Showing posts with label 1870s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1870s. Show all posts

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Tuesday, March 17, 1874. John Younger shot and killed

 


John Younger of the James Gang was paid with the wages of sin when he went down in  a gun battle when he and Jim Younger ambushed Pinkerton detectives who had asked them for directions.  After detaining them, detective Louis Lull drew a hidden pistol and shot John in the neck, Jim killed Deputy Sheriff Edward Daniels, John pursued Lull into the woods and shot him.  John Younger then died of his wounds, Lull died three days later.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, March 15, 1874. The Second Treaty of Saigon.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Sunday, March 15, 1874. The Second Treaty of Saigon.

Contemporary seal of Vietnam.

The Third French Republic and the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam executed the Treaty of Saigon.  The treaty granted economic and territorial concessions to France. France waived a previous war indemnity award from Vietnam in the treaty from 1862 and promised military protection against China.  Vietnam was reduced to a French protectorate.

France already occupied three provinces south and east of the Mekong and had since 1867.  They became the French colony of Cochinchina.  The  Red River, Hanoi, Haiphong and Qui Nhơn were opened to international trade.  France recognized "the sovereignty of the king of Annam and his complete independence from any foreign power" (la souveraineté du roi d'Annam et son entière independence vis-à-vis de toute puissance étrangère). France understood this to mean independence from Chinese influence, although neither Vietnam nor China understood the terms in that fashion.

Last prior:

Tuesday, March 10, 1874. Clemson hand saw.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Sunday, March 8, 1874. The Death of Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States, and the last Whig President, died at age 74.


Formally cited frequently, and perhaps unfairly, as the worst President in U.S. history, his position in that contra honorific has been firmly supplanted by Donald Trump, who stands to very likely be the last Republican President in U.S. history.  Unlike his blowhard, crude fellow New Yorker, Fillmore was a personally honorable man who suffered much personal tragedy in his life.  He was a lawyer by trade, and not a wealthy man.

Last prior:

February 24, 1874. Honus Wagner born.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

February 24, 1874. Honus Wagner born.

 


Baseball great Honus Wagner was born in Pennsylvania.  

A shortstop, he played professional baseball from 1897 to 1917.  Following retirement as a player, he managed the team he had played for, the Pittsburgh Pirates, for 39 years.  He passed away in 1955 at age 81.

Two of his brothers were also professional baseball players.

Last prior:

Thursday, February 22, 2024

February 22, 1874. Birth of Bill Klem.


"The Old Arbitrator", Klem was a Major League (National League) umpire from 1905 to 1941, and served in eighteen World Series (1908, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1934 and 1940), more than any other umpire.

He lived until 1951 and passed away at age 77, writing his attorney just before his death that "This is my last game, and I'm going to strike out this time."  He and his wife Marie had no children.

Last prior:

February 18, 1874. Disputed crown.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

February 18, 1874. Disputed crown.

On this day in 1874 supporters of Queen Emma attacked supporters of King Kalākaua in Honolulu over who would be the reigning monarch following the election for the same, which the king had won. 


Marines and blue jackets from US and British warship intervened, and King Kalākaua was able to take the oath of office the following day.

Last prior:

Tuesday, February 3, 1874. King Lunalilo dies.

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

The Battle of the Rosebud was an important June 1876 battle that came, on June 17, just days prior to the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Fought by the same Native American combatants, who crossed from their Little Big Horn encampment to counter 993 cavalrymen and mule mounted infantrymen who had marched north from Ft. Fetterman, Wyoming, at the same time troops under Gen. Terry, including Custer's command, were proceeding west from Ft. Abraham Lincoln.  Crook's command included, like Terry's, Crow scouts, and he additionally was augmented soon after leaving Ft. Fetterman by Shoshoni combatants.

The battlefield today is nearly untouched.








































Called the Battle Where the Sister Saved Her Brother, or the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, like Little Big Horn, it was a Sioux and Arapaho victory, although it did not turn into an outright disaster like Little Big Horn. Caught in a valley and attacked, rather than attacking into a valley like Custer, the Army took some ground and held its positions, and then withdrew.  Crook was effectively knocked out of action for the rest of the year and retreated into the Big Horn mountains in Wyoming.
 

