August 27, 2025 • 36 mins
Hour 3 of the Wednesday, August 27, 2025 A&G Replay contains:
- Bad Ideas (Noah Rothman's Sarcastic Column on Jaws)
- Jack's RBF
- 80th Anniversary of Atom Bomb
- 80th Anniversary of Atom Bomb
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Arm Strong and Getty and he is Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Not live from Studio c Armstrong and Getty. We're off,
You're taking a break.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Come on, enjoy this carefully curated Armstrong and Getty replay.
And as long as we're off, perhaps you'd like to
catch up on podcasts, Subscribe to Armstrong and Getty on demand,
or one more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
We think you'll enjoy it, sir.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
We're gonna need a bigger potion.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Terrifying.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
The movie Jaws came out fifty years ago this summer,
horrifying swimmers all around the world and hoping to God
that as you bobbed around in the ocean you did
not hear at cello.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
All right bottom bottom.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
But it Oh, so this is funny. This reminds me
of our friend James Lindsay when he and his friends
did the grievance papers. They put out these fake studies.
They're incredibly over the top and ridiculous, but you couldn't
tell them for the real thing from the real thing,
because the real thing is over the top and ridiculous
(01:47):
to that point.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'm gonna do a mock one. I could switch the mock.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
One with the Atlantic piece and you wouldn't be able
to tell the difference. But the Atlantic has a piece
out today. The film Jaws came out fifty years ago
this month, trace class divisions differently from the novel that
inspired it in ways it anticipated a fight that has
arguably defined American politics since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
What Jaws got wrong is the title. I thought it
was about the fish bite and peele it was.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It was about a scary shark biting people, and it
made people think, oh my god, that could happen to
me in the ocean. And the end and they catch
the shark and it's a bloody finale and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
There's nothing else to it but that. That's it. That's
the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And it's hilarious that the Atlantic is turning it into
some sort of class division and a commentary on today's politics,
or it anticipated today's politics, or whatever the crap. Anyway,
Noah Rothman of the National Review decided to write in
that style, mocking it.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Basically. Charles C. W.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Cook, who Joe and I both really like responded to
Noah's peace by saying, I am in awe.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Let me read a little bit from it.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
The character Quint, that's the guy we just heard from,
the guy who owned the boat that says we're in
need a bigger boat. He's the salty old dude. The
character Quinn represents the suppressed male id, which struggles against
structural and metasocial taboos, prescribing the full expression of the
archetypical masculine ethos. He is consumed by the sleek white
(03:17):
metaphor of sexual equality, against which he rages until the
last minute he bids farewell and adieu, not to those
Spanish ladies, but to the shackles of conventional gender roles.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Exactly what I thought, exact that's what I took from it.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, when I watched the Shark movie, I mean, this
is no more over the top than the Atlantic piece. Really,
the drive to open the beaches by the fourth of
July is a classic expression of American jingoism and the
blood spilled over his rote commitment to commercialism as an
unremarkable feature of the rapacious capitalist enterprise.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I find that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Hilarious, and that it is so not even this much
different from the actual pieces.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Some of these crazy people write about.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
This stuff right right, So easy to bamboozle them if
you know the language to throw around.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Noah Rothman actually said at the end of he said,
this is really fun. No wonder so many people do
it for a living. One more Jaws a portrayal of
the monstrous menacing and potentially violet other foreign, indeed alien.
It haunts its pursuers, dominates their conscience, and is subject
to abuses and indignities until it meets out the righteous
(04:32):
vengeance of accumulated transgenerational memory. The Shark is the global South,
the black and brown daspora of the bun Dung Revolution,
whatever the hell that means. And I'll just give you
one more that I like Martin Brody. Who is is?
Is that the uh oh Brody is the police chief,
right okay, the weak and crumbling edifice of the post
(04:55):
war consensus. Exhausted and plagued by indecision, He serves as
our to the fraying social order of the past.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
His triumph is pyriic. I mean, it wasn't worth it.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Perched atop a sinking ship, dealt a mortal blow by
the rising vanguard of the subjugated and militant. His reprieve
from the oppressor's fate will be short lived. The Atlantic
pea is great. The Atlantic piece that I read is
so not much different than that. Yeah, and it's just
(05:25):
who dude are It gets to the previous conversation of
like Trump and this man, this New York mayor dude
whatever his name is being in on the joke. Is
the Atlantic in on the joke that they know it's
a joke and they're writing it for their readers who
think it's.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
A joke, or they all taking it seriously. This crap.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
No, you know, it crystallized in my head that in
the same way that if you want to like get
the tension or sell practically anything to a twenty three
year old male, at least in the past, appeal to
sexual desire and they'll just buy anything. And to women
(06:04):
it's you'll be beautiful and desirable and people will like you.
They will freaking buy anything. Appeal to the intellectual vanity
of a certain crowd, and it's mostly on the left.
If you make them believe believing this makes you better
and smarter than everybody else, they will believe freaking anything,
(06:26):
no matter how laughable it is. Lendsy and pluck Rose
and Bogosian with their experiment. You mentioned the infamous the
Grievance study papers. I mean they are the best example
ever of that. You could not make it so stupid
that the intellectual vanity of these people wouldn't make them
lap it up.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah. The Atlantic piece is actually about the different political
orientations of the book versus the movie, and how the
movie got it wrong in portraying class distinctions as opposed
to the book.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Nobody watched the.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Movie and came away from it thinking about class distinctions
at all. It didn't get them wrong. It didn't get
them at all. It's a it's a horror film.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
It's just a short close the beaches, or don't we
there's tremendous money at stake.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
That's just a really good subplot, sure, exactly. And whether
it's a guy in a hockey mask coming on campers
with an axe or a shark in the water, that's
what it is. It's got nothing to do with class
distinctions or any of this other crap. And it didn't
foresee our politics fifty years later.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
What is wrong with you people? If you were to
read more of the Atlantic one and then give us
all an hour to go about our lives, I think
it would be impossible for each of us to remember
which one was the parody and which one was realized.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Is your point, obviously, But yeah, what a bunch of
mumbo jumbo. There are some ideas so ridiculous only an
intellectual would believe them. Thomas Sowell, I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And talking about the Brody is a recent transplant from
New York City.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
This is from the Atlantic, the actual piece. Brody the character.
You should have just read it and asked us which
one of us? They just guess.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Brody, the character in the movie, is a recent transplant
from New York City in the film, living a seemingly
idyllic life, and Amity went a home with a home
on the water, although he is not college educated.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
What the hell's it got to do with me? And
didn't anybody even know that?
