Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Saturday, February 3, 2024
Two random items. Andy Griffith and Taylor Swift
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Monday, August 23, 1943. Kharkiv changes hands for the last time.
Today in World War II History—August 23, 1943: Soviets take Kharkiv, Ukraine, the fourth and final time it changes hands during World War II, and the Germans lose the Donets Basin industrial area.
From Sarah Sundin's blog.
And that was a big deal in the war, we might note.
We should also note that the Red Army took massive casualties in the Battle of Kursk and its independent subparts, and in the counteroffensive following it. While putting it oddly, an achievement of the Red Army by this point of the war was being able to sustain huge manpower and material losses and not disintegrate. On the other hand, while the Red Army has numerous fans, it was fighting in a style that simply tolerated losses at a level that anything other than a totalitarian state could not endure, something the Germans also would do, but with the Soviets taking much larger casualties.
Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky, a Polish born senior Soviet commander, had his illustration appear on the cover of Time. The painting, which we cannot put up here as it is copyright protected, featured the Soviet general looking forward with piercing blue eyes and the words "USSR" behind him. He was painted seemingly thinner than he was in real life. Rokossovsky had been arrested during the Purge but had amazing survived, and then was dragged back out of confinement when it ended and the Red Army was in need of experienced commanders, which he was, after the disaster of the Winter War. He never blamed Stalin for his confinement, but rather the NKVD, taking a politic, if toady, approach to both the horror and his ongoing servitude to the monstrosity of the USSR.
Orphaned as a child, he'd joined the Imperial Russian Army during World War One, then went over to the Reds during the Revolution. After the war, in 1949, he became the Polish Minister of Defense under Stalin's orders, showing the extent to which Communist Poland was a puppet. He was not popular with the Poles, which he knew, commenting; "In Russia, they say I'm a Pole, in Poland they call me Russian".
Rokossovsky and his wife Julia had a daughter named Ariadna. He cheated on his wife with Army doctor military doctor Galina Talanova during the war, with whom he had a second child named Nadezhda. He was fond of hunting.
He died in 1968 of prostate cancer in Moscow at age 71.
Life magazine, in contrast, had a black and white portrait of a young couple dancing the Lindy Hop.
Uruguay transferred German sailors of the battleship Graf Spee and auxiliary ship Tacoma to an internment camp at Sarandi Del Li after they violated the conditions of their internment in Montevideo boarding houses.
The Pasadena Post reported on the cast of Poppa is All touring military bases, which included Casper born and Lander raised former Miss Wyoming Helen Mowery.
Friday, July 28, 2023
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor passes, an unfortunate icon for her times.
Sinéad O'Connor had, by the time of her death, eschewed her name and an additional one, as she traveled through a world that celebrates narcissism and which treats mental disturbance as self-expression.
Her cause of death has not been revealed yet, but if it turns out not to be suicide, I'll be amazed.
O'Connor is going to be celebrated as a musical genius and a cultural beacon. I've listened very little to her music, which I don't care for at all, but what she really was, was a really screwed up personality that had been crying for help in a world that instead just urges "self-expression". In a way, although their personalities and music, etc., were very different, she's the Irish Michael Jackson, the American pop artist who went from fame to weirdness to an early death. The public is unlikely to turn on O'Connor, however, as unlike Jackson who did a deep dive into cultural weirdness, O'Connor did a deep dive into rejecting Western Culture, and the cutting edge of Western Culture loves rejecting Western Culture, making our culture unique in that fashion.
Her name was taken from Sinéad de Valera, the wife of the Irish revolutionary leader and the mother of her attending physician. Her parents divorced, which was unusual for Irish Catholic couples and her father, at least, remarried and moved to the United States. That shows fairly clearly her family had fractured. She lived with her father and stepmother for a time and then returned to Ireland, by which time she'd take up shoplifting and ended up in the Magdaline Asylum, which, like most things in Ireland at the time and many things now, was run by a Catholic religious order. She actually did very well there developing her talents, but not too surprisingly chaffed under the discipline.
A lot of O'Connor's musical career was used to turn attention on herself, which has proven in the post Madonna music world to be a good vehicle towards success. Early on, in 1992, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a photograph of St. Pope John Paul II ostensibly in protest of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, but which is more symbolic of the childish Irish temper tantrums that were just then starting to really develop. The act was so shocking at the time that even Madonna criticized it.
By that time she'd already identified as a lesbian, when that was shocking, although she later retreated from that claim. At some point in the 1990s she was ordained by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is not in communion with Rome, an apparent "Independent Catholic Church" which is in no way in communion with Rome. She announced at that time that she wanted to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary.