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Oops.

I'm a bit late to this but, um, no, that was Grant.

Roosevelt was just 13 years old at the time.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if the same thing was attempted today, Wyoming's Congressional representation would oppose it, and probably the senior elected officials in the state as well.

Monday, August 15, 2022

Courthouses of the West: Laramie, Albany County, Wyoming. First "Woman Jury" Memorial.

Courthouses of the West: Laramie, Albany County, Wyoming. First "Woman Jury" Memorial.

Laramie, Albany County, Wyoming. First "Woman Jury" Memorial.

Memorial, MKTH photograph.

Accurate information on this event is actually fairly difficult to find.   The trial was the First Degree Murder trial of Andrew W. Howie.  The prosecutor, Albany County Attorney Stephen Downey, had only been in that role for a few months and objected to the women being seated as jurors, but was overruled by the Court, which held that as women had been granted the franchise in Wyoming, they also had the right to sit in juries.  Downey's objection was based on social convention, rather than the law.

Contrary to the way it is sometimes recounted, the jury was not all female, but half male and half female, with six women jurors.  It returned a verdict finding Mr. Howie guilty of manslaughter, which must have been included as a lessor offense in the charges.  The trial convinced Downey who in turn became a champion of women's suffrage.

This memorial is not at the Albany County Courthouse, but at the downtown railroad park.  Judicial proceedings in Laramie were originally held in a store at that location.

(Photo and reasearch by MKTH).

Monday, June 20, 2022

Saturday, June 20, 1942. The I26 shells Estevan Point.

The Japanese submarine I26 shelled Estevan Point on British Columbia's Vancouver Island, but did not hit it, even after firing over 25 shells.  Ironically, the effort was somewhat successful in that it was then decided to turn all of the lights off for Pacific coast lighthouses, which caused problems for coast shipping.

The I26.

The I26's raid was the first time that Canadian soil had been attacked since the last of the Fenian Raids in 1871.

The I26 was the Imperial Japanese Navy's third-highest scoring submarine.  In October 1944 it disappeared at sea, and the cause of its loss is not really known.

The Afrika Korps commenced attacking Tobruk with artillery and aircraft, resulting in the 11th Infantry Brigade retreating and opening up the lines.

Three German saboteurs were arrested in New York City, their mission having been betrayed.

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.


There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer.  Here's a National Park Service item on it:

Updates

  • Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
  • Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
  • The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
  • To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
  • All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
  • There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
  • The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
  • Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
  • At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding. 
  • Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
  • The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
  • Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.

Here's an idea.

Don't rebuild the roads.

For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become.  A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that.  For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.

Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.

Well, nothing now, so to speak.

Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park.  It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now.   Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.

Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority.  Things are much different today than they were then.

Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar.  To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area.  To others, it's a sort of theme park. 

The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood.  The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do.  Early camping parties travelled there.  People fished there, and still do.  Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else.  This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.  

Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite.  Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie.  All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.

But they don't all have the same value.

Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness.  Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it.  And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.

A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.

Don't rebuilt the roads.

That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly.  And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general.  And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.

But that's exactly what should be done.

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Thursday, March 23, 1922. The loss of the H2, the nomination of Holley

Babe Ruth, March 23, 1922.

The HMS H42, a British submarine, was lost near Gibraltar when she surfaced in the path of a destroyer by accident during torpedo run drills.  In spite of its best efforts, the destroyer sliced her in half, and she went down with all hands.

Emile Treville Holley was nominated to the United States Naval Academy, making him the first black nominee to the academy since 1871.  He did not attend, however, as it became clear the all white student body would not accept him, something that would repeat the experience of nominees from 1873 through 1875.

Holley went on to enroll at Middlebury College in Vermont and went on to become a college professor.

WEY went on the air in Wichita, making it the first station in Kansas to do so.

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Thursday, January 29, 1942. Iranian alliances, Integrated blood, Desert Island Discs.


Desert Island Discs premiered on the BBC. The show invited guests on to imagine that they were shipwrecked on a desert island, but could bring 8 records with them, then featuring the eight.