Speaker 3 (08:33):
His primary virtue is that he defers to people who
are and it becomes a foil for Amity's working people,
who in the film are portrayed as unpleasant or obtused
and at best well meaning but shortsighted. What are you
talking about? That was what I said.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I walked out of Jaws and I said, you know what, honey,
the working people are so obtuse.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
In that movie. I couldn't enjoy it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
And if you ever go to Universe, and we've probably
most have us done that. If you've ever been to
Universal Studios in Los Angeles and the old jawsh shark
comes out of the water and you go ah to.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Gets you kind of wet, that's exactly what you think.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
The obtuseness of the working class, that's what you're thinking about.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Just you know what, you peep a fine, do what
you I just don't want you in charge of anything.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well yeah, I used to think that too.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I don't want you to exist dull, or you need
to be in a camp or okay, fine, you can
live your free life is in camp, but you don't
get to be in college teaching kids this crap and
convincing him it's true, because that is a problem for me.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Ugh, so true. Now wow, speaking of delusion, Wow, wow.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I mean, it just blows my mind that you watched
the Shark movie that's what you came away with.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Well, it's it's a great example of if you spend
your all of your time looking for something, you will
find it well, whether authentically or not. It's like the
race of session crowd that sees everything through the lens
of race.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Well, yeah, they'll cook up you know.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Examples both real and imagine where people have racial feelings
that aren't very pretty, but if you don't spend all
your time looking for them, like plenty of black and
brown and pink people all over the world, you're just
not worried about it. Life is fine.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I just in my mind conflated the two I was thinking.
I was about to say, in the example of the
shark as the other representing the brown and black.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
No, that was Noah's thing, right right, Yeah. Did you
ever have a college class like this?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
This was hot like for our age subliminal message in
advertising and how they're doing it all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I remember the college professor.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Putting up a can of coke with the water droplets
on it and saying, you see how this water droplet
is clearly a woman's body and this one is It's no,
they're just water droplet's. It's like staring at clouds and
you can think they are anything. There's no subliminal anything
going on here. It's just you're making this, this is crap.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, yeah, just sound confident and people will buy it,
particularly if you're you know, within the ivied walls of
the university, and if you're saying the old youngsters they
don't know better, combined with I just need to remember
this because you're going to ask me about it on
the test.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show, The
Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
A question for I guess anybody on the staff, so
it could be you know, anybody who works with me.
This is I know, and I know what the answer
is going to be. Yeah, and there's a point to this.
They can help you, you the listener, if you suffer
from RBF resting bitch face, which is a common thing,
do I, Jack, Do I come off as unapproachable when
(12:02):
really I'm just this is just my normal face.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, I see everybody hesitating. Let me lead
the pros a million yea. I have sat in meetings thinking,
oh my god, you're radiating hate visibly.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So that's the first question on the whole. Do you
have RBF and what to do about it? Thing that
I came across. I've been working on this for two
weeks and I think I'm getting somewhere.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Wow. Okay, yeah, so some of it is.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I came to this idea on my own, but
actually did a research and it's a common thing practicing
neutral expressions. It's the whole resting bitch face is just uh,
you know, maybe you were born that way or for
some reason, a lot of people with age you just
(12:56):
get used to like, you know, your muscles relaxing and falling,
and you're the falling muscles of your face kind of
puts you in a frown for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And I've known.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Lots of people older people like that happens regularly with
old people where you see a guy or a woman
who just looks so grumpy and you engage them at
all and they just light up with a beaming smile.
They're not grumpy at all. That's just their face sagging.
But why do you laugh at that, kittie?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Like God, I can just picture you saying that to somebody. Oh,
you're actually quite pleasant in your face was just sagging.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
You're not a nasty human, right, And they're thinking I
was thinking the same thing of you as psycho killer
looking bastard.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
There are practical things you can do if you're concerned
about resting bitch face or as friends have told me,
I've got our mf resting murdery face like a step
beyond arbah. Whether you're trying to change how others perceive
you or feel more approachable, and here's a rundown of
your options, practice neutral expressions.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
In the mirror.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I had been doing that, and now I've been walking
around with what I hope is at least a neutral
expression on my face most of the time. Slightly lift
the corners of your mouth to create a softer, more approachable,
resting face. You can also practice relax brows if you
got furrow brows. I don't have that, but I do
have the mouth thing. Even if your face seems serious,
(14:19):
open posture and eye contact can off set it also,
But intentional smiling is a big thing. Try the soft
smile when you're in social settings, barely upturned lips, not
no need for a full grin.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
That's the thing. I've been traveled by. Oh okay, so
it's kind of it was kind of fun. I was
on vacation, so you know, I'm around people I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So I was able to practice it a lot and
I got results, and I was comfortable practicing because I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
If I practiced.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
You know, if I first started practicing around here, people
are gonna say are you okay?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Are you constipated? Or do you want something?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Or if you go too far with the silly grin,
you know, it's like, are you gonna kill me?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I mean, what is happening right now? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
What are we doing here? Why do you have that
look on your face? But I noticed, and this is
so crazy. I was going around with the kind of neutral,
slightly upturned expression and getting a noticeably better result out
of people that I interacted with, whether it's just somebody at.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
The coffee shop or just walking down the street. Yeah,
it's crazy. I've been doing this my whole.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Life, walking down the street looking like I want to
kill you and radiating hate, as Joe said, and getting
an immediate result by trying to change that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah. Yeah, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
There's a person who I love very much, who will
remain nameless, who has the who has had to learn
not to be completely transparent when you've lost her interest,
Like she'll tell a story. Then you'll tell a story
and you'll just see click that moment, I totally lost
(16:06):
interest as the you know, and we have been working
on a oh my god, cheerfully attentive look.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Hmmm. Oh, I'm doing it right now, right, So it's better.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
I like it. It's better.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I feel we're no longer afraid.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
And you know what's interesting about it, the whole just
it's kind of similar like with stretching, you just get
used to your muscles being in a certain way. In
my face, in my mind, it feels like I'm grinning
like the Joker from Batman. But I look in the
mirror and it's just completely neutral because my muscles are
so formed to frown.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So it's it's gonna take her.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I gotta I gotta make sure I check on a
daily basis so I don't end up walking the halls
grinning like a homicidal lunatic.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Well see that's the idea across the line right here.
Yeah like nice, yes, nice, very good.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
It feels really uncomfortable and unnatural for me, But like
I said, I've been getting better result results, So give
it a whirl, see.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
If you can change it.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
And of course the idea with like with stretching and
lifting rates or whatever or posture is it becomes your
habit and it just becomes normal and natural and you
don't have to try anymore. Quick question for you, what
if you happen to miss this unbelievable radio program.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
The answer is easy, friends, just download our podcast, Armstrong
and Getty on Demand. It's the podcast version of the
broadcast show, available anytime, any day, every single podcast platform
known demand.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Download it now. Armstrong and Getty on Demand, arm.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Strong, He Yetty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
The US Navy has dozens of nuclear powered submarines. Fourteen
are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Each Ohio class sub
can carry twenty Trident ballistic missiles with eight nuclear warheads each,
meaning one American Ohio class nuclear submarine could strike one
hundred and sixty cities at once.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I thought it would be good to play something current
before we get into a discussion about the anniversary. Eighty
years since we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. We
still have wars going on. Nuclear weapons are still a conversation.
