Nobody Wonders Why Nobody Reads History

Nobody Reads

As you might guess, I read a lot of books. Right now, I’m halfway through The Education of Henry Adams. I’ve read it before, but like many things, you can reread books ten years later and your own experiences in life almost force you to go, “Mmmm, that didn’t seem so important before.”
The older you get, the more experience in life you have, the more meaning you can see in many books and movies. Even reading the Bible, or Shakespeare, or watching “Gone with the Wind” at different ages, I always learn something that I didn’t think about before.

For instance, I ALWAYS though Scarlett O’Hara was a monster the first time I saw, Gone With the Wind.  But as I got older, I saw how if not for her, the family would not have survived. Margaret Mitchell was a genius in that respect: To compare Scarlett O’Hara with Ashley’s wife Melanie. Both had their great strengths. Both were important.

So, this morning I was wondering just how we got to the point when our politicians cared so very little about the American people.

And then I read this…Henry Adams had just gotten back to Washington D.C. He was in his fifties, and describes the scene. It was the middle of February, 1892. I think you might find it,  as I did, very interesting.

“No one in society seemed to have the ear of anybody in government. No one in government knew any reason for consulting anyone in society. The world has ceased to be wholly political, but politics had become less social. A survivor of the civil war, —like George Bancroft, or John Hay, tried to keep footing, but without brilliant success. They were free to say or do what they liked, but no one took much notice of anything said or done.

A presidential election was to take place in November, and no one showed much interest in the result. The two candidates were singular person of whom it was the common saying that one of them had no friends: the other, only enemies. Calvin Brice, who was at that tie altogether the wittiest and cleverest member of the Senate, was in the habit of describing Mr. Cleveland in glowing terms and at great length, as one of the loftiest natures and noblest characters of ancient or modern times: “BUT,” he concluded, “In future I prefer to look on at his proceedings from the safe summit of some neighboring hill.” The same remark applied to Mr. Harrison. In this respect, they were the greatest of Presidents, for, whatever harm they might do their enemies, was as nothing when compared to the mortality they inflicted on their friends. Men fled them as though they had the evil eye. To the American people the two candidates and the two parties were so evenly balanced that the scales showed hardly a perceptible difference. Mr. Harrison was an excellent President, a man of ability and force: perhaps the best President the Republican party had put forward since Lincoln’s death: yet, on the whole Adams felt a shade of preference for President Cleveland, not so much personally as because the democrats represented to him the last remnants of the eighteenth century: the survivors of Hosea Biglow’s Cornwallis: the sole remaining protestants against a banker’s Olympus which had become, for five and twenty years, more and more despotic of Esop’s frog empire. One might no longer croak except to vote for King Log, or, —failing storks, —for Grover Cleveland: and even  then could not be sure where King Banker lurked behind. The costly education in politics had led to political torpor. Everyone did not share it. To Adams a western democrat or a western republican, a city democrat or a city republican, a W.C, Whitney or a J.G. Blaine, were actually the same man, as far as their usefulness to the objects of King, Hay (Adams friends) or Adams were concerned. They graded themselves as friends or enemies, not as republicans or democrats. To Hay, the difference was that of being respectable or not.”

Tell me, what has been the main complaint of Trump from all? He’s not respectable. And he IS the enemy. Except this election was much more vicious than the one in 1892. And the reason is protection of their own money.

There IS a very good reason that the REAL words of men have been censored from our school children.

Washington, and it’s parties, care mostly about…themselves. And like Mr. Adams, I too, wonder…but know, it’s the REAL reason President Trump is hated so much.

He represents, for once, the American people. And we are learning just how MUCH their fortunes mean to them.

It’s no wonder they hate him so.

February 9, 2020 Posted by Joyanna Adams | American History | American History, corruption, Henry Adams, President Donald J. Trump | Leave a comment