Reply #104: Sorry! I didn't intend to take you to task particularly, IC

[Mairead]

I expect I was hooked by the image conjured by 'soft imperialism'--you know, handing the survivors candy bars and k-rations, no mentioning that they are survivors, or that the photo was as contrived as anything showing the Wehrmacht being handed flowers by schoolgirls in pinnies.

My point about not euphemising things stands, though--and that includes not letting the bleeding Nation euphemise things, either! :( Nobody wants to see the real cost either because they're making a profit off of not seeing it or because they get a depression thinking about the magnitude of the problem. But we must keep straight about it. The rulers count on things vanishing down the memory hole, summer grasses growing over the warriors' dreams, and new chidren, ardent for some desperate glory, falling for that same damned old lie.