Annotated 20-23
Harky does something that most politicians today are too cowardly to do: he owns the defeat. No sugarcoating, no “temporary setback,” no “minor skirmish.” We. Lost. The. Battle. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a plan to turn this around into something motivational (the crowd certainly responds well when he mentions those filthy Peace-makers and their, ugh, death-defying chicanery). But some Rebels who might’ve been on the fence about him right now respect him infinitely more for not bullshitting when it counts.
To be a bit fair to modern pols, Harky doesn’t have to worry about some tweeter taking his admission out of context before he’s even done talking. “@Harky admits hesa losing loser who loses #bringonteflondon”
He is also coming dangerously close to genre awareness here (“We’re never going to be their equals unless we get some PLAYER CHARACTERS, dammit”), but considering how direct a role Byron and Syr’Nj played in defeating the army and him personally, it’s not surprising he attaches some importance to them.
He’s also selling it as “we lost because we’re not good enough, let’s be better!”
It’s pretty alien to American politics because we’ve been “Best” for a century. Maybe hard for the British and Chinese at times, too. Meiji Japan seemed into it, though. (I say, with only superficial knowledge of post-Perry Japanese politics.)
Well the setting for that could very well be “We’re the underdogs,” and no one has ever had a hard time selling that.
Sometimes incongruously at the same time as declaring themselves the best.