The show ran throughout the war, and has been revived from time to time.  The concept remains a popular one in the imagination.

Indeed, at least for the stressed, being shipwrecked on a desert island, as long as you have food and some comfort, starts to look like a pretty good thing. . . for a while.

As we learn from Sarah Sundin's blog; 
January 29, 1942: Iran signs treaty of alliance with Britain and USSR, which promise to depart Iran 6 months after Axis defeat.

Iran frankly didn't have much of a choice but to agree, and the Soviets would nearly have to be forced out after the war.

Persia had been long part of the "great game", along with Afghanistan, played between the United Kingdom and Russia.  As it was between the two, its position was untenable during the Second World War, and it was occupied, as we've previously discussed, by both powers.

The New York Times reported, on the previous days byline, that Prime Minister Churchill was standing for a vote of confidence:

LONDON, Jan. 28 -- Debate on conduct of the war raged in Parliament today with a political fury quite equal to the fighting on the fronts. At the end of one of the longest single day's sittings that Parliament has had since the war began, there was little doubt that Prime Minister Winston Churchill would get a big majority in a vote of confidence that will close the three-day debate.

He survived the vote.

African American enlisted men, white officer, 10th Cavalry, April 1942.

The NYT also reported that:

RED CROSS TO USE BLOOD OF NEGROES; New Policy, Formulated After Talks With Army and Navy, Is Hailed and Condemned WILL BE PROCESSED ALONE New York Delegation Criticizes Separation as 'Abhorrent' to Founding Principles

Hard to believe this was a concern with some people.

Blood is blood, but the "mixing of blood" to mean the mixing of "races" had been a long fear in a certain section of the United States, with no quarter of it being immune.  Laws existed nearly everywhere preventing mixed marriages, although the degree to which they were enforced varied enormously.

Scientifically, it was well known and had been for a very long time that there's no difference whatsoever between the blood of various humans, not matter what their ethnicity.  Indeed, the concept of "race" itself is a false one, although it's still widely believed.  The genetic variance between various human populations is slight, and to the extent it's real, it's real between various populations that are grouped into "races" as well.  I.e, there's a genetic variance, albeit slight, between, let's say, Irish men and Italians, and so on.

As we've discussed here before, it's widely stated, inaccurately, that World War Two brought about a phenomenal change in regard to women in the workplace, and hence society.  It'd be more accurate to say that about the status of African Americans in American society.

Their place, of course, had been fought over and struggled over since the end of the Civil War.  The Compromise of 1877 had caused a massive nationwide retreat in the cause of civil rights in the country, but the issue had not gone away.  The creation of the Lost Cause myth, its strong growth in the early 20th Century, and increased mobility, had brought about the Great Migration in the second decade of the 20th Century. World War One saw African Americans volunteer to fight in the belief that their performance in the war would bring about a final leap to full equality, but that not only did not occur, the end of the war brought a racist reaction with the Red Summer of 1919.

Still, things were slowly changing, and the liberal administration of Frankly Roosevelt at least held the promise of the advancement of civil rights for African Americans.

African Americans had served in some numbers in the U.S. military since the Revolution.  Interestingly, the Navy had been originally integrated, as we've also discussed here previously, but the Army had been segregated since large-scale recruiting of blacks first occurred during the Civil War.  The Marine Corps had not admitted blacks its entire history, going into the Second World War.  Given the excellent performance of black troops during World War One, it would be natural to suppose that the experiment would have been repeated during World War Two, but in fact the Army was, at least at first, more prejudiced during the Second World War than the First.

In spite of having longstanding all black combat units, prejudice from career officers, often with Southern roots, meant that the Army declined to deploy them as combat troops. For the most part, the Regular Army black units were busted up into service units during the war.  African American sailors likewise were relegated to service roles on board ship, something that had been the case since the steel wall Navy replaced the wooden wall one.  Blacks were allowed into the Marine Corps as the war progressed, but again in service roles.  Only late in the war, when pressure from African American groups and combat necessity required it, would this start to break down in the Army.

Still, the fact that the nation went to war espousing the ideal of equality made the hypocrisy a bit too much for society to bear.  Integration of the services would commence in the late 1940s and there was no going back.  This was brought about, in large part, due to the ideals expressed in the Second World War.

