You might have better served yourself and your readers to focus more on the still unfolding consequences of the Vietnam debacle, which in (my not so humble) opinion should be mostly about empire and forms of cognizance of empire. The danger THERE would be to succumb to thinking and judging like a geopolitical strategist (a George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski etc) meaning over focusing on advantages, disadvantages, unintended consequences and Rumsfeldian “knowns” & “unknowns” on the battlefields and international balances of power and terror.
But as you clearly pointed out (though went on to obscure with a multitude of other considerations and observations) Vietnam had and is still having a visceral impact on the psyche of US unity, nationhood, the meaning of citizenship, and the limits, potentials, and dangers of governability/ungovernability.
Noam Chomsky liked to puckishly indicate that the genocidal indochina conflicts of the sixties and seventies were actually a grand geopolitical victory for US imperial interests with Vietnam becoming a useful economic and strategic ally (just south of China) and Indonesia firmly(? at least for now) in the US sphere, etc. etc. But the bulk of the US citizenry (and perhaps even more of the veterans of those conflicts) have a deeper and darker sense of betrayal and defeat regarding Vietnam — with the betrayals sometimes blamed on the establishment (government and corporations) or on the US civilian population (or certain elements of it: progressives, liberals, hippies, professors, intellectuals, Hollywood types, Democrats, minorities, feminists, gays, activists, wokes, etc.)
For the veterans and their families (parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren) service in Vietnam was a sacrifice. (Religious sense intended.) Sometimes even a sacrifice of HONOR (think Mỹ Lai) which is the most chocking, bitter, and gruesome form of sacrifice or FORCED sacrifice: so much more impossible to safely incorporate than the sacrifice of life, limb, health, or sanity. Many of those veterans had grown up in the vortex of the sacrifices of World War II veterans which were often expressed in depression, violence, risk taking, and family abandonment. But the veterans of the two World Wars of the twentieth century had two (often faint and taunting, but still…) succors: they had contributed to a “victory’ and there was a story (easier to believe about the defeat of Hitler than the the defeat of the Kaiser) that they had contributed to something honorable - or at least had tried to preserve something decent and worth preserving - even if that “something” was for others.
You don’’t seem to like calling what trump represents ‘fascism.” But it’s a bitter truth that a majority of those who actually bothered to vote (a bit more than a third of those eligible) cast their ballot for a cynical, lying, amoral, profiteering, abusive, irresponsible clown with no regard for social responsibility, history, learning, understanding, factuality, or truth. That can’t simply be laid down ONLY to lack of education, irresponsibility, insouciance, or gullibility on their part. There is ALSO a profound bitterness, hopelessness, and desperation behind such a choice (some of that justly to be blamed on the corporate wing of the Democratic Paty and the performative streak of well heeled (or aspirational) boutique progressivism. (Then there are the TRAUMATIZED gays, minorities, creatives, women, trans people etc who, along with migrants and Jews, are ever ripe for scapegoating… with an interesting parallel to traumatized combat veterans).
So maybe we shouldn’t call trump a fascist and should instead dare to struggle with understanding the social histories that make the term incomprehensible to those who succumb to its newest manifestations…
Another quibble: at the “heart” of communism is not some nonsensical notion of historical inevitability. That is a mistake sustained by trauma and despair. The same goes for the cynical rejection of the liberal rule of law associated with too much commie rhetoric. At the heart of communism is the chimerical notion of self government which is the SAME as democracy or “economic democracy”. What we are seeing now in MAGAISM (I can’t help but call it fascism) is a revision to an older mode of those who hate and fear the idea of human progress for the bulk of humanity when they used to disparage democracy though since the 1870s the contempt and violence that used to be directed at democrats was targeted toward “communists”.
"History for it's own sake"... I've really noticed that one. people love the big sweeping simple stories, but so often that's not the way it works. You've got to get into the nitty gritty of a bunch of different events.
