Ken Burns is in your future

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Don’t you dare close your eyes.

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It can be very valuable and interesting to study the surrounding context of a war. Military history with battles and kill counts and discussions of tactics is something I find boring af, but there are endless discussions to be had about how the causes of the American Civil War can be traced back to before even the Revolution and tracing the repercussions of the war all the way up through to current politics.

Think about how the Taiping Rebellion, which killed more than 20 million people, would have affected day to day life in 19th century China - which weakened China and rendered it more vulnerable to European powers. Think the Opium Wars. Think about how Hong Kong was just returned to China in 1999 - and all of the complexities that entailed.

Or how the World Wars depopulated Russia. You had a generation dead or traumatized. Russian alcoholism is usually treated as a joke - trauma can have intergenerational changes in genetic expression.

Wars also make excellent chronological signposts. I’ garbage at dates, but usually wars segment significant social/economic/cultural/blah/blah/blah changes that they help me keep events organized in my head.

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The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.

I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.

Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.

That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.

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the century of war between Berwick-upon-tweed and Russia

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Republic or Empire?

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It’s a fascinating war

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Sweet! I got Star Wars!

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Ah… remember when England decided they owned an island that was located inside the territorial waters of another country?

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The Great Emu War would like a word.

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For reference:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

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You will have to be a lot more specific when talking about the British Empire…

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Pretty sure they made a video game series about that.

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I think you may misunderstand. <edit or I’m misreading your replies>

Jacob’s book covers an all in exchange. everyone goes max. very little in the northern hemisphere would survive. a bit of planning, all the planning in the world - neither will save you when each side is maximizing the amount of fallout with ground strikes with megaton weapons.

the ‘lucky’ folk in the southern hemisphere will just have to wait until the after effects catch up to them.

Jacob’s scenario is megadeaths to gigadeaths - literally a billion dead directly (flash/blast/etc) and multiple billions dead shortly after. Krepinevich’s scenario is a few terrorists with tactical weapons.

these are wildly different things.

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prefer to close my eyes and count to fuck…

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I hope you’re not trying to refer to the one that’s 200 miles from Argentina because that would be hilarious.

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Of course we can’t acknowledge it, because then we can’t make the same “mistake” again and people will start questioning real causus belli like saddams WMDs which we’ll find any day now.

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I understood the joke just fine. I started my comment off with “I missed the memo” implying I never took any interest in wars or never got assigned a war to obsess over.

c/foundtheargentinian

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I just watched The Cynical Historian’s review of the recent Napoleon flick. It was great. The review I mean, not the movie. It tried to tell Napoleon’s whole story, which is just not feasible in the span of a single film.

I had no idea there were 7 coalition wars, that’s crazy.

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Is there also a buff blonde dude with a sword in a fur loincloth?