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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
I thought of that quote of Yamamoto after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and that it might now apply to the way this country is going to take the Trump administration.
The guy who predicted Trump would win is now predicting that Trump will prove so uncontrolable and downright dangerous that the republicans will take steps to remove him and get Pence, who they can deal with.
The country has taken this hideous step and there will be an awful outcome...
I'm pretty scared right now...
MFM008
(19,820 posts)I'm stuck in angry.
This perverted pig shit
Is going to ruin all of our lives.
Blow every tradition and norm
Do things to purposely shock and awe the
Public and people who hate him.
With out a care.
It's like having someone break into your house .
I still can't believe it's happening.
Let me tell you it shakes my faith to the very core.
bdamomma
(63,923 posts)own Domestic enemies. They need to be thrown out, I only wish.
Dream Girl
(5,111 posts)And then fuck up shit just for the hell of it
delisen
(6,044 posts)2naSalit
(86,799 posts)SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)50 Shades Of Blue
(10,049 posts)HassleCat
(6,409 posts)The Japanese thought the attack on Hawaii was brilliant, the first step in a strategy to force the Americans to leave them unchallenged in Asia. It was a big victory, but it didn't work out in the end.
Yamamoto probably didn't make the sleeping dragon quote, but he should have, and he was the kind of guy who would think of the consequences, unlike someone else whose name I won't mention.
ProfessorGAC
(65,199 posts)What did i miss, HC? I don't recall ever hearing that was apocryphal. He did spend some years in the US and did know the country better than anyone else in their military hierarchy, no?
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)But I think it was the invention of a script writer. He did not survive the war, so he could not be quoted by anyone from our side, and nobody has turned up a Japanese source.
ProfessorGAC
(65,199 posts)Sorry, but none of those abjectly refute he didn't say something close enough. Not sure what movie you're talking about, because i learned that statement in grade school and that was at least few years before Tora, Tora, Tora was released. So that can't be the movie in question.
I've been a WWII buff for a very long time (i'm 60) and so i studied and remembered a lot of things from books and classes all the way back to 10. Maybe i watched too much "Combat" and "Garrison's Guerillas" with my dad in the mid-60's, but i started glomming onto WWII facts by the age of 10 or 11. And, when i saw that subtitle in the movie, i recall reading that he had said that.
Now, maybe not. But, it definitely goes back further than TTT.
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,862 posts)In The Reluctant Admiral, Hiroyuki Agawa gives a quotation from a reply by Admiral Yamamoto to Ogata Taketora on January 9, 1942, which is similar to the famous version: "A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto's_sleeping_giant_quote
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)It is the kind of thing Yamamoto would have said.
ProfessorGAC
(65,199 posts)I knew i heard that quote (perfectly accurate or not) before the movie came out.
I'm getting old, but not that old!
Wounded Bear
(58,718 posts)he's a RW ideologue, through and through. Because of that he is actually worse than Trump in many ways, especially because the press thinks of him as such a "mainstream" guy.
louis-t
(23,297 posts)by association with drumpf. I don't see Donnie dum dum lasting more than a year.
Dream Girl
(5,111 posts)People will rally and even give home the benefit of the doubt. Not so much the hard core deplorable, but the folks in the center and even some dems
Greybnk48
(10,176 posts)that have now taken this cheating, lying, right wing racist, misogynistic shit long enough.
The fucking racist scum already revolted in the 70's when the Dixiecrats threw a shit fit over civil rights. We've been tip-toeing around apologetically ever since and it's time to stop now. Fuck them.
Fact: We're right about civil rights and human rights, they're wrong. And it's time for us, the fucking majority in this country, to come down on them like a ton of bricks. Do I personally have a plan, no. But one will arise. I have no doubt. I'm ready.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,858 posts)grantcart
(53,061 posts)cyclonefence
(4,483 posts)Just because we are better behaved than the RW doesn't mean we can't be just as nasty.
moda253
(615 posts)Form a march? Protest in our designated protest zones? Post on a dusty old forum in a dark corner of the internet? Post on Facebook?
I don't mean to sound defeatist but honestly what are we going to do that is going to be feared?
They own everything now. They don't have to fear a damn thing. The own congress, they own the White House, they are going to own the USSC, the media...