People are still willing to fight to the death over
a variety for a variety of reasons. Nothing has changed
on that front since World War II. World War One
(18:24):
was going to be the war to end all wars.
Then we had World War Two, which was significantly significantly bigger.
And since World War Two, we have now had more
people die in wars since World War.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Two than happened during World War Two.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
And I believe as we speak, we have the most
armed conflicts going on Earth that has been recorded.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Really, just heard that yesterday. I didn't know that it's
like one hundred and forty or something like that.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, So I get discouraged sometimes with my love of
history and that I feel like it is wrongly portrayed
so often, or narratives catch on and they just become
the truth forever in some cases, and they're not accurate,
and it's just the way it is. Like our friend,
(19:11):
we like, Victor David Hanson's he wrote a book a
couple of years called The World Wars, and he was
trying to make the argument that it was really separate
wars that we call it World War Two, but there
were separate wars going on that really didn't have much
to do with each other. This other book that i'd
been reading just recently, Operation Downfall by Richard B. Frank
(19:34):
It's the most recent book written about Downfall was going
to be the was the campaign for US to end
the war with Japan. Japan bombs US December seventh, nineteen
forty one. They attacked US. Hitler had already been defeated
at this point, and we needed to figure out how
to finish off the Japanese who were still fighting like crazy.
But the whole fight in Japan and fighting Germany didn't
(19:57):
really have much to do with each other. There are
a couple of ins stances when Japan and Germany kind
of worked together, but if it ever came down to it,
I mean, think about it. These are two incredibly racist
regimes that believe the other side shouldn't exist.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
On planet Earth, so at stay the hell away.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
The Nazis would have killed every Japanese person on Earth
if they had the opportunity, and vice versa. Japan was
an incredibly racist nation. They believe they were superior to
the Chinese, let alone the white mongrel United States. And
this Frank's guy is trying to make the argument that
a lot of historians have, but it just hasn't worked yet.
(20:37):
That World War Two started in nineteen thirty seven when
Japan invaded China and started taking over that part of
the globe. Because we're mostly from Europe and we're so
Europe focused, and most of our World War two movies
are about Europe and fighting the Nazis, we just we
don't we think World War two started in September of
(21:00):
thirty nine when Germany goes into Poland and all those
countries and start doing their thing. But the Japanese invaded
China in nineteen thirty seven and started one hell of
a war. Eight million Chinese had died at the hands
of the Japanese.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Before Pearl Harbor. Eight million Chinese.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, Japan was one of the most ruthless regimes that's
ever existed on planet Earth. Why we regularly refer to
Nazis or Hitler like the worst thing that has ever happened,
I don't quite know. Stalin was worth worse than Hitler,
and the Japanese were more deadly than the Nazis. Japan
controlled twenty percent of the planet what they were fighting
(21:46):
at the time that we defeated him, a significantly greater
chunk than the Nazis took over.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Even though they took over most of Europe and call
it racism or bigotry or just resentment. But I've always
reacted to the obscention unspeakably stupid statement from progressives that
only white people can be racist, because ask Korean about
the Japanese, right, ask a Japanese ferson about the Chinese,
(22:13):
Ask a Filipino about any of them. Oh my god,
will they bring the hate anyway? But part of that
is fairly legitimate resentment of I don't know, killing eight
million of our people, often in horrific you know ways.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, And things had gotten so ugly there at the end,
fighting Japanese soldiers island by island as we tried to
get close enough to the main island of Japan to
at the time we thought we were going to invade.
We ended up deciding that wasn't going to work because
it would have been too deadly and too costly. Sixty
(22:47):
between sixty and seventy percent of all of our casualties
happened in the last year of the war. Half of
all marine deaths happened in the last couple of months
as we were fighting island to island. By the time
we got to Water Canal was the first battle in
which we lost more people, more men died that were
US soldiers than the Japanese lost, and we just figured
(23:08):
that that was going to continue as we got closer
to the island and then invading the island, we were
going to take way more deads than they were going
to take. So people who make the argument we shouldn't
have dropped the bomb, why do you think we should
suffer more losses than the people that attacked us?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
What's the argument there?
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Well, and there are a lot of good arguments on
that side. Loyal listener Mikey San Francisco urged us me
to read about the Battle of Okinawa, which raged for
two months in three weeks and was one of the
last big ones before we were either going to invade
Japan or not. But one hundred thousand Japanese troops in Okinawa,
(23:50):
fifty thousand Allied casualties, around one hundred thousand Japanese casualties,
also including local Okinawan's conscripted into the Japanese army. According
to localists, at least one hundred and forty nine thousand
Okinawan people were killed, died by course suicide, or went missing.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
So, yeah, the.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Carnage at the end was Oh, it's unspeakable. It's unthinkable.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
It is a version of total war that is practically
unseen on planet Earth. Why it doesn't get discussed more often,
I don't know. And then as to the idea that
Japan would have surrendered at any point, so Japan had
never surrendered historically in their twenty seven hundred year existence,
(24:34):
they had never surrendered to an invader, and more recently,
during World War Two, no Japanese unit, not one, had
been surrendered in any battle. No matter how defeated they were,
they would continue to fight until they were all dead.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
That was just to the last span their culture.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
And it's kind of hard for us to get into
the mindset of It's why the whole Kamakazi thing worked.
They have a of mindset that we do not have
of where they would take such great pride to have
their young son go get in a plane and fly
it into a ship and die. They were perfectly okay
with that. It made every bit of sense to them
(25:13):
to serve their God, king Herohido. Thing that they had
going on that we also can't quite wrap our heads
around culturally, because it not only was it a monarch,
but it was a religious figure and we just we can't.
It doesn't make any sense to us culturally the way
that that worked. Roosevelt also believed, if you're a fan
(25:37):
of World War One, you know the hole stabbed in
the back myth that entered into Germany after Germany lost
and we left their government, we the Allies left their
government in charge. Then the young Hitlers of the world,
people that had fought in the warst started this whole.
Our government stabbed us in the back, and it's the
dirty Jews that caused it. Thing that grew and grew
(25:58):
and grew and led to the eyes of the anger
of the German society and Nazi Germany and World War
two and all that. Roosevelt knew that, and he didn't
want to leave in Germany or Japan any He wanted
to make sure Roosevelt believed Germany and Japan, every man,
woman and child in the country had to believe they
were defeated. To make sure that they either one of
them didn't rise up again. They had to all know
(26:20):
they were beaten, completely beaten. They were their own government
didn't stab in the back, None like that happened. They
were soundly defeated, and that was one of the reasons
they had to take it clear to the end the
way they did, combined with that nobody had ever surrendered,
so there's no reason to think they would ever give up.
The Japanese we now have we've only had this for
thirty years. We now have the communications that were going
(26:41):
on in Japan thanks to Japanese historians, there were only
six people in control of the whole decision, they called
the Big Six. Five of them were in the military,
and they had no interest in surrendering whatsoever, and they
were willing to lose tens of millions of Japanese civilians.
