Is Ken Burns a good documentary maker, or is does he make nationalist narratives for liberals?
The new Vietnam documentary he made pretty much matches my expectations: "And American soldiers felt really sad about carrying out a genocide in South Vietnam, why oh why did we turn out back on the Hamiltonian ideas that make America Great (tm)"
even The New Republic can smell the bullshit, it seems
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haven't seen it. but if it
1. fails to mention that the u.s. invaded south viet nam in 1962 (with u.s.-led violence starting even earlier)
2. perpetuates the belief that the u.s. "lost the war"
3. tries to absolve "saint kennedy" of wrongdoing or portrays him as a dove
4. fails to show the war as an atrocious act of aggression and cruelty by the u.s.
it's probably garbage. this goes for most media portrayals of the war
I thought that was the case though. The u.s. inflicted a disproportionate amount of casualties, but that doesn't necessarily mean they won the war.
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that view is a distortion, intended to turn the aggressor into the victim. "we killed millions of people and devastated an entire region but we're the real losers here"
Would you describe what happened as "winning" or what?
idk but his WW2 doc was fucking BOOOORING
Bad documentarist
See
The US destroyed Vietnam, stopped communism from spreading, had loyal puppet governments control the region. It wasn't an absolute victory but many of the war goals of the US where more or less achieved
You're right.
Americans: 5000 aircraft lost
Vietnam: 200 aircraft lost
MiG-21 > F4 Phantom
Fuck you, his Jazz series is incredible.
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Want to see what PragerU thinks about the vietnam war?
Fun fact, here's a North Vietnamese prop poster trying to get US troops to desert
When can I book my stay at the Hanoi Hilton?
I would go for it tbh
I'm slowly becoming a tankie myself stalinche.
Welcome to the club, Товарищ
I watched the first episode and so far it has hit points 1, 2, 3, and 4(ish). I don't know, it still has 9 more episodes to redeem itself. But I give it some credit in that it mentions that the US openly supported the communists until they started fighting the French instead of the Japanese. Also it outlines how the US broke all international norms, by agreeing to the split in the country (for a temporary vote on reunification) and then pulling back on that deal and installing a dictatorship in the south.
It also shows the Việt Minh as a force for good in Vietnam against the French (because even most Americans wouldn't support a side that is overtly imperialistic, they like to have a capitalist "republic" as a proxy for their imperialism).
We will see, but I don't have high hopes considering that the director said in an interview that he hopes this documentary will be assessable to every viewpoint, and that everyone will be represented. Which we all know is code for "We are going to shit out the mainstream narrative and then give the pile left over a sprinkling of 'opposing viewpoints' flakes to seem objective".
Ken Burns is awesome with respect to baseball and jazz, but you're mistaken to expect anything but an extremely liberal perspective on world politics.
Imagine what Adorno would have to say about that
...
Fuck off jazz is great.
Jazz is fascism. Read adorno.
stop right now
nice meme
The US failed to achieve its ultimate goal of propping up a new permanent puppet state though. Saying that, saying they "lost the war" makes them "the victims" is as stupid as claiming that Nazi Germany losing the war makes them the victims.
But that's literally what nazis claim.
That they do.
then i guess chomsky is stupid. "america lost vietnam lolol xd" is a meme favoured by snarky liberals who think they're being radicals and dissing america, when they're really just playing right into the state's hands and spewing a propaganda line
the u.s. did not lose the war. it never suffered a day of that grand crime. viet nam lost the war, and the vietnamese suffered beyond imagination