Just saw Oppenheimer and I was a bit disappointed with how they portrayed Truman. He came across pretty poorly IMO. It was only one scene but I wondered what you thought.

I understand your disappointment and it certainly wasn't a very in-depth portrayal of Truman, but according to the book that the movie was largely based on -- American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) -- the meeting that Oppenheimer had with President Truman went down pretty much as depicted in the film.

As Bird and Sherwin write in American Prometheus:

(O)n October 25, 1945, Oppenheimer was ushered into the Oval Office. President Truman was naturally curious to meet the celebrated physicist, whom he knew by reputation to be an eloquent and charismatic figure. After being introduced by Secretary [of War Robert P.] Patterson, the only other individual in the room, the three men sat down. By one account, Truman opened the conversation by asking for Oppenheimer's help in getting Congress to pass the May-Johnson bill, giving the Army permanent control over atomic energy. "The first thing is to define the national problem," Truman said, "then the international." Oppenheimer let an uncomfortably long silence pass and then said, haltingly, "Perhaps it would be best first to define the international problem." He meant, of course, that the first imperative was to stop the spread of these weapons by placing international controls over all atomic technology. At one point in their conversation, Truman suddenly asked him to guess when the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb. When Oppie replied that he did not know, Truman confidently said he knew the answer: "Never." For Oppenheimer, such foolishness was proof of Truman's limitations. The "incomprehension it showed just knocked the heart out of him," recalled Willie Higinbotham. As for Truman, a man who compensated for his insecurities with calculated displays of decisiveness, Oppenheimer seemed maddeningly tentative, obscure -- and cheerless. Finally, sensing that the President was not comprehending the deadly urgency of his message, Oppenheimer nervously wrung his hands and uttered another of those regrettable remarks that he characteristically made under pressure. "Mr. President," he said quietly, "I feel I have blood on my hands." The comment angered Truman. He later informed David Lilienthal, "I told him the blood was on my hands -- to let me worry about that." But over the years, Truman embellished the story. By one account, he replied, "Never mind, it'll all come out in the wash." In yet another version, he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Oppenheimer, saying, "Well, here, would you like to wipe your hands?" An awkward silence followed this exchange, and then Truman stood up to signal that the meeting was over. The two men shook hands, and Truman reportedly said, "Don't worry, we're going to work something out, and you're going to help us." Afterwards, the President was heard to mutter, "Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn't half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don't go around bellyaching about it." He later told [Secretary of State] Dean Acheson, "I don't want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again." Even in May 1946, the encounter still vivid in his mind, he wrote Acheson and described Oppenheimer as a "cry-baby scientist" who had come to "my office some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy."

“Dear President Truman,

I am 9 years old and I think it was a disgrace that in Washington 51 children were not let in to a hotel because 4 children were colored.  The capital is supposed to be for freedom.” May 28, 1948.

Collection HST-OFF: Official Files (Truman Administration)

Series: Official Files

File Unit: Official File 93B

Transcription: 

93-B

May 28, 1948

Dear President Truman,

I am 9 years old and I think it was a disgrace that in Washington 51 children were not let in to a hotel because 4 children were colored.  The capital is supposed to be for freedom.  I am proud to be an american but this makes me feel ashamed because in my own classroom we made up a play on brother hood.

Sincerly,

J. Jagliarin

---

x

[Drawing of 2 children, one with a colored-in face and one with a light face]

[Drawing of a person at a hotel, with words "no room"]

I made a trucoop amv because this is my life now. I wanted to channel that mid-aughts naruto amv energy. I'm not proud of how long this took me and how much of that was spent rifling through dvds. Amazing how just some basic level editing and a cascada song can turn twin peaks into gay cinema.

'In this opening stanza of one of my favorite poems, “La Jornada” by Antonia Quintana Pigno, the speaker laments the disastrous effects of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s love affair with New Mexico.

She suggests that her own love affair as a brown woman with the white scientist could have stopped the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. This poem ran through my mind multiple times as I watched Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.

Like Nolan’s other films, the depiction of women in Oppenheimer is terrible. In this one, he manages to reduce two scientists—Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist who was also queer, and Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, a botanist—to a floozy and a drunk who are both in love with Oppie, not to mention that they are two of only four women with significant speaking parts. (The third is also involved in an extra-marital affair with Oppenheimer and the fourth was a Manhattan Project scientist who is depicted as trying to shut down the use of the bomb for war purposes. But I digress.) Quintana Pigno writes lovingly about her “Nuevo Méjico,” but it’s a different love than Oppenheimer had for New Mexico.

Oppenheimer

I could have loved you

wrapped my legs tightly

around your white buttocks

to keep you thinly against me

without desire

for food

for water from mountain streams

for the journey to Jornada del Muerto

for the creation of Trinity

“La Jornada” by Antonia Quintana Pigno

In the summer blockbuster, New Mexico serves as a desolate backdrop to Project Y and the Trinity test. The wind and rain that characterize the wild west that Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists must tame to build and test the bomb contradicts the querencia most of us have for our high desert homeland, the one that Quintana Pigno writes about. One of my favorite Oppenheimer quotes, which sits as an epigraph to “La Jornada,” features prominently in the film. The original quote, though, is different than the movie version. Oppenheimer once said, “My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It’s a pity they can’t be combined.” In the film, Oppie says, “When I was a kid, I thought that if I could find a way to combine physics with New Mexico, my life would be perfect.” The truth is that his love for New Mexico, like his other romantic affairs, was disastrous. Who should really be pitied here? The truth is, Oppenheimer knew very little about people in New Mexico because he often went to New Mexico to be alone, that is, until he created a government project that changed the cultural and physical landscape of my ancestors forever.

Those left out of Oppenheimer

With the attention that the film has received, many people have been able to critique how the film leaves out entire populations of people, such as Indigenous communities, downwind communities, and Nuevomexicana/o farmers. It has allowed us to better explain to the world that New Mexico was not uninhabited in the 1940s. In fact, it has been inhabited since time immemorial. In a recent interview, I finally realized that the journalist was unaware of New Mexico’s geography, and I explained to her that Trinity and Los Alamos were 200 miles apart when I finally realized that she did not know this as she asked her questions. Yet another called it “Mexico” but then corrected herself and repeated “New Mexico.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that we have this chance to explain these things, and I don’t fault people for not knowing the geography of New Mexico. Certainly, the film makes no effort to distinguish the Pajarito Plateau (Los Alamos) from the Tularosa Basin (Trinity site); New Mexico is one amorphous, desolate desert in the film. Nevertheless, this portrayal is just another effect of nuclear colonialism.

