A Bright Shining Lie
Chronicles the military career of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, profiling his military and civilian roles in the Vietnam War.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
8mentions
6people
2013–2025years
63% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- These words all have different meaning. Because they all have different origins. Modern English (say post Shake-Speare, but especially American TV and music that is marketed globally) have grotesquely collapsed these words already.
For example
- Happy means "I'm feeling lucky." Like the old Google search button. You're happy when you say, hit your full house on the river... precisely because what just HAPPENED fulfilled your hope, but randomly and subtley perhaps without agency. This is a Norse germanic word. Its romance synonym is not pleased, rather fortunate. For example a baseball player hitting a home run off the bottom ten feet of the foul (fair) pole is and should feel happy; the same player hitting a home run entirely out of the park having successfully predicted the pitch with skill and agency, this is different. They are experiencing a different feeling. We've just forgotten the meaning of words. For example see Shakespeare "Oh happy dagger..." for a juxtaposition that is already playing with this. Obviously the inanimate object doesn't have feelings. And she is not glad or delighted, she's suicidal at that moment. It's the dagger that has won the lottery of sheathing itself in her tragic bosom?
- Glad means not pleased or happy but rather "bright and shining" or what a third party would perceive as radiant or glowing, even joyful. So Achilles in his touched/trance zone, bride walking down altar? Shakespeare uses it to connote an inside feeling in response to again something out of your control but not, as with happy, having any concept of fortune or luck. Rather like, I am glad of you, seeing you, being with you. It wants a other person and speaks intrinsically to a subject-object interaction: it's about perception and reaction. Happy is about being stoked because YOU were lucky, nobody needs to witness it. Glad requires an other. Notably Neil Sheehan chose "A Bright Shining lie" for his amazing book. This is another very intellectual choice (like Juliet above by Shakespeare) by an author who clearly knows his etymology? It's about the tension between what was really going on (objectively) and what people thought was going on (subjectively).
- Pleased is our first non-Germanic word. Broadly, English from German/Norse origins are a) older, b) shorter, and c) experiential not analytical. Pleasure is not that. It's going to be arriving with the Normans circa 1066 (a few generations before and after, by location in physical geography of the Anglophones ie Bordeaux vs Yorkshire) and the key concept is satisfying somebody's expectations: Pleased means a state of Acceptableness. Your home run above satisfies the expectations of the coach and your fans. That's why they are cheering. Not because you are happy to be lucky; or glad to be on fire; but because you accomplished THEIR goals. It's a technical analytical state of being, eg you should be pleased your candidate release passes acceptance/regressio testing. I hope you don't feel happy or look too glad. Act like you've done this before etc. A football player who puts down the football after scoring without a stupid celebration dance is pleased.
- Delighted is obviously another non Germanic admix word in via the romance languages with the Frenchies. The key concept is your experience of something alluring, charming, seductive, delicious. It's a .. sensual word but also, like so many romance language words is a bit detached and analytical. Smart guy word for the feeling at the end of a process of getting what you wanted. Unlike happ and glad, which are for... bros verbing/living in the moment? The fact delighted just means "super pleased" or "double plus glad" now is a sign we already live in the collapse you envision. Which is a shame.
Ps you can fix it by reading books that are merely 50+ years old.
- > They won because they took part in the war with a sense of righteousness.
This belief is certainly reflected in one of the best books I've read about the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan, who was a reporter there throughout the war and devoted a large part of his life to chronicling it.
He repeatedly shows how the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army), from commanders down to recruits, were not deeply motivated in the same way the Viet Cong were - abandoning battlefields, taking bribes to leave the front, etc. Additionally, the South Vietnamese political class was a corrupt gerontocracy with little in common with the people (either peasant farmers or urban) they were supposed to be leading.
For that reason, early American observers said they'd rather be on the side of the North than the South.
- The parallels are striking.
I just finished reading Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, which is a story of Vietnam told through the lens of the experience of one particular American officer, and later civilian consultant: John Paul Vann. I heartily recommend the book - winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and authored by someone who was on the ground in Vietnam on and off during the war.
The book was published in 1988, so any parallels that are evident to Afghanistan and Iraq are not the backseat driving of the author.
One parallel, out of many, is that Vann many times lamented the lack of devotion the South Vietnamese Army had to the cause of Vietnamese independence. They largely wanted to avoid actual combat and profit off the American military machine by selling services, re-selling war materiel, accepting bribes for the other side, etc. And Vann said many times in the book that if he himself was a young Vietnamese, he would join the NVA (the North Vietnamese Army). And further, that he admired the grit and devotion the NVA had to the cause of independence.
Indeed, one could fill a page of further comments on the parallels: asymmetric tactics, politically powerful generals who lied about prospects for winning, presidents who kicked the can down the road, inability to win "hearts and minds", blaming the press when bad news gets out, ease of bombing versus difficulty of holding territory, "nation-building", installation of American-backed Vietnamese leaders (often emigres) who have no credibility in the country...
It is actually quite humbling. We should have known better.
- I’ve read War is a Racket. It’s a great piece and raises issues we all should think about. I also read A Bright Shining Lie, About Face, The Best and The Brightest and other books critical of the military [1, 2, 3]. Like I said in my previous comment, I have many issues with the military, but I’m also concerned when the elite of society no longer feel the need to serve, that makes me think of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire [4]. War sucks, but we all need to play our part, either in support or protest, but just pretending like it doesn’t exists and going about our day is the worst of both worlds.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bright_Shining_Lie [2] https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Odyssey-American-Warrior/d... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and...
- I'm also reminded of a line from Neil Sheehan's classic "A Bright Shining Lie" that has stuck with me since reading it:
Men who succeed at an enterprise of great moment often tie a snare for themselves by assuming that they have discovered some universal truth.
- That's true. I'm normally very anti-authoritarian but these days I applaud when police come by and shut down public gatherings due to COVID-19. I think everyone is more comfortable with authoritarianism during this crisis. To be fair, there is a place for decisive action during emergency, as long as those emergency powers don't last forever.
However, long term, authoritarian leadership makes things worse due to lack of transparency and accountability to the people. They can clean things up short term, but then they hold onto power and rot society.
I guess there could be a place for temporary authoritarian governments to swoop in, sweep up the mess, and then hand over things to liberal democracies, but they don't hand over power easily.
A book I read on Vietnam (A Bright Shining Lie) floated the idea that communism never delivered on its promise to make society more equitable, but communist revolutions have played a role in eliminating backwards feudal governments and clearing the way for liberal democracies to take over. Kind of like a shock treatment, but with a very high price in terms of human suffering.
Anyway, we should all be very suspicious and ready to oppose authoritarian creep, because we're all susceptible to it right now, and it could stick around even after this virus passes.
