A local corrections officer tells me prison breaks are not like in the movies. If it happens on your watch, “there’s no slap on the wrist.” You will be held accountable. The investigation will also seek ways to prevent future breakouts. I suggest a ban on large posters of Rita Hayworth.
But speaking of accountability, our Andrew Stiles reviews Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
“Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are going to make a lot of money from their new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Some people find this aggravating, and for good reason. The vast majority of Americans (86 percent as of February 2024) used common sense to arrive at the correct conclusion long before the 81-year-old president shuffled on stage and bragged about beating Medicare. Biden was cognitively and physically unfit to serve another term in office. No shit. He was arguably unfit to serve at all. The scandal played out in plain sight, fueled by Democrats and mainstream journalists doing what they do best: scolding the American people for having the wrong opinions.
“‘Our only agenda is to present the disturbing reality of what happened in the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign in 2023–2024,’ the authors write in the introduction. It’s a carefully worded admission that their goal is not to provide a full account of the cover-up of Biden’s decline, because that would involve a thorough examination of how mainstream journalists, who don’t officially work ‘in the White House’ or on behalf of Democratic campaigns (but often in practice), helped perpetuate the lies.
“Original Sin is an illuminating and often infuriating exposé. It’s packed with damning accounts from (mostly anonymous) Democratic sources who all waited until after the election to stop lying. Numerous villains are identified: Biden himself, his family, his inner circle, and the Democratic establishment. Meanwhile, the reporters who failed to expose the scandal when the stakes were higher are generally portrayed as sympathetic, well-meaning professionals with poor bullshit detectors.”
You know what’s surprising? Just how close the British were to winning the Revolutionary War. Professor Allen C. Guelzo explains in his review of Rick Atkinson’s The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780.
“It is one of Atkinson’s convictions in both The British Are Coming and The Fate of the Day that Britain and its leaders were, even with the keenest of intentions, their own worst enemies. Britain’s North American colonies emerged from the trauma of the Seven Years’ War as grateful and devoted children of the Hanoverian crown and its newest representative, George III. What the imperial planners in London never quite fathomed was that this reverence was built on generations of improvised self-government in America, which the Americans saw no reason to surrender once the British government decided to impose an unprecedented series of direct taxes on them. It was not that the taxes were necessarily onerous; it was that they were imposed roughshod, without a by-your-leave to American habits.
“It exploded when the Boston Tea Party turned to the outright destruction of property. No one was angered more seriously than the king, who insisted that unless the Americans were brought to heel, the rest of the empire—Ireland, India, and the Caribbean—would go the same way.
“The British generals to whom this task was given—Sir William Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, Earl Cornwallis, ‘Gentlemanly Johnny’ Burgoyne—were neither nitwits nor tyrants, and if we are to judge by the opening chapters of The Fate of the Day, they were remarkably close to winning their war in 1777. Burgoyne’s capture of Fort Ticonderoga in July 1777 should have guaranteed the success of his plan to move down the Hudson River Valley and cut off rebellious New England from the rest of the American rebel states; Howe’s dramatic combined-arms operation to capture Philadelphia steamrolled George Washington’s Continental Army at Brandywine in September, threw off a counterattack at Germantown in October, and consigned the Continentals to their dreadful winter encampment at Valley Forge.
“But Howe’s adventure to Philadelphia left him unable to support Burgoyne when ‘Gentlemanly Johnny’ was forced into surrender at Saratoga in October 1777. Howe himself had already concluded that the war was unwinnable and never lifted a finger to disturb Washington at Valley Forge. The Saratoga victory convinced the French that the British were vulnerable to a serious effort to recover France’s New World empire, and with the French entrance into the war, the principal theaters of operations had to be shifted elsewhere by Britain. Britain’s generals in America would still win a few dramatic victories, but they would lose the biggest battle at Yorktown in 1781, and after that, American independence only required the official stamp of the 1783 peace treaty.”
Did you know Alexander Hamilton played a key role in the Battle of Yorktown? It’s mentioned in Ron Chernow’s eponymous bestseller. Chernow is now out with a new book, Mark Twain. Patrick Parr gives us a review.
