There’s a quote that continues to circulate social media. Although it’s 225 years old, it could have been written today, as the words eerily and almost perfectly describe and engulf the perils of Donald Trump. Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of America and a co-author of the U.S. Constitution, wrote the statement excerpted here from Enclosure [Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration], [18 August 1792].
“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”
(Full Statement)
To learn more about Alexander Hamilton, below is a short 6-minute biographical video. To learn more about Donald Trump, follow him on Twitter if you dare, and you’e looking for some instant anxiety. Most everything Hamilton describes is all there in Trump’s public tweets for the world to read and gasp. We don’t need to wonder about fake news with Trump—he writes his own fake news and embarrasses himself and the country on a daily, often hourly basis. In some cases he incriminates himself while displaying slander and obstruction of justice. It is hoped by many that each despicable act will soon come back to bite him in the ass—and in a perfect world, remove him from the White House and put him in the Big House.
the Alexander Hamilton video:
And we march on.