When platoon hit theaters in 1986, it had only been 13 years since the last American troops left Vietnam.

For context, that's like 2005 ago. Or for further context, about like 2005 ago or for further context about how long ago I

released my last album. In that 13 years there had been very little of what we

might call healthy processing of the Vietnam War. Many, many people insisted the U.S. had won the war,

beaten the North Vietnamese in combat and left victorious. The fact that Communist North Vietnam

won was a weird fluke, a technicality.

Also, if we did, I guess, not win, it's only because Eugene McCarthy and that damn

turncoat Walter Cronkai back home didn't let us win.

Or whatever, the narrative was garbled because the experience was the very definition of a cluster

fuck.

We never should have been there.

The whole premise of the war was based on a theory of a domino effect.

When one small country chooses a communist government over a blessed and virtuous one run by the United

Fruit Company, then another follows and pretty soon the whole world becomes communist.

Where will our fruit come from?

So we had to fight every little whack-a-mole conflict in the world for 50 years because what about Domino effect?

But Domino effect is the exact same theory as gateway drug.

It's just another dumb political theory that has no real basis in fact that history ultimately proves incorrect

after the expenditure of uncountable lives and treasure. Like bringing democracy to the Middle East or famously Marxism. Remember that as you caress

your favorite theory of history and think of all the things that would be

immediately better as soon as one or two little of your policies were implemented.

Anyway, we lost the war, but in 1986 we still didn't want to hear it.

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