The Advisory Farewell

     The United States' global success in the second half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the way the nation developed through the stages of history from native-filled woods to terrifying nuclear arsenals. The seeds of independent government started early in the history of the nation both with written forms like the Mayflower Compact as well as in the spirit of settlers that left civilization to live in the wilderness and establish their own societies. Eventually this spirit of independence culminated in the American War for Independence (1776-1783) which resulted in a loose confederation of states eventually bound under the Constitution that remains the living foundation for the United States.
     The Founding Father of the United States, George Washington, used his military experience and political knowledge to help establish the Constitution and spread its rule to the thirteen states. As a military leader popular with the American public and respected among his aristocratic peers, Washington was unanimously elected president. George Washington's two terms as president set many precedents for other American leaders to follow including the establishment of a presidential cabinet system, the amended clause "So help me God" when swearing the oath of office, and the retirement from political service after leading the federal executive branch. One of the last cornerstones of his presidency was his Farewell Address in which he stated his wishes for the country, warned of dangers foreseen, and advised on potential calamities from certain courses of action. Since Washington, other presidential resignation speeches have become famous, especially Dwight D Eisenhower's 1960 speech regarding the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
     George Washington's  1797 Farewell Address encompasses a vast array of topics that the fledgling nation faced or would face in the future, but several points have become hallmarks to Washington's wisdom and foresight. At the time of Washington's writing, the United States was a decade old, militarily weak, and almost entirely reliant on British trade while favoring the political support of France. Referencing his career in the military both in the Seven Years War (The French and Indian War; 1756-1763) and the American Revolution, Washington had observed the unintended effects of European alliances and the social costs of war: death, taxes, and political tension.
     With this lifetime of military and political experience in perspective, Washington stated in his Farewell Address cautions against forming peacetime alliances with European nations since that would draw limited American resources into repetitious conflicts across the seas. Although unheeded, Washington's second great caution was to avoid political bipartisanship since a dual-party political system would unnecessarily divide the brilliance of America's leaders into oppositional camps. A last great caution was that America should keep its leaders to the highest moral requirements because moral resilience gave American society its strength (Tocqueville, 1835).
     Emphasized throughout the letter is the preservation of the new national unity. As portrayed by the first American political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin in the Seven Years War "Join or Die." The threat of separation by selfish states' interests alarmed the Founding Fathers from the earliest years and remained one of the largest obstacles to unity even past the American Civil War.
     George Washington has had the respect of his American brethren for two and a half centuries. His words have dictated foreign policy for generations, stilled momentary passions, and created an introspective narrative to America's history and actions. His passion for his homeland stirred him to oust British Imperial rule, set precedent for peaceful power transitions, and caution his beloved nation of dangers. Establishing insight for American conduct in both domestic and international affairs, Washington sought to rely on the "Common Sense" of the American people to elect leaders that would seek fair treatment of its citizens and impartial, commercial relations with other nations around the world.

     Reflections on pivotal political decisions in American history since the writing of the Washington's Farewell Address reveal the respect for the Founding Fathers the people and leaders of America have engendered. Those cautions created a strong influence on foreign and domestic policies throughout the past two centuries. America avoided European wars in the nineteenth century and only made its first peacetime alliance with the formation of NATO after World War II. While the moral core has remained intact, the fickle will of the people has caused changes to the republic established by the Founding Fathers. Though strained by the Civil War, the Progressive Movement, and Social Services, the republic endures. The only major piece of caution wholly rejected by America is the formation of a two party system which established itself immediately after Washington and continues to basally affect the governance of the country today. Though fundamental for the birth, development, and rise of a twentieth century superpower, the lessons of Washington's Farewell Address were heeded by citizens, Congress, and cabinets throughout the history of the United States of America but have been increasingly ignored by the passage of time and the rise of new generations.

     In this American tradition of reflection before resignation, I offer some closing words of hope and advice that my perspective has cultivated. Through four and a half years, I have used themes of science and history to address virtues, remember forgotten events, and uncover the motivation of individuals from all parts of recorded history, but all things end. Since every man of greatness has died, every grand empire has faded, and every absolute, undeniable reality has been altered, it may seem foolish to attempt to embody resilience for values of personal worth, but the world is not shaped by the decisions of one person. No, the world is shaped by a culmination of individuals pressing toward a goal, regardless of motivation, just as Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan (1651). Unity is the strength of man, but that unity will only persist by the quality and endurance of each individual. Education, context, and awareness establish the paramount tools in embodying your personal and societal values. Watch, think, and decide to determine action just as the most successful leaders of history and science have. Learn from the past to improve the future.


