Will This Be OUR Crisis?

From left to right: Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) in AppleTV’s Foundation.

The second season of Foundation is airing on AppleTV, and episode seven arrives on August 25th.
Based on the book series by Isaac Asimov, Foundation is about a mathematician named Hari Seldon, who becomes the first psychohistorian.
He predicts that the Empire is approaching its’ decline and fall.
However, between his time, and the far future, there will be several crises (or tipping points), during which the coming period of disorder may be shortened with his assistance.

The cover of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, published as an abridged version (in 1951) as The 1,000 Year Plan. Seldon hoped that his Foundation would shorten the period of chaos between the first Galactic Empire, and the second Galactic Empire, to around 1,000 years—mitigated from a probable 30,000 years of disorder.

Seldon sets out to establish a society, a “Foundation,” to cope with these crises, and save human civilization from barbarism

The U.S. has had its’ own “tipping points.
The first was the country’s birth.
In 1776, many colonial citizens were too conservative to rebel.
Thousands of Loyalist families fled to Britain, or Canada, leaving their wealth behind.
Perhaps, if all white men over the age of 16 had voted “Yay” or “Nay,” the colonies wouldn’t have separated.
According to Wealth and Democracy, by Kevin Phillips: “Only supporters of Independence were allowed to vote [for the Declaration of Independence], Tories being barred, and with prewar property requirements also set aside.”

The Founders needed “the rabble” to set up a new country.
However, many of the Founding Fathers could only imagine a hierarchy of Anglo-Saxons being in control.

Another “tipping point” occurred in 1861 when eleven Southern states declared themselves a separate country.
However, the real crisis had begun years before the South seceded, with a general lack of respect toward the Federal Government that grew with each inadequate presidency.

Abraham Lincoln (Satan) carrying away the Goddess of Liberty published in Southern Punch on November 14, 1863. Southern newspapers vilified Lincoln before and during the war.

Southern newspapers convinced their citizenry that if Abraham Lincoln were elected, he’d arm slave revolts, give their daughters to Black men, and make the South destitute.
It had become illegal to even discuss abolition publicly in most Southern states, and over twenty Northern abolitionists were lynched.
(The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, by Larry Tagg.)
The U.S. was forced to choose between a weak central government (and the enslavement of almost four million Black people), and remaining the united country that the Founding Fathers had dreamed of.

British DVD cover of C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America.

In 2004’s C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America—a satirical “documentary” in which the South won the Civil War, written and directed by Kevin Wilmott—Wilmott shows the C.S.A. becoming an Empire, and taking over sections of Central and South America in order to keep the slave system going.
Those scenes seemed hyperbolic until I learned the story of William Walker.
Walker was a young Southern doctor who in 1856 traveled to Central America and made himself the President of Nicaragua, (thus creating a slave country south of the border).
U.S. President Pierce actually recognized Dr. Walker’s government as legitimate!
Walker’s regime lasted less than a year.
A few years later, he tried for power once more (this time in Honduras), was captured by the Brits, found guilty in a court, and executed by firing squad.

The 1930’s were another tipping point, when the Great Depression resulted in Democracies ending all over the world, and international trade breaking down.
(The fact that this was a reactionary period, wasn’t covered well in my high school history book.
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt—the President from 1933 until his death in 1945—hadn’t used his power judiciously, or if the U.S. hadn’t become united by World War II, perhaps we wouldn’t live in a Democracy today.

Trump shaves Vince McMahon’s head in 2007’s WrestleMania23. Who thinks Trump would have let McMahon shave his head if he had lost the bet?

Yet another tipping point occurred in 2020, when publicity-seeker Donald Trump—less a populist than a Hero of Hierarchy—lost his opportunity to serve a second term.
This continuing crisis is more like the 1930’s tipping point, then the ones in either 1776 or 1861.
Although a few U.S. representatives propose that the U.S. split up into red and blue states, that wouldn’t work today.
(Too many states are purple.)
Just as 1930’s isolationists flirted with Fascism, Trump created MAGA by convincing Americans that he had the ability to wall them off from “out groups,” as well as put a halt to societal change.

A comic book in 1950 explained why our votes are vital.

To read the complete comic go HERE.

Close presidential races have occurred before.
However, those elections weren’t “tipping points.”
Four presidents were assassinated—in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963—but those tragedies didn’t create chaos.
Most folks viewed the two parties as too similar to really care who won.
In too many elections less than half of Americans vote.

