Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes"

Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by Quarrelsome on Thursday January 22, 2026 @08:51PM (#46727444)

and that's a very good thing. I only recognise our nation from 1945 onwards, establishment of the welfare state, the idea the government cares for its people. The idea that victims matter. While it wasn't just overnight and was many years in the making, there was this element of cruelty, a survival of the fittest, seen in the victim blaming of street urchins with rickets in the early 20th century.

In 1966 there was an industrial disaster where a school was submerged in coal waste and 116 children died. The coal company offered £50 per child as compensation. There was a national outcry that marks the change in attitude and the compensation was increased tenfold to £500 (quite a lot back then). Did we see this in Flint with the polluted water, or in Ohio when that train derailed with all the chemicals?

There's something about having absolutely everything in the world and then pissing it all away in an enormous own goal of world wars that is extremely humbling and I'd like to think that plays a key part in the British psyche and I think its for the better.

My grandparents were the war generation I knew, having lived through the blitz, and all they wanted was to sit in the garden and have a nice cup of tea. They didn't want to be the best or were looking externally for validation. Just a nice sit down and a chin wag and I think that's a positive way to be, as opposed to what I imagine was the driving force of the Imperial era in always wanting more and trying to prove how "great" our nation should be. We proved how great we are in two of the most destructive wars in the world's history where the entirity of Europe lost. We suck.

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by PaulDavisThe1st on Friday January 23, 2026 @01:25AM (#46729133)

> pissing it all away in an enormous own goal of world wars

in what sense were WWI and WWII British "own goals" ?

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by wongarsu on Friday January 23, 2026 @06:08AM (#46731094)

Britain won, but it cost them pretty much everything. And while a lot of pride is connected to winning them, neither were wars Britain really had to fight.

WWI was caused by every European power thinking they could benefit from a war, leading to powder keg that blew up from a completely inconsequential event. For the British one of the motivations was getting Germany's African colonies that were in the way of building the Cape to Cairo Railway, which ended up never being completed anyways.

WWII at least had a clear villain. But it was a villain that made every indication that he didn't actually want to fight Britain. Maybe that was a ruse and Hitler would have attacked Britain after securing the continent, maybe it wasn't and a British and German empire could have coexisted. We will never know. What we do know is that fighting WWII required Britain to bleed its colonies dry, followed by losing most of them in the years after the war

I'm not going so far as saying Britain shouldn't have fought the world wars. At least WWII had justification beyond what can be seen on map. However without participation in those two wars Britain would have had a shot at continuing to be a wealthy empire

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by Quarrelsome on Friday January 23, 2026 @01:48PM (#46736177)

I don't mind the rationale for WW2 so much, I think the idea that Britain "didn't have to", doesn't scan. What the Third Reich was doing meant it would always be an existential threat that would ultimately result in conflict. So it was better for Britain to fight the Nazis than stay neutral.

I would however suggest that the two wars are basically the same war with just a big ceasefire in the middle, that's why I would treat them as the same mistake.

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by Quarrelsome on Friday January 23, 2026 @01:44PM (#46736107)

Britain mostly bankrolled WW1 and was broke by 1916. If you consider the British position prior to the war and after the wars, its an extroadinary failure. Especially considering how all the monarchs of Europe were directly related and had ample opportunities to prevent the wars. They were conflicts of hubris, over-confidence based on mostly fighting the developing world and never having to appreciate the horrors of modern artilery against their own ranks. If you look at the opening battles of the first world war the quantities of casualties are absolutely staggering. They were not prepared and under-estimated what it would take to fight these wars.

All that wealth and power wasted on turning Europe into a wasteland and sacrificing generations of young men.

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