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Agatha Tyche

Monopole

     In particle physics investigations with electromagnetism, a monopole is a magnet that can be distinctly separated into individual poles instead of the normal dipolar magnet. While many physicists, especially supporters of string theory, tout the existence of monopoles, it remains unconfirmed in nature. The physicist inquiry only deals with innate matter of the universe but rejects the study of more complex objects. If monopoles could theoretically exist in particles across the universe, then complex agents like people and political affiliations should exemplify this scientific claim easily.
     The American Civil War (1861-1865) split the United States into two camps concerning either states' rights or slavery. The cost of that deliberation was four years, 650,000 lives, and an irreparable rent in American identity. Regardless of the fundamental cause of the war, the ideological divide of Congress reflected in the eventual allegiance of each state. In every conflict a line must be drawn, and this division formed along the border states between the free, pro-Union North and pro-slavery, rebel South. The collision between the Northern industrial might and Southern fervor energies clashed along that border with enough blood and horror to rename towns.

     The border states had the most to lose in this conflict. The support of their populations was divided, the requisition of their resources was hounded, and the pain of the war stretched through their lands.
     Missouri had long been at the heart of the slavery controversy in the United States with politicking creating the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Kentucky attempted to remain neutral but eventually sided with the Union in attempts to stave off invasion by a Southern general. Virginia voted to secede, but by 1863 the western portion of the state seceded from Virginia and was voted back into the Union as West Virginia. With the anti-Union antagonism in Baltimore, Maryland reached a crescendo in riots that killed a dozen people and solidly pitted the city legislature and much of the state in opposition to Federal military actions.
     One of the most blatant actions taken by the Federal (Union) government involved securing the support of the border state Maryland. Because the federal government resided in Washington D.C. across the river from the Confederate Virginia, Lincoln ordered federal troops to secure Baltimore, its railroad connections, and, by whatever means necessary, the support of the state legislature. While Maryland officially voted to stay in the Union, it did so while occupied by 75,000 Federal troops and a third of its legislature in prison with suspended rights. Lincoln's Army forced Maryland to stay in the Union to protect Washington D.C. Conscription efforts in Maryland forced most of those recruits to serve in far-flung theaters of war to avoid desertion to the South. Though reliable records are difficult to ascertain because of the poor record keeping of the South, an estimated thirty-seven percent of all Maryland Civil War veterans fought for the Confederacy.

   
     Following the Civil War the culture of the border states evolved naturally compared to the suppression of the Solid South. Native Southern Whites resented the Northern carpetbaggers and freed blacks but remembered their solidarity to the Democrat political party. Since the war Missouri, Kentucky, and much of West Virginia realigned cultural values toward the South, rejecting the city richness of many of the Northern states.
     One border state, however, is still refused any positive association or cultural affiliation from either side of the war. The South rejects Maryland because it sided its support and resources to the Union; the North ignores Maryland because its spirit longed for the rebel cause.
     Maryland is the American monopole that takes on the attributes desired from certain perspectives. The South has long resented the War of Northern Aggression, and the North has not forgotten the resentment created from coercive Union. Maryland has suffered substantially from that estrangement and bitterness. The bloodiest day in American history, September 17, 1862, had 22,000 casualties and splattered its blood on Maryland soil.
     In the century and a half since the American Civil War, Maryland has remained an unwanted reject among its counterpart states. The Northern States enjoy its trade and access to the nation's capitol, and the South appreciates its Chesapeake Bay Culture. In that time the Federal Government's powers and wealth have increased substantially, and those financial powers have allowed government officials to buy homes and lands in Maryland. The elite hierarchy resides in Maryland to escape the stress of the city, and the president's retreat is Camp David, in the foothills of Maryland.
     The Civil War was bloody, and the border states soaked that blood in to reshape the nation. Maryland is the ostracized state that has been disowned by both North and South. A consolation prize for that rejection is the wealth of the reformed Federal Government which has made Maryland the richest state in the richest nation in the world, and it is still hated by all.

