On this day in 1804, the infamous Burr–Hamilton duel took place. I do think that Burr was a jerk. But it is hard not to side with him on this given that Hamilton apparently fiddled with the pistols to give them hair triggers. There is also the evidence that Hamilton wrote a letter the night before with the intention of making Burr look bad if Hamilton lost the duel. I rather think of the duel as being between John Cleese and Terry Jones of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Jones (Burr) might be difficult and emotional, but he isn’t calculating like Cleese (Hamilton). Clearly the world needs both kinds of men, so they shouldn’t get in duels.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Steve King and his use of this duel:

So 211 years ago today, the mean girls had their fight. Hamilton died the following day. And Burr hardly covered himself with glory after the duel. What honorable men!

On this day in 1973, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped. While living in Italy, he was kidnapped by a bunch of mafia affiliated people, trying to get some money out of his billionaire grandfather. They asked for $17 million. So the guy’s father asked granddad for the money, but he refused. He claimed that it was to protect his other 14 grandchildren, who would all be threatened if the ransom was paid. It was just hogwash, of course; Jean Paul Getty Sr simply cared more about his money than did about any human being.

Four months later, Getty Jr got a letter from the kidnappers with a his son’s ear. But they had reduced the price to $3.2 million. Getty Jr again went to granddad, who agreed to give him $2.2 million — because that was as much as he could write off. The rest of the money he provided as a loan at 4% interest. Remember: Getty Sr had a couple of billion dollars. But note that he was no longer concerned about his other 14 grandchildren. John Paul Getty III was returned alive, but missing an ear.

I’ll write about Bill Cosby later today with regard to the way that great power corrupts people. But with people like Jean Paul Getty Sr, I wonder if it isn’t that psychopaths like him are just really good at making money. Of course, it’s not like Getty was that great at making money. His father was a rich oil man. Jean Paul Getty Sr was born into the business. Regardless: what a waste of a life.

We mark this day 42 years later for the fascinating glimpse it gives us into the messed up lives of the rich and famous.

On this day in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. A good case can be made that the US really began on this date. Because the amendment fundamentally changed our Constitution. Before it, the government was largely hamstrung by the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment allowed the United States to become a modern democracy. But it would take some time. As Ian Millhiser documents in Injustices, even into the 20th century, the curious reading of the amendment by the Supreme Court, meant that it was used primarily to oppress the very people the amendment was intended to protect.

What’s interesting about the Fourteenth Amendment today is that, in general, conservatives hate it. In this regard, I’m very interested in Section 4, which reads in part, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” It’s interesting because I remember in 2005 that Bush decided to “spend” his alleged political capital on something that few of the 50.7% of the people thought they had voted for: privatizing Social Security.

So Bush went around talking about how there wasn’t a Social Security Trust Fund. Instead, it was “just IOUs.” It’s a totally bizarre claim. To start with, cash is also “just IOUs.” But more to the point, Bush wanted to transfer a huge part of Social Security to private investment accounts. That would have meant that instead of having US bonds, we would have had stock certificates. So we again would have had “just IOUs.” The difference would be that governments IOUs are considered the safest investment in the world, and stocks are, well, not quite as safe.

The broader point is that Bush was doing exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment said no one should do. But from his perspective, it didn’t much matter. Sure, the Fourteenth Amendment was a Republican thing, but that was the liberal Republican Party. Other than occasionally mentioning Lincoln (because now even conservatives admit that slavery was wrong), the modern Republican Party is cut off from its past. More recently, Republicans have been calling for an end to automatic citizenship for people born here — Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I’m not naive; if the Fourteenth Amendment justified something that Republicans wanted to do, they would be quoting it — selectively.

But this day in 1868 was a very good day because the Fourteenth Amendment transformed the nation. I just wish conservatives would read it.

On this day in 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco on a scientific expedition for the North Pole. I have the greatest respect for people who do fool things like this. It is so contrary to my notions of how a sane person should act that I stand in awe. The expedition was headed by Lieutenant Commander George W DeLong. In total, there were 30 Navy officers and men and 3 civilians. Things did not go well.

