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Trumpa hate America rally cost the taxpayer payer $2.7 billion in damages. And he paid them off $50k each via ice contracts. Whos paying who?

Did not know this, thanks Jamelle! www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/b...

*the guy who claimed to write The Night Before Christmas

Would love to read it in its entirety From Moore's Wikipedia page:

based

I need to read/research this. Know your history!

These are the little facts I like to learn about. Thanks for sharing.

It's October 2025. So this what they pay you to contemplate. # smh

Benjamin was his father.

based christmas we doing it

My god. If Moore was right about Jefferson, then what else what he right about...?

The textual analysis is REALLY strong, though. Livingston's family believes that he wrote it. It sounds like Livingston's writing and Moore never wrote anything even remotely similar in tone. Moore's writing was severe. I don't know for sure if Livingston wrote it, but I don't think Moore did.

That's really nice to know. It will enhance my enjoyment of that seasonal poem. 🦌🎅🏽

Were the people Jefferson emancipated all his own children, or were there others as well?

Oh wow, thank you for correcting this. I should be sleeping now but couldn’t stop reading your Bloomberg piece. bsky.app/profile/byju...

Well, for any folks who now need a pick-me-up, here’s Santa at the No Kings Rally in L.A. on Saturday. ☺️

Those details are from a 1956 biography and are pretty much all wrong. Moore's parents inherited those four enslaved people, but Charles Smith was freed in 1803 and I don't know what happened to Ann, Hester and Thomas but they were all no longer enslaved by the Moores in 1810. 1/2

Oh my. Sigh. The Night Before Christmas will never be the same. Damn that inconvenient reality...!

Oof. I was so hoping not.

Exactly. It's the double speak out their mouths that have some believing Abraham Lincoln was a true abolitionist when he also thought Blacks were not equal to whites.

Ugh.

Thank you for the post script. Hypocrisy is the through line of politics.

Thanks for posting this.

One massive wrinkle in all of that is that for a long time, (white) intellectuals were seemingly divided between ones who took the Bible to be literally true and ones who didn't but also adhered to extreme forms of racism such as "polygenesis", and polarization pushed people into irrational corners

Moore and his family were slaveholders in New York, where slavery was not abolished until 1827. Moore is documented as having received enslaved people from his maternal grandmother,

Same.

Reading suggestions: Gerald Horne's "The counter-revolution of 1776: slave resistance and the origins of the United States of America", and Gordon Wood's "The radicalism of the American Revolution".

Moore himself came from a slaveholding family and owned slaves; he was not an abolitionist who was exposing Jefferson to free enslaved people. That complicates how we read his motives and rhetoric.

But didn't Moore own slaves and oppose abolition?

Wow, I had no idea! That’s really interesting context about Moore — definitely changes how I think about him beyond just the Christmas poem.

Yep!!!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for my conscience.

Did you discover Linda Kerber’s work on the Federalists? Or did you find that somewhere else?

Slaves also fought back in passive-aggressive ways. Slowing down their work. Making “mistakes.” “Accidentally” breaking things. Playing dumb.

initially read that as "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and was seriously confused for a bit XD XD

yes!

I was reading "How the Word is Passed" and it references Jefferson's writings in terms of "Jefferson wrote powerfully and eloquently at length about the moral failings of slavery - and also the most batshit racist ramblings you can imagine."

I think I now love that poem even more. ❤️

I read "Notes..." a while back and had to put it down, call my wife over, and read some of the passages to her so we could both say, "What in the actual fark is he talking about???"

"There were racists and bigots all through the land..."

Notes on the State of Virginia is something else. Whoo boy.

I thought this was gonna turn into a discussion on how Henry Selick never gets any credit for directing Nightmare Before Christmas

Same

The Chelsea developper?

Tylenol? Only if you want autism for Christmas! Losers.

Let it be.

During his lifetime, Moore also produced "A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language (1809), a translation from the French of A Complete Treatise on Merinos and Other Sheep (1811), and the historical biography George Castriot, Surnamed Scanderbeg, King of Albania (1850)." A versatile person. 🧐

Scanned copy of pamphlet from UMich library is available at babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=md... — seems to mostly be an attack on Jefferson’s racism to defend religious orthodoxy. But then I think the early abolitionists were similarly motivated by faith.

