Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 174 - The Spanish American War Part 1: Maybe Don't Remember the Maine

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

Part 1 of 3 as we explore the birth of American Empire. Sources for all 3 episodes: Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/spring/roosevelt-and-medal-of-honor-3.html https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/how-buffalo-soldiers-helped-win-the-spanish-american-warand-saved-teddy-roosevelt-7716090 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

hello and welcome to yet another lovely episode of the lines led by donkeys podcast i fucked up the intro i'm joe and with me is liam hello man hi i've only been doing this for you know almost four years in in my defense this is like the longest we've gone without recording and because we had a vacation or like the first time ever we don't do vacations on this show no we just sort of endlessly toil away and suffer if serious like for the first time in three and a half years, I went on vacation. You went on vacation. We recorded a whole bunch before I left, so nobody noticed.

Which is how I planned it. You went to the homeland. Yeah, it was lovely. I got my paperwork started to get my passport. My Armenian passport. Obviously, I have a passport. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get there um i had to get baptized in the church i was not baptized in the church uh to prove my armenianness uh which is actually that's a fun lack of a wall there

yeah that's like it's state religion tasty it's interesting because like most armenians are not hyper religious it's like a cultural thing. It doesn't shock me. Yeah. Like, I don't know any like, like older people. Like when I went into the,

the church to get a talk to the priest and get baptized, it was like only incredibly old people who are actually paying attention. And I'm like, and the back of the church is like people playing on their cell phones and stuff. Yeah, no, I,

I get that. I, uh, know it's it's weird man obviously like i think sort of especially as a young adult you sort of fall off i think that's basically inevitable and then you know depending on your life trajectory either you have kids or you know you get older and religion maybe becomes more of a social thing like for my parents synagogue is incredibly important because it allows them to you know maintain a social life in retirement that sort of thing oh yeah absolutely yeah and like you know i'm i'm jewish and i'm gonna so i'm fasted in a couple years uh and i'm gonna fast

this year and i'm just gonna be like full of hate for the next 24 hours it's it's incredible um i really hope i get to record my catholic girlfriend just to spite my catholic girl because she's like well when you're hangry you're a real piece of shit i'm like yeah i know but god wants me to like did you create all the heavens and the earth no you didn't corinne i i'm a whore i'm a horrible bitch and yeah i really hope we get to record at some point while you're fasting because the amount of verbal abuse just sounds incredible to me yeah it's just like like i i normally am you know despite what you may see on twitter.com a relatively easygoing

guy uh and then i'm hungry and i'm just like i'm gonna do a hate crime like real vile shit big big philly hours uh when you get hungry just just murdering a giant's man and pleading to the judge i was hungry uh speaking of hate crimes oh no we got a serious me i i promised everyone a series uh because we're missing a bonus episode for the month of september i'm sorry everybody it's the first time it's ever happened just because like the logistics of trying to get another episode done while trying to get all of our regular episodes done after vacation is just impossible i'm sorry so i promise well there's your problem approach yeah i'm gonna get out when they get out sorry man like i tried uh it's really hard like i even planned to record

while i was in armenia and it's really hard to do with like a 16 hour time difference yeah um now when i move there that's something that's logistics i'll have to figure out but like that we'll cross the bridge when i get there but recording on the road sucks ass dude don't ever do it so i planned a series um and i planned a series but sure that is kind of the birthplace of american uh empire um and that is the spanish-american war oh cool this is oh a nice light subject now as fast. We actually, um, covered half this kind of already. Uh, when we covered the,

uh, American, uh, American Filipino war, uh, we did a three part series in that forever ago. Um, so that half is taken care of.

Otherwise the series would be way longer, way more unwieldy. Uh, so this will be limited to the Cuban and Puerto Rican theaters of war. Um, and yeah, So this will be limited to the Cuban and Puerto Rican theaters of war. And we've also talked about how America took over Guam, which was very funny. I encourage you to go listen to that series. And I had a Filipino activist help me research that because that is a subject I know nothing about. that because that is a subject i know nothing about um but yeah uh for a lot of people who maybe just like kind of glance at american history a lot of people think this is like the first

overseas war that america fought and that's not true um that's actually america's first what some people call america's first global war on terror uh is the barbary pirates wars uh that was america's first overseas war i'm not counting an attempted invasion of canada there's two of them uh where we floated all the way over to tripoli to fight pirates uh but also it's kind of sort of part of the ottoman empire so that's a war i tactically support uh alongside such staunch american allies is the kingdom of sicily and sweden hey man i i'm swedish man you know yeah um like now i don't agree calling this america's first global war on terror because we won um and that's not something we do with war on terror

yeah so so again going forward i'm not going to really mention the Philippines at all. It's not because I blanked on an entire theater of war because we already covered that for four hours. So go back, listen to that, fill in the gaps when you're done with this if you're new around here. Now, the seeds of this war. Most people will say that like this war started because the main blew up the uss main blew up that is incredibly untrue no that's true no i learned it in school yeah journalism had nothing to do with it and william randolph first was a good person and then you just cut my mic we will actually get to the yellow journalism bit um it's

it's something that's we we like to put a lot of weight on i strongly disagree with doing that uh but we'll get there um now the the seeds of this war planted years before when the spanish colonized cuba way back in the 1400s um spanish rule over cuba was fucking horrendous and a nightmare show of plantations institutional brutality and genocide with slavery thrown in on top. Cool. Great. It was originally populated by the Taino people who were Arawak,

and they're all pretty much gone now for a reason. Spain. Spain did that. Yep. Now, if that sounds horribly reductive to you, it's because it is. Give me a break. I have to get through like 400 years of history here. It was bad.

Read about it amongst yourselves and come back. Eventually, people who lived in Cuba got pretty fucking sick of this shit and rose up. Now, at this point, there is Spaniards, there's Cajuns, there is mixed race people, there's slaves,

there's a lot of different people who are imported into Cuba and also some of the native population phrasing but that's that's yep i mean you're right but yeah um now some of these people were slaves some of these people weren't um so like it's kind of like when you read about haiti um like there were slaves and there were mixed race people who were also slave owners and were allowed to elevate themselves into a middle class. It's very in comparison to American slavery, race, culture.

It is much more contextual. But however, still super fucked up. Don't own people. It's bad. Slaves bad. Never good time to own slaves. No, don't do that. Now, generally speaking, there's considered to be three different wars of independence.