After two bombs were used to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, news of Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project broke worldwide. Oppie’s face appeared on the November 8, 1948, cover of TIME. As Hollywood magic would have it, Oppenheimer sees his reflection on the magazine cover as he walks into the Oval Office to meet with President Truman in the film. (Oppenheimer resigned from Los Alamos on October 16, 1945, but this inaccuracy with the TIME cover does not actually change much in the film.) It is during this scene that Truman asks Oppenheimer, “I hear you’re leaving Los Alamos. What should we do with it?” To which Oppenheimer responds, “Give it back to the Indians.” Not only is this comment ignorant, but it’s also racist. Oppenheimer and Groves knew who they displaced to institute Project Y; they just didn’t care. Nuevomexicanas/os and Indigenous people, in addition to the Los Alamos Ranch School, were dispossessed from their homes and homelands on the Pajarito Plateau. Not only did they not return the land, but the colonizers never left.

Dealing with the fallout

New Mexicans were left to contend with the lasting effects of the Manhattan Project, including intergenerational trauma, disease and death, contamination, secrecy and obscurity, and environmental racism. In Resolana: Emerging Chicano Dialogues on Community and Globalization by Miguel Montiel, Tomás Atencio, and E.A. “Tony” Mares, Atencio writes about Los Alamos and how northern New Mexico communities have resisted the effects of the Manhattan Project. Atencio writes, “Since the mid-1940s villagers had recognized the dangers of radiation, as men pushing wheelbarrows full of waste in the Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) suddenly turned ashen, went home, and died. In the villages, meanwhile, children were dying of leukemia. Despite the evidence from Los Alamos and the knowledge that chemicals, including commercial fertilizer, were polluting the land, we had been told that modern technology would improve nature” (Atencio 27). Stories of family members getting sick or dying because of their work at the Labs are no longer restricted to whispers at kitchen tables, and initiatives to keep traditional knowledge alive and in practice are thriving. Still, other northern New Mexicans, especially, are proud of the work they did and continue to do at the Labs. It’s a conundrum.

In southern New Mexico, the communities surrounding the Trinity site continue to deal with the legacy of illness and death created by the plutonium bomb called the Gadget. New research shows that fallout from the Trinity test reached forty-six states plus Canada and Mexico. A recent New York Times article quotes from the report that “locations in New Mexico where radionuclide deposition reached levels on par with Nevada” from atmospheric nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site. The new study offers support for the ongoing efforts to amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include the Trinity downwinders, who are not eligible under the current federal law. Since its establishment in 1990, the RECA fund has paid out over $2 billion; New Mexican downwinders have never been eligible for compensation under RECA.

Our own role in the current nuclear moment

Last week, the US Senate passed a bill to amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). This new amendment would include not only New Mexico downwinders, but also it includes post-1971 uranium workers, other downwinders of the Nevada Test Site atmospheric nuclear tests, and downwinders in Guam from testing in and the Pacific Islands. The House must pass their version of this bill now, which is integral before RECA sunsets in 2024. People can call their US Representatives and ask them to support the RECA amendment.

But there is another conversation that has opened recently in New Mexico around the legacy of the nuclear industrial complex. In January 2022, the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, John C. Wester, released a Pastoral Letter, “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation toward Nuclear Disarmament,” which actually calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Suddenly, there is a new conversation happening around the present-day role of nuclear science at the National Laboratories in New Mexico, namely Los Alamos. The National Nuclear Security Administration has tasked Los Alamos with producing a minimum of thirty new plutonium pits per year with a goal of eighty new pits per year between LANL and a second location – the Savannah River Site.

At the end of Oppenheimer, viewers are left questioning the guilt the film’s protagonist might have felt unleashing nuclear weapons into the world. But shouldn’t we also question what role the United States and other nuclear weapons-wielding counties have in the future of nuclear weapons? We must consider how future generations will look back on our nuclear policies and the choices we make. Are nuclear weapons and all their inherent risks and public health impacts a legacy that we really want to pass on?'

I'm blocking ANY American I see pulling this shit from now on. The blood is almost pouring out of our fucking televisions because of Biden. And the Dems. They deserve eternity in Hell. The Republicans are not "worse"- they just have worse manners, they are less polite - that's the only difference.

I have seen more dead children in the last three weeks than I have seen in my entire life. You would think that seeing Biden, Trump, Hillary and Bernie all support "Israel's right to self-defence" for the last solid three weeks would be a wake up call. (Bernie issued a milquetoast statement a few days that maybe this shit should stop, without saying the word "ceasefire" once.)

Imani is a prominent activist on both Black Twitter and Disability Twitter who has been consistently speaking out for all the millions of people continuing to die and become disabled from the Biden Administration's eugenicist COVID policies over the last three years.

There's also this:

This goes all the way back to Harry Truman in 1948 who was almost single-handedly responsible for the colonization of Palestine to creat Israel. But it doesn't mention that the US political establishment was actually against him at the time because they rightly said it would ruin their relations with the Middle East, and Truman's relationship with his own State Department nearly broke down over it. General Marshall, architect of the Marshall Plan, held out until 30 minutes before Britain emancipated Palestine, which was the deadline to claim what would be the initial land for the state of Israel. His decision is said to have been influenced by his Christian upbringing, despite his distaste of both Jews and Zionism.

Now why would an antisemitic white Christian be in favour of herding Jewish war refugees into Israel, where everyone knew they would have to stay fighting Palestine until it was completely defeated, which they couldn't do without relying on the US for help? 🤔 And how would the US government have stayed committed to Israel ever since? Raise your hand if you know the answer!

But no, y'all don't need a system change, just someone who will hold the line at the top against white Christian fundamentalism. There's nothing entrenched here at all. 🙃

Meanwhile:

Adrian Hemond, a Michigan-based Democratic strategist, cautioned that there is a lot of time between now and Election Day in which voters could change their minds as passions cool. And, he said, voters are highly sympathetic to Israel right now, which could benefit Biden politically.

List of US Presidents and how many future presidents were born during their administrations

Before Independence: 8. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams, Jackson, William Harrison

Before Presidency: 2. Van Buren, Taylor

Washington: 3. Tyler, Polk, Buchanan

Adams: 1. Fillmore

Jefferson: 3. Pierce, Lincoln, Johnson

Madison: 0.

Monroe: 2. Grant, Hayes

Quincy Adams: 0.

Jackson: 3. Garfield, Arthur, Harrison

Van Buren: 1. Cleveland

Henry Harrison: 0.

Tyler: 1. McKinley

Polk: 0.

Taylor: 0.

Fillmore: 0.

Pierce: 2. Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson

Buchanan: 1. Taft

Lincoln: 0.

Johnson: 1. Harding

Grant: 2. Coolidge, Hoover

Hayes: 0.

Garfield: 0.

Arthur: 2. FDR, Truman

Cleveland: 0.

Harrison: 1. Eisenhower

McKinley: 0.

Teddy Roosevelt: 1. LBJ

Taft: 2. Nixon, Reagan

Wilson: 2. Kennedy, Ford

Harding: 0.

