A more satisfying history

[nancylebov]

Michelle Bachman extols "John Quincey Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country". (2:30) It would be nice if there were a zombie or possibly vampire Adams who didn't go to his grave until the Emancipation proclamation, or is possibly still working to prevent the slavery of undocumented people, but the real world has this annoying historical inflexibility.

Video reference thanks to asim. He got it to embed, but that doesn't seem to be feasible any more.

Comments

[siderea]

Maybe she knows something we don't. :D Sounds like a great premise for a graphic novel: the presidency makes one undead, so except where assassinated or otherwise neutralized (Booth and Oswald used silver bullets), they're all running around out there somewhere. Camp David maybe.

[zenlizard]

The ghost of Lincoln is said to haunt the White House.

[siderea]

Oh, well, see? Maybe Booth didn't use silver bullets after all.

[llennhoff]

Was Abraham Lincoln a cyborg?

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that "annoying historical inflexibility" only applies to people in the reality-based community. Michelle and hers live outside there, where they make their own reality. Or so Karl Rove (and, I'm sure, MB and the Alaska Barbie and all their ilk) claimed.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the poet Coulton tells us that he "looked just like his Dad." Coincidence? Hah? I think NOT!!1!

Beware the Adams immortals...they're coming for you, I tell you...

[madfilkentist]

"Would not" can mean "did not wish to," and that's what it means in the expression "I won't rest until..." It's not a prediction of success in one's lifetime. If Adams had resolved not to rest until slavery ended and didn't change this decision until death put an involuntary end to his efforts, then the statement is accurate.

We can quibble that people who say "I won't rest until ..." have been known to sleep, but that's not what it means either.

[madfilkentist]

One other point: The Emancipation Proclamation didn't immediately free a single slave. It applied only to states that had seceded, and naturally they ignored it. It was the 13th Amendment that legally ended slavery.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

See also Slavery By Another Name, which documents industrial slavery conducted through the legal system and which went on into the sixties.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'll call in some other nitpickers to check on the grammatical implications. I may be too entranced by my joke.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Nitpicker reporting for duty. I didn't click the link, but judging from what you quoted here, it should have been "who *swore* he would not rest..." if, in fact, that was his intention (which, alas, he could not carry out).

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Fair point; I don't know the answer to that, so it probably should be "who said he would not rest..." or possibly "who wrote he would not rest..." depending on what medium he was using.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Thanks for fair common sense.

Kipling's "man who would be king" didn't mean he became king; iirc he died trying.

I don't know whether Blake's ghost has yet ceased from mental fight, but I expect his sword was pried out of his cold dead hand, and we haven't yet built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

ROFL

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

How about this?

“I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth.”

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

roflmao!