Kusaimamekirai > Recent Status Updates

“Having defeated the Mughals in an initial engagement, Nader Shah then managed to capture the Emperor himself by the simple ruse of inviting him to dinner, then refusing to let him leave.”
Ha! The emperor has a good meal, gets up to go and is like, “Wait. What now?”

“And you can call me an egomaniac, megalomaniac, or whatever you wish, with a messianic complex. I don’t have any complex, honey. I happen to know I’m the Messiah. It’s only a complex when you’re confused. It’s only a complex when you have some kind of neurotic compulsions and some kind of subliminal pressures. Honey, I don’t have any conflict about it whatsoever….I am God the Messiah. -Jim Jones

“Overthrowing capitalism with a communist mop factory proved to be impossible”
Best line ever.

“During a visit by Bishop Bugnion D’Erlach, an eccentric Swiss mystic who had been evangelizing Harris’s teachings in Mauritius and Madagascar, the bishop announced to locals that he had achieved sufficiently divine respiration to see the fairies that frolicked at Brocton”

That sentence is carrying a lot of weight!

“Benedict and her cohort believed that American Christians would heed the millennial tidings with joy and rally to support the divine mission the apostles outlined in their pamphlets. Instead, they earned the wrath typically reserved for blasphemers…According to Emma Hardinge, the group’s publications lacked credibility in part because “the wisdom of Solomon appeared clothed in very bad grammar.”

“Whereas the town’s other spirit circles generally conferred with departed loved ones, unknown shades, and the occasional ghost of an American statesman, Benedict and her associates announced that their circle was chosen by God to transmit messages regarding the imminent return of the Messiah.”
Have to respect the grift. Why stop at channeling regular folks when you can level jump and be like, I talk to God

Some of these cults, especially the late 18th century ones are wild. The Public Universal Friend was a 22 year old woman who was on her death bed, recovered, only to believe she was both male and female and the instrument of God for the next 40 years. Oh and she travelled around the countryside on a horse with a monogrammed saddle and a retinue of 20 attendants. Why do I not know more about this person?

“At dawn on 2 October, he (Lincoln) took O.M. Hatch, an old friend from Springfield who was accompanying the presidential party, on a walk up a hill from where the two could see the entire camp.
Asked what he saw, Hatch replied, ‘The Army of the Potomac.’ ‘No, Hatch, no,’ said Lincoln, ‘this is General McClellan’s bodyguard.”

A British official after entering Delhi:
“All the city people found within the walls when our troops entered were bayoneted on the spot; and the number was considerable, as you may suppose when I tell you that in some houses forty or fifty persons were hiding. These were not mutineers but residents of the city, who trusted to our well-known mild rule for pardon. I am glad to say they were disappointed.”
Jesus…

In response to his recall over stopping indiscriminate violence toward Indians.
Canning wrote:
‘As long as I have breath in my body, I will pursue no other policy than that which I have been following—Not Only for the reason of expediency & policy above stated, but because it is immutably just. I will not govern in anger’.
A reminder that even in the darkest of times, there will always be people of conscience

I’m close to halfway through this book and it’s probably 80/20 about the Indian revolt as opposed to the Civil War. That’s fine, it is interesting, but could’ve just done a book on the former without straining to find tangential ties to the latter.

Bradbury was so ahead of his time about the morality police. We need a 2025 version of the House of Usher for all the people killing culture and taking the joy out of living.

“Doesn’t an old thing always know when a new thing comes?”

I know I probably shouldn’t laugh but I’m more than a little amused at the increasingly creative ways Americans on successive missions to Mars manage to get themselves killed due to their hubris. Almost as funny as their expecting to be feted as heroes (as Americans do) and being greeted with a shrug instead. All kinds of fun subtext here

“Over and over he was forced into battle but would not shoot. At first the captain asked him if he shot. ‘No, I did not shoot’. He got into another battle. After it was over the captain asked him whether he had shot. ‘No, I did not see anything to shoot at’. The captain asked, ‘Why, didn’t you see all those Yankees over there?’. The soldier answered ‘No, they’re people; we don’t shoot people’

Rich planters at the outset of the war, and well into it, were well aware of massive food shortages in the Confederacy. They in fact were given exemptions from the war on the pretense that they (and their slaves) were necessary to grow food for the soldiers.
Yet they steadfastly refused to do so, continuing to grow the far more profitable cotton and tobacco while people starved