Related Threads:

Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation


Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

 

Thursday, January 6, 2022

On the anniversary of an insurrection. Where are we headed?

There will be a lot of retrospective columns appearing here and there today, although oddly, our local paper didn't have one.  Many of these, like the two I already posted, will warn that American democracy is in peril.

And indeed it is.  

On January 6, 2021 an insurrection attempting to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote occurred resulting in the storming of the chambers of the Senate and the House for the first time since the War of 1812.   The Confederate battle flag flew in those halls, something that symbol of racist hatred had not ever managed to come close to doing in the Civil War.  Members of the national legislature and the Vice President feared for their lives while, as we now know, President Trump ignored pleas for his supporters to stand down.

We further now know, thanks to the January 6 Committee, that plans to steal the election, effectively mount a coup, in fact occurred, but they were undertaken by Donald Trump, not the Democratic Party.  The Democrats, who as we noted in an earlier recent item, had grown comfortable with forty plus years of court forced social change, and therefore non-democratic rule of a type themselves, are not wholly free of blame, but there had never been in the country's history an effort to absolutely impose the rule by a President that had twice lost the popular vote and then lost the electoral vote in his second run for office.

Moreover, there's an ongoing effort right now to put Donald Trump back in office in 2024 which is now so pronounced that he himself may no longer have that much of a choice on running.

That Trump ever was elected in the first instance is a sign of how ill American politics have become.  In any earlier time, nobody with Trump's character would ever have received the nomination of a major political party, let alone be elected. The fact that he was remains a serious sign of American decline.

A serious sign of our ongoing state of peril is that the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith, Dwight Eisenhower, and the like now is no longer committed to democracy at all on a national level.  On a local level it continues to struggle somewhat, but in places like that where I live the primary election will effectively be the general election and the only issue will be how blindly loyal to Trump and his lies a candidate is.

Some are predicting the end of American democracy.

A very erudite commentator I heard didn't predict that, but rather something like a new Compromise of 1877 coming into effect, which I think is probably a more accurate prediction of this type.  For those who do not recall that, that was the political compromise in which Republicans of the 1870s proved willing to sell their souls and their loyalty to democracy and gave up on it in the South, thereby leading to nearly a century of highly imperfect elections in the South. Some have noted, or claimed, that because of this, the US wasn't a real democracy until the 1960s, and that it threatens to become a fake one again.

I think, as noted, that there's a real chance that something like that will occur. The GOP will facture into two parties, which it nearly already has, and the Democrats will as well.  Only in the really contested regions will issues like a person's unthinking loyalty to Trump be an issue.  In areas like Wyoming, it will be assumed and not even mentioned except in the apple pie and motherhood sort of way..[1]

That's not my prediction, however.

I'll be frank that I am extremely worried.  I think the chance that the Trumpist pull off a coup in 2024 is pretty high, and that this would in fact rocket the United States into second nation status.  Our run as the premier global democracy will be over, and historically it will have proven to be surprisingly brief.  The American Century would have been just about that, in real terms.

But in spite of that fear, I'll weigh in with some cautious optimism it won't happen.

My first prediction here is that slowly, slowly, things are turning.  The news from the January 6 Committee is getting out.  Of note, political wind sniffer Ted Cruz, whose role in trying to position himself as the Trump heir apparent post insurrection led to his post insurrection effort to affect a coup, came out on the anniversary of the event and stated:

We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week, and it is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage, incredible bravery, risk their lives to defend the men and women who served in this Capitol. We are grateful for that courage, we appreciate the selfless sacrifice of the men and women who keep us safe.

Those are admirable sentiments indeed, even if Cruz's own post insurrection role was despicable.  But Cruz is pretty good at switching sails rapidly, and the fact that the former primary opponent of Trump, and then Trump acolyte, suddenly is throwing rocks at insurrectionists is telling.  He knows something we don't, and the 1/6 Committee was hinting all last week that there are some real bombshells out there.

The fact that Donald Trump cancelled his planned speech for this day is telling as well. Something is coming.