I'm really enjoying Greg Grandin's new book which does a great job describing the development of a humanist polity in the other American nations as a counterpoint to this kind of assumed necessary racist expansionism.

Jefferson believed that blacks and whites could not coexist in a society in which blacks were free. It is hard to accept him as a founding father when he believed in white supremacy.

Gtfo. Thats 😎

this is like a reverse milkshake duck

Also, a professor of Theology at General Seminary of the Episcopal Church in NYC.

Oh, I want to see this, even if it is not in rhyme (But we have to, you, create a rhyming version).

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👍🏾 that guy…. fuck Thomas Jefferson

Why isn't that book taught in school?

I did, too, until I saw your post here!

Same - considering the upside down times, the music is befitting: “This is Halloween! This is Halloween!”

Wow!

Same as it ever was. Happening today and will happen tomorrow.

PT Barnum is a fascinating figure and it annoys the crap out of me that none of the media based on his life seems to be actually interested in exploring that.

not a contemporary of Jefferson’s, but I always think of Bartolome de las Casas

A lot of people. Laws changed in other countries because of pressure from those people. Thank God. Americans eventually saw the light. Well, most of them.

"But they couldn't have known! It was a different time!" "So you're suggesting John Brown was a time traveler? Because *he* knew what was right."

Yay

Folks really should appreciate that their ancestors were just as smart as they are... and maybe smarter! It's only been a hundred generations since the time of Jesus and a few hundred more to the birth of civilization itself. 𝘒𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 are more evolved then we are at 6000 generations... and it shows.😉

I kind of have the idea that the coming of the cotton gin in the 1790s made it look like slavery was gonna be real profitable. Jefferson however wasn't going to rely on cotton (I think Monticello is in the wrong place for it). He had the notion to breed slaves to sell south to cotton country.

Underrated comment 🤣

Proving that “it was a different time” is never an actual excuse

It’s a good reminder. I needed it today.

In every time.

Absolutely. I used to be of the mind that slavery was an absolute stain on human history but that you had to judge people by the morals of the time, etc., and someone made this exact point to me and it made me re-think my position. People at the time said it sucked!

No doubt.

Link to the pamphlet, for those interested: www-americanhistory-amdigital-co-uk.proxy.lib.umich.edu/Documents/Im...

Astronaut hug

Hello Benjamin Banneker. Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson, 19 August 1791 share.google/pMl1VVlKJhHH...

YES! There were! And compromises were made to keep slavery so they could unite to become this new nation. I mean, they even rationalized their own slaves while still believing slavery was wrong. Human beings are odd creatures. We've come so far since then, but we still have a long way to go.

Thank you. I truly know nothing of US history I realize

read this as “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and nearly did a spit take

Wow!

Hell yeah

Thanks. That's good information, and heartening.

And though he professed we should each love our neighbor He stole from them liberty, freedom, and labor And claimed that by right of his far paler skin He could freely indulge in this sinister sin And as he exploited these sisters and brothers He said, “All are equal. But, some more than others.” /2

Everybody knows 🎶 The Deal is rotten Old Black Joe’s Still pickin’ Cotton 🎶 For your ribbons & bows 🎶 Everybody knows - Leonard Cohen

That guy had range!

It's entirely possible Moore didn't write the Xmas poem. It was published anonymously and several people attributed it to him, but it doesn't fit at all with his other writings, or his general attitude. It's an interesting aside, anyway.

T'was the night before Christmas and that jolly old elf said "Ol' Tommy J Can go fuck himself"

babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=md...

Thats pretty cool

Racism is about using an immutable characteristic to create an illusion to justify….CHEATING. Survival at other’s expense is cheating & cowardly. Same for misogyny or any other “fear of others”. Jefferson & his cronies believed they couldn’t compete without cheating using slave labor.

Picky, picky, picky!

Moore and his family were slaveholders in New York, where slavery was not abolished until 1827. Moore is documented as having received enslaved people from his maternal grandmother,

The chains had been broken The whip had been snapped The overseers had all been stuffed in a sack. And shut up in the big house With Master and Misses. The torches were burning With Crack, pop, and hisses. He said to free people, People free in the night MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL Now set it alight.

Just making sure the right Bible quote gets out there. It’s often misquoted.

Never trust anyone wearing a powdered wig. As a Chicano whose ancestors have lived in the Southwest since before there was an AmerryKKKa, my forefathers never wore knickers.