Anyone else watch the Ken Burns PBS "The Vietnam War" documentary? Just finished the 4th episode and I am absolutely blown away.
I didn't really know shit about the war in Vietnam (23yo Canadian), but this has definitely been a good primer for me so far and has fully sparked my interest. I've been watching an episode per night this week and have found myself constantly thinking about it and looking things up to feed any questions/curiosity I may have.
It is truly 10/10 in coziness, visuals, and creepiness. The music and songs selection are phenomenal (ex. The Rolling Stones - Play With Fire), the interviews from American Marines, Rangers, protesters, etc., not to mention the interviews from both north and south Vietnamese fighters.
Holy fuck, I had to make a post because I haven't seen anything posted about it here (I realize it came out in September). Anyway, if you haven't seen any episodes, I highly recommend checking it out.
Will definitely check that out. I also heard his American civil war doc is worth watching, which I plan on checking out. I read that they had been compiling footage/interviews for this Vietnam doc for ~10yrs, which blows my mind but definitely shows in terms of quality
Lucas Moore
Is it the usual american propaganda shit?
Evan Hernandez
Civil War is a fucking incredible doc. I don't know if I outright cried any but I definitely was on the verge repeatedly. I know "makes it come alive" is cliche as fuck but it's true. I really felt for the horrific conditions the soldiers endured and was kind of drained and sad when watching the end.
Nolan Evans
yeah they even say that Nixon was mostly to blame for it not LBJ or JFK
Ken Burns is dogshit
heres how to make a Ken Burns doc: pick a gigantic topic browse wikipedia for 2 years on it writing down random anecdotes get a bunch of old pictures that slowly zoom in whilst some actor reads the 100s of pages of random wikipedia anecdotes whilst providing no structure or overarching insightful critical thoughts on the subject
win awards
Jeremiah Richardson
...
Jayden Jackson
Absolute faggot detected
Isaiah Cox
Everyone keeps saying it is, and I'm only on the sixth episode, but I don't really see it. It's pretty balanced, and goes over a lot of the mistakes made by the US and South Vietnam during the war (the body count, corruption in South Vietnam, inability to define "progress" compared to conventional warfare, atrocities etc).
t. non-burgerstani
Connor Harris
It seems pretty objective so far, but "blaming Nixon" seems a bit rich for a doc that straight up shows JFK's blundering and McNamara's autism getting it started and LBJ being a faggot making it infinitely worse.
Owen Bell
i don't like that it paints lbj as a sympathetic figure. desu he's one of the worst presidents of all time and was a scumbag
Hunter Martin
> 15 hours long vietnam documentary > it ain't me didn't start playing
Michael Peterson
This has been my biggest issue. The man was not only incompetent but human garbage. "Muh civil rights" is the only thing even remotely defensible from any reasonable person's perspective.
Ethan Collins
where does it paint lbj as a sympathetic figure though ?
Bentley Reyes
If only more people realized this.
Justin Sullivan
Was it a liberal jerkoff fest. If they presented Nixon in any other light than a hero for putting an end to JFK and LBJ’s mess, then it’s flat out WashPo tier propaganda
I thought it was funny when the north Vietnamese gooks admitted that they had more food to eat during the war then after the war living under communism
Mason Walker
I should preface this by saying that I haven’t seen this documentary yet.
The problem for a lot of us Americans when it comes to the media’s portrayal of the Vietnam War is that a lot of us find the fight against communism to be a worthy battle. Leftists in America have long been sympathizers with communist ideology and regimes. This leads to two things-
1) they portray the Vietnam War as evil and imperialistic. The communists were “freedom fighters” (btw how did that work out for Vietnam after we left).
2) since the war was “evil”, and because the left is incapable of self-criticism, they shift the blame from JFK/LBJ to Nixon (they have a particular hard-on for trashing Nixon. They drove him out of office with smear tactics from literally the same old farts at WashPo who lie about Trump all day long).
The sweet, sweet irony of it all is that the majority of anti Vietnam war propaganda was LITERALLY Russian propaganda that modern leftists still cling on to, while shrieking all day long about Russian propaganda helping Trump.
Gabriel Edwards
the jew media really hates nixon. the guy really is a hero. he saved the usa's economy from collapsing during the cold war when france started liquidating our dollar reserves and killing the gold standard. the french are scum and should be the enemy of every american
Colton Harris
The literal reason we got into the war was false anti-russian propaganda/thought.
