ghost stories of an antiquary first edition

Presidential administrations of the 20 th century-as a device, it works, though even Stone seems unable to escape the idea that history equals big events like war, and big entities like government. Untold History centers its revisionist narrative on the succession of U.S. But his television series Untold History of the United States, makes his brand of left-wing social criticism accessible to the widest public yet. This is the direction one’s thoughts can take, when viewing Oliver Stone’s new series.įilmmaker Stone is best known for his feature films, like Talk Radio, Natural Born Killers and most recently Savages. soil, in which we could feel what it was like to be Vietnamese every day in the 1960s, or Korean during the 1950s, or Russian or French or British during the 1940s. The attacks of, not unlike the ambush at Pearl Harbor, indeed marked “a day which would live in infamy,” in that it was the single day in an entire century in which a war was fought on U.S. Vets do not pass us, whether on the battlefield or on Main Street, as Oliver Stone once put it, as “ghosts in a landscape.” Perhaps the greatest injustice done to the Vietnam vets was a refusal to validate their experiences and even their existences, for better and worse. But some kind of acknowledgement may lie within your power.

So I don’t urge you to go out and buy a vet a drink, necessarily, or to shake his hand or verbally thank her, nor to pass by and secretly despise her, if that’s your political stance. Vets, despite Thoreau’s attack, are all-too-human. Or to jingoism and fervor, or disillusionment, or even apathy. And, of course, today we have our own brands of wars, both declared and undeclared, which lead to shell shock, Gulf War Syndrome, PTSD, and the like. Thoreau lamented a Marine “such as can make a man, with its black arts.” Yet it’s hard to argue against the fact that, in the twentieth century, we can still point to our elder veterans, and say we owe them the continued existence our very way of life. Many of the founding fathers considered a “standing army” a great evil to be avoided, and in the 19th century Henry D.

I posted this particular photo (taken several years ago) because these little guys are now grown enough to be serving in the armed forces today.Įveryone’s experience with the military, and attitude toward it, extend in a different degree, minute, and second of the compass. I haven’t been very active on the blog lately, but I’d like to offer a few thoughts to observe this important holiday, which many allow to pass unremarked year after year.

Ghost stories of an antiquary first edition