Bill Kristol Calls For Americans to be ‘Awakened and Rallied’ to War

[MisterP]

70. I've been doing a lot of reading on the 1880-1914 period and this attitude gives me the willies

Last edited Tue Mar 18, 2014, 08:48 PM - Edit history (1)

but it's unsurprising: the except for that fire-balloon and 9-11 we've never had mass casualties from warlike acts (outside of our colonial territories, sorry): we've never had to pick up dozens of 8-year-olds in knickerbockers and throw them onto a pile for burning or bury infants covered in third-degree burns in the ashes of what used to be a whole city; and the wingers have had even less experience--Heinlein never saw combat and the neocons even less so

Wodehouse mocked the trend by having the Germans, Russians, Manchu, Pacific islanders, Rif rebels, Dervishes, Monegasques, and Swiss attack at once: he got the British mad because he was Dixie Chicking something they saw as Deadly Serious--the moment when the Fritzes Finally Would storm East Anglia, drag off our screaming women and line us up against the wall OMG OMG OMG

but this melodramatic nonsense--deeply coupled with calls for "preparedness" and conscription--flung everyone directly into a four-year vortex of death that wiped out half a generation