In 2018, she converted to Islam, an ironic but perhaps predictable conversion as it is somewhat shocking for somebody who claimed earlier to be retaining Catholic beliefs. The irony, of course, is not only that she was Irish and self-proclaimed type of Catholic, but joining a religion that is generally hostile to female equality. Following that, she became a critic of Christian and Jewish theologians and called non Muslims "disgusting", from which she also retreated.
She was married at least once, and had four children, one of whom recently committed suicide.
The problem with being shocking and in despair is that the attention you get from being shocking is pretty temporary, and so goes the relief as well.
O'Connor stands out in the end as somebody who needed help and didn't get it. There are a lot of people in that category. With a strong-willed personality, and her world set upside down early on, she might not have accepted the help anyway had it really been offered. But celebrating the public descent of a tortured soul isn't really doing her a retroactive justice, and it didn't help while she lived.
She also stands, however, for something additional. Jackson stood for a long held American negative trait of rising people to great heights based on something superficial, and then destroying them. O'Connor, however, stands for the destruction of Western Society following World War Two, but in a time delayed way as she was Irish, and Ireland's entry into modern Western Society was delayed by at least 40 years. Prior to the Second World War a person's departure from the culture would not have been openly celebrated even if known, and it would have been somewhat arrested so that the individual self-destruction was less likely to be so open. And rescue from that destruction was a real possibility, with individuals such as C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde and Whitaker Chambers providing diverse examples of the same. Following 1968, however, hope for rescue started to become fleeting and open attack on the culture became a liberal virtue.
Now that she has died, she'll be celebrated and her many strange paths and failings turned into personal triumphs. In the end, however, it's clear she was grasping for the existential and metaphysical in a world that is hostile to both and would prefer to find all expression in as self-centered. Her conversion to Islam, which is openly hostile to those concepts, probably best expressed that desperate search, as misguided as the path she took was.
That's the modern way, however.
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon her.
May she rest in peace.
Sunday, February 12, 2023
What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 2. Care, lack of care, and an existential lack of focus.
Basically- Save the tomboys, let little boys paint their nails, don’t be a jerk to your kid because there are bad people/groomers in the world- protect your child and teach them they’re great the way they are and doing those things doesn’t mean they’re a different gender
Well, I was in the bookstore for three days running, but that's another story.
And just before the trip to the bookstore, I became aware that somebody who I've known their entire life now identifies as transgendered, but there's something else, I suspect, going on there that I'll not deal with here.
I so thoroughly killed off my younger self to become what I was, what I am, that I truly feel as though trying to find any part of her left in me would just feel like resurrecting someone else’s corpseI suppose that metaphor is appropriate with how Frankenstein-like I feel now
There will be no justice until every damn doctor, hospital, and medical association responsible for this atrocity has been sued into the ground, and some of them imprisoned. Forgiveness? Yes, in time (though that's easy for me to say, as I have not suffered what this father has suffered) -- but only after full lustration, only after Nuremberg-like tribunals, only after the trials, only after utter and complete shame shattering all the luminaries and the institutions -- including the Democratic Party, the TV networks, the major newspapers -- which brought this evil onto the lives of American children and their families.Those who did this to young women like her -- people like Dr. Gallagher above, who revels on social media in her success in slicing the healthy breasts off of women -- God willing, they will pay within the limits of the law for what they have done. As evil as the Tuskegee Experiment was, this is even more damaging, because it has created, and is creating daily, thousands of more victims.
Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things.
Philippians; 3:19.
This pretty much defines where we are, even though's worshiping their stomachs and glorifying in their shame don't recognize it. That has to change, and changing that is a tall order.
Because in order to do that, the lens, in society has to be turned back to me, towards the whole, and the existential.
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
Nguyễn Chí Thanh. Accidental Legal Muse.
Nguyễn Chí Thanh is the man who caused me to go to law school.
Eh?
Now, Nguyễn Chí Thanh was a General in the North Vietnamese Vietnam People's Army and former North Vietnamese politician who died in 1967, when I was just four years old. How could this be?
Well, he was the figure who thought of what became the Tet Offensive of 1968.
From a Vietnamese middle class family, Thanh's father died when he was 14 which forced Thanh into farming, as his family entered poverty. Perhaps it was this experience which lead him in 1937 to join the Vietnamese Communist Party, which in turn lead to being sentenced to French labor camps. He was both a political and military figure, and following 1960, was principally a military one. It was his idea to launch what became the Tet Offensive of 1968, a disastrous, in military terms, general uprising that cost the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese over 100,000 casualties, over twice as much as the Southern effort lost, and which ended so badly that Gen. Võ Nguyên, who accented to the plan and help prepare it, thought that he was going to be arrested and potentially suffer the fate of all who get blamed for stuff in Communist societies do.
