Washington’s “Coup d’oleil” Is Laser Focused On Trump and Project 2025.

Posted on | October 21, 2024 | 4 Comments

Mike Magee

John Plumb knows a bit about George Washington and what Trump has lately been calling “the enemy within.” A Navy Officer for 22 years, and current Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, he holds a PhD in aerospace engineering and is a student of warfare.

One of his favorite topics is George Washington who he says possessed what the French call “coup d’oleil” or the “inner eye.” According to Plumb, that refers to “the ability to see and comprehensively assess the whole problem, now and in the future.” He is especially interested in how Washington applied this approach to politics, not simple to the Revolutionary War battlefield.

Specifically Washington forewarned us in 1796 of Trump and Project 2025. In his Farewell Address, he peered into the future and didn’t like what he saw – specifically “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” He predicted these predators would “agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindling the animosity of one part against another, fomenting occasional riot and insurrection…opening the door to foreign influence and corruption.”

Washington did his best to raise the alarms stating that it was “the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain” the Trump’s of his day. Most preferred to align with the thinking of modern day Princeton psychologist, Emily Pronin, whose 2002 article was titled “You Don’t Know Me, But I Know You: The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight.” In that paper she seems to suggest that Kelly Conway was right, when she appeared on Meet The Press on January 21, 2017, and suggested that truth was in the eye of the beholder, and that “alternate facts” are just as valid as the regular variety. 

Pronin suggested our species was subject to “Naive Realism” which she defined as “insisting that our ‘outsider perspective’ affords us insights about our peers that they are denied by their defensiveness, egocentricity, or other sources of bias. By contrast, we rarely entertain the notion that others are seeing us more clearly and objectively than we see ourselves.”

Madison in 1788 suggested that governing a nation where there was no truth, just perception, would be a hard slog at best. In Federalist 51, he writes, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” 

His solution? Our legal system, and checks and balances. On January 6, 2020, by all measures, we honored our commitment to the Founding Fathers. As reports that day outlined, “By the numbers: President Trump’s failed in efforts to overturn the election.” The article led with, “Trump and allies filed scores of lawsuits, tried to convince state legislatures to take action, organized protests and held hearings. None of it worked…Out of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential election (in state and federal courts), 61 have failed. By all accounts, our nation and her citizens, owed our Judicial branch (its judges, lawyers, and legal guideposts) a debt of gratitude.  Our Judiciary saved our democracy – for the moment.” For the moment indeed.

Washington’s “inner eye” over the remaining two weeks before November 5th must be laser focused.

1. We must not be “naive” about the threat presented by the return of Donald Trump.
2. We must be pragmatic, prepared, and above all “realistic.”

Washington knew exactly what he was talking about.

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