Voödoo 6 von Inyanga Profile picture
Apr 14, 2023 26 tweets 10 min read Read on X
We often outsource tasks we find distasteful as a benefit of generational success to focus on more critical tasks. We must however be careful what we hand off. If we stop doing the hard things that made us great, we are bound for slow death. Like at the Battle of Civitate in 1053 Image
1/ By the 11th Century, more than five hundred years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, their former lands had started to re-establish itself into some semblance of power with the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. Image
2/ The new Germany based HRE controlled most of Northern Italy while the Byzantines controlled part of the south. In between stood a motley collection of unorganized Italians at the core of what was once Rome. Image
3/ Despite their shared heritage as part of the fearsome Roman Legions, these modern Italians were not particularly skilled at war.

Sensing an opportunity, battle hardened Normans, always looking for blood and booty, began to arrive on the shores of Italy. Image
4/ They were immediately put to work. Hired as mercenaries by the HRE to fight the Byzantines, the Byzantines to fight the HRE, and the Italian nobles to fight one another, the Normans quickly became the soldiers to hire if you wanted to do some serious fighting. Image
5/ Even the elite Varangian Guard who had served as the Byzantine Emperor's bodyguard for half a millennia had trouble against them. Hearing of the rewards of war, Normans from all over began flocking to Italy, often fighting on both sides of battles. Image
6/ As the decades of war went on, the Normans began to acquire lands and titles within Italy. Sensing the danger, and tired of Normans who decided it was easier to loot and conquer lands than serve as mercenaries, Pope Leo IX (cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor) decided to act. Image
7/ Forging and alliance between the HRE, the Byzantines and the Italian lords, Pope Leo IX hoped to crush the Norman menace once and for all. Except for one thing. The Italians had forgotten what it took to be warriors. ImageImage
8/ Knowing the soft Italians needed help, Leo IX begged his cousin for support, who obliged and sent a force of Swabian (south-west German) mercenaries, with their fearsome two hand swords, known to cut a man in half from “head to leg”. Again, Italy had to outsource its defense. Image
9/ The Pope’s plan was to link up with a Byzantine naval force, and present a unified front to the Norman horde. They would never make it. The Normans quickly gathered what army they could, hunted down and cut off the 6,000 man Papal army outside the village of Civitate. Image
10/ The Norman army, starving and hastily assembled, were about half as many. To make matters worse, the Norman soldiers were deeply religious, and the idea of facing the Pope in open battle shook them to their core. The Normans attempted to make peace, but were laughed off. Image
11/ With no options for peace left, the Normans decided to just get at it. Looking across the field, the Norman’s quickly picked their Huckleberry, their formers bosses, the unorganized and poorly equipped Italians who had hired them for decades to do their fighting. Image
12/ Despite outnumbered 4:1 veteran Norman cavalry thundered across the field and slammed into the Italians. The Italians may have needed lessons on how to fight on a battlefield, but they needed no lesson on how to die on one. Image
13/ The Normans crushed the Italian infantry on the right, who either fled the field or died on it. The Swabian professionals in the Pope’s center held against the enemy wave. Not able to use their massive swords as effectively on horseback, they dismounted and fought on foot.
14/ Despite knowing the battle was lost and the horses were their only means of escape and survival, the Swabians stood to the last man for their Pope at Civitate, cleaving Normans to death before being overrun. Image
15/ The Pope, who had watched his army die from behind the safety of the city walls was thrown out the gate by the citizenry, who feared his presence would invite a Norman siege. The smaller but hardened Normans who had not lost their edge, had defeated their former masters.
16/ Americans outsource all kinds of things. We outsource things like manufacturing and coding to foreign nations, we outsource cleaning our homes and mowing our lawns to foreigners in the United States, and we outsource things like educating our children to other Americans. Image
17/ It isn’t feasible for everyone to do everything all the time. Outsourcing tasks is a benefit of a rich and powerful society, which needs to focus its attention on remaining rich and powerful. The challenge of outsourcing is the ever dangerous slippery slope.
18/ With no one to limit it, with no one to consider what should and shouldn’t be done domestically we are flying blind. Does everything need to be made here? I personally don’t care if a plastic bucket is made in Omaha or in Haiphong. Image
19/ But I do care where medicine, critical technology, and steel are made. For decades Middle Class Americans were sold a promise from both sides. That outsourcing manufacturing to cheaper countries would lead to cheaper products for us. Image
20/ Americans would get education and support could move into service, creative, or tech related jobs and everyone wins. Except then those jobs were the next to be exported or even worse, given to one of the 65,000 H1B visa holders coming into the US every single year. Image
21/ The same goes for the military, and violence conducted on behalf of the nation. Since the late 70s that violence has been outsourced, not to barbarians like Rome did, but to professionals. A professional army is easier to send to war than a citizen army. ImageImageImageImage
22/ It requires neither the consensus of or sacrifice by the people. It is easier to keep deployed for longer, and it benefits the state to limit military training to a small few so as to prevent another Battle of Athens in 1946. Image
23/ A national police force is the same. Pushing authority further and further from accountability until we are merely subjects to its power. This is not the path towards freedom our founders set us on, this is the path towards dependence, serfdom and slavery. Image
24/ We Americans are responsible for our nation. Our politicians and "leaders" are not. We the people are the ones that forged this country into what it was, and we are the ones who allowed others to start taking that birthright from us. It is time we started taking it back. Image
Full disclosure I outsource almost all of my images... @HistoryMarche is a great source and a fun channel to watch.

