This is my favorite war movie. Like my favorite gangster movie has always been the godfather. Patton is the embodiment of the American spirit, so Americans like him, he is an American hero. There are all kinds of shortcomings. He self-assessed that he didn't understand politics, only knew how to fight and kill, and he didn't talk about the door, and he was moody. In fact, Patton has ancient heroism in his bones, and the Germans even described him as Don Quixote. Patton is religious, but believes in reincarnation (believes he was a soldier in a previous life, including participating in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow); he is a poet, but full of foul-mouthed (every god damn day); he is a military historian, and he rules the army harshly ( not aiming to be popular with his subordinates); he was anti-Russian, competitive (competition with Montgomery), and said whatever he wanted.
But, who doesn't have flaws? His opening monologue is precisely the American spirit, the spirit of competition and battle. This reminds me of the book WINNING by JACK WELCH. American culture is the culture of winning.
Two outstanding figures from different eras and different fields have one thing in common, one is outstanding, and the other is American. Another point is that they reveal a spiritual characteristic of the United States, which is the advocacy of power and war. War was supposed to be a final solution to human disputes, but the Americans put it there as a decoration from the beginning, or put it in the background as a background. This is determined by the powerful position of the United States today. Power is the background.
Patton is a typical American. We watched a monologue at the beginning of the movie as a lecture he gave to the soldiers. Here he is to boost morale and make his soldiers love war as much as he does. He said: Americans traditionally love to fight. All real americans love the state in battle. ...Americans loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser.
He listed the American social life people like and praise the winners of various sports (to understand the reason why Americans like sports from this perspective, they regard it as an important way to become a winner, so they can get more from sports than we Chinese people have much more fun.
For Chinese people, if it weren't for the practical benefits that today's Olympic gold medals can bring, most of us would be dismissive of Liu Xiang or Yao Ming: running fast or jumping How useful can it be?).
Patton conflated competition with war. But for Patton, war is American competition, and it must be won. He also represented Americans' dislike of Russians.
A book I was reading recently, THE NEXT 100 YEARS, the author directly counted the proportion of the time Americans were at war. Overall, it spent one-tenth of the time in the more important wars, what about Desert Storm? are not included. Throughout the 20th century, 15%; in the second half of the 20th century, 22%. The twenty-first century has always been in a state of war.
It can be said that war is the main means by which the United States influences and establishes the world order. His views are strikingly similar to Patton's: The United States is, historically, a warlike country....America was born out of war and has continued to fight to this day at an ever increasing pace.
If this author was born in Patton's Times, Patton would have kissed his forehead as he would have kissed his soldiers. Patton claimed that he did not understand politics, but only knew how to fight and kill. But he knew that America's core interest was to win in all wars. America is full of such professional, even terribly fanatical, doers. We Chinese are still talking about peace, but war has actually come to our doorstep.
Because we Chinese like to sit and talk about things, and if you win by fooling you, it will be a victory. We talk about future development without establishing mechanisms that can guarantee that such development will happen. As if our leaders and officials were exceptional or made of special materials. When talking about GDP, we do not talk about people's income, when we talk about people's income, we do not talk about purchasing power, when we talk about prices, we do not talk about housing prices, and we do not talk about education and social security.
Chinese people must learn to think independently, so as to learn to face reality. Otherwise, we will not be able to compete with the strength-loving, pragmatic Americans and the determined, perfection-seeking Japanese. We look not only at ourselves, but also at others. Look at the purpose of others, or understand yourself more deeply.
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