Perspective

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States
Howard Chandler Christy (PD)

I'm just finishing up a very good book about Henry Knox (Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution by Mark Puls), provided to me by our very own John Blackshoe.

Henry Knox, bookseller, self-educated artillerist, the fellow who led the effort to drag cannon down from Fort Ticonderoga to drive the British from Boston. I mean that's what I knew about him. Now, having read the book, I know he was so much more.

Friend , and trusted advisor, to George Washington and Nathanael Greene, a Rhode Islander whose southern campaign during the Revolution (which is described once removed in the most excellent The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution by John Oller, which I finished a week ago, also a gift from John Blackshoe) had few victories but eventually drove the ragged British army under Cornwallis north to Virginia, where they were eventually defeated at Yorktown. (I had no idea that the war continued on for some time after that, ah, the deficiencies of a public education.)

Knox was quite a guy, I highly recommend both of the aforementioned volumes (available in multiple places but also Amazon).

Now this post isn't so much a book report as it is a post about perspective.

perspective (Source)

1a : a mental view or prospect

b : a visible scene

2a : the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed

b : the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance

3 : the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and positions

4a : the technique or process of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye

b : a picture in perspective

My point being that long after Knox and Marion lived, books were written about them by folks who had the longer perspective of the events which Knox and Marion lived through than folks did at the time.

Historians know that to judge an event in its immediate aftermath as to its importance or its meaning is foolhardy at best. Ofttimes we have no idea of the effects of an event until well after it takes place.

Take, for instance, the current state of affairs in our fair nation. Now I hear things every day from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. I have friends and relatives who are on either side of any given issue. They ask me for my take on these things, I always say the same thing ...

"It's too soon to tell if this is good or bad. I'm taking a wait and see approach."

Now that viewpoint can be frustrating to some. I know people in government service who have labored long and faithfully there. They have done their best, they have worked damned hard, often in times of shifting priorities and uncertain funding. They do the best they can and right now many of them are quite nervous at what's coming tomorrow, or the next day.

The way DOGE has gone about firing people has many in fear for their livelihoods. Many undeservedly so. Many of the people who visit here have a very low opinion of Washington DC. Some folks on the Book of Faces enjoy describing it as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy," most of whom probably have very little idea of how things work (or don't) in our nation's capital.

The dust hasn't settled yet, the extremes on both sides are behaving like knuckleheads, as so aptly put by Peter Grant over at Bayou Renaissance Man. Where will it end?

I have no idea, but then again, I take the long view of things, or try to. I also fully believe that God is in charge.

But for now, I would advise all and sundry to buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride. And while you're at it ...

Don't be a knucklehead.