US Politics: Sitting in Judgement

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Felt like we needed a new thread as we are slowly appraoching the hotter trial phases.

[Ormond]

Just want to say this is a great title because it not only fits what's going on in terms of the trials of Trump and his cronies, but also the  judgments being made about Biden's and Trump's mental fitness AND the argument of judging slave-owners that dominated the end of the last thread --

So, bravo!

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Dammit, I lost my comment. 

[Zorral]

We all have.  Mine are gone too.  So again, to say what I would have done in their place?

I wouldn't have been born in their place, would I, considering my gender and my background?  Which includes the second generation of nordic/german farmers emigrated to Wisconsin and Iowa, whose men of that generation had just turned old enough to enlist in the first regiments being recruited to fight for the freedom of the enslaved.  Their letters make it clear that was why they enlisted.  Not everyone in the North, you know, was a hypocrite or even involved with slavery at every level -- as were almost all businesses in New England and New York, for instance

However, there are those who were born like George Washington etc., who went to great effort and thought to not only free their labor, but make it possible for them to have decent lives in freedom, providing land, training, education over a period of years.  One of them was brother of an African slave trader of Rhode Island -- see

Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye.

In the meantime, to illustrate I am considered qualified to speak on these matters, when we get back from Spain we are presenting about them at the private, monthly luncheon for this --

https://thecapitolforum.com/

Also at Princeton, next week -- Black History Month you know, always gets us invitations.  

Edited February 9 by Zorral

[Phylum of Alexandria]

@Zorral said:

But I wouldn't have been born in their place, would I, considering my gender and my background? 

I mean, every imaginary leap into the past is going to have some conundrums to deal with, right? But hopefully you get the general gist of thought experiment.

My point was not that George Washington was the most advanced person with respect to the morality of slavery. Probably the absolute edge of the moral vanguard was William Blake, though he was younger and British.

Still, Washington was nevertheless rather advanced for his time...and extremely advanced among the Southern landed gentry. 

And Jefferson may not have offered more beyond his ideals, but those ideals proved to be really fucking important for inspiring the improvement of our society, including abolition and reform for civil rights.

Needless to say, those ideals were way more advanced than most Southern families, who wanted to double down on America's hierarchical norms, rather than expand on the idea that everyone has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These are all important distinctions in my view.

[Zorral]

2 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

abolition and reform for civil rights.

Jefferson did not.  Quite the opposite indeed!  What history have you read? Really why did Jefferson Davis's family name him after Thomas Jefferson, just for starters here on his inspiration for abolition and civil rights?  Come on!

Edited February 9 by Zorral

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Just now, Zorral said:

Jefferson did not.  Quite the opposite indeed!  What history have you read? 

Guys, please. Just a modicum of grace and good faith in interpreting what I say. Will it kill you? No. It sure would save time.

The most important word I used was "inspiring" (later) improvement of our society, including abolition and reform for civil rights. Jefferson's words were an important seed for later progressive flowering. 

[Zorral]

Among the most important things for which Jefferson's example and expertise is cited, is his invention of election dirty tricks, party politics (which somehow Washington believed could be excluded from the presidential politics and governance of the new United States -- sweet summer child's denial of realities and pretense to not see what is in front of his eyes), and betraying all one's friends.  Cite me one place where Civil Rights leaders cite Thomas Jefferson as a role model.  Or feminists, for that matter.  Or Native Americans.  

Good grief he didn't even believe in democracy! He refused to even meet with that quintessential man of the people, who brought the vote to all white men -- Andrew Jackson!

Edited February 9 by Zorral

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Cite me one place where Civil Rights leaders cite Thomas Jefferson as a role model.  Or feminists, for that matter.  Or Native Americans

Seriously?

To choose just one prominent example:

"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
 

King lays out what I said. Jefferson gave us the seed, and it inspired later action to live out the true meaning of its creed.

Now, if you're talking about activists since the 70s...well, probably not too many. But that's an unfortunate development. 

[Zorral]

Again, I ask you -- if this guy inspired abolitionists, why ever did that Davis family in Mississippi, determined to expand slavery throughout the US and the hemisphere -- name their kid JEFFERSON?

And when it comes to speech writing, for a very smart fellow wanting to get as many WHITE people on board, convincing them they don't need to be afraid of Black People, ya, you might quote a WHITE guy to make them feel better.  As we know, WHITE people are very special snowflakes who find even the mention of slavery too much for their fee-fees.  As we see every frackin' day with the laws that are being passed.  Ya, quite an inspiration.

Moreover, King, and we KNOW Jefferson didn't mean Black People are created equal -- Jefferson said and wrote often enough that he KNEW they were not.

Edited February 9 by Zorral

[Phylum of Alexandria]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Again, I ask you -- if this guy inspired abolitionists, why ever did that Davis family in Mississippi, determined to expand slavery throughout the US and the hemisphere -- name their kid JEFFERSON?

