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A friend recently asked me to watch Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. I watched the esposide on Eisnenhower–and didn't like it.I felt it was a propoganda piece design to show the USSR was the “good guy” and the Unites States the “bad guy.”The cold war is something I admit I haven't studied, although I grew up in it. Before listing some of what I thought was false/misleading I'd like to hear the views of others. Especially about things they feel are inaccurate, distorted, misleading, etc. Thanks.
If you don't like Oliver Stone's take on American history then avoid Howard Zinn too. Both take the position that everything that has happened since Columbus landed on Hispaniola has been a series of one injustice after another.
I have not seen Oliver Stone's piece, but it sounds consistent with the strain of post-colonial and/or Marxist readings of history. For American leftists, the doctrines espoused by Marx regarding inequalities in wealth were never defeated philosophically (nevermind the means of implementing them). This stands in contrast to views of the racial views of the Nazis, which were defeated philosophically in the West (together with the defeat of the Nazis themselves). Because Marxism was not defeated philosophically by mainstream Western culture, we see negatives by communism ignored. Ever wonder why it's become “cool” for young hipsters to be seen wearing Che Guevara shirts?
Like the 1930s and early 1940s when they excused the deliberate starvation of the Ukrainians, purge trials, attack on Finland, gulags, and annexation of the Baltic states, the same mentality chooses to ignore the brutal takeover of Eastern Europe after WWII, continuation of the Gulags, and the attempt to subvert governments everywhere through communist parties that took orders from Moscow.In 1945-46, leading politicians demanded the military broing the boys back home. The draft ended until 1947 when it was reinstalled for a year as Universal Military Training. Then again no draft from 1948-50 until the Korean War began.
