“This Week in 1776” is an ongoing almanac of events from that year in the American Revolution. Be sure to check out my novel HEARTLANDERS.

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It has all been building to this…and then we have six more months to go. Just you wait until we get to Trenton.

The War Side

I’m abstaining from a focus on Arnold and the northern retreat because nothing new happens with him. Washington continues to fortify New York, and Admiral Richard Howe (British) starts to arrive off the coast of the city.

Side note: I’m pretty sure Sean Bean’s character in National Treasure was named Ian Howe in reference to the Admiral.

There are no major military engagements in the South.

July 2: The Lee Resolution

I covered the Lee Resolution as an American Document earlier this year. It was put to Congress on June 7th, 1776, and led directly to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

“That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Each state got one vote on the measure. The delegations had to agree by majority in order for their state’s vote to count. Overall the resolution passed 12-0. New York’s vote was delayed as they didn’t receive their voting instructions in time. South Carolina originally voted no, but once they saw the tally they switched their vote for unity.

July 3: Caesar Rodney’s Ride

Everyone remembers the ride of Paul Revere from 1775, but I really think we should also emphasize the ride of Caesar Rodney on the eve of the Declaration. It’s not as sexy because he rode for a political vote instead of a military warning, nevertheless without him bravely doing so in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm, the Declaration would have struggled to gain passage. Details:

—Delaware’s delegation had three members: Thomas McKean, George Reed, and Caesar Rodney.

—During this session in Congress, McKean and Reed were present, but Reed opposed Independence while McKean favored it. Despite being a small state, McKean knew that Delaware’s support would add strength and momentum to the measure. He knew Rodney favored independence but he was 80 miles away in Dover, doing militia stuff. McKean sent a message urging Rodney to show up for the vote.

—Rodney, 47, had asthma and cancer in his face. It had disfigured him so badly that he wore a scarf year-round to cover his jaw. Regardless, he got on a horse and spent the next 18 hours hammering turf to get to Philly for the vote. He was still dripping wet with mud on his boots when he voted, and Delaware’s assent broke the deadlock.

We should remember this bro.

July 4: The Adoption

July 4th is formally the day that Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, after all of the procedural stuff was taken care of. The text of it was sent to printers that night to be published in newspapers across the country.

The actual signing by “Fifty-[six] in iron pen, Mr. Matlack cannot offend” wouldn’t take place until August 2nd. (I believe I left this particular detail out of HEARTLANDERS but you should still read it.)

Thomas Jefferson Condemns Transatlantic Slavery

I wanted to mention this just because it’s a detail that merits preservation: an earlier draft of the Declaration included condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade, which many Signers opposed (the trade, not the condemnation) but it was such a divisive issue between North and South that they removed it from the final draft in order to get the vote through. (South Carolina and Georgia favored their slave trade, and Northern merchants profited from it.)

The Declaration wasn’t an omnibus bill: they couldn’t address every problem, they had to tackle things one at at time. Nevertheless, here is the text:

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither… Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce…”

I shall have expanded remarks about this at a future time when I’ve done some more reading on the transatlantic trade in the Americas. I’ll want to have the details fresh for that. It’s worth noting that Jefferson, who owned slaves, opposed the trade thereof, and wished that the problem didn’t exist at all.

Which is something to remember when disingenuous people bring it up.

John Adams Marks the Date

In a letter to Abigail Adams, John said:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

His only error was in the date. He expected Congress’s vote to take hold in the minds of the people, but the text of the Declaration was what stood out:

In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

And it was unanimous. New York would add their assent on July 9. I will probably mention that again next week.

I did try to throw John Adams a bone with the third book in my Engines of Liberty trilogy; it came out ten years ago this week, on the 240th anniversary of Congress’s vote. It’s called PATRIOT’S GAME.

Anyway. That’s what happened this week. And my heart is full of gratitude for it every year.

Thank you guys for reading. Have a fun Independence Day. God Bless America.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

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This concludes my reading of The Federalist Papers in advance of our country’s 250th birthday. Thank you for reading these.

Prior installments: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

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I. Am. Mentally exhausted from this exercise.

Let me tell you:

I started this project with a lot more enthusiasm than I had when I ended it, and anyone who says they enjoyed this is just trying to flex on you because you won’t shut up about the Hamilton musical. (Very good and simultaneously overrated. Also racist.)

Nevertheless, arduous tasks are only undertaken because they are necessary, or at the very least, the desired result is on the other side. Hamilton, who penned 51 of the 85 Papers, had a deep and broad understanding of the history of republics, especially the Achaian League of old Greece, the Holy Roman Empire, and others.

America could have started with all the promise in the world and it wouldn’t have mattered if our doom and failure were baked into the cake from the get-go, and he foresaw that the ultimate outcome of the Articles of Confederation could only be the dissolution of the United States. He stated his case pretty clearly in these papers, along with a future president and the first chief SCOTUS justice. These men knew what they were talking about—they quite literally wrote the book on the mechanisms of the Constitution.

While the Papers were front-loaded with history and essays on parallel examples, the back end was concerned primarily with justifying the built-in powers of each branch of government. I’m going to speed run all of these because once again, I am tired, the Papers are verbose, and a summary would be meaningless beyond one or two lines per.

And before anyone asks, I will not be reading the Anti-Federalist Papers this year. I don’t have it in me. I will be digesting these for another six months and I need a break. I will tackle the AFP in 2027.

Lightning Round

75: Why the Executive can make treaties with two-thirds of the Senate

76:Why the Executive can appoint department heads who must be confirmed by the Senate

77: A continuation of 76 (he often breaks up his points into multiple essays because he considers multiple scenarios where a plain reading of the statutes would create uncertainty or an imbalance of power)

78: Barriers between the Judiciary and the Legislature as pertains to term length, pay, and conduct

79: Safeguards for judicial independence (right around here I started to get annoyed because let’s just say Hamilton’s views were a little bit idealistic when contrasted with some of the stuff we’ve seen from the bench in our history)

80: Proper jurisdiction of federal courts compared to state courts

81: Expands on different elements of paper 80

82: Relationship between state courts and federal courts

83: Mainly pertains to trials by jury (recall what I said about the Bill of Rights, that most of the rights enumerated have to do with a citizen’s rights in court. This was a big concern then and remains one today.)

84: Grab bag of other points that he hasn’t addressed yet but has heard in public and read in the papers. The Bill of Rights didn’t exist yet and a lot of what he writes here will be covered by them, so it’s all good.

85: Closing remarks, Hamilton urges ratification. He says it’s better to adopt it now and amend it later than to go back to convention, which would open the Union up to a much more devastating fracture.

Conclusion

Earlier in this series I used the analogy of a surgeon trying to excise a tumor with an extremely precise cut of a mighty sharp blade. The specific allotment and limitation of powers as regards individual liberties is like that surgeon’s effort to cut away that tumor with a minimal impact on healthy tissue.

After reading these Papers I have a much greater appreciation for the magnitude of the task the Founders undertook. There’s a reason almost half of the Signers of the Declaration were lawyers. Those of us without a legal background seldom appreciate the advanced Western philosophies that govern pretty much everything we do, especially in a constitutional Republic where our rights are understood to come from God and not government.

These Papers are a sharp legal surgery with an ever-focusing microscope and a careful application of the blade before every cut. I joked a lot about agreeing with Aaron Burr every time I had to read one of Hamilton’s run-on sentence marathons. Honestly though, I think the last twenty Papers or so revealed who he really was and why he was doing this. (Madison is still my favorite Federalist, don’t get it twisted.) But this was definitely a Hamiltonian project en masse.

Whatever his flaws—and he was only as human as you or I—he was indispensable in making the case for our divinely inspired Constitution, and these Papers should form as much of a study about our Founding as any other series of documents to come out of that era.

I am looking forward to the arguments in the other direction. Just not right now. The 4th of July is tomorrow. Let me rest.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

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This is a very special edition of American Documents. I’m not running the normal preamble. I’ll keep the focus short and tight.

July 2nd was when the Lee Resolution was received by the Continental Congress, which was the precursor to declaring independence. The discussion was thorough and formal. The Declaration was then adopted on July 4th and signed mostly by the next month, with a couple of outliers. (The video below talks about this.)

First: Read This

Obviously the date is loaded with significance for Americans. In addition to Independence Day, July 4th also marked the deaths of three presidents and the births of one. James Monroe died on July 4th, 1831, and Calvin Coolidge was born on July 4th, 1872.

What’s insane is that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4th, 1826, exactly 50 years after they voted to adopt the Declaration in Congress. Jefferson died first and Adams died later the same day. This is one of those mythology-caliber events in American history that has always fascinated me.

I worked this into the lore of HEARTLANDERS. The idea is that George Washington discovered an ancient shrine in the American Heartland during his service in the French and Indian War—a sacred site where mortals can commune with the gods, and enter into agreements for protection and prosperity, if they meet certain standards of conduct.

Washington would later relay this information to other Founders, and they used that knowledge during their activities in 1776. I don’t go into the particulars of where and when in the book, only that several Founders (and Washington) entered the Shrine and made such a covenant that year. Adams and Jefferson were included.

The dual deaths of Adams and Jefferson created a fifty-year renewal interval. Every half century on July 4th, the President has to go to the Shrine and renew the covenant between God and America, or else divine protection will be lifted.

The book is set in 2076, twenty years after a cataclysmic solar storm and six days before the 4th of July. Frank Rammage and his team of Kryptonauts have to find the Shrine and escort the President there if they have any hope of getting America back on her feet.

Go read this book. Buy it and read it. Imagine if Michael Crichton wrote at pulp speed and swerved his truck into Dan Brown’s lane and said “Shut up, nerd.” That is HEARTLANDERS.

Second: Watch This

This video just premiered on the TMR YT channel. It’s a full list of who signed the Declaration, where they were from, how old they were, and what they did for a living. Then I give you a list of books to read (fiction and non) as well as movies to watch.

Third: Read These

John Quincy Adams, December 1826

JQ Adams didn’t offer a speech on July 4th, though he attended celebrations. The day was later overshadowed by his father’s death. He broached the subject during a national address later that year.

Ulysses S. Grant, May 1876

He opened the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia with these remarks.

J. Calvin Coolidge in 1926

He emphasizes the spiritual and religious roots of the Declaration, as any good president should. (You’re sleeping on Coolidge, go read about him.)

Gerald R. Ford, July 1976

He spoke at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and gave the famous line of “a flame to be fed, not ashes to be revered.”

Donald J. Trump in 2026

Trump will have remarks this weekend, no doubt. He kicked off the Great American State Fair last week in advance of that.

Mason Reynolds in 2076

Why yes, he gives a speech…go read the book…

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Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

I post several times per week on YouTube.

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Unlike most 40+ men sharing an opinion online about this movie, I’ve actually seen it. I’m a big fan of Superman and his surrounding lore, so I was naturally inclined to check this out after last summer’s good showing, and I wasn’t disappointed.

That said, I’m not going to glaze it either, and I do have some complaints, which are valid—because once again, I’ve actually seen it. I’m going to keep hammering this point. Most haters online are very high school about this stuff. “Oh but my favorite alcoholic YouTuber said he saw it so I didn’t have to!” How does it feel to outsource your thinking? I wouldn’t know. I’m capable of figuring out what I like on my own.

Anyways, here’s the rundown!

The Good

Story

Kara Zor-El is at a low spot in life after the deaths of her family and her homeworld. We learn through flashbacks that Krypton died a slow death, but part of the planet was preserved by her scientist father who wrapped a remnant of it in a force field. Nevertheless, the breakup of the core filled the atmosphere with kryptonite dust and people started dying of space cancer, including her parents.

Her father, Zor-El, built a copy of Superman’s spaceship and used it to send Kara and her dog Krypto to Earth. Unlike Clark, Kara wasn’t raised in a midwestern farming community; she’s jaded and likes to spend her time on planets with red suns so that she can get drunk. (We saw this at the end of Superman last year.)

Despite Clark’s attempts to reach out to her and make her feel at home, she’s still mourning and flying around the galaxy, living out of her car (spaceship) with her dog, the only thing she loves. While she’s camped out on one random planet, a local band of raiders called Brigands kill a swordsmith’s family, leaving only their daughter as a survivor. The daughter, Ruthye, goes on a revenge quest to kill the Brigands’ leader Krem. When Krem steals Kara’s ship and poisons Krypto, Kara is forced to team up with Ruthye so she can get the antidote from Krem.

As they journey together, predictable beats happen: Kara comes out of her alcoholic shell, Ruthye grapples with her desire for vengeance, and the clock is ticking on Krypto. By the end, they’ve both changed and grown and become friends, and Kara decides to permanently settle in on Earth with Clark, as it’s now her home.

Characters

Kara’s a good protagonist. She’s in a crap spot and engages in self-destructive behavior, but you can understand why, and it’s not portrayed glamorously. Through her forced interactions with Ruthye and the need to save her dog, Kara gets over the personal hurdles she has, and she plays the character charmingly. There are some pieces of dialogue that don’t land all that great here and there but I liked her in the role, Milly Alcock is a good actress.

David Corenswet reprises his role as Superman in sort of a bit-part, and I really like him here too. I hope he gets several more movies in the suit. He knows what he’s doing.

The only other role people had any questions about was Jason Momoa as Lobo. What’s he like? He’s like Lobo, and also like Jason Momoa. He’s fun and he pops up two or three times overall.

Other than those three, the roster is pretty thin. The villain was good, and whoever played him really leaned into the “crazy hobo space gangster” elements of his character, so that was nice. No cheesy monologues, just a powerful bottom-rung thug who makes everyone around him miserable. He’s also a human trafficker. You really want this dude to die.

I wasn’t crazy about the actress who played Ruthye. Her character was, again, understandably upset, but the actress tried too hard to convey that.

Oh and David Krumholz was Zor-El in the flashback. He’s good too. His entire role was performed in Kryptonian with English subs (there were a lot of those in the movie and I liked it).

Visuals

It’s somewhere between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy in terms of its grit, grunge, and color palate. The ships looked cool and practical and lived-in, and while other elements were recognizable (chairs and tables and condiment trays in a space bar) they weren’t just one-offs from Walmart. There was effort put into the set pieces and that showed.

The fight scenes were also excellent. Marvel are really bad about that in those movies, the directors really heavily on cuts between movements and the result is often disjointed or clunky. In Supergirl we get a lot of long, rotating one-shots that are all coherent and visually satisfying. Very well done.

Fidelity

Twenty years ago Smallville did this take on Clark and Kara, where he was the idealist and she was the “realist,” whose background was harder than his and so she was a little rougher to deal with. I think this was a good elaboration on that dynamic between the two of them.

Music

In short, I liked it, and I’ll look up the tracks. The only one I thought was weird was a slow female cover of “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, played during the climax. Odd choice.

The Bad

Superman Lore

I will say that my biggest complaint from James Gunn’s Superman was the idea that Jor-El sent Clark to conquer Earth and start a harem. I thought that was a fakeout that Lex Luthor published to turn people against Superman, but Gunn doubled down on it in interviews after the film came out. I can’t agree with that decision, and Gunn really needs to stop putting weird sex ideas in his superhero movies.

While Supergirl didn’t have a reference to the harem stuff, Zor-El and his wife did see Clark’s ship flying off as Krypton collapsed, and they mentioned that Jor-El’s son was off to conquer Earth. Again, that’s an idea that Smallville played with but they passed it off as Clark mistranslating a message from his father. That’s the right approach.

Novelty

Gritty and grungy superheroes are cool when they’re like…five percent of the stories you get. By now it’s a saturated trope and I’d like to see it well and truly disappear. That said, the total arc of the story is one where Kara gives up her attitude and figures out how to move on with her life, even as she helps someone she had no interest in.

That ending felt like a novelty, or at least a lesser-trod path. The revenge elements of the story were kind of bland and overdone. It got us where we needed to go with the story, I just had to accept that the character really wanted that because I didn’t feel it.

Pacing

The movie only clocks in at about an hour and forty but it feels longer than that. Some of the scenes could have moved a little better. The “muddy middle” is real.

Bodily Fluids

My biggest issue here. The movie opens up with Krypto peeing on the floor. Kara goes and gets drunk and she vomits. She talks to Clark on a video chat while she’s brushing her teeth. Ruthye comes to talk to her when she’s hungover and she needs to use the bathroom. Later you get other aliens vomiting or drooling or otherwise leaving ejecta all over the place…Ruthye even has to raid a Brigand armory while one dude is randomly taking a leak in a chamber pot. It was constant and disgusting. WTF.

The Future

“Graham, the movie lost eleventy jillion dollars!” I’m sorry that you lost eleventy jillion dollars—oh, wait, the movie lost that? So you didn’t lose anything? You didn’t pay the eleventy jillion dollars, right? You’re not on the board at Warner Bros? Okay cool then, I don’t care about the money. It cost me thirteen bucks ‘cause I took my wife for a Wednesday matinee. I got my thirteen bucks’ worth.

As far as the box office, I saw snippets online that the CEO was disappointed with the weekend receipts but that they were going to continue on with their plans for more DC movies. Cool. I like DC characters and I especially like Superman. I’m a fan so this excites me.

Box office discussions are cool if you want something to succeed and I guess also cool if you want something to fail, but let me just say that I’ve been there and it’s a dumb place to be. “I hope this movie loses money!” On some level I get it but on a bigger, sexier level, it’s a dumb thing to care about. I like comics and superheroes. I want better superhero movies. The ones we’ve gotten in the last two years are better than the ones we had in a few years before that. Box office doesn’t measure that. It doesn’t equal good movie or not. The Rocketeer wasn’t a box office success. That right there should tell you the box office is a dumb thing to follow.

Unless they’re burning your eleventy jillion dollars, I don’t really care, Margaret. This was a good superhero movie and I like seeing good movies. You should too.

Anyway, go read HEARTLANDERS.

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This is another ongoing series as I do a slow-read of THE ILIAD by Homer, translated by Rouse. Previous installments: book 1 | 2 | 3 | 4| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 & 10 | 11 & 12 |

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Book 13: Little Brother Syndrome

Poseidon, who definitely has a horse in this race (heh) decides to get a little more hands-on and he pays the Greeks a visit. Hector is inside the (shoddily-built) walls now and the army is pressed up against their ships so time is running out. Poseidon whips out one of the gods’ favorite superpowers—shapeshifting—and takes on the appearance of a prophet called Calchas. Then he pays a few Greeks a visit.

First on the roster: Ajax and Ajax. I didn’t mention this earlier but there are two of them, it didn’t seem like an important detail until now. They’re not related, they just have the same name. One is huge and the other is fast. The problem is right now they’re SUPER gassed after so much nonstop fighting, and they’re all demoralized besides.

But the moment “Calchas” visits them, he casts Bardic Inspiration with Reviving Touch and Courage Boost +4, along with a special manna regeneration spell that makes their hands and feet feel very light. Then he’s like “Guys, go kill Trojans,” before he walks off, and Ajax and Ajax look at each other and they’re BEYOND hyped.

“Bro!

“BRO!”

“I THINK THAT WAS POSEIDON, BRO!”

“BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” (etc)

Poseidon pays visits to other leaders like Idomeneus (who I’ve mentioned before, he’s the king of Crete, and he gets some major action in this book) and Meriones. Though he’s the god of the sea, he’s also the god of horses (and he has an epic stable underwater where he parked his chariot before going on this little adventure) and the god of earthquakes, so he’s sending the Greeks to shake the earth on his behalf here.

Thus equipped with their buffs, the Greeks smash into the Trojan army, who—in their defense—hold the line admirably. (Easy to do when Zeus has his cheat codes in play on their hero Hector.) Nevertheless, the Ajaxes, Meriones, and Idomeneus STACK bodies. It becomes a roster wipe for Troy as we get the history of who-killed-who and how. Even the gods have some sons and grandsons who get folded in this fight.

As it happened before with Diomedes, Aeneas finds himself squaring off against a god-touched Greek, only instead of Athena, this one has Poseidon in his corner. The battle between Aeneas and Idomeneus (with his epic thunderbolt armor) is awesome. Menelaus even comes into the fight after they’re done, just to remind them all how much he hates Troy for stealing his girl.

The Greeks would have won the battle, except Hector was just that good, and he kept the Trojan army from being completely overwhelmed. The battle ends with an eagle flying overhead, and this is where it’s worth pointing out that the Greeks are very pious and believe in omens, while Hector doesn’t put stock in it at all. Ajax and the others are animated by the sight of the eagle and while they’re upset they haven’t won the battle outright, they take it as a sign that something good is coming. No spoilers.

Book 14: Divine Hoe Behavior

I mean, I guess it’s not really “hoe behavior” since they’re married, but there are definitely dishonest intentions at play here…hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Down on the ground, the Greeks are licking their wounds, and Agamemnon even floats the idea of getting everyone into the ships and sailing away. Odysseus dresses him down in front of the others for the very notion. While they’re arguing over this, Hera watches from Olympus, and she gets a very base idea to help her favored nation.

She goes and locks herself in her very special chambers that nobody else can get into, and she gets herself all purdied up and cleaned and dressed in her best stuff—I don’t know what women’s clothes are called, it’s like revealing and whatever—and she does her hair up and shaves her legs and wears perfume and even makes a quick stop at Aphrodite’s Secret to pick up something extra special for this occasion, and finally she teams up with “Sleep” (Hypnos) for a strategy session.

With everything in place, she flies from Olympos down to Zeus’s little cloud fortress where he’s watching the battle and fortifying Hector. The perfume hits Zeus like a truck and he folds almost immediately, not knowing that the special item from Aphrodite—a “girdle of desire”—is casting +16 Horniness and -19 Inhibition. Hera walks all sultry around him and touches him on the arm or whatever and asks if he’s been working out, and how did he get so funny? Zeus, whose brain immediately devolves into caveman mode, congratulates himself for Still Having It, and he pitches this wild idea to Hera that they should definitely Do It right here, right now.

