The past is prologue

National Review's Jonah Goldberg, in the context of a NR discussion about whether the WW2 Allies should have declared war on the USSR in 1945, and having been educated as to the many, many problems with this thesis --

[argument that] we couldn't because the American people were too exhausted from the war. That's true, but it leaves out an important point. The American people were also exhausted by the New Deal, which had kept the American public in a de facto state of war for nearly an entire decade before the real war even started. The relentless exhortations, the scarcity, the propaganda: these things began long, long, before Pearl Harbor and even before Roosevelt was promising voters he would keep America out of another European war.

An odd statement that the people were exhausted by the recovery from the Great Depression, but an even odder quasi-insinuation that Pearl Harbor was in fact a clash of two militaristic countries, and finally a clause that could be repackaged for George Bush --

The relentless exhortations, the abundance, the propaganda

The last 6 years in a nutshell.