Warning: Rant ahead.
Last night I was reading Newsweek, and the cover story was about the upcoming movie Pearl Harbor. There was an article about the movie, an article about what actually happened at Pearl Harbor, and of course there had to be an article by Tom Brokaw because God forbid that something be written about World War II or the people involved with it and Tom Brokaw not be included.
This article brought up my feelings about the so-called "greatest generation." Before I go any farther, let me point out that one of my grandfathers worked in communications during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, my other grandfather spent his entire career in a steel company undoubtedly helping the war effort, and I love and respect both of them a lot.
That having been said, I want to smack people when they refer to my grandparents' generation as "the greatest generation." How can generations be judged against each other? Each has been born into a unique set of circumstances, with problems and opportunities to deal with. The mere concept of saying that one is better than another is stupid.
It also pisses me off that while people keeping saying "the greatest generation," what they mean is "the greatest American generation."
Anyway, even saying that we were comparing generations (which we can't; it's horrible to judge as a group; not only is it horrible, but it's impossible), why is that certain generation better than the one that fought the American Revolution? Or the American Civil War? We revere the generation of my grandparents' because they're still alive, but rapidly dying. We revere them because they lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II, the last great war (if any war can be great).
In some ways, they almost had it easier in fighting WWII. It was a clear-cut war. Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito-these were not good men. They were clearly doing very bad things. The Americans went off to fight, knowing that the country was fully supporting them. And no, the United States did not save the world. We helped. We helped a lot. But if the United Kingdom had fallen to Germany during the Battle of Britain, and if the Soviet Union hadn't been able to stave off the Axis powers on the eastern front, the world would be a very different place.
And what about previous generations of Americans? Those who fought in the Revolution and Civil War were ravaging their own country by fighting. Both had to deal with deep moral questions regarding their participation in the war. Both had to deal with the fact that they were essentially fighting their "brothers." The decision to go to war for them wasn't easy (though there was a lot of propaganda and far too many of them [here I'm talking about the Civil War] felt that they were entirely right, most of them did feel some sort of pain at having to fight their former countrymen [that wound up being about both the Revolution and the Civil War; yay me!]).
And how about the later generation, the baby boomers? They fought in Vietnam, a war that was morally ambiguous at best. A war which was not supported at home. They had to deal with the Cold War. As for that "greatest generation," who do we think started the Cold War and Vietnam? I'm not saying that they're evil (or even eeevil), but in addition to "saving the world," they helped create a much longer war, one that put the entire world in jeopardy.
Okay, I think I'm done. That's long enough, but I've had this building up for a long time. Feel free to post a rebuttal in my Discuss! feature. I like my grandparents' generation, but are they the greatest ever (and the mere fact that it does imply "ever" right there makes the whole thing ludicrous)? I don't think so.
Current song in my head:
"South Side" by Moby (with Gwen Stefani)