No one state, or group of states, got everything they desired in the U.S. Constitution (written in 1787), but that was the point.
People got together and bargained, and the majority opinion won.
The Constitution, and Bill of Rights, were written to work hand in hand with a Democratic society, and Democracies work best if people are free to do whatever, as long as doing so doesn’t harm others.
As the saying (attributed to multiple people) goes: “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

The framers erred in hoping that slavery would gradually fade away.
They also made a mistake in creating the Three-fifths Compromise,* enticing Southern states to sign the Constitution by trading this compromise for a bit more power.
(This strange agreement “baked” the concept of slavery into the Constitution.)
Eventually, wealthy Southerners conflated their own freedom with the freedom to be “on top” of the societal heap, and to own other people. 

Picture of Washington and Lincoln (the saviors of unity) by Currier & Ives.

One way of thinking about each U.S. crisis is that they centered around reactionary cycles and hierarchy.
However, as Lincoln (the disciple of Washington) expressed it in his Gettysburg Address, the U.S. needs a Federal Government that is: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
There’s simply no room for hierarchy in that phrase.
In the crises of 1861, 1933, and 2020, large segments of American society feared that their ways of life were being threatened.
They became resentful of other Americans, and valued “Anglo-Saxon order,” and wealth, over the Democratic system.
Hierarchy, and not caring about the general good, is a very bad fit with Democracy.
We are now at a crisis point.

* The Three-fifths Compromise was an agreement—in the U.S. Constitution—that included slaves in the state populations, but in a very peculiar manner. It specified that each slave would be counted as 3/5th of a human being. The resulting totals were used to calculate the number of seats in the House of Representatives, the number of electoral college votes, and how much states would pay in taxes. Although slaves couldn’t vote, slave-holding states ended up with more state representatives, and more electoral college votes, than they truly deserved.

Trying to Make a Dream “Work”

July 4th (this country’s “birthday”) will be held this coming Tuesday, and the divisions in this country are a main topic of discussion. 
We’re careful to not discuss politics at work, or when getting a hair cut, because we don’t want conflict.
Sometimes, we don’t look forward to big parties where we might meet “unfamiliar” people who we don’t wish to offend.
Most of us get all our news from specific websites and TV channels, and seldom use others.
A few of us long for the days when it seemed that everyone was on the same page, but that time has never existed.
Leading the U.S. has often felt like herding cats.
It certainly felt that way to George Washington.

When George Washington (father of our country) became the first president in 1789, there were only 11 states.
Two of the original thirteen colonies (North Carolina and Rhode Island) hadn’t officially joined the union.
Vermont was toying with joining Canada.
Tennessee was a territory of North Carolina and Kentucky was a county of Virginia.
Great Britain was still holding onto most of the fur trading posts around the Great Lakes.
The eleven states were upset about issues in the Constitution, water rights involving Spain and their borders.
By the end of Washington’s second term, 16 states had accepted the Constitution, and the trading posts were in American hands.

In George Washington’s Farewell Address (1783), issued* when he retired as the first U.S. President, he said that he hoped our “union and brotherly affection may be perpetual” and “that the free constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained.”
Essentially, Washington was warning the young nation (white men over 16) that only unity could prevent them from splintering into many parts, and from “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” usurping “the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” 

One issue that Washington didn’t mention in his Address was the practice of slavery.
In fact, he never spoke out publicly against slavery during his lifetime.
However, he did leave a will which would emancipate the 123 slaves that he could legally free.
(Under the property laws of the time, although Washington was one of the wealthiest men in America, he was only allowed to free 123 of the 317 slaves at the Mount Vernon plantation.
The other 104 slaves were either owned by his wife’s heirs, or leased from neighbors.)

A George Washington commemorative pitcher from the early 1800s.

By the time Washington died in December of 1799, he’d become a cherished symbol of democracy and unity.
Manufacturers around the world (including France and China), supplied commemorative items—plates, pitchers, clocks, and jewelry.
American women sewed memorial pillows, quilts, and black armbands.
American artists created paintings and lithographs that were displayed in homes and public places.
His Farewell Address was read aloud from books like Caleb Bingham’s The Columbian Orator.
His widow (Martha) was besieged for locks of his hair.
However, there wasn’t much discussion as to why Washington (after years of talking about it to his family) had finally freed 123 slaves. 

