Three Years, Eight Months, Twenty-Six Days

Three years, eight months, twenty-six days separate 07 DEC 1941 from 14 AUG 1945.

Between the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the end of World War 2 on VJ Day, the United States built 22 aircraft carriers, 8 battleships, 48 cruisers, 349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts, 203 submarines, and 34 million tons of merchant ships.

American manufacturing muscle created 100,000 fighter planes, 98,000 bomber aircraft, 24,000 transport planes, and 58,000 trainer aircraft.

The indomitable will of the newly awakened “sleeping giant” also assembled 93,000 tanks, 257,000 artillery pieces, 105,000 mortars, 3,000,000 machine guns, and 2,500,000 military trucks.

The fighting spirit of 16.1 million men in uniform turned the tide in Africa, invaded and defeated Sicily and Italy, planned and executed the D-Day invasion, marched across Europe in the race to Berlin and hopscotched around the Pacific through the Battle of the Bulge, Midway, and the black sands of Iwo Jima, ultimately defeating the Germans and the Japanese.

Along the way, technological advancements that had been undreamed of prior to Pearl Harbor were invented, tested, and put into use, mostly by private industry working with the United States government to complete a task that was forced upon us. We were united in purpose more than any other time in our history, before or since.

Not even the attacks on 9/11 united this nation in such a way, though the differences were minimal.

Three years, six months, ten days separate 21 MAR 2010 from 01 OCT 2013.

In nearly the same time frame in which America entered and won the most destructive war in the history of this planet, the “government” finally succeeded in its takeover of one-sixth of the American economy, wrote nearly 11,000 pages of regulations for Obamacare, and created $4,084,106,238,500.08 of debt, all while using proven technologies that had been around for about two decades and failing to create a working website.

To add some perspective to this: The total cost of World War 2 for the United States was approximately $288,000,000,000. The total cost for healthcare.gov is estimated to be around $1,000,000,000 (and climbing, as the site still has issues).

How we have fallen so far, so fast, is something that I'm sure will absolutely perplex future historians. One thing I can say with certainty, however, is that the Greatest Generation would be absolutely livid with us for allowing that fall to occur, and I wouldn't blame them one bit. For that, we should all be very, very ashamed. ~ Hunter