Coolidge: 2. Carter, H.W Bush

Hoover: 0.

FDR: 1. Biden

Truman: 3. Clinton, W. Bush, Trump

Eisenhower: 0.

JFK: 1. Obama

LBJ: 0.

Nixon: 0.

Ford: 0.

Carter: 0.

Reagan: 0.

H.W Bush: 0.

Clinton: 0.

W. Bush: 0.

Obama: 0.

Trump: 0.

Biden: 0.

Have you seen Oppenheimer, and if so, should I see it? I, knowing nothing about the movie, just sorta assumed it was either history-related or historical fiction and never learned anything about it or mustered up the give-a-damn to give it a shot (I am not a history buff).

You know...

I saw it...and I generally liked it...but I honestly think that it was kind of messy.

Like here's the thing about historical fiction...most people are not atomic bomb/Oppenheimer experts.

So they don't know most of this stuff by heart.

They remember shit like the Manhatten project and they know jfk and they know truman. They know America dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

But oppenheimer the movie like...throws so much shit at you, without even bothering to give you the context?

Like I say this as someone who has a decent knowledge of American history...there were some parts that were so obscure historically and politically that I honestly didn't know why the fuck I should care.

They would shout out names nonstop, referring to real life people, but these names have no context. Then they'd continue to expound upon the politics of these names...but why would we know who Patton George Lucas and Terry Yasolfis Mayweather and Gary Frederick Friedman are, especially if they were not presidents, senators, or governors?

Like these are random ass administrative assholes and forgotten military figures and obscure political jackals, who weren't well known because they never achieved high offices...

And they were from fifty fucking years ago?

Why would the average film watcher know them unless they fucking studied up?

See I like historical fiction, but it has to make me care!! Give me context!!! Tell me who these people are and show me through drama!!! That's why we're watching a MOVIE and not a documentary or reading a Wikipedia article.

And the main problem is that the movie is 3 hours long and absolutely NOWHERE in it does it EVER give us a fucking year, a location, or even a damn university.

It just throws you at Oppenheimer and says this asshole is sad and he has a lot of sex and he's inventing a bomb.

And it's like...I did enjoy it, when I understood it...but it doesn't let you breathe much.

Like the parts that are great are the parts where you can figure out what's happening.

Oh look they're blowing shit up in the desert.

Or the endless cheating subplots. Or the politics of the classroom and the socialist tendencies right at the height of the McCarthy era.

That stuff was fun.

But the parts that are bad are like...Cillian Murphy talking very quickly about a military prick that he hates while the board that's reviewing his security clearance is talking about people that we never see on screen, who are literally just floating names to memorize.

It was like a pop quiz movie sometimes, and I found that off-putting.

It also flashes between time periods quickly and without easy transitions, just hard cuts, which can be really confusing and odd.

So I would recommend you not see it in theaters if you're not a history buff. Or specifically, a fan of world war 2 and Oppenheimer and know everything about atomic bombs.

Watch it at home so you can Google who Heisenberg is.

When New York City recently released a grotesque “public service announcement” video explaining that you should stay indoors during a nuclear war, the corporate media reaction was principally not outrage at the acceptance of such a fate or the stupidity of telling people “You’ve got this!” as if they could survive the apocalypse by cocooning with Netflix, but rather mockery of the very idea that a nuclear war might happen. U.S. polling on people’s top concerns find 1% of people most concerned about the climate and 0% most concerned about nuclear war.

Yet, the U.S. just illegally put nukes into a 6th nation (and virtually nobody in the U.S. can name either it or the other five that the U.S. already illegally had nukes in), while Russia is talking about putting nukes into another nation too, and the two governments with most of the nukes increasingly talk — publicly and privately — about nuclear war. The scientists who keep the doomsday clock think the risk is greater than ever. There’s a general consensus that shipping weapons to Ukraine at the risk of nuclear war is worth it — whatever “it” may be. And, at least within the head of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, voices are unanimous that a trip to Taiwan is worth it too.

Trump tore up the Iran agreement, and Biden has done everything possible to keep it that way. When Trump proposed talking with North Korea, the U.S. media went insane. But it’s the administration that hit the height of inflation-adjusted military spending, set the record for number of nations simultaneously bombed, and invented robot-plane warfare (that of Barack Obama) for which one must painfully now long, as he did the ridiculous-but-better-than-war Iran deal, refused to arm Ukraine, and didn’t have time to get a war going with China. The arming of Ukraine by Trump and Biden has done more for the chances of vaporizing you than anything else, and anything short of all-out bellicosity by Biden has been greeted with blood-thirsty howls by your friendly corporate U.S. news outlets.

Meanwhile, exactly like the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the guinea-pigged human residents of the much larger Pacific island nuclear experiments, and the downwinders everywhere, nobody sees it coming. And, even more so, people have been trained to be absolutely convinced that there’s nothing they could possibly do to change things if they did become aware of any sort of problem. So, it’s remarkable the efforts those paying any attention are putting up, for example:

Cease Fire and Negotiate Peace in Ukraine

Don’t Get Yanked into War With China

Global Appeal to Nine Nuclear Governments

Say No to Nancy Pelosi’s Dangerous Taiwan Trip

VIDEO: Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Globally & Locally — A Webinar

June 12th Anti-Nuclear Legacy Videos

Defuse Nuclear War

August 2: Webinar: What could trigger nuclear war with Russia and China?

August 5: 77 Years Later: Eliminate Nukes, Not Life on Earth

August 6: “The Day After” film screening and discussion

August 9: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Day 77th Anniversary Commemoration

Seattle to Rally for Nuclear Abolition

A little background on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

The nukes did not save lives. They took lives, possibly 200,000 of them. They were not intended to save lives or to end the war. And they didn’t end the war. The Russian invasion did that. But the war was going to end anyway, without either of those things. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, “… certainly prior to 31 December, 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

One dissenter who had expressed this same view to the Secretary of War and, by his own account, to President Truman, prior to the bombings was General Dwight Eisenhower. Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, prior to the bombings, urged that Japan be given a warning. Lewis Strauss, Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, also prior to the bombings, recommended blowing up a forest rather than a city. General George Marshall apparently agreed with that idea. Atomic scientist Leo Szilard organized scientists to petition the president against using the bomb. Atomic scientist James Franck organized scientists who advocated treating atomic weapons as a civilian policy issue, not just a military decision. Another scientist, Joseph Rotblat, demanded an end to the Manhattan Project, and resigned when it was not ended. A poll of the U.S. scientists who had developed the bombs, taken prior to their use, found that 83% wanted a nuclear bomb publicly demonstrated prior to dropping one on Japan. The U.S. military kept that poll secret. General Douglas MacArthur held a press conference on August 6, 1945, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, to announce that Japan was already beaten.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy said angrily in 1949 that Truman had assured him only military targets would be nuked, not civilians. “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender,” Leahy said. Top military officials who said just after the war that the Japanese would have quickly surrendered without the nuclear bombings included General Douglas MacArthur, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, General Curtis LeMay, General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, and Brigadier General Carter Clarke. As Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick summarize, seven of the United States’ eight five-star officers who received their final star in World War II or just after — Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Arnold, and Admirals Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey — in 1945 rejected the idea that the atomic bombs were needed to end the war. “Sadly, though, there is little evidence that they pressed their case with Truman before the fact.”

