Backbaygrouch asks:

“The question then arises, why was the Greatest Generation such a bunch of self important jerks? Who trained them? As opposed to who trained both sides of the blood letters of the Civil War [War Of Northern Aggression]? May I suggest it was the FDR’s Jewish appointees with a Jewish agenda? Does anyone have any evidence on the issue? I have nothing more than a gut reaction. Agreed, the Greatest Generation was brainwashed, but who did it, and why? Basics.”

The reason the WWII Generation got to be such self important jerks — BBG is always a master of subtlety — actually came from the fact that in 1945 America regretted its wretched treatment of World War I vets — the Bonus March crowd of 1932. The Bonus Army was very recent headlines by 1945.

But, our usual BASIC question: Why was this information, which could be forgotten as yesterday’s news, produced? Because it was food for the biggest lobby America had ever seen: those who found a gold mine in exploiting those who had been in uniform during the War.

Many of the soldiers in WWI were left in Europe for over a year after that War ended. American soldiers wanted to go HOME. So a movement began in America and Britain:

“No boats, no votes.” That was the first cry of the lobby that would dominate America for over a generation. Soon every discharged soldier got a year’s pension after he was discharged. Vet’s benefits became a giant lobby.

The Jews did not plan this, the leftists did not plan this. But once that force was there, they, unlike our side, made USE of it. So naturally the theory arose that they PLANNED it. Successful politics doesn’t MAKE the opportunities, it EXPLOITS them.

But BBG is right about the invention of the self-righteous part.

It is almost impossible to credit, but when I was coming up and the Korean veterans came home, the WWII crowd was known as, of all things, the Quiet Generation. It was noticed that, while Korean War vets talked endlessly about their war adventures, WWII vets didn’t want to talk about it.

When I reached my teens, the WWII vets were doing what earlier generations had done, getting back to real life.

As you know, in 1948 the Red Cross reported on Nazi killings and they were not Six Million. Nazi killings in wartime were vastly inferior to Stalin’s in peacetime. If they had been as vast as it is now illegal to dispute, the Red Cross would have talked about it and Churchill would have mentioned it.

So why was this information that Hitler killed as many Jews as the left wanted him to have, PRODUCED?

You know the answer to THAT. Everything encouraged the production of this information and there was no lobby against it. As the years passed, the left wanted to end the Cold War. Anything that showed that World War II was against Evil, while the Reds were entirely different, was eagerly published.

Yes, Virginia, there was Jewish Lobby. But its basis was disappointingly prosaic. I have no idea how many hundreds of billions Jews got of our reparations from Germany, but it was titanic. Two overwhelming lobbies, WWII vets and the Jewish Lobby, became indistinguishable. It would-be astonishing if the left did not USE this.

It wasn’t until the 1960’s that the Good War against Hitler was invented. In the 1960’s people were shot down daily trying to escape Communist countries, so that was not reported on. This was no plot, it was as natural as gravity. All the news became Eichmann and the Good War. By the time opposition to Vietnam became media policy, this natural development turned into a tidal wave.

In this tidal wave the Quiet Generation turned into self-righteous jerks. All of the media made Vietnam Vets ashamed of fighting the People’s Republics. Suddenly the millions of WWII “vets,” of whom about a third had ever heard a hostile shot fired, became John Waynes. Again if you have the slightest understanding of the human animal, this was as natural as gravity.

Veterans of the Good War were lionized. Veterans against Communism were portrayed as psychotic nut jobs.

For millions of WWII vets the Good War was the last noteworthy thing they had ever done. They began to talk about nothing else. They became self-righteous permanent adolescents, self-righteous jerks. Once they had this tool in their hands the left used it ruthlessly.

The left was simply not as stupid as the right was. As the leftist media found a need for some kind of opposition, they naturally gave those slots to the people who threatened them least and agreed with them on vital matters like the Holocaust.

This is not as exciting as a Jewish Conspiracy. But it IS the way history really works.