George Washington to Donald Trump--Falling into a National Abyss

 

George Washington was a brave and passionate young man who by will and desire controlled his internal fires. He made himself the stern man who could lead a new nation during and after the Revolution that brought the nation into being.  I am reading a Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography of George Washington by Ron Chernow.  The more I read, the more I admire the man who was the symbol of America before there was a capital, a flag or a national government.  

And with each page, the contrast between the man who brought America into being and the dissolute dumpy draft dodger in the White House is more vivid. Washington was a colonel in the Virginia militia during his early twenties. He was celebrated for heroism in England and the colonies for his bravery during the Seven Year’s War: at the same age our current President had draft deferments for invisible bone spurs.  

When Washington first took command of the continental army in Cambridge, there was an outbreak of smallpox in Boston where the British held the city.  The British using 18th Century biological warfare, sent boatloads of infected Boston residents across the Charles River to Cambridge to spread the disease.  Washington, who had taken the crude vaccine himself, ordered his soldiers to be vaccinated.  He carefully quarantined the infected Bostonians sent across the Charles River.  

Today, the anti-vaxxer in chief appointed a lying vaccine skeptic to be the head of Health and Human Services.  In a less-known act, Trump re-instated soldiers who refused the Covid vaccine while on duty. Returning to the ranks soldiers who refused orders will make the US military exactly the kind of “losers” he said happened under the previous President.  Washington knew discipline (obeying orders) made the army effective. Whining idiots who refuse a vaccine could refuse to fight. How much worse is combat than a Covid shot?  

Martha Washington traveled from Virginia to wherever her husband was during terrible winters such as the one in 1976-77 to be with her husband. Martha was terrified of the vaccine which nearly claimed the life of her son, but George insisted she be vaccinated to be with the army.  She took the vaccine, was ill for a month and recovered.  I think soldiers should be at least as brave as George Washington’s wife. 

Washington had an eye for good leaders. The best men in his army rose rapidly through the ranks. Generals Green and Knox notably rose rapidly to important commands as did young officers who caught Washington’s attention.  As against the British army with its deep class distinctions, Washington’s army was a meritocracy, bringing the best to the top.  Trump has appointed a Star Wars bar scene of misfits to corrupt and destroy the government.  Notable in the inventory of idiots is talk-show-host Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense.  Will this moron even be sober if Russia attacks Europe? 

Can America survive this onslaught of mediocrity?  I don’t know. When we survived the Civil War, Americans still admired courage and thought the President should be a leader of great character.  Last year America no longer cared about character.  A mean mediocrity was their pick to make America great again.  Not even 100 days into utopia, the economy is tanking because the 20th century man in the White House is re-instating the tariff wars of the 1920s. How did that turn out?  

Stupid is not only infinite, but bipartisan. Even as I despair of the descent from the dignity of Washington to immoral mutant Trump, I know that people who agree with me about Trump will howl about Washington, Jefferson and other of the founders of America who owned slaves.  Whatever their flaws, the nation they founded eventually fought its bloodiest war to end slavery.   

The critics of Washington and America right now are protesting in favor of Jihad on and around college campuses and major cities.  The most pathetic of them are Gays for Gaza.  Only Israel in the entire Middle East would allow gay people to live in safety, to live at all.  In Gaza or any Jihad land, gay people, whatever their pronouns, would be stoned by a gleeful, hateful mob doing the will of their hateful god.  Pro-Hamas is not less vile than Pro-Trump.  And both are willing to sacrifice their followers without a second thought.   

Washington led by stern example in the face of enemy fire, then retired to Mount Vernon when he could have been a king.  From the dignity of Washington we have descended to the lying delusions of Trump. And worse than that, a majority of America vote for him. 

This pathetic fool will be President for the 250th anniversary of the USA.

First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas Ricks Book 15 of 2022

 The very long title and subtitle of this book comprise a good summary of its content from beginning to end.  The founders of America were deeply influenced by the Greece and Rome, by the examples of their leaders, by their culture and by their writings.  

Thomas Ricks shows how the classical world shaped the lives and leadership of the first four American Presidents.  Each of these Presidents:  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison took very different lessons from the classical world, but that influence was evident throughout their lives and especially in their Presidencies.  

For George Washington, the only one of the first four Presidents who did not attend college, the classic world, especially the Roman Republic, was his example for how to live. He carried himself with dignity in every situation and rarely showed emotion. Only a few times during the Revolutionary War did he allow himself a public display of anger. Even fewer during his Presidency. Although he did not study the classics, the classical world was in him from his teens to the end of his life.  Even his final great act of leaving the Presidency amid a clamor for him to run again was guided by the example of Cincinnatus returning to his plow.

John Adams was vain and contrary and acerbic with little of the quiet dignity that guided Washington, but the Roman Republic guided his thinking and actions. He read and re-read Cicero and thought his times the most well-document period of ancient history:   

The period in the history of the world the best understood is that of Rome from the time of Marius to the death of Cicero, and this distinction is entirely owing to Cicero’s letters and orations. There we see the true character of the times and the passions of all the actors on the stage . . . Cicero had the most capacity and the most constant as well as the wisest and most persevering attachment to the republic. Almost fifty years ago I read Middleton’s Life of this man . . . Change the names and every anecdote will be applicable to us (the Founders). 

Thomas Jefferson, the third President, was more influenced by Ancient Greek history and culture.  For him, Athenian democracy provided the guide to all of his leadership from the writing of the Declaration of Independence to his two terms as President.  The Declaration of Independence would be an amazing document in any era or any place, but as a statement of a fledgling nation rebelling against the greatest military power of their time and saying all men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--that was amazing.  (The end of slavery was in Jefferson's first draft, taken out by the Continental Congress.)

Throughout Washington's Presidency and into Adam's term, Jefferson fought against those within the government who wanted America to be a monarchy. Hamilton was first among those who wanted America closer to England and led by a hereditary monarch. 

Compared with the iron will of Washington and the combative Adams, Jefferson was a more affable. He was a lover of parties, at home in France, and enjoyed life. 

James Madison, the fourth President, was by far the most bookish and studious of the first four Presidents.  The Declaration of Independence was a singular act of rhetorical genius from Jefferson, whom John F. Kennedy thought the most brilliant of the Founders. The Constitution grew out of a year in which Madison studied everything he could find from the ancient world and contemporary sources. He wrote a document that became the beginning of the Constitution, was instrumental in the work of creating the final document, and then he wrote of the one-third of the essays  that explained and defended the Constitution. The 85 essays that he, Hamilton and John Jay wrote became the Federalist Papers.   

While the book focuses primarily on the first four Presidents, other founders come in and out of the story.  Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Ben Franklin are important to the story Ricks is telling.  

Seeing how America began and how the first Presidents saw the world helped me to better understand where we are now.  On one hand, reading this book shows the almost infinite distance in character from dignity of Washington, the firm resolve of Adams, the brilliance of Jefferson, and the reasoned determination of Madison to malignant stupidity of the 45th President.  If is almost impossible to believe a list with those four and Abraham Lincoln and both Roosevelts and Harry Truman could also contain Trump.  I have trouble believing they are of the same species.

Read the book and enjoy where we came from. It gave me a glimmer of hope for where we could be going. 

First fourteen books of 2022:

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen