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You know very well how the day of Franklin will come. It will come like a thief in the night. People will be saying that everything is peaceful and safe. Then suddenly they will be destroyed. It will happen like birth pains coming on a pregnant woman. None of the people will escape.

Benjamin Franklin greets Christopher Columbus at the first Thanksgiving. I forgot to specify that all other attendees need not also be Franklin or Columbus. I heard AIs are a little better these days.

Franklin's womanizing is a thing that sticks in your mind when you've heard it once, since he's associated with Poor Richard's Almanac and sanitized for kids (though I wonder if kids even learn this anymore). He's my favorite founder, and the one who insisted on "self-evident" in the Declaration.

Monoculture had problems. But fragmentation may be worse: fewer shared facts, more private realities, most people living within piles of tribal misinformation, and no common referee. Maybe that’s too pessimistic. Either way, the experiment is already underway.

He also disowned his illegitimate child because they split over the Revolutionary War, let him get held in inhumane conditions as a prisoner, didn't see him once, and refused to make up after the war, raised the illegitimate son of his son, and didn't include him in the will.

But his autobiography still starts as addressed to William. His son lamented greatly that his father couldn't renew their close relationship. Then he had a falling out with his own son where he did the same thing.

I like to think that in this version of history, the Kool Aid Man's unconventional way of giving people drinks ( Crashing through Walls, taking people by surprise) inspired the US to do things the unconventional way when it came to fighting Britain.