World War II, which I have described (in The Probability Broach) as a struggle between competing brands of fascism, was much the same thing. For the beleaguered people of Europe, it meant being forced to choose between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Would you rather be shot or gassed?
For Americans, it meant looking for protection by a political regime so grossly and criminally corrupt that future historians will shake their heads, wondering how an entire people could be such suckers. “The Greatest Generation”, that miserable collectivist mouthpiece Tom Brokaw has called them. Looking back over what my father told me of his life, how his family suffered in the government-caused Great Depression, how he and his comrades risked unspeakable danger in the war, and how he became a prisoner in Germany — all to aggrandize the virtual godhood of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — I call them “The Gullible Generation”.
On the other hand, people loved the Roosevelt Administration so much that they passed a Constitutional amendment to make sure that no sonofabitch could ever be elected to more than two Presidential terms again.
World War II gave government complete, dictatorial control of American society, control of industry, control of communications, control of the economy, control that Roosevelt had desperately lusted after before the war, but failed to achieve. If anyone objected, or insisted on his rights under the Constitution, all the other side had to say was, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
The government enjoyed that level of control. Once the war was won, and people looked forward to a period of peace, the government plunged us into the Korean War, Vietnam, and an increasing number of undeclared and stupid conflicts in order to retain its power. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” never worked quite as well as it had to shut dissenters up, but it’s clear that this scam will go on and on and on until something drastic is done to stop it.
L. Neil Smith, “The Deep State”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2019-04-14.
October 7, 2020
QotD: The gullible generation
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