What the hell ever happened to the white American man?

Unintentionally Blank, I don’t know what could convince you; obviously, my thoughts on the bombing come from a place that differs from yours. All I ask is that you read the excerpt here: The War Criminal Harry Truman - LewRockwell.

If, after you read it, you still insist that the U.S. had their hands tied and just had to do what it did to end the war, then so be it. But at least humor me and read it. To just act like Truman had exhausted all other options to end the war justly is a lie. It’s a lie just like all the other lies that get perpetrated to mask the misdeeds of the powerful (e.g. Iraq caused 9/11 is a good example).

He just wanted to get some revenge on some Japs and he knew he could get some bigoted Americans to go along with it. Not much different than the nonsense playing out today.

Well I’ll take you up on that offer my friend. Black men aren’t doing the things they are suppose to do. When we’re looking at a 8-1 ratio at least of black women in college as opposed to black men. When big brothers and big sisters are crying for black men to be big brothers because biologicals seem to have too much other shit to do.. when here in Atlanta we had to run a special.. “take your child to school black man” program.. I go to Chris Rock.. “You’re supposed to do that you low expectations having &^%$”

See that’s why I concur with the OP. What I’ve noticed as of late (And this and all of our suppositions are purely ancedotal) is that White guys are always looking for the out position these days. White guys at my gym.. or my job.. make jokes about not having a shot at the national spelling bee unless you’re a girl or and indian dude. They’ve suddenly taken some big interest in lacrosse or soccer because they have some dumbass idea that their kid can’t play against some black kid in football or basketball. What’s up with that? European dudes are getting taken in the first round of the NBA.. but only Jimmer?
Assuming that only the Chinese kids are going to the honors math class.. Its like a subtle sign of desperation. Another example.. Univ of Ga use to be a safety school. Well President Adams has ended that shit.. and UGA is actually tough to get into.. standards have been raised. White dudes are mad as hell about this.. suddenly their kids are having to go to Bama (No offense directed at Tuscaloosa).

Perhaps this was something that we created in an all black southside neighborhood in Chicago.. but the thought was that you had to have your shit tight to go up against white kids..

I think the biggest problem white guys have in this day and age is that they’ve been pounded on for forty-five years and told that inequality is unfair and that no one is better than anyone else, but then the powers that be and an apparently unlimited number of agitators insist that they therefore take a backseat to everyone else when it comes to jobs, income redistribution, etc., etc. In other words, “fairness” is tantamount…and it’s for everybody but them.

White men these days are also very cognizant of the fact that they are not the ones who created the racist policies of the past; they are not the ones who sought to keep women down (which I don’t believe ever happened in the first place; society here just like in most of the world simply evolved so that men supported the family through work and women took care of things on the home front); and they are not the ones responsible for every “evil” that anyone unhappy with their lot in life wants to blame them for.

Listen to this bullshit about “little white men”. How friggin’ ridiculous and revealing of the hatred that white guys in this day and age are being confronted with is that? Do you want equality? Or do you simply want to trade places with your supposed oppressors?

I’ll take number two for the win, Alex!

We definitely should’ve nuked Berlin in August 1945 to prove we weren’t racist.

OK, here’s some cites. The Trinity Test, including dates. V-E Day, including dates. While I can’t find any details about what Truman would have done and I’ll have to walk that comment back, there’s a bit from the Wikipedia article about the Manhattan Project stating that Roosevelt intended to drop atomic bombs on Germany if they were ready before the war ended. A direct link to the Wikipedia cite, which is unfortunately a printed book. Here’s the quote I’m working with: “President Roosevelt instructed Groves that if the atomic bombs were ready before the war with Germany ended, he should be ready to drop them on Germany.” (Leslie Groves was the general who headed up the Manhattan Project.)

And good god, where did I or anyone else defend Korematsu? Who here has stated that racism was not evident in American minds during WWII, or that it was as bad for German-Americans as it was for Japanese-Americans? You’re putting words in everyone else’s mouths, and it’s a damned obnoxious way to argue. I specifically argued that it was absurd for you to argue that the Germans were not nuked because they were white, both because the Allies did not have nuclear weapons before V-E Day and because Allied leaders made statements demonstrating their intent to nuke the Nazis given the opportunity. I argued that they would have been nuked had the Allies had the nuclear weapons available in time. I was avoiding the entire rest of the issue because it’s full of grey areas that I have no interest arguing. The intent of Allied leaders to nuke the Germans is the only part that I responded to, but you’re dragging in a lot of extraneous material. Frankly, I was picking a nit, and you’re building up a whole strawman around it.