They believe if we surrounded them and did a blockade
(27:03):
and tried to starve them out, which ended up that
was going to be the plan. If we didn't drop
the bomb, we were going to surround Japan and starve
millions of people until they surrendered, which would have killed
way more people than the bombs killed. But the Big
Six in Japan, they figured if twenty million Japanese starved,
the world opinion will finally turn against the Allies in
the United States and.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
We'll be very hamas like strategy.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Exactly, and we'll be able to negotiate a much better situation.
They're perfectly comfortable with that for anybody who argues that
there is a way out that would have been less
deadly than the nuclear weapons. Also mentioned it the other day,
but worth mentioning again, around two hundred thousand people were
killed by the bombs. It's hard depends on where you
(27:48):
know you do the cutoff because the cancer later and
everything like that. But around two hundred thousand died from
the bombs that were dropped eighty years ago tomorrow, and
then on the ninth the other bomb. Twice as many
Japanese as that died at the hands of the Russians
in the very same weeks as Russia was coming on
and taking ground and trying to take it back from
(28:09):
that much more ruthless than we were.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
When you ever hear anybody say anything about that.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Well, yeah, self hatred is the hallmark of the progressive
and they're proud of it.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
They stoke it, they like it, and it's just it's
it's a perverse.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
They had a million men ready to defend a ground invasion,
some eight thousand planes, maybe half of which we're going
to be kamakazis attacking every one of our ships which
would have been That's why they ultimately decided, and we've
only known this since the nineties, that our Navy decided,
who ain't going to do this? That's a no. We're
(28:50):
a no vote on that. So the ground invasion was
on Gonnam because it would have been too deadly. It
just absolutely couldn't be done. So it was either starve
them out or drop the bomb. So I went to
the Oppenheimer movie with a friend when it was that
three four years ago that that Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Movie came out.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
This friend was a super lib But anyway, we're driving
away from the movie theater and we're having a conversation
about the whole should we have dropped the bomb or not?
Kind of got started the conversation, and it was very
funny because it took us ten fifteen minutes of driving
and saying, I know, can you believe that there are
some people that believe that Before we realized we were,
(29:29):
we had completely different positions. We're both saying, I know,
it's crazy that people believe that. I was thinking it's
crazy that people believe we shouldn't have dropped the bomb.
She was thinking, it's crazy that people think we should
have dropped the bomb, and at some point and it
got very quiet in the car after that, we realized, oh, oh,
(29:50):
we're completely on the opposite side of this, because those
of us on whichever side just can't believe the others.
I believed what they believe, and I'm on the side
of obviously we should have dropped the bomb. Who wouldn't
have given the circumstances. But there are plenty of people
that think it's just nuts that we opened up the
(30:10):
can of worms, and it's one of the great black
marks in US history that we crossed that line and drop.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Them atomic bomb on Japan. Yeah, what's the other pushback?
The best? What's the college kid, college professor pushback on
dropping the bomb?
Speaker 4 (30:26):
That Japan was prepared to offer a not unconditional, but
more or less complete surrender, and that it just had
to be worked out over the course of a couple
more days of conversation.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah, there's no documentation for that.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
There are a couple of communications from a couple of
people that hint that that might be possible, and they
extrapolate from there and feel free. We can talk about
this as long as you want, But on the at
home sociological why do people believe what your friend did.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
It occurred to me, and I've said this many, many times, that.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
If you are on the left, you get a great
deal of social reinforcement, a lot of pats on the back,
acceptance for being a self hating American.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
But it's funny. I hadn't really looked at it from
the other perspective.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
You cannot be accepted in those circles if you are
a patriotic American who thinks, by and large, we have
been a great country doing mostly the right thing. I
mean that is you are drummed out. That's it's like
committing an act of violence, you know, at a social club.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
There's no hearing you're gone. That's enormous social pressure for
those people.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Well, just as a response to your thing for we
and we can break and I want to get two
in the weeds done this. But the Big Six made
all the decisions for Japan. If there was going to
be any sort of surrender, they would have to do it.
There's no indication anybody in that group wanted to surrender.
And five of the six were in the military and
they absolutely were into fighting to the last man. So
it just was never gonna happen, right anyway, I wanted
(32:09):
to get this on the fifth because I have a
feeling tomorrow you'll hear a lot of news from mainstream
media pushing the idea that we did something wrong, and
I'll be interested to see how that plays on your
evening newscast, the.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Armstrong and Getty Show. Yeah, more Jack, your show, podcasts
and our Hot Lakes.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Do you have a compelling reason for why we the
eighty year anniversary of US dropping the bomb on Japan
is tomorrow. Do you have a reason why we focus
so much more on the fight in the nazis European
part of World War Two as opposed to the Pacific War.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
I don't know that I've perceived that in the same
way you did. I've always been into the Pacific War,
partly because my father in law served there, and I've
always been acutely aware of it.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I don't know culturally, I.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Know, factually, in terms of movies and books and everything, like,
the whole European theater dominates and has forever. I think
it's because it was just so morally more clear cut.
Things got so ugly against the Japanese bit by bit,
island by island where both sides were just so the
(33:36):
book i'm reading read several of them. Twilight of the
Gods by Ian Tole, which is considered one of the
definitive books on it. He had a story. Oh, by
the way, we got a text the Japanese. The text was,
it's cute that you think the Japanese surrendered because of
the bombs. It was because they knew Russia was coming.
There's no documentation about that. If you have a book
that says that's true, that's a common narrative, but there's
(33:57):
no documentation that that conversation was being had by the
Big Six who made these decisions in Japan. So if
you have a different book that says they were, you know,
feel free to text me.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I'd be interested in reading it.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
For instance, on one of the islands, and I don't
remember which one it was, but this became a common thing.
Our marines would come across dead US soldiers who had
had their genitals cut off and shoved in their mouths,
sometimes while they were alive, by the Japanese. So the
Japanese soldiers had come across, you know, a wounded marine
cut off his junk stick in his mouth, So we
(34:32):
got more and more brutal, and it just it got
that way to where it was just like freaking Lord
of the Flies, total war, as awful as it could get,
foot by foot, trench by trench in the mud and
the blood and your own feces and everything right across
the islands, And that's what it was going to be
in Japan. And it had a story in there of
(34:55):
collecting gold teeth became a thing, so US soldiers would
collect gold teeth and had a story in there about
one US soldier coming across a wounded but still alive
Japanese who he then took his bayonet and started digging
in the guy's mouth trying to pry his teeth out
while they're still alive. Of some of his fellow US
soldiers said, dude, that's not cool. Came up and shot
(35:17):
the guy in the head to put him out of
his misery. But that's the sort of warfare it was
there at the end, and it was going to be
that times. Who knows how many thousand on the beaches
of Japan if we actually invaded.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Well, and I think Europe got more coverage partly because
a film crew could do what they did then go
back to Paris or London or whatever, and so you
can't do that in the islands of the Pacific. And
they said, crisis a legend alls.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
A hard time.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
This bad trucker with eliasa bad therapy and a mouth
they went. They covered it all this morning, and tomorrow
they'll do even more.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
The arms strong and Getty showed the conscience of any
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Arm Strong and Getty and he is Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Not live from Studio c Armstrong and Getty. We're off,
You're taking a break.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Come on, enjoy this carefully curated Armstrong and Getty replay.