By September of 1879, the Jeannette was at 71°N and caught fast in ice. And they stayed in that state for 21 months — almost two years! But the ride ended on 12 June 1881, when the pressure of the ice started to cause the ship to leak. DeLong had his crew move the supplies and three lifeboats onto the ice. The ship sank the next day. But the crew managed to make its way to the open sea.

They managed to make it to some small islands way north of Siberia. This allowed them to get some food and prepare for the big trip to the continent. Again, I find all of this amazing. I would have been inclined to stayed on the ship and died there. But maybe not. The will to survive is strong and these people kept on going. It probably helped that others were yelling at those like me who are not so tenacious of life.

On their way to Siberia, a big storm came up, capsizing one of the boats, killing eight of the men. But the other two boats made it to the continent — but they did so in completely different locations. One of the groups was headed by DeLong. Things did not go well for them. Of the 14 men, only two of them survived — the rest starved to death. The other group of 11 men, was headed by Chief Engineer George W Melville. They were able to find a native village and so survived. So of the original 33 men, only 13 survived.

I tend to think of these kinds of guys as real men. But it was a matter of necessity for these guys. I have the luxury of being an agoraphobic coward. What bothers me about most of the “real men” I see in America is that it is posturing. Their lives are as easy as mine — easier, perhaps. But they go off hunting or doing whatever in the name of feeling like they belong to the tradition of DeLong and Melville. And in a sense, I suppose they do. If put the Jeannette, they would have acted like everyone else. But as I noted, so would I have. So doing things like killing deer seem to me more like little boys playing army. It isn’t the same thing.

But we mark this day 136 years ago when the USS Jeannette started its insane voyage to the North Pole.

On this day in 1988, the Piper Alpha oil production platform exploded, leading to the deaths of 167 men. These platforms are a whole lot larger than people normally think. The Piper Alpha was 474 feet above the surface of the water. That is more than twice the distance from the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge to the water. In other words, people can’t easily escape a fire by jumping.

The Piper Alpha was originally designed to be safe. When it went into operation in 1976, it contained three firewalls between where the most dangerous work was done and where the men lived. But it was later converted from its initial purpose of drilling for oil to the new purpose of drilling for natural gas. This basically destroyed the original design. Let’s be clear about that: why design and build a whole new platform when that’s going to cost money? So as always, the company — Occidental Petroleum — was fine with safety, as long as it didn’t add much in terms of costs. When costs are substantial, lives don’t matter, because those who are getting the quarterly bonuses are not working on the platforms.

By 1988, the platform was in need of major maintenance. By July, they had taken out its Gas Conservation Module to replace it. This meant that they could not drill for natural gas. But instead of just shutting down the drilling while the repairs were going on, the company put it back into oil drilling mode. They were drilling almost 120,000 barrels per day. None of which is to say that this is the reason for the explosion. There were mistakes that were at least nominally made by workers. But the larger context is that Occidental Petroleum did not have proper procedures in place and, as always, put profits before people. No criminal charges were ever filed against the company, and I’m sure all its executives went on to have have very nice careers and retirements.

We mark this day 27 years ago when 167 men died as a result of corporate greed and incompetence on the Piper Alpha.

Bloody Thursday occurred on this day in 1934. It was part of the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike. The result of that strike was good: it caused all of the west coast ports to become unionized. But Bloody Thursday was typical of the kind of thing that workers have had to live through in order to organize unions. Historically, the levers of official government power have been used to stop unions — most especially the courts. But on the front lines, it has been police departments.

On the day after the Fourth of July, the Industrial Association tried to get the San Francisco port working more despite the strike. And who was there to help them? Why the police department, of course. As will happen whenever the police get a tiny bit scared, officers eventually started firing into crowds of workers, killing two men. Afterward, workers put out flowers on the corner of Mission and Steuart. And the police came by and removed them. The workers put more flowers there. Eventually, police started firing into the International Longshoremen’s Association hall, but no one was killed.

