Poetic Facts

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

— George Orwell

Conservatives love their myths.

They don't want to hear that Betsy Ross didn't design the American flag—no more than they want to hear that Blacks didn't arrive in America as "immigrants" or that Ronald Reagan didn't have an ounce of intelligence.

They'd much rather cherish myths.

Liberals aren't much different, when it comes to it.

They don't want to hear that early feminists didn't burn their bras or that Martin Luther King was less than a saint.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Joseph Goebbels famously said.

The same holds for myths or, more accurately, "poetic facts."

The Betsy Ross Flag is one such poetic fact.

Betsy indeed worked as a seamstress in Philadelphia and was acquainted with George Washington, due to his occasional attendance of her church.

But that's as far as things went. 

That Betsy made our first flag was a yarn spun by her grandson, who in an 1870 speech claimed she'd been hired by Washington to design a flag for his army.

Harper's Weekly, an immensely popular magazine, picked up the speech and spread the tale nationwide.

Talk about "false flags."

The story was nothing but star-spangled bullshit.

"Every historian who’s looked into it has found no credible evidence that Betsy Ross made the first American flag," historian Marc Leepson told National Geographic last year.

The "Betsy Ross Flag" is a myth made of whole cloth.

And it's become lodged in the fabric of history—much like the "voluntary" nature of slavery and the "genius" of Ronald Reagan.

An analogous tall tale concerns how the Betsy Ross Flag was unveiled.

Flags in general weren't flown by infantry during the Revolutionary War; they were flown only by ships and forts.

But that fact didn't deter patriotic Delawareans from insisting the Betsy Ross Flag was unfurled for the first time at Cooch's Bridge, site of the only Revolutionary War battle in the state.

Cooch's Bridge—fought September 3, 1777—was a British victory, so perhaps the fiction felt consoling.

Howard Pyle's The Nation Makers

The hard facts were: the Continental Congress indeed resolved—on June 14, 1777—that the nation would adopt a flag comprising stars and stripes; and it made that resolution public three months later—on the very day of the Battle of Cooch's Bridge.

And so it seems the first announcement of the flag became the first appearance of the flag.

The fiction took root in Delawareans' imaginations not in 1777, but in 1940, when it was included in The Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, whose author claimed that "circumstantial evidence" proved the story to be true.

And the circumstantial evidence? 

A "history painting" by Delaware artist Howard Pyle that appeared on the cover of Collier's Magazine in June 1906.

Pretty flimsy evidence—especially when you consider the painting depicted another battle altogether.

Historian Wade Catts told National Geographic the Betsy Ross Flag wasn't carried into the Battle of Cooch's Bridge for practical reasons.

"The American formation fought as an ad hoc light infantry corps," Catts said. "The whole purpose of the infantry was stealth and secrecy, so it is highly unlikely they would have carried a flag into battle."

But how much more comforting is it to cherish the poetic fact that the embattled Americans carried the Betsy Ross Flag into the Battle of Cooch's Bridge?

And how unromantic to say that it never happened.

As the late historian Ed Bearss was fond of saying, "It never happened—but it should have."

Mother of Muses

Sing of the heroes who stood alone,

whose names are engraved on tablets of stone.

— Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's "Mother of Muses," critics agree, is among the singer-songwriter's finest pieces. 

Released in 2020—seven decades after his arrival in New York as a fresh-faced folkie from Minnesota—the song represents a collage of archaic people and events that Dylan counts as sources of inspiration.

Sing of Sherman, Montgomery and Scott,
Sing of Zhukov and Patton and the battles they fought,
Who cleared the path for Presley to sing, 

Who carved out the path for Martin Luther King,
Who did what they did and then went on their way,
Man, I could tell their stories all day.

Romping the "old, weird America," Dylan is like a vacuum cleaner whose bag never gets emptied.

He compiles, more than composes; derives, more than devises—pastiching from the sourcebook we call American History and hoping listeners never forget that "we stand on the shoulders of giants."

"All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources," Mark Twain said. "There is not a rag of originality about them."

That's certainly true of Dylan's murky lyrics. As a songwriter, he's is like a dealer at an antiques mall or a docent at a roadside attraction, ready to regale you with lore about obscure objects and eccentric people.

Listening to his words is like taking vacation with Sarah Vowell.

"When Bob Dylan performs, he channels a whole universe of time-weathered emotions, ideas, and legacies," says Giovanni Russonello, music critic for The New York Times. 

His rootedness makes him an "ambassador for the country's past and its indelible ideals."

In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan describes songwriting as inheritance, a process of "converting something that exists into something that didn't."

"Mother of Muses" acknowledges just a few of the dusty items in the cabinet.

There are thousands more in Dylan's catalog.

NOTE: Bob Dylan turned 81 May 24.

Altered States

Good news: Uvalde looks like the national tipping point in gun control.

Federal reform, of course, is impossible, because the NRA owns the GOP.

But it doesn't own every governor, making blue-state reforms quite feasible.

My own governor and the Democratic leadership in Delaware's legislature right now are pushing a "historic" package of six gun-control reforms.

The reforms would:

• Raise the age to purchase guns to 21; 
• Strengthen background checks; 
• Ban the sale of assault weapons; 
• Ban the accessories used to turn handguns into AR-15s; 
• Ban high-capacity magazines; and
• Hold gun manufacturers and dealers liable for recklessness.