Thanh didn't get the blame, for the military failure. Nor did he get the credit for the massive political success, as the offensive shocked the American public and lead to the US abandoning South Vietnam to its fate. He was killed from wounds sustained by a B-52 raid in 1967.
What's that have to do with law school?
Well, this.
In 1980, I had to write a paper in my community college freshman composition class. I was still in high school, but I only went half days and took freshman comp at the college in the afternoon. I wrote a detailed paper on the Tet Offensive of 1968, taking the position that the U.S. had won the battle militarily, but lost the war due to it due to the huge public reaction.
That thesis is widely held now, but at the time, not so much.
Sometime in the next couple of years, I had an American history class of some sort. I can't recall, but I do recall it was well attended. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the professor was a lawyer, but one who had largely not practiced, if he ever had, after doing a stint in the U.S. Navy. I had to write a paper, and what I did, which was legitimate, was to revise and dust off my preexisting one.
Keep in mind, this was in the typewriter days, so that was more difficult than it might sound. Indeed, writing in general was more laborious in those days.
Anyhow, when it came back, I had received an A, and the professor had marked "You should consider an analytical career".
The part of the story I usually don't tell is that I asked my father, "what's an analytical career"? That's probably as I don't want to have my father tagged with any other problematic career stories other than the one that's been mentioned before, which is unintentionally dissuading me from becoming a game warden. Anyhow, he mentioned lawyer. I think that's the only analytical career he mentioned. It's probably the only one that occurred to him, and frankly, it is hard to think of analytical careers.
And hence the seed was planted.
Monday, January 30, 2023
Tuesday, January 30, 1973. The return of PFC Ronald L. Ridgeway.
The Defense Department discovered that a North Vietnamese provided list of 555 POWs included Marine PFC Ronald L. Ridgeway of Houston, who had been listed as Killed In Action. He would be promoted to Sergeant and medically discharged in November 1973.
His girlfriend, Lawanda Taylor, had not married since his disappearance in 1968, and they would subsequently marry. He would go to work in the Veterans Administration.
On the same day, the first 125 of 37,000 South Korean troops in Vietnam left the country. The South Korean Army retained a large presence in South Vietnam right up into 1973 and had to be pressured by the US to leave, although the US also considered leaving South Korean troops in the country into 1974 given the slow progress of the ARVN in the regions the Korean troops were located. By 1973, South Korean troops constituted the vast majority of foreign combat troops in South Vietnam
Senator John C. Stennis was shot and wounded in front of his Washington, D. C. home in a robbery attempt.
The rock band Wicked Lester rebranded itself and performed for the first time as KISS.
Thursday, September 29, 2022
Something in the wind, part 2 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.
Giorgia Meloni not sounding like Donald Trump. In a sort of "make Italy great again" speech she calls for uniting the country, governing for all Italians, and doesn't sound like some sort of cheap badly done rendition of Goodfellas. Indeed, her articulate nature comes across, even if you don't grasp Italian, in comparison to Trump's nearly complete lack of it.1 Her victory message is certainly different, but the proof, of course, is in the cannolis, not in the menu presentation.
Does the election of Giorgia Meloni tell us something about what's going on in the US right now?
I think it does, or at least did, and therefore explains in part how we got to where we now are.
More than that, does it tell us what isn't going on, and what Trump's backer's might get, or rather the country, if we keep going down this road?
It probably does.
First, we'll note, her victory has already been heralded in parts of the English-speaking world as a non-fascist victory for true conservatism.
At the same time, the American usual suspects, probably none of which actually would be comfortable with Meloni's actual world view, rolled into congratulate her:
Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz under fire for celebrating Italian far-right victory
Italian politician Giorgia Meloni’s party traces its roots to the Second World War-era fascist movement founded by Benito Mussolini
All of this tells us a few things.
The first is that the FdI's rebranding of itself as a non-neo fascist party is taking root successfully, but it remains challenged. The party certainly had its roots there, and its symbol is made up of flames from Mussolini's grave, after all. But maybe it has reengineered itself as a right wing populist party that's no longer an anti-democratic fascist one.
Secondly, the English-speaking right is switching its attention from Viktor Mihály Orbán to Meloni, and maybe that's a good thing, if the FdI is no longer fascist and is democratic.
Of course, at the same time, the populist American right remains basically captive to a large degree to Donald Trump and his acolytes.
Finally, it really shows us what the populist Trumpite wing of the GOP, which anymore we might as well just call the GOP, is, and isn't.
So, what is Meloni's platform?
Well, I'm not Italian and I hadn't heard of the FdI until just the other day, or if I had, I hadn't paid all that much attention to it. Italy has had more than one neo Fascist party over the years. But it's easy to find videos of her giving really fiery speeches. A lot of those have been condensed into snippets, but if the full speech is listed to, they go in directions that you don't really expect. As far as I can tell, and I may be way off, the FdI, under Meloni, is hugely and unapologetically traditionalist and right wing populist, by it retains some syndicalist economic views. It also has dabbled, to some surprising extent, in social legislation which would be regarded as left wing in the United States, as trying to pass a bill regarding child care for working mothers.
