"...and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands."

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
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I recently listened to some Churchill speeches for the first time in decades by virtue of downloading all of the expansion content for a particularly nerdy WWII history game called Hearts of Iron IV. I triggered these in-game speeches by playing as Nazi Germany, successfully conquering France and invading the militarily incompetent island of Britain, but that’s neither here nor there.

Here’s the speech quoted in the title, with awesome 2023 animations:

I’m here to talk about the broad, sunlit uplands. Churchill was right about those. I remember them. They were there when I was a boy, an adolescent, a young adult and even a mature adult. Things weren’t perfect, but it seemed like we were moving towards better times and better lives that were attainable for most people.

I’m not so sure we are moving ourselves into broad, sunlit uplands anymore.

Whether you agree or disagree, I’d be love to hear your thoughts.

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Ayo, you ever play Wolfenstein?

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Yes I have. I played it on my Zenith x386 with a 40 megabyte hard drive. VGA monitor. No dedicated sound card.

I’m not sure where you were going with your post, but video games of my childhood and speeches by world leaders of WWII are all part of our living history, with people alive today who lived through those times.

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Oh nothing, I figured since you enjoy studying WW2 History there was a good chance you played the series.

I agree, we isn’t moving into sunlit uplands anymore. But, we better stay the hell out of my way as I am moving into the sunlit uplands.

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I agree with you

I have a hard time not devolving into “we’re fieked” so I just keep myself busy when there’s work and watch stuff about wars when there’s not

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“Will sink into the abyss of a new Dark age”
I think that sums it up.

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No, we are certainly not. Our country is destroying itself from within, a fractured nation with multiple culture tribes vying for power. A country where the people elect morons, who are hell bent on creating chaos and misery. Our country will not survive the next 30 years with its current model of destruction. God bless America rings on deaf ears.

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We were already there. How many immigrants came to America, decided it was worse than where they came from and went back?

I believe the problem is that some people equate better times, a better nation, with having to put less effort in to become whatever they determine is successful. They see “better” as deferring more of their responsibility for their own improvement, success, happiness, etc., to the government or system.

So I would say “it” is as good as it gets but that doesn’t mean it’s a limiting factor on how good you can be. But in their quest to make “it” better, some are making “it” worse.

You are already there. Seriously, how bad do you have it right now?

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Personally, I hat scares me is the thought of having to relinquish quality of life for reasons outside my control (e.g., government being incompetent, fallout from climate change, deadly pandemic)

So I guess it’s less about getting to uplands but staying there

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The future seems a lot better since I had a baby a couple years ago.

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That’s what worries me the most. I am afraid for my son in the future.

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I think that’s sort of a universal fear. The future will be really fucked up for the next generation.

Years ago my parents were really sad that I’d never have the opportunity work in a steel mill or auto plant.

Thankfully that hasn’t been a problem for me. I live hundreds of miles from the Rust Belt and work in an industry that didn’t even exist 20 years ago.

Sure, the future will be fucked up in a different way. But probably no More messed up than at any other time.

Or at least that’s how I like to think about it so I can stay optimistic.

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My father worked in construction and he would have been disappointed if I followed in his footsteps.

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My dad was an insurance dude who wore a suit to work for 30+ years and always insisted that I would go to college.

But for some reason my parents were always pretty pessimistic about the future and my lack of Blue Collar toughness.

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A lot of parents work really hard to try to ensure that the kids don’t.

I wouldn’t mind if my kid has the ability to weld, or has/owns a fabrication shop. In fact, Id be proud of him for expanding on something I may have planted the seed for.

But a start from scratch, pay your own way through school and hope for the best like I did?
Nah. That would mean I dropped the ball pretty badly.

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Great discussion so far. These are all good directions for this topic to go. I’d like to offer my thoughts on a few responses.

The degree to which we are fucked should not change your decision-making process. You still need to make the most of the situation you find yourself in. You know this already, so keep trucking along and, while you may still be fucked, you’ll be much less fucked than your peers who didn’t match your effort.

That part stood out to me as well, along with what prefaced it. “But if we fail…”

My grandfather and his peers did not fail during WWII and the years following. They fought for the broad, sunlit uplands and won, delivering them to my father. My father also fought for the broad, sunlit uplands, although he engaged a lot more Jaegerschnitzel and Bier than enemy troops during his military career. Still, he was there on the East German border in the mid 1960’s, an American teenager ready to die to defend Europe if the Soviets ever made their westward push.

Have we now failed? I think we have, in a lot of ways. That’s not to say all is lost or that our situation is not salvageable. Hopefully this is a low-point of sudden and dramatic impoverishment experienced by people worldwide, and not the start of a trend line.

I will leave a significant inheritance to my stepson and continue to support him in adulthood, but I fear that he won’t ever see the broad, sunlit uplands. Home ownership is out-of-reach for him on his own anytime in the next several years. This is PROFOUNDLY different from the situation in the USA just 20 short years ago when I was the same age as him, but on my 2nd property as an early 20’s high school graduate. America has turned a corner and we’re headed in a different direction, away from the broad, sunlit uplands. This seems obvious to me.

People across the world are experiencing this, which is why we have simple depression-era Appalachian folk music topping the charts. Not just in the USA, but in the world. This shit hits harder than NWA in the 1980’s. Who picked bluegrass or backwoods country music to be the hottest tracks of 2023? Not me.

This is where I disagree. For most of my life I think a lot of people assumed, with good reason, that the future will present generally better opportunities to more and more people. That’s how the first 30 or so years of my life played out, at least. Again, that’s not to say things were perfect or there were no problems in the world, but things were on an upward trend compared to what my grandfather had to deal with and what my father had to deal with. Society was marching into the broad, sunlit uplands.

This is why I chose to broach this topic by posting an optimistic speech made during a very dire situation that my grandfather lived through. I believe a sense of historical perspective helps us understand the present much better.

Churchill was correct to point out what he did at the time. Nazi Germany had just shocked the world, AGAIN, this time by conquering France in six weeks. SIX WEEKS. France was no Ukraine, they were a first-rate military power of the 1930’s who had been preparing for this fight since the last catastrophic world war fought one generation earlier.

The whole speech is just as true today as it was when Churchill delivered it. The nature of the threat to us all is the only difference.

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Could we solve the housing crisis if everyone who owned multiple homes Owner-Financed their extra houses to 1st time home owners?

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Unfortunately, no.

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Here is another speech worth listening to. FDR may be my favorite Democrat but he’s still a mixed bag of policies, lots and lots of policies and social engineering. I’ve read enough Chomsky and Zinn to know what real progressives think about FDR, so he gets extra points from me for that.

This was how the leader of our nation could speak to the citizenry when my grandfather, born dirt-poor in Poland, was proudly enlisting in the United States Army with war on the horizon. This is just the man speaking in one take. Sure, he had a script, but he could speak to us like we were all adults.

Contrast this to any communication to the American people from any Federal Government official at any level at any point in your lifetime. It is PROFOUNDLY different.

How is it possible, when we presume so much progress has been made, that a man like Joe Biden occupies the same office as FDR? To throw the liberals a bone, you can ask the same question about Trump. Or Obama. Or Bush. Or Clinton.

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Churchill was a prick who starved 30 million people in India and advocated gassing kurds the only chilled people in the entire region lol.

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