The President has lost it

 

The truth is simple; he's an ignorant, generally malevolent, old guy who has lost his marbles. The contents of that brain always rattled around a bit, but they've gotten looser. There's little left but greed and id. 

 

And the people need to say so loudly, because the media won't. In fact, to sustain the only business model they know, journalism pretends he's functioning within the bounds of normal when he's batshit crazy. 

Trump on his Iran war: 

They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.

Jennifer Rubin puts the reality succinctly:  

Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence...

... Trump was more unhinged in Ohio on Saturday, where Trump blathered about James Talarico: “I see that ‘Tala-freako’ in Texas. So he’s been a vaygan' all his life. He’s a vaygan vaygan, I didn’t even know what the hell a vaygan was. A vaygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long.” Ignoring his apparent ignorance of the word ‘vegan,’ the nature of his obscene, irrelevant insults suggests a complete loss of impulse control. These are not “speeches,” but rather psychological breakdowns. But, unfortunately, you would not know it from mainstream media coverage. ...

... Similarly, Trump’s encounter last week with TIME was routinely labeled an “interview.” But an “interview” denotes responsive answers — not a stream of non sequiturs, insults, and outbursts. A few commentators ventured that the session was “grievance”-filled or “emotional,” but even those descriptions falsely suggest some orderly presentation of reality-based complaints in response to questions. ...

... The Mob boss mentality, lack of logical connection between sentence fragments, self-contradictions, and elementary-school-level vocabulary in a froth of vicious anger reflect a deeply unwell mind — albeit notably less so absent in the sanitized version. Obsessive efforts to explain what Trump must mean are indicative of PR; not journalism....

... Aaron Rupar, who assiduously records and posts Trump’s and his minions’ remarks arguably more thoroughly than any journalist, ... put it, “Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he’s actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings.”

As he ages, Trump’s decline will continue (maybe accelerate), meaning this is likely the “best” version of Trump we will see from here on out. Billionaire-owned media has essentially covered up that national crisis, refusing to acknowledge that he is deteriorating mentally and emotionally, just as he is physically (evidenced by bruising, swollen ankles, consistent somnolence). ...

We see it; long experience has convinced me that when the people lead, our "leaders" will eventually follow. When will the big media admit that he has no clothes?

Midterm elections: who votes

One month out from the midterm election date, it might be worthwhile to share some historical facts about the shape of these contests. Who votes in midterns is not quite the same as who votes in presidential years.

These data come from USA Facts which seems a reasonably unbiased interpreter of census and other data. 

Every four years, a pattern repeats: fewer Americans vote in the midterm elections than did in the presidential race before it. It’s a pattern that’s persisted for decades. ...but in the last two election cycles midterm turnout was higher than it was for much of the past four decades. 

... Since 1980, presidential elections have had an average reported voter turnout of 63%. Midterms averaged 48%. Generally, voter turnout drops by an average of about 15 percentage points between a presidential election and the following midterm.

But the 2018 midterms were an exception: turnout fell eight points, the smallest drop in four decades....

Maybe there is something about a Trump and MAGA regime that gooses some voters to turnout in non-presidential years? 

 • In the most recent full election cycle, young people not only had the lowest presidential vote turnout, but they were also the least likely to vote in the midterms. Less than 30% of 18 to 24 year olds voted in the 2022 election. Conversely, people 65 or older had the highest turnout and smallest drop-off. ...

• The likelihood of voting rose with a person's family income in both presidential and midterm elections. The drop between the two, however, was largest among people in families earning between $40,000 to $75,000 a year.  ...

• Married Americans living with their spouse voted at higher rates in both presidential and midterm elections than any other relationship status ... Among other marital statuses, widowed Americans had the smallest turnout drop, eight points, while those who were never married had the largest at 20 points. ...

I wonder whether this is also true for married same sex couples; we're becoming a larger fraction of the married every year.

• Fewer than 40% of Hispanic citizens voted in the last midterm election. Asian turnout dropped the most, falling 20 points from the presidential election. White voters had the highest turnout in both elections. ... 