So what caused more Italians to vote for it than any other party?
Probably that traditionalism, which is grounded in a sort of philosophy of nature, or new essentialism, or even a combination of classical Western thought and evolutionary biology. It appears, at least in its Italian form, to be of deeper thought than that of the normal American version. Indeed, American conservative intellectualism is of a much different type, and really hasn't evolved in any concrete form since Buckley's day.
What it might simply boil down to is what we've already mentioned. The FdI and Meloni are enormously anti-Woke and aren't apologetic about it in the least. They are also very nationalist in the "Italy for Italians" sense of things. And all that instinctively appeals, all around the globe, to people who aren't keen on being as multicultural as progressives assure them they should be and who, deep down, don't believe that a species that is male and female and has had marriage as its central fundamental societal element needs to now change that view.
It's a huge reaction to 1968 and the things 1968 foisted upon Western Society.
It's also, we might note, a reaction to the 1970s and the Greed is Good ethos that a triumphant capitalism brought in everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s. That part of Meloni's public platform seems missed. Meloni, however, has attacked modern globalism, and therefore that part of capitalism, pretty openly as well.
These themes all appeared in the far right before. Mussolini's original fascism was actually extremely radical in a left wing sense, reflecting a radicalism he'd grown up with, and his original membership in the Socialist Party. The Italian Fascist, however, combined some really left wing concepts with some extreme right wing ones, which was common to early fascist movements in many, but not all, places that it took root, that being one of the things that has made fascism so difficult to define. Because it did that, however, it also appealed to societal voters in the countries where it took root, who would adopt some of its views while blinding their eyes to others, and indeed blinding their eyes to the most radical elements of it.
Indeed, that's what made and still makes fascism really dangerous. We can see it in this example, maybe, and we can now see it in the U.S.
Indeed, we'll turn to the U.S. here, with this entry by some conservative journalist:
He’s Still the One
Sohrab Ahmari & Matthew SchmitzRepublican voters face a clear choice in the 2024 presidential cycle. Those who think the conservative movement has the solutions to the nation’s crises should vote for a conventional GOP candidate. But those who believe the conservative movement is part of the problem should support Donald Trump.Only Trump defied the deep state empowered by his Republican predecessors. Only Trump has broken from the disastrous foreign policy championed by the conservative movement. Only Trump has taken on the mania for free trade and outsourcing. No other figure of the right has shown the same willingness to break with his own side’s orthodoxies.
Footnotes:
1. Meloni has a very direct and highly pithy form of delivery. In contempoary American politics it would be nearly impossible to find an analogy, in part because she very clearly means what she says. An interesting contrast would be to Trumpite Harriet Hageman, who is articulate enough, but who lacks the element of sincreity that Meloni obivously has. Perhaps only Liz Cheney, whose delivery is different, is comparable.
Trump's style nearly defies description, but it's odd and sort of oddly childish, as if he's delivering a rambling address to himself, or to a group in a children's club. That he's gained a wide following is surprsing in part for that fact, as people generally don't like being talked down to. He doesn't come across as consdesencing, but as not too bright. Interestingly one realy diehard fan of his that I spoke to some time ago, who couldn't imagine anyone not admiring him, related that "he speaks like us". Of note, that person was of a highly blue collar background from the East, which gives some creedance to the theory that New York politicians of recent years have learned their speaking style from dealing with East Coast mobsters.
Prior Threads in this Series:
Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.
Prior Related Threads:
It's not just here. The Italian Election and the further rise of the hard right.
Monday, September 26, 2022
It's not just here. The Italian Election and the further rise of the hard right.
Fratelli d'Italia, the "Brothers of Italy", have won the Italian election.
Not outright, but with 26% of the vote. Enough of a command that, together with another right wing party and a center right party, Giorgia Meloni's neo-fascist party will govern.1 2 The party, in second position, is the Italian center left Democratic Party, but it can't put together a ruling coalition.
This gives Italy, when in the 1945 to early 1970s period teetered on the edge of falling into Communism, its most right wing government since Mussolini was strung up.
The Fratelli d'Italia is nativist, anti-immigrant, anti-European Union, and traditionalist. It's leader, Giorgia Meloni has said of herself; "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I’m Christian". The slogan is sufficiently popular that it's been set to techno pop with her saying those things, in Italian, and it's pretty effective. You can also find clips of her saying, but to members of the Spanish Vox party, in Italian;
Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology... no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration... no to big international finance... no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!"
