Pearl Harbor Day, 2023 ~~ dmorista

 Pearl Harbor Day, 2023 ~~ dmorista

Pearl Harbor Day used to be universally, if unofficially, observed in American Society.  Now it is afforded a 3 or 4 minute mention on the TV News Channels or on NPR, if that. Even Turner Classic Movies no longer bothers to air Tora! Tora! Tora!, (far and away the best movie about the Pearl Harbor attack and the events that led up to it) though they are presenting several other WW 2 movies. The JFK Assassination is also fading from living memory, but is still a date for attempted disinformation and propaganda gambits, and 9-11 is in the heyday of its reign as the New Main Official and Unofficial  Commemoration and Observance.

The U.S. that was already potentially the most powerful society on Earth, began its emergence as the dominant player on the World Stage on December 7th, of 1941.  This initiating event took place when about 360 Japanese aircraft from the 6 Carrier Task Force (named Kido Butai) attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in two waves of about 180 planes each. The U.S. Pacific Fleet had 3 large fleet carriers, and had either the good luck or the surreptitious planning, to ensure that those 3 carriers were not moored in the harbor.  The U.S.S. Lexington and the U.S.S. Enterprise were both engaged in ferrying fighter aircraft to two U.S. bases, one on Midway Island and the other on Wake Island.  The other fleet carrier, the U.S.S. Saratoga, was arriving at the major United States  Navy (U.S.N.) base in San Diego, California.  It was dispatched, with yet more fighter and bomber planes intended for Wake Island, in a mission that did not actually take place.  If those three U.S. Fleet Carriers had been lost in the Pearl Harbor attack, the battles of the Coral Sea, and Midway would not have taken place.  There has always been an undercurrent of discussion that Roosevelt knew there was a pending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Certainly, the U.S. Navy had run war games assuming Pearl Harbor, among other locations, would be attacked by Japanese forces. And authors wrote books and reports with that presumption, going back as far as the early 1920s. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to play a larger role in the war against Nazi Germany, but was constrained by the strong isolationist sentiments of the U.S. populace.  In fact, the U.S.N. had, for over 6 months, been engaging in a war against German U-Boat operations in the Western part of the North Atlantic.  The Germans had attacked the Soviet Union on June 21st of 1941 and were just, in early December, losing the ability to actually capture Moscow, though that was not yet evident to the U.S. or the U.K.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a godsend for Roosevelt, and his core group of advisors, who wanted to join in the war against Germany.  Of course, Hitler and the Germans played right into the hands of the Roosevelt group by declaring war on the U.S. on December 11,1941.  If that had not happened there is no particular indication that the U.S. populace would have supported going to war against Germany.

So now, some 82 years after the Pearl Harbor attack, what is the state of the U.S. and of The American Century, as declared by Life Magazine’s owner and founder Henry R. Luce.  Well yesterday, Dec 6, 2023 there were two “mass shooting” events that killed 9 people and wounded 3 others.  Donald Trump has openly declared he will begin jailing opponents and otherwise imposing an authoritarian regime within minutes of being inaugurated should he ascend to a second term in 2025, and he and his minions continue to organize and mobilize their heavily armed base of supporters..  The current political leadership has committed the U.S. to massively supporting not just one, but in fact two wars, and is rattling the saber against the nearly unbeatable Chinese.  Half the country languishes under harsh Forced-Birth regimes run by a motley collection of Theocrats and corrupt reactionaries who serve the ultra-rich and their jaded agenda.  Millions of desperate people have swarmed across the the Southern Border for over 30 years now, most of them the fruit of the Death Squad campaigns and the never-ending support for oligarchs in Central and South America.

Yet we see plenty of positive developments with organizing and social developments. The far-right knows that the ongoing social and demographic trends in the U.S. will inevitably defeat them if those forces are allowed to mature and come to some degree of social power.  The right is, therefore, ready to act and think that time is working against them.