• Naturalized US citizens born in Canada or Greenland report voting at higher rates even than native-born Americans. European-born Americans voted at similar levels to native-born, while Latin American- and Mexican-born voted at lower levels.

• While African-born citizens voted at similar levels to native-born Americans in the 2020 election, their turnout dropped by 31 percentage points in the 2022 midterm, the largest drop of any of the demographic groups in the data.

Don't let anyone claim this is "a color-blind society." In the most basic activity of civic belonging, race and ethnicity clearly still matter. 

So does economic well-being.

• Renters and unemployed people voted below the national average in both elections and had steeper drops in turnout in midterms than most other groups.

• Americans with a disability also voted less than average in the presidential election, but their midterm drop-off was among the smallest of any group, 11 points, bringing their midterm turnout close to the national average. 

• Veterans and government workers stood out at the other end. Both voted well above average in both elections with drop-offs at or below the national average.

It's not clear in this data whether blue (Democratic) states had more or less drop off than red (Republican) states. Maybe it can matter whether people feel they have something/someone vital to vote for -- or against?  I sure hope so.

AI leads to brain rot?

I found this New York Times exploration of the implications of AI interesting. You might also. Gift link.

Other findings of this study presented in graphic form are less discouraging about where the AI boom is leading us. AI-native young people may be able to use it to assist solid learning. Or, as seems too common today, maybe not.

 

We seem fated to find out. 

There's much to vote on: local San Francisco ballot measures

Yesterday I worked my way through the 13 California state propositions voters are up against. Whew! 

Here I'll survey the 10 local measures San Franciscans face on the November ballot. A lot of discernment is asked of us. This exercise, as it always does, makes me wonder whether so much direct democracy -- direct legislating by the people -- has the results we might wish. But Californians like our system, so here we are again.

San Francisco local measures have letters, rather than the numbers used for the State offerings. Here we go:

Measure A: Proponents claim this one would clean up accreted inefficiencies and oddities in the current shape of city government, many derived from a 30 year old city charter which was a fix for the same sort of problems when we passed that one. City government has become a bit of a Winchester Mystery House, as anyone who has had to deal with it has discovered. Measure A is a complex set of tweaks and fixes supported by the current ruling establishment: Mayor Lurie and his tech bro and real estate sponsors. The outspent opposition is the Coalition on Homelessness. I confess to having a lot more trust in that organization than in the current city government. As I often feel, the devil will be in the details. I don't trust 'em. NO

Measure B: For a Public Bank ... this is my Supervisor Jackie Fielder's hobby horse. She has managed to line up Supervisors, labor, and civic organizations in favor. Seems worth trying. YES on B

Measure C: Increase City Contributions to the Housing Trust Fund. This is such a no-brainer that the only opposition are local Republicans. Anything that might increase housing availability for regular non-billionaires is okay by me. YES

Measure D: Would increase the number of voter signatures to get a measure on the ballot from 2 percent to 8 percent of the electorate. This looks to me like an effort to hobble direct citizen input into policy. I get the impulse. But I've run signature collection efforts. They are hard and expensive. Would legitimate grassroots efforts to put questions on the ballot be priced out? Quite likely. The big boys will always be able to pay to play. Let's keep San Francisco its fractious self. I'm a NO

Measure E: This one untangles city contracting processes. As with Measure A, I'm instinctively sympathetic. City government is an over-complicated mess. But do I trust the current powers that be? No, I do not. Guess I'm a suspicious NO

Measure F: Allows reorganization of city government by the present mayor and his corporate appointees. Again, I get the impulse. City government is a mess. It has accreted epicycles of poor management. But do we trust Daniel Lurie and his billionaire backers to preserve a San Francisco which represents the City's remarkable quirky diversity? I don't. Again, NO

Measure G: Reopen Sunset Dunes Park to cars. Hopefully this time will be the charm and this bad idea will finally go away. We've already voted it down twice. I understand there are folks who live in the Sunset District who find the park inconvenient, but this has been one of the great improvements to the city in the recent decade. NO

Measure H: Parcel tax to fund MUNI. We need public transport; this is a city, not a suburb. And so we have to pay for it. Only opposition is the Republican Party. 'Nuff said. YES