The first being known as the Ten Years War in 1868. Now, these are organized rebellions or always small scale uprisings because it turns out people don't enjoy being dominated unless you do and you probably pay for it. Now, the reasons for this. Like you're a sober, Joe. this i guess i don't know uh it's statewide doming um now the reasons for this are actually much more nuanced than just like spain bad um though that is you know the through line there was a growing crisis of in the place where people were trying to live within an empire that did not consider them a colony, but rather a providence of Spain itself. Now, if you notice, I said place, not people, because Spain didn't give a fuck about the people. But the French approach to Algeria. Yes, that's actually a pretty good comparison.

That's actually a pretty good comparison. Because while Spain considered Cuba itself an integral part of its empire and a part of Spain, it did not think the same about the people that live there. Yeah, it sounds familiar. Previously, there had been a ban on slavery, but virtually no enforcement of that ban, leading to tens of thousands of slaves continuing to be imported into the island.

This was made worse by an economic crisis that left a lot of farms and plantations destitute uh the constant importation of slaves shunted out local people who needed work and if you're a worker you can't compete with free uh so you were left penniless the colonial government of cuba also randomly began to slap higher taxes on farmers while at the same time is beginning to be painfully obvious that their tax revenue was being sent back to Spain or centralized at the top of the local colonial government

rather than being reinvested back into the island. The Spaniards, being the white Spaniards from Spain, represented 8% of the island's population while appropriating 90% of the entire island nation's wealth. almighty thankfully that doesn't happen anymore right no no no no now in addition cuban-born population still had no political rights or representation in parliament the reason why i say cuban-born and not cuban native is because as we already talked about the native aruac people who originally populated the car, Cuba included, were pretty much wiped out at this point. Now, if you look this up, this is something that you also see in the United States or North America in general.

It's incorrectly attributed to something called the virgin soil theory of disease spread. Have you ever heard about this was this no i mean is this related to uh us wiping people out just by uh contact with them yes i'm getting like smallpox and shit and diseases their immune systems i've just never seen before yeah it's largely untrue um now that did happen it did happen i'm not saying that like smallpox is more of a vibe but like so you're telling me that you're a vaccine truther is what i'm hearing i that like smallpox is more of a vibe, but like, so you're telling me that you're a vaccine truth or is what I'm hearing? I'm a smallpox truth or actually don't believe it's real. Now the virgin soil theory mandates that there was no purposeful genocide of

natives. Instead, it was accidental based on disease spread. Okay. Well that's bullshit. Yes. I'm like white people didn't mean to do it. Whoopsie doodle.

We just showed up and killed everybody with our with our fucking aura or whatever i guess like i would say as much as like we didn't have the germ theory of disease yet but like sort of exculpating white people and saying no it's just a harmless little accident like it's both like it was they meant to do a genocide maybe they just didn't mean to do it that effectively i mean there was like we literally gave out blankets to smallpox on it yeah i mean and there was you know multiple extermination orders i had honestly forgotten about the smallpox blankets so they they knew yeah by that point they didn't need

to understand germ theory to understand like wait if we touch them with this stuff it'll kill them right everybody i got the timeline wrong no it's fine for me and i mean to be fair most people still believe the virgin soil theory because it is so popular to make white people feel better about themselves sure um it's only largely being combated in um genocide study circles which are very very small circles people constantly like to tell us to shut up. So, you know, it's nobody's fault if you believe that. Absolutely not. It's still taught in higher education,

like in American history classes and universities. I won't go into it. Like I said, that's about as far as I'm going to go into it. But that's also the same thing you hear about the Arawak population of Cuba.

It's not true. The Spaniards were fucking insane right yeah that doesn't yeah anyway i'm shocked yeah objections to these conditions sparked the first serious independence movement especially in the eastern part of the island in may of 1865 cuban creole elites uh not earlier i said cajun i think i fucked that up i meant creole i apologize um yeah my bad i meant creole uh again placed four different demands upon the spanish parliament uh tariff reform cuban representation in spanish parliament judicial equality with spaniards and full enforcement of the slave ban.

After a few years of half-assed Spanish reform attempts that really didn't address any of these, and they were never truly committed to, Cubans were pretty much over trying to talk this entire thing out and instead started shooting Spaniards, starting the so-called 10 Years War of 1868. war of 1868. Now, this might shock you. The Spanish response to this uprising was pretty much genocidal. Yeah.

Yeah. The colonial government passed several laws, arrested leaders and collaborators of the insurgency to be executed upon the spot. Ships carrying weapons would be seized and all persons aboard would be executed. Males 15 and older caught outside of their plantations or places of residence without justification would be executed. All towns were ordered to raise the white flag or otherwise be burnt down and executed.

Any women caught away from their farm or place of residence would be taken to camps where they would be executed. I was right to hate the Spaniards. No, you're always right to hate the Spaniards. I know we have some Spanish listeners, guys. You're fine. This is your fault, personally. I hope that you've reconciled with your histories. I know that.

I mean, I'm American. Who am I to judge, right? Yeah, right. I feel that in my bones, Joe. We got some things to work through together. Now, none of these rules apply to white Spaniards, unless you happen to be like a collaborationist. But very rarely was that the case.

Well, that was my next question. That's how frequent collaboration was. Now, as the majority of the rebels were black, Creole, or other mixed race people, the crown inflicted their violence against any racial minority they came across, transforming the entire thing into an island-wide race war. Now, reports of Spanish atrocities trickled out of the island. The Cuban rebels found themselves an unlikely ally, the United States of America.

Now, remember, America is incredibly close to Cuba. It does not take long for news to travel, even in this day and age. And this is where i will start to now i know you talked about yellow journalism people are listening the first thing that probably popped in their mind is yellow journalism regarding this war this is where i'm going to lay uh my my evidence that yellow journalism really didn't have anything to start this war because i'm very interested in this because i was like the narrative you're taught in school is that like it was because of yellow journalism that we did this like at least that's what i was taught i definitely wasn't taught about like you know imperialism or thirst for empire or any of that i was taught like basically they did a tricksy on us

and we feel real bad if we feel bad at all um there's some truth to that uh i mean someone made a lot of money selling fake newspapers uh or fake news in newspapers um right i'll let you be the judge after we talk about this if you actually think it swung much opinion um now also

we both live through the iraq war and we know that public opinion doesn't actually matter all that much no you wanted a warning out one man yeah like Also, we both lived through the Iraq War, and we know that public opinion doesn't actually matter all that much. No. W wanted a war and got one, man. Yeah. Literally record-breaking anti-war protests did not matter. I was there. Yeah.

