Not to make it obvious that I’ve thought about this before but George Armstrong Custer would be a social media addict who constantly does numbers and got famous from prank videos that are actually super fucked up but because he’s funny and charismatic and because he's friends with a bunch of way bigger creators for some reason (and eventually loses all of them because he talks shit about all of them behind their backs the second it benefits him) he has a sizable audience and then eventually you find out he’s like super fucking racist and he gets cancelled on Twitter and he uses it to get onto Fox News and Daily Wire and start grifting money from conservatives and then spends the rest of his days as a has-been right wing grifter that gets retweeted by Elon Musk and bots on Twitter and constantly flexes how rich he is despite being tens of thousands of dollars in debt because he has a gambling addiction from those online slot sites and because he keeps dumping his and Libby’s life savings into crypto and NFT schemes and he pretends like he doesn’t care that he gets clowned on and ratio’d constantly and spams laugh-cry emojis when people criticize him while Libby has to calm him down because he’s legitimately enraged when people make fun of him and then he dies during a prank and no one feels bad for him

also yall are gonna laugh. i had a conversation about Custer while talking to my driving teacher 😭 LIKE we both love reading history and we were saying it's so hard with American history sometimes bcs the atrocities are really downplayed a lot and i said "yeah, i love reading about Custer, and i read this one great book on him where the author really did call him out on his racism and all of his behavior and i respected that he didn't hype him up" and i got to tell him how Custer got big in the army during the Civil War because of his charisma and sucking up and i even called him a purse dog LIKE. man. the most Psy conversation of all time JKHSDB

the unfortunate thing about George Armstrong Custer is that sadly he is one of the funniest historical figures ever. any time i post something about him i feel like i have to wrap it in a bunch of disclaimers and flashing signs about him because i don't want anyone to get the idea i like him. i just think his entire existence is a comedy.

i just remembered that Custer is in Night at the Museum 2 and . why does this look like a still from a fucking Epic Rap Battles of History video KSHRNJHSN

George Armstrong Custer, in other words, is what we call a "clout chaser." i fear to think what kind of person he'd be in a modern world like this.

you ever notice that a majority of the pictures of Custer have him doing the youtube rantsona pose

WHAT

I don’t know if this makes any sense but Custer is like the evil version of Alexander Hamilton

the more i learn about Custer's promotion to brigadier general in the Civil War the funnier it gets. Pleasonton got him promoted and asked where he wanted to go and Custer asked to lead the Michigan brigades since he'd served with them and he spent a lot of time in Michigan and Pleasonton immediately fired the current general just so his special little guy could be with his favorite brigade. Custer is the equivalent of a purse dog to these superior officers

i find it interesting how American culture did a 180 on Custer after he died. not to say that he still wasn't treated as a special lil guy and a hero or whatever cause he definitely was, but even back then, people decided he was a moron who had it coming because he's so stupid. (which. bad assessment of what happened but it's fine, nobody knew wtf happened) but yknow what it made me realize?

i think the only thing that makes Custer different culturally from other American historical figures in that time is what his death represented. American culture doesn't really hate him because he's stupid, American culture hates him because he made colonizers look stupid. because American culture as a whole has no problem with celebrating colonizers. but Custer is an easy and safe target because he made American colonizers look so bad. he's a figure that Americans can use to pay lip service to condemning people LIKE him, but not really.

i just think that's interesting.

and so, it bears repeating: when is Custer going to get his own extremely in poor taste hip hop musical about his life. someone get Lin Manuel Miranda on the phone

uhm i got my Custer books today and uhh Cavalier in Buckskins is fucking ginormous. The Boy Generals part 1 for scale

i bought the hardcover cause it was the same price as the paperback and it wasn't a print on demand but like wow it's way too big to be comfortable to read 😓 i might order the paperback version. i'm gonna keep this copy cause it's a cool coffee table book, and i'll try to see if i can hack it with reading this big ol book but waow ..

YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD

(ID under the cut)

[ID: Three screenshots from Reddit. The first one is a comment from Tobi_1989 that reads as follows: "I see he was just as smart with money as he was in military tactics. Any other useful talents which managed to completely miss that man?"

The next two screenshots are the response to this comment from peixcellent. The messages read as follows: "Y'know, the crazy thing is that he actually was quite a good military leader. He's gotten a bad rap in popular culture for being a foolish, if not downright moronic, egomaniac. And, granted, I think that assessment is pretty fair all in all, but of course it doesn't account for just how wildly complex the man really was. I don't think he was an idiot, he was just a damn fool sometimes.

Military leadership was probably his only talent, aside from maybe networking. He was God awful to his men outside of battle, but he commanded respect in battle even among men who despised him because he genuinely did know his stuff. He was famous for his bravery in battle, always being the first to charge with his men instead of commanding from the back. He was very adept at handling battles. He became a famous celebrity because of his victories and leadership during the Civil War. Custer became a brevet brigadier general at just 23.

The reason he failed at Little Bighorn was a mixture of mistakes; he understimated the amount of Native peoples camped at the river as they had been discovered by some of the warriors before Custer could properly execute his planned surprise attack. Lacking proper information on the population there due to the incomplete scouting, he split up the 7th Cavalry between himself, Major Marcus Reno, Captain Frederick Benteen, and a small column for supplies. Had he realized the size of the attack, sticking together could've potentially increased the chances of more men surviving the battle. He only took around 200 men with him after he divided up the 700 or so men they had.

The second reason the Little Bighorn was such a spectacular failure was because of Reno and Benteen. Reno was extremely drunk during the proceedings of the battle and spend much of his time hiding in the trenches while his men fought blindly to defend themselves at another point away from Custer's column. Benteen received a runner from Custer begging him to come to his aid and bring supplies. Benteen pretended not to know what the message meant, and refused to assist Custer as he deeply despised the man. This undoubtedly helped cause the deaths of every man in Custer's column.

When Benteen met up with Reno, he asked if Reno had seen Custer, and he hadn't, so Benteen let it go. Benteen, doing one good thing in this entire battle, took over for the drunken Reno and helped rally the men to fight off the warriors and thus managed to escape with their lives. Reno would later be court martialed for his behavior at the Little Bighorn in 1869, and Benteen justified his own failures with conflicting stories when he was called to the stand; he didn't go because he thought Custer was already dead. He didn't go because Custer was alive. He didn't go because Custer had it under control. He didn't go because the Natives were overrunning Custer. Nothing was ever his fault.

In addition, Native warriors were known for hit and run-type battling. The Cavalry would have been more used to fighting warriors who were easily driven off if they did not believe they had a complete and utter upperhand. This was unlike American military forces, which would fight to the very end, no matter the losses. However, after the Battle of the Rosebud, which had taken place nearby just eight days prior to Little Bighorn and resulted in another U.S. loss under General Crook, the warriors were not retreating as they were known to do. They kept fighting, and so the columns never had a chance of driving them back when they were split up in that way.

This isn't all to say that Custer did nothing wrong, or that he didn't fuck up that day. He did. He made a serious mistake and it resulted in not just his death, but 267 more, including numerous family members. He made a critical error in judgment when he split up his men, but not all the fault lies with him. I feel like Custer gets misrepresented a lot. He was a terrible person, deeply flawed and often foolish, but one thing he was not is a bad leader."

End ID.]

why did i watch that whole movie. i could have just watched this

The Boy Generals mentions that Custer quit drinking for sake of his wife, refusing to drink ever again and the author is like "wellll Custer could never do anything in half measures!"

sir nowadays we call that "being prone to addiction"

I love how tumblr mobile saves posts you’re making if you close out of it without saving or whatever. Like yeah man I really wanted to come back to this one.