Battles long ago

 As I think I've mentioned before, I've kind of run out of military historical engagements that really get my spider sense tingling. It's not that the history isn't there...it's just that it's either 1) not all that "interesting" in the sense that there's anything illuminating for a hobby historian like me to add, or 2) so "interesting" that it's been worked to death, so there really isn't anything to add because the ground has been worked over so hard.

I kept trying to find a handle on the 1916 Brusilov Offensive and ran into both problems.

It's "interesting" in that it's widely conceded to have been a pretty critical event in the First World War; the most tactically successful Russian operation - hell, on a "ground-gained" scale it was the most successful offensive operation, period, between August 1914 and November 1918 - during that time, but a strategic nullity and an extraordinarily bloody one that is proposed as one of the main drivers of the eventual revolutions and collapse of the tsarist government.

Unfortunately for me it's just more goddamn pointless WW1 bloodshed, and I think I pretty much did that to death at The Marne and Verdun.

The one piece of Brusilov that intrigues me is the Austro-Hungarian Army, the Kaiserliche und Konigsliche organization that had met Fredrick the Great and Napoleon (tho, admittedly, hadn't done all that well with them...) but was running out of time in 1916.

The problem with that is that much of the literature focuses on the Russian side of the hill. Unsurprising, given that the Russians are the big story. But the KuK was a big part, too - there's a reason that Brusilov went forward and his contemporaries didn't (Alexi Evert, commander of the Western Front, comes in for pretty massive stick from everyone I've read) -  was because of problems inside the Austro-Hungarian defenses and the guys manning them, and it's been tough to find anyone who did a deep dig into that.

I'm still kind of intrigued by the KuK, tho. For fun I might do Sadowa/Koniggratz, the sort-of-last-gasp of the Austro-Hungarian imperium as the big player in Germanic affairs. We'll see.

For the rest, though?

I've pretty much done everything I find intriguing in North America, and I'm not familiar enough with South America (or interested enough, or speak and read enough Spanish) to go deeply into the fights there. 

Six years ago I did take a stab at the Chaco War of the Nineteen Thirties and it still kind of intrigues me, but the sources are troubling for a non-Spanish speaker and the fight itself is just dire; one clusterfuck after another. I did a bunch of research for it, though, so I should really return to and finish it up some day.

Maybe.

Hmmm. What else?

I actually thought about writing up "Desert Saber", the February 1991 portion of the Second Gulf War, but I'm afraid that one's both been done to death and lacks an "interesting" factor. If anything it feels like a weird artifact of ancient history - a U.S. Army that effectively doesn't exist fighting an Iraq that the same American army returned, destroyed, occupied, and then abandoned having proved that the original stop-line in 1991 was the only really sensible decision made during the whole disaster.

There's some Boer War fights that have some pull at me, but nothing huge. It's all stuff like Spion Kop, which is just straight-up stupidity and massacre, or the grinding concentration-camp campaigns that defeated the Afrikaaners.

In Asia and the Middle East there's lots going on, but nothing that grabs me. Looked into Manzikert but the sources are really crap, and while the politics are kind of intriguing the fight itself is lame.

Someday I might write up one of the more peculiar 戦国時代, Sengoku Jidai engagements, but I'd have to find one that really hooks me; I'm neither particularly well qualified nor interested in the old chestnuts like Sekigahara (for one thing, the fight itself is really all about the treachery of Kobayakawa Hideaki, and we've done Bosworth and Stanley (bastard!) for that). Might keep poking to see if anything grabs me, but I'm not hopeful.

One I'm actually really intrigued by is the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. I still need a good source for it, though. Just ordered this, 

...which I hope will give me enough to run with.

But that's kind of it. 

Hard to think of what I'll do when I run out of "battles" pieces, but I can see the end from here.

The Boxer

One of the things that's been so difficult and frustrating for me to watch is my country seeming to be intent on re-fighting fights I thought had been fought (and won for the good...) long ago.

The current insanity of the wingnut Right for all things other-than-heterosexual is one of them.

First, I don't get it.

