dagblog - Comments for "The Adams Family: Counter-Revolution, Contre-Empire"

Ah, light reading to start

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 04:44:49 +0000

In reply to Note that on the side menu to

Ah, light reading to start the week...

Note that on the side menu to

artappraiser — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 03:36:46 +0000

In reply to Sean Wilentz' takeaway, alas:

Note that on the side menu to Wilentz's piece there are these two related pieces:

The Revival of John Quincy Adams by David Waldstreicher. from July 11, 2017
Donald Trump and the Legacy of Andrew Jackson by Steve Inskeep, from Nov. 30, 2016

Sean Wilentz' takeaway, alas:

artappraiser — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 03:22:58 +0000

In reply to The Adams Family: Counter-Revolution, Contre-Empire

Sean Wilentz' takeaway, alas: The Problem With High-Minded Politics

John Adams and John Quincy Adams’s virtuous disdain for partisanship was at the root of their failures.

Book review of The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality by Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein; Viking

for TheAtlantic.com, May 2019 issue

Historians have not yet decided what to make of Donald Trump’s election, although some of us have been trying. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, I participated in a session at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting devoted in part to assessing the president-elect in historical terms. The gathering had been planned much earlier, with Hillary Clinton’s presumed presidency in mind, so we speakers had to shift gears in a hurry. The best I could do was summarize Trump’s links to organized crime.

As it happens, my offhand remarks contained some foresight about public revelations in store, but they hardly explained Trump’s historical significance. Some scholars have reached for analogies, likening Trump’s victory to the overthrow of Reconstruction or to the excesses of the ensuing Gilded Age. Others have focused on the roots of Trump’s visceral appeal. Jill Lepore’s recent survey of American history, These Truths, describes Trump as buoyed by a new version of a conspiratorial populist tradition that dates back to the agrarian People’s Party of the 1890s. In a new dual biography of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality, Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein trace Trump’s origins practically to the nation’s founding [....]

Thanks for this. John Quincy

artappraiser — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 01:13:33 +0000

In reply to The Adams Family: Counter-Revolution, Contre-Empire

Thanks for this. John Quincy especially is a much underappreciated Prez, mho, I'm a fan. Not the least of which he was a waaay ahead of his time policy wonk and "technocrat" (so much so that he could probably time travel to the 21st century without much trouble). Reality based with great vision of the future. Didn't give a shit about his own popularity, confident in his own skin from being raised in Europe and education. Did his best to ameliorate some pretty vicious tribalism through compromise while mostly basically trying to push doing the right thing for the country at the same time. Kept pushing, kept trying whenever he failed, didn't give up. Disproves the "dynasty" thing doesn't always have to be bad, not if they're raised right.