[Athena]

Christibe wrote.... In one of my history classes in college, my professor was amazingly awesome. He played Bob Dylan, talked about protesting Vietnam, and our texts were Howard Zinn's History of the United States series, among other things. Our exams were all oral and required we know everything, even though we would only be asked one question. It was in that class that my eyes were opened to the fact that the 'education' I had received was nothing other than politicized political history for the purpose of, among other things, creating a patriot, because the only truly loyal masses are ignorant. He taught through social history, or, history told by the people of the times in the traditional way that we used to learn about the past. It was truly fascinating, and also very horrifying, especially the journals of American soldiers WWI and WWII... I hope mankind never again uses warfare like that... But, in that class, it was told that the US did know that Japan would attack. We did still trust the oceans to a great extent, but we also knew that Germany was using submarine warfare and since we were trying to figure out how to spot them still as we waited for GB to develop sonar, nod to the British for always keeping at par with German technological developments, otherwise the Allies would have lost WWII. But, because of that, and because Japan was somewhat allied with Germany, we had no reason to trust that they didn't have subs... we didn't know how they would attack. We knew that Germany was working on nuclear tech, as some of those physicists expatriated and came to us and told us so, and so we were worried about Russia also working on it. We worried about everyone, because we didn't really stand anywhere or fit in, because we were helping everyone out from the beginning. It's late right now and so I'm not going to search for backup... But, I do know that Russia was a deciding factor in dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also, Prussia is the kingdom of sorts that led to modern-day Germany, before the 19th Century, modern Germany was a collection of small 'statelets' of tribes, if you will, connected by a common language and geography, mostly. The end of the Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism which led to the situation where the French and the Americans revolted sort of made the Prussians aware that they wanted to combine the communities, and they started searching for their true identity as a people. They formed the idea of modern Nationalism, since they had no common history but only language. Some argue that it is because of this method of unification that German nationalism has proven so severe in history. The idea that Germans are better stems from a feeling that they didn't hold up to the rest of Europe... since the rest of Europe had spent the 18th century finishing their nations, as it was. It's interesting to me how all of this 'newness' helped England realize that following tradition was the way to go, and when they could have followed the rest of the Western world, they stuck with what they had. They knew it wasn't perfect, but that the best kind of change happens through careful consideration. Evolution. The rest of us spontaneously mutated, and are still figuring out what everything means... And I don't blame GWB for anything. He is a symptom of the problem. He is the skin legion one gets from leprosy, not the bacterial infection beneath.

What you have said is interesting enough for its own thread.