On August 6, 1945, President Truman lied on the radio that a nuclear bomb had been dropped on an army base, rather than on a city. And he justified it, not as speeding the end of the war, but as revenge against Japanese offenses. “Mr. Truman was jubilant,” wrote Dorothy Day. Weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13, 1945, Japan had sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes and read the telegram. Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” President Truman had been informed through Swiss and Portuguese channels of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months before Hiroshima. Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell, at which point it allowed Japan to keep its emperor. So, the desire to drop the bombs may have lengthened the war. The bombs did not shorten the war.

Presidential advisor James Byrnes had told Truman that dropping the bombs would allow the United States to “dictate the terms of ending the war.” Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal wrote in his diary that Byrnes was “most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in.” Truman wrote in his diary that the Soviets were preparing to march against Japan and “Fini Japs when that comes about.” The Soviet invasion was planned prior to the bombs, not decided by them. The United States had no plans to invade for months, and no plans on the scale to risk the numbers of lives that U.S. school teachers will tell you were saved. The idea that a massive U.S. invasion was imminent and the only alternative to nuking cities, so that nuking cities saved huge numbers of U.S. lives, is a myth. Historians know this, just as they know that George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth or always tell the truth, and Paul Revere didn’t ride alone, and slave-owning Patrick Henry’s speech about liberty was written decades after he died, and Molly Pitcher didn’t exist. But the myths have their own power. Lives, by the way, are not the unique property of U.S. soldiers. Japanese people also had lives.

Truman ordered the bombs dropped, one on Hiroshima on August 6th and another type of bomb, a plutonium bomb, which the military also wanted to test and demonstrate, on Nagasaki on August 9th. The Nagasaki bombing was moved up from the 11th to the 9th to decrease the likelihood of Japan surrendering first. Also on August 9th, the Soviets attacked the Japanese. During the next two weeks, the Soviets killed 84,000 Japanese while losing 12,000 of their own soldiers, and the United States continued bombing Japan with non-nuclear weapons — burning Japanese cities, as it had done to so much of Japan prior to August 6th that, when it came time to pick two cities to nuke, there hadn’t been many left to choose from. Then the Japanese surrendered.

That there was cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That there could again be cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That we can survive significant further use of nuclear weapons is a myth — NOT a “public service announcement.” That there is cause to produce nuclear weapons even though you’ll never use them is too stupid even to be a myth. And that we can forever survive possessing and proliferating nuclear weapons without someone intentionally or accidentally using them is pure insanity.

Why do U.S. history teachers in U.S. elementary schools today — in 2022! — tell children that nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan to save lives — or rather “the bomb” (singular) to avoid mentioning Nagasaki? Researchers and professors have poured over the evidence for 75 years. They know that Truman knew that the war was over, that Japan wanted to surrender, that the Soviet Union was about to invade. They’ve documented all the resistance to the bombing within the U.S. military and government and scientific community, as well as the motivation to test bombs that so much work and expense had gone into, as well as the motivation to intimidate the world and in particular the Soviets, as well as the open and shameless placing of zero value on Japanese lives. How were such powerful myths generated that the facts are treated like skunks at a picnic?

In Greg Mitchell’s 2020 book, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, we have an account of the making of the 1947 MGM film, The Beginning or the End, which was carefully shaped by the U.S. government to promote falsehoods. The film bombed. It lost money. The ideal for a member of the U.S. public was clearly not to watch a really bad and boring pseudo-documentary with actors playing the scientists and warmongers who had produced a new form of mass-murder. The ideal action was to avoid any thought of the matter. But those who couldn’t avoid it were handed a glossy big-screen myth. You can watch it online for free, and as Mark Twain would have said, it’s worth every penny.

The film opens with what Mitchell describes as giving credit to the UK and Canada for their roles in producing the death machine — supposedly a cynical if falsified means of appealing to a larger market for the movie. But it really appears to be more blaming than crediting. This is an effort to spread the guilt. The film jumps quickly to blaming Germany for an imminent threat of nuking the world if the United States didn’t nuke it first. (You can actually have difficulty today getting young people to believe that Germany had surrendered prior to Hiroshima, or that the U.S. government knew in 1944 that Germany had abandoned atomic bomb research in 1942.) Then an actor doing a bad Einstein impression blames a long list of scientists from all over the world. Then some other personage suggests that the good guys are losing the war and had better hurry up and invent new bombs if they want to win it.

Over and over we’re told that bigger bombs will bring peace and end war. A Franklin Roosevelt impersonator even puts on a Woodrow Wilson act, claiming the atom bomb might end all war (something a surprising number of people actually believe it did, even in the face of the past 75 years of wars, which some U.S. professors describe as the Great Peace). We’re told and shown completely fabricated nonsense, such as that the U.S. dropped leaflets on Hiroshima to warn people (and for 10 days — “That’s 10 days more warning than they gave us at Pearl Harbor,” a character pronounces) and that the Japanese fired at the plane as it approached its target. In reality, the U.S. never dropped a single leaflet on Hiroshima but did — in good SNAFU fashion — drop tons of leaflets on Nagasaki the day after Nagasaki was bombed. Also, the hero of the movie dies from an accident while fiddling with the bomb to get it ready for use — a brave sacrifice for humanity on behalf of the war’s real victims — the members of the U.S. military. The film also claims that the people bombed “will never know what hit them,” despite the film makers knowing of the agonizing suffering of those who died slowly.

One communication from the movie makers to their consultant and editor, General Leslie Groves, included these words: “Any implication tending to make the Army look foolish will be eliminated.”

The main reason the movie is deadly boring, I think, is not that movies have sped up their action sequences every year for 75 years, added color, and devised all kinds of shock devices, but simply that the reason anybody should think the bomb that the characters all talk about for the entire length of the film is a big deal is left out. We don’t see what it does, not from the ground, only from the sky.

Mitchell’s book is a bit like watching sausage made, but also a bit like reading the transcripts from a committee that cobbled together some section of the Bible. This is an origin myth of the Global Policeman in the making. And it’s ugly. It’s even tragic. The very idea for the film came from a scientist who wanted people to understand the danger, not glorify the destruction. This scientist wrote to Donna Reed, that nice lady who gets married to Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, and she got the ball rolling. Then it rolled around an oozing wound for 15 months and voilà, a cinematic turd emerged.

