Reflections on 2022

The human heart plans the way, but the LORD directs the steps.

Proverbs, 16:9

2022 won't go down in my memory as a good year.

The Fall of 2022 saw me in the hospital three times, one of which was for several days, all of which were for surgical procedures, one major and two minor.  The result of the first one was to move a chunk of my colon, after which I learned that I barely dodged colon cancer.  And I do mean barely. 

God's providence, as Pope Francis has stated, is always one step ahead of us.

I got in that situation by basically disregarding the advice on getting a colonoscopy, getting mine a full decade after they recommend you start getting them. That sort of thing is typical for me, but it nearly got me killed.

At the time of writing this, I'm still waiting to find out what's up with a thyroid nodule.  I've had two fine needle aspirations and still don't have a diagnosis, other than that something is odd about it.  The material has gone out for a genetic analysis, which will determine whether or not it's something to worry about.

The doctor feels it probably isn't, but she doesn't sound reassuring about it.  I strongly suspect that it probably is, so 2023 will probably kick off with another surgery.

I'm in pretty good shape overall for somebody who is nearly 60, and who will turn that age, God willing, in 2023.  So all of this has caught me by surprise.  I didn't expect it.

I also didn't expect surgery to take so much out of me, but it did.  I was beat up for weeks.  My digestive track still hasn't returned fully to normal, or at least to the status quo ante, and I don't think it's probably going to.  This isn't like a huge disaster, but it is different, noticeably so.

I was tired for weeks after the surgery, and punchy too.  I didn't really realize how much so until some time later.

One of the things about running a blog is you get to know some people whom you know only through that.  Two of those folks came in with well-wishes when I was ill, which I appreciate.  One of them, however, who was a well known outdoor writer, died very shortly after his last post here, which was one of those posts.  It sort of punctuated this in a way.

Everyone else in the family is healthy, and I'm grateful to God for that, although COVID 19 visited the house.  My wife fell ill with it, even after being fully vaccinated.  That cost her a vacation with her brother and our sister-in-law.

Being laid up interrupted by hunting seasons enormously.  I didn't draw for anything other than elk, but I did get out for general deer with my daughter.  We got up on deer right away when some inconsiderate person drove right through where we were hunting, costing us some good bucks.  No deer for 2022.

I went out elk hunting on the first day, which was right before surgery.  I was tired and lethargic going out, which I now can look back on and realize that pretty much described me for all of 2022 before surgery.  I didn't see anything.

I got out the last Sunday as well. Felt better, but saw nothing.

Just two days out of a long season. Post surgery, restrictions kept me out of the field for a long time.

That also meant that I missed most of the waterfowl season, and indeed, when I started back up, as I had missed so much, it felt like the season was starting.  Of course, it was not.  I missed sage chicken season for some reason as well, maybe working cattle.

All of which means that in some odd ways, 2022 was more about my office job than ever.  I worked like a dog, even working from home the Monday after I got out of the hospital, but for some reason, I really have less to show for it this year than I should.  Or that's how I perceive it.  A post surgery outlook, perhaps.

I didn't work cattle hardly at all this Fall, same reason, which emphasized the indoors again.

An odd thing for me has been the various references people have started making to retirement.

I'm not old enough, on the Social Security scale, to retire even at the early age, and I won't be for a few years.  All of a sudden, however, people are asking me about it and I don't know quite why.

One reason may be that when I came into the practice of law, I rapidly ended up in the litigation major leagues.  Lots of the lawyers I worked with were young then, which I guess I didn't appreciate, but htey were older than me.  This has been a common experience in my life.  I graduated high school a year younger than most people, and I've often been the youngest person in any one group.  Added to that, I've tended to appear younger than I really am for almost all of my life.  

Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained by a life that is just.

Proverbs

That's no longer quite as true, although men age at remarkably varied rates.  Up until going into the hospital it seemed very much still the case, although over this year my facial hair, in my case expressed by my mustache, which I try to keep bushy, and my sideburns, which I try to keep short, have gone white.

And I mean white, not gray.

That's going to make you look a certain age, no matter what.  Some men would shave it, but I've been wearing a mustache now continually since 1988, and off and on before then, so I'm not.  And every once in a while I'll mention shaving it and my wife, who has never seen me without one, will object.

It is a shock, however, when I see my firm official photo.  All my hair was dark brown then.  The hair on my head remains brown, with gray mixed in, but my facial hair is white.

Added in that, however, I think is this.  I've often been the youngest person in a group, as noted above, which means the rest of the group is older.  All the guys I graduated with from high school were a little younger than me.  When I started working, a lot of the lawyers I knew, worked with, and became friends with were several years older than me.  They weren't old, they were just older than me.

At that time, somebody graduating from law school sometime in the first half of the decade prior to you seemed like a long time.  Graduating in the late 1970s even more so, and it really is.  But for those from the early 80s, if you were 1990, that isn't really that long of time, except at first.  Over time, it isn't, and those people begin to pretty much figure you are their contemporaries, and vice versa, which you basically are.

A couple of years ago, one lawyer I worked with a fair amount over the years pulled up and retired to the southwest.  Another that I'd worked with much more, and whom I'd become friends with, fell ill, retired, and died nearly immediately.  He wasn't that old, just in his 60s.  I'd been all over the west with him on cases.  A mutual friend of both of ours, who is a good friend of mine, is getting ready to retire.  A judge I worked with as a lawyer up and retired.  A lawyer I worked against a fair amount had a heart attack and died.  A couple of longstanding business contacts I am close to retired.  A lawyer that I'm pretty close to and have known my professional career is fighting a serious disease.

I feel like I'm The Last of the Mohicans.

Or maybe Will Penny.

Anyhow, you get the point.

Perverse speech sows discord, and talebearing separates bosom friends.l

The violent deceive their neighbors, and lead them into a way that is not good.Whoever winks an eye plans perversity; whoever purses the lips does evil.

Proverbs.

The events of the year oddly worked into this.  You wouldn't think that the background noise of the times would impact you personally that much, usually, but they do, and often heavily.  The state went into the 2022 election so dedicated to Trumpite populism that it felt more like South Carolina in December 1860 than Wyoming in, well. . . ever.  Views circulated in the state that I've never heard before, with some of them bordering on the unhinged.  Candidates were elected who seemed to be Berserker mad at the entire population of the country and who were ready to dive into the population, broad sword drawn, until they emerged screaming on the other end.  

It was weird.

In that atmosphere, we elected a Secretary of State with thin connections to the State and a Congresswoman who has long connections with it, but whom will start off as a nullity and whom I predict will forever remain there.  The entire time, large percentages of the state, including many people who have not lived here long, looked back romantically on a state history and culture that never ever existed.

So here, I feel like Sitting Bull.

It was not only weird, but for a native, downright depressing.

Indeed, in spite of my Sioux reference, a better analogy is that this must be what it was like if you were a Westphalian of my age, but in 1932.  The country you were born in, for all its faults, is now gone and completely unrecognizable.  The past decade has been a mix of extremes on all levels, cultural and political, and a big section of the country is now supporting extremism for reasons that are hard to grasp.

Well, here's hoping 2023 is a bit better.

How much better to get wisdom than gold!

To get understanding is preferable to silver.

Proverbs.

Thursday, December 31, 1942. New Year's Eve

Hitler's Order of the Day, in part, stated: "The year 1943 will perhaps be hard but certainly not harder than the one just behind us."

In fact, for the Germans, it would be harder than 1942, and in short order.

Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt hosted dinner and a midnight movie at the White House.

The Battle of the Barents Sea occurred between the Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy, with the Royal Navy escorting Convoy JW 51 B to the Kola Inlet.

All the merchant vessels made it safety to their destinations. The British lost the HMS Achates while the Kreigsmarine lost the Z16 Freiderich Ecoldt.

Emperor Hirohito gave permission for Japanese forces to withdraw from Guadalcanal.  The Japanese, accordingly, had officially suffered their first internally recognized defeat.

Sunday, December 31, 1922. New Year's Eve.

It was New Year's Eve, 1922.

That meant a lot of parties.  Parties occurring during Prohibition.  A fair number of them were dry, but a fair number were not.

French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare rejected German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno's proposal for a non-aggression pact with Germany, which would have replaced French troops in the Rhineland with an international disinterested force.

Frankly, were I Poincare, I would have rejected it also.  What international force, following the Great War, would have even qualified as disinterested?

We mentioned Cuno here the other day, he was an economist.  Of some interest, he was born in 1876 and would die in 1933.  Poincare was born in 1860, and would outlive him, dying in 1934.

