Larry I love the early 50's Victory at Sea also, but everyone should realize the that although the BS/propaganda level is high today it has always been around, at least we are not having a world war, although the results of climate change could be as devastating though it will lack the sudden 'shock and awe' of wars.

If you get deeper than the Victory at Sea films that don't mention most of the blunders and errors, you find a lot of the same kind of fools were running things during the heyday of the 'greatest generation' and engaging in similar behaviors to those of today. One of the best books I've read on WW2 was Cecil Brown's (a leading national war correspondent on CBS radio) 1943 book, From Suez to Singapore. He was on the HMS Repulse when it was sunk off Malaya, and then he and survivors went to British Singapore.  Brown was one of the last to depart Singapore before its fall and he relates that his press pass was pulled, and the British kicked him out of Singapore (his luck), for his factual reporting of the deteriorating conditions there. He says Singapore Commander Percival said no Jap would set foot on Singapore Island the day before they crossed to it in force. Brown said the restrictions placed on his reporting from Singapore by the British were worse than fascist Italy (under Mussolini) which he had left earlier that year, 1942.

Brown left Singapore for Australia on a PBY and below a direct quote from his book as he sat through a meeting of the Australian Parliament, just after reports were received that Jap bombers had struck Australia, and had leveled much of Darwin:

"I sat through part of that session at the House, listening in amazement to the inane, vapid utterings of the men who represented the people of Australia. They were concerned with pork barrel measures and incidentals of no importance even in peace time."

Sound like familiar behavior of politicians? He also mentions that ships sunk at Darwin by the Japs had not been unloaded of vital aircraft and parts from America due to a union work stoppage and strike at the docks.

Then there are the well known failure of US torpedoes which were almost totally ineffective for the critical early years of the war when the Japs were ascendant, and proven so in tests in the war zone, but overruled by Navy tests by bumbling idiots in the navy munitions hierarchy who said the torpedoes were OK.

Other mistakes, the self promoting MacArthur leaving US planes in the open the day after Pearl was bombed allowing the Japs to destroy them wholesale, MacArthur also rejected the advice of his commissary officer failing to appropriate canned goods from private sources in Manila before sending thousands of US troops to starve and finally surrender on the Bataan peninsula, while MacArthur went to Corregidor and then to Australia.  The US decision to make Wake Island a sentinel for watching the Japs in 1941, but not supplying them with even one patrol aircraft or even electric gasoline pumps to fuel the aircraft they had-before the island was overrun by the Japs, and of course our locking up of Japs and some German Americans as security risks and countless other blunders. We did win because we were bigger, richer, and made less mistakes than the other side.

It seems the problems we face today are not as well defined as WW2, but you have to retain some optimism that when push comes to shove, our country and the world will meet the challenges, yet not without the errors, idiocy and mistakes that are always part of what we do.