"We have an obligation to do everything we can to prevent tragedies,” Delaware's governor said Thursday in a news release. "I look forward to seeing these bills on my desk this session.”

Other blue states' governors are pushing similar reforms.

If the governors succeed, as I believe they will, we'll soon find ourselves an even more "divided nation." 

There will be gun-safe states and gun-loving states. 

NRA-free states and NRA-owned states. 

Blue states and red states. 

That's red as in blood.

And that's okay, in my book, because parents can simply pick up and move from a red to a blue state.

If they value their kids' lives, they can relocate.

Sure, the housing is tight in the blue states; but the schools and libraries are better, and the jobs plentiful.

Let the red states relish their militarized weapons—and the weekly mass shootings that stem from them.

We blue-state citizens will send them thoughts and prayers.

Lumber Jack

I don't know of any great man who ever had a great son.

— Anthony Mann

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright had a son named Jack who was tormented all his life by his father's fame.

He hoped some of it would rub off on him, but things just never quite worked out.

At the age of 18, shiftless and unhappy, Jack Wright quit his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin—his father's alma mater—and headed to the West Coast, where he scraped along on menial jobs until deciding to try his hand at architecture. 

Jack smooth-talked his way into a job as a draftsman at a Los Angeles construction company, but quickly grew restless with his junior-man's position. When he announced his intention to move abroad to study architecture, Jack's father offered him a job as office manager at his now-bustling Chicago studio, in lieu of help with tuition.

Jack would last at the studio of Frank Lloyd Wright only four years: his father fired him after a heated argument over salary.

Suddenly jobless, Jack Wright tried something altogether new: designing toys for Chicago retailer Marshall Field. 

Swiping his father's earthquake-proof design for Tokyo's Imperial Hotel, Jack designed a set of notched wooden logs that kids could play with (his US patent application described the miniature logs' purpose as "Toy Cabin Construction"). 

He packaged the logs in a garish green and red cardboard box that featured a log cabin and a portrait of Illinois' favorite son, Abe Lincoln. 

The packaging promised "Interesting playthings typifying the spirit of America."

Jack Wright's "Lincoln Logs" caught on like wildfire. Parents and kids—swept up in a post-World War I patriotism craze—couldn't get enough of them. 

Although they never made him rich and famous—Jack would return to architecture after selling his patent for the toy to Playskool for $800—Lincoln Logs became 20th-century American kids' go-to building blocks, peaking in sales at 100 million sets. 

In 1999, along with the Hula Hoop, View-Master and the Radio Flyer Wagon, they were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, 27 years after Jack Wright's death.

Trust Fund Babies

 He had a lifelong desire to earn a living,
which helped keep him grounded.

— Julian Baggini

"Let me tell you about the very rich," F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. 

"They are different from you and me. 

"They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. 

"They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are."

Outside of trust fund babies, who doesn't loathe trust fund babies?

They're loathsome because they're born with immunity to all quotidian hardships.

While the rest of us worry what the boss really thinks, how much longer the car will last, and whether to pay the whole credit card bill this month, they worry about the currents next week off Barbados, whether to hang the Basquiat alongside the Beeple, and what to wear to Saturday's steeplechase.

They're not immune, of course, to overdoses, cirrhosis, cancers, or car accidents.

That, at least, is satisfying.

Numerically, trust fund babies are small in number.

Almost 75% of the super-rich 1% have earned their wealth; and only 16% have inherited "old money" (earned two, three or four generations ago).

Nonetheless, that 16% represents 527,000 people to loathe.

These loathsome people have inherited, on average, $2.7 million, according to the Federal Reserve. 

That's $447 for every $1 inherited by the poor.

And not all trust fund babies are, of course, airheaded wastrels. 

History is rife with trust fund babies who worked hard and changed the world.

Buddha. St. Francis. Lafayette. Cézanne. Tolstoy. Bertrand Russell. Edith Wharton. FDR. JFK. William S. Burroughs. Gloria Vanderbilt. Anderson Cooper.

The list is long.

But we tend to stereotype trust fund babies.

Unfairly advantaged in almost every stage and walk of life, they're spoiled and lazy; vain and vapid; aloof and self-righteous; petty and paranoid.

Bolstered by wealth, they are directionless, and know nothing of failure and hardship.

Perpetual child actors, "their life is a series of highlight reels," says writer Tim Denning.

But the trust fund baby would tell us we're guilty of envy, and that envy's a sin.

"Envy rots the bones," Proverbs says.

Envy is insecurity masquerading as resentment: it invites you to compare yourself to others who, by dint of good luck, enjoy status you lack—and to cultivate hatred for them.

"Envy is a mind game with our sinful nature," says Christian writer Quinn Jackson.

"At its core, envy comes from the lack of belief that God is all powerful, cares about you deeply and has wonderful plans for your life."

Envy is in fact so sinful, Jackson says, it's practically inadmissible. 

To admit to being envious is to admit you're "ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted."

Hogwash.

At its core, envy seeks justice.

Envy resides within the heart of democracy.

Envy isn't hate; it's contempt, targeted, in this case, at unearned moneyed privilege—and the power it wields over us, even if only potentially.

As a member of the trust fundless, that contempt is my right.

You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.