Okay, maybe I don't care if football players (who are individual people) take the knee, but keep your Corporation's "opinion" to itself.

Note, this is one of the many draft posts that I started a really long time ago, and then never finished.  I have on the order of 300 posts, most barely started, that fit that description.

Writer's block?  No, just the nature of available time.

Anyhow, this item oddly shows right back up in the news again.

Some time back I posted on football players "taking the knee" during the playing of the National Anthem.  As anyone who read it may have noted, I'm sort of generally lukewarm on any opinion there, unlike a lot of people I see (if Facebook is any guide).  I.e, I didn't have a fit about football players taking the knee and, absent an individual athlete's protest reaching the level of that of the 1968 Mexico City, Olympics, I generally don't get too worked up about that.

At the same time, I also tend to disregard individual opinions of people who have risen to fame through their athleticism or because they're entertainers.  Recently, for example, I read where Beyonce was expressing opinions at a concert of some fashion.  It would be nearly impossible for me to care what Beyonce's opinion on anything at all actually is.  Indeed, I thought her daughter's instruction to "calm down" at a recent awards show was pretty much on the mark.

But opinions, particularly social opinions, by corporations really aggravate me.

Recently this has become particularly common, and while I'll give a few entities a pass, it smacks to me of being blisteringly phony.  If corporations, as a rule, suddenly endorse something that's been recently controversial, the issue has probably actually become safe to express.

What this amounts to, of course, is belated virtue signalling, and it's phony.  Corporations main goal, indeed, their stated and legal goal in almost every instance, is to make money for their shareholders.  That's their purpose and focus, and when corporations suddenly take up a cause, what they are often really doing has nothing to do with values and everything with trying to co-opt a movement for profit or not offend a group that's been lately in the news and has obtained financial power accordingly.

Indeed, it's frankly much more admirable when a corporation has a stated position that it adheres to in spite of financial detriment.  The fact that they know an opinion will be unpopular and they stick with it probably says its a real belief.

Which gets back to the perceived views of people in general.  If you look out at a crowed of people supporting anything, or in modern terms posting their support in some fashion on Facebook or Twitter or the like, probably over half, and I'd guess around 2/3s, have no strong convictions on the topic at all. They may believe they do, but in other circumstances they'd be there supporting the other side equally lukewarmly.

Today is American Independence Day.  The day came in the midst of a truly bloody war.  Around 23,000 Americans lost their lives in the war fighting for the Revolution, including those who died of disease, and a nearly equal number were wounded in an era when being wounded was often very disabling.  The British took about 24,000 casualties of all types, meaning they took fewer than the Americans.

But among the "British" were a sizable number of American colonist who fought for the Crown.  Up to 1/3d of American Colonist remained loyal during the war to the United Kingdom.  Only about 1/3d of the American Colonist supported independence or the revolution at all.  The remaining 1/3d took no position.

Even at that, it's not all that difficult, retrospectively, to find example of combatants who fought on both sides of the war.  Some captured American troops were paroled with the promise to fight for the British, and did.  The times being murky and records difficult to keep, some men just fought on both sides depending upon how the wind seemed to be blowing, a risky course of action, but one that some did indeed take.

Howard Pyle's illustration of Tory Refugees.

After the war those die hard Loyalist who couldn't tolerate living in the United States, including many who were so outed as Loyalist they had little choice on that matter, relocated to Quebec where there descendants are still sometimes self identified by initials that note an honorific conveyed by the Crown.  But 1/3d of the American population didn't pull up stakes and relocate, which tells you a lot.  And what that conveys is that a lot of people who thought that the Colonies were making a mistake just shut up.  Indeed, it proved to be the case during the War of 1812 that British soldiers met with sympathy and assistance in Virginia as they marched on Washington D. C., and that was because many Virginians, in that state which had been a colony, of course, retained a higher loyalty and sympathy with the United Kingdom than they did the United States.

But if you read most common commentary today you'll be left with the impression that the Americans, and by that we mean all of the Americans, were eager to shake off the chains of British tyranny.  And I'd wager that as the war began to turn in Congress' favor that view became common at the time and that it really set in by the time the American victory became inevitable.  So most of the men who spoke quietly in favor of King George III at the Rose and Thorne, or whatever, on Saturday nights in 1774 were praising George Washington by 1781.