The Nine Power Treaty went into effect.  We've run the text of the treaty, signed by the U.S. France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and China previously.

United States Supreme Court Justice Mahlon Pitney retired following his having suffered a stroke.

Justice Pitney.

Pitney was conservative, but also a libertarian, and has received praise in the modern era for being consistently libertarian.  He hailed from New Jersey, where his family had been located since colonial times, and only served for ten years before his stroke idled him.  He died in 1924 at age 66.

The Casper Daily Tribune had a cartoon on the cover regarding the Hays of the Hays Production Code, which we just discussed.

Sick Call.

 

The Baggage Train.

Going back to that WyoFile editorial, one of the replying letters stated this:

Sorry Kerry, buy you couldn’t be more wrong about Harriet Hageman – you made the mistake of trying to predict how she will be judged in history on one issue which will rapidly decrease in importance as Trump goes down in flames.

The only way to predict how Harriet will be viewed in her new roll as a Representative is to do an in-depth review or her substantial record in the courts – particularly the Federal court system. Its my understanding she has been one of the most successful and foremost natural resource attorneys in the United States and has argued cases at the highest level. To understand her experience in this field of natural resources one must recognize there are less than 10 really experienced individuals in Wyoming who have proven over the years their expertise in the field of natural resources. They include Jill Morrison, Doug Thompson, Ken Hamilton, Angus Theumer, Dan Hielig, Karen Budd Falen, Harriet Hageman and maybe a few more. Harriet is near the top of this distinguished list of competence.

The bottom line is that Harriet can be expected to be one of the most knowledgeable natural resource experts to ever be elected to Congess. If she equals or exceeds her past performance she will have a major impact on natural resource issues in the house. It will be important to see which committees she is appointed to and whether she can put together a staff of truly talented experienced natural resource experts.

Her unique experience as a natural resource attorney positions her to write amendments to legislation, existing laws which could redefine the ESA, Clean Water Act, Wild Horse and Burro Act, Wilderness designations, etc. and do this in a House of Representatives controlled by the Republications at least for the next 2 years. Never under estimate a person who has proven over and over that she is all about competence, competence, competence. The Donald Trump thing will wilt in the very near future and we’ll see Harriet in the legislative setting instead of the court room setting. Will she be as successful in Congress as she has been in the courts. Based on past performance, I think Harriet will be as influential.

This taps into something that's been bothering me throughout this election, or rather, maybe several somethings.

Those are; 1) when does "being a lawyer" credit you as a candidate, and when does it discredit you, in the public eye, 2) does the propaganda on lawyers match the reality, 3) does anyone really believe that having been a successful lawyer in private practice means you're going to be a big wheel in Congress, and 4) if Hageman's record is correctly cited, why would we support it?

First, a disclaimer, which I've noted before. As noted here, I knew Hageman slightly at one time.  Early on, because of her circle of friends, I frankly assumed she was a left wing Democrat.  At that time she was shy and hardly spoke, so my assumption was probably way off, but if it was way off, she was a unique personality in that her friends must have been way outside of her political beliefs.

That actually credits a person.

Indeed, one of the people like me, who had friends that were in her circle of friends, is mentioned in the letter above.  And that person definitely has very left wing beliefs and is married to one of Hageman's school year friends who also have very left wing beliefs, at least based on their views at the time, and their careers since.

Interesting.

It's additionally interesting as that person would most likely be on the opposite end of the spectrum on all the issues listed.

That brings up the point that lawyers careers tend to reflect the work that was available when they started off.  It doesn't necessarily reflect their personal views.  In the case of the person I'm thinking of above, it does, as their choices in career paths would reflect that.  In at least one other person listed above, it probably does as well, although they took a big diversion from their pathway at one time.

Hageman?  

Well, I don't know.  She did seem to develop, from what little I know of it, a career that focused a lot on water law at one time and then branched into something else, that being the representation of far right interests on various land and environmental issues.  I know of her representing a super wealthy import on a house construction case, however. Perhaps that was a favor of some kind.

Most lawyers actually are at least a little left of center.  Even the self-proclaimed right wing lawyers I know tend to actually be left of center, a little.  I've met a few really right wing lawyers, but in those cases one was a fellow who was so wealthy he really didn't have to do anything, and who came from a very conservative background (I also know a very left wing lawyer who was so wealthy the lawyer didn't actually have to do anything).

Of the three really right wing lawyers I've known over the years, two of them were from, you guessed it, somewhere else.

Is Hageman really right wing?  Well, she is now, and has no choice but to be.  Her father was a right wing legislator, and she's from Ft. Laramie, so if she is, she probably came by it naturally.  If she originally wasn't, she is now, and she has to be.

Which will make her irrelevant in Congress.

Which, in an out-of-order sort of way, brings us to number 3 on our list "3) does anyone really believe that having been a successful lawyer in private practice means you're going to be a big wheel in Congress"?

I can't think of any examples.  Can you?

Let's start with the letter writers citations here:

The bottom line is that Harriet can be expected to be one of the most knowledgeable natural resource experts to ever be elected to Congess.

Well, setting aside Herbert Hoover, maybe.

Hoover was a mining engineer. 

If she equals or exceeds her past performance she will have a major impact on natural resource issues in the house. I

How so?  Legal work is presenting your case to a jury or judge, and in this line of country, probably mostly to a judge.

That, frankly, doesn't mean squat in terms of arguing policy in Congress. 

The House of Representatives has 435 members, who all think of themselves as being the judges.  And unlike a real judge, they aren't, and don't have to be, constrained by what the law is and, while they should be constrained by the facts, they have never been.

They also all think themselves equal in their expertise to you, and really don't give a rats ass what your pre Congress career is.

Put another way, does anyone really think that AoC is going to think, "wow, Harriet, you know so much, I'm going your way!"  Or, for that matter, that Keven McCarthy is going to think "I struggled for years and sold my soul to become Speaker of the House, but I'm deferring to you Harriet".

Not bloody likely.

Particularly, and this is important for Wyomingites to realize, the House represents the population of the United States, which is about 70% aligned against what Harriet is seems to be for, based on her record.

Which takes us to this:

Her unique experience as a natural resource attorney positions her to write amendments to legislation, existing laws which could redefine the ESA, Clean Water Act, Wild Horse and Burro Act, Wilderness designations, etc. and do this in a House of Representatives controlled by the Republications at least for the next 2 years. 

Bar har har har!

Uh huh. The House is Republican, barely. 

The Senate, isn't.

The Oval Office, isn't.

You have to be delusional to believe that any legislation is coming out of the House with a right wing point of view on the ESA, the Clean Water Act, the Wild Horse and Burro Act, or Wilderness designations in the next two years.  

No freakin' way.

And if the last several elections cycles have shown, the rules about when houses switch are now broken.  If Donald Trump continues to whip the ass cart towards the cliff, the chances are just as good that you end up with a Democratic House and Senate in 2024.

Particularly if the GOP Rockettes in the form of Marjorie "Jewish Space Laser" Taylor Green and Lauren "Insurrection Barbie" continue to draw so much press.  Far right House female  House figures look more evil female villains in Marvel Comics right now that serious policymakers.  If you are a far right angry congresswoman, and that's the presentation that Hageman has given so far, firmly riding the Trump Ass Cart, do you really think you'll be taken as a serious potential policymaker?

Indeed, does any Wyoming politician have that street cred right now?  Senator Barrasso did at one time, but the GOP has seemed to use him recently to personally blame Joe Biden for gas prices when they go up, but not credit him when they go down.  Lummis might be faring the best right now, and she's clearly working on breaking away from the Wyoming GOP, with her sights set on a cabinet position in a future GOP administration she figures won't be Trump's.

Indeed, how the next two years go, with Lummis acting independently and Hageman beholden to Trump, will be interesting. 

And frankly, most Wyomingites aren't haters of Wilderness. Out on the street, it's easy to find Republican Wyomingites who would add more. That's an upper level GOP thing and one of the many examples of how they are out of sink with the electorate. Same with the Clean Water Act.  You can get visceral reactions to the ESA mostly because the right has hated it since day one. 

The Wild Horse & Burro Act matters to ranchers, and I don't like it, but most people don't think about it at all.

All of which is to say that I don't expect any Congressional action at all in these areas.  In 2024, the Wild Horse and Burro Act, the ESA, etc., will all be there, and Harriet Hageman's opinions on them will not have mattered one bit.