Now, this is not the first time the U.S. had laid eyes on the island of Cuba. As far back as the 1820s, Thomas Jefferson thought that Cuba should join the United States, not as a colony or a territory, but as a state. He also told Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, quote, the first possible opportunity to take Cuba. Now, at this point, they saw Cuba as just valuable land. They didn't see like they didn't care about the people there. I mean, this is the US. They saw it as very, very close to the United States and very, very valuable. But that would change. The importance of Cuba would change. This lust

for Cuba eventually morphed into something somehow more sinister when Southern states began to pay attention to it. Oh, is this Golden Triangle shit? Yeah. In the 1840s, Southern states, their backs starting to be pressed against the wall on this whole owning people as property thing, saw taking Cuba as a state as a solid way to bolster themselves in Congress as Cuba was home to half a million slaves.

President James K. Polk, a Southern slave owner who defended the practice of slave owning, dispatched a guy named Romulus Mitchell Saunders because people used to be named a lot cooler back then Jesus a close friend great name though huge bastard he was a close friend of the president and minister to Spain which is what they kind of called ambassadors back then

to negotiate possibly buying Cuba from the Spanish there's a small problem though Saunders was a fucking idiot he had only gotten the job to negotiate possibly buying Cuba from the Spanish. There's a small problem, though. Saunders is a fucking idiot. He had only gotten the job because he helped get elected, and he did not speak Spanish. James Buchanan, another asshole, further joked that, quote, he even sometimes murders the English language.

Saunders offered the Spanish government $100 million dollars which is a lot of money in today dollars to buy cuba and they laughed in his face saying they'd rather sink it into the ocean and sell it to the united states owned oh that's that's pretty good also this entire spaniards but this might shock you this entire thing was supposed to be a secret mission for the south uh which was ruined by the fact that Saunders openly talked about it wherever he went and then quit his job all within two years. That's horrific. Fast forward to 1851 and be another attempt to separate Cuba from Spain, this time called the Lopez Expedition. Narisco Lopez is what was known as a freebooter have you ever heard these guys nope uh now it's a very nice way of saying pretty much mercenary

um he invaded people for money he wasn't cuban but instead was bosque and born in venezuela and and previously fought on the side of spain against the bolivarian Revolution led by Simon Bolivar. Dick. Not Simon Bolivar. He's alright. He's fine. This guy pretty much was just down to fight whoever for a check, which, you know, who am I to judge? I was in the US Army. You also literally did do that.

I was not a freebooter, at least. No. Joke saving it, everybody. Sweating hairs, babies. i may have fought afghanistan but i did not fight to uh secure a slave state so uh point me uh lopez zero um now after the spanish got their asses stomped at the battle of maracaibo he retreated to cuba uh and l and Lopez kind of follow them along the way. Uh, once there, they were forced to flee to the United States after going broke and starting a business and becoming an anti-Spanish partisan somehow.

Uh, okay. Weird career. Yeah. Once there, he decided he would be the one to free Cuba from the yoke of Spanish oppression and give it to the United States. He met up with a guy named John O'Sullivan.

Now, if that name does not ring any bells, I don't blame you. He just so happens to be the guy that literally came up with the term Manifest Destiny. It's like a cornucopia of bastards. Oh, it gets better. like a cornucopia of bastards. Oh, it gets better. Now, John O'Sullivan, this might shock you, was very popular

in the South because he was a hell of a freebooter. Now, he also put Lopez in contact with various other Southerners who would throw money in to support his dumb plan. This kind of freebooting was also known as filibustering, and it was incredibly common among Southern slave owners of the day to attempt to slap together a private army and expand and take over more territory

that they could then turn into slave states and territories um this is pretty popular a lot of presidents try to put a like try to stop people from doing that because this is literally private warlords expanding the united states yeah um. President Zachary Taylor had told Southern states to cut that shit out by this point, however, and he ordered Lopez's dumb mission to be broken up. This did not slow Lopez down. He once again struck out. I never stopped, Joe. You got to keep it up.

I mean, at this point, he is the freebooter guy. He's got to keep freeing them boots. He struck out again looking for southern support eventually finding the support of a mississippi senator you may have heard of jefferson davis oh no uh for people who again aren't aware of that name he's the future president of the confederacy uh at this point he's a bitch boy joe he at this point he has a winning record for the most point uh he he had uh putting up nothing but l's after this really uh he had a record fighting in the mexican american war and lopez thought he would need you know actually trained military officers to help

any of his you know invasion of cuba he offered davis a hundred thousand dollars and a quote very fine coffee plantation if he joined him oh boy and yeah i normally i'm sure davis was like ah you had to be a plantation good sir but uh he almost took the deal but he was actually talked out of it by his wife uh jefferson davis noted wife guy um but jefferson's like you know what i can't help you but i do know another guy who fought in the war who might robert e lee uh probably a surprise now we also very nearly took the deal uh but if if you haven't listened to our episode robert e lee uh go back and listen to it he was up to his kids in debt uh and he couldn't sell his farm um like there's way too much he owed way too many people way too much money at this point of life so he there's no way he could get out from under it so he had to back out too don't worry the union had a solution for that yeah i'm convinced that robert

e lee uh joined the confederacy just so he could skip out on debt. I don't know if that's true, but I'd buy that. Yeah. I have no reason to not believe it. He had a lot of debt. Turns out not a great plantation owner. The only thing he excelled at was getting stumped by fucking U.S. Grant. How are you losing money when

your labor is free? He inherited all of his land and the person that he inherited from was really bad i think it was his father-in-law uh at running it but yeah then he continued being bad but fuck him uh so with lee out of the picture he did get some support uh from other southern politicians like the governor of miss, John Quitman, who funneled tons of money into the operation. Eventually, Lopez's dumb invasion set out and

actually did capture the town of Cardenas before having to retreat back to the U.S. where everybody got arrested for violations of the Neutrality Act. This is actually somehow the second time we've had to bring up the Neutrality Act on this podcast. The first time was when a whole bunch of nazis tried to invade uh somewhere but uh now pretty much everybody was able to dodge prison

time uh and john quitman was forced to resign uh because even back then the politicians were at least kind of held accountable when they did crimes wow i mean honestly it's kind of shocking that quitman had to resign uh because like he was governor of mississippi and he'd be like look no i'm just trying to expand into more slave states and people like oh no that's cool but like you know it's he violated the neutrality act it's kind of a big deal i guess but lopez wouldn't quit he launched another invasion august of 1851 which failed as soon as it stepped from the island. And Lopez and all of his followers were captured and executed by the Spanish government via Grotte.

