drmanhattan16
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User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
We judge people morally based on whether they did morally better than expected in their conditions or milieu.
Can you clarify what you mean by "conditions"? Are we going down the route of "morality is just what you can afford"?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
I think you'll find part 3 interesting, then, as I plan on addressing the scouting efforts and Japanese weapon arming.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
To be clear, you are referring to the scouting efforts? As you'll see, the Japanese tempted fate.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The problem is that even in an entirely good-faith argument, I don't know how you could come away thinking Jefferson isn't a racist by our standards. Such an argument might also give consider what describes a person when one thinks of them generally - should you think Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father or Thomas Jefferson, racist Founding Father? Or if we have to acknowledge this bigotry in every instance.
This is why I was saying the personas mattered. Rufo's status hinges on him rejecting the philosophy of the social progressives and other radical leftists he identifies, he has every incentive to not give them an optics win. Approach Rufo in a bar with no other people and make the same argument, he'd be far more amenable to it, I suspect.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
I don't see anything in the Current Affairs article saying that Rufo approached Robinson.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Scouting is always a roll of luck in the age before satellite and radar. I plan to cover the Japanese scouting efforts in part 3.
It is not luck when we talk about loading bombs and torpedoes. That stems from design philosophy, since the carriers have to be built to a specific requirement before you train people on how to work aboard them.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
What's wrong with arguing whether a man who owned slaves and helped found America was a good person without having to use one of the most mind-killing words in all of discourse?
"What's wrong" is that it would be very difficult and awkward in an interview to describe Jefferson in a way that didn't just make people reading go "oh, you're trying to say he's a racist." By any reasonable definition we have, we could consign Jefferson to the category. But Robinson may just genuinely not get that Rufo would never admit it because "Rufo admits CRT was right" is the kind of headline people would unironically parrot forever when discussing him.
Why Robinson decided to interview Rufo is beyond me, it should have been obvious that as "new" as the arguments might be, the incentives for a persona are entirely different from that of a person.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The US would have demanded Japan end its colonial empire, which was unacceptable to the Japanese.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The Doolittle Raid was a total surprise, the Japanese were not expecting the US to launch army bombers from carriers. Secondly, the US did very little material damage in the raid.
Suppose there were a counterfactual where the Japanese divebombers come out of a cloud, sink 4 carriers and win the battle. The US is fucked, that's the Pacific Fleet neutered for the time being. They can keep producing but how can they keep Pearl Harbour from being bombed to shit? What good is a carrier without bases to fuel it? What good is cycling in new and untrained crews vs veterans?
Uh, how exactly are the Japanese going to bomb Pearl Harbor after the initial strike on December 7th? Even during the attack, American sailors were actively defending the base and the ships with AA fire once the initial surprise wore off. The increasing resistance was one of the factors that made Nagumo avoid a third strike.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
As soon as this was proven not to be the case they should have started negotiating.
Not possible, unfortunately. America would not have settled for any kind of concessions Japan might throw their way after Pearl Harbor.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
It is worth noting that the Japanese were not actually aware that carriers were in the South Pacific until the Battle of Coral Sea. They initially assumed that land-based aircraft were attacking them in a prior operation.
I can hardly fault them for thinking that maybe, just maybe, the carriers of the US were engaging in their own operations and it was just happenstance that the two forces happened to meet. But it's the job of military planners to assume the worst, so the Japanese definitely failed to be good analysts in that regard.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
So far, much of the essay is a summary of Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (as the essay implies).
Sorry, I should have been clear. This is 100% correct, it's mostly just that. But Shattered Sword is somewhat lengthy and has details only nerds would really care about. I'm trying to cut down on some of the things I think people would not be interested in, like the whole section on Japanese carrier-based aircraft. That section is necessary to understand later arguments, but not to the level Parshall and Tully imply.
Though I don't think the part about Japanese public opinion is covered.
It's a small snippet in that book, actually.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
If they could take valuable targets, they wouldn’t have needed to attack midway.
Maybe so. But remember, the Japanese Navy had given a great deal of control over to Yamamoto, and it was he that insisted on sinking the American carriers. The others wanted to strike elsewhere.
