Hot Takes/Unpopular Opinions?

When my son’s school messed up and didn’t send his info in for Boy’s State, I went to the head of the program with American Legion - an old tax client of mine years ago.

I ran into him after my son was assigned to seabees - and I updated him on my son. He was so happy. Pulled up his sleeve and showed a seabees tattoo.

Most people I just say engineer after they look puzzled.
 
I disagree. Draft todays 18-25 into the military to fight WW2, we would lose. Half the country would be in litigation revolving around the draft and the half of those drafted wouldn't fight either because snails would be hurt during shelling or the US was committing war crimes. As a nation, the US isn't willing to get its hands dirty. Our military works today because it is a voluntary professional force whose people want to be there. Start drafting people, you will get "it's not my war"

Prior to December 7, 1941 there was a lot of people who thought the same.

The USA was a mess.

It was going through a terrible economic depression. Isolationism was never stronger. The "Great War" cost 120,000 US lives a generation earlier and, many thought, for what? Anti-war sympathy was high. Nativism. Anti-semitism. Anri-British sentiment. Labor unrest. Some communist sympathies. Some pro-Nazi sympathies. Who cared about defending the Manila, really? Democracy wasn't viewed, by many, as the preferred way to go. Mussolini didin't look so bad. Some didn't think Hitler did either. Racism. Conscription was not popular. Passed into law by a single vote in 1940. The Axis powers preached that the US was a lazy, decadent society only interested in Glenn Miller music and Clark Gable movies (both of whom had later WW2 service).

Were Tojo & Hitler really that crazy to go to war with the USA in 1941? History says obviously they were, but history has that awesome hindsight in its favor.
 
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