Which covers not only topic 3, but topic 4.

What about topic 2?

Well, maybe, in her case. The New York Times supported that view, that she was a lawyer who worked against environmental regulation for decades, and they're surely no fans of Hageman.

Well, what about 1.  Funny how that works.  If somebody's a lawyer, and their views seem to agree with yours, that means a lot. If they're a lawyer, and their views differ, they're a dirty bastard.  The High Country News, before she was a candidate or even close to being one, in 2009, stated the same thing, more or less.  So that claim seems to be correct.

But again, does that credit you?

Witness the Secretary of State election.  Chuck Gray complained that Tara Nethercott was a lawyer and was only campaigning for the salary, an absurd proposition. First thing he does his hire a lawyer to be on his staff.

Weird how that worked.

Which gets back to the letter writers point that we don't know how we're judged in history, until we're judged in history.  His point is that Hageman may overcome having a front row seat on the careering ass cart due to her background and skills.

And maybe she will.

But in order to do that, she'll have to get out of the ass cart quick, as otherwise she's just going to be wrecked baggage. And that's not an easy thing to.

"Tail Gunner" Joe McCarthy.  Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Two conservatives who didn't react, when they could have, both of whom might have been very much differently remembered than they are today.  By the time that McCarthy hauled in the Army in front of the House Committee on Un American Affairs, the bloom was off the Communist under every bush rose.  He should have known that and wrapped things up, stating they'd gone as far as they could, and have gotten back to things later. Instead, he rode that wagon over a cliff.  

Nixon should have exposed the Watergate burglars. He didn't order them to actually do anything. If he had, he'd have completed his second term, destroyed the negative evidence against him, and be remembered as the President who got us out of Vietnam.

Part of taking trips into dangerous territory with the baggage train is knowing when to leave it.

Remembered by Irrelevance.

 

WyoFile's Kerry Drake wrote an editorial worth reading, entitled:

History will judge Cheney, Hageman by their Trump choices

Wyoming’s U.S. Rep. elect hasn’t been sworn in yet, but it’s already clear that she hitched her wagon to the wrong jackass.

It's a great article, with many good observations, but Drake is reading his audience, the Wyoming voter, incorrectly.

And that's a tragedy.

Drake is correct about this:

Hageman, by contrast, has now irrevocably tied her political identity to backing Trump’s lies about the “rigged” election. Even if she wanted to abandon him, Hageman cannot simply walk away. You don’t just shuck off those handcuffs when you get tired of wearing them.

No, Hageman has made the political calculation to double down on her support, even as many incumbent Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump after the GOP’s disastrous midterm election results. Our freshman congresswoman doesn’t have much choice.

And this:

She hitched her wagon to what she thought was the most powerful horse in the field. Now the world is quickly realizing her rotund orange steed was a jackass all along. And Cheney is leading it to the glue factory.

But will "Wyoming's" voters wake up, and will it make a difference to Hageman?

Not a chance.

Nor will it matter to her supporters.

Hageman will go on to be reliably right of the right for the rest of her political career.  In her early 60s, she'll be there for at least 16 years, and have little influence on anything.  

In the meantime, something occurred to me.

I have a friend who is a fanatic Hageman supporter.  I have another who was a real Chuck Gray supporter.

What do they have in common?

Not from here, and not from any of the neighboring states.

They've imported their politics from the Midwest. . . and there's a lot of that going around.  Indeed, we have a Secretary of State that hails from far away and his district has elected a replacement for him, in the legislature, that hails from Chicago.

Wyoming has always been a very odd state in this way.  It has a highly transient population and a core of locals. But the locals themselves are divided between various regions.  And generally, for some reason, people have tended to politically look to outsiders in the state, although our current era is a real exception.  The Governor is actually a Wyomingite, as is Hageman (from the farm belt).  Lummis is as well.

Indeed, Lummis may be the best political barometer of what that local core may be thinking. She dissed Trump when most did, made up to him in spades when things were clearly going the other way, and has dumped him like a hot rock now that he's sinking fast.

Drake is right, Hageman can't do that.

But Drake is wrong to think most Wyoming voters will. The real Hageman supporters, who include an interesting group who brought their political views from somewhere else, would rather ride the Trump jackass into oblivion than admit they've been grifted.

It's sort of self satisfying, really.

But it doesn't help address anything, however.

History will judge Hageman and Cheney by their choices, and Wyoming in general. Hageman and Wyoming are going to look pretty much the same way America Firsters did by 1945.  But there were still a few America Firsters, even those who backed fascists, around in 1945.  History judged them by forgetting them, and they did in fact become pretty irrelevant politically.

As we are about to.

Saturday, December 30, 1972. Operation Linebacker II stopped.

Operation Linebacker II was halted after a total of eleven days, following the North Vietnamese agreement to return to the negotiating table.

Wednesday, December 30, 1942. Sinatra breaks out, and Soviets starting to. And, Bobby Soxers.

Frank Sinatra appeared as a solo act for the first time, appearing before a screaming crowed of bobby soxers of 5,000 at the Paramount Theatre in New York City.

Sinatra on the radio with actress Alida Valli.*

Sinatra in some ways was the first example of a phenomenon that would attach to certain male performers of the mid 20th Century in which they were the subject of gigantic teenage female fascination.  We tend to think of personalities like Elvis in this category, but Sinatra had the same adulation prior to their experiencing it.

His appearance at this point in time raises certain interesting questions.

Sinatra was born into an Italian American family that endured rough circumstances, to some degree, but which also saw his father go from being a boxer to a fire captain, and which featured a dominant, highly driven mother.  The mother supported the son's endeavors.  Sinatra, who always performed under his own name, took an interest in music early and started singing professionally with bands at age 20.  He sang with Tommy Dorsey's band in the late 1930s, with his desire to break free from the band resulting in a legal battle and persistent rumors that Mafia boss Willie Moretti, who was Sinatra's Godfather, had held a gun to Dorsey's ear.  That rumor was incorporated by Mario Puzo in the novel, and later the movie, The Godfather to apply to a very much Sinatra like character.

Sinatra was a huge hit in the early 1940s, but being of conscript age, the logical question is why he wasn't drafted.  He was categorized by the Selective Service as 4-F, which provides the reason, due to a perforated ear drum, but Army files later indicated that he was regarded as psychologically unsuitable for military service due to emotional instability.  He did tour with the USA in the latter portion of the war.  A lack of wartime service did not hurt him, as it did not hurt John Wayne, which says something about the culture of the time.

He campaigned for Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.

Sinatra lived a long, and not uncontroversial, life, dying at age 82. As all that would really be too long to go into, will stop here, with the World War Two story told.

Bobby soxers should be noted.

Bobby soxers have come to be erroneously associated with the 1950s, but in fact were a 1940s phenomenon.  They were teenage girls and women in their very early 20s who were an early example of the emerging youth culture of the United States.  Indeed, they were in some ways its real pioneers.  They were called "bobby soxers" as, at the time, they wore short "bobbed" socks with saddle oxfords.

Saddle oxfords are a dress shoe now, but they've always had the reputation of being a semi casual dress shoe.  At some point they became heavily associated with students and young people.  They were introduced as a mass manufactured shoe in the early 1900s by the Spaulding Company, with the first example introduced in 1906. That's the same company, we'd note, famous for basketballs, etc., which says something, as at first, it was an athletic shoe, not a dress shoe.

Probably that origin as a sporting shoe caused its popularity.  It crossed over pretty quickly to dress wear, anticipating a later trend we have seen the past few decades of basketballs hoes in that use.  

The shoe came on the scene just as there was a real expansion of women in sports, so it was ideally timed  It became hugely popular with cheerleading teams.  By the 1930s it was approaching near universal adoption by schools as mandatory footwear for girls academic uniforms, although it remained popular with men.  They began to become school uniform shoes for boys in the period as well.

The same period saw a shortening of skirts. The combination of the shorter skirts, saddle shoes, and short socks lead to Bobby Soxers being the name for young women affecting the style.  The style endured until the 1950s, when it faded, but the shoes themselves retained widespread academic popularity until the decline of clothing standards started to set in during the late 1960s.

While it may seem odd now, the style was somewhat risqué.

President Roosevelt spent the morning visiting with Naval personnel, including Admirals King and Leahy, and the Secretary of the Navy.  He was in New York City at the time, and had a doctor's visit in the afternoon.

The Red Army was generally gaining ground everywhere to the south of Stalingrad.