Yeah I don't have a plan either but I don't see anything coming to fruition in the near future. The only thing we have is a slim majority of voters and that didn't get us shit.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,858 posts)2naSalit
(86,799 posts)Been posting that occasionally to show what we face in a not-so-delicate manner.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,858 posts)Trump seemed to not be affected by "conventional attacks" by his Republican opponents.
I was actually enjoying it back then because I wrongly assumed it was going to rip the GOP apart! I also assumed that Hillary and media coverage would blast Trump to oblivion eventually.
Trumpzilla will go down, though, probably by it's own doing!
2naSalit
(86,799 posts)Last edited Sun Jan 15, 2017, 07:59 PM - Edit history (1)
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,858 posts)it might prove to be a dog and pony show.
yuiyoshida
(41,862 posts)bdamomma
(63,923 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,467 posts)Yamamoto never said it, although it's safe to assume it conveyed his genuine feelings about the attack.
Rollo
(2,559 posts)Godzilla and company being symbolic of the horrendous destruction Japan's ill conceived war brought upon itself.
Yamamoto may have had misgivings about the consequences, but I doubt he had any qualms about inflicting mass casualties upon an unsuspecting enemy in their own harbor. He well knew that the success of the Pearl Harbor attack was dependent upon the element of surprise.
Brother Buzz
(36,467 posts)to declare war before the attack. Admiral Yamamoto was a man of honor and totally realized how fucked what they did was.
Rollo
(2,559 posts)Was its failure to communicate a war ultimatum to DC before the attack commenced.
In truth, Yamamoto made a fatal error in believing that the primary targets in the initial attack should be battleships. He thought that battleships held a great symbolic power for Americans (and the rest of the world) to the extent that wiping out the American Pacific battleship fleet would so demoralize the United States that it would refrain from counter attack.
This is a bit ironic, considering that Yamamoto was a great proponent of naval aviation. Yet he bungled the Pearl Harbor attack by focusing on battleships and neglecting to ensure that the American carrier fleet would also be destroyed on December 7. In fact, his main concern about the attack was being able to destroy American battleships with torpedoes in the shallow waters of Pearl. He was willing to cancel the plans until the Japanese had adopted the British method of shallow water torpedo design which made it, in his mind, all possible.
It's by no means clear that a declaration of war just minutes before the Pearl attack would have made much difference to an American public outraged by what they saw as completely unprovoked aggression conducted in as stealthy a manner possible.
The nail in Yamamoto's military coffin was that he let the American carriers evade the attack. As we all know, it was those carriers who spearheaded America's ultimately successful counter-attack, with their victory at Midway heralded as the turning point in the Pacific war.
Perhaps it was Yamamoto's cultural bias, which led him to regard Americans as "barbarians" (the exact word in Japanese to describe Westerners to this day) who clung to an outmoded concept of naval power. It was this hubris that was his downfall, but he fought on in his myopic vision to the end, clutching his sword in his hand as American P-38's shot him down over Southeast Asia.
longship
(40,416 posts)Since none of them were at Pearl Harbor. They were all on the high seas at the time. But you are correct that there was a lot of old thinking with regards to battleships at that time.
One thing the Japanese missed were the huge field of fuel tanks which if blown up would have forced the US fleet back to the west coast for some period of time.
That might not have stopped the submarines, though.
Rollo
(2,559 posts)Who could have let the fleet know if the carriers were in port or not...
But it's even more complex than that. The Japanese were following a contradictory plan, perhaps the result of magical thinking. On the one hand, they wanted to humiliate the US militarily by luring the entire US Pacific Fleet out to the open seas and demolishing it in one decisive battle. At the same time, they wanted to destroy the Pacific Fleet in port. Their success at Pearl in destroying the battleships in port meant they couldn't have the ultimate decisive battle their strategy demanded. So they won at Pearl but lost the war.
longship
(40,416 posts)Edwin Layton's book lays it all out. He was fleet intelligence office under both Admirals Kimmel and Nimitz. His book is detailed on both Pearl Harbor attack and Midway and closes in Tokyo Bay on board the USS Missouri.
Highly recommended.
And I Was There
Rollo
(2,559 posts)hatrack
(59,592 posts)After that, I have no expectation of success."
And right he was - Midway was almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor.
Brother Buzz
(36,467 posts)USA! USA! USA!
