Quote Originally Posted by gnome View Post
good post, the WWII mindset of getting stuff done cannot be discounted. those folks were experts at moving a lot of men and equipment quickly and with a minimum of debate.

At the time the horizons were clear, the future bright and old was bad. You see the same thinking in the facadectomies up and down every downtown in America. Nice shiny aluminum to cover that old tired brick. Tear off the doodads from the David Whitney and dozens of others.

It was a time for the future, JFK told us so when he said, "..the torch has been passed to a new generation..."
The criminal irony is, how many decades later, we now shop at Partridge Creeks and vacation at Disney to get any semblance of a real town or neighborhood--no matter how canned, contrived, and cartoony it may be. Aside from a handful of places, that's all we have left. Our culture has been reduced to a giant cartoon.

Whereas, after World War II, the Europeans reconstructed their bombed-out cities EXACTLY THE WAY THEY WERE. If you compare photos of modern-day Warszawa and Detroit, you'd think the war was fought on our turf.

This is what people mean when they talk about American arrogance.