A year later, minister and bookseller Mason Locke Weems published The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, and this dubious biography further helped bolster his image.
The 5th edition of Parson Weem’s biography added several apocryphal stories about Washington—for example, the infamous “cherry tree” tale (in which virtuous young George cannot tell a lie).
(Weems also wrote pamphlets against gambling, dueling, and drinking.
It was his opinion that over-the-top language, sentimentality, and colorful anecdotes, sold books.)
The Weem’s article in Collier’s Encyclopedia mentions an estimate that his books sold over a million copies.

George Washington’s birthday (February 22) was proclaimed a holiday in 1885.
In 1971, the holiday was moved to the third Monday in February and some states began to call the day “Presidents Day”—a date when two presidents could be celebrated—Washington and Lincoln.
Worship for Washington, as the symbol of unity, had nearly evaporated by 1971, and he was replaced with the country’s martyr for unity, President Abraham Lincoln. 

A banner of Washington displayed by German American Bund at a 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden.

In the late 1930’s, however, George Washington’s “brand” was still strong enough for the German American Bund to use the first president to put a pro-American veneer on Nazism.
The Bund displayed a giant portrait of Washington (alongside Adolf Hitler) at their events—for example, a February 20, 1939 rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
(More than 20,000 attended the event, but as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia predicted, the rally only discredited the group.)

According to Francois Furstenberg—in his  2006 book In the Name of the Father—Parson Weem’s biography of Washington, and Bingham’s The Columbian Orator, were both strong influences on young Abraham Lincoln.
These were two of the books that the self-educated man read by candlelight in his log cabin, and they helped to shape his deep dedication to the union. 

Scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still, showing Klaatu (Michael Rennie) visiting the Lincoln Memorial with Bobby (Billy Gray).

In the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, a visitor from a more-advanced planet, Klaatu (Michael Rennie) visits the Lincoln Memorial with earth boy Bobby Benson (Billy Gray).
The alien ambassador Klaatu is so impressed by the ideals in Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” that he decides to lecture to Earth representatives, and delay destroying the planet.

When Washington spoke for unity in his Farewell Address, there was no way for him to predict how much the country would change over the next 240 years.
The country already looked very divided to him—with the Federalists favoring a strong central government, and Anti-federalists advocating for states’ rights and a Bill of Rights.
The thirteen colonies were very religiously diverse—especially in the middle colonies.
The societies in the south, the New England states, and the middle states were already becoming vastly different.
(In fact, they may be more similar today than they were then.)
However, no one could predict the growth of giant cities, the fact that the U.S. would change from an enclave to a world power, or the internet.
By the first census in 1790 there were nearly 700,000 slaves in the U.S. (17.8 percent, out of 3.9 million people).
Only around 80,000 people lived in the three biggest cities (New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) and most Americans lived in small towns and on farms. 

There’s no record of Washington ever saying that racial divisions might split the nation in two.
He, and the rest of the Founding Fathers didn’t listen to abolitionists—Lafayette, Dr. Filippo (Philip) Mazzei, Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Kosciuszko, and Thomas Paine, to name a few—who advocated against slavery.
Some Founding Fathers, like Washington, said (privately) in their old age, that they were disgusted by the monetizing of human beings.
(Martha Washington burned all her husband’s letters to her.)

However, these great problem-solvers found that issue unsolvable.

240 years later, it's still a battle between those who want a strong central government, and those who want states rights. It’s still a clash between those who want an aristocracy of the rich, and those who want democracy. It’s still a struggle between those who want a caste system, and those who want a society where everyone receives equal respect.

In H.G. Well’s Outline of History (the “New Democratic Republics” chapter), Wells speculates on the statement (in the Declaration of Independence), that “all men are created equal.”
He says:“All men are not born equal, they are born. . .in an ancient and complex social net.”
He goes on to describe the democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers as the human spirit rebelling against the social net, and exhibiting the belief that we may “achieve a new and better sort of civilization that should also be a community of will.” 

In order to achieve democracy, and a “community of will,” the main thing we need is an acknowledged set of ideals.
Washington served for years, as an icon to create a “community of will.”
Abraham Lincoln fulfilled that role after George Washington’s influence ended.
A problem now is that we have no role models “to look up to.”
We’ve given up on political ideals.
Nihilism, cynicism and anarchy will get us nowhere.
Can we maintain a democracy any other way?

*Washington’s Farewell Address wasn’t an oration. The 6,085-word statement was given to Claypool’s American Daily Advertiser (based in Philadelphia, PA) to be published in its’ Monday Edition. The Address was soon circulated in a dozen other papers, 40 pamphlets, posters in public spaces, and books (like Bingham’s The Columbian Orator) all over the nation.