This commentary, I'd note, isn't directed specifically at Americans in the 1700s by any means, but is more broader.  There are big exceptions to the rule of the get along nature of human opinion to be sure, for example I think the Civil War may be uniquely an exception to it, but people shouldn't make any mistake about this in general.  During the 1930s a lot of trendy social types teetered on the edge of real Communist sympathy while some conservative figures in the country spoke in admiration of Mussolini's and Hitler's governments in their countries.  By 1941, however, everybody in the country was an outright die hard opponent of fascism and militarism.  By 1950 nobody had ever been a Communist sympathizer, not ever.  

In 1968 and later a lot of young Americans protested vigorously about the American role in Vietnam. Quite a few of them vilified American servicemen.  By mid 1980s the same people were backing the troops and by the 1990s quite a few of them were for other foreign wars.

If this suggests that people's stated opinions are fickle and can't be trusted its meant to.  I was in university during the Reagan Administration and a college student would have had to been cavalier or in very trusted company to express any kind thoughts at all about Ronald Reagan.  One of my most conservative in every fashion friends of long standing would openly declare that Reagan was going to reinstate the draft and send us all to fight in Nicaragua, which was just the sort of nonsensical opinion common at the time.  One young computer employee in the geophysics department was unique not only because he was an early computer genius, employed with their super computer that probably is less powerful than a modern cell phone, but because as a recently discharged Navy submariner he was an adamant and open Anti Communist.  Nobody openly expressed views like that.

Which isn't to say that a lot of people didn't think them.

Which is also not to say that a lot of those same people, in the presence of the granola chick at the bar, didn't express the polar opposite.*

Which gets back to the topic of corporations.

If people's confused and muddled approach to what they declare their views is quite often the rule rather than the exception, this isn't the case with corporations.  More often than not, their goal is the bottom dollar.  They're looking out at the confused and muddled crowed and assuming its focused and distinct, and they then leap on board because they want to sell you pants, shoes, or whatever.  and that's cynical even if its self confused cynical.

Which is all the more reason to ignore, or actually buy from the company that is open about just wanting to sell you goods because that's what they do.

*Which recall Zero Mostel's character's line in The Front as to his reason for becoming a Communist.

It's not a "national landmark", it's a Cathedral

And hence its much more important.

I keep seeing references to Notre Dame de Paris as a "landmark" or a "national treasure", or all sorts of other similar terms.  All of which are in fact true.

And all of which miss the point.  Notre Dame de Paris is a Catholic Cathedral, and that's not only what it is, its why it is, and why its a national treasure and all of those other things.  It's status as a Catholic Cathedral defines everything about it.  Everything.

France is sometimes referred to as the "eldest daughter of the Church", referring to the very early conversion of the French people to Christianity.  The claim is associated with a claim that France was the first wholly Christian nation, but that claim is pretty debatable.  Actually, Armenia holds a better claim to that title.  But France became a Christian nation very early.

And by Christian nation, we mean a Catholic nation.  Irrespective of fanciful claims to the contrary that were fabricated during the Reformation, there's no doubt whatsoever that the early church was, "one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church".  That's not a matter of religious faith, that's a matter of historic fact.  Christians of other denominations can't honestly deny that, and if they're honest with themselves, they have to explain it in some historically cogent fashion, excluding such clearly false claims such as a different nature of the early church or some secret great apostasy.  As the sage Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts".

France is also a country that saw radical early anti clericalism and extreme secularization, which is party of its problematic historical legacy.  That plays into the history of Notre Dame de Paris as well.  Four churches have stood on the spot where the damaged Cathedral now stands prior to the commencement of its construction.  In 1548 French Huguenots, a Protestant sect, destroyed some of its statutes, taking the extreme iconoclast position that pops up in Christianity, and indeed in other religions, from time to time.  It was heavily rebuilt over the years to reflect changes in architectural style.  An enormous statute of St. Christopher dating from 1413 was destroyed in 1786.  A spire that had been added on earlier was removed in the 18th Century, and then a new one reinstalled in the 19th.  During the French Revolution it was seized and defamed into a Cult of Reason, and the statutes of twenty eight Biblical kings beheaded on the mistaken ignorant belief that they represented French kings.

Indeed the unfortunate legacy of the unfortunate French Revolution, the model for modern revolutions in the fact that it it became wildly debased and turned into a massive, if still celebrated, failure, lingers on in that the Cathedral is property of the French state.  After the French Revolution, France has had an uneasy relationship with everything, including itself, and as part of that, with its Faith.  France became wildly anticlerical during the Revolution, but it remains Catholic still.

And it will continue to be.  Unlike Ireland or Quebec, which really don't exist without the Church, there is a France that can be discussed without discussing the Church, but like everything European, or at least worth celebrating in Europe, it's not only difficult to do, but largely discussing something that's much diminished without the Church.

