Hobbit versus Adventure: Trumpsters Nothing New

Reading an unexpectedly wonderful book about America at the turn of the nineteenth century, a time I have not had much interest in--until now--has been an eye opener and thrilling.

Ian Toll's "Six Frigates" is so exotic a sortie into a distant time and at the same time, like so many good histories, an examination of current times. 

Jefferson's Republican Party, which included fellow Virginian plantation society types like John Randolph, really was the "America First" constellation of Hobbits. These folks had inland plantations and they regarded land bound farmers as the very best sort of people, and could not understand or see much value in the coastal seafarers, who lusted for trade with far flung parts of the world, who exulted in intercourse with foreigners, with seeking adventure in the rest of the world.

Jefferson hoped for a time when the tax collector would be an anomaly, rarely seen. Those Tea Party folks took their yellow flag and anti tax rhetoric right from Jeffersonian founding fathers. That government is best which governs least. Leave me alone. Don't tread on me. I'm doing fine.

Of course, those Trumpland folks out there in the impoverished rural parts of Appalachia and the Midwest are not doing nearly so well as Jefferson was at Monticello, with his slaves and his plush debt sustained life. Today's Trumplings are festering, like those darklings in the 1935 cartoon, "The Sunshine Makers." 

Or, one can see it as the story of the happy Hobbit who is dragged reluctantly out of his paradise and out into the threatening, often ugly, violent world beyond.

Jefferson, of course, spent years in France and Europe and spoke French and his restless mind was forever seeking out books from abroad, but he returned to America determined to keep America isolated from France, England, Austria, Russia and China.

He led a party of men who did not care much about the depredations of the British fleet upon American merchant marine ships, as the Brits boarded the American sloops, kidnapped sailors for service in the British Navy, stole American goods bound for foreign ports.  They were unmoved when American merchant men in the Mediterranean were captured by the pirate princes of Tripoli and Northern Africa and when those pashas demanded extortion, tribute, and sold off the unlucky Americans into slavery.

Jefferson rejected an American navy as being too expensive, a burden which would require ongoing taxes and he hated the idea of taxes. He liked the idea of militias of farmers, who could be rallied to defend an invaded town, but then go back to the farm. His idea of coastal defenses were floating, flat bottomed boats which served as platforms for one or two cannon. Even coastal batteries struck him and his fellow Republicans as too expensive. A standing army and most especially a standing navy would result in endless war.

The problem for the Jefferson ideal was two fold:
1/ The world would not leave America alone; the Atlantic Ocean was vast, but sailing ships traversed it from England, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal in the thousands and quickly enough to bring the world to America's door with increasing frequency.
2/ A whole population of adventurous souls from Boston to new York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Hampton Rhodes, Virginia wanted to engage the world, and got rich and happy doing it. If they were part of a real country, a United States of America, then they felt they had a claim on their brethren to stand with them in their grand adventure.

But Jefferson and his ilk wanted none of that deep blue ocean and its shipping lanes. Let the British or the French try to invade the American continent and the Americans would swallow them up, like a bear, but venture into the ocean and you could only expect the sharks and leviathans of the the blue water would eat you alive.

Jefferson had no interest in trade with China or Amsterdam or England. 
We could make all we wanted right here in America.

Obadiah Youngblood, Sunset Lake

Of course, he had benefited enormously from the slave trade which brought Africans to the plantations of the South. If New England's rocky soil meant that shipbuilding and whaling and world trade appealed to those seacoast folks, let them take their chances on the high seas, but don't ask the South and the farmer to protect them with a blue water navy.

So there we have it: America is all we need. Foreigners have nothing important to offer. We are fine staring at our own navels. Why launch explorations?  North Africa, Naples, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Vienna, Istanbul, Jerusalem have nothing to offer us.

Everywhere else is but a shithole.

Here's a link to "The Sunshine Makers."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3VNoJiSN1g