Hera, naturally, is scandalized but tantalized by the idea, not least of all because it would distract Zeus from Hector. However, they couldn’t possibly Get It On in the open like this, the mortals are watching! So Zeus snaps his fingers and wraps them in a nest of golden love clouds, and they dance the Divine Hibbity Dibbity. It’s the best thirty-eight seconds of Hera’s life, after which Hypnos works his magic and puts Zeus to sleep. Operation Midnight Thunder is a success.

Without his brother screwing things up (heh), Poseidon can now openly turn the tide against Troy. Hector, who is suddenly very confused at the lost of his protagonist status, has to pull his men away from the Greek ships because they are getting it. Ajax even knocks Hector down with a huge rock. They really like to do that in this book. (Ajax is stopped and Hector is spared because Zeus wakes up and throws a thunderbolt between them.)

The battle is epic, as they always are in this story, and the Greeks regain significant ground, though the war still needs to play out. Zeus is mad at Hera, but not too mad, because didn’t matter, had s*x. (And they’re married so that’s okay.)

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

I post several times per week on YouTube.

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“Electoral Brawlage” examines the first inaugural address of each president in U.S. history, with some commentary and analysis. Check back on Mondays for more.

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A Dozen Years on Average

While the scope of this project normally lays with a president’s first inaugural address, Teddy’s ascension to the Presidency took an abnormal path. William McKinley’s first-term VP, Garrett A. Hobart, died in 1899 of heart disease, and at the time there was no legal mechanism for a president to replace his #2. That would come in the 1960s with the ratification of the 25th Amendment.

The 1900 GOP convention selected Teddy as the new V.P. candidate; he was popular, and a rising star in New York, an important state—though he rankled the in-state party machine. More on that in a second. McKinley-Roosevelt won 1900 with an electoral breakdown of 292-155 over William Jennings Bryan, who apparently didn’t learn his lesson the first time.

On September 6, 1901, a Polish-American anarchist shot McKinley twice in the stomach, and he died a week later from gangrene. The assassin thought that killing the president would advance the cause of anarchy. All it advanced was several thousand volts of electricity through his worthless anus when he got the chair two months later. I hope the sponge was dry.

Between Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, America had now lost three presidents to assassination in 36 years. Think about it: there were people who lived through all three of those and it had become, to some extent, normal. That would be like me at age 6 seeing Bush 41 get plugged, then twelve years later Bush 43, then twelve years later Obama. Not a great norm to establish.

The Youngest President

Teddy Roosevelt was six weeks shy of turning 43 when he assumed office, making him the youngest to ever take the job. (JFK was 43 when he was elected, so he holds an adjacent record.) Obviously it wasn’t a time for celebration, but rather it was a whirlwind of things for him, catapulting this Spanish-American War veteran and former N.Y. governor into the big chair just one year after being picked at the convention.

You can read the full text of his 1901 assumption remarks here, about halfway down the page. It’s short.

This is regarded historically as an ironic twist, because Teddy rocked the boat in New York politics, and the Republican establishment wanted to shut him up and neutralize his influence. Crowbarring him into the V.P. slot would allow the party to use his celebrity and image for its own purposes while removing him from hands-on power. Teddy wanted to run for higher office later and stay in New York as governor, and the convention results forced him down another road.

Fate intervened, and a moronic anarchist merely caused a progressive Republican to skyrocket into the most powerful job in the world. Good job, retard.

The 1904 Election

I started including these pictures because the image speaks for itself. (We used to be a proper country, etc.) Teddy finished McKinley’s term without a VP for the aforementioned reasons. When he ran in 1904 he picked Charles Fairbanks (Indiana) as his running-mate. The Democrats nominated Alton B. Parker (New York) and Henry G. Davis (West Virginia). Roosevelt/Fairbanks took 32 states to Parker/Davis’ 13, with an Electoral breakdown of 336/140.

The popular vote was an eighteen-point chasm (56.4 to 37.6), or a difference of over two and a half million. Out of a voter base of around thirteen million, that’s not just a beatdown, that’s a prison shower. We won’t see these numbers again for a few cycles. FDR will do it in the 30s, LBJ in the 60s, Nixon in the 70s, and Reagan in the 80s. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 1905 Inaugural

At long last we arrive at the speech. When we pine for leaders of yesteryear who talk about the American character in spiritual terms, who lay out a philosophy of virtue that captures who we are in our souls, this is the kind of leadership we’re looking for. The speech itself is short, and doesn’t tie itself to the events of the time, but rather the enduring nature of the vision we ought to hold for ourselves and for the world. Some selections:

No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness.

…

Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither…But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves.

…

If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.

…

Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged.

…

…we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal…

Go read the whole thing. Let me know what you think.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

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“This Week in 1776” is an ongoing almanac of events from the American Revolution, mostly political and military in nature. I drew on these very loosely for my Engines of Liberty series of YA novels.

You should also check out The History List—they have an excellent merch store and occasionally they get valuable historical pieces that are very much worth their prices. I’m not sponsored by them, they just make great stuff.

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Congress in Philadelphia

The Committee of Five (Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Sherman, Livingston) presents its first draft of the Declaration of Independence. There is some argument over verbiage, and they make around 80 edits to the text. Meanwhile Congress continues to manage the logistics of the war, they receive reports from Canada, and the Iroquois continue to hang out and observe.

Arnold in Canada

I thought a map would be helpful to show that Arnold & Co were directly north of Washington down in New York. The red dotted line is the outline of Lake Champlain, a natural obstacle that Arnold used to cover his retreat, and will be the stage of another conflict later in the war. For now, they’re still limping away as fast as they can on empty stomachs and bare feet, in many cases.

Washington in New York

The Thomas Hickey plot—wherein some of Washington’s Life Guards (proto-Secret Service) plotted to betray him—comes to its conclusion. Future SCOTUS Justice John Jay carried out the trial and convicted Thomas Hickey on charges of “mutiny, sedition, and treacherous correspondence with the enemy.”

The trial was on June 26, and Washington approved the death sentence on June 27. Hickey was hanged by the neck until dead on June 28, at what is now the intersection of Grand and Chrystie Streets in New York. 20,000 spectators turned out to watch. Although Hickey wasn’t the only one involved, he was the only one executed, and the others were transported or exchanged for valuable prisoners. Washington wanted to make sure the whole army got the message.

Elsewhere

The South finally sees some action when Charleston’s Sullivan Island takes heat from the Brits, and a huge battle takes place between Royal ships and Patriot militia. The Patriots are some 800 strong under Colonel William Moultrie, while the British commander is—I excrement you not—Commodore Peter Parker.

British guns pounded the Patriot fortifications, basically a fort made out of palmetto logs, and even knocked down the Patriots’ flag (a South Carolina flag.) Limey cannonballs may have been accurate that day, but they were no match for Sergeant William Jasper’s huge brass ones as he went out under heavy fire, retrieved the flag, and hung it back up, which must have been extremely hard to do with both middle fingers raised. That’s just South Carolina for you. They still celebrate Carolina Day in remembrance of the Battle of Sullivan Island.

American losses ranged between 12 and 35, while the Brits were repelled and took over 200 casualties. It was the biggest victory until that point and the most significant morale boost for the colonies since Boston a few months ago. The Patriots would hold South Carolina until 1780 after this huge W.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

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What is this?

A few weeks ago the news broke that a movie had been banned by the entire country of Germany before it was released, which may have been part of the marketing strategy, in retrospect. Filmmakers are no stranger to the tactic where they put something overtly verboten in their work just to get people to talk about it.

As an indie author, I can appreciate the temptation; I struggle to get people to talk about my work (go read HEARTLANDERS.)

The movie in question was Citizen Vigilante, by German filmmaker Uwe Boll (pronounced ‘Uva Bowl’). I know I’ve heard his name but I couldn’t rattle off his oeuvre without looking it up, I just know that he’s been at it for a while and people tend to regard his work as “niche.” Which is fair.

The premise is simple and well-trod: the law isn’t protecting people like it should, so a normal guy becomes a vigilante and kills criminals who keep Getting Away With It. The cops try to close in on him because this could end poorly for all involved…the end.

No seriously, this isn’t a movie with a plot. It’s a lot of people talking into cameras, a LOT of people getting shot and killed, and that’s pretty much it. Armie Hammer plays a guy named Sanders, who is American, though the film takes place in Europe, making him…not a citizen, lol. But you get a little bit of backstory on him as the film unfolds, and you find out he inherited his late father’s European rental properties, only to discover that many of them are being used for crime. He then uses his army training to hunt down criminals who escape the legal system and he usually kills them.

He quickly becomes a social media sensation, not least of all because he regularly releases videos explaining why he does what he does, and taunts the police for their impotence. The news covers the crime he fights in unrealistically blunt and honest language, almost as if excusing him or siding with him, which lights a fire under the cops to do something about him. This leads to one of of the worst scenes in the film, where Sanders lures a SWAT team into a trap house and mows them all down with high-powered rifles, then booby-traps his escape hatch to kill the survivors.

Make no mistake, the morality of the protagonist is highly suspect, and his motivations are never explained. At times they’re a matter of ethics, other times a matter of finance. He even kills an innocent bystander to make a point to a corrupt judge right before he kills him too. His methods are counterproductive sometimes, and the whole film feels underdeveloped as a result.

Another problem with the film is its dialogue, and I can only describe it this way: I’m 41, and I’ve been fluent in Spanish for 25 years. I can hold a great conversation in that language, I can read and write in it, and I understand various cultures in Spanish-speaking countries. But if I were to sit down and write a novel (or a screenplay) in Spanish, I’d struggle to produce something above a middle-school reading level. The language barrier does that, and conversational competency is not the same as artistic ability.

Go watch the trailer I posted above. The side characters all speak like English is their second language, and their dialogue was written by someone with that same relationship to it. Armie Hammer talks like a guy who’s just glad to be coming back from cancellation a few years ago, and he wears the Sanders character like an uncomfortable sock with a hole in the toe. All of this converges to create a sort of patina where you can tell what the film is trying to convey, it just gets muddied by how it says it.

So…why watch it?

Nevertheless, its value comes from its portrayal of a real-world problem that the European media is all too content to ignore or misrepresent: migrant crime. It isn’t just petty crime that The System ignores, it’s specifically crime from Africa and the Middle East that has taken root in European nations. (We’re never told which one, it’s just ‘Europe’ and you roll with it from there.)

IRL this has been a growing problem for decades, and has especially boiled over in the last five years. The default reaction of European press and law enforcement is to punish native Europeans for even complaining about migrant crime, while literal rapists and murderers get a slap on the wrist—if they get any punishment at all.

And this component alone is probably why I watched the movie all the way to the end. Finding myself on the right-wing side of the political spectrum, I’m really not used to seeing my ideas or observations stated in cinema with anything less than sarcasm or malice. So even though Hammer’s overwrought delivery of Boll’s basic right-wing talking points is somewhat flat to me, the movie has gotten a lot of buzz because it’s novel to audiences. I wanted to see what conclusions Boll came to through his script (he was the writer as well as the director.)

