Everybody knows

Neocon notes Vietnam: they lost the war, but won the battle about the meme and the paradigm and the reality.

Vietnam just may have been the first war in which those who opposed the conflict “won” in the forum of public opinion by convincing their fellow citizens and government to abandon the war itself, and then got to write most of its chronicles. … the Left and even most Democrats consider it axiomatic that those who opposed the war have been “proved” right. I’ve spent many hours and many words discussing the proof that exists for the opposite side: that our abandonment of Vietnam in the mid-70s was an unnecessary tragedy and a shame … word doesn’t seem to have penetrated a huge swath of liberals and the Left that there still might even be another side—much less that it might have some validity, and that it offers arguments that require responses.

In the comments, Assistant Village Idiot suggests that this is a form of social signaling that has little to do with reality. In that respect it is a malignant branch of recently maligned social signaling such as patriotic displays. It is perhaps no coincidence that these are a part and parcel of the same community, one that seems obsessed with self esteem and moral relativism and ideologic perfection triumphant.

Vietnam will not go away. The shame of the baby boomer generation will continue to fester.