Wow, that is a heck of a method to do it. Now, think of how much different American history would be if he got both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee to go with him, only to get strangled by Spaniards. If only, right? Give us a time machine. I'm going to go back and talk to Robert E. Lee, but not for the reasons that you think I will. Like, look, there's going to be a Bosque guy that shows up. I'm going to need you to go with him.

Now, this is really the downturn of the freebooter movement, though there was some other attempts and they were about as successful as this one. And some people have probably rightfully pointed out that this is the point that Southern slave owners moved away from the idea of expansionism to save slavery and instead moved to secessionism. Right. So, you know, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Though that itself didn't end the American South's thirst for Cuba. Only a few years after the failure of Lopez in 1854

during the presidency of Franklin Pierce, people cooked up another idea. Pierce was pro-slavery Democrat from the North who was very pro the Southern cause. It is he who we have to thank for the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the effective repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which led to a prequel civil war known as Bleeding Kansas. Yep.

Yeah, he's a dick. We'll talk about bleeding kansas at some point in the future i'm sure now this uh violent little detail gave pierce some pause when it came to fucking around with more slave states worried about you know more violence uh and his administration set up uh the annexation of cuba pretty high on their list of shit they wanted to get done worrying that the slowly weakening Spanish empire might fall victim to this British or French. Uh,

and they would be able to steal that sweet succulent Island before they could. And you know, then they'd have an enemy nation right there. I love the fact that you said sweet succulent Island, that sweet succulent Island meat. That's right. I don't like that phrase.

It's fine. I can say it. I'm on an island. Kind of even so though, right? No, you're right. You're right. I'm going to post a notes app apologizing for using the term sweet succulent

island. I will do better. I hear you. I see you. We'll do better. We probably won't, but I can promise you I will not do better. hear you i see you we'll do better um we probably won't but i can promise you i will not do better i guess i've never once tried to do better i'm not gonna start now have you met us another thing pearson is slave owning but business buddies are worried about was cuba was eventually going to break away from spain in like as an independence movement and become quote africanized like haiti had been oh boy oh boy that feel that you know i don't need to say that feels that's real bad

by africanized i only assume uh by the racist tone given they mean ran by the people who live there now instead of framing the entire thing as salvaging slavery, because that would not ring great in Pierce's support base, they instead decided to frame the entire attempted acquisition as a form of national security,

leading to the Ostend Manifesto. Oh, jeez. Now, the manifesto is a replay of previous attempts by the US to buy the island from spain with the added threat if they didn't we would simply invade them now this was a plot not something they're actually discussing with the spanish government like this wasn't like sending your your idiot friend to go talk to like an ambassador like a girl at the bar right yeah

yeah not like old romulus my friend over there thinks you're cute. It's just... We saw you from across the bar and we like your vibe. Would you like to give us Cuba? Now, the manifesto is supposed to be secret. This is something that is a continuous problem in the United States government at this point. Nobody can keep a fucking secret.

All of this shit is supposed to be secret. Everybody's like, hey, yo, we're going to be secret. Everybody's like, hey, yo, we're gonna buy Cuba. Now, a fact that nobody told nobody told diplomat Pierre Sol, who worked in Europe

that not to talk about this shit at his day job while he was working as minister to Europe. And then what did he do, Joe? Well, Spain found out. They got pissed. As did people back in Spain, clearly seeing this as a power grab, an imperial

invasion, and also Americans were pissed too. Generally Americans saw this for exactly what it was. A fucking power grab for slave owners. Pierce's reputation was completely ruined and his own political party refused to renominate him for president this is the only time in u.s history this has ever happened i can't imagine that's so fucking cynical but i can't imagine that happening

now oh fuck no no if someone like if someone if joe biden that's that's a he'd do this but like i mean he is old enough to remember the first time we tried this but like if joe biden that's that's a he'd do this but like i mean he is old enough to remember the first time we tried this but like if joe biden came out tomorrow like a memo is like oh joe biden said we should invade cuba and not because of like anti-communism but like to help with like spread slavery he would 100 stand for re-election in a couple years um it's it's every time i researched how things used to be granted people had to be like incredibly corrupt to actually get caught but when they got caught they had to resign or like admittedly like admittedly at this point being a pro-slave

northerner as president was way out like was not popular anymore um it was it was not huge uh but like they this led to his party electing uh someone else to stand for the presidential election and led to the nomination of james buchanan a guy who is widely believed to have written the manifesto the austin manifesto in the first place and then our first president from pennsylvania i grew up uh he's from lancaster not a good dude he pretty much caused the civil war good job good job central pennsylvania has nothing to contribute same as always that makes anybody feel better franklin pierce died alone uncontrollably shitting and vomiting on himself uh from cirrhosis after years of being an alcoholic so yeah good yeah he deserved it um now we'll also probably die of cirrhosis but i'd

like to believe we'll be surrendered by loved ones yeah but at least we're cute uh now american designs on cuba faded away for a little bit bit because we took some time off amongst ourselves to shoot the South until they surrendered. And then, you know, back to the 10 years war. The U.S. is only a few years removed from the Civil War and saw the Spanish Empire as a slave-holding oppressors, denying the Cuban people their freedom.

