This is apparently intended as some bromide to combat the teaching of critical race theory without seeming to address it at all. A pastor stands on George Washington’s estate and describes how Washington’s main slave, Billy Lee, actually had a great life and guess what? Washington left him tons of money. I would laugh if it wasn’t so disgusting.
Right-wing pastor Jacks Hibbs says that while George Washington owned hundreds of slaves, he treated them well and even left one, William (Billy) Lee, half of his wealth when he died: "When's the last time you heard that?" Probably never, because it's not true. pic.twitter.com/A6X0uXX4NL
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 13, 2021
The official Mount Vernon website says Washington freed Lee and left him an annual allowance of $30. https://t.co/VaHEWd9UnM pic.twitter.com/MDUrRLJURn
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 13, 2021
FYI, $30 in 1800 is the equivalent of almost $700 today. To give you perspective, rent was $4.00 per week (and I’m getting this off of Google, I have no idea) so there’s no way even in 1800 that $700 was enough to live on.
Good for George Washington for giving the man his freedom and a small annuity. That’s certainly better than selling him down south to Mississippi. But Lee’s inheritance is nowhere near the pie in the sky luxury that this pastor depicts. And even if it was, that was one person who lived under slavery. Lee being owned by Washington is certainly not the typical slave experience.
The dishonesty here is shocking, but the shocking is normal nowadays. History is being rewritten, whether it’s the recent history of the insurrection or the history of the Civil War. Expect more of the same.
I believe it was Bill Ewok Barr himself who said he didn’t care about what history says about him (as he is now trying to clean up his reputation) and that history is written by the winners. That is so true and why we’ve all been raised on lies and myths about our forefathers.
There’s more (uncomfortably so) in the saying Barr cites about history being written by the winners. Yet for his talk at one time about not caring about how history would regard him he is engaged in some efforts at protecting his image for the time when historians look back on him. He got away with putting a coat of whitewash on his first sting as AG, so the evidence suggests the fact he put in the time and effort to do so suggests he was blowing smoke when he said he didn’t care about history.
What matters is in two parts. He does in fact (probably) care how he will be regarded by history. And given that he’s smart, as well as cold and calculating and has the ability to think and plan for the long term (a founder of the Federalist Society – need I say more?) he’s at least hedging his bets because he is concerned when all the dust settles Trump and Trumpism will lose. “Bigly” so to speak. The fact he’s already said and done enough to raise Trump’s ire suggests to me that Barr has calculated the whole Trump movement will implode, and do so in spectacular enough fashion that while remnants will always be around and pop up enough to cause some concern from time to time, overall MAGA is doomed to to failure.
And since he played a pretty crucial role in keeping the Trump/MAGA train on the tracks he’s going to get a LOT of scrutiny by historians. Unless I miss my guess he started planning for Trump’s losing and how Trump would react, and therefore his departure well before November. The signs are there. He laid groundwork for trying to whitewash his misdeeds in propping up Trump well in advance of the time he started executing his plan. He knew that unlike the first time as AG, he would have decades out of the spotlight to quietly rehabilitate his image. So he planted some “Easer Eggs” that will appear there all shiny and pretty to fake people out that he was really one of the good guys all along, and that people (historians) won’t crack them open and find that they had sat in the sun so long they were rotten inside!
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think Barr is a halfway decent barometer that indicates a hurricane is going to come and wreak major damage on MAGA land. Because he’s been trying to get to and inside a structure he’s been building well inland and on high ground.
he quit just before those pardons went out. You can’t convince me he didn’t know and hadn’t advised on them.
Washington spent a lot more than that trying to track down Oney Judge, a [female] slave who ran away. He was not a good or kind slave owner. (I understand he also had a temper that could go off like an explosive.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge
Oh yes the name Bill Barr comes up again. The most amazing thing about the meteoric rise of ignorance in the GOP is that IF Don J Trump should ever win the WH again there would be a whole new batch of Swamp Drainers. Remember that boast? But how long until they too are all in jail for doing too great a job of draining swamps? A whole new cast of characters. If it weren’t so scary it would be laughable?