Spoilers Strange New Worlds 1x01 - "Strange New Worlds"

[Belz...]

Judge what?

Actions. That's what we're talking about.

I can agree to a lot of this.

My point is not that what the writers had Burnham and company do was unforgivable - just that declaring a pragmatic endorsement of state terror was in no meaningful way "sticking to their principles." If words have meanings other than those decreed by Minitrue, it was just the opposite.

You're twisting my words. I said, three times now, that it was calling off genocide that was sticking to principles. They went against orders and risked much for this. The solution, however, is another matter.

 

[Belz...]

Exactly. The Japanese government didn't even have time to evaluate the devastation to make an informed response before another bomb was dropping on Nagasaki.

They had already somehow decided they would not surrender following the first bomb, so this is false. The rest of your post is revisionist. And this entire conversation is way off topic.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

Unless someone is there, they really will never know if it was the right or wrong thing to do.

In that case, it's impossible to judge a single thing from history. How then are we supposed to learn from it?

They had already somehow decided they would not surrender following the first bomb, so this is false. The rest of your post is revisionist. And this entire conversation is way off topic.

I think what you mean is you'd rather not confront facts you don't like, so applying a label like "revisionist" makes for a quick escape.

 

[BillJ]

In that case, it's impossible to judge a single thing from history. How then are we supposed to learn from it?

We can decide what actions we don’t want to replicate thanks to developments between then and now, and how we want to proceed.

 

[Belz...]

I think what you mean is you'd rather not confront facts you don't like, so applying a label like "revisionist" makes for a quick escape.

Don't tell me what I mean. Look up the work of real historians rather than opinion pieces from ideologues you agree with.

 

[cooleddie74]

We can decide what actions we don’t want to replicate thanks to developments between then and now, and how we want to proceed.

This. Every bit of this. With the perspective and knowledge in the head of American generals, admirals and the American population in the summer of 1945 all we CAN do is go on the horrific casualty projections of a late 1945 or early 1946 invasion of the home islands and weigh the options we would have been given. The atomic bomb was a horrific and disgusting device with no purpose other than mass devastation but let's not pretend nor even attempt that we have the power of a Q or some deity to know all the ramifications or assume that a simple show of force by landing craft on Honshu Island was going to make the regime crumble.

It was a moment in history when there were no good choices and nobody should have felt happy. No matter what one chose a bare minimum of hundreds of thousands were going to die, and let's just be honest: with the racial animosity and propaganda on all sides during the war and on all fronts there weren't many people in the chain of command who would have batted an eye at using the two atomic bombs. This was a war of survival against what we were told was an alien, tyrannical culture that bombed our naval base with no provocation. Even the heroes of these decisions weren't really heroes. The only good outcome was that the surrender happened within days and that's it. Everything else was just ugliness.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

We can decide what actions we don’t want to replicate thanks to developments between then and now, and how we want to proceed.

Soooo...
is it impossible to say slavery was bad/wrong?
can't say the Holocaust was bad/wrong?
can't say colonialism was bad/wrong?

That's a terrifying line of thinking, because moral convictions need to be part of the equation as we move forward in the present and the future.

 

[indranee]

I did a search, and it appears that no one has mentioned the fact that some version of the movie "Silent Running" has been adopted into the Trek universe. Forests in Domes around Saturn? Anybody?

Didn't that happen with TWOK?

 

[cooleddie74]

The A-Bomb was and remains awful but yeah, when ALL your options are terrible it's truly a Reservoir Dogs standoff where even the winner gets bloodied and mangled.

 

[Farscape One]

Ultimately, it was the real life Kobayashi Maru.

Or Tuvix.

 

[jackoverfull]

I quickly fell in love with Lower Decks, even though I was sure it wasn't for me in the lead up to the show. I'm more interested by far in the story they are telling right now than anything Discovery or Picard have done.

Me too. The morons that did the lower decks marketing must have been the same that did the orville’s: I got in totally deflated and uninterested and discovered they were actually gems with little to do with the trailers.

Prodigy? Nickelodeon kiddie hour. Pass.

It’s surprisingly much more, give it a try.

