The Copenhagen Interpretation of Socks says that your socks might be in order where they should be, but the act of looking at them causes them to separate, disperse, and fail to match up. The only variation is between white and colored socks and whether a cat is involved. Further research is needed to further quantum the theory.
Who was the real Thomas Jefferson? There have been so many biographies. There can be no clear answers. Jefferson was controversial, polarizing in his own time, and he continues to be polarizing today. This book is a collection of essays appraising some of the leading biographies of the man.
FOREWARD
Jon Meacham explains where this book came from: a conference at UVA with a group of scholars honoring Peter Onuff.
PREFACE
During Thomas Jefferson's lifetime, Americans united around the supposition that he possessed the potential to change the world. What divided them was whether he would make it better or worse. (I take this to mean that Jefferson was polarizing from the beginning) His critics associated his political philosophy with mob rule and the butchery of the French Revolution, that he embodied the "Demon of Jacobinism,." He was cited for his irreligion and atheism. He was called a "double-faced politician." Yet many saw nothing but good in him. If his contemporaries saw him in contrasting ways, is it any wonder that later biographers had different conceptions of him?
Jefferson himself said that many knowledges make up the complex man. Of all the founders and despite the fact that Jefferson left a huge volume of papers including 19,000 letters sent and received, Jefferson is the least self-revealing founder and the hardest to sound the depths of his true self. Perhaps Jefferson himself did not know his true self.
This book examines not who Thomas Jefferson was but instead what his biographers made him out to be.
This book is an excellent tool to gain insights into the changing landscape of historical interpretation rather than history. In other words, historiography rather than history.
Its closest predecessor is Merrill Peterson's The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. Peterson's work is a pioneering landmark of historiography. The emerging field of "Memory Studies" or "History and Memory." What history has made of Thomas Jefferson.
Interpretations of Jefferson changed over the years not just because of new information but also because new interests and preoccupations of historians. In different eras historians have presented Jefferson as a states rights republican, the man of Monticello, a party founder and leader, a world citizen, an epicurean, and on and on. He was conscripted by Whigs and Democrats, abolitionists and slaveholders, unionists and secessionists, Populists and Progressives, and seemingly every side of just about every political struggle with Jefferson being a mirror of America's troubled search for the right image of itself.
Biographical focus makes a mistake emphasizing the Great Man version of history which was popular in the 19th Century before the advent of of bottom up history.
Jefferson may pass the litmus test of greatest, but this fact only magnified his mistakes and short-comings. As Joseph Ellis says, Jefferson always ultimately disappoints. Time will only diminish his stature.
That Jefferson opposed slavery in principle yet maintained it in practice owning hundreds of men, women, and children over his lifetime and afterwards as his estate sold them off one by one as one of the biggest enslavers in his time will always from now on be the can on a string trailing along after him so that no matter how he might be praised he will always have one unalterable BUT after his reputation.
This book enlightens by showing how Jefferson's biographies shed light on the biographers themselves: their personal commitments, their ideologies, the time in which they lived and what was going on in the country as a whole as they wrote.
INTRODUCTION The Many Lives of Thomas Jefferson by Barbara Oberg
What is a biography? There are different opinions. Simply defined, it is the story of a person told by someone else. Joyce Carol Oates call is "pathography." Stanley Fish calls attention to the writer's self in any biography. Freud said that "biographical truth does not exist." P. 1
What are we to do with Thomas Jefferson? So many opinions over the years, he defies easy explanation as he seems to be all over the place. P. 2
Joseph Ellis calls him the "Great Sphinx of American History." He shows cherished convictions and contested truths. P. 2
Jefferson's biography is firmly embodied in the nation's history. P. 2
Marshall's biography of Washington established the Federalist version of American history against Jefferson's so-called republican version. Jefferson did not like the Federalist version. Jefferson and Madison wanted Joel Barlow to write the republican version of our early history, but he never did so. Jefferson was obsessed in thinking about his future reputation. P. 2-3
Jefferson is our perfect example of the country's flawed hero. He was controversial all of his life with no letup in sight to today. P. 3
Biographies are shaped by the times in which they are written. P. 3
Each age creates its own Thomas Jefferson and adapts him to their own purposes. A man for all seasons and times. Was the nation to be republican or aristocratic? TM is the personification of the good and bad in our history.The author of the DOI yet major slave owner. You can make Jefferson into what you want him to be. A balanced view? Not sure if that is possible.