So where is she basically coming from: Well, here:
It's impossible at this point not to see that something is going on in the Western World. It's not just Orban, or Trump.
Its the entire Western World.
Indeed, if anything, Trump's version of this is the most decayed and perverted. Meloni's may be the most open and honest.
So how did we get here?
This might be the reaction, long delayed, to 1968, and all it brought about.
Indeed, it almost certainly is. The question is what form that takes, and where that form takes shape. In Italy, Meloni, running from the hard populist right, will form a coalition government in a parliament in which, perhaps ironically, nobody is claiming a minority government reflects corruption in the vote, whereas in our country, with a Federal democracy that's designed to work slow and defeat "coalitions", or parties, one side is. Therefore, ironically, Italy, which has a history of fascism but never endured de-fascism, democracy may actually be less imperiled.
At any rate, we noted here earlier that in post Boomer generations, liberalism was waning and conservatism building. What we missed is that it's waning quicker than we anticipated, and the reaction to 1968 seems to be very widespread, and increasingly strong.
Footnotes
1. "Meloni" means just what it sounds like.
Indeed, Meloni in a short video clip, can be seen holding two cantaloupes chest high making a joke about it. Something that's somewhat unique to Italian politics, which remains occasionally ribald.
2. The FdI denies that it's neo-fascist, and while we've referred to them here that way, this wants again raises the topic of "what is a fascist". It's not as easy to answer as it might at first seem.
The FdI may have a point here, although I frankly don't know. At the end of the day, fascism implies an element of totalitarianism. The Italian fascists of the 1920s through 1940s made no bones about not approving of democracy. The Spanish fascist were of the same mind set. By and large, neo-fascist have also been anti-democratic.
This contrasts with the Illiberal Democrats, who tolerate a degree of democracy, but within a preset framework. They're okay with the vote, up to a point, and that point is the point at which a society is supposed to have a cultural set of concepts upon which it operates. That's not up for a vote. That concept has a lot of sympathy, it seems, all over the Western World right now.
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Tuesday, September 22, 1942. Top elevated
Today in World War II History—September 22, 1942: Germans split Soviet 62nd Army in Stalingrad and occupy the southern half of the city. US Army raises grade of first sergeant to that of master sergeant.
From Sarah Sundin's blog
Clearly, the item about the Battle of Stalingrad is the important item, but I've linked this in here due to the item on U.S. Army ranks. On this day in 1942 the grade of the rank of First Sergeant was made equal to that of Master Sergeant.
We've discussed enlisted Army ranks here before, indeed more than once, I think.
First Sergeant are the senior enlisted NCO's in a company, battery or troop. It's an important rank, and it's been around for an extremely long time. He is, literally, the "first" sergeant and for enlisted soldiers often the most senior soldier they typically engage with, commonly nicknamed "top".
When the Army was reorganized in 1920, 1st Sergeants were given the grade of E-6. That would surprise modern soldiers, as that's the grade now held by Staff Sergeants, who at that time held the grade E-5. E-5 today is held by the rank of Sergeant, but at that time, Sergeants were E-4s, as they still are in the Air Force.
Master Sergeants, that title indicating a senior status to that sometimes indicated for master tradesmen, were E-7s. Today, that grade is held by the rank of Sergeant First Class. That rank didn't exist in 1920.
On this day in 1942 the Army adopted a new enlisted structure, changing some of the enlisted ranks. Technician grades, which we've earlier discussed, were adopted, foreshadowing the later introduction of Specialists. Enlisted ranks remained the same up through Staff Sergeant. First Sergeants were moved from E-6 to E-7, making them the equivalent of Master Sergeants, and an additional rocker was added to their insignia to indicate their equivalency. In the E-6 position the rank of Technical Sergeant, which had already coexisted with First Sergeant, remained.
This basic structure remained until 1948 when technicians were eliminated, but new rank insignia were introduced for non combatant NCO's, only barely distinguishable from those of combatants. Technical Sergeant, at that time, was renamed to Sergeant First Class. Moreover, the rank of "Recruit" was introduced for what had been "buck privates", and introduced at the E-1 level, making there three grades of privates. The rank of Staff Sergeant was eliminated, and buck Sergeants took their insignia.
Specialists were added in 1955.
n 1959 a jump in grades happened in enlisted ranks overall. Staff Sergeants were reintroduced as E-6s, acquiring their prior insignia, and Sergeants became E-5s and reacquired their three chevron and no rocker insignia., Sergeants First Class took the E-7 grade and First Sergeants (and Master Sergeants) E-8s. The rank of "Recruit" was renamed Private E-1. Privates at the E-3 level worse the single chevron, as they had since 1948. This is basically the structure we've had since then, except that PFC's obtain a rocker in 1968, and Private E-2 reclaimed the single stripe insignia that they hadn't had since 1948.