The irony in this paragraph is that I never said that Germans were not nuked because they were white; that’s your interpretation.What I said was Japan was nuked because of racism and jingoism (and also revenge for Pearl Harbor), and I stand by that.

Whether or not Germany would have been treated with an A-bomb can only be speculated at this point. Perhaps it would have been used in Dresden, instead of the air assault that had occured. But I seriously doubt Truman nor the American public would have calmly accepted the decimation of 100,000 men, women, and children had they lived in Berlin instead of Japan. Had these been European civilians, it would have more difficult to spin the act into something other than the war crime it was.

Why are we arguing about this in the first place? Oh, because I mentioned the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as being part of larger pattern of white men not acting like the noble, graceful, magnaminous archetype that astro believes his brethren is falling away from. Then bump came in to argue that the Manhattan Project was an ACHIEVEMENT and Unintentionally Blank rebuffed me for using 2011 armchair sensibilities when radically speaking out against the bombing of 100,000 civilians. (Can I use 2011 armchair sensibilities to say the Holocaust was an atrocity, or is that a no-no too? Come on.)

If yall take umbrage over Hiroshima being lumped in with Jim Crow, slavery, the Holocaust, Trail of Tears, etc., I give you permission to pretend it was never mentioned. My point still stands though: Same shit, different day. I don’t understand astro’s lament at all.

We killed 50,000 in Hamburg and 25,000 in Dresden without the public getting too upset. We would have dropped the bomb on Germany without hesitation, IMO.

I agree. The OP is disjointed and rambling.

I’m just baffled your ascribing emiti

I’m just baffled that you’re ascribing emotion and intent to a factual statement. Nuclear development WAS an amazing development, Nagasaki and Hiroshima DID end the war.

The American concentration camps (you know, like the Nazis, but without those pesky gas chambers) weren’t our shining moment, but they were an attempt to cut down on information leakage. Do I defend it? Was it racist? I dunno. It Happened. It’s History.

Did we want revenge for Pearl Harbor? Are you THAT blind? Did we want revenge for 9/11?

Was it morally reprehensible that we killed dogs and moms and kids? I doubt you’ll find any disagreement there. Is war hell? (and I blame the last posts on my iPhone and the Internet hamsters)

I don’t know why you take issue with me condeming Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seriously. Of all the things to get hung up on, of all the minutia to get riled up about, I’d think it would something more controversial than this. Outside of this thread (apparently), condeming Hiroshima is about as radical as condeming homophobia. It’s nothing and yet here you are, rationalizing it for no reason.

So what that the bombs themselves were amazing technological feat? Yeah, they were. Never said otherwise, and its irrelevant to my point in the first place. I mean, it was also amazing how the Germans were able to come up with so many novel, efficient ways to kill the Jews and Poles. How many of us could say we’d be able to devise the technology required to eliminate 11 million people over the span of a few years? I think we can all agree that those Nazis were brilliant. And too it was also amazing how many Africans the slavers managed to pack into their ships. I for one would not have been to finagle that, given my weak spatial skills. Pure ingenunity went into the slave trade, I tells ya.

I hope you see now that I’m more than willing to give credit where credit is due. At the same time, this “credit” doesn’t mitigate the horror associated with these events.

I also don’t understand why you expect Machiavallian arguments to hold sway in this discussion. Yes, the bombing ended the war in the Pacific. And if we bombed Afghanistan off the map tomorrow, so too would the war over there end. Peace in the Middle East could easily be established if we took out the whole region. And? What’s holding us back? Morality, maybe?

Because I’m not able to read you mind. I make a statement, you make a statement, I speak to that statement. If it’s not important to you and you don’t say it’s not important to you, how am I supposed to know and debate to it?

This is a lot more compelling when you ignore who runs the government and the crporations and the wealth. I’ll buy that they always take the back seat when in fact they’re mostly sitting in the back seats.

That ain’t today.

Because it’s irrelevant.

I see. Check Please!

I think I’m done paying attention to anything you may have to say about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or World War II or anything else, if you don’t even know that the first atomic weapon was tested more than 2 months after Germany surrendered, which obviously is why we didn’t use the things on Germany.

And yet you came in all late to write this. Funny.

I want to go on record as saying Hiroshima was fucking awesome and the best possible solution for all involved and the Japanese government should officially pass a resolution thanking us for nuking them.

Little known fact, the “G” in Warren G Harding’s name stands for “gangsta!” Ya-yeeeeeeah.

Really? As a 50 year old WAM, I don’t see this at all. Perhaps it’s a regional thing. The guys I hang with are good men that have grace and nobility. You don’t have to wear a 3 piece suit and smoke a pipe to be a ‘man’.

‘Cheap angry little men stamping our feet’? You need to hang out with a better crowd. I know no such men.