Measure I: Set aside part of a transfer tax on real estate sales of over $10 million too be used for affordable housing. This has an "only in San Francisco" feel. We passed a similar measure in 2020 but the current powers that be have evaded turning over and using the money. Housing and tenant advocates, community organizations, and some of labor support this one. Some construction unions say no. But really, let's make the richest us among contribute to the community's needs. YES

Measure J: Ensures the city gets a cut when big real estate deals happen through foreclosure. Transfers of commercial, industrial and large residential properties would trigger the tax. Seems reasonable. Nobody comes out against this expect Quentin Kopp (a name that will trigger longtime San Franciscans). YES

This survey highlights that Mayor Lurie and the billionaires think this election is an opportunity to use San Francisco residents' discontents to cut back on the vigorous citizen engagement with the local government which has always characterized this quirky, sometimes manic city. I, for one, don't feel that government by the plutocrats has earned our trust. (After all, I live in the Mission, turf they leave to rot.) So let's use the election to slap back at our overlords. 

Vote NO on D, E, and F and let 'em know, they must do better. 

Thirteen (!) California state ballot propostions for your perusal

It's that time again. California voters will receive our mail-in ballots this coming week. A responsible citizen therefore has to sort out a blizzard of direct democracy propositions and local ballot measures in order to cast a vote.

Frankly, as usual, many of these are things most of us should not be having to vote on; our elected leaders should sort out policy and take the consequences if we the people don't like the result. But people and causes with lots of money put their concerns on the direct ballot, and then it is our job to try to vote responsibly. Here I'll pass along how I come down on the state measures; your mileage may vary.

State Ballot Propositions

Prop. 1:  Authorizes $11 billion in bonds for housing affordability; it's always hard to tell whether anything real comes of these programs, but we have to try. YES

Prop. 2: Funds the State's "Rainy Day fund." State taxes bring in wildly different amounts year to year because some of our highest earners are gambling tech bros, financiers, and other inventing speculators. The Rainy Day fund enables the state to smooth out a wildly differing income stream. Voting for it feels like endorsing an undesirable boom/bust economy, but that is what California lives on. So YES.

Prop. 3: makes higher taxes on high income residents permanent to fund schools and healthcare. If we want a common good like education, we have to go where the money is -- and it is rich people that have it. The California Teachers Association came up with this plan. YES

Prop. 4: Allow state and local governments to establish public campaign funds. This is a good government measure, trying to reduce the dominance of big spenders in elections. The League of Women Voters and Common Cause like it. YES 

Prop. 5: Would reform the state's recall process so that if any office holder is recalled, the successor would be chosen in a separate election. Currently, choosing the successor is part of the recall itself; that's how we first got Arnold as governor. Recalls are messy money sinks, but this is probably a better process. Unenthusiasticaly, YES

Prop. 37: State loan program to help home buyers. Private enterprise isn't working? YES

Prop. 38: State bonds for cancer research funding.  This looks to be some particularly sympathetic researchers asking us to fund their work. The question why these folks and not others seems appropriate. I'm torn, but YES

Prop. 39: Require voter ID at polling sites. Californians get on the voting rolls by providing ID when they register. Why should everyone have to do that every time? This seems one more conservative effort to make voting harder for people who aren't good at navigating red tape. NO

Prop. 40: This would require the estimated 200 Californians whose net worth exceeded $1 billion at the start of this year to pay a one-time 5% tax. It was added to the ballot through the efforts of the union SEIU/Healthcare West. The establishment hates it. I suspect many people love it. Sure. Let's make 'em pay more. They have the money; too many of us don't. YES

Prop. 41:  This one is a poison pill which aims to undercut Prop.40's billionaire tax. It purports to limit everyone's taxes, but mostly aims to prevent the billionaires from having to pay up. NO

Prop. 42: Another poison pill aiming to kill Prop. 40's billionaire tax. This one reclassifies assets that would be used to calculate the taxable wealth under Prop. 40. Some very rich people don't want the Prop. 40 billionaire tax; as a result, you are voting on this. NO

Prop. 43: This would make it harder for cities and counties to raise local taxes by requiring a two-thirds affirmative vote rather than the current simple majority. The rich people want to put government out of business. Vote NO