Despite having heard the term “exploitation film” for years, I don’t think I truly understood it until I saw Citizen Vigilante. For all of its flaws, it grabs a hot-button issue that you’re Not Supposed To Talk About and puts it front and center, with right-wing talking points that may as well be ChatGPT regurgitations of Our Tweets. The target audience is normies and left-wingers who either don’t know about the problem or actively deny it, while right-wingers will look at it and say “Yes, obviously.”

To be honest I thought the ending made the entire film feel a little underwhelming; it’s more a series of vignettes than a full plot, it’s not completely linear, and there’s a fair amount left unexplained, but you still have a generally clear idea of what happened by the time the credits roll. Taking all of this in the aggregate, my concluding thoughts were of Jonathan Swift, whose works I probably hadn’t considered since high school.

Who is Jonathan Swift?

In 1729, Irish author Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal” in response to crippling poverty in Ireland, where most landlords were English and most citizens were broke-but-cranking-out-babies. With high rents and sparse living conditions sucking up their humble income, the Irish had a lot of problems and almost no recourse from their landlords. Swift’s solution—delivered in a deadpan serious tone—was for the Irish to fatten up their babies and then sell them to the English as foodstuffs. In high school we studied this essay as part of a unit on classical satire.

The teacher asked us to state what Swift was “really trying to say” in our own words, and my conclusion was that he meant to seriously propose something so preposterous that those in power, who had no solutions for anything, would look really stupid for not coming up with anything better. Of course he didn’t actually want the Irish to profit off of English infanticide and cannibalism; but the very proposal would get people talking and force the English to answer some relatively lesser questions.

I kept thinking of Swift in the back half of this film. I really think this was Boll’s own “Modest Proposal.” Rather than live in fear and constantly hear about another woman being beaten and raped in the UK, why not just hunt the criminals and murder them?

That’s inhumane!

Okay then, we send them back to their birth country. Remigrate. It’s not murder, which makes it the moderate—even compassionate—option.

No, that’s racist! They have to stay here!

And keep raping and murdering?

That’s racist of you to say!

I’m not going to shut up and let this keep happening, that’s extreme and unacceptable. Thus the extreme option is to kill them, and the moderate option is to send them home. They can’t stay here, they’re killing and raping everyone. Not a western value.

And thus we see.

Yeah, I think Uwe Boll knew what he was doing here, between the subject matter and the lead casting choice. The controversy and word-of-mouth have definitely driven attention to his work, which is the hardest thing to achieve in the digital economy. The time, place, and subject are different, but he’s doing the same thing Jonathan Swift* was almost 300 years ago: challenging people to propose a better option that will work.

The rapes and murders will continue until you do.

*Jonathan Swift was hella better at writing though

Content Warning

The shooting scenes are really violent, there is a LOT of blood and guts in the scene where the SWAT team gets taken out. That said, Boll’s script and cinematography make it so that you can feel it coming and know when to look away if needed.

It’s a European movie so there’s also a brothel scene and it’s really tasteless. I had foreknowledge of said scene and fast-forwarded when it came up—apparently it depicts a protracted sex act between Sanders and a prostitute, after which he admonishes her to take better care of the building, which he owns. File under “bad morality.”

Surprisingly it didn’t go too hard on the profanity, though there were a few F-bombs as well as other hard language leading up to it.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. The movie was free on Twitter (and will be through 27 June 2026). After that you have to pay to stream it.

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2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. So far I have covered The Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry’s Speech, The Lee Resolution, The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Treaty of Paris, the Virginia Plan, The Northwest Ordinance, The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Monroe Doctrine, the Indian Removal Act, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club rules, Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ Speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address, the Appomattox Surrender Letters, the Homestead Act, the Gettysburg Address, the Alaska Purchase, the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, Susan B. Anthony’s Speech on Women’s Suffrage, and the Nez Perce Surrender.

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The 19th century was one of massive expansion for the United States, whether it was in buying Louisiana from France, settling Texas, or defeating Mexico to acquire the Mountain West and the Great Basin. This brought in new settlers, homesteaders, farmers, workers, and States.

To the American Indians, it often meant a new set of landlords, as it had for centuries. First the Spanish, then the French, now the United States. Two incompatible systems couldn’t occupy the same space at the same time, and so something had to give. It tended to be the more numerous or powerful Americans who won the struggle, and the Amerindians had to figure out a new way (and a new place) to live.

I covered Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy earlier this year. Contrary to modern revisionism, the goal was to preserve the Amerindian Nations, and on that front it succeeded, as they are still here and are more numerous than they were two hundred years ago. Nevertheless it is an immutable fact of history that many of them suffered and were wronged as a result of the policy. To further complicate matters, the Indian Territory to which they’d been moved was now surrounded by beneficiaries of the Homestead Act, as well as migrating Americans from the Westward Expansion.

Once again, two incompatible systems and cultures were occupying the same space at the same time, or very nearly so. The United States wasn’t going to dissolve itself and ship all the white people to Europe, and pure annihilation was abhorrent and unsavory (though such episodes did occur.) Thus it was incumbent upon lawmakers to figure out a new solution.

The Dawes Act came up in the 1880s during the era of “paternalism” reforms, wherein the government aimed to reduce the number of things it managed and instead encouraged people to take care of their own business (what a NOVEL concept…) Since the American Indians were one such group that was, ostensibly, in the government’s care (or under their protection), the idea was to “modernize” their way of life so that it more closely mirrored that of other Americans.

To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section;
To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section;
To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and
To each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section:

The focus was on land holdings. Amerindian tribes held their lands communally, which more closely resembled their pre-colonial way of life; one person didn’t hold the land or stake a claim to it, instead it belonged to The People. (Most Native American tribe names translate to “the people” in their own languages.) The Act allotted 160 acres to a family, with smaller plots going to individuals based on age and circumstance. Any leftover land could be sold, but the land allotted to the Tribal members would go into a trust for a few decades.

This would prevent other settlers from coming in and buying the excess land, driving up the cost of the Tribal lands, buying those lands, and then leaving the Tribes with literally nowhere else to go and nothing to buy. (Hey Blackrock: f.u.) With the land directly assigned to families and cordoned off for farming, the Tribal members could adopt modern agricultural methods and hopefully, in time, assimilate to American modes of living.

This may come as a surprise, but yeah, American Indians weren’t automatically United States citizens. The definitions of an American was a lot more narrow in these years, even if it was expanding in legal terms. Amerindians were effectively foreigners in a nation whose boundaries were in flux from a number of factors. Granting them citizenship was a heck of an olive branch after what so many of them had been through, and if the program were successful, it would have strengthened both peoples as time went on.

The full scope of the Act’s success would have to be a longer article, and exceeds the aim of this project. By and large, I’m not sure it worked as intended. It caused a lot of problems in succession, and inheritors divided the land into plots so small they were basically unworkable. “Checkerboard ownership” became a problem when land holdings eventually did go up for sale, and the Tribes lost a LOT of land in the aggregate anyway.

The Dawes Act was repealed in 1934 and replaced by the Wheeler-Howard Act, or Indian Reorganization Act.

In summary, the Dawes Act wanted to change the reservation system and move into a more direct assimilation model, bringing the Tribes into the United States as full members and citizens. The deeply-embedded cultural differences between the Tribes and the Americans couldn’t be done away with by the stroke of a pen, and while well-intentioned, such things should be judged by their results too.

The government was trying to figure out a peaceful and prosperous solution to a problem that might have worked with one group, but others resisted it, and the relationship between the Fed and the Tribes would continue in its difficulty for a long time.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

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This is another ongoing series as I do a slow-read of THE ILIAD by Homer, translated by Rouse. Previous installments: book 1 | 2 | 3 | 4| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 & 10 |

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I continue to double-these up as part of the new schedule. Here we go!

Book 11

Open warfare between the Greeks and Trojans on the beach! Let’s rock! Remember how Diomedes became an unholy killing machine back in book 4? Well now it’s Agamemnon’s turn, as he puts a performance on for the ages, and we’re reminded why this guy is king. Once again, Brian Cox was horribly miscast to play this man, he’s even bigger than Achilles!

Even knowing that Hector has the naked favor of Zeus, the Greeks rally behind their king as he stacks bodies on the battlefield. He’s so dangerous that Hector stays back while he’s out there…although this is the result of some divine cheating. Zeus, who’s still chilling in the clouds and watching this play out, sends Iris (goddess of rainbows) to tell Hector what to do: abstain from battle until Agamemnon is injured, and when he is, he’ll withdraw, at which point Hector can enter the fray.

Before long, Agamemnon takes a hit that he can’t ignore (he tries at first, but after enough blood loss he’s basically in the same amount of pain as a woman in labor), so he leaves and is replaced at the forefront by Odysseus and Diomedes. It isn’t long before the latter runs into Hector and, using all his strength, chucks his huge spear directly into Hector’s helmet, hitting it so hard that it throws him backward and really rings his bell. Epic hit, but it doesn’t kill him. A dizzy Hector gets up and jumps into his chariot to get away.

While Diomedes is gloating, Paris that insufferable pantywaste, jumps out from behind a boulder and pumps an arrow into Diomedes, pinning his foot to the ground. Paris talks some serious trash about landing a blow. Diomedes, annoyed at such a piddling little injury, claps back with some mad freestyling and you just know there was a bard in the wings somewhere to drop a fat beat on it.

(This goes on for a moment.) Diomedes basically says he’s going to rip him in half and make his women and children cry. Unfortunately he’s forced to retreat and tend to his foot, leaving Odysseus alone at the front, surrounded by vicious Trojan warriors…who have all suddenly fallen into his trap. (Homer describes the coming action as a bunch of hunting dogs who are about to get gored to death by a single boar.)

Odysseus opens up a whole 12-can case of whoopa$$. The count in a single paragraph is two dead and four wounded bad enough that they can’t keep fighting, and he ain’t even done yet. One man, Socos, is able to injure Odysseus’s shield arm, but Odysseus puts a spear in his back as he’s running away, adding to his kill count. He’s rescued by the next wave when Ajax comes in and starts busting heads.

Hector hears of this and gets ready to square up with Ajax, but the latter has to retreat, as there are too many Trojans for him to overcome. The Greek heroes escape.

And here we take a hard cut back out to the beach, where Achilles is watching from his ship, just chilling, probably drinking a lo-carb Monster. He sees Nestor bringing the injured back to the boats, and sends Patroclus to go check that out. Nestor complains to Patroclus that Achilles could be helping out there, but he’s not fighting and the men are suffering for it.

Here’s where Nestor pitches Patroclus an idea: why don’t you put on Achilles’ armor and go into battle?

In the business, we call this…

Book 12

Troy has now driven the Greek army back to their ships, and within the fortified wall that they hastily threw up to defend themselves. It’s a good wall…for a few minutes. The Trojans attack it directly. “The gods did not consent to the building; and therefore it did not stand long.” Shoulda paid the sacrifice tax, my guy.

