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EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM: The TerryReport
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News, commentary, opinion on politics, government, books, social trends, American life, travel, cycling, books, other stuff
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The idea of “the greatest generation” came into popular use because it was the title of a book by Tom Brokaw, then, in 1998, the primary anchor of NBC News. It caught on fast and is now used routinely. It does not matter if it is an accurate title, people like it and they use it. Brokaw is not by, any stretch an historian so one could argue that he was not qualified to paste this label on anyone. More than that, however, is the fact that, as a news anchor, he had to seek popularity and flattering his older viewers was certainly good “PR”. The history that disagreed with his title had to be left out or ignored.
Brokaw might have intended the title as a tribute to his father’s generation, but there was an underhanded slap, intended or not, at the generation that followed WW II, the generation that had Vietnam dumped in its lap. Opposing the actions of one’s own government is one of the most difficult tasks of a patriot. Indeed, the so called “anti-war movement” that developed during Vietnam is one of the few examples anywhere in world history where a widespread, popular movement developed in opposition to the use of military power, within the nation using that power. We can honor that generation more with truth than with flattery. Indeed, they don’t need our flattery, what they accomplished speaks for itself. We need to remember the details of that history and how the end of the war in Europe came about and to understand a time different than our own.
Tom Brokaw is a “tweener”, a person born between the two great wars of the 20th. He might have therefore been jealous of those a bit younger, the so called boomers, who created the idea of a cultural revolution in America or he might have just felt they were wrong to oppose Vietnam. In any case, his title, “The Greatest Generation” seemed an intentional slap at those five and ten years younger than he.
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70 years after the D-invasion in Normandy, France, we honor the “greatest generation”? No. Why not simply honor a great generation that made modern America possible? To call the WW II generation the greatest in American history is to take away honor from other great periods of accomplishment, the most notable perhaps being the revolutionary generation that gave birth to the nation. What’s more, what would “the greatest generation” have done had they been handed the ugly and, to many, repugnant use of the military to take sides in the civil war in Vietnam? Vietnam was an entirely different can of worms and it split a generation in two as some worked, and risked, to oppose the war, while others found themselves far away from home with a rifle in their hands without a clear definition of what they were supposed to accomplish, besides bare survival.
We can remember and honor those who served and died on D-Day and throughout a long, bloody war that, beyond any doubt, had to be fought to defeat Hitler and fascism. We can do so without overstating the case. Surely, that generation’s accomplishments were great, some of the greatest in American history. The late historian Steven Ambrose said he did not believe there was one “greatest” generation of Americans. He was right. Each generation takes the challenges before it and does the best they can and there are many worthy examples along the way. WW II was a time when American business and industrial power was strapped onto the war machine and, recognizing their duty, young men, and some young women, went off to do their best for themselves, their families and for all of us. It was not a time of universal harmony in the U.S. Most of the men who went were drafted, ordered on the penalty of jail, to go fight. There were also an estimated 50,000 deserters during the war and over 7,000 arrests for crimes by service members in Paris after the victory. This doesn’t lessen what the others, and the nation, accomplished.
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to go to recent posts, nearly 300 pages of news and comments filed during the first nine months of 2013 and during the critical election year of 2012.
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to go back to prior years (500+ pages) of The TerryReport
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