They don’t make ’em like they used to

I’m fascinated by old propaganda posters.  Recently my folks forwarded on an email linking to several of them from the US in WWII.  You’ve probably seen most of them — various patriotic appeals to buy war bonds, work hard in factories, what we’re fighting for, loose lips sink ships, etc.  Good stuff.

Below the posters, someone along the email chain had included some interesting questions I feel obliged to answer.  (This site has all the posters, plus a couple of more, and most of the text below, though not all of it, and some additional stuff.)

These were our parents. How have we let happen?

This email has apparently been passed around for a few months, so there are a variety of sites that have discussed it.  Apparently in some renditions, the latter question is more coherent (“What in God’s name have we let happen?”).

I guess we are the last generation to see, or even remember anything like these? Whatever happened?

There’s a serious generational thing going on, yes.  I’ll answer first, the look at the answers of the original poster.  Why don’t we see war posters like this today?

1. Media have become far more sophisticated, and we expect that sophistication.  During WWII you have movies, newsreels, newspapers … but simple appeals to emotion were splashy, colorful, and (presumably) effective.  Posters of this sort were made by the Brits, the Germans, and the Russians, too — all appealing to a fight to the death against an implacable enemy, of the need for sacrifice of blood and wealth, of the patriotic righteousness of the cause.  I believe in the American cause in the Second World War, but the imagery used by propagandists the world over was much the same.
2. WWII was couched — the last US war to be so — as a war of sacrifice, a war where everyone both on the lines and at home, needed to fight in their own way, lest we all suffer at the hands of the Japs and the Nazis.  It was an existential threat that no war since has (and this is a good thing) been.  And, as such, everyone had to give stuff up — scrap drives and food rationing and gas rationing and all.  It’s been suggested that the War on Terror would have been more effective and garnered more support if it had been couched in these terms — we all have to sacrifice, so taxes are going up, and so are gas prices as we try to choke off the funding that comes to Middle Eastern terror groups from petrodollars, and so forth. Instead, Dubya told everyone to go out and “shop,” and cut taxes on the wealthy.  No shared sacrifice, no sense of communal urgency and dedication.
3. While it is a bit simplistic of an analysis, the Cold War in the 50s, and the counter-culture of the 60s (not to mention the scandals of the 70s and the Reagan Revolution of the 80s — all began to build up levels of cynicism and disillusionment.  We began to turn against ourselves in the Red Scare as much as against the enemy without.  Patriotism became loyalty oaths and watching worriedly for Commies. Cultural unity (and homogeneity) became fragmented, with both the ills and the freedoms that ensued.  Those in power were revealed too often to be there for their own greedy purposes.  Traditional values were appropriately questioned.  “Future shock” and the pace of change quickened. People became too sophisticated for rah-rah propaganda as in these posters, though they still responded to beautiful videos “Morning in  America” and “Change You Can Believe In” and the the like.  There’s still a love for America and American values in most Americans, but an awareness of our feet of clay, how much further we have to go (leavened by how far we’ve come) and that the world is no a Manichean battle of Good vs Evil.
4. Which brings up the last point. The current “war” — the one on “Terror” (or even, more specifically, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq) — is not something that lends itself to Us vs Them.  The simple categories of WWII propaganda — the Japs, Hitler+Mussolini+Tojo, the God-Hating Baby-Eating Nazis — don’t have easy black-and-white analogs today.  Saddam is gone.  OBL is hidden in a cave somewhere, but nobody’s really fighting on his behalf.  We’re not fighting Islam or the Muslim Threat (really, we’re not, unless we’re going to be fighting the Muslims in this country and throwing them in camps, too — which, to be sure, some folks have argued for); ditto fighting against “Arabs” or “Afghanis” (many in the region are or have been our allies and friends and business partners; many, many of those ethnicities are part and parcel of the fabric of this nation).  Nor, for that matter, is there unanimity that the wars in question are the right wars to be fighting, in the right ways, or that we should be fighting them at all, or that we are blameless in these conflicts.  Supporting our troops — which most folks actually do, regardless of their feelings about these wars — is not sufficient to foster support for what the politicians have our troops doing.  Nor should it be.

So that’s what I have to say, at great (and over-) length.  How about the OP?  Why don’t we see these sorts of posters and their simple call to arms against The Bad Guys any more?

Political correctness (or “re-education”) happened,

Huh?  These posters are not (aside from, as above, the occasional assumption about what gender is being addressed) particularly non-PC.  Though there were plenty of non-PC WWII posters (usually of those Evil Bucktoothed Nips), political correctness doesn’t seem to be the point here.

lack of personal responsibility happened,

While one can certainly discuss whether people today have less personal responsibility, or social responsibility, than those of 50 years ago, I don’t see the connection.

lack of personal integrity and honesty happened,

Oh, I see.  This is going to be a litany of the Amazing Values of the Greatest Generation and How Far We’ve Declined.  And that’s why we don’t have “loose lips sink ships” posters for the War on Terror.  Got it.

lack of respect and loyalty to our country happened, lack of being an American happened.

I consider myself an American.  I respect this nation’s values, and consider myself loyal to it.  The implication that someone who sees the above poster, or “Give us Lumber for More PTs” as a PT boat swings away from an exploding warship, and who isn’t choked up with tears and steely-eyed in determination to take down the Japanazis, is un-American and disloyal is, itself, insulting and disrespectful.

Is the OP suggesting that we need a similar set of posters in support of the War on Terror — a picture of a Predator drone dropping a missile toward a small building somewhere, with an urging to “Buy War Bonds!”?  (Maybe if we had an actual bond program, or sufficient taxes raised to actually pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that might be appropriate.)

Did all of these die along with common sense?!?

I didn’t realize that common sense had died.  Whose common sense are we referring to?  It’s “common sense” that men should be the breadwinners?  Or it’s “common sense” that blacks and whites can’t serve together in the military (let alone eat together at a lunch counter)?  Or the “common sense” that any Catholic president will be taking secret orders from the Vatican?  Or “common sense” that the Japs don’t feel pain or loss the way we good Anglos do?  Or the “common sense” that Japanese-Americans ought to be stuck in detainment camps?  Or the “common sense” that the Jews are exaggerating about their mistreatment in Germany, just to get that Jew-loving FDR to pull England’s fat out of the fire?

I’m proud to be an American!

Me, too.

If you are too.. pass it along, in English!

Okay, that makes me a bit less proud.