The GI Generation

[radind]

(05-09-2016, 07:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Just because they are no longer part of the political or cultural scene because they have passed 90 if they are still alive does not mean that they have no role in creating the world that we are now in. They grew up in a world that now looks hardscrabble except for elites.

Many of us have known them as teachers, bosses, or entrepreneurs. As I post this we need remember that two former GI Presidents are still alive (Jimmy Carter, George H W Bush). So is the Republican nominee for President in the 1996 election (Bob Dole). So is the founder of much of our contemporary foreign policy (Henry Kissinger).

We can of course compare and contrast the rising-adult Millennial Generation (which now looks much like a Civic/Hero generation and is likely on the brink of a significant move into academia and political life). We can also discuss their interactions with younger generations.

They did much well. They had a heavy role in what may be the apex of cultural creation in America, to wit the Golden Age of Cinema of the 1930s and early 1940s as screen actors, scriptwriters, and even directors. Think of Casablanca (my favorite), which I once reviewed as having the sort of screenplay that Shakespeare would have written, with allusions to the Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheri. (The USA is Paradise, Casablanca is a Purgatory that people are trying to leave, and Nazi-dominated Europe is Hell). Then there is Citizen Kane, an inimitable achievement by Orson Welles, who starred as one of the most complex anti-heroes ever found in cinema. One has quite possibly the greatest American director in Billy Wilder, and such screen stars as Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Barbara Stanwick, and Lauren Bacall. They practically founded television with Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, and Milton Berle. Do you miss such GI screen journalists as Walter Cronkhite, Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Mike Wallace, and Howard K. Smith? I most certainly do.

GI scientists and engineers were really, really good. You may have mixed feelings about fast food (Roy Kroc for McDonald's) and box stores (Sam Walton, Wal-Mart)... but admit it. You are one of the 'billions of customers served at the Golden Arches (I admit to buying snacks for my pet dog, so some of those 'billions of customers served' aren't even human) and it is unlikely that you have stayed clear of Wally World. GI women may have been among the most dedicated and competent teachers that you ever knew if you were a Boomer. Black GIs took the first steps to tearing down Jim Crow -- and white GIs largely acceded.

On the whole GI politics were far more civilized than what we now have.

Above all, they fought with extreme competence and dedication in the one war (really a double war) that America absolutely had to win, and they well behaved themselves as occupiers and kept the peace.

In general the 'Greatest Generation' earned that accolade. One of my uncles  died recently and he was the last of that generation in my family. Hopefully, the millennials will come through also.