Prior to the attack, Hector receives advice from one of the wiser men in his army, Polydamas, who interprets some signs in the sky (birds hunting snakes on the ground) as omens and portents of what is to come—and in a hilarious turn of events, Hector immediately replies with what I myself was thinking: “Dude, you’re telling me to watch birds and base my strategy off of that? Instead of doing what Zeus says to do? Are you [expletive] stupid? Dude.” I dunno, I laughed.

Hector attacks the Greeks. Zeus sends a gust of wind to blow sand into the Greeks’ faces. Things are just not going the Greeks’ way.

A key player in the attack is Sarpedon of Lycia. The Lycians were allies of Troy, but not Trojan by blood. Glaucus, who made a really unbalanced metal trade earlier, was also Lycian. They were really good fighters and the Trojans used them as a sort of “special forces” unit. Bonus points, Sarpedon is the literal son of Zeus and a mortal woman, so he enjoys even higher demigod status than Achilles.

Also mirroring Achilles, Sarpedon values battlefield glory over long life and comfort. He understands the true cost of good trappings back home: it isn’t birthright or wealth, but the willingness to kill or die in service of one’s nation. He gives a great speech to Glaucus before jumping into the fray. Both Lycians end up facing off against Ajax, but they are successful in tearing a hole in the Greek wall.

The fight is grueling and bitter—Homer compares it to the desperation with which a single mother sells wool to feed her kids—and Zeus lets it go on for a while, before finally nudging Hector along, and he rallies his men for a final push through the wall. He even picks up a HUGE rock that not even two strong men could have handled (“but Zeus made it light in his hands”) and he uses it to bust the gates open. He jumps through the gate, weapons in hand, aura-farming like there’s no tomorrow. “No man alive could have checked that rush.” The Greeks panic and flee before him.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

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President William McKinley is one of those “in-betweener” guys whose legacy isn’t often on the forefront of our awareness. Can you name a policy he was known for? Maybe a gaff? Anything memorable that he said? I can’t, or I couldn’t before I read his inaugural speech.

The central issue of the 1896 campaign was money. I mentioned last week that “bimetallism,” or using both gold and silver to back a nation’s paper currency, was a hotly-debated subject. The Republicans favored a gold standard and protective tariffs, while the Democrats favored the use of both metals to ease post-depression financial burdens. (There was a depression in 1893.)

McKinley ran for the Republican Party. He was a former governor from Ohio. His running mate was Garrett Hobart from New Jersey. On the Democrat side, William Jennings Bryan ran with Populist Party support. This was a complicated prospect, and not the kind of thing we see often these days, but the Populists and Democrats were kind of like two drivers in the same car. They both nominated Bryan as their candidate, but the Dems had Arthur Sewall (Maine) as their VP while the Populists picked Thomas Watson (Georgia.)

If you’ve ever heard of William Jennings Bryan, doubtless you’ve heard of his “Cross of Gold” speech. He was known for being a powerful and talented orator, and he took a religious fervor with him when he spoke on the campaign. At the convention he delivered the speech, with restored audio found here:

130 years ago, people got fired up about actual matters of substance. Can you imagine? Now we’ve got whiners arguing over the Reflecting Pool and hoping it gets dirty. Gayest timeline.

Anyway, I have no idea how the Dems and Pops planned to resolve their different VPs if Bryan won, but it doesn’t matter, because he obviously didn’t. McKinley took the Electoral Vote by 95 (271 to 176) but only took one state more than Bryan (23 to 22). Such a huge disparity, even though he won the utterly worthless popular vote 51% to 46.7% (with an almost 80% voter turnout.)

It gets even nuttier when you consider the difference in tactics. McKinley (53) outspent Bryan (36) by five to one, while Bryan traveled roughly 18,000 miles by train to campaign. McKinley’s money went to targeted mailers and local rallies. He barely traveled; people came to see him speak. The age and style difference was…man. Dudes weren’t even playing the same game.

His Address

Having won with a considerable Electoral victory, McKinley embraced the “mandate” given by voters, but didn’t invoke it as his first point; he went straight to faith and reminded the population what we are capable of when we remember God’s commandments.

(Somewhere in an old diesel pickup truck out west, Frank Rammage just sat up a little straighter.)

Then he went into the money question. As far as he was concerned, gold and tariffs had defeated bimetallism and now it was time to bite down. Like anyone with good fiscal sense, he admonished the country to understand the state of things as they were (depression) and that the government HAD to cut back on spending since things were tight.

Whereas a modern politician might lay the blame of fiscal problems on the doorstep of The Other Party, McKinley spoke to the people about their own character and history, with an eye to the future, that we would get out of the financial ditch we were in.

He wanted civil service reform to continue, the kind started by Garfield and continued by Arthur. He didn’t want foreign entanglements, wars of aggression or expansion, and sound foreign policy generally.

The bulk of his remarks centered on good conservative philosophy as well as national roots and unity. I like that he closed it out with this:

In a time of hardship, he was sane and positive, at least from the get-go. I’ll eventually read biographies of every president and I’m curious what else I’ll find when I dive into his life.

This was a good speech. Go read it.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

I post several times per week on YouTube.

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I was going to write this article anyway, and when I logged in to do so, I had a notification waiting that perfectly underscored the point I want to make.

Last week I took my son to see the new He-Man movie. I was blunt and honest about it—it was a fun time with my kid, the movie had some pretty good moments, overall it was dumb, but so was its source material, they just executed well on the adaptation.

A subscriber (and I do thank you for subscribing, Big K—this isn’t an attack on you) misread my assessment as if I was telling people to go see Masters of the Universe so they could own the chuds, or whatever. I was not. I’m just a dad who saw a movie with my son and we had fun together. I even said at the end of the review that if I’d seen it without him, I’d have felt dumb because it is a kids’ movie. It just has a lot of dirty jokes in it that they should have left out. The end.

Setting aside the timeless piece of cinematic IP that is the He-Man universe (note: this is sarcasm), I think the response to it is symptomatic of a larger sickness that continues to echo from the death rattle of the Culture War. Pop culture got so bad—and so ideologically one-sided, in favor of degeneracy and indefensible storytelling—that an entire subculture of entertainment arose simply out of mocking it.

I think it kind of started with CinemaSins on YouTube around 15 years ago, and then new iterations evolved from that, like How It Should Have Ended, Pitch Meeting, and others. Then the more committed haters popped up, like Nerdrotic, Az, Critical Drinker, Geeks & Gamers, and more. They strapped up for the Culture War and made a lot of money and clout by making fun of bad art.

The problem is that things did eventually get better, and there’s no money in saying that. It isn’t what their audience wants to hear. Mainstream audiences, normie audiences, are back in the business of liking things.

But even if they weren’t—this is the crucial part—it’s still not healthy for us as individuals or as society to constantly s**t on everything all the time. To throw a punch where it isn’t merited. To engage instead of just…ignoring something that doesn’t work for you.

This isn’t a phenomenon limited to one side of the spectrum. Things that we could enjoy together—or ignore altogether—instead get crowbarred into a partisan ideological conflict so people can force the entire world into their perspective. Around 2016 it hit the NFL with the Kaepernick kneeling campaign, and suddenly we weren’t allowed to watch football without getting lectured about race relations, which only forced people to examine shared spaces through a divisive lens. This spread into other sports like soccer, where the US Women’s team won their World Cup a few times (right?) and rather than being able to celebrate that, we got lectured about their paychecks, and any mention of them in the news had to bring that up.

It happened in publishing with “Own Voices” and “representation” and “inclusion,” usually about race. It hit comics like a freight train, usually about rainbow stuff. TV, the little sister of movies, got hit too, nothing was spared. This went on for years and wasn’t made any better by Covid or the other shenanigans from 2020. I don’t think we started to crawl out of it until Top Gun: Maverick came out, which was very broadly enjoyed, and even then there were haters who were determined not to like it because the plot was basically Star Wars.

(I mean yeah, it was, but it was awesome, like Star Wars, so who cares?)

Too many people are still rolling along in that gear. Something cool or fun or even harmless comes along, and there’s this urge they can’t control where they just have to s**t on it. The Left have always done this, and the Right are getting worse about it. Oh, the USA won gold in hockey at the Winter Olympics for the first time in 46 years? “I’m so glad I don’t have to care about hockey! I’m above that!” We’re hosting the World Cup of soccer and doing well in the tournament? “Soccer is a third world sport, I’m proudly not watching it!” The New York Knicks won the NBA title, breaking a 53-year dry spell, and they’re going to the White House to meet the president—the first NBA team to do so under Trump—and the response is mostly enwerd enwerd enwerd enwerd with reminders that NYC is a communist hellhole.

And don’t get it twisted, NYC is a communist hellhole, but what does that have to do with the Knicks accomplishing something great and reversing an ugly trend in professional sports? “Their fans went on a crime spree and destroyed cars in NYC after they won!” Yes, they did! NYC is full of stupid people, is this news to you? It wasn’t the players who did this, they put everything they had into the series and they won a title! Do we not celebrate real meritocratic success any more?

Europeans have traveled to the US in droves to watch World Cup matches, and they’re posting on social media about how awesome America is—how it’s not the America they see on TV back home (largely depicted as NYC and LA, two communist hellholes). This comes right on the heels of a massive social media waves of Europoors insulting America, only to love it when they actually see what it’s like.

Rather than be gracious hosts and high-five our guests, you get grumptards on the Right condemning the celebrations because hurr durr, you’re acting like you need their approval, that’s little brother behavior. Yes that is an actual take I saw. It’s almost like it doesn’t matter what actually happens, these people can find a reason to be assmad about it. That’s brain poison right there.

Again I reiterate the next best option: if you don’t like it, let it die. We live in the attention economy. Any mention of something online is a mark in the data trail. That is useful to creators. Bad press is still press. Take it from an indie author: it is SO DAMN HARD to get people to talk about my work. (Go read HEARTLANDERS.) If I had people spamming out content about my books, even if it was negative, I guarantee you I’d be using that to reach an audience that is not them, and it would help me sell. But I can’t even get that much because marketing is basically voodoo and I do not understand it.

Look for this behavior. You’ll recognize it more and more as you do. Mention “James Gunn Superman” and some guy will lose his everloving mind over it (it was a good movie) and predict the instantaneous financial death of Gunn’s DC with whatever he releases next. It’ll do fine, they’ll ignore it, and move on to the next thing.

We finally got another Star Wars movie 7 years after the sequel trilogy ended, and it was a good movie, but that doesn’t matter because it’s cool to hate Star Wars so nothing gets an objective shake. (I also reviewed that movie. The plot was safe and straightforward, the movie was adventurous and energetic, and I had fun watching it.) The Marvel offerings are better, including last summer’s Fantastic Four and the last two seasons of Daredevil: Born Again. Were they flawless? Like you, they were not.