Footnotes:

*Not really related to this entry but for this photograph, Alida Valli was an Italian actress coined by Mussolini as "the most beautiful woman in the world."  She truly was lovely.

Born to nobility, her real name and title was Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg.  She was born in a part of Italy that is now in Croatia, and which had once been part of Austria Hungary.  She was of mixed heritage, but considered herself Italian.

The photo must have been taken post 1943 as she was active in Italy at this time.  Married three times, her first husband was an Italian fighter pilot who was killed in action at Tobruk.

She was popular in Western films throughout her career, which again says something about the times.  Unlike hugely popular Italian actresses of a certain appearance, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, Valli had a more normal figure and rose to popularity in the "dirty" Italy period when Italy was regarded as, and truly was, fairly backwards.

Saturday, December 30, 1922. Red Empire.

The Saturday Evening Post featured one of J. C. Leyendecker's many New Years illustrations.

It was satyric in nature, with Old Europe, treaty in back pocket, greeting the young US in allegorical form as the old year and the new year meeting.

A new development, reviving an old set of borders, was unfortunately occurring.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was officially founded on this day in 1922.  It had, of course, been functioning as a Communist monstrosity for some time already.

The original flag of the Soviet Union.  This one perhaps overemphasized the Communist goal of swallowing up everything and was later changed.

The Country Gentleman featured a baby with a seed catalog, but unfortunately I was not able to locate the illustration.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Nine. Rout

Ukrainian Christmas stamp.

November 11, 2022.

As amazing as it is to think it, it's actually the case.  Russia is being routed in Ukraine.

But maybe it's not really that amazing, except for one thing.  We'll get to that.

The last war I can think of, offhand, in which Russian forces performed really well was during the 1812+ stage of the Napoleonic Wars, keeping in mind that I'm very ignorant on the Crimean War.

That's 210 years ago.

The Imperial Russian Army preformed badly during the Russo Japanese War.  It had mixed performance during World War One, but in the end, the Germans defeated Russia.

Sure, the Red Army won in the Russian Civil War, but any army performs well in a civil war, if its truly fought out, as the other army is also made up of people with the same training or lack thereof.

It lost to the Pole is the Russo Polish War that followed the Civil War.

And tiny Finland fought it to a standstill in the Winter War.

Then there's World War Two.

Now, let's given credit where credit is due. The Russian Army killed more Germans than any other army in the field. . . and the Germans killed a lot of Russians too.

Indeed, with a massive numerical advantage it didn't really manage to get its act together until Fall, 1942, for the most part, although there are real and notable exceptions.

One of the things that those real and notable exceptions tell us, like it or not, is that Stalin did a pretty good job of reforming an army he'd destroyed in the 30s and giving it 11th hour backbone.

After the Fall of 1942, while it hemorrhaged deserters like sand in the hand, it preformed well, even though it preformed well as an armed mob.

But since then? What has it done well, really?

Hmmm. . . 

Afghanistan? 

Well, it lost.

Syria?

The Newark New Jersey police department could probably turn in a real performance there and look impressive.

Under trained troops, bad equipment, no doctrinal flexibility.  These are Russian things.

And the Ukrainian Army, having been reformed since 2014, is a Western Army.  It's more like the Army of Poland or even West Germany than Russia, now.

Ukraine has taken back its territory west of the Dnipr.

By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-2021).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source:BNO NewsTerritorial control sources:Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map / Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed relief mapISW, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

Slava Ukraine.

November 15, 2022

U.S. intelligence indicates that Putin may have delayed the Russian withdrawal from Kherson in order to attempt to preclude it from being viewed as a Biden victory.

If so, it's an interesting example of how Russia regards American domestic politics.

Today, Russia mounted a massive rocket attack on Ukraine, sending two missiles into Poland, where they killed two.

November 16, 2022

President Zelenskyy addressed the G20 and gave a 10 point peace plan which included a Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory.  It can safely be assumed that Russia will reject this.

The missile that went down in Poland now appears to have been an errant Ukrainian one.

November 18, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War

Col. Vadim Boyko, a Russian army officer who was head of a military academy and involved in Putin's conscription attempt, has reportedly committed suicide, although reports also hold he was found with five shots in his chest.

Russia pounded Ukraine with missiles again yesterday.

North Korea

The BBC reports:

North Korea has launched an intercontinental ballistic missile with enough range to hit the US mainland, Japan's defence minister says.

The West in general and the US in particular has dinked around with North Korea so long while it worked on this project that the result is that the American population is now vulnerable to an ICBM strike by North Korea. There's no doubt that North Korea will attempt to leverage this against the US.

No US President has been effective in dealing with the Communist Stalinist Theme Park under its current leadership.  As a result, a real question has now developed on what the US can and should do to protect its interests before North Korea is fully nuclear capable.

November 20, 2022

North Korea.

North Korea's dictator/monarch was photographed showing his ICBM's to his 14-year-old daughter this week, thereby actually confirming her existence.

The United States and South Korea have been conducting practice aerial missions.  I'd frankly regard a U.S. airstrike at this point on North Korea's nuclear capacity as not unlikely, although less than 50%.

November 23, 2022

North Korea.

Kim Yo Jong stated that the United States would face “a more fatal security crisis” if it presses forward with its plan to seek condemnation of North Korea's missile behavior in the UN Security Council.

This is a clear threat of violence of some sort.

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukrainian security forces raid the Pechersk Lavra Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv on the basis that it feared the monastery might be used for sabotage.

This points out the complicated nature of the relationship between the three branches of Apostolic Christianity in Ukraine. Before the war commenced, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which had been a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, sought and received autocephalous status from the Greek Metropolitan of Constantinople.  This was condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, and a schism developed.  Some of the Ukrainian Orthodox did not go along with the separation and remained subject to the Metropolitan of Moscow.

The other branch is the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome.

The invasion of Ukraine was justified by Putin in part as being in defense of Orthodoxy. Russia under Putin has been highly resistant to social trends in the West and in part this is scene as an aspect of this topic.

November 24, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War.

Russia has been concentrating on destroying infrastructure targets, energy generation in particular, the last several days.  The attacks have been massive in extent and appear to be motivated by the same mistaken reasoning that was behind the Blitz by the Luftwaffe and the Allied strategic bombing campaign of World War Two, that such efforts destroy civilian will to fight.

Iranian Insurrection

Protests have spread to the point where Iran is now regarded to be in a state of pre insurrection and the government is having to deploy armed forces in an attempt to address it.

December 4, 2022

El Salvador/Central American Criminal Crisis

The government of El Salvador deployed a huge number of troops and paramilitary police to enter a gang controlled area near the capitol yesterday.

Russo Ukrainian War

The Ukrainian Army has crossed the Dnipro.

December 5, 2022

Two Russian air force bombers were destroyed by an explosion on the runway at Engels Air Force Base, which is deep inside of Russia.  Explosions also happened at a Russian Air Force base at Saratov.

Speculation is widespread that these are a deep Ukrainian drone strike.  Both locations are near each other, and they have been used for strikes on Ukraine.  They are near Saratov on the Volga.

December 6, 2022

Russia continues to engage in massive missile strikes on Ukraine, but for the second day in a row Ukraine has hit back with a drone strike on an airfield, this time upon Kursk.\

These strikes contrast with each other in that the Russian strikes are against civil targets, while the Ukrainian ones are on Russian air assets.  Russian behavior is making it easier for Ukraine to hit targets inside of Russia without Western protests, and the Russians seem to be baffled as to how this occurs.  News about the strikes has come from Russian media, with the Russians seemingly being stunned that it's occurring.

What is not clear is the extent to which Ukraine can continue this, and whether these raids are essentially experimental.  If Ukraine can manufacture these long range drones in sufficient numbers, Russian air assets will have to be pulled back to more distant bases and logistical stockpiles in Russia will become endangered.

December 22, 2022

100,400 Russian soldiers have died in the war.

That figure is roughly twice the number of Americans who died in the very long Vietnam War, the last major war fought by the United States (yes, there have been wars since then, but not on that scale).  Added to that, in 1973 when that war ended for the US, it's population exceeded that of Russia's now.

15,000 Russians died in Afghanistan.

President Zelensky spoke personally to Congress this week.

December 26, 2022

Putin suggested he's ready for talks, while blaming the lack of talks on everyone else.

He's also hinted that the property of Russian oligarchs who are not supporting the war may be confiscated.

Russian assaults, which are not achieving much, remain unabated

FWIW, Christmas, on the Orthodox calendar, is January 7, 2023, on its liturgical calendar.  While I wouldn't put too much stock in it, if there'd be a calendar based timing for some sort of dramatic peace related event coming from the Russians, and I'm not saying that there is, that'd be a good date for it.