There's no doubt that Europe has been struggling with itself since some date in the 20th Century, or perhaps some date in the 19th, and part of that has been an increase in worldliness and misdirection, and a perceived decrease in Faith.  That decrease, however, may in fact be a bit of an illusion, or misconstrued.  It's very clearly the case that the churches born of the Reformation, generally eager to accommodate themselves to social trends of all types, are suffering much.  Catholicism may seem to be, but it may be much less than imagined.  When real events occur, the basic Catholic nature of Catholic peoples (and the Orthodox nature of Orthodox people's for that matter, strongly reasserts itself.

Which may be why the fire at Notre Dame is oddly portentous. France is a bellwether of some sort, descending into the depths, and the reviving.  On the night the Cathedral was burning, people gathered to pray.

And that's quite telling.

Award Authorization Date for the Purple Heart

April 15, 1917 is the first date for which a serviceman can be awarded the Purple Heart for "Being wounded or killed in any action against an enemy of the United States or as a result of an act of any such enemy or opposing armed forces".

An earlier award of a similar name, and which inspired this medal, was designed and authorized by Washington during the Revolution as the Badge of Military Merit.  It passed into disuse following the Revolution.  Following World War One, however, the medal was revived in 1932, after several years of consideration, and awardable to men who had received the Meritorious Service Citation Certificate, Army Wound Ribbon, or were authorized to wear Wound Chevrons subsequent to April 5, 1917, thereby catching every serviceman who qualified who had served in World War One but sadly omitting men who had been wounded during the Punitive Expedition that had immediately proceeded it.  320,518 medals were awarded for service during World War One.

Douglas MacArthur was the first U.S. serviceman to receive the modern award.

Movies in History: Barry Lyndon

I saw this film many years ago, in pieces (that is, I saw it on television, in chunks, which is never a good way to view anything).  I recalled liking it at the time, and only recently have I been able to view it again.

This film is a 1975 film by Stanly Kubrick which is a surprising effort by Kubrick to film William Makepeace Thakeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon.  Thackeray's works satired English society of his own time, the 19th Century. The novel, like the film, was set in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century, and it is loosely based on an actual person.

The film follows the life of Redmond Barry, who we understand to be a member of the Irish gentry of that period.  Not ever explained, but fairly obvious from the context for a person familiar with Irish history, is that Barry is a member of a minor Irish noble family, hence he's actually an Anglo Irish protestant.  While the film does not explain that, an understanding of that serves to make some sense out of the plot which might otherwise be a bit mysterious in some ways.

Barry's story commences with the death of his father in a duel, which effectively places the family into a species of poverty, and goes early on to a doomed romance between Barry and a cousin, who rejects him in favor of an English army office. The film takes place during the Seven Years War, which figure prominently in the plot line.  This launches Barry on a series of unlikely, but very well presented and, in the context of the film, and indeed of the times, seemingly plausible adventures and occurrences.  Barry is followed through service with the English, and then Prussian, armies and on into his marriage to an English noblewoman.  All along, the viewer is left wondering if he likes Barry or not, which would be consistent, apparently, with Thackeray's novel, in which a clueless Barry narrates his own story.

We, of course, review movies not so much for their plots (although we certainly consider that) but also for their service or disservice to history.  And Barry Lyndon gets high marks in those regards.  The acting in the film is curiously flat by many of the actors, but that actually serves the character of Barry Lyndon, as he is called after he marries Lady Lyndon, and Lady Lyndon, quite well.  This is one of two films by Ryan O'Neal, the other being Paper Moon, which was released two years earlier.  O'Neal's portrayal in Paper Moon is so different in character that the flat portrayal in Barry Lyndon must seem to be a directors choice, which does indeed serve the film well, given that much of it is a character study of European gentry and nobility of this period.  Frankly, the gentry and nobility do not come across particularly well.

Material details are very well done.  Clothing styles change appropriately over time.  The details of noble English households are very well portrayed, including the peculiar relationship that sometimes existed between Anglican clerics and those households.  The moral decline that was going on in this era amongst the well to do is a major subject of of the film and subtly and excellently portrayed.   Indeed, moral decline is a frequent subtle topic of Kubrick films, with Kubrick having been a devout Catholic.  The strange nature of European armies and their rank and files is excellently portrayed as well.  The details of the very strange custom of dueling are accurately portrayed.

About the only real criticism that can be offered here is that it's pretty obvious that Ryan O'Neal didn't know how to ride a horse, and those scenes in which he rides are painful to watch for somebody with knowledge on riding. Otherwise, the film is excellent.