December 8th: Still Infamous

December 8th, 1941

“…a date which will live in infamy.” 

For more reasons than one. 

Hermann Goering was almost frightened, as he saw the look on Adolf Hitler’s face when he received word about Pearl Harbor. 

Hitler was visibly shaken, and this had only occurred in few other instances according to Goering. 

Churchill celebrated Pearl Harbor. 

For both these European heads of state knew that the war had been decided in that moment. 

The behemoth of America had risen from slumber. 

For what purpose? This, in reality, is unknown. 

Independent banking?

Inconclusive.

Communist back-channeling?

Inconclusive.

Was this attack allowed to happen? 

Inconclusive. 

Once upon a time, the United States threatened the British Empire with the invasion of Canada after the Civil War for housing confederate ships. The terms were pay 2 million dollars in reparations or brace for invasion. 

The British Empire paid the money. 

The writing on the wall emerged again in the American seizure of the Pacific in the Spanish-American War of 1898. 

America flirted with superpower status, and the makings of it were purposefully kept dormant through the wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine. 

But at a certain point, we just couldn’t help ourselves, and for better or for worse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt orchestrated the American Century, the manifestation of an American Empire that lives on today with the weapons of the dollar and the television for the naked eye, and the weapons of the next century backing them. 

Some might say we could have stayed out and let Europe and Asia run there respective courses, but regardless of your political leanings, the true victor overseas whether Soviet, Japanese, or German would have savored the opportunity to knock on the door of the American sphere of influence to test the waters. 

A Europe reduced from God-fearing, traditional, and hierarchical society to one whose only value was the allocation of resources was inevitably going to lose to the nation who has never been matched in this skill. 

World War One spilled the gasoline. 

Pearl Harbor lit the match. 

And it’s been a mad, mad world since then. 

God Bless America through identity crisis and new epochs. 

God help us all. 

Rest In Peace to the fallen. 

Remember the fallen.