filkermanque

A couple of lefty people I know are pre-emptively being bitter and anticipating defeat in the New York City Mayoral election, expecting “vote blue no matter who” suddenly not to apply.

I’ll be fair and admit they have reason, but pre-surrendering is not how to win fucking anything ever.

Now, some may note – fairly enough – that “vote blue no matter who” is fundamentally about how legislative bodies are organised and deciding who has the power to set the agenda for bills and legislative voting. They’ll note that it’s not actually about every individual race, but instead is about deciding what gets moved forward in a legislature.

But while true, “vote blue no matter who” still matters this time, even though it’s a mayoral race, and even though this time it’s someone to the left of people who usually say that, rather than about someone to the right of people who usually hear it. And that is because it’s about the Overton window.

Here’s one way you might pitch it to your “centrist,” or “establishment,” or “conservative-leaning” Democratic friends who might otherwise vote Cuomo as an independent, or just sit this this one out:

“Okay, yeah, I know, you don’t like the word ‘socialist,’ and so you’ve already decided you don’t like Mamdani. You’re afraid of him winning, you’re afraid of how the mythical “centrist Republican” won’t come over if Democrats somewhere back a leftist.

“Thing is, that’s bullshit. I’m sorry, but it’s a lie. It just is. They do not care. We had a literal fascist insurrectionist running last election, and a Democratic campaign that spent half its time with dissident Republicans trying to get those so-called centrist Republicans to acknowledge reality and switch over. Did it work? Not one whit. These voters don’t exist, so stop trying.

“But even that’s not the real point.

“This isn’t about Mamdani. Not him in particular. I mean, even as mayor of NYC, he can’t do that much by himself. I think he’ll do some real good. It won’t be enough for me, but it’s a start. But for you, now… for you…

“For you, this election is about moving the Overton window back towards yourself.

“You may not have noticed, but right now, the Overton window is so far to the right that Elon Musk could do and did throw a literal Hitler-identical Nazi salute during the Presidential inauguration and still be welcomed into government. That’s insane. And fatal for a representative democracy.

“But we can push that window back to where you want it to be, and we do that by pushing to the left as hard as we can. Even if you don’t want to go there, even if you don’t want to go where I do, even if you’re ‘not comfortable’ with someone who calls himself a ‘socialist.’

“By electing him, we can make that position viable. Not dominant, not in charge, but viable. And doing _that_ pushes the middle of the window back to where you actually are. It makes you the middle position again.

“Right now, everyone not a fascist – which includes you – is ‘radical left.’ Rule of law? Radical left. Science? Radical left. Due process? Radical left. Social security and medicare? Radical left. Woman not the property of a man? Queer? Radical left. Which is, again, insane, but that is where we are right now.

“But if we start electing some real leftists, then suddenly, that window swings away from the right. You’ll be part of the Sane and Normal Centre again.

“In short: like always, this is strategy. Vote for him as ‘vote blue no matter who’ so that you won’t be the ‘radical left’ anymore, and so you can have an actual choice who you vote for again in the future.

“And that’s why, this time, it’s you who need to ‘vote blue, no matter who.'”

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

December 7th, 1941: the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a day that will live in infamy” in his famous speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Japan.

That particular epithet – that’s a strong one. And unlike most such epithets, it’s held up. People know it, still.

I mean, sure, slogans like “Remember the Maine!” rallied people at the time, but it’s an historical footnote; “Remember the Alamo!” has more weight, but not because of the attack – it’s because of the hopeless and romanticised defence.

(That it was, push comes to shove, in defence of slavery is important but not relevant to my line of thought here.)

Why was the Pearl Harbour attack somehow that much worse?

It wasn’t that Japan attacked a purely military target in a United States territory. Nothing wrong with that by the rules of war. Certainly nothing infamous about it, either. Within the rules of war, it’s fair play.

It’s not that it was a surprise, even – though it was, and that tends to be what people think of when they hear the phrase. Most people at the time assumed a Japanese Imperial attack would come in the Philippines, not in Hawai’i. But surprise attacks are the meat and gravy of war, and simply good strategy – again, not a source of infamy.

It wasn’t even, really, that they started the war with the attack. That’s kind of how wars tend to go. As a rule, one doesn’t go declare war and then stand around a while giving your enemy a week or two to get their defences in place.

So why were people who were absolutely expecting war – absolutely getting ready for a war – with Japan still so very angry about the way it started? What made a crowd certain that war was inevitable – a crowd that was getting ready for it, whether they liked it or not – go, “oh, that is too goddamn far”?

It was that Japan was literally still negotiating as the bombs fell.

Roosevelt mentions this in his speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war. It’s shallow in the specifics, but it’s explicitly there, in the first minute. He didn’t have to get into the weeds of details; everybody in Congress knew.

The Japanese attack started at 12:48pm Eastern time. The military finally got word sometime after 1:30pm Eastern time. The Japanese ambassador had scheduled a meeting with Secretary of State Hull for 1:45pm, and didn’t show up until 2:05pm, by which time the bombs had been falling for over an hour – and even then, they delivered a statement responding to a previous US position paper delivered on November 26th.

It was harsh, but it was no declaration of war.

The Japanese delegation were literally negotiating as their air force’s bombs fell.

That betrayal – that subterfuge, that backstab – coloured the entire rest of the war in the Pacific, up to and including the decision to use those atomic bombs.

Does that still-negotiating-as-the-bombers-let-fly trick sound like something that just happened this afternoon?

Maybe it should.

Japan’s plan was a quick but heavy knockout blow on a military target, to weaken American forces in the Pacific and force the Americans to accede to their demands in China.

Trump’s plan was apparently also a quick but heavy knockout blow on military targets, to force the Iranians to accede to Trump’s – and Netanyahu’s – demands in the Middle East.

Iran is in no way the 1940s US; Trump’s clown car criminal crowd is in no way the leadership of Imperial Japan. This is not World War II, and since Trump didn’t go nuclear, I don’t think it’s World War III; this is not that kind of projection, so don’t make it into one.

I’m just talking infamy. As far as infamy goes?

Yeah.

I could really see saying this is an act of infamy.

Obviously, that’s the kind of thing Iran would say, no matter what. Aside from that, times have changed. Asymmetrical war, disinformation, irregular warfare as a primary strategy – all those old ideas about war have rather gone by the way side. It’s hard to talk about something as infamous in war these days.

But still. I could see it.

And more importantly… I could see people believing it.

Couldn’t you?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

…but here are some options from a foreign-policy standpoint as laid out by The Atlantic. Seems a reasonable summary to me.

What it completely leaves out is that this is a direct violation of the War Powers Act, the UN Charter (to which the US is signatory), and even the National Security Act. I guess that’s not important anymore.

Correctly, there are calls for impeachment tonight from outside and within Congress. I suggest you write whoever you’ve got up there to do the same. But I do not expect it to go anywhere; I am absolutely confident the MAGAts will find a way to justify their 100% spin on the “peace president” and why bombing Iran – an absolute act of war – is just fine and all the more reason to worship their shit-stain incarnate God Emperor.

I’ve got a short essay going up tomorrow morning at 7:48am. If you know why 7:48am on Sunday is an important time, you’ll probably have some idea what it’s about. You’re probably not completely right – but you’re quite certainly not really wrong, either.

For the rest of you?

It’s about infamy.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.