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"What we never considered was a long, slow war, a conflict that burned and sputtered, skittered from one spot on the map to the other. The old wars were simple: the other side had accents, uniforms, nations, cruel habits and urbane sneers. The old wars took years. The old wars were in black and white. The old wars were monophonic, scored by Max Steiner, released by Warner Brothers, and the only proof they really happened at all was the small battered box in the back of Dad’s sock drawer, the box that held some oddly colored metal bars."--James Lileks
"Most writers have looked to the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; to find answers for the use of those atomic weapons. The real answers lay in thousands of graves from Pearl Harbor around the world to Normandy and back again. The actual use of the weapons as ordered by the President of the United States was believed to be the quickest and least costly (in terms of lives lost) way to stop the killing. I carried out those orders with the loyal support of the men of the 509th Composite Bomb Group and the United States military at large. Our job was to serve. Our sworn duty was to God, country and victory."--Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, pilot and commander of the Enola Gay mission
"The Japanese put their unlikely hopes of prevailing over the Americans in the idea of forcing a ”decisive battle”, a fight where the utter inferiority of Japan in a long-term struggle hopefully won’t have time to matter. To brutally simplify the Japanese military thinking behind this doctrine, the Japanese hope at the start of the war is to attack Pearl Harbor and do as much damage as possible to the unprepared Americans, to tilt the odds in the short term heavily in their favor. Then, the Japanese hope that the Americans will be so enraged at this surprise attack that they fairly quickly gather what forces they have lying around and send them to battle against the IJN, which will destroy the less trained and technically inferior American force in detail. At this point, after having sustained heavy casualties in one large set piece battle, the Japanese hope the Americans will simply conclude that fighting with Japan is just too much trouble for too little reward, and agree to simply leave Japan alone to do as she wants in southeast Asia.
It should be noted that many people inside the Japanese high command think this plan will never work. But nobody can actually come up with a better idea; this method of forcing a large, decisive battle and then having the Americans agree to call the match there is the only way a war against the US can succeed.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, Kantai Kessen quickly fails. The attack on Pearl Harbor itself goes swimmingly, and the Americans are indeed incredibly angry as a result. After that, however, things begin to go catastrophically awry. Roosevelt goes on radio and predictably promises the Japanese pain and suffering, and then… then nothing happens. The Americans are furious, yes, but they don’t seek the quick and decisive battle the Japanese are hoping for. Instead they simply wait, and wait, and wait, focusing on the land war in Europe while building ships and preparing plans for when they will eventually take the war to Japan. And this is of course precisely the scenario in which the Japanese simply cannot win. If the Americans make this war about production and manpower, Japan will crumble; it is only a matter of time. The Imperial Japanese Navy isn’t defeated at Midway – it has in fact already lost the war the second the Americans refuse to follow the script the Japanese had – quite naively – laid out for them.
Now, consider the political situation in the United States in 2021, and what has transpired during the last twelve months. In a way, we have all been witnessing the execution of a modern political form of the Kantai Kessen, a decisive shock-and-awe campaign that is now clearly starting to run out of steam. ...
It turns out that the liberal Kantai Kessen suffered from the same fatal flaw as the Japanese one: it is all well and good to sink all the ships in Pearl Harbor, but what do you do if the enemy then refuses to concede defeat? The significance of ”Let’s go Brandon!” spreading like wildfire outside the jaded internet set in this context is that it reveals for everyone just how powerless the media machine has now become. Nobody believes Joe Biden is the most popular president ever – nobody among the ”chuds” and the ”deplorables” would believe the likes of CNN about pretty much anything. And rather than being humiliated and broken, the American plebs are now acting just like the American sailors and soldiers did during World War 2: though none can deny that they have lost some battles and suffered real losses, surrender doesn’t seem to be forthcoming any time soon. Maybe surrender isn’t coming at all, ever. The ”decisive battle” that was the 2020 election was indeed decisive enough, but it increasingly looks like that simply doesn’t matter.
In a world where nobody is actually convinced by the media, the fact that you control the media doesn’t actually help you. ...
What we all saw in 2020 represents, to some fairly significant extent, the full scope of the political, social and economic power of team blue in America today. And that team took its best shot in 2020, only to find out in 2021 that all that power has now decisively failed to settle any issues or end any conflicts in America. Team red is still there, and like the ”sleeping giant” that was America in 1941, they are now slowly waking up and starting to use their own power, on their own terms, in order to fight back.
On the other side of the tangles of barbed wire, however, the sleeping giants that are America’s ordinary working men and women, her shopkeepers, firemen, nurses and train drivers, are now slowly freeing themselves from their torpor. Today, they are once again beginning to use muscles that some had forgotten were there all along. Unlike the email jobs caste, this caste of people are far from being ”maxed out”, indeed, they seem to have almost no limit on their potential power at all. It is by their work alone that the big cities where the email caste lives can keep going, and the more they are willing to use this power to fight back, the more doomed the email caste becomes.
Having spent much of their stored power on a shock and awe campaign that neither shocked nor awed the working men and women of America, the woke now increasingly hunker down for a long political war of attrition that they on some level must know they structurally cannot win, no matter how disciplined, fanatical, or moral they may be. So please, have some understanding if they choose not to find the humor in the simple phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!”. They have all the right in the world to not find any of this particularly funny.
After all, they know what that phrase really means." .......
Living in Infamy:
“The day will live in infamy. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The People of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.
I declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack, a state of war has existed between the People of United States and this Deep State Government of Occupation.”
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