Prop. 44: Seeks to ensure that community clinics spend ninety percent of their funds on patient care, not on administration or overhead. Proposed by the union SEIU/Healthcare West. Sure. Vote YES

Addendum: Since posting this, friends have engaged me in a vigorous conversation about Prop. 44, making the argument that it might prove disastrous to the economies of rural clinics. And they may be right ... The more I look at this thing, the more I see a bitch fight between an aggressive union and a stubborn governor which never should have gone to the voters. We hire legislators and government executives to weigh the possibilities and the implications of things like this and figure it out. They didn't, so the proposition is yet another union weapon in their fight with the powers that be. And here we are, asked to sort something out we are unlikely to understand. I'm disgusted. No recommendation -- my cop out.

 I'll get to the local San Francisco measures (A through J!) in another post.

Can this legal system survive Trump?

Another day, another legal kerfuffle raised up by the Trump regime. Okay, I admit I probably read too many substacks written by lawyers. Naturally lawyers think legal proceedings are where it is at. For most of us, most of the time, there are plenty of other aspects of life of equal or greater importance -- perhaps whether the developing El Nino weather system is going to flood large parts of the California coastline this winter.

But like many others, I try to keep up with the legal deluge. This morning David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo laid out where he thinks we are; he's not optimistic about the courts as a defensive line against the authoritarian, but he tries to define what he thinks they can do -- which is more than nothing.

In the defining legal struggle of our time — whether the federal judiciary will sustain the rule of law long enough to preserve the essential core of a democracy for us to repair, rebuild, and re-enlarge after Trump II — the jury is still out.

Important developments in three different cases yesterday — the Alien Enemies Act, third-country deportations, and Trump’s collusive settlement with the IRS — point in very different directions.

On the face of it, not much unites the cases or offers a common theme or collective takeaway. But in stepping back and reviewing the last 20 months of Trump II legal battles, yesterday’s developments are datapoints in favor of a tentative working theory that appeals courts are slowly coming around to the urgency of the current moment.

In the first six months of Trump II, district judges were on their heels, caught off guard by the ferocity of the rampage against the rule of law and still tethered to old norms and expectations for the Justice Department that no longer held true. It was a brutal stretch of watching the Trump administration seize some key early wins and capture important legal ground.

After being collectively kicked in the teeth, district judges pretty quickly adjusted to the new reality — but appeals courts failed to back district judges in key respects, missed the urgency of the moment, and surrendered more ground to the lawlessness.

More recently, appellate judges have begun to turn, too. Two glimmers of hope yesterday came at the appeals court level, with the en banc D.C. Circuit looking poised to allow U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to resume his contempt of court inquiry in the original Alien Enemies Act case and the 11th Circuit handing Trump a loss in his bogus settlement with the IRS.

That still leaves the Supreme Court, which — with a few notable exceptions — has been Trump’s greatest enabler. It played true to form yesterday with an emergency intervention that will allow the administration’s brutal third-country removals policy to continue past the election and until it rules after oral arguments in December.

Unlike the lower courts, the Supreme Court will not eventually come around. While we’ve already seen examples — most prominently on tariffs, birthright citizenship, and the USPS mail-in ballots rule — of the Roberts Court refusing to endorse some of Trump’s worst excesses, the high court is too deeply compromised and its six-justice right-wing majority too invested in the GOP’s partisan fate to emerge as a reliable bulwark.

But the appeals courts may buy us some additional time by slowing the speed of the descent. 

Kurtz looks at reality unblinkingly in this. He neither dismisses legal struggle against fascism, nor puts excessive weight on what a democratic people under siege can win in the courts. Courts and the laws may not save us, but their work can set an honorable standard. They can impose friction on the authoritarian project. 

Besides, courts can avert some of the sheer cruelty of the Trump/Miller project. Erudite Partner and so many others work to accompany people trying to navigate the morass of immigration courts. There too winning time may all that can be achieved, but time can preserve human decency and even life.

And meanwhile, the anti-MAGA majority can work to stymie Trump in other arenas, most immediately in the November elections. We can do this. And then we rebuild and re-found this country.

