A Resistance History of the United States by Tad Stoermer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
GACK.
And, per the header, I can't think of a better piece to post on the Semiquincentennial. I said "McResistance™" in the header; it's like The Resistance™carried over from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0.
Full of seemingly mendacious framing, what I'll call lies by omission and more. And, probably all in the nature of grifting at the left edge of BlueAnon.
A few preliminary notes.
First, I follow Stoermer on Substack. (That will be changing, though.) I had not seen anything wrong with what he says, while noting that everything is paywalled and usually the paywall is pretty quick, as in, within 100 words or so. Boy, is the reality different.
Second, I am not sure that I noticed there that he is a former staffer to a US Member of Congress, maybe because I didn't click the "about" and was otherwise fooled. Since we have no third-party members (sit down Bernie Sanders) that means he’s a Democrat, and hence, as a talker about “resistance,” almost surely a member of The Resistance™. His personal website has more. Very “conventional,” even insider-ish on background. Owns two houses per that, and per IMDB, also does time in the Bahamas. Teh Google does not tell me what Congresscritter he worked for; I am curious and “goes to motive, your honor.” Scratch that; he has an older Wordpress, with an about page and it was for Mary Landrieu. Maybe that's just because he was in Louisiana, in law school at Tulane. But, she was a clear ConservaDem, on about anything other than civil rights.
(Side note: I find it interesting he went by "Taylor Stoermer" earlier. And his IMDB has the Danish "Størmer." Interestingly, that's not his
The first section? Rejecting Edmund Morgan’s late 20th century interpretation of Bacon’s Rebellion when many historians both Black and White used that as their framework for criticizing the 1619 Project (my links?) is a bold move — and contrarian. I've discussed, and critiqued, critics of the project and the project itself here.
The second? Yes, even if Giles Corey didn’t say “more weight,” it was resistance to authority. Stoermer doesn’t even explain why he remained silent, for one thing. He also doesn’t note that 1692 Salem still had a “state church” and that none of the people there had fled for the religious freedom confines of Rhode Island. Salem 1692 has little relevance for today, other than to remind people what the First Amendment is all about, or to remind them what hysteria and sociogenic disorder or functional neurological disorder (the old conversion disorder) are about.
Speaking of? He doesn’t seem to mention the First Amendment here. I don’t know that for sure because there’s no index, always a ding.
Related on the issue of relevance? Per a 3-star reviewer, I bet a lot, a lot of people were expecting events more modern than this. While I doubt a 1-star reviewer’s claim that this is AI, a prescheduled book tour and other events does make it look like Tad Stoermer, like many others, is trying to make a buck off the semiquincentennial.
But, by 100 pages in, I’m figuring this is probably 2-star, and I’m not willing to totally reject the AI idea, and I know that I am not likely to read every word and that I am likely to unfollow him on Substack.
But wait, it gets worse!
Lightly grokked chapter 3. I already know what Somerset is, and contra some of the 1619 Project’s critics, said it DID play a part in the Revolution. Stoermer also ignores that it was a wartime policy, as Britain maintained slavery in the Caribbean until the 1830s, and that Black Americans who fled to Nova Scotia faced degrees of racism there. He also has a subsection, “Why we weren’t told this story,” which implies that “they” hid the story.
Chapter 4? Madison, the man who opposed chaplains in Congress, did not write the Bill of Rights for largely, let alone purely, cynical reasons. In an era where all New England states had state churches, the First Amendment alone was far from cynical. Stoermer also knows, but won’t tell you, that in 1787, the “Virginia Plan” DID want to federalize the constitution. And, Virginia's state-level Bill of Rights had both a religious freedom section and a freedom of conscience section.
In the same chapter, we get a WHAT THE FUCK moment. “Zuinglius”? The man commonly known as the Reformed movement reformer “Zwingli”? Nobody spells it in fully Latinized version. It comes off as snooty, when you recognize he's talking about Zwingli, or so it does to me, as if he's trying to shove erudition down your throat. And Stoermer doesn’t tell you that, mixing church and state, to use modern American terms, he was killed in battle. (And, he was more than "just a chaplain"; don't believe any claims to that end.) So, in this chapter, we have multiple lies by omission, and I am thinking he’ll be lucky to be above 1 star.
He also doesn’t tell you that, in 1776, Washington reversed his stance on banning new Black soldiers. Indeed, Blacks were fighting in the Virginia Battalion under Lafayette in 1781.
Patrick Henry as a McResistance model? The man who, unlike Washington, freed ZERO of his slaves at his death? Uh, sure.
If you want an anti-Federalist who took a pass on national office under the Constitution? Why not Sam Adams, who owned zero slaves in the first place?
That said, I’m puzzled otherwise. With this degree of talk about resisting the Constitution, for its flaws, with THIS DEGREE of talk, is Stoermer saying that he thinks the Articles of Confederation were better? Or, is this a chapter for McResistance as cosplay? Neither idea is good, nor palatable.