There was never any question of telling the truth. It’s a movie. You make stuff up. And you make it all up in one direction. The script for this movie contained at times all sorts of nonsense that didn’t last, such as the Nazis giving the Japanese the atomic bomb — and the Japanese setting up a laboratory for Nazi scientists, exactly as back in the real world at this very time the U.S. military was setting up laboratories for Nazi scientists (not to mention making use of Japanese scientists). None of this is more ludicrous than The Man in the High Castle, to take a recent example of 75 years of this stuff, but this was early, this was seminal. Nonsense that didn’t make it into this film, everybody didn’t end up believing and teaching to students for decades, but easily could have. The movie makers gave final editing control to the U.S. military and the White House, and not to the scientists who had qualms. Many good bits as well as crazy bits were temporarily in the script, but excised for the sake of proper propaganda.

If it’s any consolation, it could have been worse. Paramount was in a nuclear arms film race with MGM and employed Ayn Rand to draft the hyper-patriotic-capitalist script. Her closing line was “Man can harness the universe — but nobody can harness man.” Fortunately for all of us, it didn’t work out. Unfortunately, despite John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano being a better movie than The Beginning or the End, his best-selling book on Hiroshima didn’t appeal to any studios as a good story for movie production. Unfortunately, Dr. Strangelove would not appear until 1964, by which point many were ready to question future use of “the bomb” but not past use, making all questioning of future use rather weak. This relationship to nuclear weapons parallels that to wars in general. The U.S. public can question all future wars, and even those wars it’s heard of from the past 75 years, but not WWII, rendering all questioning of future wars weak. In fact, recent polling finds horrific willingness to support future nuclear war by the U.S. public.

At the time The Beginning or the End was being scripted and filmed, the U.S. government was seizing and hiding away every scrap it could find of actual photographic or filmed documentation of the bomb sites. Henry Stimson was having his Colin Powell moment, being pushed forward to publicly make the case in writing for having dropped the bombs. More bombs were rapidly being built and developed, and whole populations evicted from their island homes, lied to, and used as props for newsreels in which they are depicted as happy participants in their destruction.

Mitchell writes that one reason Hollywood deferred to the military was in order to use its airplanes, etc., in the production, as well as in order to use the real names of characters in the story. I find it very hard to believe these factors were terribly important. With the unlimited budget it was dumping into this thing — including paying the people it was giving veto power to — MGM could have created its own quite unimpressive props and its own mushroom cloud. It’s fun to fantasize that someday those who oppose mass murder could take over something like the unique building of the U.S. Institute of “Peace” and require that Hollywood meet peace movement standards in order to film there. But of course the peace movement has no money, Hollywood has no interest, and any building can be simulated elsewhere. Hiroshima could have been simulated elsewhere, and in the movie wasn’t shown at all. The main problem here was ideology and habits of subservience.

There were reasons to fear the government. The FBI was spying on people involved, including wishy-washy scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer who kept consulting on the film, lamenting its awfulness, but never daring to oppose it. A new Red Scare was just kicking in. The powerful were exercising their power through the usual variety of means.

As the production of The Beginning or the End winds toward completion, it builds the same momentum the bomb did. After so many scripts and bills and revisions, and so much work and ass-kissing, there was no way the studio wouldn’t release it. When it finally came out, the audiences were small and the reviews mixed. The New York daily PM found the film “reassuring,” which I think was the basic point. Mission accomplished.

Mitchell’s conclusion is that the Hiroshima bomb was a “first strike,” and that the United States should abolish its first-strike policy. But of course it was no such thing. It was an only strike, a first-and-last strike. There were no other nuclear bombs that would come flying back as a “second strike.” Now, today, the danger is of accidental as much as intentional use, whether first, second, or third, and the need is to at long last join the bulk of the world’s governments that are seeking to abolish nuclear weapons all together — which, of course, sounds crazy to anyone who has internalized the mythology of WWII.

There are far better works of art than The Beginning or the End that we could turn to for myth busting. For example, The Golden Age, a novel published by Gore Vidal in 2000 with glowing endorsements by the Washington Post, and New York Times Book Review, has never been made into a movie, but tells a story much closer to the truth. In The Golden Age, we follow along behind all the closed doors, as the British push for U.S. involvement in World War II, as President Roosevelt makes a commitment to Prime Minister Churchill, as the warmongers manipulate the Republican convention to make sure that both parties nominate candidates in 1940 ready to campaign on peace while planning war, as Roosevelt longs to run for an unprecedented third term as a wartime president but must content himself with beginning a draft and campaigning as a drafttime president in a time of supposed national danger, and as Roosevelt works to provoke Japan into attacking on his desired schedule.

Then there’s historian and WWII veteran Howard Zinn’s 2010 book, The Bomb. Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over a French town, burning anyone and anything it touched. Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime. In mid-April 1945, the war in Europe was essentially over. Everyone knew it was ending. There was no military reason (if that’s not an oxymoron) to attack the Germans stationed near Royan, France, much less to burn the French men, women, and children in the town to death. The British had already destroyed the town in January, similarly bombing it because of its vicinity to German troops, in what was widely called a tragic mistake. This tragic mistake was rationalized as an inevitable part of war, just as were the horrific firebombings that successfully reached German targets, just as was the later bombing of Royan with napalm. Zinn blames the Supreme Allied Command for seeking to add a “victory” in the final weeks of a war already won. He blames the local military commanders’ ambitions. He blames the American Air Force’s desire to test a new weapon. And he blames everyone involved — which must include himself — for “the most powerful motive of all: the habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede.”

When Zinn returned from the war in Europe, he expected to be sent to the war in the Pacific, until he saw and rejoiced at seeing the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Only years later did Zinn come to understand the inexcusable crime of enormous proportions that was the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan, actions similar in some ways to the final bombing of Royan. The war with Japan was already over, the Japanese seeking peace and willing to surrender. Japan asked only that it be permitted to keep its emperor, a request that was later granted. But, like napalm, the nuclear bombs were weapons that needed testing.

Zinn also goes back to dismantle the mythical reasons the United States was in the war to begin with. The United States, England, and France were imperial powers supporting each other’s international aggressions in places like the Philippines. They opposed the same from Germany and Japan, but not aggression itself. Most of America’s tin and rubber came from the Southwest Pacific. The United States made clear for years its lack of concern for the Jews being attacked in Germany. It also demonstrated its lack of opposition to racism through its treatment of African Americans and Japanese Americans. Franklin Roosevelt described fascist bombing campaigns over civilian areas as “inhuman barbarity” but then did the same on a much larger scale to German cities, which was followed up by the destruction on an unprecedented scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — actions that came after years of dehumanizing the Japanese. Aware that the war could end without any more bombing, and aware that U.S. prisoners of war would be killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the U.S. military went ahead and dropped the bombs.

