Bill Maher: Graveyard of Empires

5 Comments

1. Jeez, don’t tease like that! I saw the words “graveyard” and “Bill Maher” together and for a second I thought he had perished and was reaching for the top-shelf stuff I drink on special occasions.

   • Not so lucky. Maher is safely in Idaho well away from the destruction he assisted.

2. George Wallace should have been elected President in 1968 and reelected in 1972. We wouldn’t be reading about Afghanistan now had he been elected.

   There was a surprising number of people who publicly supported Wallace in 1972 in the unlikeliest of places, far in the North, I remember as a child. There was huge support in working class areas, the places that sent their sons to Vietnam and beat up the hippie types who strayed into their areas. Those were the places targeted by the U.S. Government for enrichment by the nogs.

3. Can’t wait to hear all the “jokes” when the Yankee Empire has to pull completely out of the South after over a century and a half or so of conquest and then attempted reconstructions. Maybe the President of Yankee Empire will even have bands play “Dixie”.

   “‘FELLOW CITIZENS: I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves. [Cheers.] I suppose that arrangements are being made for some sort of a formal demonstration, this, or perhaps, to-morrow night. [Cries of `We can’t wait,’ `We want it now,’ &c.] If there should be such a demonstration, I, of course, will be called upon to respond, and I shall have nothing to say if you dribble it all out of me before. [Laughter and applause.] I see you have a band of music with you. [Vocies, `We have two or three.’] I propose closing up this interview by the band performing a particular tune which I will name. Before this is done, however, I wish to mention one or two little circumstances connected with it. I have always thought `Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. [Applause.] I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. [Laughter and applause.] I now request the band to favor me with its performance.’”
   — Abraham Lincoln speaking to a crowd in the streets who were celebrating , 04/10/1865, the day after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant as reported by the Washington paper Daily National Intelligencer

   Last diary entry of the man who fired the 1st shot at Ft Sumter:

   I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule – to all political, social and business connection with Yankees – and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress the sentiments, in their full force, on every living southerner, and bequeath them to every one yet to be born! May such sentiments be held universally in the outraged and down-trodden South, though in silence and stillness, until the now far distant day shall arrive for just retribution for Yankee usurpation, oppression, and atrocious outrages – and for deliverance and vengeance for the now ruined, subjugated, and enslaved Southern States! May the maledictions of every victim to their malignity, press with full weight on the perfidious Yankee people and their perjured rulers – and especially on those of the invading forces who perpetrated, and their leaders and higher authorities who encouraged, directed or permitted, the unprecedented and generally extended outrages of robbery, rapine, and destruction, and house-burning, all committed contrary to the laws of war on non-combatant residents, and still worse in aged men and helpless women!
   Edmund Ruffin sen.
   Redmoor, 10 A.M., June 18th 1865
   The End

   May God Save the South!

   https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2018/01/dixie-hastings-college-choir.html

4. It’s a bit of a myth about the Afghans being the Graveyard. Elphinstone in 1830s only had 700 white men with him and 12,000 Indians holding down Kabul. Losing a Battalion on men isn’t a good thing but it’s hardly Empire destroying stuff. I think Wellington lost 10,000 Brits in a day at Waterloo. The dead Indians mattered little in the retreat, no more than the dead 70,000 Afghans who fought the Taliban and died in the last decade. In 1830s There were other British units in Jalalabad and Kandahar that successfully fought off and annihilated the Afghans. In the end of the 1840s the British put a puppet in Kabul successfully. The Empire was just starting to blossom. The US awaits its Somme or Dunkirk. Dunkirk or the Somme was the moment the Empire died. The Imperial German Army or the Wehrmacht is what did it. The same thing may never come to pass.