Practicing citizenship

As we move into the election season, literally millions of Americans will be working to get other millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote. Volunteers will be traveling to heavily contested states and other will be working phones -- and also encouraging their local friends to do the election thing.

I've learned a lot from studying how people in different eras went about trying to get others to vote. Historian of African American life Dr. Jemar Tisby recounts how formally enslaved men organized themselves to vote in the former Confederate states after emancipation. 

For generations, most Black people had been locked out of meaningful political power. Enslaved people were treated as property under slave law, while even free Black people faced severe restrictions on citizenship and suffrage.

After emancipation, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 required the former Confederate states to create new governments based on male suffrage; the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, then prohibited denying citizens the vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

A.W. M’Callum, in Harper’s Weekly (June 22, 1867) | The National Park Service

Black men registered and voted in extraordinary numbers, entered constitutional conventions, helped elect new state governments, and won public office themselves.

But an enormous practical question lay beneath that transformation: How do you take a population only recently excluded from the democratic process and help people become informed agents in their own political futures?

One answer came in the form of Union Leagues.

The Union League, also called the Loyal League, began in the North in 1862 as a pro-Union, pro-Lincoln club for white men.

After Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Acts in March 1867 and enfranchised Black men across the South, Republican leaders turned the organization southward.

Campaigners understood that a huge project of teaching civic literacy was needed if Black men were to take their place as actors in American democracy. 

Donors underwrote the campaign. Paid speakers, both Black and white, swept through the southern states. Hundreds of thousands of Black southerners joined that spring and summer.

In October 1867, the Charleston Daily News counted no fewer than eighty-eight league organizations in South Carolina, which it said had enrolled almost every Black man in the state. ...

They held meetings at night in homes, churches, and schoolhouses.

They often had a Bible, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and an anvil or some other emblem of labor often lay on the table. A minister opened with prayer, new members took an oath, then the group got to work.

... The Leagues answered the era’s hardest question. How do you take a people who were “property” five years earlier and make them agents in their own political fate?

They did it in organized community.

White southerners who had held these Black men as property fought back against the Union Leagues.  

After the Civil War, many white people (North and South) could only imagine Black people using political power in the same way white men had—to dominate.

The white opponents of Reconstruction described Black political participation as “Negro domination.”

They portrayed a people who, just a few years earlier, had been excluded from citizenship as dangerous for organizing and using the rights they had just gained.

We generally remember the Ku Klux Klan as a racial terrorist organization, which it was. But its violence during Reconstruction also had a specific political purpose: to weaken the [interracial] Republican coalition, suppress Black voting and officeholding, and restore white supremacy. ...

Too often it seems as if the sins of the American past just keep coming around again. Where Black people are determined to practice their rights as citizens, recalcitrant officials still try to get in their way. In 2021, Georgia made it a crime to give voters water while they wait in line to cast a ballot.

The lengths to which people will go to vote and the lengths to which other people will go to stop them reminds us that voting is the vital center of citizenship, of belonging to the American project.

This is just too good ...

In Chicago on Monday, the hometown Bears took on the Philadelphia Eagles. As is customary at football games (unhappily in my view, but that's for another day), there was an introductory performance of the national anthem. The local team knew how to put on a good show. Take a look.

See the full 2 minute performance by Mariachi Herencia de México: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1096930372917065

Rather remarkably, after having lost their franchise quarterback to injury the previous week, Chicago won.

The NFL is filthy rich and the owners are horrible people, but the league knows where we're going as a society ... we're going together. I like that. 

An invitation to debate

So far, this delightful ad from Texas Democrat James Talarico who is contesting the state's' corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton for a US Senate seat wins the prize for the season.

Paxton is kind of a nasty ghoul. Talarico knows how to present an attractive contrast. Which guy might you like to represent you? Polls say Talarico has a chance. 

Mourning a long time friendship ...

Like many Americans living (or in my case having formerly lived) near the border with our northern neighbor, Canada is near and dear to me. 