The upper Specialists insignia over E-4 have also largely disappeared.
As this recitation also notes, the Technician grades were introduced during the same year as Top got a promotion and pay raise. They'd existed since January.
In a manner that only made sense to the Army, two stripe technicians were introduced at the grade of E-3, but with the title of Technician 5th grade. If that doesn't quite made sense, its because the "E" structure that I've been using here wasn't introduced until 1949. Prior to that, while the E grades noted here offer equivalency, so that it's easy to tell the actual changes over time, pay grades went by a simple number. Pay grade 7 was the lowest, and it was the one that applied to buck privates, or what we'd later refer to, most of the time, to Private E-1s. Pay grade 1 was the highest, which was equivalent to the post 1949 E-7.
That right there helps explain some of this evolution, by the way. There was nothing higher than pay grade 1, in enlisted ranks, and that was equivalent to E-7. Now, the highest enlisted grade normally encountered is E-8, which Master Sergeants and First Sergeants occupy, as of 1959. In that same year, 1959, the rank of Sergeant Major was introduced at E-9, as was Specialist E-9. E-9 remains the highest enlisted grade today, although there are several different types of Sergeant Majors that occupy it, some being exceedingly rare.
Anyhow, back to technicians. Introduced in January, right after the war started, their existence reflected the much more technical Army of 1940 as compared to earlier. The creation of the rank was an attempt to create a rank and pay scheme for men who were not combatants. Something had to be done, but the experiment wasn't really successful, leading to the change to combatant and non-combatant ratings in 1948, and ultimately to the not hugely successful creation of specialists ranks in 1959. On that latter creation, the number of specialist ranks was already being reduced by 1967 and was further cut back in 1978. When I joined the National Guard in 1981, there were still Specialist E-6s, but in 1985 that was changed so that only Specialist E-4 remained. At the same time, however, the increasingly professional nature of the Army after the elimination of the draft meant that the number of men occupying lower enlisted ranks increased, and therefore the Army reduced the number of Corporal E-4s in favor of Specialist E-4s, the distinction being that Corporals are NCOs and Specialists are not.
Prior Related Threads:
Timeline of U.S. Army Enlisted Ranks, 1920 to Present
The Infantry Company over a Century. Part 1. The Old Army becomes the Great War Army.
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
April 7, 1971. Withdrawals and Accessions.
President Nixon announced on television that he was withdrawing a further 100,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam, with the withdrawals to take place at a rate slightly over 14,000 per month. There were currently 284,000 US troops in the country, down from approximately 500,000.
Nixon had been withdrawing troops for most of his Presidency, while at the same time occasionally intensifying the air operations. It was a twin strategy of brining the troops home from an unpopular war while simultaneously punishing the North Vietnamese for their actions. The strategy was termed "Vietnamization" and was claimed to be based on the evolution of the war to the point where the south could take over the fighting on its own.
Indeed, North Vietnamese forces had been so depleted during the Tet Offensive of 1968 that they were in fact more ineffectual in the field against the U.S. Army and the U.S. supported ARVN, something that has lead some to claim that Nixon was withdrawing troops as the war was effectively won. In retrospect, based upon what we now know of Nixon's thoughts, Nixon was looking for a way out of the war that afforded some sort of cover that the U.S. hadn't abandoned the south, even though that is exactly what he was effectively doing. As a practical matter, however, by this point in the war, and partially due to the obvious withdrawal policy, the morale of U.S. forces in Vietnam was collapsing and there were serious concerns about the extent to which that was impacting the Army as a whole.
Most of the American forces in Vietnam were always support troops, although there were certainly many combat soldiers. While there were still combat forces in Vietnam in 1971, by this point the scale was heavily weighted towards support troops.
On the say day, the U.S. abandoned Khe Sanh for the second time. It had been earlier reactivated that year in support of ARVN operations in Laos. In that country, the Royal Laotian Army commenced a defensive counter strike against Laotian communist troops in Operation Xieng Dong which would result in a successful defense of the country's capitol against them.
Meliktu Jenbere was elected as the second Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church, a branch of Oriental Orthodoxy, and indeed its largest branch.
Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Denver Colorado
He was the second Patriarch of the church, reflecting the fact that the church became autocephalous in 1948, at which time it was accorded that status by the Coptic Church. He became the acting Patriarch in 1970 at the time of his predecessor's death.
He was imprisoned by the Marxist government of Ethiopia in 1974 which attempted to depose him while he was in prison, an act that the Coptic Church refused to recognize. He was treated cruelly while a prisoner and executed by strangulation on August 14, 1979. The Church in general was heavily persecuted during it's Communist era, which ran from 1974 until 1991, and the largest political party in the country today remains a reformed Communist party.
