New Musings! -- Reformation Weekend and Mid-Fall (10/25/2024)

Riddleblog and Blessed Hope Podcast Updates:

  • I’m beginning a series on the Book of Hebrews on the Riddleblog

  • The Blessed Hope Podcast Season Three on 1 Corinthians continues—in upcoming episodes we’ll be dealing with idolatry, the Lord’s Supper, spiritual gifts, and other controversial topics

Thinking Out Loud:

  • You know Tim Walz was a terrible choice for VP when Jim Gaffigan can imitate him so brilliantly on SNL.

  • Much of the blame for our two miserable presidential candidates falls on Senate leader Mitch McConnell. If he had pushed the R’s into impeaching Trump after the J6 debacle, then Trump would have been barred from holding office back in 2021. Very likely the Magacrats would have splintered and lost influence in the party, instead of taking it over and pushing Reagan conservatives out. Why that matters is the R’s would have gone through their primaries and nominated a competent candidate (say Ron DeSantis, or Brian Kemp, or Glenn Youngkin) one of whom would now be running against Harris and very likely building upon a significant lead as the election draws near (8-10 points?). The R’s would easily gain the White House and possibly both houses of Congress. What could have been would have unburdened us from what will be.

  • Meanwhile, I'm praying for a divided congress and a peaceful transition of power.

  • I’m no fan of LDS theology, but I have to begrudgingly admit that they have the most impressive name for their sect leader — “prophet, seer, and revelator.” That almost makes up for the peach-faced boys on bikes calling themselves “elders.”

  • I love the convenience of Amazon’s Alexa. But in our house we have to speak about her using a different name (“Amanda”) so she doesn’t wake up and interrupt whatever it is we are doing or watching. I know she’s spying on me—a trade-off I’m willing to make because I am boring (she’s got nothing on me) and too lazy to get up and do whatever it is she can do for me.

Currently Reading:

Richard B. Frank’s 2020 volume, Tower of Skulls, is not a piece of horror or science fiction, although from the title it sounds like it could be. This is a very important contribution to the field of World War Two historiography and is must reading for anyone interested in the Asia-Pacific War. Frank tells a complicated story clearly and efficiently.

Richard Frank is among the leading World War Two historians—his book on the Guadalcanal campaign is considered to be the definitive work on the subject. This is the first in a projected series of three volumes, and is subtitled “A History of the Asia-Pacific War July 1937-May 1942.” The subtitle makes clear that Frank is going to make the case (and indeed does) that the Pacific War—the beginning of which is thought by most to be the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—actually began four years earlier (with the Japan-China conflict) which should be regarded as the beginning of the “Asia-Pacific War.”

Japanese incursions into China started as early as 1931, but open warfare between the two nations began on July 7, 1937, when Japan invaded Manchuria following the Marco Polo Bridge incident in China, and then subsequently the Chinese heartland. Frank does a solid job of describing the strategic goals, the atrocities, the horrific causalities (into the hundreds of thousands), as well as detailing both Japan’s and China’s foreign policy aims in regards to Germany, the USSR, and the United States. These geo-political machinations enabled the Japanese militants to continue the war in China (which was bleeding both nations dry), and eventually led to two stark choices. One option for Japan was to seek to take advantage of Soviet weakness after Germany invaded the USSR in June of 1940, and take all of Manchuria (risking war with the USSR). The other was to bully the Vichy French and occupy French Indo-China. But such an occupation would likely risk war with the the European allies and the United States. The Netherlands (which had been overrun by Hitler’s armies in1940) still possessed the oil rich Dutch East Indies. Great Britain, too, was was teetering on the edge of defeat at the hands of the Nazis, while America was thought to be unready and unwilling to fight. Ultimately, the militants chose the latter “southern” course once Japanese intransigence brought about an American oil embargo on Japan which provided the necessary justification to go to war with the European allies.

There is so much in Frank’s narrative that it would take a lengthy review to do it all justice. I’ll leave that endeavor to you should you choose to read Tower of Skulls. But one important conclusion accomplished by Frank is his absolute demolition of those conspiracy theories that either Churchill or Roosevelt (or both) knew of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance and did little or nothing to stop it so as to bring isolationist America into the war against Germany and Japan. Frank presents and defends the sad but utterly inescapable conclusion that while American intelligence services and diplomats should have figured out what was to come, the Japanese did an excellent job of masking their true intentions and pulled off the successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. At the end of the day, American political and military officials simply could not believe that Japan would actually dare do such a thing. And so the watchdogs of the Pacific Fleet and Hawaiian air bases remained asleep at the switch on the morning of December 7, until the terse radio dispatch was sent to all commands soon after the attack began, “Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is no drill.”

I am sorry I didn’t get to this essential volume earlier as there was much here I didn’t know about the behind the scenes political maneuvering—the eventual basis for the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific War and which set in motion the post war tensions between the USA, Communist China, and The Soviet Union throughout the cold war. This is a remarkable book in its scope, yet remains brief and readable.

But this book has one very serious shortcoming. The twit (I mean the editor or publisher, and trust me my rude designation is well deserved) who decided not to use conventional footnotes or endnotes did the author (and the reader) a tremendous disservice. Frank’s extensive and dense notes are not numbered or listed in the text, but are collected by the page in the volume to which they refer (so, for example, there will be four “page fourteen” notes, but no way to tie these notes to the point they support, or that to which they refer in the text. This is maddening in a book like this where that information is both important and useful. Whoever did this, stop it!!!! Don’t do it again!!!!

Recommended Links:

Past Musings: It’s Fall — New Musings (9/23/2024)

Video: Why is Music Getting Worse?

Ignore the profane “What the . . . Happened?” chyron. The video has no profanity and offers a good explanation for the demise of good ole rock music.

MusingsKim RiddlebargerThe Election as spiritual warfare, The Reformation, The Asia-Pacific War, Fake Pandas, Why is new music so bad1 Comment