shantipole t1_j12s4w2 wrote on December 21, 2022 at 6:22 AM

Reply to comment by Sniffy4 in When President Truman met Oppenheimer by redditor3000

IMHO, there's a difference between being unaffected and refusing to dwell on "what might have beens." If Oppenheimer was as fixated on his own guilt (or "guilt") as the quote suggests, I can see a Truman who had made the hard decision to use the bombs being disgusted by a man who had made the decision to create them and after the fact constantly second-guessed the entire idea.

[edited to fix a typo]

Sniffy4 t1_j12vp3d wrote on December 21, 2022 at 7:04 AM

>Truman who had made the hard decision to use the bombs being disgusted by a man who had made the decision to create them and after the fact constantly second-guessed the entire idea.

The technical term for someone unaffected by 200k deaths they personally ordered is "sociopath."

shantipole t1_j14cadm wrote on December 21, 2022 at 4:03 PM

You're assuming your conclusion. There's still "a difference between being unaffected and dwelling on 'what might have beens.'" IOW there is a middle ground between sociopath on the one hand and endlessly rehashing important decisions on the other. It's actually a very large middle ground where you accept you did the best you could and you deal with the consequences. Oppenheimer seems to have gotten stuck in the "endless rehashing" end of the spectrum and Truman (and many others) think/thought less of Oppenheimer for it. None of which imply that Truman was a sociopath.