House should be secured later this year, although I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to the gerrymandering wars. The Senate will be quite an uphill battle, and always is. That's probably more realistic for '28.
With the fabled founding fathers, I think it's necessary to make a distinction between great men and good people. Washington is great because he was the Commander of the Revolutionary Army, Chairman of the Constitutional Convention, and first President of the United States; Jefferson is great principally because he wrote the Declaration of Independence; Madison is great because he was foremost responsible for the drafting of the Constitution and separately authored the Bill of Rights. All of them were big-time wealthy slaveowners, and that's fucking dire. Only in Washington's case was there some sort of rectifying action, after his death.
It's also worth pointing out who wasn't: Alexander Hamilton -- whose vision of the United States as an industrial powerhouse with a strong central government ultimately won out with TR & FDR -- never owned slaves (though members of his family did) and co-founded a New York abolitionist organization years before the Constitution was even drafted; John Adams was vehemently opposed to slavery on both moral and political grounds, never owned slaves; Samuel Adams much of the same, he was actually gifted one named Surry for his wedding and refused ("A slave can not live in my house; if she comes she must be free"). She did live there, with legal emancipation paperwork formalized. And Benjamin Franklin, albeit towards the end of his life, turned abolitionist and petitioned for it to be banned on a federal level.
Nah I dont agree with these perspectives, they're selectivist History and this way of describing them is often used to set the playing field of discussing the United States. You know who knows this? Modern Federalists in their right wing Think Tanks. I dont have to concede greatness to slavers because they sort of did a thing. I dont need to concede greatness to a guy who kept the Mother of his children enslaved, a Mother who he formed a sexual relationship with when she was 14, and I REALLY dont have to do this on the grounds that men back then used their positions of power to engage in sexual relationships with children who were considered property legally because that was normal, as if they somehow didnt know what they were doing (they absolutely did). And I dont need to concede greatness to a man who wanted to yoke the greed of capitalists to become an empirical competitor to England and thus, came up with documents and systemic practices designed to embed chattel slavery on the basis of race.
Washington was never rectified. That's a myth. His slaves passed to Martha when he died, and then she died not long after. They were only freed because of that. Had she lived another 20 years they would have been her property that long. Also, subtext to that...HER slaves were not freed upon her death because technically she didnt own them. Washington never wanted Martha to live a single day without a pet human being. Also you might want to dig into his Military career a bit deeper than the Ken Burns versions. He failed upward more than once.
Sam Adams was a Gangster, but John and Hamilton were complicit in not only embedding slavery as a legal framework, but in its expansion. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson were also complicit in allowing Acts to pass that not only said in plain language that the US was essentially an Ethno-State, but solidifying egregious Acts of Government overreach that betrayed these ideals we have been led to believe they were Champions of.
You want real figures to look up to in US History with regard to the ideology of freedom and democracy you look at enslaved people who took advantage of Dunmore's offer to free enslaved people if they agreed to fight for the British. You look at Mary Wells, who was bold enough to challenge that offer as it initially existed only for men. Or Winnie Hempstead who challenged the part that said "who could bear arms" as she was 10 years-old. This leveraging which freed thousands of slaves by the British is what led U.S. Patriots to make similar offers because the British made good on these offers, on the back of Somerset v Stuart.
It was still another 100 years almost before an armed conflict undid SOME of the institution of racially-based forced labor due to the work of Radical Republicans, and it cost a Liberal Republican President his life. Then another 100 years of protest, and violent suppression thereof for them to get Civil Rights, an occurrence the Conservatives (regardless of party distinction) have never quite forgiven.
The "great man" narrative is not a requisite of understanding our past. Nor is it especially a requisite of planning our future. It keeps us locked into the notion that these men INTENDED for the things people had to fight, bleed, and die for to come to pass and they clearly did not. Its in their letters. It's in the language of their laws. It allows for the current excusatory language for authoritarianism, and the downplaying or total erasure of slavery, or even the PragerU "was slavery really all that bad?" horsesh*t. It creates a thought process of forgiveness for their transgressions, and those that came after. Forgiveness for the fact that immigrants in detention centers are slaves right this second, and people are applauding it. That ICE is just another version of the same old posse, here to enforce tiered citizenship.
www.telegraph.co.uk