In my teens we drove across the border without a qualm, answering the question "where were you born?" from agents on each side of the the Niagara River bridge without a further thought. I would sail my little Sunfish across the river for a picnic lunch on the Ontario side. I listened to my elders report that during Prohibition, they'd sat on a porch by the river watching the US government revenue agents chase the Canadian rum runners. (You can guess who they rooted for.) When the exchange rate between the two countries warranted it, Canadians would flood shopping malls on our side, and vice versa. We watched Canadian as well as US TV, following ice hockey as well as baseball. I had relatives in Canada; it was only a slight exaggeration to say that it was an historical accident that we lived in Buffalo and not St. Catharines. 

So it is painful to share some observations from Brynn Tannehill, a US expat now resident in our northern neighbor.

As an American expat living in Canada, I have a front row seat to the destruction of the United States’ international reputation. It shows up in all sorts of little ways in my day-to-day life that most Americans wouldn’t see. 

Fuel prices here are even worse than in the Unites States, and oil is a global market. Regular 89 octane gasoline has climbed up again to $2.06 CAD per liter, which translates to about $5.60 USD per gallon. Every time my friends and neighbors see it tick upwards again, they lament that the Americans that did this, and they had no say in the matter. 

Every supermarket that isn’t American proudly plasters their windows with announcements that they’re Canadian-owned. Every product on the shelves at the market is labeled as to whether or not it was made in Canada. There is a social stigma attached to being seen buying a product that isn’t Canadian-made, and as the token American expat I’m far more conscious of being caught buying American than being outed as transgender.

Canadians themselves are leaving the US and returning to the motherland. I finally got the import safety inspection done on my car at Canadian Tire this week. The manager mentioned he was doing about 30 import inspections per month before Trump was elected, and now it’s more like 150. Almost all of them are Canadians returning from the US because the country has “lost its mind” and they don’t want to be there any long no matter how well their jobs pay. ...

She summarizes what the Trump regime has done to the relationship between the two nations:

To put how bad things are in perspective, Canadians hold more favorable opinions of China than they do the United States. Thirty-five percent of Canadian adults have confidence in Xi Jinping to do the right thing, while only 20 percent say the same thing for Trump. Along similar lines, only 34 percent of Canadians believe the United States respects the freedom of its citizens, down from 75 percent just a decade ago. 

Eighty-four percent of Canadians regard relations with the United States as negative, which is worse than the public opinion on Canadian-Chinese relations (64 percent negative) and on a par with Russia (85 percent negative). Given that Russia has spent years brutally invading and occupying Ukraine and committing countless war crimes, it’s hard to imagine that number dropping much further short of the United States actually attempting an invasion of Canada.

She concludes:

The number one message non-MAGA Americans should be taking away from the current Trump-induced debacle is it will likely take a generation of Americans electing normal, pro-Canadian leaders to start restoring the relationship and regaining trust. 

The other lesson Democratic leadership in the US should be taking away from this is that politicians who stand up to Trump, don’t obey in advance, and (politely) tell him to go F himself are extremely popular both with the Democratic base and the Canadian public. Showing a little backbone, and being willing to call Trump out for what he is, would go a long ways toward starting to repair the damage.

It's not only those of us on the US side of the border who are mourning our losses from Donald's idiotic bluster.

Rainbow Bridge between the US and Canada beside Niagara Falls

We live in a strange country

It's been hard to get enthused about the United States' 250th anniversary celebration. On the one hand, Donald Trump defiled the big day with a partisan political rally and a fireworks show that left the capital under a world-record smoke cloud. Serious people like Princeton University scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. used the occasion honestly to ask why the nation has always hated our dark pigmented residents and citizens. 

Yale University historian Beverly Gage takes a light approach to exploring the nation's moment in This Land is Your Land: a Road Trip Through U.S. History. Her story of visiting many famous and obscure historical sites is quite simply fun, though not without sharp and novel observations.

As part of my academic training, I took a ... tempered and realistic look at the United States, with all of its contradictions and injustices. I also learned to be skeptical of self-congratulatory narratives: progress, manifest destiny, shining-city-on-a-hill exceptionalism. Historians tend to be myth-busters. ... With the country’s semiquincentennial—or 250th birthday—on the horizon, I figured it was a good time to step out of the proverbial ivory tower and check in with the past as it exists here and now, in the third decade of the 21st century. 