December 27, 2022

President Zelenskyy has indicated that he's relying on India to advance a peace proposal to Russia.

In spite of news of peace talks being a possibility appearing in the Western press, it's highly doubtful that any peace negotiations will start any time soon.

December 27, cont.

Russia today issued an ultimatum to Ukraine to accept Russian terms or the Russian army will settle the issue, according to Russia.

This would seem to suggest that Russia is on the verge of launching a new offensive and presumably it has some confidence that this one will be successful, something of which there is no guaranty.

December 29, 2022

Alexei Maslov, a senior Russian Army armor officer who had fallen under criticism, has been reported dead within a day of a meeting with Putin being cancelled.

Pavel Antov, age 69, a Russian sausage tycoon, fell to his death at an Indian hotel.  His friend, Vladimir Budanov, died at the same hotel four days prior.

An unusual number of oligarchs and Russian figures of note have died since the war started. Antov adds to the list, since the war commenced, that includes the following:

Leonid Shulma, age 60, by suicide. Igor Nosov, age 43, stroke.  Alexander Tyulakov age 61, suicide. Mikhail Watford age 66.  Vasily Melnikov age 43 Wife and two sons found dead beside him. Vladislav Avayevage 51. Wife and 13-year-old daughter found dead beside him Sergey Protosenya age 55, Hanged from a handrail, wife and daughter found dead in their beds with blunt axe wounds and stab wounds. Andrei Krukovsky age 33.  Fell from cliff. Alexander Subbotin age 31.  Drug induced heart attack. Yuri Voronov age 61. Gunshot wounds to the head, pistol found next to his body.  Dan Rapoport age 52.  Fall. Ravil Maganov age 67. Fell out of a hospital window.  Ivan Pechorin age 39. Fell off boat and drowned. Vladimir Sungorkin age 68. Stroke. Anatoly Gerashchenko age 72.  Fall. Pavel Pchelnikov age 52. Suicide. Vyacheslav Taran age 53 Helicopter crash. Grigory Kochenov age 41.  Fall from balcony during police search of apartment. Dmitriy Zelenov age 50.  Injuries sustained in fall.

That's rather odd.

December 30, 2022

United States v. ISIL

The US announced it has killed about 700 ISIL operatives over the past year, with this taking place in Syria and Iraq.

Russo Ukrainian War

Russia continues its massive missle campaign against Ukrainian infrastruture, clearly intending to completely destroy it.

Last prior Edition.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Eight. The one in which the Russian forces collapse and Putin puts his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Recent Related Threads:

The Man of the Year.

Whether the battle for Ukraine fills one with hope or with fear, Volodymyr Zelensky galvanized the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades.

Time magazine, on their choice to make Volodymyr Zelensky their Man of the Year.

I had no doubt he would be.

Odd to live in a year in which some in far off lands rose so bravely to the occasion, while others closer to home failed so greatly to live up to obvious standards.

What is wrong with the Putin supporting right?

Maybe the color of the GOP really should be red. . .

Why your grocery store shelves will be clear of eggs if you live in Cheyenne, Sidney, or Raton

 Neighbors of Big Green Rectangle, be advised.

A new law prohibiting the sale of non-cage-free eggs in Colorado will go into effect in January

Don't get me wrong. I'm about as big of a fan of natural agriculture, if that makes sense, as a person can be.  I'm cool with free-range eggs, or whatever this amounts to.  And I'm opposed to factory farming pretty much.

But what does this sudden change mean for Colorado?

My guess is, no eggs.

And, I'll bet, fewer eggs on the shelves in border towns.

This should be interesting.  Colorado started off with the right wing dream of packing every square inch of the state with people for economic reasons, and got a left wing imported populace.  There's a lot of egg eating going on.

Babylon. . . um, then or now?

 An original epic set in 1920s Los Angeles led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, with an ensemble cast including Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Jean Smart. A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.

Description of the movie Babylon.

Seriously?

Well, in keeping with the ostensible focus of this site, let us first acknowledge that early Hollywood was a complete moral sewer.  I haven't seen, obviously, Babylon (nobody in the general public has yet) and I'm not going to, but it would frankly be difficult to inaccurately depict the moral depravity of early Hollywood by going too low. . . which is what makes it the perfect topic for Hollywood today, doesn't it?

Before the Hayes Production Code came in, in 1934, movies were unrestrained by any standards other than community and local ones, and they plumbed the depth as far as they could.  As we earlier noted:

The Hays Production Code of 1934 had been a voluntary code that the movie industry had imposed upon itself to prevent further regulation due to outcry of the moral content of early films, some of which were outright pornographic even when aimed at a general audience and even when camouflaged with supposedly religious themes with even such moviemakers as Cecil B. DeMille taking that approach.  The code had imposed eleven items that were outright prohibited in films, including nudity and associated sexual portrayals, but also banned such items as profanity, disrespect to the clergy, childbirth and willful offense to any religion or race.  It also included twenty five items that film makers were required to be careful about in their depictions.

Indeed, illustrating the above, Cecil B. DeMille, whom we associate with Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments, released a "Biblically" themed silent movie which still receives viewer warnings today due to such scenes depicting female "saints", in Roman times, writhing in agony, nude, chained to columns.  People went to see that in order to see nude women on the screen and have some excuse for it.  It was pornography then, and it remains pornography now.

And not just that, although that's a spectacular example.  Fairly routinely moviemakers slipped in nude scenes of women to see how far they could go.  One famous example involving a well known actress then and post code had a brief snipped of the actress emerging from a bathtub.  It's apparently really brief, but the point was she was nude.  Filming nude swimming actresses was pretty common, barely obscuring them.  You get the point.

And not just that. The moral tone of movies itself was often amazingly low.  Indeed, many popular films of the pre code era were refilmed shortly after the code was put in place, in part because they could still be viewed.  1940's beloved Waterloo Bridge was a remake, for example, of the 1931 variant by the same name.  IMDB provides the plot line for the 1931 version as this:

In World War I London, Myra is an out-of-work American chorus girl making ends meet by picking up men (i.e, by being a prostitute) on Waterloo Bridge. During a Zeppelin air raid she meets Roy, a naive young American who enlisted in the Canadian army. They fall for each other, and he tricks her into visiting his family, who live in a country estate outside London, where his stepfather is a retired British Major. However, Myra is reluctant to continue the relationship with Roy because she has not told him about her past.

The 1940's variant? Well:

On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and is thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survives on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears that her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. That those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.

A little different. . . ^{1  2}

As far ago as a century back, it was widely known that actors and actress in Hollywood were a libertine set, which they remain.  Scandals surfaced early on, with marriages breaking up and affairs sufficiently rife in order to hit print from time to time.  While social standards generally remained fairly high in American society itself.  People basically turned a blind eye to it, as long as it didn't surface.

Of course, it did surface spectacularly with the death of Virginia Rappe, an actress now remembered only for her death.  We had an item back on that in 2021, which we will repeat here in its entirety, as it is realevant to this entry:

Labor Day, September 5, 1921. The Wages Of Sin

On this day in 1921 one of the most infamous, most misreported, and one of the most still most mysterious deaths in Hollywood history occurred.  And one that features all the things that still cause Hollywood to fascinate and repel.

The death of young actress Virginia Rappe.

Even though the critical events in the death of Rappe, then age 26, occurred at a party, where lot of people were around, what really occurred leading to her untimely death remains a mystery.  From what seems to be clear, we can tell the following.

Rappe was a guest at a party hosted by Fred Fischbach, a friend of celebrated silent movie comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  The party was partially in celebration of a hit Arbuckle movie, Crazy To Marry.  The five reel movie was a recent release and doing well, although it is now obscure and may be in the category of lost film (I'm not sure of that).  At the time, Arbuckle was making $1,000,000 a year from films, a gigantic sum not only now, for most people, but particularly then, given the respective value of a dollar compared to now.  Arbuckle, we'd note, was married, with his spouse at the time being Minta Durfee, although the couple had recently separated.  In spite of that, it should be further noted, Durfee would call Arbuckle in later years the most generous man she'd ever met, and that in spite of their 1925 divorce, if given the choice, she'd do it all again.

Minta Durfee.

