M N Connors

The Haunted King / Director, Project Freelancer / Magister Ludi

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

@IMPERATORAUS This *is* purgatory, and our behaviors right now are adding or subtracting years to the sentence from who we were before.

[The Conservative Alternative @OldeWorldOrder]

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards & its fighting done by fools."

—Thucydides,
Ancient Greek historian

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

One caveat- the best biography of Sulla was actually not written by Plutarch, excellent as that one is, it's marred by the fact that contextually Plutarch by default had to write pro-Caesarean historiography. Prof. Arthur Keaveney, requiescat in pace - whom I had the good fortune to correspond with briefly - penned this, which is far more fair to the Optimates in the waning days of the Republic

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

Beautiful song to start the day…

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

On April 12, 1945, Dwight Eisenhower walked into Ohrdruf and threw up.

It was the first Nazi camp liberated by American forces, a subcamp of Buchenwald in central Germany. Patton, who'd seen everything a soldier could see, stepped behind a shed and was sick. Eisenhower made himself look at all of it. The bodies stacked like cordwood. The shed where the SS had stored corpses with lime. The pyre of railroad ties where they'd tried to burn the evidence before they ran.

He walked the entire camp.

Then he went back to his headquarters and started sending cables.

One went to George Marshall in Washington. Eisenhower wanted a delegation of congressmen flown to Germany immediately. He wanted editors and publishers from the major American newspapers brought over too. He wanted them on the ground, inside the camps, while the bodies were still there.

His reasoning was blunt. He'd seen propaganda work in the last war and he knew what was coming. "I made the visit deliberately," he wrote, "in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda."

In private he put it harder. He wanted witnesses so that no "son of a bitch" could ever stand up and claim it never happened.

Marshall got the request to the White House. Within days, a congressional delegation was in the air. Newspaper editors followed. Eisenhower took them through Ohrdruf and Buchenwald himself, walking them past the same sights he'd forced himself to see.

He ordered Signal Corps photographers and film crews into every camp the Army reached. Shoot everything, he told them. Every body, every barrack, every survivor, every oven. He wanted the footage filed, catalogued, and preserved. He ordered nearby German civilians marched through the camps so they could see what had been done in their name. The mayor of Ohrdruf and his wife were brought through on April 14. They went home and hanged themselves.

The photographs and reels piled up in Army archives. They ran in Life and on newsreels in theaters across America. They were entered as evidence at Nuremberg.

Eisenhower kept some of the prints in his own files for the rest of his life.

He'd told the photographers to keep shooting. They did.

© People of the Past

#archaeohistories

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

@SWT_Channel

[📜Echoes of Empire📜 @EchoesofEmpire_]

Mark Twain in the laboratory of Nikola Tesla, 1894

[Barbarian Herodotus @BBHerodotus]

Don’t fear defeat, fear never daring greatly enough to risk defeat in the first place. Enter into the arena.

[ThinkingWest @thinkingwest]

“I love the name of honor more than I fear death.”

― Julius Cesar

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

The dream can and must be expanded; it cannot be redistributed. 🇺🇸

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

@_middleEarth You'd think it would have had some impact on the ecology, weird fish or something.

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

The most sophisticated psyops are subtle enough that you're not going to receipts. Power of suggestion type stuff passed casually by parties not tacitly aware of what they're doing.

Information warfare exists on a level that your own mind needs a counterintelligence division, and our formal counterintelligence divisions are nowhere near keeping pace as it stands.

Narrative dueling has kept some of these battles from being lost, but the AI race - and generations now being raised on crutch-thought - means ever more complex levels of warfare the likes of which no entrenched profession or agency is properly equipped to handle.

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

@BasedMikeLee

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

Fairly strongly convinced the religious classification flareup about labeling Mormonism as not being a Christian denomination was an internal sabotage op aimed at the social fabric among many who serve our government in various capacities.

Stop underestimating the enemy[ies].

[Memory Medieval @MemoryMedieval]

Your brain is wired to bring your thoughts and words into reality.

Never doom.

[TheHistoryOfTheAmericans @TheHistoryOfTh2]

People who think it was important that a great painter chronicled the American founding are a little put out that there isn't more widespread celebration of John Trumbull's birthday today.

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

Credentialism is one of the strangest religions ever invented. A piece of paper signed by the right stranger is treated as evidence of wisdom, while actual results are treated as anecdotal.

It’s what mediocre people build when reality keeps asking for proof of competence.

[M N Connors @MichaelNConnors]

@RepLuna @CIA any reason you allow a game as sophisticated as BlackRock's to be a rival on your own turf?

[Michael McGill 🏛 @mcgillmd921]

You need to be Plutarch-maxing like Napoleon.

[US Department of the Interior @Interior]

This morning at the World War II Memorial, we pause to honor the courage and sacrifice of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy 82 years ago today. 🇺🇸

Photo by Chris Johnson