That's a convenient attitude. I mean, like, this is pretty new. Like, granted, this wasn't like the press yellow journalism hasn't started yet we're still at like u.s grant era uh this is like an american people thing like after we defeated the south we thought that everybody else should kind of like have the same treatment like hey we'll shoot slave owners if we have to type which all right if you're gonna do an imperialism right now this is an

attitude clearly largely in the north and in government um this is not a a popular sentiment in the south but the presidential administration of u.s grant didn't really have any organized designs on cuba those were instead focused on the dominican republic and another hilarious episode of american failure we will talk about in in a different time. Now, but the Grant administration being focused elsewhere did not mean Americans themselves were going to stay out of it. Because when do we ever? Huge fundraising efforts were made to be sent off to Cuban rebels, as well as guns. And a few more than a few couple dozen volunteers would smuggle themselves onto the island. Because remember, not that far away.

volunteers would smuggle themselves onto the island because remember not that far away now grant was talked out of just recognizing the cuban gobble rebels as government by hamilton fish his secretary of state uh now the reason for that was ongoing negotiations with the british the british kind of wanted the u.s to stay out of european bullshit despite the fact the european bullshit was on america's front door um so instead he quietly told people uh that were telling him to invade to shut the fuck up while also not enforcing the neutrality act whatsoever so like so playing both sides yeah any american who wanted to like go get squirrely in cuba or like sell some guns or like send anything to the cuban rebels were completely and freely allowed to. The only thing that was going to stop them was the Spanish.

Yeah. But by 1878, the 10 years war had fizzled out. Slavery was fully outlawed, kind of, you know, kind of like the United States slavery, both extra steps was implemented.

But they were unable to fully secure their colony as the Little War sparked out next. Now, the Little War is sometimes thought of as its own war, but also as a continuation of the Ten Years' War, led by revolutionaries who had recouped and replanned while hiding out in New York, of all places. Oh, okay. Got the New Yorkers. revolutionaries who had recouped and replanned while hiding out in new york of all places yeah i mean that's honestly super common like when we talked about um our expedition into mexico against pancha via pretty much every time there was a popular uprising uh in cuba they planned it in the united states uh because again it's very very close and we just didn't care right because again, it's very, very close and we just didn't care. Right. Now, this war did not find much popular support in Cuba.

The population was just tired from decades of Spanish slaughter. So it fizzled out after a while. After the 10 years war, Spain once again went on a crusade of terrible reforms with slavery mostly gone. Hundreds of thousands of freedmen entered the workforce. This made the previous plantation system no

longer profitable because, you know, you have to pay people now. Oh, the horror. Oh no, our brand of extractable capitalism is ruined. I can't believe they would have done this to us. It's that Eric Andre meme of

them shooting themselves in the chair. Why would they done this to us it's that eric andre meme of them shooting themselves in the unemployment soared and the spanish didn't really bother to do anything to help anyone other than themselves eventually the cuban revolutionary jose marti and a few others in the little havana neighborhood of uh florida begin to plot their next move. Again, like I said, of course it's Florida. These were what were known as patriotic clubs, and they began to one, plan the next revolution, but

also worry that the U.S. could sweep it and take over Cuba before any revolution could become successful, which kind of ended up becoming a true thing to worry about. But they were trying to play both sides of the fence they knew it was in their best interest if we could like poke america with a stick enough to get them to invade cuba like it would make their job easier like they like look

we tried a decade of revolution and it fucking failed but what if you guys yeah if we get a bunch of fucking blue jackets that just you know got done warming up the rifles by shooting southerners to invade that would make our job a lot easier uh it was 100 like make a deal with the devil type situation because remember the spanish empire wall at this point is mostly like a fucked up old house about ready to fall over for its subjects that had been oppressed for 400 years they might as well be like the end boss of a video game right because you don't feel that way you still doesn't feel that way right right right it's like i'm sure like that

at this point it's like kind of like when the taliban finally figured out they won like wait we did it really um so at the time in the united states the secretary of state was a guy named james blaine blaine blaine james g blaine conan a liar from the state of maine um he was a man who decided it was his sole mission in life to end the era of american isolationism um now this might shock people but once upon a time it was actually like american doctrine not to fuck around against other people um like the there's the washington doctrine of no entangling alliances uh which like meant that we didn't you know kind of get ourselves in a world war one situation where everybody's allied and war started we have no choice which you know we found a way to do anyway um and then there was the monroe doctrine

which while the original intent was you know twisted to say the least it was also to keep the u.s out of other people's shit um you know keep keep us solidly in america shit which would sometimes mean us getting involved in other people's shit but generally they're isolationist right yeah there's isolationist in nature now obviously things change now marty and the other planners watch the u.s annex hawaii where i'm sitting right now no problem there um now hawaii is unique like obviously we've taken over a lot of territory over the years, but Hawaii was a free nation that the US had recognized as a sovereign state,

had done trade with, and had full diplomatic relations with. And then what did we do, Joe? We gave it to a guy named Samuel Dole. Enjoy your pineapples, bitches. Now, that's a whole other

episode we'll eventually talk about the eventual annexation of hawaii is very weird uh and dumber than you could possibly imagine no it's joe after years of listening to this podcast nothing is dumber than i could possibly imagine but fair enough um now marty looked at what we did in hawaii and was like wow that was like that was a kingdom and they just took the like of course yeah like well then they'll totally do that to cuba right right um blaine said quote that rich island uh he wrote this on the December 1st, 1881. The key to the Gulf of Mexico is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American commercial system. If ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination.

uh not to mention there's an there's more than enough evidence to suggest that blaine had been working with samuel dole off the books in order to foster the coup that eventually toppled queen lily okalani of the kingdom of hawaii uh so blaine's fucking around a lot he has his hand a whole lot of really bad genocide crimes yeah yeah yeah though eventually blaine left office when president william mckinley took office about two and a half years into the third Cuban War of Independence, which was what we would eventually get involved in in the Spanish-American War. It was the third Cuban War of Independence. Blaine was replaced in his position by a guy named John Sherman, a 73-year-old senator who everyone believed was already suffering from dementia, even back then. Now, as the war raged in Cuba, McKinley didn't support armed intervention. Now, like we talked about before, the U.S. military was very, very small.

This is not like a rapidly deployed division somewhere type part of American history. This is still very much a regular army of a couple thousand guys and then a National Guard. Like his predecessor, McKinley's predecessor, absolutely would have recommended an armed intervention. But McKinley instead wanted to negotiate with Spain. There was also part played by American shipping and farming interests which strangely enough were divided on the issue american shipping yeah like like it might not shock you too much when i say like it was in the shipping and farming industry's best interest if like the war ended and things then continued to be how they had been because the spanish let them do whatever the fuck they wanted

right and i say that like when the other option is american uh domination the spaniards still let them do more so and pretty much every like the sugar industry plantation shipping pretty much everybody's like no no we want you to help end the war between the cubans and the spaniards but we don't want you to come and take it over right um now there was some uh like there were there were some outliers that did want america to come in but it was also because they assumed they'd get the same deal that like dole got in hawaii but it didn't seem like mckinley really cared about that yeah obviously yet is a lot of us, but most business interests actually favored the Spanish because they'd been there for fucking hundreds of years. Like we want this and all that.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. We want the status quo back where the Spaniards shoot anyone that disagrees with us and we make money. Now, however, none of this did any real favors with the American public who were demanding intervention.