And when it comes to speech writing, for a very smart fellow wanting to get as many WHITE people on board, convincing them they don't need to be afraid of Black People, ya, you might quote a WHITE guy to make them feel better.  As we know, WHITE people are very special snowflakes who find even the mention of slavery too much for their fee-fees.  As we see every frackin' day with the laws that are being passed.  Ya, quite an inspiration.

You're shifting the goal posts. My point was that many reformists were inspired by Jefferson's writing. Not very recently, but I'd say that's to our detriment as effective activists.

I did not say that Jefferson had only one legacy. Yes, libertarians owe him a debt. And political partisan hacks. That doesn't make my original points any less true. People can contain multitudes. 

Also: the original point that mentioned Jefferson's ideals was all about relative comparisons. So: Blake > Franklin > Washington > Jefferson > Most Other Southern Homes. I wasn't trying to make Jefferson out to be some god, just noting that his mere ideals did have real impact.

Edited February 9 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Fragile Bird]

The thing I remember about Thomas Jefferson is the fact he was always in debt. He owned over 600 slaves during his lifetime. He freed 2 while he was alive, and 5 in his will after his death, including two of his children with Sally Hemings. The rest of them were sold off to pay his debts.

[Ormond]

I happen to presently be reading Weavers, Scribes, and Kings by Amanda H. Podany at the moment. This is a book about the history of those areas of the ancient Near East that used cuneiform writing (mostly Mesopotamia, but also parts of modern Syria, southern Turkey and southeastern Iran.)

Podany seems to make it clear that slavery was an accepted part of ancient cultures as far back as we have written evidence. Some people sold themselves, or were children sold by their parents, into slavery to pay debts, but there were also many prisoners of war and people born into slavery. Some of those whose slavery was connected with debt would automatically be freed after the debt was considered repaid, but that wasn't the majority.

A bit of Googling seems to show that the first known real anti-slavery statement in the ancient world was made by the Christian bishop Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century C.E.  Over the next few centuries the church developed the rule that Christians could not own other Christians as slaves, which meant that in most places in Europe during the late Middle Ages full-blown slavery was non-existent (serfdom evidently not being quite as bad as that.) 

In order to justify lifetime slavery (as opposed to indentured servant status) European Christians had to go full-blown racist in their justifications.  You had to see non-Whites as being less than fully human in order to rationalize it.  But in my opinion the close link between racism and slavery this created led to even worse consequences for society as a whole than ancient slavery did. A culture where slave-owners themselves could theoretically become slaves in the future through war or debt would at least be a bit "fairer" and less dehumanizing than the race-based slavery that developed in American colonies.  And that has made the legacy of slavery especially hard to overcome in the modern USA.

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Yes, libertarians owe him a debt

Ya, who hardly progress or liberal, or believers in equal rights.

BTW, I've been invited to community centers, community bookstores, activist quarters in cities all over the country  where everybody is STILL working for the equal rights they don't have -- and while there are photos and portraits in almost all of them honoring those who inspired them, you will never see Thomas Jefferson there.  Or Andrew Jackson for that matter.  Or any president except Lincoln and JFK, though for a while, Bill Jefferson Clinton was, but no longer.

Yes @Ormond -- as I mentioned above -- until essentially the industrial revolution, almost all societies going back as far as one can go, ran on wo/man power, much of it enslaved.  And it was horrific.  I cringe and shake inside all the time when I contemplate man's inhumanity to wo/man.  There are so many reasons I say history is the accounting of the charnel house that is our species' erection.  But even in those societies, as I also mentioned, there were always those who thought this was wrong, even among those who wrote the Old Testament.

 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

Ya, who hardly progress or liberal, or believers in equal rights.

I concede that much in the comment you're replying to. It does not challenge any of the primary points I made.

[Kalbear]

I think that the idea that everyone knew deep down that slavery was evil is ridiculous. We as humans routinely rationalize all manner of shitty things we do to other humans, animals, and any number of other things, and these largely become normalized and consider correct behavior. 

You don't have to go very far in today's world to find things that we'll likely find abhorrent 30 years from now, and you don't have to look very hard to find things we did 30 years ago that most people consider evil now. 

That all said, you also don't have to do very much digging to see how shitty most of the presidents of the 19th century were - not for modern moral failings, but for competency failings at the time or doing exceptionally shitty things that even by those times were considered way too much. Clinton being 15th or so in a ranking is probably fair, but he's probably not very much higher than a whole lot of those midrange presidents - noting that unlike a number of them he has more successes and more failures that a lot of them, who often managed to do fuckall. 

[Zorral]

Your points don't make what you think they do, you know, which is to excuse Jefferson as not bad and only a guy of his time, who was actually really good. He was and remains a truly evil sob.

