Men’s Action Fictions

No genre explored the escapist lure of apocalypse more fully than the new pulp genre of men’s action fiction, where the 1960s-style fallout shelter serves as a measure of the faith of the hero in the structure of government and authority and the society it underpins. The more elaborate the shelter and the accoutrements of survival that surround it, the more likely is nuclear war to have been a good war. For rightwing writers, the distinct probability of urban apocalypse afforded a new political equation for the 1980s: eliminating the densely packed blue-state populations, especially on the coasts, was a quick way to imagine changing the electoral balance. Nevertheless, men’s action fiction takes pains to frame its heroes’ choices in rational rather than ideological terms. The heroic protagonists recognizably follow in the hard-boiled noir tradition of antisocial guardians of society in a fallen world threatened by criminal nihilists from the right and ineffectual liberals from the left. The bunker fantasies of men’s action fiction, in the dialectic they stage between survival and survivalism, posit in pulp form the hard questions that had plagued policymakers since Harry Truman first made the decision to use the bomb. That their cartoonishly excessive qualities neatly mirror the extreme rhetoric of the Cold Warriors in the Reagan White House should also remind us that the contradictory impulses they so exuberantly narrativize remain deeply rooted in the contradictions of American identity and American history.

Elizabeth Anscombe versus the World

This chapter chronicles the philosophical development of the abrasive, brilliant Elizabeth Anscombe and her contribution to her friends’ implicit project of reshaping mid-century ethics: her all-out attack against “Oxford Moral Philosophy” epitomized by R.M. Hare, and her publication of the influential “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Anscombe was Wittgenstein’s apprentice and translator for much of her early career, rarely publishing original work. She was, nonetheless, a fearsome adversary of anyone she saw as glib or insufficiently serious, including C.S. Lewis and J.L. Austin. Anscombe’s real engagement with ethics began with her attempt to stop Oxford from bestowing an honorary degree on Harry Truman; she abhorred his decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She was invited to give a radio broadcast, “Oxford Moral Philosophy: Does It Corrupt the Youth?”—the opening salvo in a fight with R.M. Hare, which resulted in her influential essay “Modern Moral Philosophy.”

Just Mild about Harry

Harry Truman had a dim view of newspaper pundits, especially Drew Pearson. Although Pearson supported Truman’s Fair Deal, he got on the president’s wrong side by publishing perceived slights of his wife and daughter. Truman fired some of his best sources in the cabinet, but leaks continued, leading Truman to have the FBI investigate Pearson and tap his phones. Pearson regretted the collapse of the alliance with the Soviet Union but supported American foreign policy during the Cold War. In 1947 he sponsored the Freedom Train to collect food and supplies for Western Europe. Holding Defense Secretary James Forrestal responsible for the deepening Cold War, Pearson conducted a sustained attack on him. Blame for Forrestal’s suicide later fell on the columnist. Pearson also targeted Truman’s aide, General Harry Vaughn, for influence peddling and called for his dismissal. Truman responded that he would not let “any S.O.B.” dictate whom he fired.

Toward Tokyo Bay

Okinawa received much more media attention from mid-May, after the German surrender. The censors also relaxed restrictions on reporting the kamikaze story, which reinforced the growing sense on the home front that the Pacific War was particularly brutal and bloody. As Harry Truman, the new president, looked for ways to end it, attention shifted to the air war. The air force happily publicized its incendiary bombing of Tokyo, followed by the destruction of the five largest cities in Japan. Even before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such carnage drew little protest across America.