And as long as we're off, perhaps you'd like to
catch up on podcasts, Subscribe to Armstrong and Getty on demand,
or one more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
We think you'll enjoy it, sir.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
We're gonna need a bigger potion.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Terrifying.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
The movie Jaws came out fifty years ago this summer,
horrifying swimmers all around the world and hoping to God
that as you bobbed around in the ocean you did
not hear at cello.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
All right bottom bottom.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
But it Oh, so this is funny. This reminds me
of our friend James Lindsay when he and his friends
did the grievance papers. They put out these fake studies.
They're incredibly over the top and ridiculous, but you couldn't
tell them for the real thing from the real thing,
because the real thing is over the top and ridiculous
(01:47):
to that point.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'm gonna do a mock one. I could switch the mock.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
One with the Atlantic piece and you wouldn't be able
to tell the difference. But the Atlantic has a piece
out today. The film Jaws came out fifty years ago
this month, trace class divisions differently from the novel that
inspired it in ways it anticipated a fight that has
arguably defined American politics since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
What Jaws got wrong is the title. I thought it
was about the fish bite and peele it was.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It was about a scary shark biting people, and it
made people think, oh my god, that could happen to
me in the ocean. And the end and they catch
the shark and it's a bloody finale and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
There's nothing else to it but that. That's it. That's
the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And it's hilarious that the Atlantic is turning it into
some sort of class division and a commentary on today's politics,
or it anticipated today's politics, or whatever the crap. Anyway,
Noah Rothman of the National Review decided to write in
that style, mocking it.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Basically. Charles C. W.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Cook, who Joe and I both really like responded to
Noah's peace by saying, I am in awe.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Let me read a little bit from it.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
The character Quint, that's the guy we just heard from,
the guy who owned the boat that says we're in
need a bigger boat. He's the salty old dude. The
character Quinn represents the suppressed male id, which struggles against
structural and metasocial taboos, prescribing the full expression of the
archetypical masculine ethos. He is consumed by the sleek white
(03:17):
metaphor of sexual equality, against which he rages until the
last minute he bids farewell and adieu, not to those
Spanish ladies, but to the shackles of conventional gender roles.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Exactly what I thought, exact that's what I took from it.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, when I watched the Shark movie, I mean, this
is no more over the top than the Atlantic piece. Really,
the drive to open the beaches by the fourth of
July is a classic expression of American jingoism and the
blood spilled over his rote commitment to commercialism as an
unremarkable feature of the rapacious capitalist enterprise.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I find that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Hilarious, and that it is so not even this much
different from the actual pieces.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Some of these crazy people write about.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
This stuff right right, So easy to bamboozle them if
you know the language to throw around.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Noah Rothman actually said at the end of he said,
this is really fun. No wonder so many people do
it for a living. One more Jaws a portrayal of
the monstrous menacing and potentially violet other foreign, indeed alien.
It haunts its pursuers, dominates their conscience, and is subject
to abuses and indignities until it meets out the righteous
(04:32):
vengeance of accumulated transgenerational memory. The Shark is the global South,
the black and brown daspora of the bun Dung Revolution,
whatever the hell that means. And I'll just give you
one more that I like Martin Brody. Who is is?
Is that the uh oh Brody is the police chief,
right okay, the weak and crumbling edifice of the post
(04:55):
war consensus. Exhausted and plagued by indecision, He serves as
our to the fraying social order of the past.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
His triumph is pyriic. I mean, it wasn't worth it.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Perched atop a sinking ship, dealt a mortal blow by
the rising vanguard of the subjugated and militant. His reprieve
from the oppressor's fate will be short lived. The Atlantic
pea is great. The Atlantic piece that I read is
so not much different than that. Yeah, and it's just
(05:25):
who dude are It gets to the previous conversation of
like Trump and this man, this New York mayor dude
whatever his name is being in on the joke. Is
the Atlantic in on the joke that they know it's
a joke and they're writing it for their readers who
think it's.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
A joke, or they all taking it seriously. This crap.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
No, you know, it crystallized in my head that in
the same way that if you want to like get
the tension or sell practically anything to a twenty three
year old male, at least in the past, appeal to
sexual desire and they'll just buy anything. And to women
(06:04):
it's you'll be beautiful and desirable and people will like you.
They will freaking buy anything. Appeal to the intellectual vanity
of a certain crowd, and it's mostly on the left.
If you make them believe believing this makes you better
and smarter than everybody else, they will believe freaking anything,
(06:26):
no matter how laughable it is. Lendsy and pluck Rose
and Bogosian with their experiment. You mentioned the infamous the
Grievance study papers. I mean they are the best example
ever of that. You could not make it so stupid
that the intellectual vanity of these people wouldn't make them
lap it up.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah. The Atlantic piece is actually about the different political
orientations of the book versus the movie, and how the
movie got it wrong in portraying class distinctions as opposed
to the book.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Nobody watched the.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Movie and came away from it thinking about class distinctions
at all. It didn't get them wrong. It didn't get
them at all. It's a it's a horror film.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
It's just a short close the beaches, or don't we
there's tremendous money at stake.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
That's just a really good subplot, sure, exactly. And whether
it's a guy in a hockey mask coming on campers
with an axe or a shark in the water, that's
what it is. It's got nothing to do with class
distinctions or any of this other crap. And it didn't
foresee our politics fifty years later.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
What is wrong with you people? If you were to
read more of the Atlantic one and then give us
all an hour to go about our lives, I think
it would be impossible for each of us to remember
which one was the parody and which one was realized.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Is your point, obviously, But yeah, what a bunch of
mumbo jumbo. There are some ideas so ridiculous only an
intellectual would believe them. Thomas Sowell, I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And talking about the Brody is a recent transplant from
New York City.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
This is from the Atlantic, the actual piece. Brody the character.
You should have just read it and asked us which
one of us? They just guess.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Brody, the character in the movie, is a recent transplant
from New York City in the film, living a seemingly
idyllic life, and Amity went a home with a home
on the water, although he is not college educated.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
What the hell's it got to do with me? And
didn't anybody even know that?