     To readers around the world, as addressed in "Post Hekaton" in March, 2016, one more post is coming this month before the regular updates for this blog end. Writing efforts are being focused on a novel which has been in planning for six years. The blog may eventually be resurrected because the appeal of learning never diminishes.
     I would like to send my thanks to the many of you that regularly read these clips of historical, political, scientific, and social thought with special thanks to regular readers in France, Portugal, Russia, and the United States.

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Agatha Tyche

The West Man's Burden

     Rudyard Kipling's dually famous and infamous poem "The White Man's Burden" speaks to a growing and strong American nation to reach forth like her European brethren and establish colonies abroad for the good of the far reaches of the world. Because of this poem as well as his outspoken support for British imperialist goals, Rudyard Kipling has long been recognized as one of the most vocal proponents of Western imperial expansionist ideals along with Cecil Rhodes. At the turn of the twentieth century, Europe controlled the world in every measurable aspect from population growth and military innovation to industrial production and scientific exploration. Because of this incredible gap of European possibility to the rest of the world, imperial ideals took hold during the conquest and colonization of the New World. By the time of the French Revolution, Europe was seeking the establishment of trade ports and settlements throughout Asia, and by the close of that same century, nearly all of the known world was either colonized by or allied with an imperial European nation.
     Rudyard Kipling, who grew up in India, advocated for extending the imperialist agenda both toward nations friendly with Great Britain and to ensure the civilization of the rural, barbaric, pagan peoples of non-Europe. Kipling's and Europe's ideology for the colonization frenzy during the Age of Imperialism arose from the medieval practice of Christianizing Eastern and Baltic Europe in the medieval period. Europe was able to expand eastward because of more advanced military techniques, which, when combined with the lessons of New World colonization and naval development, allowed Europe to apply those technologies to the formation of empires. As British might reached the zenith of its capabilities, Kipling submitted his poem to one of the strongest proponents for American imperialism, Theodore Roosevelt, who became Vice President under William McKinley, a politician who built his career advocating American expansionist policies.
     The process of successful colonization necessitates more advanced technology than currently possessed by the native populations. Technology allows the colonizers to travel, establish a presence, and fend off natural and human attempts to dislodge their encampment. As European nations established colonies around the world, foreign lands were secured through the oppressive application of technological innovation birthed in Europe since the Renaissance. Ocean going vessels, rifles, trains, machine guns, canned goods, and assembly-line industrial capacities allowed the imperialist goals of Europe to become reality.
     Aside from the political goals that drove the conquest of the world, especially in the nineteenth century, there were as many motivations as advocates to interact with, subdue, and civilize the non-Western regions of the world. The Opium Wars between China and Great Britain exemplify the priority of economic might on a global scale to the real development of "civilization." Decades later, the slaughter of the Congolese people by the Belgians revealed no change in the approach or treatment of native peoples with regard to their non-economic existence. Despite the abusive, calloused use of native peoples as slaves for hard labor, the Christian Missionary movement, started in the early nineteenth century, sent waves of individuals to appeal to the eternal well-being of the souls of the natives. The techniques, methods, and interactions between these missionaries and the natives can be disputed, but several succeeded in establishing friendly relationships.
     Colonization depended on control of the native peoples, but British over-extension in Africa resulted in the bloody Boer Wars in the 1890s. With realization of the limits of modern British capacities, Kipling hoped to activate British-friendly American sentiment for colonialism. The rhyme and meter of "The White Man's Burden" are attuned to an upbeat marching song calling sloven, cowardly men to better the world.
     With the self-wrought destruction of the World Wars within Europe and the adoption of technological and industrial equipment throughout the rest of the world, Europe's Age of Imperialism weakened and collapsed completely midway through the twentieth century. The United States, a nation who resisted colonizing until the very end of the nineteenth century, maintained the technological innovation of its European heritage while avoiding the destruction of the World Wars which allowed it to express its own forms of imperial behavior into the early parts of the twenty-first century.
     Disregarding the politically-weighted, racial imagery of the native African and Asian populations, the concept of the right of the powerful to control colonization  was contested by intellectual, white elitists in America for decades prior to World War I. This resistance to capitalize on its technical superiority to the non-European world complemented American isolationism despite arguments for colonization's benefits for monetary gain, spiritual enlightenment, and furtherment of civilization .
     Of all the causes that incited the imperialist agenda, the desire to industrialize and develop other cultures to the technological level of Europe largely succeeded after almost two centuries of occupation and turmoil. Those other cultures, from Brazil to South Africa and India to Indonesia, have progressed to compete with and even out-compete the European giants that introduced industrialized techniques of development. Given that many developing countries are advancing their economic production, most nations, arguably, have learned the lessons that European imperialism sought to teach them, though they are understandably not grateful for the repression and bloody strife those occupations created. If that is the case, the White Man's Burden should be nearly accomplished.