Fischback rented three hotel rooms, and, in the spirit of the times, supplied them with large quantifies of bootleg booze.  Rappe was an invited guest, and arrived with  Bambina Maude.  At the party Rappe drank a lot of alcohol.  At some point in the party it seems that he and Rappe went into room 1219 of the hotel alone, and shortly thereafter some sort of commotion occurred, Arbuckle emerged and Rappe was desperately sick.  She was taken to the hospital and died four days later from a ruptured bladder and peritonitis.

One of the hotel rooms after the party.

Arbuckle was arrested and accused of rape and manslaughter, with an essential element of the accusation being that forced sex had caused Rappe's death.

Seems, at first blush, clear enough, but it gets very confused from there.

Arbuckle maintained his innocence throughout.  He was tried three times, resulting in two mistrials, and then an acquittal.  Bambina Maude was a witness in the story, filling in lurid details, but she was later revealed to be a procurer who used that role to blackmail recipients of the favors she'd arranged to supply, although there was no evidence that she was acting as a procurer at the time of the attendance at the party.  Indeed, while there are multiple stories as to what occured, one of the versions that exists is that the room that Rappe went into was the only one with a bathroom and she went into it to throw up, going through the bedroom where Maude was having sex with a movie director. In that version, which isn't the only one, Arbuckle went in the room to carry the collapsed Rappe out. ^[1]. 

The final jury apologized to Arbuckle for what he'd been through. And, indeed, it seems fairly clear that whatever occurred between Arbuckle and Rappe, it wasn't that which resulted in her death, but rather a chronic medical condition that was exacerbated by alcohol.  It's likely her drinking at the party, which killed her.

Rappe, who was at one time regarded as the "best dressed girl in films".

Even that, however, doesn't flesh the entire tragic story out.  Rappe was only 26, but by that age was already a photographic veteran, having worked as an orphan raised by her grandmother as a model since age 14.  She had some trouble holding alcohol and was inclined to strip when drunk.  She'd been the live in with Henry Lehamn only fairly recently, to whom she'd been engaged.  According to at least some sources, which may be doubted given that they are a century old, she was freer with her affections than the norms of the time would have endorsed.

What occurred between Arbuckle and Rappe is not known and never well be and now too much time has passed to sort it out.  About as much as we can tell is that it seems that Arbuckle might have made some sort of advance on Rappe and that at first Rappe might have welcomed it.  That she was desperately ill is clear.  Her illness killed her.

This, in turn, provides an interesting look at public morals and standards, then and now.  At least some of the conduct Rappe and Arbuckle were engaging in was immoral by Christian standards, and Christian standards were clearly the public standards of the day.  Be that as it may, it's clear that in his trials, the fact that Arbuckle was doing something with a drunk woman doesn't seem to have been held against him, or at least it ultimately wasn't.  Of course, maybe the jurors didnt' feel he was doing anything with her, or even aiding her, or at least some must have thought that in all three trials.  If Arbuckle was advancing on her, it most definitely would be regarded as improper today.  Having said that, it wasn't all that long ago that "get her drunk" was sort of a joke which implied that inebriation to the point of being unable to consent was consent.

Arbuckle's career would never recover from the evening.  Perhaps, in some ways, it shouldn't have.  He wasn't a killer, but what occurred was unconscionable for other reasons. .  reasons we seemingly have managed to forget, however, over the years.  Even after his acquittal he was more or less blackballed in the industry for a time, and then when that was lifted his star power was gone.  He changed his name and made a much smaller living behind the scenes before starting to stage a minor comeback in the 1930s.  He died in 1933 in a hotel room from a heart attack.  He was 46.

Arbuckle movie poster from 1932.

It's interesting to see how this event compares to contemporary ones.  We have a person in attendance at the party who associated with the rich and famous whose role seems to have been supplying female favors (Maude), much like Jeffrey Epstein and his hangers on have been accused of.  We have a Hollywood set who lived personal lives that departed greatly from public standards, something that's still the case, although less so now as standards have declined so much, and we might have some sort of sexual contact between a male Hollywood figure and a very drunk actress (or not), something that in our contemporary culture would be a career ending event irrespective of the accusations of rape.  Indeed, accusations of rape in Hollywood, not all of which are substantiated, have become very common in recent years.

In the end it was a terrible tragedy.  People thought they were going to a party  Rappe probably knew she was drinking too much.  Arbuckle surely knew he shouldn't make advances on her.  Death came like a "thief in the night", which nobody anticipated.

On the same day, elsewhere, the League of Nations convened for the second time and admitted Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland and Luxembourg.

Footnotes:

1  Yet another version, upon which a book was written asserts that Rappe had received  botched abortion that had nicked her bladder, and it ruptured when she tickled Arbuckle and he accidentally kneed her.  

Others criticize that assertion, which would by definition be based on a large element of speculation.  It seems based on Rappe having reported received something like five prior abortions in an era when they were all fully illegal.

Rappe's death remains a tragedy, but the wider details of how the overall situation came about, sex, abortions, alcohol and the like, are pretty beyond the pale even now.

Or are they?

Nothing since Rappe's death in 1921 has improved, morally, in Hollywood.  Indeed, the irony of Babylon is that moral depravity that was recognized as such in 21 is celebrated now, in no small part because Hollywood always recognized that going below a moral standard generated income.  The problem always was that once you erode a standard, you need to go still lower still.

Which in one way brings us back around to Babylon.  Apparently it contains an orgy scene.  Is that something unreasonable to depict as to Hollywood in 21?  No, not really.

Could such a scene have been included in a movie in 21?  Frankly, probably. Which is why the Code came about.

Reports hold that the actresses who were filmed in the orgy scene were worried it would be cut out of the movie.  It was, of course, not.

Why would it have been.  Post code, the moral standard today are much lower than they were in a century ago.  The movie might not even be a success, moral depravity and all. And part of the reason for that is depicting the shocking violation of a moral standard, which in our heart of hearts we know remains one, might not be all that interesting when we already figure this is pretty much how Hollywood is today.

Harvey Weinstein. . .Jeffrey Epstein. . .your cue to appear on screen has been lit.

Footnotes:

1. The plot of the first version is remarkably similar to one of the vignettes in Rosellini's Paisan.

2.  Humphrey Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon is also a remake.  For one thing, the first version had veiled references to homosexuality in it.  Reportedly the second version is almost word for word the same as the first, but for things offending the code removed.

Friday, December 29, 1972. Life Magazine's final issue.

Life magazine's final cover issue date (it came out the week before.) ran.  The cover was "The Year in Pictures, 1972".

My father subscribed to Life, and also at one time to Look. Look really declined in its final years, Life not so much.  I can recall discussion on the last issue.

Edward Lorenz proposed The Butterfly Effect in his paper  "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" 

A takeover of Israel's embassy in Thailand, by Palestinian terrorists, ended after intervention by Egypt's ambassador and Thai officials. Before everyone left, they all had dinner together, including the terrorists.

Most of the last cycle of conscripts to the U.S. Army reported for induction.

The tragic crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 killed 101 of 176 on board as it went down in the Everglades.

Tuesday, December 29, 1942 Retreats.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—December 29, 1942: 80 Years Ago—Dec. 29, 1942: German army begins retreat from the Caucasus region. Japanese begin withdrawal from Buna area of New Guinea.

 

Friday, December 28, 1922. Reds and Reichsmarks.

The Council of People's Commissars re-elected most of the members of the ruling "All-Russian Executive Committee" (hmmmm. . . . "All Russian") but did put in four new members. Three of them were:

Joseph Stalin.  We know about him.  He was appointed Minister of Nationalities.

Lev Kamenev.  He was appointed Third Vice President, which says something about the absurd nature of Soviet government in that they had up to at least three VP's.  One's enough.

His fate?  Shot in the 1930s, of course.

Grigory Sokolnikov.  He was appointed Minister of Finance.

His fate?  Assassinated in prison in 1939.

Well, they served a monstrosity that used murder.  Can we be surprised that they were murdered?

It might be worth noting that some of these figures, maybe all of them, were "rehabilitated", which didn't do them any good, but then they were pretty complicit with bringing anonymous death upon millions.

James Joyce's novel Ulysses was banned in the UK.  I've never read it, but then its a book whose memory is mostly preserved by English professors with few actually reading it, much like a lot of what Hemingway wrote is.  If tempted to read it, pick up Flannery O'Connor instead.

Germany's floating debt passed 1,000,000,000,000 ℛℳ.

What is wrong with the Putin supporting right?

By DIREKTOR - Own work based on: National Fascist Party logo.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23635340

For those who have not seen this clip of one Tucker Carlson, Trumpite pundit, mocking the appearance of President Zelenskyy in Congress, you need to, truly.

