My excuse is that I don’t own HBO myself. Maybe subconsciously I don’t want you to enjoy something I can’t.

Yes, this post is so damn pointless after the fact, but I felt the need to dedicate a post to what is guaranteed to be the new television series of the year. Or at least even with Archer.

In case you don’t know, The Pacific is the spiritual successor to Band of Brothers, what with the same guys behind it, and it also being set in World War II. You might have guessed that it does not cover the European theater, though. No, this is about Marines killing lots of Japs –three Marine badasses in particular. I thought about paying for HBO for however long it was necessary to watch the series, but then I saw the package was 26 bucks a month; perhaps there are cheaper packages, but that sight alone was enough to make me wait until the Blu-ray. To watch it legally, at least.

I made a post about this upcoming mini-series a long time ago, but now there is finally a (terrible quality) trailer for it. I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s ripped from Australian television. Sure, the footage isn’t much, and is basically a variation of the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, but I guess that shit went down over in the Pacific theater as well — every single time they had to take an island. And there are a lot of islands over there.

There is no reason not to start getting excited about this. It should air within the next 12 months, it’s by the same guys that made Band of Brothers, and apparently the soldiers it centers around were total badasses. HBO won’t allow this to be anything less than phenomenal.

Their [Poland's] horse cavalry, of which they had twelve brigades, charged valiantly against the swarming tanks and armoured cars, but could not harm them with their swords and lances.

WHAT? Why have I never heard of this terrible mismatch before? I knew Poland was defeated in a shorter timespan than it will take me to read just the first volume of The Second World War, but I thought they at least had tanks. Well, they technically did have one armoured brigade, but still — horses versus tanks? I thought that type of shit only happened in matches of Civilization.

But this obviously is not what this post is about, as the title above should imply, it is about how Churchill’s eloquence was on a plane of awesomeness not often seen — or perhaps more accurately, heard — in this world. I just wanted to post an example here, in reaction to the aftermath of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938:

All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her associations with France, under whose guidance and policy she has actuated for so long…

I do not grudge our loyal, brave people, who were ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, who never flinched under the strain of last week, the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief when they learned that the hard ordeal would no longer be required of them at the moment; but they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

That is bloody brilliant. And I’m sure it seemed even more grand in a British accent.