History books are almost by definition incomplete and too long, (“…. for the edge of a blooming cheek is in view—at once too much and too little.” Northanger Abbey) but this is one of those worth reading for me.

Two things from the introduction:

The British Prime Minister was still appointed by the king in the 1780s when the Constitution of the United States was being drawn up, so despite some influence in other areas of the legal system, much of the American system is not an inheritance from the land of Shakespeare and Dickens, so influential culturally.

But as much as I want to respect and dialogue with the American system, including its Constitution and governmental system, it is foolish and not necessary to make an idol of it, especially when it was in large part a product of a time of slavery. The electoral college system came about in part because of slavery; slave states had more electoral representation (the free population plus 3/5 of the slaves) than voters, so direct election of the president wouldn’t have been feasible even if it had been desired. Of course, it wasn’t, because the founders had all read Plato’s Republic; this book doesn’t mention that, but it is true that they all received a classical education back then, these sorts of people did, so that would have mattered to them. (For all the incompatibility with Plato’s fantastic imaginings, most of the principle features are there: excess of democracy is bad; tyranny is the worst thing; a few reasonable people with good educations can reason and compromise their way to success. Worse systems have been tried, of course, as Churchill once said of democracy.)

…. I think if I had an election between Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s parties, against and for authority, like the contemporary French ‘yellow coat’ rebels and the centrists, I’d vote for Hamilton and authority; it’s not Jefferson’s fault really and it’s not like they aren’t Star Wars Rebels in the world, but the yellow coat path leads to empowering too many questionable crackers and embittered outcasts. The Star Trek Federation is fine with me, although I don’t see it as an inevitable given. We’ve got to get people away from meat eating and into the environment so we don’t fry the earth to a crisp, but I still don’t like yellow coat ‘Fuck everybody who’s not a cracker or a weirdo or something; Fuck everybody unless they’re NOT—everybody who IS, fuck ‘em’, no, I don’t like that. Tea, Earl Grey, Hamilton.

…. Finally it’s my break and I have my fifteen minutes of thought; nothing like fruit rotting on the vine to drive you crazy. To think Jefferson could be Jefferson and not let his people read or think things!

I’m sorry. A hostile eye could do a lot with Jefferson, and neither side today would take him in the flesh, and sometimes I wonder about the people who build him an altar perforce. Yes, one of these days I’m going to get around to freeing those serfs, the feeble god demands nothing less! What is democracy without a few people out of touch, indeed, the dead, charming as they are cold.

He certainly thought more of theory than practice. In a way I do too; life is the problem; thinking, the solution. But he is no Washington, American Abraham, or Lincoln, American Moses, and I am left with that Jefferson is the pretty girl who gets what she wants and I’m the other girl who doesn’t. For every smart guy who’s Jefferson there’s a smart guy who’ll get you the measuring tape for that table you might buy. And it’s easier to forgive if you save the slaves and stop taking the brain to be a pigmentation of the skin.

…. Incidentally I get good feedback at work because I don’t think any job is unimportant; I don’t want you guys to get the wrong idea. Everyone’s a rebel sometimes, but I don’t believe in being trashy.

But as for Jefferson and the rulers, (only a privileged person can judge another privileged person ~a privileged person), I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault, especially as individuals, so I try not to blame anybody, especially personally. But the people in power have such an unreasonable position, because people are so afraid of them; and nobody but Jesus Christ in this country gives back their crown—I’ve never known a deist to do it. Even though the people running the world often don’t find their job to be worth the trouble; good times with the book nerds, all the feels. Ruling over the whole country, not memorable. ~Little TJ

I couldn’t live without books, but I’d like to think that it’s not because I compulsively prefer dining alone.

Of course, I don’t know if Hamilton’s people were really all that much better, but I’d vote for them because I think I’d get fewer, and less grandiose, broken promises.

…. Although I can agree with Jefferson that we’re just not going to talk about Donald Jackson. At least, not entirely willingly. Sometimes duty might call, but you never admire any Donald Jackson for simple, brute power’s sake. Duty might call you to know, indeed, but to imagine that the ‘important’ is the good and the worthy is to become a counter and collector of beans. Donald Jackson is ranked best when he is not ranked at all; to think of him well in the ordinary way as a mighty czar, no.

…. Which isn’t to say that I would repeat all the anti-Jackson campaign ditties, but I would never call the man a Christian.

…. I could never quite say with Merton that Hitler and Stalin, and of course all the little tin can Hitler cracker despot Donald Jacksons, are not interesting (or whatever), and not worth knowing about—cracker despots cause a lot of non-cloistered pain, and people in the world want their story known—but I can’t, you know. ‘You killed a hundred thousand people? Before breakfast? Well, you must get up very early in the morning.’

Not a whole lot is gained by the rankings, except the implied statement that power and public opinion matter more than honesty and morality, which is a malus. You can’t practically ever get people to change their mind just because they’re privateers, but you don’t have to consciously and willingly affirm them and tell them that they’re right: not least in that people have to be ranked in this weird game we tell ourselves that we have to play.

