Official Ken Burn's Vietnam War Thread
Comments
-
I was listening to Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody on Theme of Paganini" last night on the turntable last night. Arthur Rubenstein on piano. Fucking fantastic!Doog_de_Jour said:
Yes, yes I could...CuntWaffle said:PBS? Can you sound anymore old, rich, and white?
king.org/listen/ -
Classy AFYellowSnow said:
I was listening to Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody on Theme of Paganini" last night on the turntable last night. Arthur Rubenstein on piano. Fucking fantastic!Doog_de_Jour said:
Yes, yes I could...CuntWaffle said:PBS? Can you sound anymore old, rich, and white?
king.org/listen/
-
Damn I'm smooth. So much wood.GrundleStiltzkin said:
Classy AFYellowSnow said:
I was listening to Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody on Theme of Paganini" last night on the turntable last night. Arthur Rubenstein on piano. Fucking fantastic!Doog_de_Jour said:
Yes, yes I could...CuntWaffle said:PBS? Can you sound anymore old, rich, and white?
king.org/listen/ -
GrundleStiltzkin said:
Classy AFYellowSnow said:
I was listening to Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody on Theme of Paganini" last night on the turntable last night. Arthur Rubenstein on piano. Fucking fantastic!Doog_de_Jour said:
Yes, yes I could...CuntWaffle said:PBS? Can you sound anymore old, rich, and white?
king.org/listen/
-
Here goes
I never watched an episode of Mad Men until this summer when i started at the beginning. so I was already semi freaked out reliving my childhood through Sally. The series touched all the touchstones of the 60's that I had watched with my two dads on the couch.
On to Vietnam
I think it is remarkably fair and balanced with a slight lean to the left but if you lived then it should have a lean to the left. The reason the left is stuck back in time is because Civil Rights and the anti War movement was their finest hour. They keep trying to recreate that time when time has passed them by.
The first episode is painful as others have pointed out. I am through 8 of them and feel like it will never end just like the war felt. It's a weird thing. When they hit Kent State last night (spoiler alert: 4 dead in Ohio) I wanted to hit delete and skip the last two as well because I was 14 again in 1970 watching my country and family fall to pieces. The old familiar anger was strong. Really, they were pretty shitty times if you aren't living them through a CNN documentary on the 60's with cool rock music.
The same Civil War story telling of using individuals to bring depth to history is good since many of them are alive today, unlike us Civil War vets. Some gets a bit maudlin and repetitive but again, so was that fucking war. I'd prefer Ray Donovan to Peter Coyote on the narration
Probably hard to find anyone today to go on camera and be gung ho, but they did find heroes that did some real heroic shit that they can't feel good about today. Also some dodgers. The waste of human life can only seem intentional looking back at it. Cull the boomers and sell the war material. Win - win.
I remember an Easter breakfast with the extended family around 72 or so and we're in a violent discussion on the war. No internet then, you had to SAY IT TO THEIR FACE.
I was running my mouth as usual and noticed an older cousin looking like he wanted to kill me. His wife goes
"Jerry was trapped at Khe San and you don't know what you're talking about"
I felt pretty bad. Then watching the siege of Khe San and the brutal conditions and as soon as the NVA pulls back we LEAVE. Fucking incredible.
Major complaint on the old playbook of Nixon sabotaged peace to get elected. Johnson pulled a stunt to get a cease fire to get HH elected. Nixon may or may not have told the SV he could get them a better deal but considering that it took 10 weeks to agree on the shape of the table peace was unlikely to break out in 4 days. It wasn't until 72 and more bombing that the NVA negotiated seriously.
No president looks good in this. I was struck that LBJ could have been a great President if there was no war.
The callous disregard for life to keep fighting a war for years we knew we couldn't win up against the cold war and "national pride" is an interesting dynamic
I no longer think we could have irregardless of anything we tried. The NVA would have climbed out of the glowing nuke craters to keep fighting. You have to respect them. Fuckers could fight.
Vietnam ushered in the dark decade of the 70's which could be a Ken Burns show itself.
As tedious and painful as it may be to watch you need to because it was just as tedious and painful to see it live.
The major mistake of the anti war movement was to go after the troops. The kids played hard and the bad shit like Calley was after the grunts knew they weren't there to win and just went off the reservation. Something like 800 officers killed by their troops. It was out of control.
Already way too long but those guys were heroes and I feel bad for hating on them even today. And I was scared I would have to go.