Why is that good? They were already spent, they should have been left free to overextend further into the jungle before the hammer came down. The last thing the US should want at this point would be to get the japanese to switch to their “fortify and make them pay for every inch” strategy.
For one thing, leaving them alone means Japan can and would start threatening the America-Australia routes. Lose Australia as a war partner and the US has a much harder time staging land invasions, or even just the ability to resupply vessels from a nearby friendly port.
I won't comment on the loss of life in the island-hopping campaign, but the costs of losing four heavy carriers and all the experience ship crew, mechanics, and officers, were hardly replaceable to the Japanese.
Perhaps if americans had waited until supremacy to engage instead of sending every ship into battle right off the line, the whiplash would have broken the japanese, while minimizing casualties and any japanese chance of winning a limited war in the process.
Carrier warfare at the time was about launching your strike first. Nimitz knows the Japanese are coming. He gets confirmation when Midway-based scouts report that the attack is happening. His own vessels are precisely where the Japanese aren't expecting. He took his opportunity and it paid off. Yes, it relied on quite a bit of luck to make victory possible, but that is hardly an excuse to not try.
Moreover, the morale impacts cannot be understated. We are sitting 80 years in the future and know both sides of the war, I don't think the American public would have been quite aware of just how much the Japanese had overextended. They might very well insist that the navy start fighting back more aggressively if all they saw was Japan attacking national allies and taking US soil (the Aleutians and Midway Island) while the US just waited for the Japanese to overstretch.
Lastly, preventing further naval offensives had a positive moral effect as well. Let us not forget how brutally conquered civilians were treated by both the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. You say that America should have left Japan to wear itself thin, but they were certainly willing to be monsters regardless of the nature of their supply lines. It may not be a thing to consider when planning, but it should be a positive added to the list after the fact.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Goddammit, you just had to do the right thing and ask me to back up my claims, didn't you? Ultimately, I don't save that stuff and this realization was one of hindsight. I got nothing for ya, sorry. Will edit the post to reflect this.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
‘“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”
That quote would be more fitting for the final part of this series, which will include a small point about Midway's nature as a "decisive" battle.
Just sit back, strangle shipping with ironed out sub torpedoes, fight purely training & PR battles until every battle odds estimate reads north of 95%. The fabian strategy doesn’t require weakness.
Firstly, it was not until the end of the war, nearly 3 years after Midway, that the Mk. 14 torpedo became "reliable". That's a long time to be waiting to strangle shipping. Leaving the Japanese Merchant Marine alone to fuel their war machine is not good.
Secondly, the US may have been unthreatened by Japan, but China, Burma, the South Pacific, and even Australia were in danger. Leaving the Japanese to use their carriers with impunity elsewhere meant devastating strikes that could force the Allies out of their strongholds. Operation MO failed, but a second one with more carriers might have succeeded.
Ultimately, Japan's carriers represented an incredibly valuable national asset that cost that country a tremendous amount. America had pilots confident and capable of dive-bombing or torpedoing them. Nimitz knew his enemy's plan. I think his risk was justified as it would ultimately put the Japanese on the defense going forward.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The oil embargo + the Dutch East Indies also embargoing them + the Americans planning to build ten fleet carriers in 1942 and a hell of a lot of escorts and battleships meant they had limited time left to act before they got crushed.
History backs Nagano's view that Roosevelt would not have been able to justify way to the American public if it was only to protect the colonies of other nations. Had they avoided fighting America (leaving the Phillippines at their throat, yes), they might very well have avoided their disasters.
Plus Japan fought well at Midway and lost the battle due to factors beyond their control - the US having broken their codes and the dive-bombers appearing out of a cloud at the absolute worst time.
The skill of individuals on the Japanese side was high, but they absolutely failed to fight as well as they could have. Many of the decisions made during that battle make no sense even by the standards of what the Japanese should have known at the time.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Excellent essay, remarkable how many problems were papered over.
Oh, we're just getting started. This is going to be like watching a train crash.
if you haven't already seen it you might enjoy this low budget but very high effort video recreation of the Battle of the Midway, also told from the perspective of the Japanese.
I have seen that! Montemayor is one of the greatest video creators out there, marred only by the fact that he doesn't upload a video a day for me at his usual quality! It was actually that video that led to me reading the book in question.
Could you add more on the Japanese public getting sick of the war with China?