Speaker 3 (08:33):
His primary virtue is that he defers to people who
are and it becomes a foil for Amity's working people,
who in the film are portrayed as unpleasant or obtused
and at best well meaning but shortsighted. What are you
talking about? That was what I said.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I walked out of Jaws and I said, you know what, honey,
the working people are so obtuse.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
In that movie. I couldn't enjoy it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
And if you ever go to Universe, and we've probably
most have us done that. If you've ever been to
Universal Studios in Los Angeles and the old jawsh shark
comes out of the water and you go ah to.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Gets you kind of wet, that's exactly what you think.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
The obtuseness of the working class, that's what you're thinking about.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Just you know what, you peep a fine, do what
you I just don't want you in charge of anything.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well yeah, I used to think that too.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I don't want you to exist dull, or you need
to be in a camp or okay, fine, you can
live your free life is in camp, but you don't
get to be in college teaching kids this crap and
convincing him it's true, because that is a problem for me.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Ugh, so true. Now wow, speaking of delusion, Wow, wow.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I mean, it just blows my mind that you watched
the Shark movie that's what you came away with.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Well, it's it's a great example of if you spend
your all of your time looking for something, you will
find it well, whether authentically or not. It's like the
race of session crowd that sees everything through the lens
of race.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Well, yeah, they'll cook up you know.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Examples both real and imagine where people have racial feelings
that aren't very pretty, but if you don't spend all
your time looking for them, like plenty of black and
brown and pink people all over the world, you're just
not worried about it. Life is fine.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I just in my mind conflated the two I was thinking.
I was about to say, in the example of the
shark as the other representing the brown and black.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
No, that was Noah's thing, right right, Yeah. Did you
ever have a college class like this?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
This was hot like for our age subliminal message in
advertising and how they're doing it all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I remember the college professor.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Putting up a can of coke with the water droplets
on it and saying, you see how this water droplet
is clearly a woman's body and this one is It's no,
they're just water droplet's. It's like staring at clouds and
you can think they are anything. There's no subliminal anything
going on here. It's just you're making this, this is crap.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, yeah, just sound confident and people will buy it,
particularly if you're you know, within the ivied walls of
the university, and if you're saying the old youngsters they
don't know better, combined with I just need to remember
this because you're going to ask me about it on
the test.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show, The
Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
A question for I guess anybody on the staff, so
it could be you know, anybody who works with me.
This is I know, and I know what the answer
is going to be. Yeah, and there's a point to this.
They can help you, you the listener, if you suffer
from RBF resting bitch face, which is a common thing,
do I, Jack, Do I come off as unapproachable when
(12:02):
really I'm just this is just my normal face.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, I see everybody hesitating. Let me lead
the pros a million yea. I have sat in meetings thinking,
oh my god, you're radiating hate visibly.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So that's the first question on the whole. Do you
have RBF and what to do about it? Thing that
I came across. I've been working on this for two
weeks and I think I'm getting somewhere.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Wow. Okay, yeah, so some of it is.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I came to this idea on my own, but
actually did a research and it's a common thing practicing
neutral expressions. It's the whole resting bitch face is just uh,
you know, maybe you were born that way or for
some reason, a lot of people with age you just
(12:56):
get used to like, you know, your muscles relaxing and falling,
and you're the falling muscles of your face kind of
puts you in a frown for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And I've known.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Lots of people older people like that happens regularly with
old people where you see a guy or a woman
who just looks so grumpy and you engage them at
all and they just light up with a beaming smile.
They're not grumpy at all. That's just their face sagging.
But why do you laugh at that, kittie?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Like God, I can just picture you saying that to somebody. Oh,
you're actually quite pleasant in your face was just sagging.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
You're not a nasty human, right, And they're thinking I
was thinking the same thing of you as psycho killer
looking bastard.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
There are practical things you can do if you're concerned
about resting bitch face or as friends have told me,
I've got our mf resting murdery face like a step
beyond arbah. Whether you're trying to change how others perceive
you or feel more approachable, and here's a rundown of
your options, practice neutral expressions.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
In the mirror.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I had been doing that, and now I've been walking
around with what I hope is at least a neutral
expression on my face most of the time. Slightly lift
the corners of your mouth to create a softer, more approachable,
resting face. You can also practice relax brows if you
got furrow brows. I don't have that, but I do
have the mouth thing. Even if your face seems serious,
(14:19):
open posture and eye contact can off set it also,
But intentional smiling is a big thing. Try the soft
smile when you're in social settings, barely upturned lips, not
no need for a full grin.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
That's the thing. I've been traveled by. Oh okay, so
it's kind of it was kind of fun. I was
on vacation, so you know, I'm around people I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So I was able to practice it a lot and
I got results, and I was comfortable practicing because I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
If I practiced.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
You know, if I first started practicing around here, people
are gonna say are you okay?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Are you constipated? Or do you want something?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Or if you go too far with the silly grin,
you know, it's like, are you gonna kill me?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I mean, what is happening right now? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
What are we doing here? Why do you have that
look on your face? But I noticed, and this is
so crazy. I was going around with the kind of neutral,
slightly upturned expression and getting a noticeably better result out
of people that I interacted with, whether it's just somebody at.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
The coffee shop or just walking down the street. Yeah,
it's crazy. I've been doing this my whole.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Life, walking down the street looking like I want to
kill you and radiating hate, as Joe said, and getting
an immediate result by trying to change that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah. Yeah, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
There's a person who I love very much, who will
remain nameless, who has the who has had to learn
not to be completely transparent when you've lost her interest,
Like she'll tell a story. Then you'll tell a story
and you'll just see click that moment, I totally lost
(16:06):
interest as the you know, and we have been working
on a oh my god, cheerfully attentive look.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Hmmm. Oh, I'm doing it right now, right, So it's better.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
I like it. It's better.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I feel we're no longer afraid.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
And you know what's interesting about it, the whole just
it's kind of similar like with stretching, you just get
used to your muscles being in a certain way. In
my face, in my mind, it feels like I'm grinning
like the Joker from Batman. But I look in the
mirror and it's just completely neutral because my muscles are
so formed to frown.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So it's it's gonna take her.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I gotta I gotta make sure I check on a
daily basis so I don't end up walking the halls
grinning like a homicidal lunatic.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Well see that's the idea across the line right here.
Yeah like nice, yes, nice, very good.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
It feels really uncomfortable and unnatural for me, But like
I said, I've been getting better result results, So give
it a whirl, see.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
If you can change it.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
And of course the idea with like with stretching and
lifting rates or whatever or posture is it becomes your
habit and it just becomes normal and natural and you
don't have to try anymore. Quick question for you, what
if you happen to miss this unbelievable radio program.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
The answer is easy, friends, just download our podcast, Armstrong
and Getty on Demand. It's the podcast version of the
broadcast show, available anytime, any day, every single podcast platform
known demand.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Download it now. Armstrong and Getty on Demand, arm.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Strong, He Yetty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
The US Navy has dozens of nuclear powered submarines. Fourteen
are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Each Ohio class sub
can carry twenty Trident ballistic missiles with eight nuclear warheads each,
meaning one American Ohio class nuclear submarine could strike one
hundred and sixty cities at once.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I thought it would be good to play something current
before we get into a discussion about the anniversary. Eighty
years since we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. We
still have wars going on. Nuclear weapons are still a conversation.
People are still willing to fight to the death over
a variety for a variety of reasons. Nothing has changed
on that front since World War II. World War One
(18:24):
was going to be the war to end all wars.
Then we had World War Two, which was significantly significantly bigger.