So far, Trump loyalist have proven immune to the news and even Trump efforts to change the story on anything, so those who claim whatever it is won't matter have a good point.  Robert E. Lee refused to march in step after the Civil War at Washington & Lee College, James Longstreet became a Republican, and Pickett called Lee "the man who destroyed my division", none of which kept Southerners from elevating the effort to keep men enslaved into the memory of "The Lost Cause".

It took another crisis, the Spanish American War, and then a second, World War One, to really get over those events, and it's certainly not impossible we might get another one as well that would serve the same purpose.  In modern times, it seems events come much quicker.  China or Russia, for example, could easily provide the unifying emergency that puts Trump in the dust. We'll see, but if I were the Chinese, I'd be weighing my options for invading Taiwan now and trying to determine if they're better before 2024, or or after.

Anyhow, while much of what is in these electronic pages is not very optimistic, I'm going to note some predictions here and a collapse of American democracy will not be among them.

First of all, I'm going to predict that this summer, Liz Cheney prevails in the Wyoming primary over Harriet Hageman.

By that time, whatever is lurking ready to explode in the 1/6 Committee halls will be out.  Hageman so far has been able to semi camouflage her campaign's sole point being loyalty to Trump, albeit not much, but whatever it is, by that time, will be out and wholly unavoidable.  She'll be forced into determining whether Ride for the Brand is the same thing as Loyalty Is My Honor.[2] and won't really have a good answer for that question.

Moreover, it's likely to turn out that real native Wyomingites and those immigrants from the neighboring states were never as Trumpy as the COP county committees.  Indeed, I heard one immigrant from one of our neighboring states who had been a Republican office holder refer to the local GOP as "batshit crazy" even before the election, showing how dissent was already there.  My guess is that Cheney will win, and not just by a little bit, but not as much as before.

I hope a solid Democrat runs, although I'm not optimistic about it.  Wyoming has become a one party state, and that's not a good thing

My next prediction will be that in 2024 voting for Trump won't be an issue, and it won't be an issue for one of two reasons.

The less likely reason is that he'll be indited on criminal charges.

This appears to be likely in New York, in Federal court.  Beyond that, I don't think it's unlikely that the January 6 Committee will refer over charges to the US Attorneys Office. 

That will be a nightmare for the Biden Administration, a nightmare in part inflicted by the country's utter prior failures to indite Richard Nixon, which should have happened, and to fully punish the Southern insurrectionists of 1860-65, which also should have happened. But I don't think the country will actually allow a third the King Can Do No Wrong event go by when the deposed monarch is vying for reinstatement.  If charges are referred, he'll be indited, and convicted.  By 2024 he may be in prison.

But I also don't think that's the reason he won't be running.

I don't think he'll be running for the same reason Joe Biden won't be running.

Both men are ancient.  Biden is older, and looks infirm and ill, but Trump looks bloated and like a man packing around a ton of makeup. 

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Psalm 90:10..[3]

I'm not predicting, and certainly not wishing, any disaster upon either men, and most definately not a man made one.  Unlike the shockingly high, but still minority, percentage of Americans who now apparently feel that violence for political reasons is sometimes justified, I do not..[4]  I'm not keen on violence of any kind.

Rather, what I'm saying is that the reality of things is that men past pretty much age 30, yes 30, can find that they have a seat on the barque over the River Styx at any time.

Now, men who have obtained threescore years and ten, or more, may be in fantastic shape.  Some have active minds and rigorous bodies.  Indeed, one fellow resident of this state I follow appears to have both.  I've seen ranchers and cowhands who still worked pretty much full days into their 70s.  There are exceptions.

But those exceptions often appear, well, exceptional. They've made the effort to be active and beyond that none of the ones that come to mind offhand, the problematic Éamon de Valera, and the exceptional Winston Churchill, aside, occupied stressful positions until they took their seats on that passage.

And even at that, the comparisons are notable.  De Valera remained thin and vigorous looking up until the end, even though he went blind.  Churchill, weight and drinking aside, remained remarkably able, although he was frankly failing towards the end.  Trump looks like a man who is about to have a heart attack or stroke any day, and the pressures upon him are about to get considerably more pronounced.  Biden looks a bit dottered in spite, no doubt, of efforts to keep him from appearing so.