Hamilton was the aristocratic yin to Thomas Jefferson's democratic yang according to Joanne Freeman.
Henry Adams gave the 19th Century mixed reviews His great grandfather and Alexander Hamilton had the more realistic approach to framing a strong and successful national government P. 10
Jefferson's reputation barely survived the Civil War while Hamilton's rep received a boost. It was easy to hold Jefferson politics responsible for the bloody war. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were early steps toward war. The plantation economy of the South was outmoded and inefficient n the new industrial age. In romanticizing the western farmer was ambivalent about manufacturing and the new age. Jefferson was simply out date after the Civil War.
Frederick Jackson Turner brought Jefferson back part way. P.11
Wilson concluded that Jeffersonian Democracy could only be achieved by Hamiltonian means. P. 12
Claude Bowers characterized the United States as a clash of economic forces beginning with Jefferson & Hamilton. Like Woodrow Wilson, Bowers initially preferred Hamilton but switched Jefferson as he delivered the keynote address at the 1928 Democratic convention. The intellectually tide shifted to favoring Jefferson. Steele says that Bowers tutored FDR toward Jefferson. P. 13
Jeffersonianism prospered during the Depression and WWII. P. 13
Jefferson's reputation rises and falls. We will continue to discuss Jefferson a thousand yrs from now if this country survives, which is not likely. P. 17
CHAPTER 1 "Merely Personal or Private, with Which We Have Nothing to Do"
Jefferson's Autobiographical Writings do not add much to worth with which to evaluate him.
CHAPTER 3 Dexterity and Delicacy of Manipulation by Andrew Burstein
It seems like the top Jefferson biographer in the 19th Century was Henry Stephens Randall published in 1858. His treatment of Jefferson is hagiography at its best.
Reading the Jefferson book reminds me of how contentious and complicated American history has been from the beginning. There is no way I can come to firm conclusions about Thomas Jefferson.
The classic view of the Federalists like Adams and Washington was that democracies eventually kill themselves. Today this country is a laboratory testing their hypothesis.
As Joseph Eillis, Jefferson ultimately disappoints.
“There is no other perspective on slavery other than it was brutal,” Mary Pattillo, a sociology professor and the department chair of Black Studies at Northwestern University, told the Miami Herald. “It was exploitative, it dehumanized Black people, it expropriated their labor and wealth for generations to come.”
As I have previously explored in a series of conversations with cult and mind control expert Steven Hassan, Donald Trump meets most if not all the characteristics of a cult leader. Trump holds extreme power over his followers, who subsume their own identities and will to him. He persuades them to reject their own perceptions of reality and to trust only him and his approved messengers. To a large degree, they have lost the ability to engage in what psychologists describe as "reality testing."
Trump's mug shot, taken at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta last Thursday, is as an image of murderous rage and a bottomless lust for revenge. Trump has already used it to raise yet more campaign cash. In all probability, Trump's upcoming criminal trials will only make him more popular and powerful among his core followers, not less.
Like other cult movements, the MAGA phenomenon is rooted in manipulation and psychological abuse. Trump effectively exploits the death anxieties and other existential fears of his followers, presenting himself as their only protector and savior. The MAGA cult is authoritarian, preying on lonely, socially isolated and otherwise vulnerable people and providing them with a sense of order, meaning, community and destiny.
Salon.com
“That is completely characteristic of the Carters,” Jonathan Alter, a biographer of the former president, told me. “It is the way they have lived their entire lives.” Mr. Alter’s book, “His Very Best,” aims to reassess Mr. Carter’s four years in office and challenge the common belief that Mr. Carter was but a mediocre president who became a great former president. Reflecting on the presidency, he describes a man of compassion and decency who was not afraid to make decisions that might be unpopular, who kept the peace, advanced human rights and worked to protect the environment, as symbolized by his placing solar panels on the roof of the White House.
-Daniella J. Lamas in the NYT
Going into Wednesday night, there were some valiant efforts from the Beltway media to hype the first debate of the Republican presidential primary. More honest pundits, however, reflected the actual consensus feeling: It is pointless without Donald Trump.