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More from @6Voodoo

Sep 17
Let’s do some analysis. Grab a whiskey and a seat.

There are four options

1. They are real
2. They are faked by the police
3. They are faked by a third party
4. They are faked by the suspect

Or, depending on how much MDMA you do: it’s all fake
1. They’re real

Probability: High

These people are idiots. They talk in these grandiose self important sentences that don’t mean anything. Also, they have no understanding of how LE works.

Remember; Occam says blame the mentally ill. And they are
2. LE fakes.

Probability: Low

Why? They have lots of evidence already. They have cooperating witnesses and physical evidence. Dude is going away. They risk all of that to run up the score. Besides it is too quick and cops are slow.
Read 7 tweets
Sep 11
We are about to see some things happen.

The thing about political assassinations is they almost always backfire.

Killing Caesar got you the Triumvirate 2

Lincoln got you reconstruction

Ghandis ended Hindu nationalism

MLK JFK etc

Leaders on the left know this. And fear us
They know regular conservatives aren’t lone wolf killer types. We aren’t laying on rooftops to kill a political celebrity. We have too much to lose yes, but that is not how we flex our power

What they fear is our turning our backs on them. Our indifference to their causes.
Most conservatives believe in America. And we believe that most Americans just want a good America.

At least we did. Over the past few years that belief has eroded to the point of vanishing. The left has pushed and pushed and now they see us about to push back
Read 6 tweets
Sep 2
Let’s talk for a minute about what “air supremacy” means, what really happened in Vietnam and how the Russians use their Air Forces

Full disclosure I have had a whiskey, and my only credentials are I have read Flight of the Intruder and seen Top Gun… lots Image
“Air supremacy” is a broad term. But a general definition is you can hit whatever you want from the air, and the enemy can not. Sure, people still will get shot down. But the mission is a success.
The Serbs shot down an F-117, no one is saying we didn’t have air supremacy in Kosovo

Same in 1944-1945 in Europe. The Allies bombed what they wanted, and the Luftwaffe could not return the favor: still men died, but its war.
Read 15 tweets
Aug 19
Apparently we are giving CDLs to third worlders now, but ask any Iraq veteran and they will tell you why this is a terrible idea.

These people not only can not operate vehicles like this even in the best of conditions, but their disregard for human life is mind boggling Image
We always talk about logistics. Logistics win wars. Got it.

But to keep the FOBs going, the US drove in hundreds of trucks every night up the MSRs (main supply routes) from Kuwait. They carried food and fuel, ice cream and Burger King. Image
Shepherded into 40 truck convoys and escorted by American gun trucks, they drove at night, slipping though the dark sand like an army of sand worms.

To solve this manpower need, the army recruited Third Country Nationals (TCNs) to pilot the semi trucks. Image
Read 13 tweets
Jul 28
What if I told you the lesson from GWOT wasnt if V Shaped Hulls are useful against China, rather is it the ability to create an Operational Needs Statement process for units in the field to know if V Shaped Hulls are needed or not? Image
What if I told you it wasn’t if the MRAP was good, the lesson was how to do a Commercial Off the Shelf buy program unprecedented in DoD history.

What if I told you the Rapid Fielding Initiatives were the lessons.

Or the ability to stand up a Joint Program Office from scratch.
What if I told you the ability to ship thousands of different vehicles across the world at a speed that rivaled the Liberty ship was the lesson?

Or maybe it was the organization of the tends of thousands of repair and sustainment parts for those vehicles that was the lesson?
Read 14 tweets
Jul 24
We talk about battles, glory gained against the enemy and great stories of overcoming dreadful odds, but more often than not it is the thankless, tedious mental work done before two armies meet on the field that decides who wins and who loses

Like on the march to Fredericksburg Image
1/ By the winter of 1862, the Union Army of the Potomac had known little but defeat. They had been beaten like a drum four times at the hands of the Army of Northern Virginia, and had escaped with a draw in September of 1862, despite knowing the entire Southern battle plan.
2/ Nevertheless, the draw at Antietam breathed new life into the Union Army, but the fact remained that after a year and half of war, they were still only 35 miles into the Confederacy. That November, Lincoln replaced the slow moving McClellan with Ambrose Burnside. Image
Image
Read 32 tweets

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