Name: The Difference Between WWII & Vietnam
Uploaded: 2022-05-18T17:25:56.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Difference Between WWII & Vietnam' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Difference Between WWII & Vietnam' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-18. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan experience. There seems to be a
Direct connection between the loss of faith in the military in those conflicts
the Korean conflict and then the Vietnam conflict
Whereas we don't think about it that way when we think about
World War two when we think about World War two
We think about it as the good guys versus the bad guys and you know
We we won and we came back and there's the the famous kiss on you know
V-Day sure you know in the middle of the street, you know
There's like there's all these romantic notions attached to World War two that
aren't attached to Korea and aren't attached to Vietnam
Yeah, yeah, I mean Eisenhower speech people pull out that military industrial
complex. Yeah
But people should listen to the whole speech listen to it and watch it. Yeah,
because it's it's fascinating
But something shifted and I don't know exactly what it is
I can't put my finger on it, but it keeps coming back to accountability
But my question is why do we lose that sense of accountability?
Why did we lose the importance of accountability following World War two
particularly 1947 when we reorganized really our defense?
Intelligence agencies and the military got reorganized in 1947 we changed the
name of the war department to the Department of Defense
So we have precision and language precision and thought there's a shift there
We used to have a secretary of war what do we have after 1947? We have a
secretary of defense
So this look there's there's that little thing little thing but language is
important
And then for some reason we stopped holding our senior level leaders
accountable and and I don't know why you could point to
this essentially a triad or
Of politicians of think tanks of the defense industry
And kind of how people float between all those things. Yeah, so it became big
business NATO became big business
So there's a there's a lot of things that came into play that weren't at play
before World War two
That become reality after World War two
So I don't know what it is. I can't put my finger on it
But then we have that same generation that came home and what did they do? They
got to work
Yeah, they didn't whine about what they'd been involved in they got to work and
they built this country into what it is today and
And and it's so hard to see what we're doing to ourselves really in this
country that last book in the the devil's hand
I put myself in the enemy's shoes and I thought hey
What did they learn from us on the field of battle over the last 20 years at
war and
During the time I was writing that kovat hit summer of civil unrest very
contentious political season an election cycle
The enemy is learning from all those things and the sad part of my takeaway
from that research was that hey if I'm the enemy
I might just watch we're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from
the inside
Yeah, right now. I might just just wait and watch and see what happens
But of course I had to figure out in a fictional sense how to deal with that
And I did in a very creative way that I that was was fun to figure out
But but it's sad to think that we've lost this appreciation I think for what
was
Sacrificed so we could have these freedoms and options and opportunities that
we do today
So from the inception of this country up until today people have sacrificed
everything or they've risked everything
So that we can have these freedoms and now we have a segment of society that
wants to undercut those freedoms because I don't think
They appreciate what was sacrificed so we could have them
And that part that's sad. I took my daughter to
Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary commemoration events this last december
And we volunteered with an organization called the best defense foundation donny
edwards foundation that takes people
Back to the world war ii battlefields primarily so they can say goodbye
They can make peace with what they what they did there and a lot of them
It's their last trips to these places a lot of them. It's their second trip
The first one was actually going over the beach in normandy
Or going to iwo jima and fighting and now they're getting to go there in the
last years of their lives and say goodbye
But we went to pearl harbor and so my daughter is 16 and she sat at we
volunteered
We took 64 veterans age of 96 to 104
And in wheelchairs we're getting them on and off the buses taking them to the
events getting the dinners making sure they're taking their medications
All that stuff and it was a turning point in her life because she got to sit
down across the table from this generation that yeah
She's heard me talk about and she's read about but to hear them tell their
stories
And a lot of them haven't even told their stories until just a few years ago
There's one guy jack holder who was on the airfield at pearl harbor
He watched the planes japanese planes come over the mountains drop down strafe
the runway
He jumps into this suit what was then a sewage ditch and he showed us the the
bullet holes in the runway still there in the hangar still there
And so he jumps into this sewage as he watches the planes take this left-hand
turn bank
And he jumps up runs to the edge of of the
Pearl harbor right there on the water and watches them and watches the first
torpedoes get dropped in pro harbor
and then he went back he flew a pby which was a
seaplane
