I am finishing reading "The LIfe of George Washington" by John Marshall and am very struck by similarities between Washington and Trump, and the strange correspondence between early US politics and the present day, with the same basic actors (constitutional federalists and francophile "republicans"). When Washington was in office and maintained a scrupulous neutrality in the contest between Great Britain and France, he was denounced and calumnied by the faction in the US that was enamored of the new French Republic and its out of control government. (It was also the faction that was agreeable to spending money, but not to obtaining revenue.)
I am finishing reading "The LIfe of George Washington" by John Marshall and am very struck by similarities between Washington and Trump, and the strange correspondence between early US politics and the present day, with the same basic actors (constitutional federalists and francophile "republicans"). When Washington was in office and maintained a scrupulous neutrality in the contest between Great Britain and France, he was denounced and calumnied by the faction in the US that was enamored of the new French Republic and its out of control government. (It was also the faction that was agreeable to spending money, but not to obtaining revenue.)
excellent history comparison: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Joel Barlow: Advice to the Privileged Orders (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N22719.0001.001), Columbian Order of the Bavarian Illuminati (whether an actual organization or not), and Aaron Burr