The maggot protesters with the NVA flags and the deserters have not aged well against the combat troops. The protesters give themselves too much credit. By the end of LBJ we knew we had lost and needed a way out it was just a matter of how.
-
The strategy from the very beginning was totally fucking stupid and DOOMED us throughout.
Wonder if things would have been any different if JFK never dies. Probably not but whatever
Give Ken Burns all the awards -
JFK was a cold warrior and anti communist. He would have been in the same trap as LBJ I thinkJaWarrenJaHooker said:The strategy from the very beginning was totally fucking stupid and DOOMED us throughout.
Wonder if things would have been any different if JFK never dies. Probably not but whatever
Give Ken Burns all the awards
Interesting that JFK was killed weeks after he green lit the coup that killed the SV leaders -
I like WW 2 history. Clear cut cases of good (or less evil) vs evil. Don't give a shit about Vietnam or 60's history. At all. The villains were all lame. No Hitlers, Stalins or Tojos.
-
Nobody gives a shit about you, either, junior.oregonblitzkrieg said:I like WW 2 history. Clear cut cases of good (or less evil) vs evil. Don't give a shit about Vietnam or 60's history. At all. The villains were all lame. No Hitlers, Stalins or Tojos.
At all. -
Outstanding. I dig it when Race makes a TL, DR post. His don't suck.RaceBannon said:Here goes
I never watched an episode of Mad Men until this summer when i started at the beginning. so I was already semi freaked out reliving my childhood through Sally. The series touched all the touchstones of the 60's that I had watched with my two dads on the couch.
On to Vietnam
I think it is remarkably fair and balanced with a slight lean to the left but if you lived then it should have a lean to the left. The reason the left is stuck back in time is because Civil Rights and the anti War movement was their finest hour. They keep trying to recreate that time when time has passed them by.
The first episode is painful as others have pointed out. I am through 8 of them and feel like it will never end just like the war felt. It's a weird thing. When they hit Kent State last night (spoiler alert: 4 dead in Ohio) I wanted to hit delete and skip the last two as well because I was 14 again in 1970 watching my country and family fall to pieces. The old familiar anger was strong. Really, they were pretty shitty times if you aren't living them through a CNN documentary on the 60's with cool rock music.
The same Civil War story telling of using individuals to bring depth to history is good since many of them are alive today, unlike us Civil War vets. Some gets a bit maudlin and repetitive but again, so was that fucking war. I'd prefer Ray Donovan to Peter Coyote on the narration
Probably hard to find anyone today to go on camera and be gung ho, but they did find heroes that did some real heroic shit that they can't feel good about today. Also some dodgers. The waste of human life can only seem intentional looking back at it. Cull the boomers and sell the war material. Win - win.
I remember an Easter breakfast with the extended family around 72 or so and we're in a violent discussion on the war. No internet then, you had to SAY IT TO THEIR FACE.
I was running my mouth as usual and noticed an older cousin looking like he wanted to kill me. His wife goes
"Jerry was trapped at Khe San and you don't know what you're talking about"
I felt pretty bad. Then watching the siege of Khe San and the brutal conditions and as soon as the NVA pulls back we LEAVE. Fucking incredible.
Major complaint on the old playbook of Nixon sabotaged peace to get elected. Johnson pulled a stunt to get a cease fire to get HH elected. Nixon may or may not have told the SV he could get them a better deal but considering that it took 10 weeks to agree on the shape of the table peace was unlikely to break out in 4 days. It wasn't until 72 and more bombing that the NVA negotiated seriously.
No president looks good in this. I was struck that LBJ could have been a great President if there was no war.
The callous disregard for life to keep fighting a war for years we knew we couldn't win up against the cold war and "national pride" is an interesting dynamic
I no longer think we could have irregardless of anything we tried. The NVA would have climbed out of the glowing nuke craters to keep fighting. You have to respect them. Fuckers could fight.
Vietnam ushered in the dark decade of the 70's which could be a Ken Burns show itself.
As tedious and painful as it may be to watch you need to because it was just as tedious and painful to see it live.
The major mistake of the anti war movement was to go after the troops. The kids played hard and the bad shit like Calley was after the grunts knew they weren't there to win and just went off the reservation. Something like 800 officers killed by their troops. It was out of control.
Already way too long but those guys were heroes and I feel bad for hating on them even today. And I was scared I would have to go.
The maggot protesters with the NVA flags and the deserters have not aged well against the combat troops. The protesters give themselves too much credit. By the end of LBJ we knew we had lost and needed a way out it was just a matter of how.
