"Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly."
--- Benjamin Franklin on Sincerity
As politicians say, the hard one is Sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
In an age before principles of electricity made recording audio and video possible, a politician could easily stand for entirely different agendas depending on the whistle stop. It would seem that Benjamin Franklin to some extent had a gift for fitting in wherever he went, as he was well accepted by working men in print shops, erudite company of the greatest thinkers in the vaunted Age of Enlightenment, and the most well-bred aristocrats in European palaces.
If popularity was Ben Franklin's goal, however, he would not have chosen to include Sincerity as one of his 13 Virtues.
Pretending to be something you're not can be the quickest and easiest way of building superficial rapport. We all know people who arrive with a splash, making a great first impression but soon wear thin. They can quickly read a room and mirror their audience, whether a group of strangers or a single woman at a bar. As the people around them change, however, these chameleons morph so entirely that we come to realize there's no there there.
In our family, we definitely have not only differing but strong views on good governance, and as such, in being sincere we inevitably clash in political discussions. Because we live in an age where we view reality uniquely based on our preferred news sources, an age when agreeing on underlying facts themselves may no longer be foundations for conversation, the chasm often seems insurmountable. When I was a teenager, we called this the Generation Gap, so it is not a new phenomenon.
As the education system adapts to changing eras, children come home from school with new-fangled precepts just as surely as with knowledge of mathematical principles, with the former stressed more in the case of under-performing public schools. The same social agendas may be promoted at Blue Ribbon Schools, but they are paired with demanding academic standards.
Brought up in the era of Martin Luther King, I can remember challenging my grandfather at the dinner table once about the terms "Blacks" preferred to be called --- and no, he had not used that N-word but actually what was probably well-accepted during the time in which he lived --- as if I had a smidgen of his real-life experience. My beloved Mom chastised me for being disrespectful to her beloved father, who in turn said it was a shame I hadn't been taught better. It was decades before I understood that episode in my life in context from the other side of the Generation Gap.
By the time I was in my twenties, I had adopted my current bedrock belief that skin color should be ignored as much as possible, judging people as individuals based on the content of their characters. Though championed by Martin Luther King, that concept now is apparently considered less-enlightened than breaking down all people by skin color and sexuality first before deciding how they should be treated. Only a white-privileged, cisnormative troglodyte like myself could possibly believe that mindset could possibly be fair.
To be clear, as far as I know, none of my kids think of me that way. In fact, I think they love me, warts and all.
The latest education fad --- or should I say inevitable glacial movement --- seems to be something called The 1619 Project, which says that Founding Fathers like Benjamin Franklin were nothing but white-skinned, brutal oppressors dressed up in frilly shirts and wigs. For the record, Ben Franklin tended to sport his unfashionable long, thinning, natural hair, except when he wore his American-frontier-inspired coonskin cap, which he popularized in the grand palaces of Europe. I personally see that hat as something of a running joke, putting animal fur on his head instead of a powdered wig of human hair, though I cannot ask Ben to confirm that theory.
These days, wearing animal fur is an affront to half the population, whose most ardent pro-animal-rights proponents would today throw red paint on Franklin's hat to display their disapproval. That's why fur coats that fashionable ladies like Julie's mother Edna would have worn with pride for Masonic or Eastern Star events benefiting charities are now thoroughly eschewed. A handful of rather violent people have essentially banned beautiful, warm coats that had been popular since the Stone Age and were a well-recognized status symbol in the happy days following World War II from being worn in our free society.
Sorry, once again I got off on a tangent. Back to the 1619 Project, which is already being introduced in school curriculums, the basic thesis is to forget 1776 and the 4th of July. Our beloved country actually started in 1619, when the first African slaves were brought to the American colonies. Forget principles like a government of, by and for the people. Forget representative democracy. Forget religious freedom. Forget that slavery had been practiced throughout the world since before history began to be recorded. The foundation of America was all about enslaving black people and protecting that pernicious way of life.
Perhaps I have become so old and set in my ways that I can't see how brilliant this new movement is, but regardless of whether I'm one of a handful or part of the majority, the 1619 Project could reduce Benjamin Franklin to the dustbin of history.
I can't help finding that very depressing. Getting back to the powdered wig analogy, the American experiment was actually a movement of brilliant young men breaking away from powdered wig-wearing royals to birth an entirely new form of self-rule founded on principles of the age of enlightenment.
It worries me that so many recent "progressive" solutions now seem to hearken back to an age of central rule by a governing class who know how we must act better than we, as the unwashed rabble, could possibly comprehend.
It will never get that far perhaps. That's certainly what is always rationalized initially when such reality-shattering concepts are introduced, but over the decades, the pace of change continues to accelerate in the direction of what at first may seem to be irrational positions, to the point where now what I consider rational is frequently ridiculed or demonized.
I didn't breach the 1619 subject in Philadelphia or on a stroll along the Manhattan Beach Strand yesterday with Jay, Sasha, Julie and our granddoggie JoJo.
Allow me to digress a bit here to say that JoJo seemed exceptionally thrilled to see Julie and me, presumably because she has happy memories of hiking with us in Montana last summer. We touched lightly on some other controversial topics, as we seem to no matter what my intentions may be.
During our visit to Philadelphia, we kept politics out of discussions for the most part, and in fact Julie congratulated me a couple of days ago on staying off that subject, though I guess I may have blown that in this post.
Interestingly, Benjamin Franklin didn't enjoy politics, and he tried to avoid being controversial, probably understanding that in sincerely expressing our political opinions with others, we run the risk of them disliking us over what for the most part is an esoteric topic, albeit one which everyone seems to believe they have expertise based on their partisan-focused iPhone news feed or Fox News.
Instead of debates, we focused on joyful shared experiences like the magnificent Thanksgiving feast and rousing games of Tripoley, Monopoly and even an online Bridge game with Jay, who joined us on Zoom from Florida where he, Sasha and JoJo shared the holiday with Sasha's grandmother who has been a shut-in for months on end and would have otherwise had no family with her.
In Merion Station, we also enjoyed sharing some wines Amy and Lukas brought from the Finger Lakes wineries they had recently visited in Upstate New York. I particularly liked the Bear On a Bicycle red wine (Pinot Noir?) for its softness on the palate as well as its quirky label, which was among those we didn't uncork until they had left us to return to Jersey City.
Some photos included herein captured Emma's experiment making colorful ice cubes and virgin-soda-water cocktails for us all to sip from Martini glasses on one festive evening.
As you may have guessed, one unintended result was that we each had our tongues stained different colors, though the photo at the top doesn't quite do that justice.
Before I got off on tangents, the topic was Sincerity, and I can say sincerely we all thoroughly enjoyed our Thanksgiving vacation in the suburbs of Philadelphia, including side trips as far afield as Newton Square, which we knew nothing about until a real estate agent mentioned she lived there. We appreciated being invited to come to the feast, and then being made so welcome from the moment Laszlo picked us up at the airport. As Amy said, it was like being a kid again, when we didn't have to worry about anything, because everything worked out perfectly according to Gina's and Emma's carefully laid-out plans.
Being sincere does not require a dour attitude. Before Benjamin Franklin became a reluctant statesman, he was a well-known American humorist.
Let us toast this country where such a life as Benjamin Franklin's and our own can be possible.
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