Pineville Plan

 Photo from the Pineville Inn in Bucks County, PA, which served as a meeting place for Gen. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Here was drafted the plan to cross the Delaware and launch the daring attack on Hessian troops. 

Its a wild place to sit in many respects, not least as it raises the observation that Americans are oddly alienated not just from the culture, but the details of their history. Washington and Hamilton are now portrayed as mild and democratic "founding fathers" of our present order. That perspective from the standpoint of our fourth Republic is borderline mad, as each of the Republics have been a radically new form of government that arose under the specific sociological and economic conditions of its era. But none so unusual to today than the first.

Washington himself is best understood as a warlord who took Cinncinatus as his template (as his contemporaries often noted). And I think we fail to note how he looked at war - Washington was noted for pushing for government payment for scalpers. He waged war not just on the British and their proxies but also on American reticent over whiskey taxes. Those Americans, by the way, burnt down homes and tarred and feathered government officials over the taxes. Look up what that entails....

As for Hamilton: an elitist nationalist who called democracy a "disease" and "great beast". He would have deplored nothing so much as MAGA-ism, but also the bizarre managerial liberalism that is hegemonic in the West.

Some observations over lunch, which wasn't half bad...