These conversations remind me of the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners", which was wildly succesful and posited that contrary to the comforting narrative, Germans were well aware of, and lent tacit support to, the Holocaust.

I often wonder how Americans will be judged for our war crimes as a people--ranging from Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 and 2, and of course, covert intensifications of foreign conflicts--once our hegemony has withered and some other people(s) hold the stick. Surely, there will be plenty of evidence that even the most uneducated person had access to information that would reveal not only our crimes, but our bogus justifications. In fact, blogs such as these will probably be trotted out to show that the information was easily available (through the magic of the internets, available at every school and library, and even in the workplace).

but your point is noted. Everything succesful is stupid.

"That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Consent of the governed. People must want to believe these fantasies, because there is so much available information to the contrary. Ignorance, in this country with the availability of information resources that every person (except perhaps the most destitute or extremely rural), is a choice.

What I don't understand is why you're always so eager to advertise the fact.

Read the comment carefully. I neither supported nor condemned the book, but observed it was wildly popular. It has had a great impact on how people view the participation of average Germans in the Holocaust. Using that frame, I speculated how Americans would be judged by the historians of whatever power is in control when our hegemony has waned. My salient point is that, no matter what the reality, we will appear completely complicit in it all. Its ok. I...write...slower...next...time.

"The amount of information to the contrary is irrelevant."

If you're saying that its understandable to be cowed by jingoism and to trust the government implicitly, then I don't know where you're coming from. The stakes are too high to expect so little from our people. And I would just add, that by any measure, the arguments put forth by our government and their journalist enablers have been absurd from the start. One could almost say that they require a "willing" suspension of disbelief. To call their rhetoric transparent and baseless would be a compliment. My original point: historians looking back will have no choice but to assume that we chose to do nothing. Nothing being, our (as a nation) insisting on ignorance.

There is no surer way to prove your smarts than by referencing only Wikidpedia in your posts. You've convinced me--you sure know what you're talking about!

I thought this one particularly had relevance to the UT comments section.

"Once, Nasreddin was invited to deliver a khutba. When he got on the minbar (pulpit), he asked "Do you know what I am going to say?" The audience replied "NO", so he announced "I have no desire to speak to people who don't even know what I will be talking about" and he left.

The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day. This time when he asked the same question, the people replied "YES". So Nasreddin said, "Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won't waste any more of your time" and he left.

Now the people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the following week. Once again he asked the same question - "Do you know what I am going to say?" Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered "YES" while the other half replied "NO". So Nasreddin said "The half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the other half" and he left!"

you said:

"in 1972, where the populist causes of working Americans were abandoned and where the lifestyles and religion of ordinary Americans became despised."

This argument always makes me feel like I'm facing a fabulist. It was only 6 years before that the voting rights act was passed, guaranteeing the right to vote for African-Americans. Is it any wonder that in the ensuing years, the "lifestles" of ordinary Americans, based on Jim Crow and racist hegemony became despised. Say what you want about the left, but the fact that the seventies toppled cultural business as usual was a good thing. And the fact that has to be explained to you, indicates you haven't done much thinking about it.

A little later but just for the record. I don't mind being corrected, as long as the correction is accurate...I said that the voting rights act had done away with Jim Crow six years before the 1972 date that you had given. The act was passed in 1965, and went into effect in 1966. I also said that in the ensuing years (ensuing means "following") that the culture that had legitimated and supported Jim Crow was attacked and rightly so. My point was that African-Americans and progressive people of other races used the new power found in legislative protections to express their dissatisfaction with the halcyon days you recall. Despite, the misguided corrections however, you seem to be agreeing with me.

I realize that all the rugged-individual self-styled iconoclasts will erupt in horror when I assert my right to commment that posts like the last bring a level of crassness to these pages that make us all look like feces-throwing chimps. I apologize in advance for infringing on your liberties with my free speech.