The GOP frontrunner is facing 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions. He's also leading his nearest 2024 opponent by 40 percentage points in the polls. The only question then, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote, "is which of the contenders will be most unctuous and self-abasing in defense of Donald Trump?" Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic pointed out that the point "of a political debate is to try to persuade voters to support your campaign instead of the other candidates," but that "presupposes a constituency of voters who can be persuaded." Trump's MAGA stalwarts, the biggest faction of the party, make a joke out of that idea.
As last night's debate demonstrated, however, the insignificance of a Republican debate isn't just due to Trump's skill at sucking the oxygen out of any room — even one he's not in — Trump's power is entirely due to the vacuum created by the vapidity of Republican leaders. Watching this non-debate was mainly a reminder that none of these politicians possess anything resembling substance. Despite all the chatter from the punditry about "policy," the voters these candidates are trying to reach could not care less about the nuts and bolts of governance. The GOP exists mainly as a vehicle for the endless parade of unwarranted, incoherent grievances of the Republican base.
-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com
On the charges themselves: “I don’t think there’s any case that can be made in defense of his actions.” On his state of mind: “He’s feeling terrible fear.” He’s lashing out, Mary Trump said, because “lashing out has always worked before.” Somehow, he has always slid out of situations just by outlasting his adversaries—with more money, more lawyers, more time, more patience. “For Donald, it has almost always been about running out the clock,” she said.
In The New Republic
But this time, she thinks, things may be different. He’s never faced an opponent with quite the kind of time and resources that the United States Department of Justice has. She thinks this feels like the beginning of the end. But she still believes he’s very likely to be the GOP nominee, even if he’s indicted two more times. She still thinks the Republican Party will follow him off the cliff. But, she adds, we can’t lose our sense of outrage. “Donald is going to do what Donald does,” she said. “It still should shock us.”
Finally. Donald Trump's depravities are laid bare for all to see in a court of law.
With the latest felony indictments handed down by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury, former president Donald John Trump is accused of leading the "Fulton 19" — a loose assemblage of accused criminals also known as "The Enterprise" who face charges of trying to rig the 2020 election in Georgia.
Specifically, the "Enterprise" is accused of forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the state, impersonating a public officer and a host of other charges.
Buried deep in the 96-page indictment are some of the most disturbing accusations ever leveled at a president. Indeed they rival those levied against the New York mafia figures Rudy Giuliani once prosecuted while with the Department of Justice.
-Brian Karem in Salon.com
"Hurt dogs sure do holler." That was the saying that came to mind in 2008 when then-candidate for president Barack Obama drew outragefrom Republicans because he described their voters as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them." The phrase came to mind again in 2016, when Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used the memorable phrase "basket of deplorables" to describe supporters of Donald Trump. Since a cardinal rule of politics is "insult your opponent, but never their voters," the mainstream media picked up and amplified the umbrage-taking from Republicans.
What wasn't discussed very much in all this media coverage: The truth value of either Clinton's or Obama's comments. And what a shame, because both of them were right.
New polling out this week from CBS News proves, as many feared, Trump's fourth set of indictments — he now faces 91 felony charges across four jurisdictions — has only caused the GOP to rally around their seething orange leader. (And let's not forget this comes after a jury recently found him responsible for sexual assault.) Trump has surged to 62% support in the Republican presidential primary poll, and 73% of those backing Trump say it's because, not despite, of his massive criminal exposure.
-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com
A renowned historian discusses the lead - up to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.
Three men and the countdown to the end of World War II.
The first man is Henry Stimson, the long-serving Secretary of War. To his credit, Stimson had qualms about dropping bombs on civilians. For military purposes it was necessary to bomb populous civilian laden cities with the "first gadget." Hiroshima was first one selected. At age 77, Stimson must have been very tired at this point in his long and storied career.
Sec. Stimson disapproves bombing Kyoto, a most historic Japanese city. Good for him. Stimson is the first hero in this book's story.
Oppenheimer is a striking, almost haunting figure meeting with Stimson and others at the Pentagon.
Oppenheimer and Stimson were kindred spirits in understanding that nuclear weapons needed international control.
Some thoughts about the movie "Oppenheimer."
The 14th Amendment Section 3
While reading the Georgia indictment, I was reminded of my July 2022 conversation with retired U.S. Army Gen. Russel Honoré, who told me that he saw Trump as "a political thug who basically said, 'Hey, I'm the president. I'm empowered to do anything I want to do'…. Had Donald Trump not been president he probably would have been arrested on Jan. 6 for his role in what happened with the coup and the attack on the Capitol."