And since World War Two, we have now had more
people die in wars since World War.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Two than happened during World War Two.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
And I believe as we speak, we have the most
armed conflicts going on Earth that has been recorded.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Really, just heard that yesterday. I didn't know that it's
like one hundred and forty or something like that.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, So I get discouraged sometimes with my love of
history and that I feel like it is wrongly portrayed
so often, or narratives catch on and they just become
the truth forever in some cases, and they're not accurate,
and it's just the way it is. Like our friend,
(19:11):
we like, Victor David Hanson's he wrote a book a
couple of years called The World Wars, and he was
trying to make the argument that it was really separate
wars that we call it World War Two, but there
were separate wars going on that really didn't have much
to do with each other. This other book that i'd
been reading just recently, Operation Downfall by Richard B. Frank
(19:34):
It's the most recent book written about Downfall was going
to be the was the campaign for US to end
the war with Japan. Japan bombs US December seventh, nineteen
forty one. They attacked US. Hitler had already been defeated
at this point, and we needed to figure out how
to finish off the Japanese who were still fighting like crazy.
But the whole fight in Japan and fighting Germany didn't
(19:57):
really have much to do with each other. There are
a couple of ins stances when Japan and Germany kind
of worked together, but if it ever came down to it,
I mean, think about it. These are two incredibly racist
regimes that believe the other side shouldn't exist.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
On planet Earth, so at stay the hell away.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
The Nazis would have killed every Japanese person on Earth
if they had the opportunity, and vice versa. Japan was
an incredibly racist nation. They believe they were superior to
the Chinese, let alone the white mongrel United States. And
this Frank's guy is trying to make the argument that
a lot of historians have, but it just hasn't worked yet.
(20:37):
That World War Two started in nineteen thirty seven when
Japan invaded China and started taking over that part of
the globe. Because we're mostly from Europe and we're so
Europe focused, and most of our World War two movies
are about Europe and fighting the Nazis, we just we
don't we think World War two started in September of
(21:00):
thirty nine when Germany goes into Poland and all those
countries and start doing their thing. But the Japanese invaded
China in nineteen thirty seven and started one hell of
a war. Eight million Chinese had died at the hands
of the Japanese.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Before Pearl Harbor. Eight million Chinese.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, Japan was one of the most ruthless regimes that's
ever existed on planet Earth. Why we regularly refer to
Nazis or Hitler like the worst thing that has ever happened,
I don't quite know. Stalin was worth worse than Hitler,
and the Japanese were more deadly than the Nazis. Japan
controlled twenty percent of the planet what they were fighting
(21:46):
at the time that we defeated him, a significantly greater
chunk than the Nazis took over.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Even though they took over most of Europe and call
it racism or bigotry or just resentment. But I've always
reacted to the obscention unspeakably stupid statement from progressives that
only white people can be racist, because ask Korean about
the Japanese, right, ask a Japanese ferson about the Chinese,
(22:13):
Ask a Filipino about any of them. Oh my god,
will they bring the hate anyway? But part of that
is fairly legitimate resentment of I don't know, killing eight
million of our people, often in horrific you know ways.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, And things had gotten so ugly there at the end,
fighting Japanese soldiers island by island as we tried to
get close enough to the main island of Japan to
at the time we thought we were going to invade.
We ended up deciding that wasn't going to work because
it would have been too deadly and too costly. Sixty
(22:47):
between sixty and seventy percent of all of our casualties
happened in the last year of the war. Half of
all marine deaths happened in the last couple of months
as we were fighting island to island. By the time
we got to Water Canal was the first battle in
which we lost more people, more men died that were
US soldiers than the Japanese lost, and we just figured
(23:08):
that that was going to continue as we got closer
to the island and then invading the island, we were
going to take way more deads than they were going
to take. So people who make the argument we shouldn't
have dropped the bomb, why do you think we should
suffer more losses than the people that attacked us?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
What's the argument there?
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Well, and there are a lot of good arguments on
that side. Loyal listener Mikey San Francisco urged us me
to read about the Battle of Okinawa, which raged for
two months in three weeks and was one of the
last big ones before we were either going to invade
Japan or not. But one hundred thousand Japanese troops in Okinawa,
(23:50):
fifty thousand Allied casualties, around one hundred thousand Japanese casualties,
also including local Okinawan's conscripted into the Japanese army. According
to localists, at least one hundred and forty nine thousand
Okinawan people were killed, died by course suicide, or went missing.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
So, yeah, the.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Carnage at the end was Oh, it's unspeakable. It's unthinkable.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
It is a version of total war that is practically
unseen on planet Earth. Why it doesn't get discussed more often,
I don't know. And then as to the idea that
Japan would have surrendered at any point, so Japan had
never surrendered historically in their twenty seven hundred year existence,
(24:34):
they had never surrendered to an invader, and more recently,
during World War Two, no Japanese unit, not one, had
been surrendered in any battle. No matter how defeated they were,
they would continue to fight until they were all dead.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
That was just to the last span their culture.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
And it's kind of hard for us to get into
the mindset of It's why the whole Kamakazi thing worked.
They have a of mindset that we do not have
of where they would take such great pride to have
their young son go get in a plane and fly
it into a ship and die. They were perfectly okay
with that. It made every bit of sense to them
(25:13):
to serve their God, king Herohido. Thing that they had
going on that we also can't quite wrap our heads
around culturally, because it not only was it a monarch,
but it was a religious figure and we just we can't.
It doesn't make any sense to us culturally the way
that that worked. Roosevelt also believed, if you're a fan
(25:37):
of World War One, you know the hole stabbed in
the back myth that entered into Germany after Germany lost
and we left their government, we the Allies left their
government in charge. Then the young Hitlers of the world,
people that had fought in the warst started this whole.
Our government stabbed us in the back, and it's the
dirty Jews that caused it. Thing that grew and grew
(25:58):
and grew and led to the eyes of the anger
of the German society and Nazi Germany and World War
two and all that. Roosevelt knew that, and he didn't
want to leave in Germany or Japan any He wanted
to make sure Roosevelt believed Germany and Japan, every man,
woman and child in the country had to believe they
were defeated. To make sure that they either one of
them didn't rise up again. They had to all know
(26:20):
they were beaten, completely beaten. They were their own government
didn't stab in the back, None like that happened. They
were soundly defeated, and that was one of the reasons
they had to take it clear to the end the
way they did, combined with that nobody had ever surrendered,
so there's no reason to think they would ever give up.
The Japanese we now have we've only had this for
thirty years. We now have the communications that were going
(26:41):
on in Japan thanks to Japanese historians, there were only
six people in control of the whole decision, they called
the Big Six. Five of them were in the military,
and they had no interest in surrendering whatsoever, and they
were willing to lose tens of millions of Japanese civilians.
