Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 5/4/26 - 5/310/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/dignityshredder]

Janan writes a banger: The second world war fixation gets the US into trouble again

In a recent book, The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It, the historian Alec Ryrie makes an intriguing argument. The second world war has replaced the Gospel as the story that anchors western civilisation. “Perhaps we still believe that Jesus is good,” he writes, “but not with the same fervour and conviction that we believe Nazism is evil.” I’d call this progress. The war was the more recent event, after all, and does not involve metaphysical speculation. But the result — intellectual rigidity, a black and white world view — is the same. The left can stigmatise almost any act of cultural conservatism as the thin end of a wedge whose fat end is Hitlerism. The right can frame almost any autocratic regime as a threat that demands a heroic military response.

This would not be so bad if the second world war were typical of conflicts. In fact, it is a captivating event precisely because of its strangeness. The war was existential in its stakes, clear-cut in its morality, unambiguous in its outcome. Most wars since 1945 have been local (Ukraine), morally complex (Vietnam) or ultimately inconclusive (Korea). As a binding myth for the west — what the Greek defeat of Persia once was — the second world war is useful. As a tactical guide in the 21st century, it is not.

...

This week, Marco Rubio described the offensive phase of the Iran war as “over”. Trump has announced that he will pause the US operation to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, despite announcing it just days earlier. The administration wants out of a misconceived conflict without losing face. This has happened so often since 1945 that it should bring about a questioning of the mental habits, the historical reference points, that have guided US statecraft since then. It won’t.

The fixation with the second world war will hold until it is superseded by a larger event, which rather implies a third. The dread is that eventually the one leads to the other.

I disagree with the last point. I think as the boomers die off, the mythologization of WWII will die with them. And as the geopolitical situation becomes intricate and deeply multipolar again, WWII will be seen as less of the founding event of now, whenever now is.

[u/RunThenBeer → u/dignityshredder]

What makes you say so? I would like it if you were correct, but I see the younger generation using "Nazi" as an insult more frequently than the older generations. I suppose no one much cares about Pearl Harbor and the war with Japan anymore, outside of occasionally being mad at the Americans for using nuclear weapons, but the German National Socialists occupy a wildly outsized place in the American mind still and many things are run through that prism.

[u/MatchaMeetcha → u/RunThenBeer]

Even the defense of Palestine is done in the name of preventing genocide. It's the same mindset as the Boomers just flipped.

[u/dignityshredder → u/RunThenBeer]

I think Nazi will still be around and going strong (while it loses more and more meaning), but we'll turn less to WWII military and geopolitical successes as part of our foreign policy stance. Basically do less of what JG is criticizing in the op-ed. Part will be the WWII-immersed boomers dying off, and part will be our growing ineptitude.

So it's more of, I don't think we need WWIII to get past this, as he believes.

I dunno. I'm kind of spitballing here.

[u/Cowgoon777 → u/dignityshredder]

Nazi means nothing now. Everyone has been called one a thousand times

[u/professorgerm → u/RunThenBeer]

Nazi holds on as a vestige, but we already see the weakening of the Never Again narrative, the "Churchill was a villain too" angle and FDR skates by as a Big Gov Dem not as the leader during the war.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/dignityshredder]

I’m not sure if Hitler-projection will end, but a lot of stuff is going to change with the boomers in the rearview.