Only one outcome is likely: Trump will escalate his behavior all the way to a final act of personal and collective destruction.
Now that that is actually happening — Trump has until Aug. 25 to surrender in Atlanta for arraignment — how will the twice-impeached, four-times-indicted former president respond? First of all, Trump has shown himself through his public and private behavior to be a sociopath, if not a full-on psychopath. He is also a white supremacist, a woman-hater, a confirmed sexual predator, a megalomaniac and various other bad things. That's who the man is; he will not and cannot change, and it's foolish to suggest otherwise. As he faces the increasing pressure of multiple prosecutions and the 2024 presidential campaign, only one outcome is likely: He will escalate the worst of his behavior, perhaps all the way to a final act of personal and collective destruction for himself and his followers.
There's reading, and then there's reading as a way of life. This is me. Reading as a way life is pretty much over today, but not for me.
David Ulin is an editor and writer. He was or is if he is still at it the book critic at the LA Times.
Reading is a revolutionary act. It is not natural. The siren calls of email, Twitter, smart phones, and iPods pull us away from the long- form writing of books. Does reading even matter anymore?
In this easy, a ruminative blend of memoir and criticism he explores the efforts of a life of reading and the price we have to pay for the effort. He finds the digital world to be illusory and oddly demanding that we disengage---particularly from the rapturous immersion that a good book requires of its reader. Can we afford to forgo the memory, cognition, and sense of narrative derived from books?
It's immersion that matters whether ink on paper or digital type. We can no longer take the simple act of reading for granted. Here is a call to pages!
Not everyone today understands The Great Gatsby and that1 it stands for, an entire decade, the decade of the 1920's.
Literature will never have the same influence it once had. Common Sense will never happen again.
Too much screen staring can hinder our print concentration.
Referencing Joan Didion and "Slouching Toward Bethlehem."
Everyone wants to tell their story and be heard these days, but what does that mean anymore.
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Ulin is a minimalist on marginalia. I am a maximilist.
Denby says we need a coherent world-view.
Society has lost the ability to present a logical argument.
It's all sentence fragments with no coherence or framework.
Checking our electronic devices is mostly a matter of thoughtless, mindless habit.
The paradox of technology is that in the name of connectivity it distances us from each other.
My attention is more and more selective; otherwise, the world is chaos.
People today try to process too much, which is why I focus. Trying to process too much will make you lose your capacity to think and feel. And most of what I try to process is totally superficial.
A sobering thought: We exist at the mercy of the past.
Screens mess with my mind, warp my mind, change me, mess with my equilibrium, and I do not like it.
Silent reading is learned behavior. Do not ever take it for granted.
Point is silent reading is an unnatural act.
The author likes the book as object, and so do I.
The callousness of my small-town Alabama upbringing has worn thin, no one finds it funny or witty anymore, and I can't fake sophistication so what do I do? Just be myself whatever that is? I reckon so since I am no longer trying to fool anybody.
In this mind-numbing age of technology gone wild in which everyone thinks they know everything without checking it out there are still a few things that remain pure in and of themselves. As examples I suggest that a rose is a rose is still a rose, the trains may not run on time but a train is still a fun way to travel, and well-done bacon is still unbeatable. Order up!
The great irony is that the United States was building the atomic bomb in order to end the war and beat the Nazis to it. No doubt Germany was working on an atomic bomb at the end. The irony is that Germany surrendered in August before the US bomb was ready and the first two atomic bombs were used on Japan. Historians will debate forever whether the US should have nuclear bombed Japan. HST made the call and it happened, but it was controversial even at the time, and it is still controversial today. I do not have the overall necessary informed perspective to have an intelligent opinion.
ristotle proposed these happiness virtues more than two millennia ago, but I believe they provide a handy checklist today for living well. Here’s an abbreviated list you might just want to put up on your fridge, or tape to the bottom of your computer screen.
1. Name your fears and face them.
2. Know your appetites and control them.
3. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift.
4. Give as generously as you can.
5. Focus more on the transcendent; disregard the trivial.
6. True strength is a controlled temper.
7. Never lie, especially to yourself.
8. Stop struggling for your fair share.
9. Forgive others, and forbear their weaknesses.
10. Define your morality; live up to it, even in private.
Last week, Donald Trump was finally indicted by the Department of Justice for his attempted Jan. 6 coup and larger plot to end American democracy by nullifying the 2020 Election. On Thursday, special counsel Jack Smith announced his preferred timeline for a trial, beginning early January 2024.
