Hubris

The Japanese celebrate the victory of the Battle of Tsushima: the naval battle between the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo versus the Tsar's Second Pacific Squadron under Admiral Rozhestvensky during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Togo came out being called the "Nelson of the East". Two thirds of the Russian fleet was sunk.

The war was held up to Japan as an exemplar and paragon for all future Japanese imperialist expansions to follow - a lesson in what bushido could accomplish, divine fate and blind faith in the Emperor. The Japanese learned this lesson of triumphalism well, to their future regret.

Which is to say, they learned the wrong lesson. If you look at the war, it taxed the tiny island nation to the limit. Even the battle of Tsushima itself contained lessons Japan failed to learn. Admiral Togo, at the end of the battle, noted that the Japanese fleet could not have fought much longer. The ships were out ammunition and coal, the bores of the big guns on the Japanese battleships were worn out and needed to be replaced. The Japanese arms industry could not perform the task. Provisions and supplies were tapped out.

In the greater war, the Japanese economy was nearing exhaustion, an irreplaceable and taxing 100,000 men had been killed taking Port Arthur, Mukden, and Manchuria. Russia, the biggest country in the world, was in the process of calling in fresh replacements. Japan was fortunate that Teddy Roosevelt intervened, else they would have had to sue for peace.

So, the right lesson the Japanese failed to learn was to be taught again in World War II. They failed to build an effective system of logistics. They jumped into battle, poorly supplied, with no reserves of resources in place, a shoddy supply chain, no plans to expand or augment their supply chain, and in many cases, expected the warrior spirit of their people to win battles for them. In short, they operated on blind faith that past triumphs would be revisited upon them.

What a bunch of fools.

The American people would do well to study what happened to Japan in the first half of the 20th century, but we won't. In particular, those of a conservative bent, who accept the triumphalist lie of the end of the Cold War, will fail to learn the lesson provided. Which is, sorry folks: Cold War is still going on, we still have 5,000 Russian warheads pointed at us, the American people have proven themselves less than exceptional, and their boy Reagan was a vain foolish oaf who did nothing to end the Soviet Union.

(Come on, a nation that survived both Stalin and Hitler taken down by a senile-in-office corrupt old dunce like Reagan? Give me a break. Look instead to the Bush clan's connection to the House of Saud, in lowering oil prices as, simultaneously, the Russian military bled the economy dry in achieving a short-lived parity with the US. Hmm. Lower oil prices, sure looking like the Saudis did for Obama to get Iran to the table).

And now the conservatives are paying a price for not learning the right lesson. Which was: bankrupting ourselves, adding to the foul corruption of the military/industrial/congressional  complex, and acting upon the blind faith of American exceptionalism, and more importantly the tenants and moral fiber of the conservative mindset will somehow makes us prevail based upon imagined past triumphs.

You can only be delusional for so long before reality catches up with you, and I believe this is the beginning of reality catching up with at least portion of the benighted conservative domain known as the GOP.

Have fun being tangled up in your filth-ridden malarial bedclothes and fever dreams, GOP. You so fucking deserve it. Problem is, we have to put up with you deranged fuckers.