Awake

 Last night I was in a cleaning mood, felt tired, and crashed early.  Tonight -- still in the cleaning mood -- I finished up, mostly, cleaning out the fridge (nothing needed to be thrown away, but stuff needed to be cleaned and such), doing the floors, dusting, that sort of thing.  I went to bed, sort of, and... here we are now.  My blood sugar was low, and I couldn't sleep anyways, so I may as well blog, right?  I should have done it before, to be sure, but, again... I was feeling domestic, fueled by 1) the notion that I should do this more often and 2) why don't I do this more often?  I mean, I strongly suspect that it would be easier if I did this, right?

Is it me, or has the release of the Epstein files been...underwhelming?  I mean, first there was the release, but also the reaction.  Bill Clinton likes them young?  Yawn.  Donald Trump wanted to land a chopper?  David Copperfield... now that is something.  Prince Andrew (Randy Andy!) is also old news.  Is it because he is dead and beyond justice?  All the names are roughly out there?  All of the names are past their prime?  Odd.  Years ago, this would have been a tale, but now...

I am about a third of the way through Wilentz's No Property in Man, which concerns itself with the antislavery origins of the Constitution -- both in creating the document and the debate afterwards.  My first thought is that didn't the chick who wrote the 1619 Project read this?  More seriously, I think he makes the point that while the Constitution protected slavery in many ways, in the important ways, the text limited the growth of slavery, and, as the author indicates, made sure to make a careful distinction between property and people.  I think we tend to underestimate the amount of racism inherent in society at the time -- not even the Quakers really believed in the equality of races -- so for anyone to say that in law, black people (slave or free) were equal to whites.... well, it was impressive as a concept.