You might have better served yourself and your readers to focus more on the still unfolding consequences of the Vietnam debacle, which in (my not so humble) opinion should be mostly about empire and forms of cognizance of empire. The danger THERE would be to succumb to thinking and judging like a geopolitical strategist (a George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski etc) meaning over focusing on advantages, disadvantages, unintended consequences and Rumsfeldian “knowns” & “unknowns” on the battlefields and international balances of power and terror.
But as you clearly pointed out (though went on to obscure with a multitude of other considerations and observations) Vietnam had and is still having a visceral impact on the psyche of US unity, nationhood, the meaning of citizenship, and the limits, potentials, and dangers of governability/ungovernability.
Noam Chomsky liked to puckishly indicate that the genocidal indochina conflicts of the sixties and seventies were actually a grand geopolitical victory for US imperial interests with Vietnam becoming a useful economic and strategic ally (just south of China) and Indonesia firmly(? at least for now) in the US sphere, etc. etc. But the bulk of the US citizenry (and perhaps even more of the veterans of those conflicts) have a deeper and darker sense of betrayal and defeat regarding Vietnam — with the betrayals sometimes blamed on the establishment (government and corporations) or on the US civilian population (or certain elements of it: progressives, liberals, hippies, professors, intellectuals, Hollywood types, Democrats, minorities, feminists, gays, activists, wokes, etc.)
For the veterans and their families (parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren) service in Vietnam was a sacrifice. (Religious sense intended.) Sometimes even a sacrifice of HONOR (think Mỹ Lai) which is the most chocking, bitter, and gruesome form of sacrifice or FORCED sacrifice: so much more impossible to safely incorporate than the sacrifice of life, limb, health, or sanity. Many of those veterans had grown up in the vortex of the sacrifices of World War II veterans which were often expressed in depression, violence, risk taking, and family abandonment. But the veterans of the two World Wars of the twentieth century had two (often faint and taunting, but still…) succors: they had contributed to a “victory’ and there was a story (easier to believe about the defeat of Hitler than the the defeat of the Kaiser) that they had contributed to something honorable - or at least had tried to preserve something decent and worth preserving - even if that “something” was for others.
You don’’t seem to like calling what trump represents ‘fascism.” But it’s a bitter truth that a majority of those who actually bothered to vote (a bit more than a third of those eligible) cast their ballot for a cynical, lying, amoral, profiteering, abusive, irresponsible clown with no regard for social responsibility, history, learning, understanding, factuality, or truth. That can’t simply be laid down ONLY to lack of education, irresponsibility, insouciance, or gullibility on their part. There is ALSO a profound bitterness, hopelessness, and desperation behind such a choice (some of that justly to be blamed on the corporate wing of the Democratic Paty and the performative streak of well heeled (or aspirational) boutique progressivism. (Then there are the TRAUMATIZED gays, minorities, creatives, women, trans people etc who, along with migrants and Jews, are ever ripe for scapegoating… with an interesting parallel to traumatized combat veterans).
So maybe we shouldn’t call trump a fascist and should instead dare to struggle with understanding the social histories that make the term incomprehensible to those who succumb to its newest manifestations…
Another quibble: at the “heart” of communism is not some nonsensical notion of historical inevitability. That is a mistake sustained by trauma and despair. The same goes for the cynical rejection of the liberal rule of law associated with too much commie rhetoric. At the heart of communism is the chimerical notion of self government which is the SAME as democracy or “economic democracy”. What we are seeing now in MAGAISM (I can’t help but call it fascism) is a revision to an older mode of those who hate and fear the idea of human progress for the bulk of humanity when they used to disparage democracy though since the 1870s the contempt and violence that used to be directed at democrats was targeted toward “communists”.
Sometimes in horror, there is clarity.
"History for it's own sake"... I've really noticed that one. people love the big sweeping simple stories, but so often that's not the way it works. You've got to get into the nitty gritty of a bunch of different events.