As might be expected, Memorial Day here was pretty uneventful. My wife and I spent an inordinate amount of time doing paperwork; what’s new? But I did manage to plow through The Great War on Netflix.
Overall impression? I don’t know that I can give a more emphatic “meh.” It is refreshing to see that WWI has been getting more attention lately. I don’t know that there’s a film that’s really captured the horror.
I’ve written before about riding as my dad snaked us through The Somme, seeing where his grandfather had fought.
Later, in high school while running the hills (football training) near our quarters in Heidelberg, seeing the incredible number of headstones in the cemetery that read 1915-18. Wait, why are all these dates before the most important war in human history? Corporate press tells us that!
If you can’t trust the media, who can you trust?
Note that this was before Tom Brokaw’s 90s/2000s “Greatest Generation” obsession, and things like Saving Private Ryan, or the ultimate movie about WWII, Pearl Harbor. (Yes, the sarcasm is intended.)
But I had two big take-aways I scribbled down. (And I don’t know that they’d really fit an Okay With This entry…)
- The writers/producers spent an incredible amount of effort glossing over how badly Wilson screwed up so many things. I don’t know if it was intentional, but Lusitania’s sinking was really pushed to the back, though it was still listed as a civilian ship; a passenger liner. I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s no mention of why it’s a more dangerous wreck to dive, despite having sank years after Titanic in much shallower water. Why can’t people dive Lusitania? Oh, the ammo that the US had been sending the British is scattered across the seabed and could cook off at pretty much any time. They also leaned heavily on Black soldiers and their role in the US Army atop the discrimination they faced back stateside. No mention of Wilson’s resegregation of the US Government (including the military). Yes, the people featured were heroes. I understand that the focus on the contributions of the minorities is important for cinematic awards consideration, but I do wonder if it was more than a little over the top. If you consider it too long, you reach a real indictment of what Hollywood’s become in the past twenty or so years. I don’t recall seeing things about LGBTQ, and wonder if that might push this out of cinematic awards consideration. They did touch on some of the Communist stuff following the war, but omit talking about things like the Palmer Raids. There really isn’t any discussion about how authoritarian Wilson and his allies were. Have I gone full Glenn Beck with my dislike of him? Hardly. That said, the more I see, the more I notice “the left” trying to gloss over what he did. Who was a bigger enemy of freedom? Donald Trump or A. Mitchell Palmer?
- Along those lines, they spoke glowingly of The League of Nations, and what it would have brought. The Treaty of Versailles was great had it been followed, there wouldn’t have been a World War II. No mention of how the US Senate didn’t ratify the treaty, and that the US remained at war with The Triple Entente (Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Germany) until Harding was President in the 1920s. What was actually finished and ratified after the US failed to support was far, far, far more extreme than what the US rejected. The audacity is rivaled by what the Democrats did here in Virginia after their 2025 win.
Governor Langley’s actions won’t be as detrimental, but they are comparably reckless.
So final take on the documentary? i didn’t give it a “thumbs down,” but it’s one of the few things I’ve seen that didn’t even warrant a lukewarm endorsement.
Do I make bits of this an OWT entry? Don’t know. I probably should. I’m cramming my brain enough with it, but I really don’t know if I have anything that anyone will care aobut hearing. But that’s okay; everything gets deleted, eventually. Including my scatterbrained missives.