Uniting and strengthening all of the WWII myths is the overarching myth that Ted Grimsrud, following Walter Wink, calls “the myth of redemptive violence,” or “the quasi-religious belief that we may gain ‘salvation’ through violence.” As a result of this myth, writes Grimsrud, “People in the modern world (as in the ancient world), and not least people in the United States of America, put tremendous faith in instruments of violence to provide security and the possibility of victory over their enemies. The amount of trust people put in such instruments may be seen perhaps most clearly in the amount of resources they devote to preparation for war.”

People aren’t consciously choosing to believe in the myths of WWII and violence. Grimsrud explains: “Part of the effectiveness of this myth stems from its invisibility as a myth. We tend to assume that violence is simply part of the nature of things; we see acceptance of violence to be factual, not based on belief. So we are not self-aware about the faith-dimension of our acceptance of violence. We think we know as a simple fact that violence works, that violence is necessary, that violence is inevitable. We don’t realize that instead, we operate in the realm of belief, of mythology, of religion, in relation to the acceptance of violence.”

It takes an effort to escape the myth of redemptive violence, because it’s been there since childhood: “Children hear a simple story in cartoons, video games, movies, and books: we are good, our enemies are evil, the only way to deal with evil is to defeat it with violence, let’s roll.

The myth of redemptive violence links directly with the centrality of the nation-state. The welfare of the nation, as defined by its leaders, stands as the highest value for life here on earth. There can be no gods before the nation. This myth not only established a patriotic religion at the heart of the state, but also gives the nation’s imperialistic imperative divine sanction. . . . World War II and its direct aftermath greatly accelerated the evolution of the United States into a militarized society and . . . this militarization relies on the myth of redemptive violence for its sustenance. Americans continue to embrace the myth of redemptive violence even in face of mounting evidence that its resulting militarization has corrupted American democracy and is destroying the country’s economy and physical environment. . . . As recently as the late 1930s, American military spending was minimal and powerful political forces opposed involvement in ‘foreign entanglements’.”

Prior to WWII, Grimsrud notes, “when America engaged in military conflict . . . at the end of the conflict the nation demobilized . . . . Since World War II, there has been no full demobilization because we have moved directly from World War II to the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. That is, we have moved into a situation where ‘all times are times of war.’ . . . Why would non-elites, who bear terrible costs by living in a permanent war society, submit to this arrangement, even in many cases offering intense support? . . . The answer is quite simple: the promise of salvation.”

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for:

October 1989. Katar Hol meets the second Shayera Thal — who will become Hawkwoman on Earth — in HAWKWORLD #3. In this continuity, Shayera is the adoptive daughter of Thanagarian administrator Thal Porvis, a human girl from the slums of Downside Porvis adopted because she resembled his daughter, Shayera Thal, who was killed in an explosion earlier in the story (about 10 years before this scene). The HAWKWORLD ongoing series by John Ostrander later established that the second Shayera is actually the illegitimate daughter of the first Shayera and Porvis's associate Andar Pul, commissioner of the Wingmen.

One odd omission: Although the younger Shayera was about 9 years old when she was adopted and she tells Katar that Thal Porvis "gave her his name, and that of his dead daughter," neither Truman nor Ostrander ever reveals what name she had before that, although it presumably wasn't "Shayera."

I was telling someone about the white house renovation during the Truman years and how they completely gutted the interior structure using David McCullough's Truman biography as my primary source - do you have anything more specific about the white house renovations and the condition of the White House prior to its upgrade?

There was a GREAT website called whitehousemuseum.org with tons of awesome photos and history, but it sadly seems to have closed down a few months ago.

However, the White House Historical Association has a pretty solid website, too, and they frequently post in-depth stories and photos from their archives. Here's their section on the Truman Restoration -- I haven't gone through it thoroughly, but it looks like they have some really great photo galleries on there. And the WHHA usually has interesting related links on their stories, as well.

A women's military unit passes in front of President Truman and Vice President Alben Barkley during the inaugural parade.

Collection HST-PHC: Photograph CollectionSeries: Photographs Relating to the Administration, Family, and Personal Life of Harry S. Truman

This black and white photograph shows a large group of uniformed women marching down the street in Washington, D.C. before a large covered platform.  Spectators are seated on the platform which displays the presidential seal.  Bare trees and buildings are visible in the background.

In September 1950, US President Harry Truman sent the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Vietnam to assist the French in the First Indochina War. The President claimed they were not sent as combat troops, but to supervise the use of $10 million worth of US military equipment to support the French in their effort to fight the Viet Minh forces. By 1953, aid increased dramatically to $350 million to replace old military equipment owned by the French.[6][...]

In 1954 the commanding general of French forces in Indochina, General Henri Navarre, allowed the United States to send liaison officers to Vietnamese forces. But it was too late, because of the siege and fall of Dien Bien Phu in the spring. As stated by the Geneva Accords, France was forced to surrender the northern half of Vietnam and to withdraw from South Vietnam by April 1956.[7] At a conference in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1955, between officials of the U.S. State Department and the French Minister of Overseas Affairs, it was agreed that all U.S. aid would be funneled directly to South Vietnam and that all major military responsibilities would be transferred from the French to the MAAG under the command of Lieutenant General John O'Daniel. MAAG Indochina was renamed the MAAG Vietnam on November 1,1955, as the United States became more deeply involved in what would come to be known as the Vietnam War.

The next few years saw the rise of a Communist insurgency in South Vietnam, and President Diem looked increasingly to US military assistance to strengthen his position, albeit with certain reservations. Attacks on US military advisors in Vietnam became more frequent. On October 22, 1957, MAAG Vietnam and USIS installations in Saigon were bombed, injuring US military advisors.[8] In the summer of 1959, Communist guerrillas staged an attack on a Vietnamese military base in Bien Hoa, killing and wounding several MAAG personnel.[8] [...] By 1961, communist guerrillas were becoming stronger and more active. This increased enemy contacts in size and intensity throughout South Vietnam. At this point, Diem was under pressure from US authorities to liberalize his regime and implement reforms. Although key elements in the US administration were resisting his requests for increased military funding and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troop ceilings, MAAG Vietnam played a significant role in advocating for a greater US presence in the country.[9] Throughout this period relations between the MAAG Vietnam and Diem were described as "excellent"[...]