Do these fucking C.H.U.D.s think that they can just scream and stamp their widdle feet and legislate other-than-heterosexual people away?

Obviously, yes, because that appears to be the idea, such as it is.

That's nuts.

That's like saying that if I close my eyes long enough that the table I'm sitting at will just...go away.

Gay people are...people. Lesbian people, non-binary people, trans people. They're just...people. For fuck's sake, cis-het whacko Christian "conservatives", it's like you're trying to pretend there's nothing in this world not like you (or what you want it to be). 

There's all sorts of people who aren't fucking like you. People who like model trains. People who sleep in Sundays. People who hate green beans. People who like (or love, or lust after) people who may not be the ones you "think" they should.

To insist otherwise?

That's utterly bugnuts.

No, actually, that's worse. Because "wishing people away" is how you start down the road that ends against walls, in shallow graves, or in ovens.

And second, and fuckadoodledoo, I thought we'd settled this on let's-not-do-stupid-shit grounds.

It's plain commonsense; if We the People are going to hand out legal and financial goodies based on things like legal and financial marital status (and We the People want to at least pretend that our society is based on Equal Justice Under Law) then every consenting-adult has to have in on that.

So if I want to marry for the tax writeoff? Cool. If I want to gay-marry, or lesbian-marry, or whoever-so-long-as-we-can-consent for the same bennie?

Also cool.

If I want to love? Lust? Dress like? Be with? Think or talk or be? Someone not manly-man or girly-girl? 

What' s the fucking problem with that?

And, seriously, who the fuck does that hurt? Who is hurt because that's a thing, and that everybody knows and accepts it as a thing?

I mean...if a schoolkid is old enough to know that there's a thing like fucking Donald fucking Trump, he or she or they are old enough to know that Heather has Two Mommies (or Daddies, or whatever...) or some other kid may have guy parts but not really feel very guy-ish. 

Personally, IMO the first should shit-scare all of us waaaaaaay more than all that other stuff, but, whatev'.

I know a lot of this is about supposed-Christian-bible-stuff but, frankly, 1) we're supposed to be a nation under civil law, not a fucking theocracy, and 2) if you're gonna clobber other people with bible-stuff you better not be mixing fucking fabrics or eating a roast beef sando with a glass of milk. 

(There's nothing more despicable than notional theocrats who pick-and-choose their theocracy. You wanna be a nutty God-pesterer? You gotta be full-on-nutzo. Buy it all or nothing. No homosexuals? Then no shrimp and no charging interest. You own it all, you don't get to pick your looney bits.)

Point is...here we are. 

Every whackadoodle wingnut (which means effectively the entire American Republican Party) is screeching like their junk is in a vise about non-heterosexuals being pedophiles (Oh, hi, Roy Moore, Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Denny Hastert, Gym Jordan! Ears burning, ma dudes? Yep, talking about your little, ummm..."problems") or "groomers" or every other awful goddamn sexual thing they can throw at the public wall to see if it sticks.

I'll be the first to say that there are troubling things that We the People should be deeply concerned about. Climate. The fact that here in the world's richest and most powerful polity there are people with more yachts than they can ever sail while a couple of miles away there are people who can't sleep indoors. Nonalcoholic "beer". COVID-19.

But the fact that Asami and Korra (and, yes, I totally shipped those two and still do...) love each other?

That's so far down the fucking list...no. Just no. 

It's not even on the fucking list.

It's just two people. Imaginary people, even. In love. Just like people, lots of people, real not-cartoon people, do.

And the fact that we're fighting over this?

Again?

Has me infuriated in a sort of angry-sick-and-tired-of-this-bullshit way.

One of the saddest and most irritating parts of having lived this long has been watching the worst people in my country return to the worst ideas my country ever had and dig up those ideas like a fucking stupid spaniel digging up the stinking remains of a dead rabbit.

Sexism.

Racism.

Homophobia.

I thought we were on the way to burying those sonsofbitches deeper than Newt Gingrich's morals.

Seems I was wrong.

Well, shit.

"In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him 'til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains..."

~ Paul Simon