If I want reasonable debates on current policies, ideologies etc I'll stick with Realclearpolitics.com.
A gaming site is obviously not the place. Pity that negative stereotypes of gamers are reinforced. I'll console myself with my current read, a book based on personal recollections of W.Averell Harriman. Very interesting indeed.
But hey I'm a brainwashed individual who can't think for himself.....
Martyr much?
I'll just that add that yeah I may come across condescending but then the political history of the 20th century is my hobby( for now) with untold hours of research put into it. i know I shouldn't try to debate these issues on online forums as I've been warned countless times by my peers, well they're far ahead of me actually, but I can't help myself. Things degrade from there.
For someone with “hours of research†put into the topic, you do come off as exceedingly naive. You’ve consistently dismissed communism as “evil†on account of its implementation by obviously corrupt despots – functionally oligarchies, really - without demonstrating any understanding whatsoever of communism as a sociopolitical theory. Circumspection – you need some. I wonder how you’d describe the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Being, you know, a democratic republic and everything. Are there different rules when democracies turn out to be rotten?
For example the line in the article "and the slightly inconvenient reality that America is, to date, the only country to have actually dropped a nuke on anyone.". That gets my back up badly. How is that relevant? It comes across as a flippant "OMG people died in Mushroom cloud, it must have been wrong lets bash the U.S with it for the rest of eternity". Has the author done any research into the conditions leading to the bombing. Books, papers, anything. Somehow I don't think so. Nevermind the fact it happened 60 years ago.
It’s relevant because in the game, it’s featured as a moment of desperate wickedness and unmitigated horror. Which, frankly, dropping a nuke is, was, and always will be, despite all political context and motivating factors –
no matter how legitimate these might be. Over 200 000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many of them civilians. There’s not very much moral ambiguity here – many thousands of innocent people died. How is Oppenheimer’s Target Committee absolved of all responsibility for this? This is definitely something worth thinking about.
The fact that, 60 years on, it’s still a matter of serious academic debate means it’s not a simple case of right or wrong whatsoever. And it remains a matter of serious academic debate because a committee of men made the decision to drop the bombs, and the rest can only ever be speculation. Could the war have ended any other way? We’ll never know.
Anyway, my point in the article was that we’re presented with a crucial plot device, and an act of wickedness and horror that, ironically, only America (and the other Allied powers, by proxy) can currently claim as their own in reality. Can you really deny, with any integrity, that it’s not worth critical consideration? The threat of nuclear war is an immensely emotive force in fostering support for war, and a formidable propaganda tool.
I though have. Extensively on that subject and others including communism, Nazism, Taliban..... Then I get told I'm the brainwashed idiot by people who perhaps didn't even do history in school.
I didn’t call you a “brainwashed idiotâ€; I said you’re not thinking. See my earlier point about communism.
PS I’m a bit of a history nerd too. ;P
Wow. I'll be honest, I usually hate your articles, but this was very, very good. You make some great points.
Ha, thanks.