“But Donald Jackson is Important; he’s a White Man, just like God—and unlike God, he’s one of Us.”

So now we talked about Donald.

…. Give me perfect charity, but not yet.

…. And I thought I was done with the Jackson blues. I don’t know why I thought that. Actually I do know; it was because I was reading about the Anglo Jesus. I guess everything’s connected; take Dickens. There’s a sense in which Dickens is the Good Hitler, and Hitler is the Bad Dickens.

Anyway.

But whether we have Hitler/Stalin or Napoleon/Jackson, we have these tyrants, and we fall into it. Whichever way it leans, we act trashy, and then we find that our crappy little enemies transgress our crappy little rules, and we fight both ways at once.

But it makes sense. The day of judgment should be intense. Life is a drama, not a musical. And basic morality is quixotic, not a bean counter dilemma.

…. I know that Polk lives in fear of time-traveling assassins, but I can’t even—wish I didn’t even have to deal, you know. It’s not enough to do in the race of men with red skin, and the race of men with black skin: now we have to do in the guys with coffee-milk skin! I know Spain had this huge empire and we needed to one-up Mexico to deal, but we really over-did it. They have so little even today; was Spain’s racist empire in Mexico really too dark, to begin with?

“But it worked out for us, diddinit.”

I who am about to barf salute you.

…. ‘Popular sovereignty’/states’ rights + federal slave catchers (Fugitive Slave Law)=

Moral or immoral, choose what you will…. So long as it’s immoral.

The presidents of the 1850s are failures, even from his own, mostly national power point of view, (although he does point out that history is not polite), if you fancy giving grades.

…. But Lincoln was the greatest president.

…. Arguably early American history is more topical than the recent stuff, although the more recent past is so well studied I feel like I should tackle it some other time….

[I’ll only say this one thing: the unfortunately legal or whatever terms, “Republican Party” and “Democratic Party”, in use both before and after the civil rights movement of the 50s & 60s, is highly misleading. To say that Coolidge or whoever was a “Republican” and Truman is a “Democrat”, and then to compare them to one of the Clintons or some Bush is to hopelessly distort the picture. Both parties are new, re-made, after the 60s. To cut things down to the oversimplified One Thing, the Democratic Party is the Party that 95% of Black people in America vote for, and the Republican Party is for usually white people who feel differently about civil rights, modernity, or whatever (with corporate Democrats occupying the center-left). Between 1877, (before which time Lincoln’s Republicans were for the North, and the Democrats more Southern), and 1954-1968 or whenever, this situation would have been totally alien. The Democrats were the party of the South, and the Irish in northern cities; the Republicans were the party of northern WASPs. So the Republicans were insular, sure, and the Democrats were the party of segregation. They were both white parties, and they stood for similar things; it’s hard to draw meaningful lines of conflict between these two groups. Some of the elections between 1877-1960 or whenever were meaningful, but that was largely the result of personalities, perhaps of chance, not party and ideology. FDR certainly changed the face of America, but that was the result of Roosevelt himself and his people, not some inherent characteristic of the ethno-Southern party that kept the ‘Whites Only’ signs in front of the white water fountains. Before the civil rights movement, it’s not like there was one party rule because white America always had a choice between two of its sons, but there was only one ideology, I think.]

To circle back to the US vs the UK, where I started this review, I’ll say that although many issues (white and Black) are shared to some extent with Europe/the Anglo-sphere, for me American history is surely more emotional. Andrew Jackson is an uglier character for me than whatever British jackass was ultimately responsible for the Amritsar massacre. (Forget about numbers; they’re both large processes and numbers are not the point.) I am, after all, an American, and I feel more deeply when it is my own cradle which has run somebody down—and not some cousin, which is a little distanced from me, to some extent.

…. William Blake: I thought that the World was Innocent, and I was happy, because it was My World. Then I found the stain, and I say, To the Devil with your Happy World, sir, to the Devil with it!
Mary Bennet: Grasping wounded innocence, yes, I’ve seen it before; it leads to misery.
Hermes Child: Aww, poor duckie. You feel sad. You need a hug.
William Blake: *starts sobbing* It never used to feel like this before.
Mary Bennet: Feelings often change.
Hermes Child: Poor duckie feels sad.

Final note: As I suppose I’ve probably made clear, my own style is not one of amoral consensus reporting, but at the same time I guess that the book has its place. The British apparently don’t write one volume books about all the prime ministers (I think there are about 50-some UK PMs, as opposed to over 40 US Presidents, so it’s not like the numbers are dramatically different). So if there were nothing like this book like there would be if we were more UK-style on this issue, I think that would be a loss.

N.B. Despite being a visionary anti-racist (in my own mind), I have in places needed to edit this review for sloppy (as opposed to creative) writing, and in one place, inadvertent Andrew Jackson racism! So perhaps it was all an (hon hon hon) historical inevitability, or maybe I don’t live up to my standards, or both. (Jackson was still a jackass though.)