Kalbear -- nobody said EVERYBODY knew or cared in the deep past that slavery was wrong, but there were always some, moving to many, to finally most, knowing it was not only wrong, but evil and fostered many other behaviors and choices toxic to everyone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Different subject (though what has been done is indeed worthy of a Thomas Jefferson strategy --

Elite lawyer brain is killing us

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/02/elite-lawyer-brain-is-killing-us

Quote

 

So why did Merrick Garland do this incredibly stupid and reckless thing? Let me give you the inside scoop here, having spent the last 38 years or so hanging around the vestibule of the Elite Lawyer Club, which I myself would never join for Marxist (Groucho) reasons. Because Robert Hur was Executive Editor of the Stanford Law Review, and clerked for the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and was a partner at Gibson Dunn, and somebody with that kind of impeccable legal pedigree wouldn’t ever be a partisan hack, because if he was that would call into question the impeccable judgment of the other Elite Lawyers who anointed appointed him to those exalted offices, where Objective Legal Analysis always wins out over Partisan Political Considerations, because only the Very Best People get those kinds of jobs, because . . .

OK I can’t do this any more.

Merrick Garland should be fired immediately. He has one of the most important jobs in the United States, and he’s absolutely terrible at it, which is a bad combination, especially when there’s a little light sedition in the air. Yes I get it that Biden would take a big political hit in the short term for doing this absolutely warranted a thousand times over thing, but first, the public has the attention span of a fruit fly, and second, riddle me this:

What ELSE is Merrick Garland going to do between now and November?

This guy might as well be a Republican plant, but the really sad part is that I don’t doubt for a second that he’s as sincere as Linus in the pumpkin patch, waiting for the Spirit of the Law to bring presents to all the good little boys and girls, who got an A in Civil Procedure at Harvard Law School back in the day, before things got ruined by Critical Legal Studies and all this so-called “rap” music.

 

 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Your points don't make what you think they do, you know, which is to excuse Jefferson as not bad and only a guy of his time, who was actually really good. He was and remains a truly evil sob.

Well, you've failed to explain how my points don't make what I think they do. You're just going for that easy certainty again.

[SeanF]

21 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I happen to presently be reading Weavers, Scribes, and Kings by Amanda H. Podany at the moment. This is a book about the history of those areas of the ancient Near East that used cuneiform writing (mostly Mesopotamia, but also parts of modern Syria, southern Turkey and southeastern Iran.)

Podany seems to make it clear that slavery was an accepted part of ancient cultures as far back as we have written evidence. Some people sold themselves, or were children sold by their parents, into slavery to pay debts, but there were also many prisoners of war and people born into slavery. Some of those whose slavery was connected with debt would automatically be freed after the debt was considered repaid, but that wasn't the majority.

A bit of Googling seems to show that the first known real anti-slavery statement in the ancient world was made by the Christian bishop Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century C.E.  Over the next few centuries the church developed the rule that Christians could not own other Christians as slaves, which meant that in most places in Europe during the late Middle Ages full-blown slavery was non-existent (serfdom evidently not being quite as bad as that.) 

In order to justify lifetime slavery (as opposed to indentured servant status) European Christians had to go full-blown racist in their justifications.  You had to see non-Whites as being less than fully human in order to rationalize it.  But in my opinion the close link between racism and slavery this created led to even worse consequences for society as a whole than ancient slavery did. A culture where slave-owners themselves could theoretically become slaves in the future through war or debt would at least be a bit "fairer" and less dehumanizing than the race-based slavery that developed in American colonies.  And that has made the legacy of slavery especially hard to overcome in the modern USA.

Slavery could be just as horrific in the ancient world.

The last 150 years of the Roman Republic were, IMHO, a horror show.  Roman commanders like Aemilius Paullus, Scipio Aemelianus, Caesar became slave hunters on an unprecedented scale.  The profits of slavery, and extorting from the Provinces, fuelled a vicious cycle that drove up the costs of a successful political career, requiring politicians to hunt for slaves overseas, in order to repay their debts.  Eventually, the Romans turned their cruelty inwards, destroying the Republic.

The Viking, Ottoman, Abbasid trades were equally awful.

I think what makes slavery hell on earth is when it becomes industrialised, so to speak.  A master who works a farm or runs a business alongside a couple of slaves may still view them as human beings.  A master who owns vast numbers who work his estates, mines, quarries treats them as chattels, to be worked to death, and replaced with fresh slaves.

[SeanF]

10 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Well, you've failed to explain how my points don't make what I think they do. You're just going for that easy certainty again.

Broadening the discussion again, had I turned 20 in Munich or Moscow, in 1933, I could have ended up doing pretty evil things.  Knowing what the Gestapo or NKVD were capable of, I would be taking pains not to offend them.