One trend I’ve noticed in this election cycle is EPIC-NESS. Collectively, we as a society seem to have lost the ability to care about something for more than two weeks at a time unless it is the most important thing ever. Naturally, since cable and the internet (plus a whole crew of candidates and consultants) need to talk about the election for something like two and a half years, that means describing the campaign in increasingly dramatic turns. It’s almost impossible not to get sucked into this, but the latest participant is Rick Santorum, who apparently got on stage and regaled the audience with comparisons to the years immediately prior to World War II.
“Your country needs you. It’s not as clear a challenge. Obviously, World War II was pretty obvious. At some point, they knew. But remember, the Greatest Generation, for a year and a half, sat on the sidelines while Europe was under darkness, where our closest ally, Britain, was being bombed and leveled, while Japan was spreading its cancer all throughout Southeast Asia. America sat from 1940, when France fell, to December of ’41, and did almost nothing.”
…
“It’s going to be harder for this generation to figure this out. There’s no cataclysmic event. It’s going to be hard. You understand it — you’re here. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t get it. But what about the rest of America, do they understand what’s happening? Is anybody telling them what’s happening? Is anybody reminding us who we are, what made us great, and what these assaults are all about — to clear the way?”
This is a pretty weird analogy, partially because it’s so indirect (are you comparing today to the rise of Hitler or not?), and partially because it’s so random. Today is a fascinating, interesting period of time for the world, but it seems completely and totally different in almost every way from the 1940s.
As a young person (and for the record, I remain “a young person” for the next thirty four days), I’ve come to realize that sorting through World War II references in search of accurate comparisons and analogies is surprisingly difficult, thanks to an overwhelming hoard of movies, books, video games, HBO mini-series, board games, and crossover comic books (Nazi dinosaurs!) that have polluted my collective knowledge of what was a really complex military, political, economic, and cultural event for the entire world. At some point, even lightly educated people like myself and whatever the 30 year old equivalent of Rick Santorum is need to step back and consider what we’re basing our sweeping generalizations on.
That’s why I made this chart.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. And remember — not all Wikipedia articles are created equal.