Chapter 5 on Oney Judge? Washington’s scheme was indeed illegal. I had always before thought the six months were consecutive, but that’s not true. That said, the original 1780 law, and the new in 1788, did not apply to members of Congress. Washington avoided seeking a ruling as to whether executive officials were covered or not.
Chapter 6 on Thoreau? Learned nothing new other than his grandfather resisted patriots in the Boston area and spent a night or two in jail as well.
Chapter 7 on the Underground Railroad and Fugitive Slave Act trials? From a book I recently read, “Freedom Ship,” I know now that, to coin a phrase, more enslaved Blacks freed themselves via The Underwater Submarine than via The Underground Railroad. I had not heard of Chloe Cooley before, or Upper Canada’s 1793 Act Against Slavery. That said. Stoermer oversells it. It’s no different than New York State’s law for gradual emancipation. It did not abolish slavery for any currently enslaved people, it allowed them to be sold within Upper Canada, and back into the US. And, it did nothing to save Cooley. She was taken across the Niagara River and Wiki’s page on her says her fate after that is unknown. (Her page ends by saying New York State’s emancipation act was very similar to that of Upper Canada.) See? Mendaciousness and lies by omission.
And, on history books, feeling the need to repeatedly look shit up, stuff that I'm not sure is less than fully true but about which I have suspicions, is guaranteed to piss me off. I skipped the rest of the chapter because I’ve read books about the Underground Railroad as well as “Freedom Ship,” two bios of Charles Sumner and more.
Chapter 8: I’ve read a bio of John Brown, a dual bio of Brown and Lincoln and other material about Brown’s funders. Largely skimmed.
Chapter 9: Reconstruction. Nothing new.
I then have the insight, after seeing no index at the end, but a “Resistance toolkit,” that he’s like the Indivisible dudebros of the first Bernie Sanders campaign. My thoughts about them and their grifting here.
And yes, grifting is the word, and it’s the word I’m ready to use about Stoermer by the 100-page mark.
I mean, think about it. Book officially comes out in June, tour already lined up. (I’m shocked his website doesn’t have a “merch” page.)
A quote from my Indivisible takedown is relevant:
What's also "funny" is that the sheepdoggers, per Ted Rall, seem to talk more about resisting than about proposing specific ideas. Maybe because they know that today's national Democratic Party, with its neoliberal foundations, is largely bankrupt. And we haven't mentioned foreign policy.
But wait, beyond my Goodreads review, I'm not done kicking Stoermer in the nads.
Per the last sentence of the pull quote?
What’s his stance on Gazans resisting Israel? Russia resisting US-NATO imperialism (while expanding its own)?
Back domestically, what does this former Army officer and son of a Navy officer think of “large standing armies” and whether ours today is too big, not too small?
Otherwise, typical of McResistance, he’s on Instagram, but not Book of Face, even though Hucksterman owns both. He’s of course on Blue Sky and of course not on Shitter.
Scratch that! Actually, he WAS on there. Academia.edu and one other site both sent me that link, with one calling him “History Doctor” before the link. Further per the three-star reviewer calling him an armchair revolutionary, his LinkedIn lists him as living in Denmark. Guess that armchair came from across the Kattegat direct from Ikea in Sweden? And yes, we’re very much in the land of snarkin’ not cotton. And, per the “shape-shifting” feeling I’m getting — “Taylor” to “Tad,” “Stoermer” vs “Størmer,” etc.? That LinkedIn also says he got his Tulane law degree back in the middle 1990s. Say, age 25 in 1996, and thus, 55 now? Interesting that he’s never landed a tenure-track academic position. Maybe he just didn’t want one. But, even if tenure in a place like Tex-ass has less security than it did in the past, nonetheless, in general, tenure offers a degree of financial security.
Beyond that, actually looking through his Substack? A post that, before the paywall, excoriates any “Hang more [sic, we hung about none] Confederates” ideas? Lost me right there. I’ve long said the biggest thing wrong with Reconstruction’s military force was that we needed 100,000 troops for a generation instead of 20,000 for a decade on occupation duty. Contra Spielberg’s myth-making, Abe Lincoln’s rosewater wouldn’t have been that much better than Andy Johnson’s rosewater + open racism.
Beyond that, actually looking through his Substack? A post that, before the paywall, excoriates any “Hang more [sic, we hung about none] Confederates” ideas? Lost me right there. I’ve said the biggest thing wrong with Reconstruction’s military force was that we needed 100,000 troops for a generation instead of 20,000 for a decade on occupation duty.
As for who he reads? Largely left hand of the duopoly types. The Minnesota nicely odious Garrison Keillor is one.
Per a three-star reviewer on Goodreads, he's an armchair revolutionary, if any. Besides that, even within nonviolence, does he do anything? I mean, like BDS? I check the label all the time on olive oil to make sure none of it's Israeli. I don't buy any Unilever products because of their "tireless" effort to silence the actual Ben and Jerry. I don't buy Coke products.
Ditto on oil. We have to have gasoline from somewhere, if we don't own electric vehicles, but I still can, and do, boycott eXXXon by brand.
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