Various for Monday

A cloudy good morning to Stroock's Books reader(s) in the United States, Commonwealth, and across the globe. 

We ourselves awake with a touch of plantar fasciitis, which is better than waking up with a touch of gout. 

Oldest Daughter is home from college after a very successful first year. 

War of the ants...we saw one ant yesterday. We are moving inexorably toward victory. 

PJM reports: 'Bombshell Evidence About the 2020 Election Is Coming'. We remain skeptical. Which is to say, remaining unaccountable for one's misdeeds is a Democrat specialty. Which is not to say that Trump didn't win. Trump won. Upon this hill we will fight. Oh, you think the election was fair? Got any evidence for that, or na? Do you also believe in the tooth fairy? Reminder, believing the 2020 election was fair is the conspiracy theory here. 

We remain paralyzed, unable and unwilling to write American Revolutionary War articles. No idea why.  Organizing our boxed up library would be a way to stoke our own interest. Back in the day, by which we mean 2021, our American Revolution books took up an entire bookcase, about a hundred books in all. 

One American Revolution thought. Historians sometimes portray Washington as an 18th century Fabius avoiding pitched battle with the British Army. The men of the American Revolution (like their British counterparts) were raised on Plutarch and other Roman historians. They looked to Roman examples to define Washington's character.

Note, Plutarch was not a historian in the way we think of historians*. He was a moralist, using historical examples to define good morals and character. For example, Alexander was an overambitious glutton who couldn't stop conquering. Ceaser was of bad character so the senate assassinated him. This style of history is why we have stories about George Washington in the cherry tree. Washington was of good character and won the war and was a good president because of that character.

The first modern history is Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon was in many ways a moralist too. The Roman Empire fell because it became large and gluttonous. Gibbon's not wrong, is he? But unlike a lot of moralists, Gibbon looked at the primary sources (think of those Penguin Classic histories at the book store) and used them to interpret what had happened. 

DOGE Report.

We worked on the Contra intro chapter yesterday and are diligently trying to make this chapter make sense. These are important character introductions. We shall continue doing so today.