And then he went on to uh to fight in the pacific and he sunk a japanese
submarine and helped sink a japanese aircraft carrier
And then he goes to the metterranean and sinks a uh a german
submarine
I mean incredible incredible that's what this generation did for us
And so she got to to see that but I so she appreciates point being is that she
appreciates what
Those genera generation gave us and then by default what previous generations
have given us
So, uh, we're gonna go to d-day here. Um, this june taking her out of school
We're gonna go do that and go to normandy and take the same group of veterans
back to back to normandy and a lot of them
It'll be their their last trip
Um, but uh, she'll get to help again get them to the events get them to dinners
Get them on and off the buses in and out of the wheelchairs and and experience
That place with them
So I can't imagine what it must be like for them to go back to normandy and to
be on that beach
And i mean i've seen the photographs and you know, I think probably uh, one of
the best uh theatrical representations of it is saving private ryan
Right, it's just horrific
Imagine that they they nailed that scene. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean it's it's
uh, it puts things in relative terms
And for me it was in buds on the beach and hell week, you know
Doing push-ups getting yelled at you're freezing you're on the verge of hypothermia
people are quitting
And I thought hey, you know what i'm not coming off of a boat on to a beach in
normandy
Where i'm running through a hail of machine gun fire that's set up in an
elevated position with no cover and concealment between me
And that position right i'm like I can do a few more push-ups here on the beach
You know, I can shiver here in the water a little longer here
Those guys sacrificed that so I could follow my dream and I could be here on
this beach in coronado, california
Testing myself in this crucible of buds
So I think about that that generation in particular uh quite a bit and uh and
what they gave us tactically when they review
Storming the beach at normandy is there alternative?
Methods of approaching that situation that people have proposed that would have
been
Caused less casualties because it's such a crazy thing to just dump everybody
off at the beach and run towards the gunfire
I mean, yeah, I will always wonder like why didn't I mean why didn't they do
something differently?
Why didn't they shoot at them with planes and soften them up first?
I mean it seems
Well, we had some of that so we did drop uh uh drop people behind the lines we
had gliders going in
We bombarded the shore for gliders is because no no sound
You know that's a good I mean that must be a part of it
I can't remember exactly why but that must be that must be it
But they have the gliders going in and oh my gosh what I mean a crazy thing to
be involved in just in the especially back then
Yeah
In uh in the 1940s being in the back of a glider
Uh going essentially crashing
Yeah
And then getting out and then having to figure out where you are
And then to figure out without radios who the good guys are who the bad guys
are
Which direction are we going like all of that so we get dropped off in the
right place?
Right
Some of them were shot down and then they you know a lot of them were shot down
Um, but uh, so they did do things they did do things to soften up those those
brief those beaches and
And all of that, but you know, we're dealing with 1940s technology right off of
lessons of world war one, which was even more horrific
Um, did they have missiles back then that are capable of uh, like being precise?
Or did they just sort of launch them in the general direction?
No, the germans had some uh missile. I believe that missile technology that was
a rocket technology that was um far superior to ours
I think people can you can check me on that
But no, it was mostly like a gigantic bullet coming out of a battleship wow and
uh and hitting something or not
Um, so yeah, it's an amazing place to go for people who haven't been to go to
these memorials
Especially to take kids to these are memorials
And uh to go to pearl harbor and to go to normandy and to go stand up on point
to hawk and look down
And see hey where the rangers had to climb up ropes and ladders and the germans
are firing right down on them from these positions
And they just kept climbing uh the longest day that old movie
Um, it shows that as well and I grew up with that film
It's an old black and white movie that people should watch
They should watch that and saving private ryan but uh and that's the power of
popular culture
Like these movies play an important part in uh in in our popular culture and in
our history
Because you can show these things and create this appreciation and we're just
losing that I think
I mean hollywood used to be our most uh
Most prolific and valuable asset that we would export and so people from all
over the world would see these movies and see this opportunity
That was the united states and I think that's shifted that's shifted over time,
but uh, that's why those war films
I think are so important because you can watch that and say oh my gosh
I am so appreciative of what those guys did and you know what my life here
Maybe I should uh, maybe I can make some changes here and I can uh
Appreciate what they did for us so that I can have make my own decisions and uh
And I can have these freedoms and opportunities rather than just complain about
it because really you know what i'm not doing
Running into a hail of machine gun bullets as I cross this beach
So there's there's a lot to be an appreciate to appreciate the
Previous generations what they did for us