I’ve been reading a bunch of books this week.<\/p>\n
Two of them are bloggable, and I’ll get them in good time (paying work comes first).<\/p>\n
They are Occidentalism<\/a>, by Ian Baruma and Franklin and Winston<\/a>, by Jon Meacham.<\/p>\n Franklin and Winston offers good lessons even for those who – unlike me – don’t see parallels between the threat presented by Islamist totalitarianism and Nazi totalitarianism.It talks at length about the delicate politics Roosevelt went through from 1940 to 1941 as he maneuvered to help Churchill and the British while staying barely on the side of the anti-war mainstream of American politics. This mainstream was, as it is now, both based in the wider voting population and in the administrative and media classes.<\/p>\n One interesting quote reminds us that the media are largely the same as they were back then:<\/p>\n “Mr. Prime Minster, isn’t Singapore the key to the whole situation out there?” \n“Mr. Minister, could you tell us what you think of conditions within Germany – the morale?” \n“Mr. Minister, can you tell us when you think we may lick these boys?”<\/p>\n \nFor the first time, Churchill looked puzzled. To that point, The Washington Post reported, he had been “flinging back answers that almost caught the questions in mid-air.” But he did not understand what ‘lick’ meant. Early went over and translated it for him.<\/p>\n \n“If we manage it well,” Churchill answered with a smile, “it will only take half as long as if we manage it badly.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And to those who wonder when we’ll be done in Iraq, I’ll propose the same answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been reading a bunch of books this week. Two of them are bloggable, and I’ll get them in good time (paying work comes first). They are Occidentalism, by Ian Baruma and Franklin and Winston, by Jon Meacham. Franklin and Winston offers good lessons even for those who – unlike me – don’t see parallels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“The key to the whole situation is the resolute manner in which the British and American Democracies are going to throw themselves into the conflict.”<\/p>\n
\n“Well, I have always been feeling that one of these days we might get a windfall coming from that quarter, but I don’t think we ought to count on it. Just go on keeping on as bad as they are, or as good as they are. And then one of these days, as we did in the last war, we may wake up and find ourselves short of Huns.”<\/p>\n