They believe if we surrounded them and did a blockade
(27:03):
and tried to starve them out, which ended up that
was going to be the plan. If we didn't drop
the bomb, we were going to surround Japan and starve
millions of people until they surrendered, which would have killed
way more people than the bombs killed. But the Big
Six in Japan, they figured if twenty million Japanese starved,
the world opinion will finally turn against the Allies in
the United States and.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
We'll be very hamas like strategy.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Exactly, and we'll be able to negotiate a much better situation.
They're perfectly comfortable with that for anybody who argues that
there is a way out that would have been less
deadly than the nuclear weapons. Also mentioned it the other day,
but worth mentioning again, around two hundred thousand people were
killed by the bombs. It's hard depends on where you
(27:48):
know you do the cutoff because the cancer later and
everything like that. But around two hundred thousand died from
the bombs that were dropped eighty years ago tomorrow, and
then on the ninth the other bomb. Twice as many
Japanese as that died at the hands of the Russians
in the very same weeks as Russia was coming on
and taking ground and trying to take it back from
(28:09):
that much more ruthless than we were.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
When you ever hear anybody say anything about that.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Well, yeah, self hatred is the hallmark of the progressive
and they're proud of it.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
They stoke it, they like it, and it's just it's
it's a perverse.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
They had a million men ready to defend a ground invasion,
some eight thousand planes, maybe half of which we're going
to be kamakazis attacking every one of our ships which
would have been That's why they ultimately decided, and we've
only known this since the nineties, that our Navy decided,
who ain't going to do this? That's a no. We're
(28:50):
a no vote on that. So the ground invasion was
on Gonnam because it would have been too deadly. It
just absolutely couldn't be done. So it was either starve
them out or drop the bomb. So I went to
the Oppenheimer movie with a friend when it was that
three four years ago that that Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Movie came out.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
This friend was a super lib But anyway, we're driving
away from the movie theater and we're having a conversation
about the whole should we have dropped the bomb or not?
Kind of got started the conversation, and it was very
funny because it took us ten fifteen minutes of driving
and saying, I know, can you believe that there are
some people that believe that Before we realized we were,
(29:29):
we had completely different positions. We're both saying, I know,
it's crazy that people believe that. I was thinking it's
crazy that people believe we shouldn't have dropped the bomb.
She was thinking, it's crazy that people think we should
have dropped the bomb, and at some point and it
got very quiet in the car after that, we realized, oh, oh,
(29:50):
we're completely on the opposite side of this, because those
of us on whichever side just can't believe the others.
I believed what they believe, and I'm on the side
of obviously we should have dropped the bomb. Who wouldn't
have given the circumstances. But there are plenty of people
that think it's just nuts that we opened up the
(30:10):
can of worms, and it's one of the great black
marks in US history that we crossed that line and drop.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Them atomic bomb on Japan. Yeah, what's the other pushback?
The best? What's the college kid, college professor pushback on
dropping the bomb?
Speaker 4 (30:26):
That Japan was prepared to offer a not unconditional, but
more or less complete surrender, and that it just had
to be worked out over the course of a couple
more days of conversation.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah, there's no documentation for that.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
There are a couple of communications from a couple of
people that hint that that might be possible, and they
extrapolate from there and feel free. We can talk about
this as long as you want, But on the at
home sociological why do people believe what your friend did.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
It occurred to me, and I've said this many, many times, that.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
If you are on the left, you get a great
deal of social reinforcement, a lot of pats on the back,
acceptance for being a self hating American.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
But it's funny. I hadn't really looked at it from
the other perspective.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
You cannot be accepted in those circles if you are
a patriotic American who thinks, by and large, we have
been a great country doing mostly the right thing. I
mean that is you are drummed out. That's it's like
committing an act of violence, you know, at a social club.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
There's no hearing you're gone. That's enormous social pressure for
those people.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Well, just as a response to your thing for we
and we can break and I want to get two
in the weeds done this. But the Big Six made
all the decisions for Japan. If there was going to
be any sort of surrender, they would have to do it.
There's no indication anybody in that group wanted to surrender.
And five of the six were in the military and
they absolutely were into fighting to the last man. So
it just was never gonna happen, right anyway, I wanted
(32:09):
to get this on the fifth because I have a
feeling tomorrow you'll hear a lot of news from mainstream
media pushing the idea that we did something wrong, and
I'll be interested to see how that plays on your
evening newscast, the.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Armstrong and Getty Show. Yeah, more Jack, your show, podcasts
and our Hot Lakes.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Do you have a compelling reason for why we the
eighty year anniversary of US dropping the bomb on Japan
is tomorrow. Do you have a reason why we focus
so much more on the fight in the nazis European
part of World War Two as opposed to the Pacific War.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
I don't know that I've perceived that in the same
way you did. I've always been into the Pacific War,
partly because my father in law served there, and I've
always been acutely aware of it.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I don't know culturally, I.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Know, factually, in terms of movies and books and everything, like,
the whole European theater dominates and has forever. I think
it's because it was just so morally more clear cut.
Things got so ugly against the Japanese bit by bit,
island by island where both sides were just so the
(33:36):
book i'm reading read several of them. Twilight of the
Gods by Ian Tole, which is considered one of the
definitive books on it. He had a story. Oh, by
the way, we got a text the Japanese. The text was,
it's cute that you think the Japanese surrendered because of
the bombs. It was because they knew Russia was coming.
There's no documentation about that. If you have a book
that says that's true, that's a common narrative, but there's
(33:57):
no documentation that that conversation was being had by the
Big Six who made these decisions in Japan. So if
you have a different book that says they were, you know,
feel free to text me.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I'd be interested in reading it.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
For instance, on one of the islands, and I don't
remember which one it was, but this became a common thing.
Our marines would come across dead US soldiers who had
had their genitals cut off and shoved in their mouths,
sometimes while they were alive, by the Japanese. So the
Japanese soldiers had come across, you know, a wounded marine
cut off his junk stick in his mouth, So we
(34:32):
got more and more brutal, and it just it got
that way to where it was just like freaking Lord
of the Flies, total war, as awful as it could get,
foot by foot, trench by trench in the mud and
the blood and your own feces and everything right across
the islands, And that's what it was going to be
in Japan. And it had a story in there of
(34:55):
collecting gold teeth became a thing, so US soldiers would
collect gold teeth and had a story in there about
one US soldier coming across a wounded but still alive
Japanese who he then took his bayonet and started digging
in the guy's mouth trying to pry his teeth out
while they're still alive. Of some of his fellow US
soldiers said, dude, that's not cool. Came up and shot
(35:17):
the guy in the head to put him out of
his misery. But that's the sort of warfare it was
there at the end, and it was going to be
that times. Who knows how many thousand on the beaches
of Japan if we actually invaded.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Well, and I think Europe got more coverage partly because
a film crew could do what they did then go
back to Paris or London or whatever, and so you
can't do that in the islands of the Pacific. And
they said, crisis a legend alls.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
A hard time.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
This bad trucker with eliasa bad therapy and a mouth
they went. They covered it all this morning, and tomorrow
they'll do even more.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
The arms strong and Getty showed the conscience of any
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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