The state sent in the National Guard. And federal troops were at the ready. Bloody Thursday resulted in a general strike — you know, the kind of thing that is now illegal in the “freedom loving” United States. And there was a good overall result for the workers. But I’m always struck by the fact that most people associate labor unions with violence. Well, yeah. But why is that?! The labor movement has been consistently attacked both politically and physically. So yeah, sometimes things get violent like when those heartless workers got in the way of those police bullets.

I’m afraid those days are coming back. The rich have been too greedy. Increasingly, workers have nothing to lose. And the rights that workers gained during the first half of the 20th century are being chipped away. They will have to be fought for all over again. And the rich really should hope that we succeed. Because America is doomed if we don’t.

We mark Bloody Thursday on this day 81 years ago.

It is the Fourth of July, and so all good Americans should sit down and watch 1776. There are two reasons for this. First, it is about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Second, it is a musical, and there really is no more American art form than the Broadway musical. Today is also a good day to watch The Music Man — but it is optional. The main thing about 1776 is that it is both accurate and completely deceptive. Well, I will grant that Benjamin Franklin was a charming fellow. But John Adams wanted to break with England so that he could set up an aristocracy here. Most all of them did.

But there is one story about 1776 that really explains America. The producer of the film, Jack Warner, was a friend of Richard Nixon’s. So after it was finished, Warner screened it for the president. And Nixon loved it. There was just one problem with it: “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.” It presents the men who were not so keen on independence as, well, conservative. The refrain is even, “To the right, ever to the right; never to the left, forever to the right.” So Warner had the number cut from the film, against the wishes of the director. He also told the studio to destroy the negative. But Warner was no longer president of Warner Bros, so his instructions were thankfully ignored.

What was cut was not just one of the more interesting songs in the film, it was a great number. It included an exchange between John Dickinson and John Hancock. Dickinson warns Hancock that history will brand people like him traitors. Hancock replies, “Traitors, Mr. Dickinson? To what? The British crown, or the British half-crown? Fortunately there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.” To which Dickinson responds with something that is as true today as ever, “Perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us…” And the chorus starts singing, “To the right, forever to the right…” It’s wonderful.

Another aspect of it is as the song is ending, all the cool, considerate men make their ways out of the chamber to their carriages — going off to enjoy their rich propertied lives. There is something wonderfully arrogant about it. And McNair, the custodian of the Continental Congress, who was watching them go, reflects, “How’d you like to try and borrow a dollar from one of them?” Indeed.

I knew the musical originally from the film, but later, I listened to the original Broadway cast album, so I knew the song very well. But I never put it together and noticed that the number had been removed — much less the reason for it. And this was true of people who saw the film in the theaters and on VHS for decades. It was only in 2002, when the Restored Director’s Cut was released, that we got to see the scene — and much else — restored to the film. Now the original release seems hollow.

But think about the irony of the whole thing. The President of the United States, acting just like King George III would have, said, “Butcher this work of art, because it offends me.” And it was done. And it was done in the name of patriotism. That’s the way with things. Dickinson was right: those men would be remembered as traitors — by some people. The problem is not that today’s conservatives would have been against American independence. The problem is that conservatives delude themselves in thinking that they would have been backers of the revolution when they most clearly would not have been. It is the liberals who are always there pushing in new directions. Not the conservatives.

And that’s fine. We need conservatives to hold liberals back and keep us from moving ahead too quickly. But they should stop thinking that they ever would have been for long settled liberal policies of the past. It’s like Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, which shows no trace of the author ever having read Paine. They need to stop embarrassing themselves. William F Buckley Jr was right, “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop…” That’s what it means to be a conservative. They were the John Dickinsons and Edward Rutledges. When it comes to Independence Day, they are a bad guys. Conservatives need to embrace that.

On this day in 1979, President Carter signed a “presidential finding” that authorized funding the Afghani guerrillas who were fighting the Soviet presence (the invasion didn’t happen until later that year). You know: the same people who would be fighting us just two decades later! The enemy of my enemy is usually not my friend. As a matter of fact, at that time, the Soviet Union was bringing to Afghanistan a whole lot of things that we agreed with. The people who we were funding were not good people and in no way supported what we think of as American or western values. This was the true beginning of the decade long Operation Cyclone.

