...the first night. It was battle porn, all the way. Maybe the series settles down later, and starts to talk, but I don't need battle porn. I need meaning.

So I got the entire World at War series out of the library. This has context, both personal and global. It is a well-done piece, with 30-year later interviews with people, on both sides, who were there, with all their prejudices and internal warts. It is hours on hours of careful documentary. Its makers admit they were sorely restricted by the time, and they explain how they made the decisions they did in selection, tone, and editing.

I hope Ken did better that what I saw on Sunday. It sure didn't seem like he would.

Oh, and I suggest a drinking game of a shot every time the narrator says "meanwhile." But that's just me being catty. Or drunk. Or both.

It will be interesting to see how the "lessons" to be drawn (highly subjective, highly suspect in this political climate) will be used. Predictably, as a kugel against our relatively selfishness ... and lack of "will" ...

It is a human tendency to seek commonalities ... to find patterns, analogies ... as far as I can see, most comparisons between "then" and "now" have very very shaky, even deceptively contrived foundations.

I too am saturated by "greater generation" superlatives ... they were the generation who, in great numbers, cast out their sons over Vietnam, who went along to get ahead, company men who enjoyed the perks and retired early and many are still hanging out at VFW bars swapping war stories....

We'll all just have to wait and just how "The War" is used in some broader national dialogue, if at all. Bread and circuses all around.

Direct hit.

Cheney's motorcade stopped yesterday at Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of the companion book for Ken Burns' "The War." What things Cheney will draw from that, I can only imagine. But I'd bet you it is like Viagra to him. Same as when Nixon used to skulk in the White House basement movie theater and watch "Patton" starring George C. Scott, over and over and over, while our soldiers bled and died.

The review says that Burns failure to raise the issue of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified.

No mistake: Kamiya wishes Burns had used his platform for a polemic against the use, and almost all Americans in the military service at that time (e.g. Paul Fussell) were all in favor. It is the one issue upon which consensus has not been reached, and it could not be handled evenly (in my view, like that of Fussell and all men scheduled to land in Japan in November 1945, those objecting to the use of nuclear weapons have it both ways - they got the benefit, and now they can feel righteous)

So discussion of the use of the bomb would have been an enormous red herring. Glad Burns stayed away from it

from Wikipedia:

The name Silent Generation was coined in the November 5, 1951 cover story of Time to refer to the generation within the United States coming of age at the time. The phrase gained further currency after William Manchester's comment that the members of this generation were "withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent."

The name was subsequently used by Strauss and Howe in their book Generations as their designation for that generation in the United States of America born from 1925 to 1945.

The generation that followed WWI was called the "lost generation" ... shell-shock and the numbing brutality of modern war began then ... with bigger guns, tanks and radio comunications ...

Watching last night, it was easy to understand why "air superiority" seems so attractive ... none of that business of having thousands upon thousands of troops simply STUCK in place, being picked off by snipers, starved, left for dead ...

"The War" is parochial: It's about America from beginning to end. But she's wrong to conclude that this viewpoint is pernicious

I agree. One of the intriguing aspects of "The War" are the ironies brought up because of this very parochial take. We see, for example, race riots in Mobile - when black welders are brought in (the whites resented it) and blacks being beat up for drinking at the "white" fountain. Black soldiers, meanwhile, set upon and bloodied because they walked into the wrong side of town.

All of this in the "land of the free" which they are supposed to be defending. Makes you wonder if they asked themselves: For what?

And then there are the Japanese -AMERICANS, all rounded up and put into internment camps. Oh, the males were eventually given the chance of getting out IF they joined a segregated unit of all Japanese-American soldiers.

Without the parochial take, it is doubtless these ironies would be brought out, exposed. For one thing there probably wouldn't be enough time.

"The War" is excellent for highlighting the inconsistencies of the country. All the pious cant and "values" in opposition to the harsh reality.

I don’t know about any documentary or soundtrack, but I do like the metaphor in one of the early letters of a couple in conflict as our two great Political Parties and marriage as metaphor for this great Nation we all love and protect. The two Parties are, after all, like a couple bound in a symbiosis that both depend on, with rules and expectations that keep them, by and large, on the same track and with basic needs met. And they are like a couple, in a sense - despite the constant, superficial bickering, still finding it rewarding to fornicate and fellate each other from time to time . . . . . but I digress.

Wouldn’t Family as metaphor for Country be even more accurate?

Daddy, after all, is a dry drunk who can’t quite seem to control the impulse to assault other males. He has the sympathy and support of his family despite the violence. He protects them. We are Family. Mom tolerates a lot (the pills help) and stands right up for Dad when she has to, even when he gets a little rough, all to keep her Family together. Family is everything. The kids seem so whiny and angry, but give ‘em internet access or an iPod and they calm down really well. The Family has traditions and stories: of accomplishments and happy vacations, advancements and accolades, the Christmas letters full of lies by omission, civic groups and church attendance - just like our County’s tribal tales of Great Victories and Achievements - all serving to cover what is painfully not working and to protect from the terror of insight and the pain of change.

Until the child becomes adult, he idealizes, clings to, and is bound to his Family.