Books have been way better especially if you know where to look. ( is a great place to start.) Comics have been awesome for a while now, especially the Unknown War from Ghost Machine, the Energon Universe from Skybound, and the Absolute line from DC. I’ve really enjoyed Zdarsky’s run on Captain America since last summer too. Things are good and while you don’t have to glaze them to enjoy them, there’s nothing healthy in figuring out some excuse to s**t on them.

And if those things aren’t to your taste, then by all means, boost the ones that are! We don’t have to be like this. (For a long time I definitely was, and it’s a miserable way to survey the arts.) There are great stories out there. Tell people what you’re into. Let’s leave the constant crapping-on-everything behind. It isn’t good for us.

I’m gonna turn on the Netherlands-Sweden game and go fix my wife’s car. Then I gotta catch up on comics from the week. It never ends.

Drive safe, see you out there.

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“This Week in 1776” is an ongoing almanac of events from the American Revolution, mostly political and military in nature. I drew on these very loosely for my Engines of Liberty series of YA novels.

You should also check out The History List—they have an excellent merch store and occasionally they get valuable historical pieces that are very much worth their prices. I’m not sponsored by them, they just make great stuff.

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I’ve got a juicy one for you this week, and we won’t even get to the end of it. First, let’s check in on the regular stuff:

Arnold in Canada

Reading up on Benedict Arnold over the last few weeks, I’ve decided to grab a book about him and Washington in the Revolution. It contrasts the conditions under which they served in the Army, how one had more support and success than the other, and how their endies were incredibly different. This week he continues to manage a rough retreat out of Canada, and the military made preparations for a naval defense on Lake Champlain to cover their rear.

Washington in New York

If you guessed that he continues to prepare New York for a British attack by fortifying its defenses, you just won a cash prize of zero dollars, which is roughly on par with the amount of money he had in his war chest to keep paying his troops. He wrote to Congress about it but Congress was pretty much flat broke themselves, at least as regards additional funds for the troops.

In an amusing twist of fate—and one of several pieces of evidence that God played cheat cards to favor Washington—the lack of funds among soldiers revealed a traitor in his inner circle. More on that in a second.

Congress in Philadelphia

The Iroquois are still hanging out, I think I mentioned last week that they left after giving John Hancock a cool nickname, but they haven’t left yet. Overall they stayed for a few weeks. The main work of Congress focused on debates around the Lee Resolution, and drafting the Declaration of Independence, which will be signed in two weeks.

Other reports centered on the bad news out of Canada and the poverty in New York, as well as…

The Hickey Plot

And here we get to the real meat of the week. Thomas Hickey was an Irishman who was formerly a British soldier, and now served in George Washington’s “Life Guard,” a sort of Secret Service that protected him wherever he went, since he was a priority target for the Redcoats. He and a fellow Life Guard named Michael Lynch were arrested for passing counterfeit money in New York, because the troops were broke and still liked to eat food (good) and get drunk (weak).

Hickey was locked up in City Hall, and the allegation is that while he was there, he bragged about being part of a larger plot to recruit Loyalists, stymie the Army, and kidnap Washington to hand him over to the British. William Tryon, the Royal Governor of New York, was hanging out on a ship in the harbor and coordinated the efforts on land to take out General G-Dub. Means, motive, and opportunity were clearly there.

Hickey was put on trial by none other than future Federalist and SCOTUS Justice John Jay. On June 19th, Jay turned Scott’s Tavern on Wall Street into a makeshift courtroom and, using America’s first counterintelligence apparatus, heard the evidence against Hickey and three others (including the aforementioned Lynch.) The charges were “mutiny, sedition, and treacherous correspondence with the enemy.”

It’s a fascinating story. HOWEVER. It didn’t reach its end this week. In fact, Hickey was only held in custody through June 21st. He wouldn’t be court-martialed until the 26th. To find out what happens to him, check back in a week! No, don’t Google it, that’s cheating.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

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2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. So far I have covered The Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry’s Speech, The Lee Resolution, The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Treaty of Paris, the Virginia Plan, The Northwest Ordinance, The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Monroe Doctrine, the Indian Removal Act, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club rules, Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ Speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address, the Appomattox Surrender Letters, the Homestead Act, the Gettysburg Address, the Alaska Purchase, the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, and Susan B. Anthony’s Speech on Women’s Suffrage.

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In my American Documents book, I thought the inclusion of this piece was an odd choice. Was it meant to reflect a final surrender of the Indians to the Army? Because the last tribe to formally surrender was an Apache band under Goyathlay (Geronimo.) Why was this incident given priority?

After doing some research on it, I think it’s for two reasons: the heartbreak reflected in the words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, and the confluence of historical factors that could only have resulted in this outcome.

The Nez Perce

The name comes from the French words for “pierced nose.” It’s a misnomer because the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) didn’t actually practice nose piercings, but the Chinooks did, and the French who named them in the 18th century didn’t know the difference. (Many such cases.) They lived in the greater PNW area around the time of European (French) exploration into the region.

As colonial powers expanded into the area and traded ownership of the land, eventually the Nez Perce found themselves under American control and soon the Westward Expansion brought them into regular contact with English-speaking Americans.

In the early 1800s their total population was around 6,000, but that diminished for the usual slate of reasons: disease, changing environmental conditions due to co-occupation by different farming methods, and higher mortality rate from nomadic lifestyles. After the Mexican-American War, a great deal of the territory they lived in became part of the U.S., and the government under the principles of Manifest Destiny started to exert its influence over the region.

As a result, the Nez Perce were moved into reservations and signed treaties with the government. They were living in modern-day Clearwater, Idaho around 1855. In 1860, someone found gold in that region, and that brought a flood of problems.

The Gold Rush

With the 1849 San Francisco Gold Rush still in recent memory, and the desire of so many Americans to become rich overnight, thousands of miners—professionals and amateurs alike—dashed into the Nez Perce lands. When I say thousands, I mean 5-6 times the population of the Indians who lived there. Conflicts naturally arose and what came next was, at the most base level, a logistics problem.

Yes, there was a cultural and philosophical clash between the Indians who wanted to live there peacefully and the miners who wanted to turn the whole place upside-down for gold, but that wouldn’t have been an issue if the ratios were inverted; two hundred miners couldn’t have pushed out ten thousand Nez Perce. But eighteen thousand miners made life for three or four thousand Nez Perce extremely difficult.

Clashes ensued and soon the Army came in, and the Fed got involved. With the Civil War underway back east, the U.S. Government understandably didn’t want to deal with a protracted conflict in its backyard, so the solution was a forced treaty that got the Nez Perce booted from Clearwater.

Again, it’s a matter of logistics: the government had to know it was pointless to send soldiers to tell eighteen thousand miners to leave. They would just ignore the soldiers and keep trying to get rich. It was easier—and in keeping with U.S. expansionist philosophy—to move the Indians again and avoid a martial conflict to the extent possible.

It gets dicey here because while there was a chief among the Nez Perce, the tribe was divided into bands, and not every band wanted to deal with the Army (acting as proxy for the government.) Those who did were forced to agree to a treaty in 1863 that the Nez Perce still refer to as a treaty of theft, and defensibly so; however I will once again iterate that the logistics can’t be removed from the assessment of this episode.

What came next was a series of moving skirmishes as a few bands of Nez Perce refused orders from the Army and tried to flee rather than be controlled by the Army or the Fed. (Based.)

The Pursuit and Surrender

The Nez Perce didn’t have numbers on their side. The Army sent roughly two thousand troops while the Indians had about two hundred, and those two hundred also had to care for women and children. They fled across the mountain west and into the Pacific Northwest, with some heading for Canada to meet up with Sioux neighbors. The total path of their flight was almost twelve hundred miles, just about all on foot.

They made contact with the Army a few times in the summer of 1877 and racked up kills as they stood their ground. Still, it was a doomed effort, and by early October the Nez Perce were rounded up and forced to surrender. Chief Joseph’s speech, brief as it was, described the condition of his people at the end of the conflict.

Chief Joseph’s Speech

The tragedy speaks for itself. After reading up on it, I find it to be a necessary inclusion in the full tapestry of American history. As much as I celebrate the mythos and beauty of it, it wasn’t born without pain from numerous corners.

For that reason the context of it all deserves to be remembered; to say that it was purely “racism” or “logistics” that resulted in the Nez Perce displacement would be disingenuous in the friendliest of terms. We in the 21st Century stand at the pinnacle of a nation that was built on several intersections of choices that we personally never had to make, and I daresay we would struggle in the moment to make the choice we think we would.

Overall, the words of Chief Joseph are worth hearing and contemplating. There are applicable lessons in all of this.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

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This is another ongoing series as I do a slow-read of THE ILIAD by Homer, translated by Rouse. Previous installments: book 1 | 2 | 3 | 4| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

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Okay it’s time to go up-tempo with this project or I’ll be at it all year. We’re 33% done so if I double up on books each week, I’ll wrap by the end of the summer. Man I love the summer. This is awesome. Okay, here we go!

Book 9

We Got Pwn’d

King Agamemnon has a rare moment where he gets real with his army and admits that they just got their heads handed to them by Hector, now that the Trojans have the naked favor of Zeus on the battlefield. It’s all they can do to throw up a wall and hide behind it long enough to catch their breaths; come the morn, Hector will be upon them. It’s time for Agamemnon to panic, open the briefcase, and press the giant red button that surely marks the end of all things: apologize.

He sends Odysseus and Ajax to Achilles with a sweet, sweet offer. “Yo homie, look, I’m really sorry I stole your girl, in much the same way that Paris stole Helen from my brother, and in a seriously ironic twist that’s what started this whole mess, but here’s my offer if you’ll come back and fight for me on the battlefield because boy howdy we are getting worked by this Hector guy.”

The Offer

First, a signing bonus: if Achilles the demigod returns to Agamemnon’s service he’ll get

• Briseis, his slave-girlfriend, who totally wasn’t diddled by Agamemnon (pinky promise)

• Seven Lesbians (these were literal women from the Isle of Lesbos, and not of the modern parlance; Lesbians were skilled tradeschicks and could make things of great value, in addition to being smoking hot.) They were very valuable in the context of spoils and you could more accurately call them Uber Tradwives.

• Ten talents of gold (that’s a lot of money)

• Twenty cauldrons (yeah I don’t get this one either)

• Twelve really good horses

• Seven tripods “that have never been placed on a fire” (dude what)

As a performance bonus, Agamemnon works this into the contract: if they sack Troy, Achilles will get

• As much gold and silver as his Myrmidon ships can hold

• The twenty hottest Trojan chicks he can find (minus Helen, because again, that’s kind of what started this mess)

• One of Agamemnon’s daughters in marriage (player’s choice!) plus a massive dowry

• Seven entire cities back in Greece.

Literal boats an’ hoes, you guys. On top of stacks. Can you imagine the rap song about this?

The Answer

Achilles just stares at Odysseus and is like “Bro. Come on now. We know this guy, we know what he’s about, I ain’t falling for it.” Agamemnon’s long record of hoarding most spoils and dealing too little to the men under his command has come back to bite him. Achilles also resents Agamemnon’s moral character, and says that a man should love his woman. He doesn’t care to fight the Trojans any more and especially under these conditions.

