George Washington's Lie

Reflections on history while writing my book, American Hero.

The Liar

Young George Washington, 22, still recovering from the death of his beloved brother Lawrence, no formal education beyond grade school, and only appointed a major in the Virginia Militia because of family connections, led his British Rangers through the Ohio Valley, along the Allegheny River. They were beyond the formal boundaries of British North America and marching through a dense wilderness filled with hostile Indian tribes and under a relentless deluge of bad weather. Perspiring not from the humid dankness of this late spring afternoon of 1754, but with anxiety, Washington trembled with fear as he marched his raw recruits into French Territory. He feared not death, but cowardice.

His mission was to determine the intentions of the French in the area.

The Seneca chief, Tannaghrisson, encouraged Washington to venture even further towards the French, promising the support of his braves.

That night a horrific thunderstorm shook the forest. Lightning dissected trees. Flash floods ripped the undergrowth. Washington, hungry for heroism, pressed on. At first light, he came upon a few Frenchmen hunting rabbits.

Surprised, confused, frightened, Washington fired his gun, blindly. By chance, his bullet found the heart of a Frenchmen. Both sides opened fire. The wet field thickened with sulfuric smoke and the cries of the wounded. Within minutes, a dozen French lay dead in the mud, another score wounded.

The volley brought the entire French regiment, a hundred men, upon the much smaller British band. Washington and his Rangers were captured and tied, forced to march back to Fort Duquesne. The French Commander, Joseph de Jumonville slogged through the mud to slap Washington in the face. “You idiot,” he screeched. “We are not at war.”

France and England hadn’t been officially at war, but now, thanks to Washington, they almost certainly would be.

“Your men attacked,” stuttered Washington.

“Menteur!” charged de Jumonville. Liar!

As Washington’s face reddened with shame, the Seneca attacked. Tannaghrisson, had used Washington to draw out the French so he could massacre them. His braves fell upon the startled Frenchmen with no mercy. Some of the British prisoners begged to be unbound to help in the fighting, but the Indians left them unscathed. It was French blood they desired and French blood gushed from torn limbs.

Tannaghrisson had de Jumonville by the throat, ignoring his pleas for mercy. “You have lied to us for a hundred years,” he shouted. “Pas plus! Enough.”

Washington tried to stop him, but the chief swept him away as if he were a cobweb and proceeded to tomahawk de Jumonville’s skull in an explosion of bone, blood, and brains.

While Washington’s British fled into the forest, the Seneca scalped the wounded French as they died.

De Jumonville was more right than he could have known. As a result of Washington’s blunder, France and England went to war. It was known as the French Indian War in colonial America and the Seven Years War in Europe, but the two superpowers fought furiously across the globe, including the Caribbean, Africa, and India in what was truly the first World War. In the end, England won, but both countries had taken on so much debt that their efforts to raise taxes to pay for their armies resulted in the American and French Revolutions.

Washington never forgot or forgave himself for that night in the Ohio Valley.

Rubén Blades

Rubén Blades

Sings For The World

"If we don't live and breathe politics, we're fucked."

To speak of Rubén Blades is tell the story of six thousand years of solitude. The life beat of his songs reverberates in prison cells from San Salvador to Johannesburg. They are heard everyday on the street corners of the city to which we all belong. In this world, politics isn’t a once in every four years game like the World Cup or the Olympics. “In Latin America,” says Blades, who once ran for president of his native Panama, “you live and breathe politics because it affects your everyday life. If we don’t, we’re fucked.”

         Blades grew up in a world where people disappeared and nobody talked of it in the daylight. He began his career as a musician imitating rock bands from El Norte before discovering Salsa and becoming world renown with his band Seis del Solar (Six from the Sun, an infamous tenement) and albums including Siembra with Willie Colón, Nothing But The Truth with Elvis Costello and Sting, Agua de Luna based on the stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Grammy enriched Tiempos, Buscando America with its crossover hit, "Decisiones," and Paul Simon’s The Capeman. Never renouncing his interest in politics, he not only infused his danceable tunes with socially aware lyrics, he picked up a law degree and a doctorate in International Law from Harvard. Along with aspiring to be president of Panama, Blades modeled himself on the Boss of America, Bruce Springsteen.

         “He does not take the intelligence of his audience for granted,” says Blades. “The honesty and quality of the songs come from the gut, as well as the mind and heart. For me, the validity of talent and sincerity is in the measure of touching someone, the reaction from people to the presentation.”

         For Blades, it is always an issue of humanity above all else.

         “What happened in Argentina (referring to the tortures, killing squads, and other abuses by right wing Peronists) is as horrible as what happened to the Jews in World War Two, not to compare in terms of numbers of atrocities, but because of the degree of sophistication in the administration of torture. These killers were people who had mothers, fathers, sisters, friends and you ask how could these people do these horrible things. And because these people are, on the surface, just like you and me, you ask, what prevents me from doing those horrible things. It is very easy to say, ‘I would never,’ but we can’t just wash away that possibility. Denying it almost invites it. I think the idea is to say, ‘Well, I could become that, but I will choose not to.’ You have to face the evil within and always keep a watch on it. When you let your guard down, when you say ‘That’s them, but not me’ it takes over. This is as true for political murderers as for junkies in the projects. Any of us could be any of them. The difference is that we control it because we are aware of it. That is what I try to do in my political work, but especially in my music. Music works on behalf of those who may not read all the books about human behavior or watch all the programs and movies or the news—because of a lack of education and censorship, both controlled by the government. But music rescues the popular voice. You will see that the youth of Latin America will prevent future dictatorships because they have a better understanding of humanity and themselves through listening to music. The government wants us to forget. Music bans forgetfulness. Music reminds us of who we are. Sing it and it stays.”