“Twain lived a packed life. At 17, out of frustration toward [his brother] Orion and a desire for adventure, he left Hannibal for New York and Philadelphia, writing articles and taking printing jobs, exasperated by the explosion of immigrants. ‘I always thought the eastern people were patterns of uprightness,’ Twain wrote to Orion, ‘but I never before saw so many whisky-swilling, God-despising heathens as I find in this part of the country.’ Chernow also notes Twain’s evolving feelings over seeing black people free for the first time. Back then at least, Twain preferred talking with ‘a good, old-fashioned negro’ back in Missouri.
“Eventually, Twain went back to work for Orion, now married and living in Keokuk, Iowa. Chernow could have filled another thousand pages tracking Twain’s movements in his 20s; the printer/riverboat pilot/writer/pro-Confederacy militia soldier (for two weeks)/Nevada silver rush miner was in constant motion. Chernow notes ‘early February 1863’ as the time when the first ‘Mark Twain’ byline appeared in print. To Twain, the pseudonym, as Chernow puts it, ‘was short and melodious—a perfect spondee.’
“By 31, Twain had slowed down… a little, and was looking for companionship. ‘Beneath his ribald mockery,’ Chernow writes, ‘Twain was a suppressed romantic who needed a spotless soul to worship.’ To describe Twain’s marriage to Olivia Langdon, or ‘Livy,’ Chernow again dives into archival correspondence, while also using long-ago efforts of Twain estate editor Dixon Wecter and his 1949 collection, The Love Letters of Mark Twain. The result is a sweeping, 34-year love story that somehow endured losing their first-born son Langdon at 19 months. Twain’s devotion to Livy is admirable, but more so was Livy’s patience and stamina. … As far as Chernow documents, Twain was faithful to Livy, and when she passed in 1904, the then mega-famous writer was devastated, and for the last six years of his life, he appeared at times embittered and lost, his north star vanished.”
The Weekend Beacon commemorates this Memorial Day with a review by Colonel Peter Mansoor (ret.) of Jonathan Horn’s The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines.
“Instead of relying on War Plan Orange, which envisioned the provisioning of the Bataan Peninsula and nearby island fortress of Corregidor for an extended siege, MacArthur ordered Wainwright’s troops to defend forward along the beaches of Lingayen Gulf. A well-trained and equipped corps might have been able to execute the new plan, but the North Luzon Force was anything but. As Japanese forces shattered his lines, Wainwright fought a delaying action back to Bataan, just as War Plan Orange had envisioned. But with one huge difference—the food required to sustain U.S. and Filipino forces in the peninsula had been positioned instead in the Luzon central plain to support the revised (and overly ambitious) plan. The Japanese captured most of the supplies, while Wainwright’s troops went on half rations as soon as they dug in on Bataan. There they fought courageously as their stamina slowly dwindled, their defeat only a matter of time.
“MacArthur would not be present to witness the end. Ordered to Australia by the president, MacArthur, his family, and a small staff departed on PT boats in March 1942 on a harrowing journey to Mindanao, and from there by air to Darwin. Wainwright would hold as long as he could, which was April for Bataan and a month later for Corregidor and the rest of the Philippines. As Wainwright shuffled off to a prisoner of war camp, MacArthur built a new army and began the long journey back through the tortuous jungles of New Guinea.
“MacArthur never forgave Wainwright for surrendering the entire Philippines to the Japanese, even though he had little choice in the matter. MacArthur’s anger was better directed at the War Department, but he made his displeasure clear by sabotaging the award of the Medal of Honor to Wainwright, who spent three-plus years in grueling conditions as a prisoner of war wondering whether he would be court martialed for the surrender of his command. He needn’t have worried. The War Department promoted him to full general while in captivity and after his release he was given a prominent place of honor on the USS Missouri at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay, and he likewise was present at the Japanese surrender in the Philippines. Wainwright returned to the United States to massive parades in his honor. President Truman gave him the ultimate honor when he awarded Wainwright the Medal of Honor, long delayed by MacArthur’s pettiness.”
This review will be posted on Monday, May 26.
Happy Memorial Day.
Vic Matus
Arts & Culture Editor
Washington Free Beacon
Read the full article here
