We commemorated the 66th anniversary of Victory in the Pacific and the end of WWII earlier this month. August 6th or 10th would probably have been more appropriate dates to ruminate on the decision to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population in order to save that civilian population.
The photographs and narrative on Patriot Thoughts are indeed thought provoking. The Enola Gay, Bockscar, Little Boy and Fat Man; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Saipan and the Banzai Cliff.
The incomprehensible mindset of the Japanese people of the mid-Twentieth Century.
Tiny Tinian Island, is described as "a flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue." The very idea that a place that today looks like this:
was the starting block for this:
and this:
is, in itself, a stunning notion that sends the mind into a self-examining do-loop.
What the science of History has been able to extrapolate from an unbiased, dispassionate distance is this: the utter and total destruction of Japan's major cities led to the metamorphosis of her culture; led to a nation that today is capable of creating this:
We've seen the rise and fall of great peoples -- and great cities -- throughout human recollection. Even recently, and very close to home.
When New Orleans drowned, her rotten-to-the-core, inadequate public education system crumbled along with her. Today, that education system is among the fastest-improving systems in the state. Perhaps, wiping the slate clean and having little to build upon save that which is buried beneath our feet, is what gives rise to legitimate human progress. Civilizations are built upon civilizations.
What does that truth suggest about our Nation during the first term of Barack Hussein Obama? Are we crumbling as a people, looking to rise from our own ashes? Will it take that to get us back on track to being the world's Superpower? Or, are we sliding toward a penniless and wretched decline as just another cog in the global machine? Is that really what the Progressive movement desires? Can it possibly be?
Perhaps August 21st is just as good a day as the 6th or 10th to wax philosophical on the destruction of a once great nation -- whether, as Rome, caused by rotting from within like a gangrene, or as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by nuclear holocaust.
Would that I had some answers.
I think about this more than I probably should. I lived in that neck of the woods for about four years.
ReplyDeleteTheir culture is dramatically different from our western world. Not always in a bad way and not always in a good way.
History, and not just our own, tells us what we need to know about the Japanese.
Oh and the bomb.... hopefully never again.
ReplyDeleteI think about our decline a lot, too, although I rarely put it in those terms, using that particular word. But how else to describe the radical difference between the America I grew up in and the America I see around me today? Perception is reality...
ReplyDeleteWould that I had answers, as well. We'd BOTH become quite wealthy... doin' good while bein' good.
I believe that the spiral down can be broken, but it takes serious repentance or turning. "Broken" might be the key word here. When we are truly broken, we tend to make changes or die.
ReplyDeleteI was in a seriously sad and introspective place on Sunday, guys. Today's abetted day. I think. I'll try to be in a more "stronger in the broken places" frame of mind today. Thanks for your thoughts.
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