Once upon a time everyone in the Republican firmament held the exact same position on Donald Trump, which ranged from appalled to aghast, with plenty of space for agog to alarmed to humored mixed in. The unifying factor though was the unity of opposition to the indecency, stupidity and incompetence.
The line held until he started winning, and then the greatest collective moral capitulation in American history occurred. It didn’t happen at once, but rather over many years, until it completely consumed one of the most important institutions in world history, the Republican Party.
Known as the Grand Old Party, it was born in 1854. It is the third oldest political party in the world. The Republican Party was born at a moment of American lowness in the midst of a moral abomination that would kill nearly a million Americans within a decade. The issue at hand, of course, was slavery.
There is a mythology about America that immunizes our founders from their sins under the thin gruel that they did not know better, and that the times were different, so allowances must be made.
What is true about that view — as an absolute fact — is that human slavery had always existed from the beginning of time. It wasn’t a western invention. What is true is that all peoples enslaved other people when given a chance. This is a baseline of human history. It was the American Revolution that premised and promised an end to slavery.
When the white flags were raised over British lines at Yorktown, Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old Frenchman holding the rank of major general exclaimed:
Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
He accurately predicted the ideals of the American Revolution would crush slavery, and that its last bastion in the world would be in the Deep South of the United States.
What is time? How do you think about it?
Personally, I think differently about the matter than I did at age 10, 20, 30, 40 or even 50. There seems to be astonishment over this premise in much of the political coverage around the 2024 election.
Here is an extraordinary factoid about the proximity of events outside the span of a single life span. John Tyler was born in 1791, and was the first vice president to ascend to the presidency. He did so 31 days after the inauguration of the 9th president of the United States. William Henry Harrison was the first president to die in office.
Later, Tyler would desecrate his oath as badly as Donald Trump did by serving as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
What is most amazing about John Tyler in 2023, 231 years after his birth, is that he has a living grandson. It is an astonishment and a ‘nothingburger’ at the same time. We are a young country. Always remember this: human beings lived in harmony with nature and the earth for 600 generations before the first Europeans arrived on the North American continent. Then came America.
Only 74 years passed between the Declaration of Independence and the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate artillery. Slavery unraveled the country within one lifetime, and the cause of the war was the election of the first Republican president Abraham Lincoln. He was the party’s second nominee. The first was the former president of the California Republic John Fremont. No doubt that he was rolling over in his grave when he heard Governor Ron DeSantis say the following during this past week’s Fox “Great Red vs. Blue Debate” when asked a question about his favorite thing about California, America’s largest state with a population of 39 million:
When I got orders as a navy lieutenant to go to Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, I had not spent any real time in California in my life. I’m a Florida native and I’m very proud of the state. But I got down there and that strand is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and then all up and down is just a tremendous coastline. I do believe that California has more natural advantages than any state in the country, which is why when you have so many people leaving on net, that’s hard to do. Like people don’t want to leave there because it really is such a beautiful area. I’m proud of the military installations there. I’m proud of what the Navy has been able to do in conjunction with the state. It was an important duty as an America, so I’ll always have fond memories of that strand down there in southern California.
American politics has gone off the rails and the evidence of that is the “debate” between the governors of Florida and California. It wasn’t so much the pettiness, which was spectacular, but the smallness of spirit towards the country, and specifically its largest state, evidenced by Ron DeSantis that stood out.
The smallness is epic, and it is strangling the nation’s future.
There was a poem, “The Coming American,” that was written in the 19th century that I have shared before. It was written by Sam Walter Foss, and it speaks to the type of man who came to California at the beginning of her American story. When reading it, I wonder what the author would have thought if Ron DeSantis had arrived on a riverboat in Sacramento in 1851.
The Coming American
Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains,
Men with empires in their purpose,
And new eras in their brains.
Bring me men to match my prairies,
Men to match my inland seas,
Men whose thoughts shall pave a highway
Up to ampler destinies,
Pioneers to cleanse thought’s marshlands,
And to cleanse old error’s fen;
Bring me men to match my mountains –
Bring me men!Bring me men to match my forests,
Strong to fight the storm and beast,
Branching toward the skyey future,
Rooted on the futile past.
Bring me men to match my valleys,
Tolerant of rain and snow,
Men within whose fruitful purpose
Time’s consummate blooms shall grow,
Men to tame the tigerish instincts
Of the lair and cave and den,
Cleanse the dragon slime of nature –
Bring me men!Bring me men to match my rivers,
Continent cleansers, flowing free,
Drawn by eternal madness,
To be mingled with the sea –
Men of oceanic impulse,
Men whose moral currents sweep
Toward the wide, unfolding ocean
Of an undiscovered deep –
Men who feel the strong pulsation
Of the central sea, and then
Time their currents by its earth throbs –
Bring me Men.
Nice poem. Hope de santis doesn’t include himself as a man. He’s a punk.
I fear the very little man from Florida will be recycled and brought back for ‘28 ala Nixon The powerful monied interests know he is flaccid and will mold him into a “new fascist” dressed up to look normal.
Watch the roll of DNC, Liz Chaney, harris,RFK jr, Lincoln project, Romney all will play an outsized roll is saving democracy if it is to be saved.