Achilles is gonna load up his boats with treasure and sail home and be done with this mess. He tells Odysseus and the others to do what they can to help the troops because they can’t beat Hector with Zeus in his pocket. After some more bants, another reason comes out of Achilles, and he conveys a message he got from his mother:

If he stays and fights at Troy, he’ll die but become the center of an immortal legend. If he leaves and goes home, he’ll enjoy extreme wealth and comfort, but die a nobody. Not a small decision.

There’s a third man with Odysseus and Ajax, Phoenix, who was Achilles’ surrogate/foster father, and he makes a plea to Achilles to reconsider leaving. He relates the story of Meleagros, a Greek hero who killed a huge boar but couldn’t settle on shares of spoils with his uncles. He abstained from further fighting out of pride and anger, until enemies attacked his city and reached his home. He was then compelled to fight and for the promise of no spoils at all. Better to fight than to surrender to pride.

Achilles still won’t be swayed. Odysseus returns to Agamemnon with the bad news. Diomedes says they should eat and sleep and get ready to fight tomorrow.

Book 10

This one is a little shorter and self-contained, away from the main action, and the first few pages of it are kind of boring with deliberative dialogue. The skinny of it is that Diomedes (ever the restless soul) wants to go kill something because it’s been, like, three whole hours since he busted skulls and he’s starting to get The Twitch, so he plans a night mission to scout out the Trojan lines and see what’s up.

Odysseus goes with him, since he’ll need someone to have his back (lol) so he won’t get bored. Unbeknownst to them, the Trojans also send out an ugly guy named Dolon to do the same thing to Greece. He wears a wolf pelt cloak (based) and a “pole cat hat” (lmao what?!). Check out Dirty Daniel Boone, y’all! Freaking skunk hat. I’m glad this guy is going to die.

Spoilers. Whoops. As you might imagine, Dolon bumps into Diomedes in the dark and immediately folds at the prospect of physical pain. Odysseus and Diomedes interrogate him, learn about the Trojan encampments, then kill him anyway and mark his shallow grave so they can find it on their way back. They advance into Dolon’s base camp, among the Thracian contingent of Troy, whereupon they find the Thracian King, Rhesus. Diomedes and Odysseus proceed to beat wholesale a$$, killing Rhesus and twelve more besides, then stealing some really sweet horses which they ride back to the Greek camp.

Nice little commando-style side quest where they get their spirits back up, rattle the Trojans a little, and conclude by offering sacrifices to Athena for the help.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

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Guess Who’s Back…One Better!

As promised, the non-consecutive executive gets a second go! Cleveland was certainly not the first man to attempt an executive comeback, or even multiple runs at the presidency, he was just the first one to pull it off. How did it happen?

Well, there were a couple of factors. Benjamin Harrison was a fan of tariffs and he put them in place during his term, resulting in an economic condition that a lot of voters didn’t like. This happened as the country was debating “bimetallism,” or the notion of currency backed by gold AND/or silver as a hedge against fluctuation. Finance was on a lot of voters’ minds.

In addition, there was expansion out West, and six new States voted for the first time: Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Most of these went Republican, while Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, and Kansas all went for James Weaver, a third-party agrarian spoiler.

Although “spoiler” isn’t really an apt term. He got 22 EVs, and even if those states HAD gone for Harrison, Cleveland still got 277. 223 was the magic number, so he took it. Cleveland also took 46% of the popular vote nationwide to 43% for Harrison, and just over 8% for Weaver.

This once again means that if Weaver’s voters had somehow ALL gone for Harrison, he’d have taken 51% of the popular vote, which means he still would have lost because this isn’t high school, lmao.

Policy Differences

Cleveland opposed tariffs, as mentioned, while Harrison favored them to shield American industries. The plan was to use the money to fund veterans’ pensions, among other things. (The youngest Civil War veterans were now in their early 50s.)

The gold standard was also a subject of some import, and Cleveland favored it. (The Federal Reserve wouldn’t exist for another twenty years.) I still don’t completely understand the myriad influences on American money at this time, I was only able to deduce from my readings that Harrison was cool with gold and silver but that somehow this option allowed for greater European influence on American markets. It seems too complex to summarize for me.

Speaking of money and Civil War pensions, Harrison wanted to expand generous pensions while Cleveland said they were excessive and wasteful. Cleveland also wanted civil service reform and a limited government while Harrison wanted efficiency out of federal institutions (and now drawdowns.)

Can you imagine an era where we got to debate these things, and not “Hmmm should we have a closed border or should we amputate your kids’ genitals and rub free-range organic poison in the gender-neutral wound?” What a freaking time, man.

Inaugural Speech, Original vs Redux

Since Cleveland’s vision won out, he came back to the White House and began his final term. In his inauguration speech, he contrasted his new focus with that of his previous term by adopting a much more serious tone, issuing urgent warnings to the public about bad economic laws and the bad philosophy behind them.

“Paternalism” is the word he chose, and I keep thinking about it in the context of other reading I’ve been up to lately. The Founders (namely Jefferson) described “constant vigilance” as the price of freedom. Paternalism, then, would be the idea that government becomes your daddy and you become a good and faithful little child, surrendering your freedom for security. Not a great idea.

He wanted a more sound currency (gold), he wanted to cut federal subsidies (end paternalism), reform the tariffs, and overall reject extravagance for frugality. He’s a doctor describing a disease and a change of one’s daily regiment to cure the underlying problem.

I’m going to have a lot more to say about this particular closing line in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say that Cleveland hit the ground running in his second term, he learned from his soft exile, and he wouldn’t waste any time executing his vision for a stronger nation in the coming years.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

I post several times per week on YouTube.

Subscribe here for more book reviews and for articles on what I continue to learn as I read.

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“This Week in 1776” is an ongoing almanac of events from the American Revolution, mostly political and military in nature.

Subscribe now

Sorry for not getting this out yesterday, I had to cover for someone at work. On that note, thank you to all 230+ subscribers, and especially to the 9 paying subscribers. I’m going to keep adding value to this site. It feels good to finally make some money off my writing.

Now on with the show.

The Lee Resolution

I covered this earlier in the year, but June 7th was the original date. The short version is that the Richard Henry Lee Resolution was the spark that ignited the intellectual fire that would, later this very week in history, trigger the Declaration of Independence. More on that in a second.

Canadian Disaster

Let’s get the bad news out of the way: Benedict Arnold got his head handed to him in the Battle of Trois-Rivières. Brigadier General William Thompson led around 2,000 troops into battle at Quebec, and they got stomped by a combination of factors, including poor supplies, bad conditions (swamp), and superior organization among the British. Hundreds of Patriots were killed or taken prisoner. Benedict Arnold was in charge of the retreat out of Montreal with what forces he could rally.

Thus ended the Continental Army’s designs on a potential 14th Colony in the north. This was a crushing blow that took the wind out of the sails from the springtime victory in Boston, and people had to be getting nervous about New York now.

New York and the South

Not much to report here, you know the song by this point: Washington keeps fortifying his positions, because the regulars will roll up soon. Nothing big pops off in the south. Word will eventually spread about Quebec and the rest of the Patriots won’t have much time to mourn the defeat.

Bills and Declarations

On June 11th, the Committee of Five is formed, consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and two other names you’re unlikely to know unless you’re really up on this era of history: Roger Sherman and Roger R. Livingston. (Side note: in HEARTLANDERS, Roger Sherman is a direct ancestor of President Mason Reynolds, who gets elected in 2052. In real history, Sherman is the only Founder to have signed the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Articles of Confederation—nobody else has all three, if my information is correct.—GB) The Committee’s job is to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote the first draft.

The next day on June 12th, Virginia adopted the Declaration of Rights, which contains most of what eventually became the Bill of Rights 15 years later. In common with the Bill, the Declaration states that our rights and freedoms are natural, and thus predate the government, including speech/press/assembly/religion, armaments, and protections in the case of legal charges.

The difference was that the Declaration mostly consisted of moral statements and lacked legal enforceability, something that the Bill of Rights held more explicitly. The Declaration was also friendlier to the enslaved, and its language would have created a more immediate legal framework for emancipation—making it a huge hurdle for passage or adoption in the South. Congress would confront this again a decade later when the Three-Fifths Compromise was adopted. Subject for another time.

The Iroquois Delegation

Last week a couple dozen leaders from the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee confederation showed up in Philadelphia to meet with Congress and declare their official neutrality in our Revolution. They wanted to trade with us but they didn’t want to get into the fight. Congress was cool with that, so they received their guests with diplomacy and had a good couple of days together.

John Hancock, the President of Congress, even got a cool nickname from the Iroquois: Karanduawn, meaning “The Great Tree.” This happened during a cultural (arguably religious) naming ceremony, something the Iroquois practiced with international relations. The name mattered because in their culture, the Great Tree of Peace was a central symbol and one they used to bridge the divides between themselves and other nations. Call it a mark of alliance.

So the Declaration is in the works, other important document have their prototypes established, and peace has been achieved with a significant neighboring nation. All told, it was a good week, as long as you weren’t with Benedict Arnold.

I wonder what next week will bring.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

I post several times per week on YouTube.

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2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. So far I have covered The Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry’s Speech, The Lee Resolution, The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Treaty of Paris, the Virginia Plan, The Northwest Ordinance, The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Monroe Doctrine, the Indian Removal Act, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club rules. and Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ Speech.

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Fun Fact #1: I’ve seen the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York where Susan B. Anthony is buried. I took this picture.

This will come as a shock to my compatriots in the Esoteric Online Religious Extremist (EORE) community, but Susan B. Anthony’s 1873 speech on women’s suffrage was, I regret to tell you, very well-articulated and reasoned according to our founding documents.

Yes, bros. I am shooketh as well. But in the age of incredibly bad arguments for just about anything, finding something from yesteryear that actually has meat on its bones is a reminder of just what we have lost. (Distinguished Scholars may correlate What We Have Lost with the expansion of the franchise, but that in and of itself is a subject for another time.)

These days whenever a politician talks about voting rights, they usually mean lowering the voting age for a power grab, especially because it’s a popular take in states that have low-to-no voter ID requirements and have legalized ballot harvesting. Imagine an entire country of Angeleno political machines, or closed-door combinations like the one that installed Spencer Cox in Utah for a second term. (Another long story.) It’s a bad idea and we in the 21st Century are conditioned by experience to reject it.

Fun Fact #2: Anthony is my 7th cousin, 5x removed. Which makes us Americans-but-strangers, lol. Our most recent common ancestor died in 1600.

SBA’s reasoning and motives were far nobler and in keeping with the Founders’ motives, at least to some degree. (Abigail Adams did, after all, send her husband a ‘Remember The Ladies’ letter, which he dismissed as silly female misbehavior.) From the outset of the country, voting was restricted to a narrow group, and that franchise has been expanded in the subsequent centuries—usually for the right, and all-too-often for wrong.