The media are already ballyhooing about how Trump's indictment for the crimes of Jan. 6 is truly "historic" and "unprecedented" in American history and that the "walls have closed in" on the reprobate ex-president. As a basic factual matter, the observation that Trump's Jan. 6 indictment and upcoming criminal trial are "historic" is correct. No president of the United States has ever attempted a coup against his own government and the country's democracy. But how "historic" are these indictments really when almost all the horrible things Donald Trump has done during his presidency and beyond, including seeking to take back the White House as a de facto fascist dictator, are unprecedented in American history?
Donald Trump's insanity is a clear and present danger to the existence of humanity.
Facing 78 felonies in three different jurisdictions, with a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, still waiting to weigh in — and perhaps facing additional federal charges or possible state charges in Michigan, Arizona and elsewhere — Donald Trump has spent the last few days spewing forth an extraordinary level of venom, even for him. While our current president is dealing with the economy, an overseas war and increased aggression in the Middle East and Asia, Trump is running for president hoping to avoid prison time, while also seeking revenge for his 2020 defeat. He is unquestionably insane, either temporarily or for good.
-Brian Karem in Salon.com
We live in a deranged and deranging time, and Trump is a symptom, not the cause, but he’s certainly making everything worse. That’s why I’ve found it hard to be jubilant over Trump’s four indictments, at long last, relating to his role in the January 6 insurrection. Even as Trump is set to appear for his staggering third criminal arraignment Thursday afternoon, this time in Washington, D.C., I’m not readying the champagne.
JoanWalsh in TheNation
But if the Paul Ryans of the conservative world want to make a compelling case against Trump, it can’t be that he’s unelectable. It’s that he’s irredeemable. It’s that he brought shame to the party of Lincoln, that he violated his oath to the Constitution, that he traduced every value Republicans once claimed to stand for and that they will not support him if he is the Republican nominee.
That may not keep Trump from the nomination or even the presidency. But on any road to redemption, the starting point has to be the truth, most of all when it’s hard.
In short, nuclear weapons were created and used to end a war, not to fight one. Oppenheimer understood that only too well. He knew that ever more powerful weapons would be coming, which is why he so strongly opposed the H-bomb.
Perhaps, instead of just roiling clouds, his eponymous movie should have shown the actual death and destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so that today’s leaders, and those of the future, could see what a single weapon, of the thousands that now exist, could do.
-Walter Pincus in the WaPost
And now? It’s showdown time. The defendant has convinced a significant (though minority) segment of the country of his lies. The sitting chief executive does not, alas, enjoy the confidence of enough of the country for this to be an open-and-shut matter politically. But legally? It sure seems like it should be open-and-shut. Even a federal jury, however, can’t close this sarcophagus lid. That has to be done by the voters, next November 5. As nerve-racking as that prospect is and will be, it’s the right prospect, because, as the indictment affirms, that’s the engine of the whole enterprise: “the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”
-Michael Tomasky in The New Republic
In a sense, anti-antiracism is its own ideology. It holds that racism directed at minorities is largely a thing of the past; that whatever racism does exist is a product only of individual hearts and not of institutions and systems; that efforts to ameliorate racism and promote diversity are both counterproductive and morally abhorrent; and, most critically, that those efforts must not only be stopped but also rolled back.
Listen to conservative rhetoric on book banning, affirmative action, teaching history or any of the ways race touches their war on “wokeness,” and you hear this theme repeated: We must stop talking and thinking about racism, and most of all we must stop trying to do anything about racism.
For some people, “opposition to antiracism is a way of expressing racial animus without explicitly endorsing it,” Wetts said. For others it’s about “distaste, anger and frustration with antiracists themselves,” an expression of revulsion against liberals and everything they want to do. Anti-antiracism is one more way to own the libs.
Feelings have become central to the way conservatives think about race; it’s no accident that many of the laws regarding critical race theory passed in conservative states explicitly outlaw discussions in schools that could make students feel “guilt” or “discomfort.” Anti-antiracism is fueled by White people’s unease with the growing diversity of American society, the knowledge that they’ve lost their dominant position — and to boot, liberals keep trying to make them feel bad.
Paul Waldman