Now, the reason for this is because not yellow journalism, but a sadistic fuck named Valerianio Whaler. Oh, good. He is Spanish Hitler. Oh, okay. Start out strong. All right. He had been sent to... Actually, it's not fair.

He wasn't the king or the prime minister. He's more like Spanish Reinhard Heydrich. Okay. With the main difference of, unfortunately, nobody ever shoots Whaler. He had been sent to become governor general of Cuba after the last guy, a guy named Arsenio Martínez Campo, had failed to put down the Cuban revolutionaries. Whaler was given full dictatorial emergency powers over the island and he used them in the most horrific way possible.

After running into the same problems Campo did, i.e. fighting an insurgency with a standing army that spent more time dying of disease than winning battles, he decided that the best way to stop the insurgents in their tracks would be to simply separate them from the population,

loyal or otherwise. Oh boy, concentration camps. That's right. That's where the term comes from. Oh great, I did it. So this is like the Reconcentrera policy or otherwise known as Reconcentration. And they were put in Reconcentration

camps. This is the first known use of that term what do I win Joe? three more hours of this thank you Joe now like the British would directly a lot of people say the British or the Germans

mostly the British were the first people to invent concentration camps during the boer wars which is what i had always heard right this is where they got the idea now to be fair their their camp system was much larger um but uh this is this is the first idea of and i mean we also attempted to do this in vietnam with our strategic hamlet program yes um we just realized we can't call it we can't use the term concentration just like internment camps we can't we're not concentrating people even the united states realized the term was poisonous

now the entire rural population of cuba was given eight days to move into designated camps where they could where they could be watched by spanish soldiers anyone found outside the camps after these eight days would be shot the housing in these areas what a nice change of pace that's right uh also pretty much every village outside of these protected concentration camps was burned um so people couldn't live in it. Food in the areas was typically disgusting. Housing was abandoned, decaying, roofless, and virtually uninhabitable. I said the food was disgusting. That's if there was any.

Normally, it was scarce, and famine and disease quickly set in. Yellow fever is incredibly common in Cuba, as was malaria at the time. By 1898, one-third of Cuba's population had been forcefully sent to concentration camps. These camps would eventually kill 10% of the entire Cuban population. It's like that

island concentration camp in Namibia. Yeah, it's Shark Island all over again. Yeah. As a Spanish government, this is just... Actually, a little bit sooner. But not by much.

As the Spanish government fully supported Whaler's methods, they were then shown all over the newspapers that made their way back to the United States, horrifying readers and nicknaming Whaler

the Butcher of Cuba. Though unlike Grant, President McKinley didn't let violations of the law slip through and the Coast Guard was sent to intercept the massive amount of weapon shipments that were trying to move from Florida to Cuba. Oh, wow. Yeah. As this was happening, a resistance movement began building in the Philippines.

So again, go listen to that. But now this meant Spain was caught fighting a two-front war across half the globe spanish soldiers in cuba were dying by the droves mostly by disease but also by enemy gunfire um now like i we're gonna talk a lot about people dying from yellow fever uh during this series uh but like i cannot underestimate just how many Spanish soldiers deal fever killed. Right. At one point, half of the entire garrison was taken out,

like either killed or made combat ineffective. By 1897, Spanish forces in Cuba were forced to circle their wagons and only defend the major cities of the island with the Spanish liberal leader pointing out that the Spanish didn't control any land. They were not currently standing on hey i've heard that phrase before but yep it all comes back um seeing the spanish on the ropes the american government once again offered to buy the island and they refused uh spanish prime minister antonio del castillo sorry guys uh announced that quote the Spanish nation is

dispossessed to sacrifice the last of its treasure to the last drop of blood of the Spaniard before consenting to anyone snatch even one piece of its territory he was then shot by an anarchist named Michelle Lombardi we got one!

Thank you. Thank you. I needed that. That's fucking funny. Was that last part important to the story? No. Does that matter? Also no. But yeah, so like this is all happening before people are really talking about

yellow journalism okay um now there is newspaper stories coming out some of them are inflated like i think i saw one about the spanish navy feeding people with sharks or something like that. But honestly, their exaggerations weren't far off. So we'll talk more about it. But while all of this is going on, the U.S. is still negotiating. At this point, the U.S. is starting to flex a bit more, knowing that Spain is weak. Spain said they would stop doing a genocide against Cubans if the Cubans agreed to a ceasefire. Now,

obviously, the word genocide was not used. It didn't exist yet. The Cubans disagreed, hoping whatever happened next would bring the U.S. military openly onto their side. As a meet-in-the-middle type agreement, however, the Spanish government agreed to withdraw Whaler and replace him with someone who wasn't a fucking psychopath. However, the Spanish government agreed to withdraw Whaler and replace him with someone who wasn't a fucking psychopath.

It was. However, as is normally the case in situations kind of like this. Never mind, boys. Whaler had quite a bit of support amongst the Spanish population of the island. So they planned a march in protest against his replacement, a guy named Ramon Blanco. These protests rapidly devolved into riots as people were pissed that an outside government was flexing

on the Spanish. This is something that they were not used to. Normally, it's the other way around. And soon, these riots began targeting American-owned business and Americans. Hey, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't fuck with the money. Don't fuck with the money. Don't fuck with the money.

It is then that the U.S. dispatched the USS Maine to Cuba at the request of a guy named Fitzhugh Lee, a former Confederate officer turned Consular General of Havana and nephew of Robert E. Lee. They really do not name him like they used to. No, they don't. I mean, Fitzhugh Lee sucks, but Fitzhugh

solid name. Like you could just see the probable facial hair this guy has in your head. Like it's the sideburns going into a mustache, but without any of the goatee. Terrible. Now, Fitzhugh Lee wanted the main to be a show of force to remind the Spanish government like, hey, don't let these people fuck up too much of our shit. There is also some argument of how violent this riot actually was. It seems that there was some minor property damage. Now, I'm going to take a short sidetrack here and address the one thing that I keep saying I was going to address.