Tucker Carlson mocking applause for Zelenskyy.

How can somebody acting so childish be taken so seriously by a selection of Americans?

Beyond that, how can people actually support the Russians side of a war of aggression, based upon pure Russian Great Slavism?  Fiscal worries, where genuine, are one thing. Narrow-minded, truly, but one thing. Outright supporting the swallowing of Ukraine in the name of Russian Slavic dominance, quite another.

It's the difference, for the history minded, between "supporting the British will be expensive" and thinking that Anschluß is nifty.

What the heck?

Some of this we have to dismiss as the crowd that's fallen for the grifter.

Grifters were originally associated with carnivals, and while it's an insult, it's one that we need to keep in mind implies a relationship.  A grifter can't peddle his graft without an audience.  

The word grifter nearly went out of circulation up until Donald Trump, but now it's come roaring back as a term frequently applied to Trump.  The thing about grifters is that they don't believe their line, but the audience does.

Is Donald J. Trump really a God-fearing Christian man of solid conservative values who seeks to Make American Great Again?

Leaving the Make American Great Again tag line, which is a line that can mean pretty much whatever you want it to, what we know about Trump really is that he's a New York businessman whose made huge sums of money and lost huge sums of money, mostly in real estate.  He was a Democrat for most of his life.  He's of the Vietnam War Era generation, but he didn't serve, having a deferment for shin splints that some have questioned.  He has a BS in economics from the Wharton School of Business, which is generally regarded as the best business school in the United States (Secretary of State elect Chuck Gray is also a graduate of Wharton).  He's been married three times, twice to Eastern European immigrants and once to beauty figure Marla Maples, whom he married shortly after she give birth to their daughter Tiffany.  What can we tell from that?

Well, maybe not all that much, really. Making, and losing, a lot of money is not as hard as it sounds if you were born with a lot of money.  He's certainly not lead a very Christian life in terms of personal conduct with women, but if he's a true Calvinist, which would be assuming a lot, he may figure it doesn't matter.  The best evidence is that whatever he once was, he's become a narcissist who know that he can sell any line to his audience, and what he's been selling has morphed, under the Führerprinzip, is Christian Illiberal Nationalism.  Do I think he's a Christian Illiberal Nationalist?  Probably not really, but that's what's selling.

And that's what's selling for Fox News and Newsmax also. 

So what that might tell us is that Tucker Carlson might not particularly believe a word he's saying.  But it sells.

But if that's true, he's giving it the pretty hard sell.

Let's mention one thing about presentation, before we go on.  Some of Trump's presentation is deeply weird, and Carlson's is as well.  The clip linked in above is massively weird.  An intelligent audience would have to be repulsed by it.

But, as Catholic Apologist Jimmy Akin says, "sin make you stupid".  And truly it does.  Much of Trump's presentation is stupid, and Tucker's, linked in above, is also.  Indeed, a vast amount of the Trumpite populist right says things that are stupid, to the horror of other conservatives (such as myself) who can't fathom the wallowing in stupidity.

But wallowing they are, and like a bunch of teenage boys sitting in the back of the bus making fun of people and farting for amusement, we have a whole swath of the current GOP acting in much the same fashion.  And also like such boys, as others look up and say "quit being so stupid", they feel insulted by having their stupidity pointed out and double down on it.

At some point, normally, people grow up and put away childish things.  Chances are that a lot of the people who are now repeating the baloney we hear all the time will deny they ever said it.  But we're not there yet.

Linking this in, Donald Trump has some sort of weird love affair with Vladimir Putin.  A person can truly debate what it is, but it is there.  It may be that Putin is a strong man, and he admires that.  It could be that Putin, who is extremely intelligent, if extremely isolated, did a good job of reading Trump and flattered him to the extent that Trump now loves Putin.

Or it could be something more sinister.

The relationship between Trump and Putin has always been so odd, and Trump has so gone out of his way to help the Russians except when being restrained from doing so, that it's reasonable to ask if Trump is a Russian asset of some sort.  We've discussed that here before.

That wouldn't make Trump's acolytes Russian assets, but they don't have to be.  Whatever it is, Trump admires Putin, so he says fawning things regarding him, and nasty things about his opponents, and Trump's followers go there on the Führerprinzip and take it further.  That requires, at some point, falling in love with Putin yourself and repeating Russian propaganda.

Additionally, Trump has a bit of a vested interest in seeing Ukraine go down in defeat.  The Russians did hurt Hillary Clinton, aiding Trump, by getting into the DNC computers, which Trump was not responsible for but which did help.  Trump himself made a public, flippant, comment regarding breaking into Democratic computers before it was known to have occurred in the 2016 campaign.  And Trump's first impeachment trial prominently featured Ukraine, based on things that he asked Ukraine to do, and they didn't.  There's likely no love lost between Trump and Zelenskyy, and accordingly, Trumpism is naturally aligned with Putinism.

But maybe there's more than that, and maybe that something is that Trumpites and Putin are fellow travelers.

Before Viktor Mihály Orbán became the darling of Illiberal Democrats and Trumpites, that position was occupied by Vladimir Putin.¹

At one time, it was easy to forget that under Putin, Russia backslid into an autocratic state.  Russia came out of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a democracy, but a troubled one.  Putin pulled it away from that back into a one party state, although like a lot of one party states, it retains a theoretical legislative body. The Soviet Union had one, and so did Imperial Russia.  They really aren't in control, nor are the people.

Indeed, in some ways, the Russian people are worse off, in terms of control of their own government, than they've ever been, although that's certainly debatable.  Under the Czar, the Czar actually claimed title to the entire country and everything in it, and even going up into World War One he was free to actually rule by dictate, just as Putin is now.  But, for all its ills, and there were a lot of them (the state of Imperial Russia going into the Great War was pathetic), the Czar was bound by a duty to the Russians and his non Russian subjects, imperfect though it was, and it was very imperfect.  

Under the Soviets, as monstrous as they were, there was at least the overarching theory that they were "the people".

Putin's Russia is for what Putin thinks it should be for.

During the time period before the completely obvious descent into authocracy, when people could still pretend that Russia was democratic, or be fooled that it was, Putin began to enact a series of social laws, and engaged in certain alignments, which, if you could set aside that the country wasn't democratic, appealed to the Western political right.  Putin has completely rejected the Western evolution on tolerance of homosexuality, for example.  Putin has facially embraced Christianity in the form of the Russian Orthodox Church, and it has embraced him, although his real adherence to its tenants can be questioned.  

The point is that a deeply conservative American political right could look to Putin, like it now looks towards Viktor Orbán as somebody who is democratic in the right way.  I.e., not politically liberal and not even letting "progressisim" out of the box.  I.e., somebody who can stand with the prinicpals of "National Conservatism", something we explored here earlier.²

The entire "Statement of Prinpcals" for National Conservatism, which postdates the far right's love affair with Putin, is posted below, but the real core of their swooning over Putin is in these:

4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

* * * 

8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.

Putin, like Franco in a way, sort of seemed to stand, and still does seem to stand, for a society being deeply rooted in its Christian traditions.

Indeed, as we've noted, Putin, more than any post Soviet leader, has made a public display of aligning himself with the Russian Orthodox Church.  The Russian Orthodox Church has not made any concessions to "progressivism" of any kind. There are no Father James Martin, S.J. figures in the Russian Orthodox Church.

This sort of social conservatism has much broader appeal to many people than the Progressive Left can imagine.  Even in highly secularized France, for instance, the government's establishment of same gender marriages brought out a massive protest in the streets of Paris.  People everywhere have a strong sense that the left is dangerously and bizarrely out to sea on many issues, and part of the reaction to that is a grasping to restore a common cultural understanding of existential matters, a struggle that exists only in Western countries and frankly not elsewhere at all.

But hence the problem of the reaction.  This struggle has been going on for well over a century.  Most people, seemingly, are just waking up to it, in our era, now.  You can argue that it's been going on since the Age of Enlightenment.

The problem here is, and always has been, the natural tendency for people in the struggle to go to the extremes. This is a problem of the left and the right.

Starting with the left, we'd note, with the collapse of the Old Order following World War One, plenty of leftists, liberals and progressives in Western countries were willing to put on blinders and believe that Communist were just Democrats with thick accents.  The editors of the progressive journal, The New Republic, wrote a letter to Stalin, for instance, warning him that people seemed to be doing bad things in his name, completely oblivious to the fact that Stalin was the perpetrator of those bad things.  In the late 1960s and 1970s, members of the American left were willing to pretend that Ho Chi Minh was a misunderstood democrat and always had been, which was very far from the truth.  Early on, people were willing to turn a blind eye to the true political nature of Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, before simply ignoring the country entirely.