Pretending anyone is right about the Vietnam war kinda implies that there wasn't total shit on both sides. It's the kinda war where it's easy to look back at it and think yourself superior, but actually living through it makes it impossible to come through clean when people judge your opinions and actions.
We honestly just never should have been involved.
Ethan Miller
That South Viet dude who lived through his "just to make sure he's dead" shot, while staying with the bodies of his men; then crawled for 3 days to safety while bleeding out... Lived to give the interview...
What a beast.
Luke Morales
>t. commie faggot Sat Cong
Levi Nguyen
>The literal reason we got into the war was false anti-russian propaganda/thought. so i guess a communist revolution taking place backed up by russia and china didn't really happen. it's just propaganda
it's right to kill communist subhumans
Samuel Bailey
No, the war was a proxy war between US and China/Russia. Both sides knew exactly what they were fighting over. The “Cold War” was won with this battle. The US forced Russia and China to play their hand and the communist regimes went bankrupt funding that war. It also showed the entire world that America would not fuck around when it came communism. It was a flexing of the muscle (kind of like dropping that 2nd atomic bomb on Nagasaki).
Nixon won the Cold War with napalm. Reagan didn’t win it with his pathetic “tear down that wall!”
Chase Evans
>false Tell that to North Korea lol
Dylan Bailey
>It's a "Westmoreland blames everyone else for the mistakes he made" episode
Ethan Price
The thinking that there was a global united communist conspiracy was what fucked us. We jumped up and let the French fuck us over with the mere mention of communism.
Nixon was smart enough with China to realize that a lot of commie countries hated each other, and that by treating each country as its own thing (rather than all the red menace) was smarter.
Anyway, the best way to fight a disagreement with economic systems it to bury your opponent under products they want and lifestyles they can't have.
Aaron Sullivan
Not false in the sense that the regimes weren't shit, but false in the sense that all instances of communism in the world were just takeovers by Russians/Soviets.
Josiah Scott
>the french are scum and should be the enemy of every american Remember when the French wanted to put Saddam Hussein on the OPCW?
Jordan Watson
Well if we can drop the semantics, let's take a peek at reality. >NK is a mess >Vietnam is pretty crappy >SK is a jewel Did I miss anything?
Thomas Miller
Sup Forums doesn't watch anything that's not riverdale or reddit things season 2. As a 19yo this has been a very informative series to me, but I still don't know how to feel about the war as a whole. I'm not saying I wish I was told how to feel, but I think I'm missing too much context.
My parents were still young during Nam so I really didn't have any prior knowledge on the war besides snippets and chapters of history textbooks. I don't think there WAS a right answer when it came to the war. I do know that this time period was incredibly transformative for the united states government and culture, and for that reason I wish it was covered in our education and society more often.
Cameron Phillips
Not sure if b8, but there's actually a thread going right now, you're in it, with lots of words posted in sequence containing thoughts of those who have and have not watched the documentary.
Jaxson Long
SK was about as shitty as NK until just a few decades ago, and China is doing alright.
Oh wait, you seem to be thinking I'm arguing FOR communism because you can't read. I'm arguing that treating communism as a single political entity is what fucked us, because it isn't.
Hudson Morris
I'm just taking a step back and observing the real world.
Now whether or not any of this was worth American lives is a much different story.
Juan Long
Not bait. Compared to the amount of threads for pure schlock tv, the vietnam war by ken burns may as well not exist on here
Levi Hall
Well then why not exist within the thread you are posting in you dink.
Justin Gray
They were fairer to Nixon than they were to LBJ. They said Nixon was complicit but they didn't give LBJ or Kennedy a pass
Christopher Ward
>one of the worst presidents there were plenty of inconsequential and shitty president's. how is lbj even in your bottom 10 worst presidents?
Alexander Brown
I’m not that user, but I would say that being inconsequential is far better than doing the kind of damage that LBJ did. The office of President was designed to be inconsequential. There are two things that LBJ did irrevocably ruined this nation 1) The “Great” Society- created an entire class of dependency and was literally a bribe for the public.
2) The signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act If 1965 which gave us open borders and cheap labor to replace the native population.
He was also a colossal scumbag. His personality made Nixon look like a Boy Scout. Probably had Kennedy killed.
