In the 1986 mini-series “George Washington: Forging of a Nation” (see the video below) Washington reluctantly becomes the first U.S. president.

…spiritual reading for July 17

This is a great moment to turn a corner. All that has been offered to you in the last two weeks has been in preparation for this opportunity. There is an opening for you to turn your back on old ways of being that you have been trying to shake, working to disengage from for years.

This is not by any means the only chance you have, but it is a valuable one. We urge you to use it if you can. It is as if the door is open and in this moment you may stop knocking, may stop waiting, may stop preparing yourself for the time when you must act.

That moment is here now, and you are ready to act if you will.

What should you do? Obviously, that depends entirely on the specifics of your own journey. You will know if you give some time to the question. And we hope you will. We should note that the direction today supports clearing and letting go, rather than the acquisition of new attributes. Today is a day to bid farewell to some of the balls and chains that you have been courageously dragging behind you for so long.

So you can see that it could be a day of realizing great and unexpected freedoms. It could be a day of joyous out-flying from the cages you have allowed to remain around your souls. It could be a day of radically
shifting persective as you drop something or things that have contained and defined you for as long as you can recall.

The experience of change may be immediate if you do realize your intent to let go of some aspect of yourself that you no longer need. Or it may be more subtle, taking days or even, in some cases weeks, to make itself manifest. In point of fact, you needn’t concern yourself with the outward signs, but rather content yourself with doing the inner work. Do your letting go today, and the results will follow.

How to do it? Each of you has practices that have proved helpful and feel comfortable. It doesn’t matter the means. What does matter is that you are very clear on what it is that you have had enough of, what in yourself wearies you to the point of tears, what you feel you can no longer carry forward, no matter what.

Once you know deeply and truly what that is, the letting go will unfold on its own. Your job is to fnd that which imprisons you now, that which perhaps strengthened and emboldened you in the past but which has come to sap your energies or keep you small.

That which you are maybe most frustrated by and yet fear to live without. You find that, dear ones, and today it will be lifted without any further struggle.

Blessings of all sorts we shower on you. We love you and we are honored to watch you evolve, to watch your great courage and spirit and heart

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.…Then George W. gets exactly what he feared

….and Eckhart Tolle would have a field days commenting on the egoic wrangling…. eight straight years of:

nonstop infighting,

quarrels,

duels,

putting one’s party over the good of the country,

two sets of warmongers who want to attack France or England, allied with the other

character assassination, and

personal hatred (especially between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton — of whom Margi was convinced that the latter was a closet jew; Aaron Burr would later shoot him).

This bickering and worse was because the American Revolution did not change people, just their form of government. The egoic mind keeps wreaking havoc in human relations.

I had seen the prequel to this mini-series in 1983 when it first came out, together with my then wife, Gerda, the Austrian, who had also met the handsome star, Barry Bostwick, and thought he was an awesome hunk. 😉

It showed the childhood and youth of Washington; his heroic soldier years for Great Britain; his marriage to Martha (played by the beloved Patty Duke);

….his running of their huge Virginia plantation with 100 slaves; and then the bloody Revolution itself…..

Despite Washington’s noble idealism, great bravery, tremendous patience, eternal tact — the redheaded Kelt Washington actually had a very hot temper, but he mastered it at critical moments — the Revolution was saved by two key Europeans:

Baron Friedrich von Steuben of Germany/Prussia; and

the young Marquis de Lafayette of France, who brought the king of France, Louis XVI (later beheaded), fully into the war on the American side.

Fact is that 90% of Americans did not lift one finger for their own Revolution, but how they criticizef anyone who did! 😉

“At the end of its tether” the American Revolution succeeds!

I recommend both George Washington mini-series, 1) the younger Washington, and 2) Washington as president, with the second part found right below.

But it is sobering to think that the American people could not even unite around its greatest hero ever, around the literal savior of his country — who 1) had won the Revolution and 2) then got us the US Constitution itself!! — then in the multiracial mess  we have today, with hack politicians and sell-outs everywhere, and not a statesmen in sight, there is zero chance of any unity today for this splintered nation.

Egoic earthlings love to trash-talk others.

See for yourself. They even dragged Washington through the mud, who was as near a saint as this country has ever produced. There is a scene at the end where he tells Martha he has failed.

Martha: “You look sad.”

George: “I wanted to leave behind a people working peacefully together. And all we do is fight! I’m not sure this nation will even survive. I’ve failed, Martha, I’ve FAILED!”

Even modern p.c. historians who criticize his owning slaves also admit the man was (otherwise) without the slightest scandal, a faithful husband, an exemplary and loving stepfather to Martha’s four children (none of whom tragically survived beyond early adulthood, a tragic fact which I had not known), a brave and skilled officer, a very, VERY wise national leader…..

…..and also a fantastic dancer 😉 ) .

When Washington died, at just 67, to their credit, all Americans united in weeping, realizing what they had lost.

Congressman Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee’s famously proclaimed that he was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” adding that “the purity of Washington’s private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.”

On January 8, 1800, a writer in the Pennsylvania Gazette summed up a loss he shared with his fellow citizens:

“When Washington lived we had one common mind — one common head — one common heart — we were united — we were safe.”

New Yorkers read of Washington’s death in city newspapers on December 21. Black-bordered headlines announced “Columbia Mourns,” and grim skulls and crossbones bracketed the text. Washington, one news sheet noted, had been the “perfect model of all that is virtuous, noble, great, and dignified in man.” 

 

…..George Washington, while president, was defamed as a murderer, dolt, tyrant, terrible soldier, and even traitor (working for, yes, Great Britain!!!) by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson

Newspaper publisher Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of a most illustrious Founding Father, viciously attacked President George Washington in his defamatory Aurora newspaper.

