Meg Gust

cryptozoological phrenologist. I don’t dm.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@GuntherEagleman @grok College football is the real football.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@MelissaBible4 @lady_valor_07 By far the most emotional

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@sundell1951 @lady_valor_07 Bonus points for knowing the actual name

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@realtimsharp I think I don’t trust the government but then every interaction shows me how blissfully naive I was. I don’t think it’s possible to distrust the government enough

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@PalmyrPar Neanderthals are genetically in all of us except sub Saharan Africans. In that sense they… we are still here.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@fwtimini Oh we’re still in the roaring 20s. The dark days are still on the horizon.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@aelfred_D I was going to say that!

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

The idea that former colonial powers must accept unlimited immigrants from their old colonies as some kind of permanent debt is selective nonsense that only gets weaponized against the West.

If past conquest created an eternal right to migrate, then Turkey would face claims from the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa after the Ottoman Empire.

Arab states would owe open access across vast parts of Africa and beyond from their slave trading empires.

Russia would be expected to absorb half of Eurasia.

Yet none of those places get the lecture or the pressure.

Most former colonies have run their own governments for longer than they were ruled, and they’ve had full sovereignty to succeed or fail on their own terms.

The notion of one way perpetual access is just a rhetorical trick to strip European nations of the basic right to decide who enters based on culture, numbers, skills, and the consent of the people already there.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@mitchellvii All of their preprinted ballots said Joe Biden

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@miles_commodore They don’t want one

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@jimiuorio Didn’t you know it was all a lie? Didn’t you open an ira or a 401k anyway? Are you fine with stealing from your children just as you were stolen from?

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@AVGirl4Life Both the left and the jihadis want to destroy the us and the west

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@fiago7 Because someone long ago ruined it for everyone

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@AiPinfu2003 In America we have a phase “mutual admiration society “. I think that is closer to the truth.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@AfgZoroastrian They both want to destroy the west

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@NoContextBrits What beach did that pub storm in Normandy

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@lyiase We’ll drop the imperial system when you drop kanji. But let’s not let this divide us!

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@QuetzalPhoenix A lifetime of nonstop communist propaganda

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

In September of 1814, America was once again in trouble.

The young republic was only thirty-eight years old. The War of 1812 had gone badly. British troops had marched into Washington, burned the Capitol, set the White House ablaze, and now turned their sights toward Baltimore. If Fort McHenry fell, the harbor would be open, the city would likely follow, and another devastating blow would be dealt to the fragile nation.

Amid this uncertainty, a young American lawyer named Francis Scott Key sailed under a flag of truce to the British fleet. He had come to negotiate the release of a friend, a physician the British had captured.

He succeeded.

The British agreed to free the doctor.

But there was a catch.

Because Key and his companions had seen too much of the British fleet and learned too much about its plans, they were not allowed to return to shore. Instead, they were detained aboard a ship in the harbor and forced to watch the coming battle from behind enemy lines.

On the morning of September 13, the bombardment began.

For the next twenty-five hours, British warships unleashed somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 bombs and rockets upon Fort McHenry. These were the “bombs bursting in air” and the “rockets’ red glare” of the song—not poetic embellishments, but terrible realities.

Key stood on the deck through the endless day and the long, terrifying night. Every explosion lit the darkness for a fleeting instant before the smoke swallowed everything again. Somewhere beyond that wall of fire stood the fort. Somewhere beyond it flew an American flag if it still flew at all.

He could not see.

He could only listen.

As long as the guns continued firing, there was reason to hope. The British would not waste ammunition on a fort that had already surrendered.

Then, just before dawn…

The guns fell silent.

For the first time all night, there was only stillness.

It was the most frightening sound of all.

Had the fort finally fallen? Had the defenders surrendered? Had the flag been torn down in the darkness while no one could see?

There was nothing to do but wait.

As the first light of September 14 slowly pushed back the smoke, Francis Scott Key strained his eyes toward the distant fort.

Then he saw it. Not a British flag.

The American flag. Still there. Still flying.

That flag was no ordinary banner. Months earlier, the fort’s commander had commissioned a Baltimore flagmaker, Mary Pickersgill, to sew a flag so enormous “that the British would have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.” It measured roughly thirty by forty-two feet, carried fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, and was so large it had to be assembled on the floor of a brewery because no ordinary room could contain it.

That was the Star-Spangled Banner.

The very flag Key saw through the morning mist.

The very flag that still survives today in the Smithsonian.

Overcome by what he had witnessed, Key reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope, and began writing. The words came from a heart that had spent an entire night fearing his country might disappear with the dawn.

He first titled the poem Defence of Fort M’Henry.

Within days it was printed and circulating throughout the country. Before long, people began singing it to a melody they already knew—an old British tune called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” originally written for a London social club. There is something beautifully ironic in that: America’s most beloved patriotic song borrowed the melody of the very nation it had just survived. It also explains why the anthem is so notoriously difficult to sing. It was never written for ordinary voices gathered in stadiums or school assemblies.

The song spread quickly and became one of America’s favorite patriotic hymns, but it would wait more than a century before receiving official recognition. Not until 1931 did Congress declare “The Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States.

[Meg Gust @MegGust]

@sakebu_cheese_ Bacon , egg and toast is the most traditional