They cite Pearl Harbor by H.P. Willmott, the 2001 version that includes an essay by Tohmatsu Haruo. I can't find this book via libgen, but if you can, they cite pages 178-80 for part of it, so I'd start there.
A good sentiment, but I think you're preaching to the choir here. We're here talking about this because we believe we are the good ones and lament that more people aren't better.
That was most definitely not me trying to preach to the choir. I see defenses of that sort quite often here.
Edit: feel free to take my observation with a grain of salt. I swear I've seen that stuff, but I can't find it, in part because I spend far less time on this site.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
They don’t care for the craft of filmmaking, there’s no thought to telling a coherent interesting story, it’s just spectacle and effects.
But those largely are not art movies in the first place! They're not trying to be either! The MCU might be defended by fans as serious art, but it's a kid's spectacle to its core. You want serious movies that are trying to be art? Try movies like VVitch, Midsommar, or Tar.
I can hardly think of a more anti-elite attitude to movies if the ones that win box offices and several awards each year are flashy spectacles that the public at large seems fine eating up.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
we don’t think anything in our culture or civilization is worth the effort of beautification or even just taking seriously.
As a cohesive unit? That's fundamentally impossible. Do you think the Chinese youth take their leaders as seriously as those leaders take themselves? The next generation is always going to make jokes and generally trivialize what came before, that's their job.
And thus to me is a huge problem because an unserious people cannot and will not do anything of note. Why would they, the environment screams at them that they live in a throw away society where everything is built cheaply as possible and made to break or be thrown away? Why contribute to culture when it’s cheap tawdry memes and spectacle and self parody all the way down?
There exist many people who can and do serious work, you're just not seeing it.
Do you like fiction? Ever want to read an entirely serious work about Rey and Kylo from the new Star Wars trilogy going from enemies to lovers? Go to AO3, you'll find your serious fiction. Do you like music? I'm sure there's some heartfelt song out put out by a black rapper about his struggles growing up on SoundCloud.
Yes, these things get memed. Yes, people do eventually grow tired of them. But just as many people hold these things near and dear to their hearts. They just don't get up in arms when someone makes a joke about it. Memes and self-parody don't stop serious things from existing, often within the same minds as well. The folks on the noncredibledefense subreddit made waifu art of Perun (a military analysis channel), but they'd be the first to tell you they take his words seriously.
"Where are my statues and buildings?" you ask. But those are your standards for what indicates a culture's self-esteem. The people you think are doing nothing are doing what they think is serious. Statues and buildings have a permanency and impact that are matched movies and TV shows. Which is more beautiful and serious, the original Star Wars trilogy or the Golden Gate Bridge? While I don't have the answer to that, the former was referenced in literal Chinese propaganda directed at their youth.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Sure. There's also a class divide within any particular culture - elites may want to valorize one thing and the public another. But unless you're from the culture is question, you can't just ignore your own aesthetic preferences.
The people of Chicago might have ugly buildings built upon them without a voice. But perhaps some consideration should be made of the big difference in cultural standards if you aren't from Chicago, that's my point.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
While I don't disagree that there are people who have in the past (and likely in the present) see it as their duty to override democratic consensus in the cultural sphere, I don't think their use of the word "democratic" is a reflection of that. I think they are more referring to the idea that architecture is a diverse field, so "everyone" is getting a vote.
I think this reserved unremarkable architecture is supposed to be a sort of repentance, a civilizational fasting on beauty. That humanity doesn't deserve that sort of stuff, since it emboldens them too much in their pride. Flaming those grandiose passions is seen as too dangerous, again since it has correlated with the Nazi and fascist regimes. Too much focus on what's beautiful seems like a slippery slope towards then also trying to decide which humans are worthy/beautiful enough to allow to exist, and to eugenics and so on.
They do not hate beauty, they want to force people to be awake. To jar the senses and force people out of a perceived dream. That dream is national pride and everything associated with it.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Have you considered that they just find different things worth taking seriously? The value of buildings as a way of indicating a place's worth is intuitive, perhaps, but not the only way.
Yes, but why have them debate when you saw how good Scott's questions for the 2016 candidates were? I want to hear Bush address whether Barbara Bush was a genius or if there were many better candidates than him.
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