Newly elected President John F. Kennedy agreed with MAAG Vietnam's calls for increases in ARVN troop levels and the U.S. military commitment in both equipment and men. In response, Kennedy provided $28.4 million in funding for ARVN, and overall military aid increased from $50 million per year to $144 million in 1961. In the first year of the Kennedy administration, MAAG Vietnam worked closely with administration officials, USOM, and the US Information Service to develop a counterinsurgency plan (CIP). The CIP's main initiatives included the strengthening of ARVN to combat the Communist insurgency, which had the corollary effect of strengthening Diem's political position.[9] At the same time President Diem agreed to the assignment of advisors to battalion level, significantly increasing the number of advisors; from 746 in 1961 to over 3,400 before MAAG Vietnam was placed under U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) and renamed the Field Advisory Element, Vietnam. At the peak of the war in 1968, 9,430 US Army personnel, along with smaller numbers of US Navy, US Marine Corps, US Air Force and Australian Army personnel acted as advisors down to the district and battalion level to train, advise and mentor the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), Republic of Vietnam Marine Corps, Republic of Vietnam Navy and the Republic of Vietnam Air Force.

Anyway no parallels to see here

Poor hawwy apparently he feels it keenly that his kids are missing out on royal traditions. Well boo hoo. Isnt it horrible being a royal? Trapped and like The Truman show? Except it is far better than not being included it seems. Surely the harkles arent hankering fir the royal life? by u/Harry-Ripey

Poor hawwy, apparently he feels it ‘keenly’ that his kids are missing out on royal traditions. Well boo hoo. Isn’t it horrible being a royal? Trapped and like The Truman show? Except it is far better than not being included it seems. Surely the harkles aren’t hankering fir the royal life? Adoring crowds, big family dos, luxury and plenty​https://archive.ph/ndjec​As for Harry ‘feeling keenly’.…doubtful. He looks as though he is zoned out most of the time. post link: https://ift.tt/MykUHrS author: Harry-Ripey submitted: March 31, 2024 at 02:21PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

Good news! The channel that plays only old History Channel documentaries had a day entirely devoted to American presidents, so I have a lot more president facts to share with you!

(Important note that I have fact-checked nothing. I am only spouting off trivia the way I would if you were here for me to info-dump at).

Andrew Jackson's wife died soon after he was elected president, and he believed her death was caused by the vicious attacks against her during the election. Because he apparently lived his life as though he were a Shakespeare character, he said something along the lines of, "On the grave of this saint, I forgive all my political and personal enemies, but as for those who slandered her, they must look to God for mercy."

When William Jennings Bryan ran against William McKinley in 1896, he went on an epic nationwide whistle-stop campaign. Though he never drank alcohol, he reeked of liquor throughout his tour--because he was using gin as a deodorant! Instead of stopping to bathe, he would wipe himself down with gin to mask his body odor.

After Harry Truman, it became the practice for both presidential nominees to get security briefings months before the election, so when they came into office they'd be up-to-date on world events--with the understanding that all this info was strictly confidential. When Richard Nixon heard that LBJ's administration was putting together peace talks to end the Vietnam War, he went to the South Vietnamese and told them to refuse to go to the table, because if they waited until he was in office, they'd get a better deal. LBJ found out and told the head of the Republican Party to tell Nixon to stop it, because this was treason. Nixon called LBJ back and said this story was untrue and he had nothing to do with any such actions. LBJ knew he was lying, but only because he'd been secretly recording sessions with the South Vietnamese, so he couldn't do anything without exposing his own actions. Because of this, South Vietnam never came to the bargaining table, and the war dragged on more than five years longer.

When Ronald Reagan was shot by an assassin, Soviet submarine activity increased near US shores, and people thought this might be part of a Soviet attack. George Bush, the vice president, was (I think) in Texas at the time, and immediately started flying back to Washington, but his plane didn't have a secure phone line, so he couldn't be in charge of the country, and people weren't sure who was next in line. Both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense believed that they should be in charge. The press also wanted to know who was in charge, but the press secretary was doing a terrible job at the press briefing, essentially saying that they didn't know who was in command. The Secretary of State then sprinted into the briefing room, took the microphone, and assured everyone that there was a clear chain of command, and he was in charge. The only problem was that he was wrong--he'd completely forgotten that both the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate ranked ahead of him.

At the time this documentary was made (2016), Dick Cheney held the record for the shortest presidency. The president is allowed to temporarily hand over power to the vice president if he's going to be incapacitated. George W. Bush made use of this rule twice when he was going in for colonoscopies, so Dick Cheney served as president for a total of four hours.

While the shadow Senator Joseph McCarthy left over the latter half of the 20th century in the United States is largely unavoidable, what is less well known are the circumstances under which his infamous witch hunts under the umbrellas of the Red and Lavender Scares (where he pursued people with real or imagined communist or lgbtq leanings) came to a close.

This itself is a story with several contributing factors.

McCarthy's Chief Counsel was a lawyer by the name of Roy Cohn (on the right on the main image, McCarthy on the left), a virulent anti-communist who was also the chief prosecutor for the Rosenburg Spy Case (arguing successfully for their executions despite even J Edgar Hoover thinking executing a mother with two young children would be unpopular). He was also a closeted homosexual, although his own leanings were an open secret among the US government, not that this deterred him from purging the US government of suspected gay and lesbian people (leading to 5000 people getting fired from their jobs).

Now, in November 1953, one of Cohn's associates by the name of G. Davies Schine (with whom Cohn had toured Germany previous to remove books by suspected communist authors from United States Information Agency libraries) was drafted into the US army. Cohn and McCarthy attempted to use their influence to pressure the army into having Schine stationed near to them in the US (some have read this as Cohn wanting his friend close by, others have suggested they were romantically involved, no confirmation is available that I can see, either way preferential treatment was demanded), and when the army told them no, the pair decided to threaten the army by turning their anti-communist hunts against them in retaliation.

And if you'd think that threatening the United States army in the early 1950s, when a former WWII general Dwight D. Eisenhower was president was a poor decision, you'd be right!

As such, in early 1954 the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, usually chaired by McCarthy himself, was given the task of investigating whether McCarthy had indeed improperly sought preferential treatment. And unlike some of the other trials, the decision was made by ABC to televise the hearings, giving the American public their first view of what McCarthy's hearings were actually like as he turned his standard tricks against the army prosecutors.

You'd be right in thinking that it was more than a touch cynical that what it took to turn America against McCarthy was him attacking white, straight army dudes, but nevertheless that's what happened.

The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organisation (the attorney in question, Fred Fischer, had been a member of the progressive National Lawyer's Guild). As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?".

Public support began to immediately drain from McCarthy, helped along by such things as the pioneering TV documentary series See It Now, where journalist Edward R Murrow (picture below) used clips of McCarthy's own behavior to underline how the senator had been exploiting the public's fear and spreading lies (such as implying the FDR and Truman administrations were treacherous) for his own political gain.

(Transcript of the episode here)

McCarthy was cleared of the charges, with sole responsibility being laid at the feet of Cohn, who resigned. By March of 1954, Joe's own Republican base in his home state of Wisconsin launched the Joe Must Go campaign, wishing to oust the senator for disrespecting the army, President Eisenhower, and for ignoring the plight of local dairy farmers facing price-slashing surpluses (y'know, the kind of issues he was elected to deal with rather than wandering around the United States harassing people for being gay, communist or being a gay communist).