The second to last episode of Season 2 is probably the best episode of the series, and season finale is probably the second best.

The season 2 finale for me is up there with some of the best trek ever.

 

[cooleddie74]

As much as we like to poke fun at Tuvix and use him in memes, yeah. Sort of. There was no good decision, only a decision we as viewers and from a distance weigh ourselves based on our own preferences and internal prejudices. Whatever the decision in 1945 people - innocent people - were going to die, by fission blast and heat wave or bullet or bayonet. Ending the Second World War was like being in a Saw movie and realizing your options to survive to the end of the film.

 

[Belz...]

Soooo...
is it impossible to say slavery was bad/wrong?
can't say the Holocaust was bad/wrong?
can't say colonialism was bad/wrong?

Didn't he say that we, in fact, could?

 

[BillJ]

Soooo...
is it impossible to say slavery was bad/wrong?
can't say the Holocaust was bad/wrong?
can't say colonialism was bad/wrong?

No, but we should also be weary of casting judgement about certain events that we weren't actually there for. We can and should learn from the mistakes of our past. Just dumping things into good and evil piles for internet points doesn't solve anything.

I can't say in good conscience that I wouldn't have dropped the two bombs on Japan.

 

[BillJ]

The A-Bomb was and remains awful but yeah, when ALL your options are terrible it's truly a Reservoir Dogs standoff where even the winner gets bloodied and mangled.

I always thought "A Private Little War" did a great job presenting a no-win scenario. Respect the Prime Directive and Tyree's people get massacred, give them weapons on par with their opponents who have been armed by the Klingons, and you have a scenario that likely leads to decades of bloody combat.

 

[cooleddie74]

Sometimes you can only look back over the gap of time and go: "I'D have never done that, but then I wasn't around then. So it would never have been my decision."

 

[ToddCam]

Actions. That's what we're talking about.

The actions of Truman, etc.?

In my original post I said it was probably unjustifiable. I do not know what the pressures of such felt like, and all the circumstances, and what would have happened in a world where the bombs were not dropped. But with the information I have, 'probably unjustifiable' is where I land.

Either way, the act of dropping atomic weapons on cities cannot be treated as an innocent act. It was a choice made by people. I cannot give anyone absolution for an act with such a devastating effect. And I think that, being in a position as powerful as Truman was, there should be an understanding that even your best intentions can have terrible results, and you should understand history may not look kindly upon you, especially as further truths are uncovered that you may not be aware of. I understand the complexity of historical actions, but I also cannot accept that acts like the atomic bombings were the best choice for many reasons, including that I am aware of my perspective as a non-participant with a very remote viewing lens.

 

[BillJ]

Either way, the act of dropping atomic weapons on cities cannot be treated as an innocent act. It was a choice made by people.

There is where the problems come in, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were likely far more humane than the fire bombings we did all through the war in both Europe and Japan. We mostly burned Japan to the ground.

 

[Belz...]

But with the information I have, 'probably unjustifiable' is where I land.

Yeah but that's the issue: the information we have is informed by decades of analysis and hindsight.

Either way, the act of dropping atomic weapons on cities cannot be treated as an innocent act.

Nobody has ever or will ever claim that it was innocent. At best, some have called it the lesser evil.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

I can't say in good conscience that I wouldn't have dropped the two bombs on Japan.

That's exactly the language of disconnect that pervades these discussions. "Two bombs," oh that doesn't sound so bad. But if you could imagine the pilot of the Enola Gay landing his plane and putting a bullet into 100,000 men, women and children, we'd all be horrified. Instead, the method and language of it is sanitized in a way that allows us to dodge the effects and consequences more easily.

In the immediate aftermath in 1945, the American public was overwhelmingly in favor of the actions taken - until John Hersey published "Hiroshima," which matter-of-factly explained the horrors of WMD from the perspectives of everyday Japanese people whom he interviewed. The American public was shocked, and suddenly "2 bombs" took on much more significance. If we can't agree that incinerating schools and hospitals is outright evil, then...

It's actually a lack of creativity (both then and now) that leads people to conclude that mass murder was the only solution.