It’s hard not to focus on the fact that Trump has picked the 100th anniversary of the first Armistice Day celebration for his weaponry parade (more on that below). But there was another parade a month and a half before the armistice that cries out for comparison because of its remarkable stupidity. I’m thinking of the Liberty Loan Parade in Philadelphia:
This was a parade to squeeze more money out of people to pay for war, to celebrate patrioti-nationali-militarism, and to reject fake news. I’ll explain that last one.
World War I brought us a number of wonderful gifts: professional propaganda, alcohol prohibition, World War II “The Sequel!,” and “Spanish” influenza. But one reason that this disease epidemic was called “Spanish” was that Spain was not at war, so Spanish media outlets were allowed to report that thousands of people were dying of a horrible disease. In nations at war, such a report would have been unacceptably un-cheerful — and therefore illegal. Few editors wanted to risk jail time to report on the flu in Woodrow Wilson’s brave new world. The flu was fake news.
