Comment by Mainan_Tagonist
2 years ago
Thanks for pointing this out, his book title Diplomacy was very enlightening.
One thing of note in the spew of bile aimed at Kissinger in the HN comment thread is that it appears to emanate from people who were children or not even born during the cold war, and who seem to base their opinion on the comments of rock n' roll stars, cooks, leftist journalists/activists (sometimes turned neocon in their later life, surprise!).
I lament the decline of comment quality on HN whenever a somewhat controversial figure is brought up. It's almost as bad as Ars Technica in those cases, and closely resembles the what comes out of the comment section of the worst right wing news cloaca.
I'll order biography by Niall Ferguson in the meantime.
Yes, topics like these mask off that HN is only a step above uneducated right wing echo chambers. People would rather throw out Bourdain, Hunter Thompson, or Rolling Stones and Huffington Post quotes than read a history book around the 60s. In some part, I blame the Reddit like upvoting that reinforces people to regurgitate the current popular opinions for affirmation. Convinced their shallow take is right, unaware of how little they could actually tell you what specifically happened 50 years ago.