'Thieves, Brigands, And Fools' - Alexander Hamilton And The Stupendous Congressional Freak Show

As envisioned by Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton, Congress is supposed to be a place of reflection, duty, and faithful representation - the people's government elected not to interfere in their lives but to assure that an enabling environment allows enterprise to flourish within a respectful community.  Yet few observing the shenanigans on Capitol Hill would recognize the vision of the Founding Fathers. 

Hamilton had been concerned from the very beginning about an untamed, unsupervised House of Representatives and urged Jefferson to consider a mitigating intermediary, something akin to the House of Lords, titled, aristocratic, wealthy gentlemen with no untoward ambition except to serve the nation. 

 The 'people', warned Hamilton, are not the kind, generous thoughtful citizens you imagine.  While there might be a few shining stars among them, in the main they must be saved from themselves.  His Federalist Papers are masteries of elegant prose, deep thought, and high political instinct. 

 

And so it is that Hamilton has been proven right again and again, and he would be chortling and chuckling at the mess that passes for governance in Washington today. 'A bunch of thieves, brigands, and ne'er-do-wells', he called the first Congress seated in 1789, and in disgust he threated to resign the post of Secretary of the Treasury, 'if I have to be beholden to these feral fools'; but fortunately for the country he stayed the course, and at least one man who understood the nature of America and its electoral base served the new republic. 

His tenure did little electoral good, for he watched with dismay as the legislative branch turned into a raucous side show, a freak show, a fun house.  'Master Hamilton', a freed slave once told him, 'don't you fret so.  De peoples gwine do right by you', but of course nothing of the kind ever happened.  Things went from bad to worse.  The new democracy cracked and fractured and ended up in civil war, the retributive ignorance of Reconstruction, and long decades of Jim Crow.  

Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, the brainchild of Hamilton's friend and colleague Jefferson, third president of the United States, turned into a wholesale slaughter of Indians and buffalo until the few natives still around in 1812 were herded across the Mississippi into reservations.  Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans told his Chickasaw and Choctaw allies thank you very much for your service, but sayonara. 

 

So much for a temperate, considerate, judicial government.  Hamilton was as patriotic as any of the Founding Fathers and saw like them America's destiny far to the west of Washington and Philadelphia, but at the same time saw his vision of a reasonable, temperate, and reflective government go with the wind. 

'Everyone gets what they deserve' said John Jay, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence who understood the feral nature of the populace - any populace for that matter.  Jay was a student of ancient history and an admirer of Shakespeare and understood the nature of the mob, but had hoped that illuminated by the Enlightenment the new American democracy would be different, more respectful of good judgment, more circumspect and patient.  

Wrong and wrong again he soon realized.  What he and his colleagues had created was indeed an intemperate, impatient, greedy lot; and all he could hope for was that this primal, ineluctable nature would also produce something universally good or at least beneficial for the body politic. 

 

It of course never happened and things went from bad to worse up to, including and especially in the present day.  'Thieves, brigands, and fools' barely touches the surface of today's legislators, and one historian and biographer of Hamilton discovered an apocryphal fragment from one of his early drafts of the Federalist Papers. Annotated, marked, edited, and scored, it never saw the light of day, but in the context of today's side show, the biographer debated whether to make it public:

The state of the union - hah! nothing but a chimera, a bad nightmare of ignorance writ large.  Democracy? Hah, and hah again. A burlesque freak show, a cavalcade of stupidity and bald impropriety, a jamboree of empty-headed....

Here the parchment had been torn and the rest was illegible, but the biographer could only imagine what else was on Hamilton's mind. 

And when that same biographer watched the rise of AOC - Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, representative from Brooklyn and listened to her screechy warnings about the evil virus infecting America, he knew exactly what Hamilton would have written and how he would have finished his journal.  This race-baiting idiot was just the icon of the perverse democracy that America had become. 

She is the reason directions for use are printed on shampoo bottles, said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana about AOC - a little woman without a thought in her head, dumb as a hammer, and with the arrogated self-importance of a jackass. Unkind perhaps and no doubt adding to the rancor and ad hominem zeitgeist of the times, but yet true enough and, sorry to say, emblematic, for she wasn't the first idiot to be elected to Congress nor would she be the last. 

One by one, Senators and Congressmen have stood up, slobbered over the poor, the black, and the disadvantaged while amassing millions, building multiple homes, feathering their nests. 'I work hard for ordinary Americans', shouted Bernie Sanders in angry defense of his three homes and multi-million dollar portfolio; but everyone in earshot knew that he, Elizabeth Warren, and Chuck Schumer - old line, dyed-in-the-wool progressives - had enough in reserve to each buy a small island. 

'I don't have to live in a tarpaper shack to empathize with the black poor', said Schumer before quickly retracting the statement.  He had just been pilloried for his tone-deaf comment about tariffs, warning Americans that their Super Bowl guacamole was going to cost more, so the 'tarpaper shack' episode should have been the end-all of the fool's career, but he went on to claim his bona fides, citing his impoverished, marginal Jewish life in Brooklyn. 

'I am one of you', he proudly said to a gathering of black church leaders in Anacostia, Washington's worst, most penitential black slums all of whom sat on their hands and wondered how this fool ever got elected. 

Elizabeth Warren, self-appointed doyenne of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, once claimed American Indian heritage to bond her ever more closely to American diversity, and took a DNA test in hopes of finding that one sliver of Cherokee she claimed. 

"Senator Warren has reached out to us and has apologized to the tribe," Hubbard spokeswoman for the Cherokee Nation said in a statement. "We are encouraged by this dialogue and understanding that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests. We are encouraged by her action and hope that the slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end."

Imagine the chutzpah of the woman, the sheer, unmitigated gall, the absurdity of the claim.  'She's my kind of girl', Alexander Hamilton might say if he were reincarnated.  This blatant bravura, this unmitigated myopic idiocy was exactly what he warned against in 1789. 

And if he did return to earth he might well wonder if he had made a bad mistake, turning a good group of pilgrims and settlers into a foolish, rabid mob.  'Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to condemn the monarchy'. 

'Let it be', sang the Beatles and maybe it is best that Hamilton remain among the shades of the dead and gone, why subject him to more misery?  But the rest of us have to put up with the charade of three-cornered government, each branch more unhinged and superfluous than the next. 

'I love America' was the lawn sign the Hamilton biographer saw as he made his way home.  'Now, that's an interesting thought'