Anthony’s speech is 20+ pages in my American Documents book. It was, more accurately, an essay which she distributed ahead of her trial. “Trial? Whatever for, Graham?”

Susan B. Anthony cast her vote for president in the 1872 election, which was illegal because she was a woman. How did she register to vote if it was illegal? Pressure tactics, basically—but that isn’t to say her methods were based on bullying and BS. She led a group of 16 women total (her, three sisters, and a dozen others) who had conferred with a lawyer after the passing of the 14th and 15th Amendments. The theory was that if black men could vote, white women should be allowed to as well.

Fun Fact #3: I’m reminded whimsically of the 2008 Democratic Primary where voters had decide if they were racist or sexist, and sexism won, lol. It was a simpler time.

I’M KIDDING JEEZ. We haven’t forgotten racism.

Anyway, Anthony’s goal wasn’t to fly under the radar and get away with a stealth vote; she wanted the publicity. In a sense it was like the Scopes Monkey Trial, where the parties agreed to their case before taking it to court because it was based on a legal theory that hadn’t been tested, and they needed a judicial decision to establish precedent. Anthony wanted to vote, she thought she had a reading of the law that would allow it to work, she tested it publicly, and the movement snowballed from there.

She died in 1906 and the 19th Amendment wasn’t passed until 1920. The groundwork she laid for the suffragette cause ultimately led to its success, which is why she still gets remembered today.

Here’s the link again in case you want to read the whole thing. For someone like me who has started to find a form of perverse and tortuous entertainment in the reading of legal documents, this is a substantial exchange of ideas that are worth examining and understanding.

Deciding in a Republic who gets to vote is probably one of the most impactful things we can do, and it’s pretty much never a settled question. Heinlein wrote an entire book about it and people missed the point because it had space Marines killing bugs. Pay attention to this idea. The future of your country quite literally depends on it.

Visit Nauvoo Supply to order HEARTLANDERS, the most American novel I’ve ever written. It’s like if National Treasure happened during Fallout with G.I. Joes.

My Amazon page has my other books, including FOSSIL FORCE for young boys and Engines of Liberty for all ages.

I post several times per week on YouTube.

Subscribe here for more book reviews and for articles on what I continue to learn as I read.

Leave a comment

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We’re in the summer movie season and there’s something big coming out pretty much every week through August. Last week’s offering was Masters of the Universe, a movie that “They” have been trying to get off the ground for a long time. (I remember seeing concept art for it back in 2009, and it popped in and out of the news every few years after that.)

Since movies are stupid expensive now, I divide up my “to-see” list with my wife and kids and we catch matinees as the summer progresses. Today it was Trucker Kid 2’s turn. I figured based on the trailers that this would be up his alley and he liked it. Whatever my tone implies from here on out, I liked it too. I get what they were going for overall, it just had warts on it along the way. Let’s dice it up.

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Tough Love and Cold Water

Here’s the thing: He-Man isn’t anyone’s favorite IP from the 80s. We’re all aware of it culturally but it’s nobody’s main thing. The nostalgia factor gives it value to mine, and that’s why it hung out in limbo for so many years.

Overall, the property isn’t that complicated. It’s a second-grade version of Robert E. Howard’s Conan with some sci-fi stuff. Spaceships, guns, etc. There is a good kingdom with The Power and a bad guy who wants The Power so he can do Bad Things. That’s it! The heroes and villains all have extremely basic and sometimes goofy names (more on that in a minute) that appeal to children.

That’s not a knock. It’s just a fact. It’s meant for children. If you want the adult version, there’s still Conan. Once you embrace that, you can get rid of 90% of your hang-ups that you might have with a story like this, and just have fun—because it IS a fun movie.

The Story

Eternia is a world of magic and talking animals and cool weapons and stuff. Everything is beautiful and awesome there. Then one day the evil Skeletor attacks and takes everyone hostage because he wants Eternia’s Power, which is concentrated in a single object (sword) and guarded by a sorceress.

After beating everyone else, Skeletor tries to take the sword, but the sorceress gives it to Eternia’s young prince Adam and yeets him through a teleportation portal to Earth. Adam is kind of a wuss and fails to hold on to the sword; without it he can’t return to Eternia, and he’s stuck in the absolute textbook definition of “beige” that is Oklahoma City. And I can say that, because I live here.

He spends the next fifteen years growing up mediocre in modern America, trying to find the sword, and telling everyone he knows about how he’s really from another world with magic and stuff. This makes his work and dating life difficult. His roommate, who definitely marks “fluid” in several categories on his LinkedIn page, is nice enough to put up with him but obviously thinks that Adam is a head case.

Then one day he finds the sword. On the same day, he’s attacked by a monster and rescued by Teela, a blue-eyed BBL with red hair who exists to remind the male audience for this movie that they are indeed heterosexual. She rescues Adam and takes him back to Eternia, where the rest of the story is a predictable series of events about him Learning How To Use The Power, and then Screwing Up With The Power, and then Getting The Power Back, and finally Saving The Day. The climax is familiar to anyone old enough to remember any part of their childhood in the 80s: a jacked, tan, blond dude beats the s*** out of a villain with his bare hands. The end.

The Moral of the Story

Since we live in the Age of Perpetual Fury, your corner of the internet has probably told you what to hate about this movie and how. One side will say it’s too woke and the other side will say it’s too straight—I don’t know, people read themselves into this stuff and their takes always come out stupid.

There’s a vague and general theme about being brave even if you don’t want to, and then there’s an overt message of talking to bad guys doesn’t work, but beating the s*** out of them does. 10 year-old Adam is a wuss in Eternia and doesn’t have his father’s respect. He doesn’t like to participate in arms training. He gets beat up by a girl.

When he comes to Earth, he ultimately ends up working in conflict resolution with a corporate HR department. What does it look like? Imagine a 2026 HR department: you nailed it. That’s his boss and his co-workers. He has pronouns listed on his placard at work. He’s miserable.

When he gets swept back to Eternia and his allies are under attack by Skeletor’s freakish monster soldiers, Adam tries to apply his HR techniques to resolve the conflict, and it doesn’t work. He gets tuned up. What does he do instead? He takes up the sword and summons The Power and beats the s*** out of the bad guys.

And in the climax, when he squares off against Skeletor, he gives it one last go and tries to talk him down. Skeletor basically says “Uh, no, this doesn’t work, there’s nothing in my backstory to explain me, I’m just the villain.” This mirrors something Teela tells Adam when he asks why Skeletor destroyed Eternia. “Because he’s bad.” It’s just that simple.

Adam exhausted the peaceful option. When it came time to take the gloves off, he stopped pulling his punches and he beat the s*** out of Skeletor.

There’s the moral of the story. 21st Century Corporate HR tactics are built on the idea that you can resolve all conflicts while talking. Real villains are built on the idea that they can kill people and take their stuff and they’ll do it until someone stops them. In essence, Adam represents a complete approach: I’ll try to talk you down, but if you keep doing evil, I will beat the s*** out of you.

How They Adapted The Story

Going back to the “this is for children” bit, you can try to adapt this IP seriously, but you can’t do so with fealty to the source material, because the source material is by definition childish. I was impressed by the early trailers because it looked like they were taking an innately goofy concept and playing it straight, which is the right thing to do; don’t apologize to your audience for the film you’re making (and definitely don’t use the film itself as the method to deliver that apology.)

That said, you have to get around the fact that characters in your story are named Man-At-Arms, Fist-o, Ram-Man, and Mecha-Neck. How did they do this?

With Man-At-Arms, he went by his given name, Duncan, but declared that he was the king’s man-at-arms, which is good enough for me. He had the accurate costume and armor. Might as well acknowledge that the casting was racebent to bring in Idris Elba, which was a good choice, because it’s Idris Elba. The other goofy characters got their names from a Young Adam who drew pictures of them as he grew up on Earth; he didn’t know their real names so he went with nicknames based on their attributes.

Fist-o has a giant metal fist. “You fist people!” was a joke that got too much mileage out of it, for example. (In fact there were numerous d*ck jokes that probably didn’t fly as low under the radar as the writers thought.) Ram-Man and Mecha-Neck get their goofy names the same way. The excuse both in-world and on the meta level is “A ten year-old came up with this.” They just roll with it.

This is also how they eventually work the name “He-Man” into it, and they make fun of that, because it’s kind of hard to play that one straight.

The Cast

Adam is played by Nicholas Galitzine. I’d never seen him in anything else, just stuff I’ve heard of, like one movie where he played the gay Prince of England or something and he was in love with the U.S. President’s gay son, and this other movie where he was basically Harry Styles hunting cougars and bagging Anne Hathaway. He hides his British accent well in this one. If he has one flaw, it’s that he got too yoked in preparation for this role, so the parts of the movie where he’s Regular Guy Adam walking around in a button-down shirt don’t really hide the massive amounts of beef that he packed onto his frame.

Camila Mendes plays Teela. Never seen anything with her in it either, but yeah. She’s there to bring all the boys to the yard and so forth.

Idris Elba, Man-At-Arms. He’s awesome in the beginning, gets his butt kicked, becomes a drunk, then claws his way back to dignity by fighting alongside He-Man. Under the “moral of the story” banner, he also gives an excellent speech to Adam about why you have to fight sometimes, and how it’s not about doing violence to the guy in front of you, it’s about protecting your loved ones. Again, the message of this movie is punch people when you should punch people.

Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn. Dude, I swore this was Elizabeth Olson at first, until the character started to act Hot-Crazy, and then I immediately recognized Annie from Community. Hers is a bit-part, and it’s fine.

Jared Leto as Skeletor. Honestly they could have put anyone in this suit and wrapped him in CGI, I wouldn’t have known who it was, but he did a great job of selling the villain. People seem to be really polarized on Leto as an actor (I see comments online referring to stuff I don’t know) but I ain’t looking all that up, gossip is stupid. He’s a good actor.

Content

Like I said before: a lot of sex jokes that kids aren’t meant to get, but it becomes cringey for the adults. (“Give ‘em head, Ram-Man!”) Come on now. There was a string of A-bombs all in a row early on, a smattering of S-words, some blasphemous exclamations, and one instance of Idris Elba saying “Whatthef[explosion].” Tonally there was a chasm between the obviously childish target audience and the desire to give the adults something to sink their teeth into.

Verdict

It teetered back and forth between “generally fun” and “childishly fun.” It only tried to apologize for itself once, and that was when they said the name “He-Man,” which I assume they were contractually required to say at least once. My son enjoyed it. Plenty of bright colors and explosions and cool heroic moments and—don’t forget—dudes punching other dudes in the face. I thought the story was fine, if reliable and safe (which is all Hollywood is about these days), the moral of the story was strong (even a little refreshing), and the action was great.

So there’s my endorsement. Watch it with your boys. I would have been annoyed with myself if I had seen it alone in my 40s, because it would be like going to see Moana as a grown man. It wasn’t made for me. It was made for my kids, and they knew I’d have to drive them there, so they threw me a bone, and it was a good time.

Drive safe, see you out there.

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