“Oh What a Lovely War” [FN1] a 1969 British film, is sharp, bloody satire set to happy songs popular in WWI. The scene for each tune disintegrates to carnage on the battlefield. I saw the film at DePauw around the same time I first read Tuchman’s “Guns of August.” [FN2] 1/9

I drew several impressions. European leaders blundered into WWI, each believing others would back down. People had little grasp of the realities of modern warfare. Roughly a century had passed since the Napoleonic wars, but those conflicts lacked modern “refinement.” 2/9

The Gatling gun had been developed in 1862 during the Civil War. Widespread use of machine guns did not occur, however, until the Russo-Japanese War. [FN3] No one was ready for death, mutilation and destruction on the scale the would annihilate so many 1914-1918. 3/9

An October poll indicated “nearly one in four Americans believe that political violence may be justified to ‘save’ the country.” [FN4] I am a pacifist. I oppose violence. What is difficult to ignore is the violence advanced by the far right. January 6 was an insurrection & violent. 4/9

Also on January 6, a person carried a Confederate flag [FN5] through the Capitol. People in this iteration of the GOP seem unconcerned by the events opf January 6. People in the USA today seem as unaware as Europeans in 1914 of what warfare is. I shall close as follows: 5/9

1) People should be damn sure things are as bad as trump, et al, would have us believe.
2) If claim as one of your own a racist walking through the Capitol, a Confederate flag over his shoulder, you sure as hell have no claim to be the Party of Lincoln. 6/9

Footnotes:
FN1. “Oh What a Lovely War,” Richard Attenborough, dir.
FN2. Tuchman, Barbara, “Guns of August,” 1962. 7/9

Footnotes:
FN3. Kenda, Daniel, “Lessons Learned from the Use of the Machine Gun During the Russo-Japanese War and the Application of Those Lessons by the Protagonists of World War I,” Masters thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2005, p. ii. 8/9

Footnotes:
FN4. David Smith, “Nearly one in four Americans believe political violence justified to ‘save’ US,” The Guardian, 10/25/23.
FN5. The flag was that of the Army of Northern Virginia. 9/9