The Eisenhawer Doctrine (1957): The Impact on Arabic Countries and The Soviet Union Attitude

Following the end of World War II, and emerging of a vacuum after the withdrawal of British and French forces from some of the Middle East countries in the region, creating fear in Western countries, particularly the United States, that the Eastern Bloc, in particular Russia, would seek to fill the vacuum and spread the idea of leftism and communism in the region. For this reason, the United States has made every effort to confront the idea of communism and establish a foothold in the region among its policies. To this end, then US President Harry Truman announced his country's new policy in the context of the Truman project on the Middle East in (1945). Following Harry Truman, when Eisenhower assumed power as the new US president in (1953), he put forward the new policy of his country named Eisenhower’s Dwight in Congress in order to confront Russian politics and infiltrate communist thought in the area. There were several items in his project that emphasized the cooperation of Middle Eastern countries, especially in the economic and military fields. The Eisenhower’s Dwight has had a variety of reactions from countries in the region, especially Arab countries. Some have accepted it from the very beginning. Some also expressed opposition to the project. There were also countries that initially opposed the Eisenhower project, but after a period of time following US efforts and pressure, eventually endorsed the project and became a fan of the US. As a result of these political divisions in the region, several political and military alliances between the countries of the Middle East Were formed. The idea of Nasser and the idea of Arab nationalism come to life at this time. Although originally favored by the Eastern Bloc, especially Russia, it also partially weakened the notion of communism and was about to cause tension between proponents of these two ideas. This situation had nothing in fact to do other than destabilizing the political state and the occurrence of several coups in order to change the regime of some of Middle Eastern countries, besides the long sovereignty of some Arab rulers.Regarding the Soveit Union attitude towards the Eisenhower’s doctrine, it can be seen that,the Soveit Union ctitisized by the Soviet authorities from internal and external the SoveitUnbion.For instance the The Soveit Union attempted to gain extermal allies among the Middle Middle Eastren countries to convince them this doctrine is a part previous imperliams that supported by Westren countries.Finally,in the United Nation,The Soveit attempted to make a campaign to remove this doctrine as it mention a therat of world peace.

O fim das fraternidades raciais latino-americanas no imaginário afro-americano: a viagem de George Schuyler pela América Latina (1948)

RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é o de analisar o relato de viagem do intelectual afro-americano George Schuyler pela América Latina em 1948. A sua intenção era a de retratar a presença e as experiências dos negros nas forças armadas dos países latino-americanos, comparando-as com a situação dos negros nas forças armadas estadunidenses. Naquele mesmo ano, o presidente Harry Truman havia assinado uma ordem executiva para iniciar o processo de desagregação das forças armadas, tentando assegurar o voto dos negros em uma eleição disputada com outros dois candidatos. O jornal Pittsburgh Courier, no qual atuava George Schuyler, interessado em promover o debate sobre a inclusão de negros nas forças armadas, financiou a sua viagem pela América Latina. Schuyler acreditava na ideia, compartilhada entre várias lideranças negras, de que as sociedades latino-americanas, apesar da pobreza material, eram muito mais inclusivas que a estadunidense, possibilitando a mobilidade social das populações negras pelo continente, principalmente no Brasil. Entretanto, ao testemunhar a realidade dos negros latino-americanos, o intelectual fez um retrato distinto das representações difundidas entre os afro-americanos, apontando para a coexistência entre miscigenação e preconceito racial, um fenômeno considerado contraditório para estudiosos das relações raciais naquele momento.

Conclusion

As we observe the seventy-fifth anniversary of the surrender of Japan, it becomes clear that the terms on which that surrender took place remain among the most central and the most contested issues—and with good reason. Unconditional surrender was destined to be controversial because it was Roosevelt’s policy. It incited the same ideological divisions as his domestic policies and extended those battles to the arenas of foreign policy and military strategy. My goal in this book has been to explain the reasons for the debate over unconditional surrender, so that we can better understand the decisions that Harry Truman and his advisors made and their short- and long-term ramifications. It comes down to two main conclusions about those decisions: that they were strongly influenced by ideological considerations and that the push to modify unconditional surrender was closely tied to concern over the consequences of Soviet entry into the war. A third conclusion is that the chance for a negotiated peace in 1945 was exceedingly slim, given that before August 14, the Japanese never indicated they were willing to accept a dramatic change in their political structure that would reduce the emperor to a symbol without authority or power....