51–60 of 365 posts
The answers to each gripe are simple, straightforward and convincing. I love how it's written.
The answers are all great, but I could also understand why an American soldier would have those gripes in the first place!
> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth, and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful. Well. I mean... Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather refreshing way. "The French don't bathe." The French don't bathe often enough. They can't.…
> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth, and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful. Well. I mean... Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather refreshing way. "The French don't bathe." The French don't bathe often enough. They can't.…
> the text is amazingly blunt and honest It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to people with a fairly low reading level.
This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time). I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us. > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came t…
Another thing that's been mostly sweeped under the rug wrt WW2 is that Russia both did the most damage to the German army and paid the highest price. America only started their offensive after Russia started winning and likely only wanted to deny them Europe. And the heavy casualties in the war likely caused Russia to fold on the cold war as well, there were just not enough able men after the war to create families w…
It's often said that the war was won with British intelligence, American steel, and Soviet blood.
Interesting. I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and everything.
Not sure if you are joking? > France is the country with the deepest, most sedimented reservoir of anti-American arguments. Its long genealogy has been well documented over the years, most recently by Philippe Roger, who argues that French anti- Americanism is older than the United States (Roger 2002). https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/meunierces...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Military personnel on average have more formal education then the general public. High school drop outs aren't even allowed to enlist anymore without a special waiver. Almost all officers, and many enlisted, have Bachelor's degrees. Senior officers usually have Master's degrees.
Officials are probably more educated than the general populace, since they almost always need a university degree, but enlisted personnel might even be high school dropouts, so I wouldn't trust any regular soldier to be humble and respectful.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/232726/education-levels-...
Did the book address the topic of rapes by US soldiers? This was a big issue after liberation, and still is a major issue near US bases nowadays (in particular Okinawa).
Question 81 mentions problems caused by US soldiers. Crimes by foreigners generally cause a lot of outrage, regardless how common they are. I saw stats a few years ago that had the crime rates of US troops in Japan lower than the native population. While the crime rates of immigrants was higher than natives. But one of these topics is politically correct and the other is not.
> If you were a French soldier, whose land had been invaded, whose wife or sister or mother had been taken into a German concentration camp and raped or killed, you might have found it difficult to control Your emotions.
> Lastly, a good many French women have been in terror of American troops, especially in Paris. Our SIP records testify to a deplorable amount of drunkenness, molesting of women and street fights -- by americans.
The original is a delight to read. Sadly, I can't help but wonder how many would be "triggered" by the answers today. How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again?
The original is a delight to read. Sadly, I can't help but wonder how many would be "triggered" by the answers today. How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again?
The original is a delight to read. Sadly, I can't help but wonder how many would be "triggered" by the answers today. How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again?
You might want to start with taking critique from the people you deem to be "triggered" seriously. That would be a first step in rational self-criticism. Otherwise you're selling a gut reaction as rationality to yourself. This is a common mistake people make. You might end up disagreeing with their critique - that may well be - but even then in most cases you'll likely take something from it, might be able to understand the topic at hand with some further nuance or get a deeper understanding of your position and its merits.