Estoy buscando America

Buscando ese camino entre la oscuridad

Estoy buscando America

Pero no tengo miedo de buscar la verdad

          

Ben Franklin

Reflections on history while writing my book, American Hero.

Ben Franklin,

Founding Trannie

Pimp My Founding Fathers

Hold on to your wigs, ladies and gentlemen. I want to introduce you to Ben Franklin. You may know him from one of the hundred dollar bills you have stuffed in your pockets. Or from his famous experiment with that kite and capturing lightning in a bottle. Or from his inventions, writings, and his involvement in a little thing called the founding of the United States of America. He is one of the OG American Idols, no doubt.

         But his Wikipedia vitals just skim the surface of Ben Franklin’s Awesomeness.

         You might know that he had a reputation as a Ladies’ Man (Madame du Pompadour eat your heart out), but he was also a bit of a Lady Man, as well.

         Identity was always a fluid thing with Franklin. At various times in his life he posed as an English fop, a country bumpkin, a freed slave, an Islamic slave trader, the King of Prussia, and several very outspoken women.

         In my book, American Hero, the narrator meets Ben at a mass execution of slaves in New York. He is dressed as a she, Silence Dogood, because “woman are taken for granted,” he/she says, “being unnoticed, they notice more.”

         This is as radical in the 18^th century world as saying that maybe blacks are human. Maybe more so because it would be a while until black men recognized the equality of black women.

         “If you go among women,” Silence writes in one of Franklin’s newspapers, “you will learn that they have always more work upon their hands than they are able to do.”

         But Franklin as Madame Dogood goes further than whining about the workload. “I have often thought it one of the most barbarous customs of the world that we deny advantages of learning to women.”

         Remember, at this time, women were not allowed to vote, own property, go to college, practice medicine or law, have any profession, etc. All virtue was seated with men, and a woman could only be respected in direct relation to her obedience to a man. Franklin, who might have had as many as a dozen female personalities, including Martha Careful, Martha Aftercast, Caelia Shortface, Busy Body, and Alice Addertongue, fought against that oppression.

         In his Polly Baker he found a champion for women’s sexual liberation. She laments in a letter to Franklin’s paper that she had gotten knocked up by a man and society was punishing her and not him. Citing the Bible’s commandment to increase and multiply, she defends having children out of wedlock and insists that the father be compelled to support her and their child. The court, she claims, “ought, in my humble opinion, instead of whipping me, have a statue erected in my memory.”

         As another woman, known simply but tellingly as Patience, Franklin laments that he/she is “so busy with the pesterment of children that there is a handsome gentleman that has a mind, I don’t question, to make love to me, but he can’t get the least opportunity to.” Not only does Franklin note the burdensome and unfair work put on women, he also acknowledges that women, like men, are sexual beings whether married or not. This was in 1742, hello.

Franklin’s views on marriage and most societal morays were complicated, but he could be hard on himself as a man when he was a woman.

         In one exchange of angry letters in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, he created Anthony Afterwit to complain about his wife’s extravagant spending. Franklin’s Celia Single immediately fired an angry letter back complaining about men who promised the world to women to get them to marry them—or have sex with them—only to come up woefully shorthanded afterward. She not only attacks men as being useless in the upkeep of homes and the raising of children, she calls them, “pool shooters, dice players, dandies, checker-board enthusiasts, tavern haunters, everlasting readers, and mighty diligent at anything besides their business.” She even goes on to attack Franklin himself for publishing the belly aching complaints of “idiot” husbands.

         As a rich, white man, Franklin often attacked rich, white men. He not only became a woman to criticize his own kind, he also became a mulatto (mixed race) freed slave who decried that people “of color” like him could not “take a walk, drink a glass of beer, or converse freely with honest men [without being hassled].” In his last published work in 1790, at age 84, Franklin became an Arab slave trader writing to justify the enslavement of white Christians using the exact logic of American Southerners to excuse their slavery. “If we do not make slaves of the Christians, who will perform our labors? Must we be our own slaves? Must we maintain them as beggars? White men are too ignorant to establish government and too accustomed to slavery to work. They are happy as slaves. We provide everything and treat them humanely. Let us hear no more about freeing the white men.”

         You could replace “white men” and “Christian” with women and make a powerful satirical point to support sexual equality.

         Of all the Founding Fathers, perhaps of all everybody, when Franklin talked about freedom, he meant it. Freedom for all people of all ethnicities, religions, and sexes.

         That’s the kind of Awesomeness that comes from walking a mile in another man’s moccasins, or, occasionally, in another woman’s pumps.