Easy truths ...

Of course we have differences of opinions on various aspects of the human condition, within our countries and across the world.  I might disagree with you, dear reader, but I will not lose respect for you simply because we disagree.

However, there are issues where there is simply no fuzziness.  Some issues have only one correct answer each, and everything else is wrong.  And on those issues, if you choose, and advocate for those wrong answers, I lose respect for you. trump is one of those in these contemporary times.  

Three hundred years ago, it would have been slavery.

Even with all the understanding that I have, I simply cannot imagine how one group of humans decided that another group of humans was not not really human.  And, therefore, there was nothing wrong in making them slaves. Raping them. Torturing them. Branding them. How sick does one have to be in order to think this way!

The more Jill Lepore gets into slavery--I am yet to reach 1776 in the book--the faster that I am losing respect for the revered white men.  George Washington, who inherited his first human property as a ten year old, was no exception.  While I have, of course, known about the founders' slave-holding, it feels strikingly new when I read sentences like this:

George Washington's slaves had been running away at least since 1760. At least forty-seven of them fled at one time or another.

Let's recap. Washington, the ardent military man who is already engaged in self-governance for the colonies, is fully aware that his slaves are also willing to risk their lives for freedom by running away from his estate ... and the guy does nothing!

In December 1765, George Mason wrote--an essay--to Washington "in which he argued that slavery was "the primary Cause of the Destruction of the most flourishing Government that ever existed"--the Roman republic."

Towns here and there voted in favor of abolishing slavery.  But, these were in the minority.

As the armed conflict between the colonies and the British worsened, Lord Dunmore "offered freedom to any slaves who would join His Majesty's troops in suppressing the American rebellion."  The bastards were no noble saints; it was merely their bloody divide and conquer strategy at play here too.

In doing so, Dunmore tipped the scales:

Edward Rutledge, a member of South Carolina's delegation to the Continental Congress, said that Dumore's declaration did "more effectually work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies--than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of."

The symbolic Boston Tea Party didn't launch the revolution. Rather "it was this act; Dunmore's offer of freedom to slaves, that tipped the scales in favor of American independence."

To quote from Shakespeare, "For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men."

A final piece from Lepore wraps it all up:

If all men belonging to civil society are free and equal, how can slavery be possible? It must be, Virginia's convention answered, that Africans do not belong to civil society, having never left a state of nature.

Terrible!