Of course, the CIA made the decision to back the most militant and backwards of the groups in Afghanistan. This is because the CIA usually doesn’t know what it is doing. It still boggles my mind that the most incompetent parts of our government are the parts that Americans think most highly of. In addition to generally being involved in the most vile of activities, the CIA has shown itself to be hopelessly incompetent in most of what it does. Think: “Bay of Pigs.”

But what’s most amazing me about the CIA is that even what they are capable of doing is fairly minor. It is nothing that any group of people couldn’t put together given the time and resources that the agency has been given. But thanks to spy books and movies, people think it has amazing capabilities. Not really. An ex-CIA agent recorded a commentary for the film RED. He noted two things. First, it is very easy to kill anyone you want to. Second, the most important ability to have if you are a field agent overseas is car stealing. I can well imagine: after you manage to destabilize a country, it is often necessary to get out of them ASAP!

Another thing that is interesting about this is that Carter was a very big Cold War politician — much more so than Reagan was. Yet Republicans have created this mythology of Cater being weak in terms of foreign affairs. I’m not too keen on a lot of Cater’s politics. But this is all very typical of Republicans. Reagan was “strong” because he was bellicose; Carter was weak because he wasn’t. Talk is cheap, but it is all that matters to Republicans.

So 36 years ago, the US government started backing the wrong people in Afghanistan. And 22 years later, we started fighting them. This is because as a nation, we are usually clueless and do things for stupid reasons.

On this day in 1777, Vermont became the first US territory to more or less ban slavery. At the same convention, it adopted universal adult male suffrage and dictated support for public schools. I still find it hard to think that Vermont was not one of the original 13 colonies. But it wasn’t. Apparently, in 1764, King George III set up boundaries between New York and New Hampshire. This left the gaping hole that became Vermont. In order to protect what they saw as encroachment from New York, people from New Hampshire settled in Vermont and eventually a state was born.

One interesting thing about this is that reading about native tribes at the time of the first western contact, I hear the same kinds of things. Different groups of humans are always trying to take others’ lands and protect their own. The fact that the natives acted this way is often used as a justification for treating them like savages. But there is literally no difference. And that’s as true today as it ever has been.

Vermont went on to be the 14th United State — on 4 March 1791. But this history explains a few things about modern Vermont. One is that Vermont has the greatest gun ownership of any state in the northeast. The relatively late frontier formation of the state goes along with that. The other thing is that Vermont is a very liberal state. It seemed to get an early start with regard to that.

Happy anniversary Vermont’s second convention. Also: Bernie Sanders 2016!

On this day in 1874, the first practical typewriter went on sale. It is known as the Sholes and Glidden typewriter. More or less invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, it was developed with Carlos Glidden along with Samuel Soule and James Densmore. It was an awkward thing. It only typed in UPPER CASE. And you couldn’t see what you were typing. But it had the main features that we have come to know as a typewriter — including the QWERTY keyboard.

The truth is, unfortunately, that it wouldn’t have taken off if it had been left to these men. It was a difficult a machine (it requited trained operators), too expensive, too new. There wasn’t an urgent need for it — even though there soon would be. It only took off because the weapons manufacturer E Remington and Sons bought it. They wanted to diversify. And they were able to stick with the device and improve it over the several years before it took off.

Don’t take this to mean that I think capitalists do a lot of good. I think capitalists can do a lot of good. I’ve never questioned but that moving capital around to where it is needed is a very useful purpose. But we largely don’t see that in our modern economy. The capitalist class has largely gained control of the government and so is able to make lots of money doing nothing at all. Before the crash of 2008, finance made up 40% of our economy. That’s just nonsense. I’m sure if the modern mindset had been around in 1874, they would have abandoned the typewriter long before it became a success. After all: it didn’t make a profit this quarter!

Anyway: typewriter!