... I headed not for Washington, D.C., where recent mandates to teach “patriotic education” have precious little to do with the actual past. Instead, I set off to explore the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, monuments, living-history pageants, battlefield reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans so often go to learn—and fight—about their history. This book is a report of my travels: thirteen chapters in thirteen American places.

Gage's encounter with George Washington's accomplishments and his historic home at Mount Vernon begins with the story of a slave girl, Ona Maria Judge.  As a child house servant, she was carried by the Washington family first to New York City and then to Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania city was then home to more free Blacks than whites; it was the most anti-slavery corner of the new nation. When the Washington family prepared to return to Virginia after the general's presidency, Judge had other ideas.

On May 21, 1796, while the president and his wife were eating dinner, she walked out the door and never came back. By the time the Washingtons returned to Virginia, she was living and working in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as a free woman, though Washington never reconciled himself to that fact.

In visiting the historic homes of the revolutionary generation in Virginia, Gage came to what she thinks is a broadly applicable conclusion about historical preservation and display: 

... Mount Vernon became a public destination thanks to private effort. In 1853, a South Carolina matron named Louisa Bird Cunningham happened to be traveling down the Potomac when, according to legend, she came upon Washington’s grand old mansion, bathed in moonlight. It was in rough shape. She worried that Washington’s legacy would be lost to the public for lack of upkeep and attention. 

“If the men of America have seen fit to allow the home of its most respected hero to go to ruin, why can’t the women of America band together to save it?” she wrote to her daughter, according to a display at today’s Mount Vernon. Thus inspired, they initiated the estate’s transformation into a public attraction. They also established what would become a central feature of historic preservation: It has often been women who have the vision, dedicate the time, raise the money, and do the work.

And in this iconoclastic vein, Gage's journey continues through the remnants of Andrew Jackson's Tennessee, frontier Texas and the Alamo, the astonishingly creative human energies of 19th century upstate New York abolitionists and women's suffrage activists, massacres of native people on the western frontier, and industrial strife in the nation's great cities. She recounts what took place and what remains in delightful prose, highlighting individuals both worthy and quirky.

What other historian would approach the country's invention of the atomic bomb by spending a night in a decommissioned missile silo, decorated to attract curious tourists? Outside Roswell, New Mexico, an entrepreneur has made the experience available to the curious:

The Atlas silos were accident-prone (though no nuclear explosion ever occurred). As a result, the program around Roswell lasted only a few years before being supplanted by superior technology. When military authorities pulled the missiles out in 1965, they left the silos behind: gargantuan steel-and-concrete bunkers hidden beneath the New Mexico desert. ... If I’m being honest, I was a little nervous about spending the night in an underground nuclear bunker all alone. ... 

From a distance, the silo is easy to miss, little more than a concrete platform flush against the landscape. But once [her guide] pulled open the big red steel door, leading down into the residential quarters, a whole underground world emerged. [Proprietor Gary] Baker has reconstructed the silo as a combination history museum and you-are-there immersive experience. It’s cold and deathly quiet, aside from the clanging metal sound that accompanies all human movement.  

Baker lives four stories down with his wife in a full-service apartment complete with running water and Wi-Fi. The Airbnb unit sits just above that. It’s a surprisingly cheery space, with a little kitchen adjoining the main living room, plus a bedroom with two single beds and a bathroom with shower. The kitchen comes fully stocked—which is convenient, since there aren’t many restaurants or grocery stores in silo country. Baker also provides plenty of subject-specific, period-appropriate reading material. I spent a few minutes flipping through Rockets and Your Future, a 1961 book aimed at persuading teenagers to enter the space business. The biggest wow in Baker’s underground lair is the silo itself, located just a few steps from the door of the guest apartment. 

... The missile is long gone, of course. But it’s not hard to imagine it sitting there, encased in its underground habitat, waiting for the chance to burst up through the surface and kill hundreds of thousands of people.

If the official celebration of the 250th anniversary leaves you cold, I can heartily recommend this truthful and quirky romp through the American past and present. Many of us need some cheering up about our country these days. Beverly Gage provides.