Thursday 7 May 2015

the irreconcilables or action-at-a-distance

Having recently finished Philip K. Dick’s engrossing The Man in the High Castle and the air of remembrance, marred to an extent by current tensions seven decades on, I found this artefact shared by the respected antiquarian John Ptak of Georgetown to be pretty intriguing. This monograph captures the isolationist sentiment that was predominant in American in 1939 and 1940 regarding its being drawn into a European war. The “irreconcilables” refers to that cabal of US senators who crafted the country’s policy of neutrality and no foreign entanglement from the 1930s until the attack on Pearl Harbor. I knew the US public had little will for this engagement going into it but the imbalance was far greater than I imagined, even when polled against specific scenarios and hypothetical outcomes. Be sure to check out more interesting articles and peruse the emporium at the website.