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The Untold History Of The United States
2012 · Film · documentary · 585 min
Directed by Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone charts the history of the United States from the Second World War to the present.
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The Untold History of the United States (2012): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1494191/
10 episodes, ~1 hour each
Oliver Stone's re-examination of under-reported events in American history.
;)
Speaking of history and the Cold War, a worthy docuseries to face some uncomfortable facts of the US' post-WW2 behavior: Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. Even Gorbachev wrote an opinion on the subsequently-released book.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995
> they did exactly nothing to take advantage of that disparity
Oh come on, you cannot seriously believe that. Anyhow, I recommend you watch 'The Untold History of the United States' by Oliver Stone [0]. He has done a great job of telling people the stories that are not told in your history classes.
> You join because you want to make a real difference in people’s lives, in a visceral, real way.
What that difference may entail varies greatly though. For one, it might be not being blown up by that IED. For another, it might be being bombed to bits at your cousins wedding, along with the other 40 members of your family, by a drone operator in Nevada. Very visceral indeed.
If you think that working for the military is "doing good" and the US is oh so innocent I suggest you watch the excellent documentary The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untold_History_of_the_United_States
Check out "The Untold History of the United States" on Netflix (Oliver Stone). In it, Stone says that Kennedy was ready to pull out of Vietnam before he was killed, but Johnson never agreed with that decision. So when Johnson became president to replace Kennedy, he doubled down on the war. I don't know how much of this documentary is true, and it has obvious biases, but it makes a lot of interesting points. Starts from WWII and goes on from there, in many parts.
This General was features in an episode of Untold History of the United States. Don't let the fact that Oliver Stone produced this deter you from watching it. I found it a very good, albeit quick, overview of history of the last 100 years. 12 episodes, on Netflix. Weirdly, the last two episodes are really the first two, so start there, the wrap back around to episode 1.
How did "we" come to this? You're asking the largest military wielder and prison population and the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on real people, people going about their contained lives wanting to wake up to see another day, how "we" came to this.
- Hiroshima
- Nagasaki
- Vietnam
- Constant US policy to support genocidal dictators around the world who mass slaughter "their" people, so long as US corporate interests gain over sovereign interests.
Millions of killings later directly and indirectly from US hands, entire lands and societies literally poisoned into waste at US policy over the past 70 years, and one asks how invading Iraq (and Afghanistan) on imaginary and unjustified pretexts was possible. The answers are shocking and simple.
There are a couple classic "American ways" in spirit. The first has some idealistic value (e.g. individual freedom, can-do attitude). Then the second is one that silences all else: hear no evil, see no evil, support our troops (i.e. in reality, support the political monsters who use them). The simplest answers to your question are related to deeply rooted combinations of nationalism, racism, pride, intolerance, regional proximity to other nations, and systems of governance that are both insufficiently compartmentalized and that run on forced funding (taxation). Guaranteed funding, especially with only the masking of "democracy," was a fast path for a super power that thinks itself a "super hero" in the world's eye -- and largely was seen as such to those who didn't face the brunt of its violence -- to guarantee its continued exploits and an accelerating industry of war. Elections put little if any checks/balances upon a congressional network of plunderers who mostly serve the same corporate and violent interests, policies, and strategists, but through lightly varying vocabulary come election. Paranoia that the US could reasonably claim in that last 'new century' and into this one is dismissed by policies that become brutal and offensive.
1. Google the American timelines and legacy of its direct and proxy imperialism: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism
2. Oliver Stone's Showtime series, "Untold History of the United States," is quite worth watching in full. Sure, we can all find faults with it. It's not intended to give a "balanced" account. Rather, it's a crash course in provoking thought about the seldom discussed or even known aspects of US policy compared to the general public and its vapid historical accounting of its negative actions. It's 10 episodes. http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-united-states/home
In episode 3 of Oliver Stones marvelous Documentary "the untold history of the US" you will find a great representation of tose events as well: http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-united-states/season/1/episode/3#/index
Related to this, Showtime is currently airing a rather brilliant set of documentaries narrated by Oliver Stone called the 'Untold History of the United States'.
It basically puts this article into broader context, from the entry to WW2 onward.
Would be interesting to know how much different the reception of those documentaries is for a US-educated citizen. They definitely fit to the overall history being taught over here in Europe, but might conflict heavily with the official narrative in the US.