They Are Who We Thought They Were

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. - Maya Angelou

War profiteering is age old problem, and deep into the Civil War that profit came from cotton, but the Confederate states were a bit busy trying to maintain their grip on enslaving humans for profit. Some smuggled bails of it across enemy lines while some went to the US government to get in on that sweet cotton action. A man named Jesse Grant sent the Mack brothers, a couple of Jewish merchants from Cincinnati, because he trusted his son Ulysses, a Union General, would do him a favor and help him out. However, Ulysses was none too pleased his father would exploit him this way. In response, Grant issued General Orders 11 which expelled “Jews, as a class,” from the military zone he was overseeing. Even in the midst of a brutal war, Grant was widely condemned for the grossly anti-semitic order, and that stain would follow him for the rest of his life.

It’s a rare condition, in this day and age, for a person’s past to stick with them over any meaningful length of time, especially if they have any sort of fame about them. People will occasionally dig up something with a “This you?”, but for all the hyperventilating over cancel culture, no one actually gets canceled (except Colin Kaepernick. He was definitely canceled), and despite so much of our lives being on the internet, who we are and who we accept feels as ephemeral as ever. A person is only the person we see in front of us and nothing more.

Now that’s not true for everybody of course. Black people, as a collective, have an exceptionally long memory, forged in the fires of Jim Crow. As much as the law was turned against Black folks after the Civil War, it was the unwritten rules that could be the most dangerous, and those things were nebulous. Forget to step off the sidewalk when a white person is approaching, whistle at a woman, or ask a group of white children to stop throwing rocks at you, and you could find yourself swinging from a tree. Occasionally men were lynched for “nothing”.

The Jim Crow South is not the kind of place you could just glide through. It took a community effort to keep people from violating “Lynch’s Law,” or to train children to see the violence that awaited them should they step over the wrong line. Even when traveling, they created a whole book that compiled which gas stations, hotels, and restaurants were safe because you could never know for sure, where the trouble might be. It was a necessity. You had to keep receipts for everyone because trouble was everywhere and you couldn’t afford to be wrong. In words of the esteemed philosopher Jack Reacher, “Assumptions kill.” This is why, in my estimation, Black women are the moral compass of the nation. Walking the twin paths of racism and sexism, they must be exceptional in knowing who their allies are, and who they aren't.

Keeping receipts is a lost art, and frankly I wish we were better at it because it would save us a whole lot of trouble. A significant portion of our political problems are heavily influenced by our inability to master idea permanence. If a person is not currently saying a thing, it’s like they never said it all, but not everyone has that luxury. If a black person finds their neighbor being racist, for example, that neighbor will always be viewed under that cloud of suspicion. If a man says something inappropriate, you can bet that’s getting filed away, and likely disseminated to other women to avoid the guy. This is also the value of historians! They collect and keep these things so future decisions can be made with the appropriate context. These oral and formal histories are precious resources so that we are not doomed to repeat these same vicious cycles.

People keep receipts a form of self defense, and you can tell who is used to keeping them and who isn’t, especially in political discussions, and especially with the current President. The way his supporters use “Trump Derangement Syndrome” or “Orange man bad” as defenses frame the argument as some kind of static opposition. You hate him because he is on the opposite team, like the way I hate Arsenal Football Club. But we know Donald Trump was not born the day he rode down the escalator ten years ago. He has piled up decades of receipts demonstrating a history of racism, grifting, misogyny and sexual assault. I do abhor his policies, but it is an extension of the dislike I’ve held for many years. So when he, Musk, Vance and everyone else in the goon squad are destroying the federal government, it’s not simply politically motivated, it’s an extension of what we’ve known about them for quite some time. They are who we thought they were!

But we let them off the hook. These things should follow them around everywhere they go. We should have headlines like “Trump, A Man Who Has Spent Decades Making Failed Promises, Promises an Impossible Thing Yet Again.” instead of ones that sanewash his hair brained ideas. But we should also highlight those with positive receipts, the ones who have gotten it right. People like Sarah Kendzior, Adam Serwer, or Jamelle Bouie who have proven to have a grasp on this moment as much as anyone. They have driven a consistent message that has been validated over time. We should likewise diminish those who have consistently gotten it wrong, or frequently alter their claims to hide the fact that they continually miss the mark and hope we forget. It’s not that they can’t be right sometimes, but they’ve shown themselves to be unreliable analysts of the situation. They can’t be trusted.

The good news is that even if someone has fallen afoul before, there is space for redemption, but the road is not easy. In General Grant’s case, he would go on to win the war and become President, where he appointed a record number of Jewish-Americans into federal positions. When a Jewish community opened a new synagogue in Washington, DC, Grant was front and center for the dedication. Was that enough to offset General Orders 11? That’s not for me to say, but it is a tangible effort to undo some damage that he caused. Some Jewish folks may not have accepted that, and that’s certainly their right. It takes effort to atone for your sins, and even then that may not be accepted, but that’s a natural consequence of our actions.

And that brings me back to the current President. Unless he has admitted his racism, grifting and misogyny, and made tangible efforts to atone for it, then he is the same person he has always been. He is not merely a “flawed person” as many supporters present him. Grant was a flawed person. I am a flawed person. You are a flawed person. We make mistakes, we learn from them, and we try to be better the next time. This guy leans into his familiar vices at every possible opportunity. It is not remotely the same thing. RFK has killed kids abroad because of his anti-vaccine stances, and will do it here too. Elon Musk has a list of offenses long enough to make a CVS receipt blush. His track record is littered with racism, ego driven tantrums, ties to neo-nazis and generally incompetent, if not nefarious business practices, and it predates his political involvement by many years. People aren’t torching Teslas because of his politics. They do it because he’s a terrible person bent on ruining people’s lives to enrich himself. You are what your record says you are.

For anyone who purports to know anything about anything, track their hits and misses. If they miss a lot, dump them! If they’re right most of the time, support them! If this newsletter proves to be wrong consistently, and I never own up to my mistakes then you should unsubscribe. I’d like to think I’m right more often than not, but I also have no problem admitting when I’m wrong. That’s really all there is to it.  Call me old fashioned, but people should own their actions. Keep your receipts and when the time comes, hold them to account.