Baseball opened with a double header, the A's v. the White Sox, for the last time.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
2020 Election Post Mortem VII. Joe Biden and the "Catholic vote".
Now, this is yet another one of the numerous posts here that should proceed with a cautionary tale first being introduced. It's not safe to assume that the comments here indicate how a person voted. You can assume that votes were cast, but you shouldn't assume they were cast for Donald Trump. . . or Joe Biden. . . or whomever.
Indeed, one of the features of rationality is to be able to hold two thoughts. . . or more in your head at the same time. And the fact that the majority of human beings do not use logic, but emotion, for decisions, makes those who use logic subject to all sorts of abuse and misunderstanding.
The Presidency of Donald Trump was virtually a feast/torture for conservatives of logical thought. Personally he was often detestable, but he also opposed abortion and appointed excellent Supreme Court nominees of the type Conservatives only dreamed of before. We're unlikely to see either of those things out of Joe Biden, while at the same time he's likely to be much more personable and therefore tolerable in polite society. Cynics are very much able to make the comment here that it seems people prefer presentation over effect.
Which brings us back to our main theme.
There's something going on in the Catholic world which is easy for those in the US to miss, but it's a big deal.
The Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian denomination in the world, and its growing like crazy. It's far bigger than any Protestant denomination, and the American assumption to the contrary. Indeed, the novelty of Biden being only the second Catholic to be voted into the Oval Office is likely to really cease being novel quickly, as Catholics are set to make up the majority of the American population in really short order.
Indeed, the thing going on in the Catholic faith had a role in this election. We'll get to that thing in a moment, but one of the things that took pollsters way off guard is that the Latino vote has started to swing Republican, and not just in the Cuban American camp. That was predicted here, but arrived much more quickly than we expected.
The thing, if you will, going on in the Catholic, and indeed Apostolic, world is that the generation of Church leadership that emerged from Vatican II and which took the Church in many places far to the "left" is dying off and retiring. As it does, younger Catholics and Apostolic Christians are coming into their own. They're highly educated in their Faith, and they're highly orthodox.
Which gives them the problem of Joseph R. Biden.
The Press, remaining largely non Catholic and secular, doesn't really grasp this at all. To them, Biden is a Catholic. But to some younger Catholics that's so debatable that there's those who will dispute even that. That being said, Biden is very clearly a Catholic that's way outside of orthodox thought in his public life. Indeed, so much so that younger and older orthodox Catholics would generally regarded him as a very bad Catholic generally and one whose soul is in danger.
The press version of Biden's religion is the charming Irish American one that was told for Kennedy as well, but more so. Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania to an "Irish Catholic family". Like a lot of American Catholics whose family roots stem back some time, in reality he's of mixed heritage, but Catholic heritage, descending from Irish, English and French roots.
Indeed his middle name, Robinette, was the last name of his mother, and is a French Canadian name. The French version of the same name is generally Robinet, the difference in spellings being due to the Quebecois pronunciation of the name which pronounces the "t" at the end of the word. The meaning of the name seems to be diminutive of the name Robert. Biden, on the other hand, is a Saxon name meaning a button maker.
This background frankly fits the common American Catholic background more than the media version in which everyone grew up in tweeds eating Corned Beef. Indeed, its somewhat reflective of my own background, which also includes French via Quebec and English, along with Irish.
Biden was born in 1942 so he's a post Great Depression, and more or less post World War Two American Catholic. That means he was born into an era in which to be Catholic didn't mean that you were limited in occupation, as it had been basically up until 1945. It also meant that he grew up in the Latin Rite at a time it still used Latin, but he was a young man during Vatican II. It also, more broadly, means he experienced, as a young man, the campaign of John F. Kennedy and the turbulent 1960s, both of which seem to have been hugely formative in his political views.
John F. Kennedy was portrayed as an Irish American Catholic during his 1960 campaign for the Presidency. And indeed, JFK was an Irish American, although one of very different background than most. As hinted at above, and as addressed elsewhere, it was only after 1945 that Catholics of any stripe really could hope for a university education, with some exceptions, and most took blue collar jobs. The post war GI Bill changed all that rapidly. But JFK himself had grown up in the prewar world when that had been true, but it certainly hadn't been true of his upbringing. He was different right from the onset.
Irish Americans didn't see it that way, however, and neither did the Irish themselves, as one of the blogs we link in here on our feed recently noted. As Mark Holan's Irish American Blog notes, the Irish intensely followed JFK's campaign and election in 1960. The whole world has been watching the American election of 2020, but not because Joe Biden professes Catholicism or because he has Irish heritage. Indeed, we've had another President, Ronald Reagan, who claimed the latter since then, although again how perfectly is a very large question.