On the right, the same story holds.  Both the left and the right outside of Spain pretended that their sides were something other than what they really were, with the left pretending that the Spanish Republicans were democrats, rather than Communists. The right ignored the autocratic nature of the Nationalist, and perhaps give us the first example of what we're witnessing now.  Franco never pretended to care for democracy, but he always had supporters in the West that pretended Spain was uniquely incapable of it.

Mussolini received praise at one time from none other than Winston Churchill.  Plenty of right wing Republicans said nice things about Adolph Hitler.  

The thing is, most people woke up when they saw that the putative champions of their positions were not what they pretended.  Most America Firsters went on to support the Allied war effort.  Most deluded leftists lost their admiration for Stalin when the true nature of the Soviet state really came out.  Not too many leftists of the 70s run around singing the praises of Ho Chi Minh today.  By the time of Francisco Franco's death in 1975, he had few fans anywhere.

But there is that time when the deluded prefer to remain deluded.  Charles Lindbergh was giving speeches about abandoning the British within days of the U.S. being brought into World War Two.  A handful of Congressmen and Senators remained not only isolationist, but pro fascist, even into the war itself. 

Delusion has a way of making the deluded look, in the end, foolish.  But usually the mass of people who followed the deluded are allowed to fade away due to their obscurity. The person who, for example, called Tom Cotton an "Anti-American Socialist" (apparently not realizing that you can be a patriotic American socialist) will, should Ukraine win and Putin fall, probably go on to recall having been all in favor of the effort.

Something, however, extremely odd is going on now and some people are falling for it.  We should ask what it is.

And for those on the National Democracy track, any sort of democracy still requires democracy.  It's clear in this contest, who that is.

But doees everyone in the far right even support democracy anymore?³

Footnotes:

1.  As an interesting aside, it's interesting to note that only Giorgia Meloni has approached a sort of hero status with the National Conservative right, and she's the only Catholic in the group.  Putin is Russian Orthodox, although his personal adherence to Orthodoxy is questionable.  Orbán and the Hungarian President Katalin Éva Novák are "Reformed" Christians, as was Admiral Horthy, who perhaps may be, in some ways, their intellectual predecessor.

2.  We looked at that in a post that we entitled:

Illiberal Democracy. A Manifesto?

The manifesto itself, linked into its source, stated:

National Conservatism: A Statement Of Principles

A world of independent nations is the only alternative to universalist ideologies seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

JUNE 15, 2022

12:01 AM

THE EDMUND BURKE FOUNDATION

NOTE: The following statement was drafted by Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher, Yoram Hazony, Daniel McCarthy, Joshua Mitchell, N.S. Lyons, John O’Sullivan, and R.R. Reno on behalf of the Edmund Burke Foundation. The statement reflects a distinctly Western point of view. However, we look forward to future discourse and collaboration with movements akin to our own in India, Japan, and other non-Western nations. Signatories’ institutional affiliations are included for identification purposes only, and do not imply an endorsement on the part of any institution other than the Edmund Burke Foundation.   

We are citizens of Western nations who have watched with alarm as the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love have been progressively undermined and overthrown.

We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice. We are conservatives because we see such virtues as essential to sustaining our civilization. We see such a restoration as the prerequisite for recovering and maintaining our freedom, security, and prosperity.

We emphasize the idea of the nation because we see a world of independent nations—each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own—as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

Drawing on this heritage, we therefore affirm the following principles:

1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.

2. Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism. We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes. Accordingly, we reject imperialism in its various contemporary forms: We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.

3. National Government. The independent nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values. We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.

4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

5. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance. All agree that the repair and improvement of national legal traditions and institutions is at times necessary. But necessary change must take place through the law. This is how we preserve our national traditions and our nation itself. Rioting, looting, and other unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end.

6. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state. But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits. A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.

7. Public Research. At a time when China is rapidly overtaking America and the Western nations in fields crucial for security and defense, a Cold War-type program modeled on DARPA, the “moon-shot,” and SDI is needed to focus large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research with military applications, on restoring and upgrading national manufacturing capacity, and on education in the physical sciences and engineering. On the other hand, we recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs.

8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.

9. Immigration. Immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations. But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.

10. Race. We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact. No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test. The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth. We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race. The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities. The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole.

Signed:

Michael Anton

 Hillsdale College Kirby Center

 Hillsdale College

 Spectator

 Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Government

 Center for the Renewal of Culture (Croatia)

 Daily Wire

 Conservative Partnership Institute

 National Review

 Edmund Burke Foundation

 Internet Accountability Project

 Modern Reformation

 Conservative Partnership Institute

 Election Transparency Initiative

 Hoover Institution

 Conservative Partnership Institute

 Hudson Institute

 New York Post

 American Conservative

 American Conservative

 American Reformer

 European Conservative (Austria)

 Hudson Institute

 Merion West (United Kingdom)

 Nazione Futura (Italy)

 Asia Times

 Project 21

 Edmund Burke Foundation (Israel)

 Newsweek

 Trinity Western University (Canada)

 Edmund Burke Foundation (Israel)

 National Review

 Troy University

 Federalist

 American Greatness

 Nasarean.org

 New Criterion

 Turning Point USA

 Claremont Institute

 Daily Wire

 Center for Immigration Studies

 Jagiellonian University (Poland)

 Ethics and Public Policy Center

 Upheaval

 Intercollegiate Studies Institute

 Washington Times

 Conservative Partnership Institute

 Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life

 AMDC Films

 UnHerd

 Georgetown University

 Mathias Corvinus Collegium (Hungary)

 Danube Institute (United Kingdom)

 Danube Institute

 New Founding

 Zephyr Institute

 Futuro Presente (Portugal)

 New Direction (Poland)

 European Centre for Law and Justice (France)

 Claremont Institute

 First Things

 Townhall

 Manhattan Institute

 Center for Family and Human Rights

 American Moment

 Common Sense Society

 American Moment

 Regnery Publishing

 Air War College

 Be The People News

 Founders Fund

 Center for Renewing America

 Edmund Burke Foundation

 Liz Wheeler Show

 Claremont Institute

 Boise State University

Larry Arnn

Amber Athey

David Azerrad

Stephen Bartulica

Megan Basham

Rachel Bovard

Michael Brendan Dougherty

David Brog

Will Chamberlain

Timon Cline

Edward Corrigan

Ken Cuccinelli

Victor Davis Hanson

Sen. Jim DeMint

Christopher DeMuth

Miranda Devine

Emile Doak

Rod Dreher

Ben Dunson

Alvino-Mario Fantini

John Fonte

Henry George

Francesco Giubilei

David Goldman

Derryck Green

Ofir Haivry

Josh Hammer

Grant Havers

Yoram Hazony

Nate Hochman

Clifford Humphrey

Emily Jashinsky

Julie Kelly

Fr. Benedict Kiely

Roger Kimball

Charlie Kirk

Tom Klingenstein

Michael Knowles

Mark Krikorian

Ryszard Legutko

Brad Littlejohn

N.S. Lyons

Daniel McCarthy

Michael McKenna

Mark Meadows

Arthur Milikh

Amanda Milius

Curt Mills

Joshua Mitchell

Balázs Orban

John O’Sullivan, CBE

Melissa O’Sullivan

Matthew Peterson

Nathan Pinkoski

Jaime Nogueira Pinto

Tomasz Poręba

Grégor Puppinck

David Reaboi

R.R. Reno

Julio Rosas

Christopher Rufo

Austin Ruse

Saurabh Sharma

Marion Smith

Nick Solheim

Thomas Spence

Daniel Strand

Carol Swain

Peter Thiel

Russ Vought

Anna Wellisz

Liz Wheeler

Ryan Williams

Scott Yenor

3. During the 2022 election campaigns I repeatedly heard people on the far right say the age old, unthinking, "we're not a democracy, we're a republic" as if they mutually exclusive.  We are, of course, a democratic republic.

But, in thinking about it, I think some on the far right truly mean that, and by that they mean that the will of the people really doesn't matter, if it can be overcome, one way or another, at the state and local level.  That provides the only rational basis, I'd note, for the ongoing support of any kind for the Electoral College. Some truly mean that democratic results can, and should, be overturned through legalistic extreme measures.

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