Tag: American history

TBT: VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s hard to believe that a year ago, we were gearing up for a presidential election.  Now Trump is back in office—woooooot!—and he has a worthy successor in the wings.

It’s going to be tough sledding in the years ahead, but it’s reassuring to know that we have a legitimate successor ready to roll in 2028.  Vance’s incredible speech to the various heads of Europe’s governments earlier this year was a call to government accountability—and for Europe to wake up.  It was not an attack on Europe, per se, but a powerful plea for its leaders to do something to improve the lives of their people.

I’m excited to see more from Vance in the years to come.

With that, here is 17 July 2024’s “VP Vance: A Worthy Successor“:

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TBT^18,446,744,073,709,551,616: Happy Birthday, America!

The Portly Politico1 Comment

It is wild looking back at the past year’s posts, and seeing how liberty keeps rallying to victory every time it seems near to death.  A year ago, the future seemed uncertain; today, it seems as though a light is shining through the fog.  Yes, America still has problems—lots of them—but we’re finally experiencing competent leadership that—gasp!—puts Americans first.

So it is that, at 249-years-old tomorrow, it seems that, at long last, America is back.

With that, here is 4 July 2024’s “TBT^4,294,967,296: Happy Birthday America!“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Sid Meier’s Colonization (1994)

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Before I dove headlong back into Civilization VII, I spent a solid two or three weeks playing Sid Meier’s Colonization on Governor difficulty (the penultimate difficulty level).  I finally won a game as the Dutch, with a strong colonial basis in modern-day Argentina and Chile:

I first played this game in the mid-1990s when I was a kid.  I was hooked immediately, and this game is largely responsible for sparking my interesting in teaching American history.  It also ignited a lifelong interest in the American Revolution.

So, how does it hold up thirty-one years after its release?

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French Independence in Sid Meier’s Colonization

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Back in January 2025 I subjected the longsuffering Dr. Fiancée (then still Dr. Girlfriend) to an excited and probably tedious explanation of Sid Meier’s Colonization, the game that was probably most responsible for me becoming a history teacher.  Since then, I started a few games, but never finished them.  Like many Civ and Civ-adjacent games, Colonization drags a bit in the middle, becoming at times a laborious economic management sim (which, essentially, is what the game is).

However, the end of the game is exciting, and is essentially an entirely different game from the rest.  The goal is to declare independence from your mother country, which becomes possible only after building up a self-sufficient economy in the New World.  A major part of that economy is the ability to produce massive amounts of muskets and horses, as well as populating your colonies with immigrants and natural-born settlers who will use those muskets.

Late Monday night—far too late to be up before heading to work—I finished up a game as New France, successfully gaining independence from the mother country after a tough fight for independence.

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Sid Meier’s Colonization Intro Scene

The Portly Politico14 Comments

No movie review this week, dear readers.  While I have quite a few posts scheduled, I was a bit short on time and haven’t watched anything worth reviewing lately, so I figured I’d do something a bit different today.

I was visiting Dr. Girlfriend this weekend, and for some reason, I started to tell her excitedly about the video that got me into history in a major way, Sid Meier’s Colonization.

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Make Greenland American

The Portly Politico4 Comments

We’re just five days away from President/President-Elect Trump’s inauguration, and I’m as giddy as a schoolboy at the candy shop.  There is much to be excited about in a second Trump administration, but lately I’ve been whooping like a silver-backed gorilla (at the candy shop, presumably) over the prospect of purchasing Greenland from Denmark—and taking back the Panama Canal.

The coverage of President-Elect Trump’s desire to take Greenland features a mix of bemusement and alarm, which is pretty on-brand for Trump’s pronouncements.  There is a lot of chest-thumping from the European Union and the Danes, who both vow that the United States will never have Greenland.  President Trump, for his part, seems to be having fun trolling the stuffed shirts in Europe and the hostile American press, especially with his talk of annexing Canada (which is trolling; I think Trump is just having fun at Justin Trudeau’s expense).

What I like about all this annexation talk is that it hearkens back to the presidency of James K. Polk.  It was under Polk that the United States expanded to (mostly) its present borders, at least in the contiguous, lower forty-eight States.  Polk similarly struck an aggressively expansionist tone, proclaiming “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight” in reference to the upper border of the Oregon Territory.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Have We Forgotten?

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

This past Wednesday marked another observation of 9-11, the events of 11 September 2001.  While there were the usual tributes to the fallen, the observation seemed quite muted.

Perhaps we can chalk it up to the anniversary falling a Wednesday, the day of the week least-suited to hosting holidays both celebratory and reflective.  I suspect, however, that there is more to our forgetful ennui than the inconvenience of Wednesdays.

Consider that President Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt earlier this summer.  Has anything really changed since then?  Has the Left and its media toned down its murderous rhetoric?

Instead, they’ve ludicrously claimed that he brought it upon himself—or that his team coordinated a fake assassination attempt.  Given the totally lax and inexperienced Secret Service detail, as well as the peeling away of President Trump’s most accomplished agents to cover some asinine speech from “Dr.” Jill Biden, these excuses smack of lame psychological projection.

Regardless of the hypocrisy of the Left—which isn’t going to change no matter how much we point it out—it’s clear that modern Americans have a woefully short memory about major events.  If we’ve already moved on from the failed assassination attempt against a President and presidential candidate, how can we be bothered to remember a series of devastating terrorist attacks from twenty-three years ago?

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The Beatles in Buxton

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Somehow, yours portly ended up following the WordPress-powered website for the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in Buxton, United Kingdom.  Apparently, the cool little museum is closed temporarily due to some structural damage to the build that houses their enigmatic collection, but it still maintains a fairly active blog, with posts about Death’s Heads Hawk Moths and their summer programs (featuring an artist called “Creeping Toad“).

They recently posted a fascinating little piece about The Beatles performing in Buxton twice in 1963, featuring black-and-white photographs from the Buxton Advertiser.  Attendees apparently sat on the floor, and girls who fainted were dragged to a changing room recuperate.  According to the piece, “This was one of the last small gigs they played before playing to over 50,000 people in Shea Stadium in 1965.”

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Homework: The Gracchi

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Yours portly is slightly strapped for time after a raucous Labor Day weekend, so I’m assigning my readers some homework.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a post comparing Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to the Gracchi Brothers of the Roman Republic.  The Gracchi were members of the elite who realized that the common people were struggling mightily under the republic’s economic system, which blatantly favored wealthy Roman Senators and other patricians at the expense of the people.  The Gracchi proposed land reforms and modest redistribution, which would have eased tensions between patricians and plebeians, giving the plebeians a chance at living modest, fulfilling lives.

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VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

The Portly Politico44 Comments

After the usual will-they-won’t-they of the vice presidential selection drama, President Trump delivered yet again, picking Ohio Senator and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance as his running mate.

The Vance pick is symbolic on a number of levels.  As a US Senator, he has focused on improving the lives of the forgotten men and women that President Trump champions.  He has rejected the siren song of the Establishment Uniparty.  He is very clearly the conservative populist in the Senate.

I receive an e-mail newsletter from The New York Times each morning at my work e-mail.  I am not fan of The New York Times, but I likely signed up for it because I needed to access some article for my students.  Regardless, the Tuesday, 16 July edition of The Morning newsletter makes a claim with which I agree:  in picking Vance, Trump was, essentially, picking his successor.

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