And yellow journalism is the topic here. This is the reason that is stuck in american memory as to being the driving force behind this war that's because it's very easy to explain and i do not think it was the case um it's a lot like i mean we live through the iraq war i'm assuming most of our listeners did or at least maybe maybe they weren't old enough to remember the press insanity that circled it. That didn't cause the war. The war was going to happen regardless. We can blame journalists as much as we want.

And to be fair, they do own a lot of blame for whipping people up into a bloodthirsty frenzy, but it didn't matter. And that's kind of the same thing here um to me throwing all this in a pile the like a pile of falling for propaganda is incredibly reductionists and also makes it seem like just like the u.s's population went to the polls to vote to invade cuba right uh this propaganda was impacting the government who actually made these decisions and remember thomas jefferson planned to take over cuba this is not a fucking new idea

right um i believe that this look at history takes agency away from both the american and spanish governments to be terrible as well as the cuban rebels themselves to encourage the united states to get involved in the war, which they had been doing for years. Now, for people who don't know, yellow journalism is, well, I guess journalism today. It is a style of newspaper reporting that emphasizes sensationalism over facts, something that thankfully doesn't exist anymore. Yeah.

Very fair and balanced uh people often blame the style of reporting for the spread of anti-spanish sentiment within the united states well it obviously added fuel to the fire there's no denying that it isn't like william randolph hurst flew down to cuba and set up concentration camps or set shit on fire himself there's also a famous saying quote you furnish the pitchers and i'll furnish the war that's often attributed to hearst i assume he never said that he never said that nobody ever said that um it's at best apocryphal um uh like third fourth fifth hand storytelling but most likely completely invented by someone else and given to him. Remember, at this point, the American public's anger at the Spanish treatment of Cubans had been around for decades, literally since the Ten Years' War.

The American people were throwing themselves on boats with guns and floating down to Cuba to shoot Spaniards. So they didn't need the help, right? Yeah, there's obviously a lot of white savior shit here. I'm not arguing and saying that they're correct like at no point am i saying that that's correct you don't have to hand it to the spaniards yeah i'm just i'm just saying that like they didn't read william randolph hearse and like i'm gonna go down to new orleans and kind of paddle and do myself a freedom fight

right right right and what happened uh there was concentration camps there was absolutely genocide that wasn't propaganda spain did that that that's like saying that i don't know um there's propaganda about the bosnian genocide that's all fake to get the united states invade right like of course there's propaganda involved but events still occurred that were real. Still just right. Validating maybe one part of that doesn't change the reality of the situation. And again, I'm not saying that the U.S. is acting in a humanitarian effort here. Our founding fathers had designs over Cuba, but

all of these things combined, the spark was not a newspaper. Also, like I've repeated time and time again, the American government was looking for an excuse to seize Cuba. Right. And that excuse was not William Randolph Hearst. It was something else we're about to talk about. Nobody with a newspaper was going to create this word of thin air when both the imperial ambitions of the American government and the liberation dreams of American people fueled by the genocidal reign of the Spanish already did that for them.

Let's do ourselves a favor and not think a couple newspaper barons whipped up a war in a few months rather than the slow creeping of imperial rot and rise over the last few hundred years or so. When on the 15th of February, 1898 at about 93030pm and like

oh no that's some WTYP shit that that's about to say that like if there's one thing I've learned from well there's your problems when I put in the exact time people are about to blow up um anyway go listen to well there's your problem um I got you buddy

um the USS main exploded three weeks into its day at the Havana Harbor, just to add fuel to the fire. Now, actually, this is both the fuel and the fire for the most part. The war probably was not going to happen without this. As most of the ships grew below deck, either sleeping or resting in their quarters, 261 sailors were killed by the explosion of the crew. Only 94 survived. Since most of the enlisted quarters were at the front where the explosion occurred,

most of the deaths were enlisted men, as is always the case. Well, it's all this time. We will simply put the enlisted men at the front as another layer of armor. Only two officers died, which is genius, sir. Yeah.

The officers quarters were at the rear of the ship, so most of them survived. Now, at first, Commander Francis Dickens told the president that this was an accident. The Navy, U.S. Navy Captain Philip Alger announced the explosion was due to a coal fire bunker or a coal bunker fire. Sorry. These were both comments made by people who had no idea what happened as they had not seen the wreck or had been there. That's funny how that works. Newspapers called for the heads of the Spanish drivers of journalism besides Hearst, openly thought that only a crazy person would think that the Spanish would have sunk the ship on purpose. Right, because why would they want a war? The Spaniards were not ready for this war at all.

They were honestly losing Cuba without our intervention at all. It would have taken longer, but they were not winning. Spain was in some serious imperial decline. People generally believe that the US immediately jumped into war based on this explosion. The next day, there's Marines hitting the beach of Guantanamo or whatever. But that's not the case. Despite the public in various parts of the government demanding revenge, because there were people in the government like Teddy Roosevelt who were demanding that the US go to war

immediately. The government actually did something I didn't expect. They pumped the brakes and investigated. Wow! Both the Spanish and the American governments launched an investigation into the explosion. Now, the Spanish won a joint investigation and the

Americans refused. And all investigations agreed that an explosion in the forward magazines caused the destruction of the ship. But different conclusions were reached in how the magazines exploded in the first place. What happened next is pretty obvious. With the Spanish investigation finding that it must have been a fire in the coal stores that caused the explosion,

they pointed out that there were no dead fish in the water, something that happens when an underwater explosion occurs from a mine. The Spanish actions afterwards further prove that if they had sunk the main, it was completely an accident. The governor

general of the island, Ramon Blanco and various military commanders... This line just says whoopsie daisy on it yeah like they brought like people are making it sound like they planted an ied for a boat and then sat by with a fucking control but which to be fair is how some sea mines were detonated at the time like they had to be controlled detonated oh that's kind of sick i didn't know that yeah it was like electrical underwater electrical charges uh which is another excuse the spaniards had there was no landmine like there's no electrical cables that could have powered it but they also had sea mines

that were triggered by bumping them sure which would become much more fragile over time as you know sea uh salt water damaged them and articles got on them and whatever but you know the governor general and various military governor or military commanders on the island came forward to show their sympathies for the lost sailors, something they probably wouldn't do if they killed them on purpose. Fair enough. The American investigation found the main had struck a explosions and the fact the ship's keel was bent inwards uh showing a outside explosion rather than outwards which have shown inside explosion now to this day nobody is sure what happened anybody says that they are for certain is lying um like there's no way to tell but there is a fair amount of investigations that had been done

um both of these both of these explanations are 100 possible um but you can believe based on what there is um i believe obviously it was an internal fire most historians believe it was an internal coal fire but we can't be sure nobody can be sure. The main had virtually no armor and even a small explosion under its waterline could have caused the magazines to go. And it was shown to have that flaw already. It was also the fact that the U S used kind of an unstable coal in its ships, a bituminous coal over anthracite, meaning that one put off a lot of dust and any spark near it could have been fatal.

