A second day with an unedited blog post. I guess it shows how desperate I am to end a long period of silence even as events in Russia spin dangerously. Who knows where the centripetal forces will let something fly.
Yesterday I actually got some possible book writing get written. I’d like to do the same today but I discovered that fifth book I ordered on our doorstep. I paged through it and was reminded why I never got it years earlier. Its 900 pages for one thing and it is not written like a traditional history.
Just before peaking into it Claudia and I listened to another hour of history for our lunch hour. We’ve done a dozen histories of dictators on one service this one is Wondery’s American History tellers. The vivid episode we listened to was the first of a series on the Age of Jackson and its introduction to Jackson fit in perfectly with my reading of the repeated Trails of tears he inaugurated to push Native Americans aside. His no nonsense ferocity was legendary and got him labled by his detractors as an American dictator.
The new book I’m reading is about the politics of America as the ten year experiment called the United States of America is still housed in Philadelphia and President John Adams is at war with the grandson of Benjamin Franklin who writes dismissively of Adams as a wannabe King. The crux of historically minded author Richard N. Rosenfeld is our nation’s first attempt to curb a free press with the historically vilified Alien and Sedition Act.
I spent two hours trying to figure out the vast books organization which is a nearly day by day account of the Aurora’s reporting of the Congress which by 15 leads to someone throwing rocks through the windows of the paper that is housed just a block and a half from the Congress where it has reported a fracas between two Congressmen that the leaders of the day felt should not be publicized.
At this point I am thoroughly on the side of the press having suffered similar treatment. My blog was copied and sent to a judge when I challenged the Duluth School District by attorneys who hoped it would bring discredit to my side. And then I was censured by the school board majority for reporting on my blog the sales price (that later fell through) of the Duluth Central site.
Joining my old school board the Republican Congressional leaders want to censure Adam Schiff for leading the impeachment of Donald Trump.
I understand criticism of our free press, especially when it chooses to profit by telling lies to people who want to hear them.
On a post-it note this morning I jotted down this thought, “If you want to be ignorant watch Fox News (mostly). If you want to know what ignorant people are thinking watch Fox News.”
As for the Aurora……the author took up John Adam’s suggestion to read years worth of the Aurora to see if it unfairly reported about him based on the prejudices of his old Revolutionary compatriot Benjamin Franklin. The Author took the pains to write a book suggesting that just maybe people today should reevaluate this time in history. God knows if I’ll get very far through the 900 pages. I have a lot of history to wade through and I want to write my own book.
