BY PHILIP KENNICOTTOn a rainy Veterans Day,
when seasoned political ob-
servers were warning of immi-
nent danger to the republic,
top military and civilian lead-
ers gathered in Virginia to
open a museum devoted to the
history of the U.S. Army. The
event followed the usual proto-
cols and ceremony of such
affairs, with speakers repeating
familiar lessons about service,
sacrifice and honor. It was all
formal, stately, predictable and
curiously reassuring.
But haunting the proceed-
ings are the lessons learned
from one of the central events
in the Army’s history — the
Newburgh Conspiracy.
Visitors to the new National
Museum of the United States
Army will encounter at least
two detailed discussions of that1783 crisis, in which prominent
officers of what was then
known as the Continental
Army threatened rebellion over
back pay and pensions. Details
of the events are still disputed,
as are the motivations of the
key players. Gen. George Wash-
ington used his personal pres-
tige, powerful oratory and a
keen sense of theater to shame
the recalcitrant officers and
defuse the situation; his deft
response is cited as one of the
critical events in the creation of
a stable, functioning republic.
Since the Newburgh Conspira-
cy, civilian control of the Army
has been central to its self-un-
derstanding and purpose.
Now, as top Republicans cast
doubt on the integrity of the
nation’s electoral system and
President Trump digs in with
conspiracy theories and false
SEE NOTEBOOK ON C2KLMNO
Style
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 , 2020. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ RE C
Mission accomplished
In this time of constitutional peril, the new Army Museum helps us understand how the military sees itself
President Trump
lost. The nation
knows it. The
world knows it.
And, although he
won’t admit it, he
certainly knows
it, too.
But because he
is claiming otherwise — with his
Republican enablers joining the
chorus — this past week has
presented the reality-based
press with a strange and
extremely important challenge.
How do you cover something
that, at worst, lays the
groundwork for a coup attempt
and, at best, represents a brazen
lie that could be deeply
damaging to American
democracy?
“You don’t want to
fearmonger. You don’t want to
underplay something this
dangerous, either,” Noah
Shachtman, editor of the Daily
Beast, told me.
The trickiest part: “Figuring
out whether these bogus
accusations are actually
dangerous to the republic or
just the last, lame gasps of a
doomed administration.”
I’d argue that they’re both.
Not because they pose more
than a sliver of a chance of
overturning the reality that Joe
Biden will take office in January.
Rather, because the constant
drumbeat that the election was
somehow illegitimate does harm
all by itself.
In general, the press has
covered this madness
reasonably well. Even Fox News,
Trump’s longtime cheerleader,
quickly started using the term
“president-elect” to refer to
SEE SULLIVAN ON C2Coup? Joke?
On a Trump
tightrope
till the end.
Margaret
SullivanBY LISA BONOSThe modern online dater has
many complaints: Prospective
lovers might correspond with an
intriguing person for long peri-
ods before meeting. And once
they do, they might find their
match lied
about their
age, appear-
ance, their sta-
tion in life — or
whether
they’re even
single. In some
areas of the
country, gen-
der imbalances
make it hard to
find a partner.
Hanging over
all of that,
there’s the wor-
ry that any po-
tential par-
amour could be
a violent crimi-
nal.
A new book,
“Matrimony,
Inc.,” by Franc-
esca Beauman,
shows that these concerns are as
old as America itself. Beauman
casts p ersonal ads not just as a
journalistic curiosity but as a
form of literature, noting that
they first appeared in the main-
stream press around the same
time novels popped up in book-
stores. “This is no coincidence,”
Beauman writes; both reflected
“a newfound focus on the indi-
vidual, as well as on the pursuit of
happiness.”
She also posits that personal
ads, in their current or more
historical form, are key to society.
“Advertising for love became
an essential element of any ur-
banized society — like a postal
service or a sewer system, but
sexier,” Beauman writes. Because
if people can’t meet and mate,
how will any nation survive?
Sifting through publications
SEE BOOK WORLD ON C3BOOK WORLDPersonal
ads, dating
from 1759
to today
MATRIMONY,
INC.
From Personal
Ads to Swiping
Right, A Story
of America
Looking for
Love
By Fr ancesca
Beauman
Pegasus. 208
pp. $27.95BY ASHLEY FETTERSRenee Enyart, 28, was across
the room from her sixth-grader
when it happened. She glanced
over and saw her daughter Emi,
who was virtually attending sci-
ence class at their home in Win-
ter Haven, Fla., reaching for her
laptop’s power cable. Suddenly, a
sharp voice rang out from the
speakers. “It was just an instant
scolding: ‘I told you to look at the
screen. You know what you’re
supposed to be doing. I shouldn’t
have to tell you guys,’ ” Enyart
recalled.
Tears sprang into Emi’s eyes. “I
didn’t know she was unmuted,
and I just told her, ‘Go ahead and
let it die.’ Because it just annoyed
me — she was still paying atten-
tion. She was grabbing our char-
ger, trying to be present in the
class,” Enyart said. “I was actually
kind of glad that the teacher did
hear it, because for a second it
was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ She instantly
apologized.”
In a normal year, a parent-
teacher skirmish over discipline
might unfold in slow motion
through secondhand accounts
and private conversations out-
side school hours. But in 2020,
this type of clash has become
familiar to parents whose kids
are learning remotely and teach-
ers whose classrooms have gone
virtual.
In September, a video of a
parent angrily confronting a
teacher over the teacher’s com-
ments about George Floyd’s
death went viral. Elsewhere on-
line, parents are expressing
alarm about what they’ve over-
heard — that their teachers don’t
seem to know how the electoral
college works, how many coun-
tries are in North America, or
whether plants are living things,
for example.
Meanwhile, online forums
such as the subreddit r/Teachers,
where teachers often share sto-
ries, encouragement and strate-
gies, have filled up with frustrat-
ed and incredulous posts about
parents’ antics — asking a child to
do chores during class, helping a
SEE SCHOOL ON C3Distance learning has strained the parent-teacher relationship
DAYNA SMITH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Rocio Caballero-Gill with son Giordon, 6, who is distance learning at their home in Ashburn, Va. She
met early on with her son’s teacher. “I knew she might need some support,” Caballero-Gill said.CRITIC’S NOTEBOOKPHOTOS BY BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: A re-creation of the D-Day invasion at the new National Museum of the United States Army, which establishes a beachhead for the idea of a n
apolitical, highly professional, unrivaled military force. ABOVE: The helmet of Sgt. Alvin York, one of the most decorated soldiers in World War I.