I must say that the absurdity of this government is definitely going sideways, maybe even soon to be upside down.
But before I go on I want to say that I saw something the other day that put a pause in what I thought about American history. I thought it was so apropos for for today; and so historically ironic it had to be true: That the British Army after its surrendering at Yorktown to George Washington and the French Army marched out of Yorktown playing a ditty called: A World Turned Upside Down. However, it seems like this may have never happened, playing the ditty not the surrender. In fact researchers are not even sure if there ever was such a tune.
According to mountvernon.com, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, some American professional historians accepted this story “and published it in their textbooks (still without corroboration).” It goes on to say that the belief the British stacked arms and marched out of Yorktown with fifes and drums dolefully playing A World Turned Upside Down never happened and actually came from “several American novelists and one British poet, Robert Graves.” Somehow this novel idea worked its way into our historical textbooks and our mythology.
The story, according to mountvernon.com “was first published in Major Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the American Revolution forty-seven years after Yorktown. Garden quoted a letter from Major William Jackson who described the surrender negotiations as though he had been an eyewitness, but didn’t mention that he was in Europe, not Yorktown at the time.” Basically Garden’s assertions are based on second-hand and third hand information from sources who also were not even at Yorktown. This also makes me rethink the whole Alamo story.
It really does feel satirical and something a novelist (or Hollywood) would do to embellish a storyline. When one considers the Revolutionary War and what 13 colonies did–with the help of a global superpower, which France was in the 17th and 18th centuries–was incredible.
But defeating the British on the battlefield is not historically earthshaking. Upstarts have defeated Goliaths in the past. Look at what is happening in Ukraine today and what Vietnam did against the French, and later the US.
What turned the world upside down in the 1780s happened a decade after the Revolutionary War when those 13 states formed a more perfect union, a republic, in a monarchy dominated world. People ruling themselves was a philosophical concept batted around in coffee houses and universities of the time–but never in real time.
Now, what does this have to do with anything today. I am glad that you are thinking ahead because as I said our government has been going sideways for a long time. But the current buoyancy of the ship of state is listing heavily to the right–pun intended. I say this because of the back and forth that is going on about saving our elections from alien invasions.
There were two things that the framers of the Constitution wanted in setting up a republic, saving us from alien invasions was not high on their to-do-list. The first was tyranny. It is not a word we throw around too much today. American History Dictionary defines it as “A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power.” The framers realized that checks and balances were needed. They feared a government with too much power. Hence, we see the formation of two distinct levels of government. They devised a federal system that a divided governmental powers. We have state and national governments and each has certain delegated and reserved powers–powers not concentrated in one person or institution.
Unfortunately for this administration elections fall mostly under the purview of the state governments and Congress. But that is not stopping this administration’s attempt at a rolling coup using the judiciary system in an obvious effort to control the outcome or at least influence the credibility of the next election. Instead of rolling up a tank division and Seal Teams in storming up the Capitol steps, the administration is using a battalion of lawyers to pull down the government with executive orders and legal rulings. It is the simple Trumpian belief if you can’t win find a judge who will just change the rules in mid game.
The second thing the framers were concerned about was too much democracy infused into the federal government. You see that in the Electoral College electing the president, state legislatures determine who will be senators, and the president nominating judges with Senate approval. At the time the Constitution was approved the people only voted for members of the House of Representatives.
Those framers also knew too much democracy can lead to mob rule, as we saw on January 6th, 2020 when people were urged to “fight like hell.” It was a page right out of Sam Adams and the Boston Sons of Liberty play book. The Sons of Liberty had no problem summoning out the mob to obstruct British governing of Massachusetts. Even after the war the Massachusetts government had to deal with Shay’s Rebellion when farmers shut down the legal system to keep the courts from foreclosing and seizing their property for unpaid taxes. Even during his presidency George Washington led an army into western Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.
Without a doubt the checks and balances and the separation of powers can make our government slow-footed. Can a king or some other sort of autocrat work quicker and maybe more efficient? Possibly. But that is not how our republic was designed. It was designed with belief that the ultimate power rests with the people and not in one person or one branch of government.
I think we are fast approaching a tipping point with this administration’s efforts to bully its way into the election process. Elections are the engines that drive a republic, a democracy. The Constitution is clear on the fact that states handle elections, No where in the Constitution is it even implied that an executive department, the Department Homeland Security or an independent agency of the executive branch, the United State Postal Service can determine who is an eligible voter.
Without a doubt our election history has had its dark moments. Has there been voter fraud? I am sure if we were to take a deep dive into City-Machine politics we would find more rats in the ballot boxes then we would like to believe. Every major city from Boston to St. Louis has had some sort of boss led city machine. Three of the most famous machines were William Tweed’s Tammany Hall during the Gilded Age, James Pendergast in Kansas City and Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago. It would be hard to believe that ballot boxes were not stuffed during their reign as “Boss.” And I am not going to talk about the opposite: voter suppression with Jim Crow in the South. When it comes to elections we have come a long way from night-riders and city-machine machinations.
What we are witnessing today is the assembling of a national machine lead by Boss Trump. A machine backed with the full force of the federal government. The only thing between the Boss and an election is the Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I am not a Constitutional scholar on running elections but it seems obvious elections are delegated to states and not the Executive Branch of the Republic, Homeland Security, Social Security or the Post Office. If this were to happen voters would be marching to the polls to the tune of A World Turned Upside Down.
mystoryorhistory 