He was eventually censured by the Senate on various charges that essentially amounted to making his colleagues look bad by association, and his political career limped along for a further two and a half years before finally dying of "Hepatitis, acute, cause unknown" on May 2, 1957. A diagnosis possibly made worse by both his heavy drinking and morphine addiction.

Schine, for his part in the proceedings, dropped out of politics following the hearings, where he entered the private sector, where among other things he made a cameo appearance in the 1966 Batman show (the Entrancing Dr Cassandra). He would eventually die in 1996 alongside his wife, and their 35 year old son in a private airplane accident.

And what of Roy Cohn... Well... While there are folk who'd go through an experience like this and try to either fade into obscurity or try to improve their image, Roy was not one of those people. He worked for the Mob in New York, the Catholic Church, Rupert Murdoch... and Donald Trump.

Cohn gathered a reputation for being willing to do whatever he felt was necessary to enrich either himself or to get his clients whatever they desired. This eventually led to his getting accused of theft, obstruction of justice, extortion, tax evasion, bribery, blackmail, fraud, perjury, and witness tampering. Indeed, Cohn's willingness to happily commit crimes for his clients has reportedly led to frustrations with Trump's recent legal trouble, with him being annoyed his current legal representatives aren't willing to do criminal stuff for them like Roy did back in the day.

Despite all of this though, Cohn remained a popular figure in conservative politics, even introducing Roger Stone to Trump, and was notably close friends with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, with whom he acted as an informal advisor and even ran Ron's presidential campaign in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

In 1986, Cohn was disbarred for, among other things, attempting to forge a client's will to make himself the beneficiary upon their death. On 2 August of that year, he died of complications from AIDS, having been cut off by Trump despite Cohn's loyalty (and help with lucrative mob contracts) over the years.

The IRS promptly seized his property, due to his owing the US government $7million in back taxes.

Take Sides Elsewhere

Bias in action is the core output of one industry that should grind to a halt.  Prosperity would increase.  Blatantly lying about the worst sort of conduct is how reporters dedicate themselves to truth.  Guardians of information tacitly align with Jew-hating lunatics whose response to marauders beheading any members of one particular religion they could find is to call for Israel not to exist.  You may notice a pattern.

Blather about occupation gets more than equal time.  The legitimately aggrieved party is not targeting civilians, unlike the demons they target.  If you want to know what Israel will be accused of doing, check what Hamas is actually doing.

Don’t start a war.  They’re bad for items and people.  And those assaulted might return the favor.  Righteousness is the key difference for anyone confused about cheering.  The best advice for avoiding civilian casualties is to not annihilate civilians.  Report that.

Somehow, the press gets more shameless.  New stories ask if Israel does enough for safety without noting where they’re aiming.  Oh, and very responsible broadcasters also leave out why the nation that lost numerous citizens for the crime of attending a music festival is responding in the first place.

The news is the place for fantasies.  Imaginary sob stories about who could be harmed if the prey fights back are the most shameful way to shame.  Copy and paste a paragraph noting collateral damage has been a component of every single conflict ever, including righteous ones.

Nuking Nagasaki for fun is our darkest moment.  Woke maniacs who don’t understand cause and effect think Harry Truman was just one of countless American presidents who should’ve been arrested for war crimes.  Disregarders or active cheerers of diabolical mayhem claim they resisted during the Fourth Reich that was the Trump administration.  Meanwhile, honorary Axis members would’ve condemned D-Day as an unnecessary escalation even if they enjoyed making others ration.

Taping asterisks to terror onslaughts is not the best way to achieve objectivity.  Liberal hacks who claim some stories only have one side mean pretending civilization is rendering Earth uninhabitable.  Attacking Charlie Hebdo got worse in the worst possible way when excusers of murdering artists accused them of putting of hate speech in their doodles.  Similarly, blaming cartoonists in Texas because of the religious figure they chose to draw was no way to defend the West, which was the point.  And asking why terrorists would hate America so much that they’d use planes as missiles was the all-time example that’s merely the most notorious moment of lame massacre justification leftists wish you’d forget.

The media applies the same tendencies to every situation.  Consistency by applying a formula does not necessarily equal super results.  Lying about Israel being an oppressive genocide colonizer is even worse than excuses for inflation.  Blatancy is so obvious that it looks planted, which means finally discovering the profession’s core mission.

The media is careful to avoid noting which religion has a terror problem.  It’s not the one with a functioning republic in the worst neighborhood.  Fighting back against barbarians doesn’t count.

Terror allies marching in support of their favorite team is shockingly normal.  Every Arafat-inspired rampager currently wreaking havoc on city streets and campuses just like their heroes would claim to oppose Nazis, by which they mean Ron DeSantis.

Praise for those demanding destruction is limited to liberalism’s pet causes.  Hamas Fan Club meetings might seem rather strident in their demands for that one Jewish entity to no longer be.  But Israel’s been mean about removing those trying to exterminate it, so there’s your balance.

Covering gatherings is about what’s not shown.  Hiding gets trickier with social media, which shows not only what correspondents refuse to cover but how the job can be done in the free time of people with worthwhile careers.  Very disinterested observers noted Black Lives Matter conflagrations were mostly peaceful aside from the flaming cities.  You may not be surprised to realize secret and open PLO admirers think America is a racist hellhole.

The same professional protesters uncannily also claim the country where they live sits on occupied land.  They never vacate, of course.  To very fair reporters on the scene, the important part is that nobody demands a flat tax.

The middle ground isn’t worth sharing with people who want you dead.  Treating the two-state solution as some sort of presumed necessary compromise only seems fair if you’re not checking if one Super Bowl participant slaughtered babies.  No super important anchors seem willing to inquire why the actually tolerant country should have to cede some of the land that’s either always been its property or that it won in previous wars from intruders to an invented group that elected Hamas.

It’s sort of a bad sign when it takes lying about a cause to make it appealing.  That’s coincidentally the only shot Joe Biden has at holding the title of president into his late 80s.  There’s totally not an invading army of uninvited American guests just because it seems to be happening, and if there were they would only be here to take advantage of job opportunities created by a booming economy and not the generosity of Democratic politicians with funds seized from productive people with valid paperwork.  Everything’s terrific despite what you notice, which is practice for acting like terror victim Israel is the terrorist.

The media shares truth about themselves by lying regarding everything else.  It’s easy for journalists to do their jobs, which is the field’s appeal.  Participants major in the easy college choice so they don’t have to spend full shifts doing math.  Their dedication to inserting their own deluded views means they’d selflessly rather spend extra hours making up tales of how they’re true than cover reality and head to Applebee’s for dollar margaritas a few hours early.  The only thing more mortifying than pretending a war on civilization has two valid factions is siding with pillagers.