, and you have the recipe for today’s abortion on all levels…

I’m “arguing” in fun, and I assume you are also, but I do not agree that selfishness is “human nature.” Whether one believes in evolution or divine creation, baking selfishness into our DNA or souls is not a recipe for perpetuating the species.

I also disagree with your claim regarding over reach. Do you not agree with my contention that most older adults, reviewing their lives, wish they had been less meek, taking more chances? If over reach is our default mode then, when examining our lives in our dotage we’d wish we had been less aggressive, less impulsive. It’s neo’s favorite poet, Robert Frost’s “road less taken.” We tend to take the safe road and that’s why it is the road most taken.

It’s the pyramid structure of most every human organization. Many wish they were on the top, but few have the nature to dare to risk all to get there.

Lets put it this way how often do those in financial or govt leadership know their limitations you can look at subprime or derivatives you can look at engagements in south asia or the near east you can look at fauci or the people behind the tuskegee experiment

My impression is that your comments keep shifting the onus to me as though I’m arguing that humans are 100% overreaching or 100% selfish.

I’m not. I’m recognizing that overreach and selfishness are substantial forces in human behavior, often, though not always, more powerful than risk avoidance and altruism.

Relying on the better angels of our nature to always prevail is foolish.

Now to cut the british and french govts some slack they had seen verdun passchandeale ypres they didnt want to go through that again