WWII Fetishism
Wednesday, September 13th, 2006I have been bothered for some time about the phrase “The Greatest Generation,” and particularly its unfortunate tendency to be packaged up with anti-terrorism and the Bush Republicans. And then Digby goes and says it all for me:
This rhetoric of epic struggle that rivals WWII and The Cold War serves the simple political purpose of rallying the conservative base so that the Republicans can maintain power. It is guided by the deep psychological need for conservative baby boomers to find some meaning in their pathetic lives and a cynical attempt to co-opt some sunny, simple vision of the Greatest Generation — who would be the last people to claim the depression and the wars of their lifetimes were either sunny or simple.
(emphasis mine)
The entire campaign is built on a Disneyfied version of WWII and boomer childhood nightmare cartoons of The Cold War. They['re] trying to squeeze all the boogeymen of the 20th century into Osama bin Laden’s turban in the hope that they can cop a little bit of that Hollywood heroism themselves. (After all, their hero Ronald Reagan didn’t actually fight in any real war either — he just remembered the movies he was in and thought he had.) It is deeply, deeply unserious.
Grownups, indeed. And they’re handing over the future to some real grownups, too!
One big problem for the Republicans is that a majority in this country now are too young to give a damn about any of this. [...] In fact, the strongest youthful supporters of the war, the College Republicans, commonly say things like this:
“The people opposed to the war aren’t putting their asses on the line,” Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn’t he putting his ass on the line? “I’m not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country,” he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, “and I wasn’t going to pass that up.”
Sigh.