Furthermore, that same flaw in that ship with the coal dust and gathering and then starting a fire had just happened. It just happened in the USS New York, which had the same brand of coal and sat for two weeks and began to burn just three hours after being checked. It was since these things are powered by coal and coal explodes from time to time, you would have someone on fire watch go through and check coal every couple of hours.

Maybe it was every hour. They checked it pretty frequently. So the last check before the USS New York exploded was just three hours. That's crazy. After being checked. And the main had gone 12 hours without an inspection. So it is very fucking possible. Not to mention that Cole had sat in the bunker for three months, meaning he had plenty of time. There had been several major investigations in 1910, 1974, 1998, and again in 2002.

Though you can probably discount the last two as they are from the history and discovery channels. The best one that anybody has used has been the one from 1974, in my opinion, which used a lot of computers. The guy that's considered the founder of the American Nuclear Navy did the investigation on that one. He's considered a very, very good engineer. But unfortunately, all of these investigations have come to differing possibilities. The one in 1910 actually got to look at the wreck above the water and said that there were definite signs of a mine explosion.

While in 1974, 1974 show that the other way like there was very obviously a coal fire yeah in short the current academic consensus is oh probably coal fire but and again anybody who says

they know for sure it's impossible you literally can't now I tend to agree with the coal fire scenario it seems very realistic um but my other theory is if spain blew it up with a mine it was a mine that had just been there and it bumped into it and nobody did it on purpose sure it was an accident either way um because there's there's no good reason for spain to do that politically and militarily it made no fucking sense for spain to direct the u.s into war right you know they were losing right exactly um and this is the 1800s so the u.s didn't have the greatest ability to investigate

something like this not to mention you have to look at who the investigation was done by which was the US Navy who went by the answer that made them not look dumb as hell right we blew up our own ship there's also conspiracy theory pushed by various people that the entire thing was a false flag

the US blew up the ship on purpose because of course of course those guys always exist. And the reason why this is still popular is it's actually the official stance of the modern Cuban government, for some reason. Okay, well, fuck them. Yeah, that's very stupid. Sorry for now.

Yeah, very, very stupid. Anyway, it wasn't until April of the same year that President McKinley finally asked for a declaration of war, and it was after months of various congress people demanding he get one while other members of congress are drawing up plans to recognize cuban independence before the u.s even got involved directly which would have forced spain to declare war i gotcha now eventually the u.s voted to demand spain withdrawal and

authorize the president whatever military needs quote unquote to make that happen uh this also include the teller amendment which forbade the u.s to annex cuba it was it was made legally impossible for the u.s to annex cuba um unfortunately there'll be something else added to that much later on but as of now good things uh which i'm sure well yeah i mean teller amendment good idea when you're going to war unfortunately everything else that gets signed into law afterwards that's so good now this is when the u.s. started a blockade of cuba something that would unfortunately become common um which then we love a blockade we love a a good blockade. Which forced Spain to finally declare war and the US declared a war in response.

That is where we'll pick up next time. How are you feeling so far about your knowledge of the Spanish-American War? I was really interested by your yellow journalism bit and not at all surprised.

You know, I think there there's gonna be some people right like i i feel like i disagree with you a little in the sense that like yeah maybe a war that certainly uh to my mind accelerated the pace i think it would be in it would be harder to it'd be easier to um debate the importance of yellow journalism if the main never blew up right yeah absolutely but uh alas that's not the world we live in i think the yellow journalism was definitely priming the fire in the civilian population but that already existed um so yeah because remember they wanted to go like the the u.s not like not like everybody obviously but like a majority of people wanted to go to war during the 10 years war which was

years earlier right before william randolph hearst even started doing his shit um or pulitzer for that matter but um i think because like it seemed mckinley really didn't want to do this like he want like anybody else because like like we've pointed out the u.s didn't have an army for this which we'll talk about in part two is a lot of how the u.s found this army um so it was like it's gonna be a bunch of new dudes from new york with not all their limbs again? Kind of, yeah. And a special guest star, malaria. Oh, that's less good. But it really seemed like McKinley was betting on the Spaniards cutting their losses, realizing they lost Cuba,

and then getting $100 million out of it. Sure. Which is like a real estate deal, not an imperial thing. Right. But I think, obviously, it had something to do with it just like dismissing war-mongering journalism the u.s entirely is stupid but i also don't think it makes policy like those things don't influence people in government i i understand well i mean politicians do read newspapers and i suppose you can say you know one exists because of the other uh in terms of

like making policy as a response to perceived public opinion but that's sort of a hazy road to go down and i'm not sure how valid that is that's it's pretty hazy and i don't know how you'd measure it i think there's a there's a lot of it to like again, reporting and propagandization after 9-11, which we just sat through the 20th anniversary of. And I do think that some of that's important to contextualize and how the forever war eventually formed into being. But I also don't think it's as important as people think it is because it's like people just watch the main explode which is you know obviously bad

and i don't think they need to be made any matter by propaganda just like i really don't think that like the saturday night live song or like the wwf having a salute to people who died in 9-11 really change anybody's mind when you were watching 3000 people die on, on loop on cable news. Right. You know, like I don't think the nudge is really necessary to make people mad. That's fair.

That's fair. I don't know. That's part one. And my fuck, this is our plug zone. Plug your show. Listen to listen to well there's your problem it's a show about uh engineering disasters from a leftist perspective and we tell jokes uh my book victory or death just came out buy it it's the last one in the uh in my series

congratulations buy the whole series it's literally free if you have Kindle Unlimited just download it and until next time don't invade Cuba yeah no don't do that don't do a genocide don't build concentration camps also don't do that don't think of new names for concentration camps

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