CrispyQ
(36,526 posts)Pence is just as scary as Trump. I once felt he would at least be moderate with the nukes, but after reading about his religious zealotry, I'm not so sure anymore.
Can we please stop electing people into government who want end times to come?
2naSalit
(86,799 posts)while the kocktopus Congress undoes every progressive gain in the last century. Won't be long before not only do women have no right to make their own decisions, they will be considered possessions again.
CrispyQ
(36,526 posts)They will finagle a few more state legislatures & call a convention. This country is in as dire a situation as it's ever been in.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)America will just chug along, they don't vote and are generally obtuse, often have a deer in the headlight look. This country could change drastically, and it's on the edge of destruction for civil rights. Also, with this ass as president, I would not be surprised to see the US in a war in the near future. He's got NK, China and Iran to deal with and he's clueless, absolutely clueless. If he thinks he can push them around, he's in for a huge surprise. Sadly, I think he is going to cause a lot of death and destruction.
Rollo
(2,559 posts)But at least he's not quite as bat-shit crazy as Trump.
I look at Pence as sort of an intelligent Dubya. Which, yes, is not a good thing, but Trump is still a worse thing. Unstable, unpredictable, unscrupulous, even criminal, whose only moral compass is what can reinforce his conviction that he is a being superior to the rest of mankind.
ananda
(28,877 posts)This is the call for every American to take up their civic duty.
Organize, protest, demonstrate, and resist until all grievances
are resolved.
world wide wally
(21,755 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)many directions and this ass we will have as president is going to make things horrific.
Ms. Toad
(34,093 posts)I was pretty sure he would until the last week, then I flipped back. I was pretty quiet around here, since anyone who dared suggest Clinton would not win was labeled a troll. There was no point in saying anything here - it would accomplish nothing, and I dont' go looking for people to call me troll unless there's something to be gained from subjecting myself to it.
BUT - throughout the primary I kept encountering Democrats and liberals who wanted Trump to win so Clinton could smash him in the general. Beyond that - I kept encountering the same sentiment, right up to election day. Trump is a joke. He'll never win.
And to the undecided voters who were leaning toward Trump - hoping that people around him would control him. My comment to them was that no one will be able to control him if he wins. What does he have to lose by continuing to be a loose cannon. At that point, he no longer needs votes - so there is absolutely NO reason for him to even try to control his natural impulses or to listen to anyone else.
Once he had the electoral college votes, it was a done deal. He is uncontrollable, because he has no reason to subject himself to anyone else's control.
CrispyQ
(36,526 posts)calling the election for Trump. He begged for Democratic leadership to listen to him.
Ms. Toad
(34,093 posts)I think it would have made a difference if Democrats had taken Trump seriously - complacency contributes to inaction - and to stupid actions that actually support Trump. I know there were a lot of Democrats who were extremely active - but I'm pretty sure there were others who weren't because they didn't think there was a chance in hell Trump would win. I even know Democrats who were so sure that Clinton would win that they cast a protest vote for Trump to send a message to Clinton.
But talking about it here wouldn't have accomplished anything other than generating a firestorm of criticism and name-calling. So I didn't.
"I think it would have made a difference if Democrats had taken Trump seriously "
There were threads where people were predicting the outcome...would it be 60/40...no maybe 75/35...complete blowout, etc...take back the house and senate, etc.
Nobody thought he had any chance of winning...well almost nobody, Michael Moore was spot on.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)for their vote. For years I've been saying there is a latent tension building in this country of left out people. Trump saw that and apparently figured he could captivate them for their vote. What stuns me, are the millions that wanted/want an ass like Trump as their president. It's been a constant WTF to me. They might eventually get how they have been used, hopefully, and likely all hell will break loose ... no idea where that will end. F, I feel like a doomsday machine has been started.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)Response to CTyankee (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
uppityperson
(115,681 posts)with? That would be good. Welcome to DU.
Cosmocat
(14,574 posts)1) First, a LOT of Republicans like him, all of this is very much what they want, they are getting off on him being an ass hole. This includes A LOT of congressman and senators.
2) doing something about him would prove they were wrong about something. The next time these as shoes admit they are wrong about something will be the first. They are NOT going to start by impeach ingredients a Republican POTUS .
Vogon_Glory
(9,132 posts)I suspect that a large block of them outside of the Religious Right block are going to think "This is not the guy we voted for and we don't want him!".