In 1960 when JFK was running Irish Americans and other Catholic Americans were in new white collar jobs largely for the first time and also were, in urban areas, moving out of the "Catholic Ghetto". They still were regarded with suspicion by a lot of Protestant Americans however. JFK faced that in his election campaign of that year and the memory of Al Smith, the prior major Catholic contender for the Oval Office, remained strong. Smith has been widely regarded as having lost the 1928 Presidential election as he was Catholic, and his religion was an open topic during the race.
The net result was that in the United States the Church was enduring change everywhere, with it being everything from architecture to the views of younger Priest just coming in.
Well that era is over.
As addressed in a recent episode of Catholic Stuff You Should Know, younger Catholics have taken back orthodoxy and re reintroducing it back into the Catholic mainstream. These Catholics aren't your great grandparents by any means, they're smarter and better educated in their Faith. They also definitely aren't operating with the Spirit of Vatican II. And they're not "cultural" Catholics.
And that's why candidates like Biden are a modern problem for Catholics. More than Kennedy was to Catholics of his era.
Catholics didn't really know much about what Kennedy really thought. We now know that he thought a lot about screwing every young woman who crossed his path. We also know now that his blundering was complicit in the murder of a foreign head of state. He had the morals of an alley cat sexually and was a rotten President otherwise.*
Not somebody to emulate.
And neither is Joe Biden for orthodox Catholics, although he's certainly not personally immoral like Kennedy was. Rather, it's his political stands on some matters that are hugely problematic for Catholics.
Biden came up in the political era in which, as we've noted, Catholic politicians were allowed to be claimed to be that and pretty much ignore their Faith as long as they went to Mass on Sunday. It didn't happen all at once. Ted Kennedy, for example, was an opponent of abortion. But by the 1980s it was in full bloom and the "I personally believe, but" Catholic politician became the Boomer rule. An example of that is Biden, and another Nancy Pelosi. They both freely vote for and even implicitly support matters which Catholic orthodox thought hold to be impermissible. Indeed, so much so that doing it may perhaps be regarded, if done knowingly and with appreciation of the gravity, that it may be a mortal sin. Not only that, but full absolution for it would not only take Confession, something that would be all that most run of the mill Catholics would have to do, but actually repenting of it through affirmative acts to address the harm caused by your prior acts.
Within a decade it will start to be the case that Catholic politicians who take this approach are going to be denied the sacraments and this is in fact already happening in some places. But the damage done by Kennedy and his followers has been vast. Vast, but not irreparable.
For the time being, however, the 2020 election provided a real struggle for Catholics. Many found Trump deeply repellant for a variety of reasons, but for largescale deeply held moral reasons, he was the choice they'd otherwise be inclined to follow. He has been opposed to abortion. He had not held to the "progressive" view that gender is merely a matter of choice. He has withdrawn American servicemen from contested areas around the globe and not become involved in new wars, something that Catholic theology holds to be problematic. Seeking to define him in relation to moral issues, some went so far as to compare him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian Emperor who definitely wasn't Jewish but who took actions that favored the Jews. Such a comparison is a stretch of course, but trying to figure out how to handle a personally repugnant, to some, person who does morally laudable things, has been a struggle for many.
What is certain is that Trump's views anticipated those that are coming, as we've already addressed, while his personal behavior was often repellant. At the same time, the old Boomer Catholics are often seemingly comfortable in their mental ambiguity and JFK "went to Mass on Sunday" views and seemingly certain in the belief that those views will prevail in the Church, and outside, going forward. That's not going to be the case.
And in the meantime, we have Joe Biden, who will be the last of the Boomer/Pre Boomer Presidents. For Catholics, he's the second co-religious in U.S. history, a second of questionable significance at this time, but may be retrospectively or, should he adhere to the tenants of his Faith, will be this term, a term which is probably the only one he'll serve.
One thing, however, that has developed in the short term. Catholics who didn't like Trump due to his character and agonized over their vote and then went for Biden have had their choice more or less ratified by Trump's post election conduct. At the time this was being typed out Trump was still attempting to prosecute efforts to have courts stop vote counting or otherwise challenge votes. The Secretary of State of Georgia, a Republican, has claimed that Trump backer Lindsey Graham pressured him regarding votes in some Georgia counties. Trump is still asserting the election was corrupt with nothing to back him up, meaning of course that he's advancing lies against his opponent and against democracy itself. The overall look for those who worried about Trump's character has verified their actions.
For a vote that seems to be developing and coalescing in the future that will leave the GOP with a lot of near term damage to repair.
*I realize that, in spite of all the evidence supporting this, there's a lot of people who simply can't accept this view of Kennedy and regard him, and indeed the entire Kennedy family as some sort of benighted heroic clan. Well, so be it. They aren't, and never were.