…. a man now universally regarded as one of our greatest presidents (plus he won the American Revolution and was the Father of the US Constitution)!

The red-headed Washington, Supreme Commander of the Continental Army,  towered even physically at 6’3″, over other men.

Washington presided over the Convention in Philadelphia that produced the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Yet he was called byFranklin’s grandson a murder, traitor, dolt, loser, and vainglorious “tyrant” who wanted to “enslave all nations of the world.”

Appalled that this slander was believed by a nation he had founded and saved, Washington refused to run for a third term as president, then died of pneumonia.

…. Even the heroic, wise and almost saintly George Washington was viciously defamed

(From http://historyarch.com/2020/02/12/the-end-of-washingtons-and-jeffersons-personal-realtionship-and-its-impact-on-american-politics-and-history/]

The bitter vitriol often descended into character assassination, straying from fact into conspiracy theory.  Both sides believed (or said they did that) the other intended to destroy American democracy with European tyranny.

Republicans [ironically, now called the Democrat party] charged Federalists [now the Republicans] with attempting to replicate English monarchy in the US. Federalists claimed Republicans sought to import the French Reign of Terror [and the guillotine for all who disagreed].

As the Senate considered the Jay Treaty [of trade with Britain], Republicans [that is,Democrats] ratcheted up the pressure, setting their sights on Washington specifically.  Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Aurora ran numerous articles denigrating Washington’s character, intelligence, competency and conduct.  A few excerpts provide a flavor of what Bache printed on a daily basis:

“You seem to have entered life with a mind unadorned by extraordinary features or uncommon capacity. . . [that] emitted none of the sparks of genius, however irregular and inconstant, which mark the dawn of your future eminence. . . . nature had played the miser when she gave you birth; and education had not been lavish in her favors.”

“[Washington’s Administration] is thus the monarch of [= obeying] Great Britain, with some trifling differences . . . with the trappings of royalty, unworthy of any but a lilliputian mind”

Washington introduced pageantry to dazzle the American people to conceal “robbery and . . . foul murder with a glittering veil of tinsel.” The President replaced republican virtues with the “Deity” of money [12]

“[Americans should not give] blind confidence in any man who have done services to their country, [the President] has enslaved and ever will enslave, all nations of the earth.” [13] 

“[Washington] meant to avail himself of the popularity he acquired to strip the people of the rights which they contended for . . . . he ought to be denounced as an ingrate, and held up to public detestation.” [14]

Peppered into these wild invectives were specious calls for impeachment.

For example, Pittachus wrote that Washington should be removed from office for making the Jay Treaty without the advice and consent of the Senate; false claims he overdrew his salary in 1793; and for enlisting troops to be stationed in western counties without Congressional approval to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. [15]

Scipio summarized Republican criticisms pretending to offer friendly advice:

“Your situation is like that of a player who has mistaken or lost his part, the longer he persists, the longer he is pelted by the audience, and who would be wiser to retreat behind the curtain at the first instance of general disgust, than to be hissed off the stage.” . . .

“An immediate resignation, however, might save your country.  The heavy charges of vanity, ambition, and intrigue might lose some proportion of their force” . . .

“You will never carry this instrument [the Jay Treaty] into effect, unless you call on Great Britain to aid you against the nation.  If you do this your name will forever be classed with [Revolutionary War traitor Benedict] Arnold, Dumourier [sic Dumouriez, the French revolutionary general who defected to the royalists and ended up as an advisor to the British] and Robespierre.” . . .

“Retire immediately; let no flatterer persuade you to rest one hour longer at the helm of state.  You are utterly incapable to steer the political ship into the harbour of safety.  If you have any love for your country, leave its affairs to the wisdom of your fellow citizens . . . there are thousands of them who equal you in capacity and who excel you in knowledge.” [16—see note for additional quoted attacks on Washington]

In addition to a daily barrage of character assassination, Bache went so far as to print letters forged by loyalists in the Revolutionary War

falsely claiming Washington questioned the ability of his army and doubted democratic values.

Bache’s bitterness was apparent in his final assessment at Washington’s retirement:

“A Virginia planter by no means the most eminent, a militia-officer ignorant of war both in theory and useful practice,

….and a politician certainly not of the first magnitude. . . .

[Washington,] the source of all the misfortunes of our country,

is this day reduced to a level with his fellow-citizens, and is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the United States.”

The largely unmerited criticism does highlight something important from the era: “the shrill editorials of the 1790s reveal the serious political polarities of the 1790s.” [17]

Scipio’s commentary is especially revealing in what Republicans hoped to accomplish.

Calling the President ignorant, greedy, unpatriotic, a murderer and even a traitor akin to Benedict Arnold was [deliberate slander] intended to force retirement. 

The unmerited attacks stung Washington deeply, and there is little doubt the unrelenting stream of criticism made leaving office eminently preferable to a third term.

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Funny how some seem to reject the Henrik Holappa of that era and still like the pathetic old con man…..

Amazing, if Benjamin Franklin Bache was right, that we erected a monument to a “murderer”….

If the Carlos Porter of those times was correct, why then did we name the capital of the United States after him?

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Someday we might even honor this vilified man:

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……JdN: Washington denounced the existence of ALL political parties!

It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption,

…which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

[…]

A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. […]

[Then Washington recommends religion and morality to counter this partisan hatred.]

Photo: the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, which my ancestor via both parents, Thomas Angell, gave orchard land for in the 1600’s. The current church, very much larger, was built in 1775.