     There are two main viewpoints of the Age of Imperialism and "The White Man's Burden." The acceptable viewpoint from the nineteenth century is that the Western Man sacrifices the luxuries of his home country to build railroads, extract resources, and educate the natives. Conversely, the acceptable viewpoint of late twenty and twenty-first centuries is that the white man oppressed, repressed, and enslaved local tribes for his own economic and political gains.

     Comparing the mindset of Rudyard Kipling when he sent his poem to Theodore Roosevelt in 1899 with the events of the past one-hundred seventeen years, let us attempt to reconsider the words of the poem, "The White Man's Burden."

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--                         We sent out our only sons--

     Go bind your sons to exile                         We wasted all our children

  To serve your captives' need;                       As slaughter for their guns;

     To wait in heavy harness,                          Our yolk's a heavy burden,

  On fluttered folk and wild--                              We tried to give it up--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,                   Our nations tire and burn out,

     Half-devil and half-child.                               We've drunk our bitter cup.

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

     In patience to abide,                                   Behind borders strove to hide,

  To veil the threat of terror                                      Remember 9/11

  And check the show of pride;                        And check the show of pride;

  By open speech and simple,                        With lies of revolutions,

  An hundred times made plain                       We left on broken roads

     To seek another's profit,                               But now our nation's troubles,

  And work another's gain.                                 All promise to implode.

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

  The savage wars of peace--                             The savage wars of greed--

Fill full the mouth of Famine                             Exploited earth's abundance

And bid the sickness cease;                        And silenced death's gross need;

And when your goal is nearest                    And when the goal was finished

  The end for others sought,                              The end of empire sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly                    Watched civil war and arms deals

Bring all your hopes to nought.                        Bring all our work to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

     No tawdry rule of kings,                                 We overcame their kings,

  But toil of serf and sweeper--                        But still beat down their workers--

  The tale of common things.                              For faster, cheaper things.

  The ports ye shall not enter,                         Their ports have higher tariffs,

  The roads ye shall not tread,                        Their roads have higher fees,

Go mark them with your living,                         Meanwhile our nation suffers,

And mark them with your dead.                           We rule from bended knees.

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

     And reap his old reward:                               And reap our same reward:

  The blame of those ye better,                       The scorn for those we labour,

  The hate of those ye guard--                        The fear of those we guard--

  The cry of hosts ye humour                             The sounds of rifle fire

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--                            Now killing off our aid:-- 

"Why brought he us from bondage,                  "Leave now our native cities,

     Our loved Egyptian night?"                         Undo what you have made!"

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

  Ye dare not stoop to less--                            Give up your weariness--

Nor call too loud on Freedom                       Have men call out for Freedom

  To cloak your weariness;                                 To hide our sins against;

  By all ye cry or whisper,                               With all our justice given,

  By all ye leave or do,                                    With all our Freedom spent,

  The silent, sullen peoples                            The stronger, better peoples

Shall weigh your gods and you.                         Just want us to relent.

Take up the White Man's burden--               We took up the White Man's burden--

  Have done with childish days--                         It's time to lay it down--

     The lightly proffered laurel,                           Esteem's not given freely,

  The easy, ungrudged praise.                        The laurel leaves grow brown.

Comes now, to search your manhood          What now is modern manhood?

  Through all the thankless years                      What have our efforts won?

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,              Take up our load, ye Other!

     The judgment of your peers!                           Embrace your native son.

     With the financial turmoil within Europe in recent years including the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis, Greek Financial Crisis, Refugee Crisis, and Brexit, European finance seems historically vulnerable while other non-Western nations are defining their own economic and political courses. The Asian Tigers are the strongest engines of growth in the world, even with China's uncertain transparency. The G20 membership further exemplifies the economic progress of non-European nations over the last century. While The European Union remains the largest trade conglomerate in the world, the rise of the Asian economies and the development of African resources stands as a testament to the ability and capacity of the "sullen peoples" of European colonialism. Whether this success stems from or in spite of colonialism, the European conquest of the world has revealed a burden that will never be put down.

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Agatha Tyche