I had never even heard of this encounter.
Fascinating stuff.
Category: History
Good Old Days
Prompted by Insty’s invitation to his open thread:
…let’s take a wander down Memory Lane (right-click to embiggen):
Ah yes, the good old days, when California actually produced things, and made stuff.
Just Remembered
…that it’s Black History Month.
So here’s a brief summary of Black History in the U.S., as seen by Black Racist Hustlers, Inc.:
Myself, I’d rather commemorate this guy, who did more for race relations in this country than the whole bunch of today’s morons ever did.
The Guns Of August
I’ve probably read Barbara Tuchman’s book of the same name about half a dozen times, maybe more. It’s a massive read, I think; not for the faint-hearted and certainly a difficult one for the non-military-history reader.
TGOA is magnificent as a military textbook alone, but what Tuchman brings to the party is an exhaustive set of the biographies of the principal characters so that we can understand not just what they did, but in many cases why they did it.
And I know that Tuchman was a tired old New York Lefty, but not in this work.
Anyway, I happened on this EwwwChoob video which follows the book faithfully, albeit cutting a few parts out (because otherwise it would run for not 100 minutes, but for three days — about as long as it takes to read Tuchman’s volume).
And it has lots and lots of original footage, none of that tiresome reenactment nonsense. Enjoy.
Afterthought: Tuchman’s prequel to The Guns Of August, A Proud Tower, will change your ideas of history completely, and for the better. It did mine, at any event.
Also: link fixed.
Battlefield Tour
And the American Battlefield Trust’s video of same (you may actually want to watch this first).
No need to thank me, it’s all part of the service.
Eucalyptus Now
Impossible? I don’t think so, and nor does this guy, in a very thoughtful and clear essay:
Talk of insurrection, secession, civil conflict and civil war is no longer the chatter of the gullible and the mentally ill.
…
The year 2021 has thus far been a spectacular year for signs of political decline: the US has now seen all the notable “horsemen of the apocalypse” that historically herald strife and revolution appear, one after another. Political division among its elites, increasing loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the population, military defeat abroad, and a new and very ominous crisis in the real economy, with no end date in sight.
Any one of these crises would be bad enough on their own; taken together, they represent a truly serious threat to the stability of the current order.
Read the whole thing.
To my mind, the question is not whether the U.S. would survive a civil war (because it would); it’s what it would look like afterwards. The situation is nowhere close to the First Civil War of 1860, the end of which simply restored the country to the status quo ante. That’s not going to happen this time.
I don’t need to remind anyone on this website that National Ammo Day is in two days’ time, do I?
