[Songcraft]

"This is not a time for emotionalism."

Talking about "emotionalism", one grouping of some of the strongest human emotions of all includes "fear", "apprehension", "nervousness", "worry", and "anxiety", and those emotions are what is actually motivating those who just keep on saying "BOHICA", and keep taking it up the old-wussy-wazoo, and then they wring their nervous nellie hands, saying, "Oh dear! Oh dear! What if this happens, or what if that happens? We'd better just take it, and stay silent, and do absolutely nothing once again."

It is much better instead to strive to think like our Founding Fathers, who also did their thing filled with many emotions, such as righteous "anger" and "disgust" and "contempt" at the tyranny of the British, and "love" of freedom, and independence, and honesty. Active American forces at any given time in the Revolutionary War, were usually outnumbered by two to three times their number by the numbers of British forces, and I'm sure many of those Americans also felt that emotion of "fear", but instead of standing around wringing their sweaty hands, and saying, "Oh dear! Oh dear! Let's stand down, and do nothing!", they actually said "Damn the torpedoes!" (so to speak), and went out and actually did something positive about it.

[buwaya]

Emotionalism is almost always a bad idea.
It doesnt help play the game well.

US strategy in the Revolutionary War was very astute. It played to American strengths, avoided engagements unless there was some perceived advantage (sometimes misjudged, such as at Germantown), and on the whole was designed to keep American military power viable, more so than fighting for its own sake. It can be defined as a “Fabian” strategy (look up Quintus Fabius “Cunctator”), and indeed it was called that at the time.

It was the very opposite of the “banzai charge” strategy of emotion you are implying.