So while it is a grim prediction, my guess is that the scythe that takes us all, naturally, will have taken them by then.  Biden, who has lived a tragic life in many ways, but not one of excess, will probably simply pass, Trump, who has lived a life of excess, is more likely to go by heart attack or stroke.

That would mean that in 2024, of course, Kamala Harris would be the incumbent President.  But as is so often the case with Vice Presidents, she's failed to secure a following and I doubt she would even after being the first female President. I'm not sure if she'd even run.  I do think it more likely that a less disliked female candidate, Amy Klobuchar, would run.  

I also think that Ted Cruz would run as the self-appointed political adopted son of Donald Trump, and fail to gain the nomination.  I don't think it would be impossible that Liz Cheney would secure the nomination.

And a race like that is the one we will see in 2024.  A likeable female Democrat against either a stern female Republican conservative or a widely disliked, consummate Republican Senator.  The first race would be difficult to predict the outcome of. Cruz, who is easy to detest, would lose in such a race.

Either way, the Trump era will pass with Trump pretty quickly.  Political movements centered on one man fail when the man isn't there, even if they had some larger structure.  The Progressive Party died when Theodore Roosevelt left it.  In no way comparable to Roosevelt's Progressive Party, but as another example of a movement based on one man, Francoist political parties bit the dust after Franco died, in spite of having ruled Spain with no opposition for forty or so years.  Fascists remain in Italy, or rather "Neo-fascists", but they've never seriously threatened to rule the country following the demise of Mussolini.  Millions of Germans voted for Hitler, followed him into war, and joined the Nazi Party during Hitler's rule of Germany, but efforts to revive any form of Nazism following the war have been a complete failure.

Indeed, the more a movement is not only based on a man, but a demagogue, the more likely it is to pass.  Some people admire Huey Long today, but most people regard him as sort of a comic buffoon.  And when politicians finally fall from grace, finding anyone who will admit to supporting them is a difficult task.  Formerly popular causes, when they become unpopular, are ones in which, seemingly, there were never any members.

Healing from the attempted coup is going to be difficult. There can be no doubt about it.  But my guess is that the election of 2024 will play out the way noted, and the healing will begin even before that. The Mitt Romney wing of the GOP will come back out of hiding as the Trumpites deny that they ever were for the man.  The McConnell's will pick up  and move on in the direction they were always going in, and indeed already are.  

Some of the legitimate concerns of populists will be permanent insertions into the GOP, but the GOP will have to start reckoning, and soon, with the fact that it is a minority party and becoming more of one every day.   And indeed that's the ultimate irony of Trumpism.  It might just, if it keeps on, awaken a tidal ave of Democratic heavily left wing opposition that's already there but not doing much.

Wider Republicans have always known this, but have not acted wisely.  Democratic disorganization has allowed them to cower.  In reality, they're being given just a little bit of a breathing room to act.  But they obviously can't or won't as long as Trump seems to command a personality cult.

As noted, while not wishing ill on anyone, the American belief that we all live forever and in perfect health is a lie in and of itself.  Death takes everyone and nobody as old as Trump or Biden really has that much longer to live.  Nature is the ultimate arbiter of everything.  

And when that comes, naturally, as it will, and soon, maybe some of the grip of this era, will be released.  It probably will be.

The nation won't be healed overnight, but the turning of a corner has already started.  Democracy won't die, and it certainly won't die with Trump or Biden.  Having gone through this crisis the real question will be what politics will look like as we emerge from it. Will we have some version of the Compromise of 1877?  Will legitimate populist grievances be taken into account so that a new version of Trump does not arise, or so that populist do not become a dangerous underground fifth column. Will the Democratic left have had enough and use its its majority to reform the country into more of a quasi parliamentary, more democratic and less republican state?  Could all of this happen.

All questions remaining to be answered, but the death of American democracy will be one of the things that will not occur.

Footnotes.

1.  On that, it might be more akin to Republican citations to being for "family" and the like.  It may be time, when candidates start talking about issues like this, to see what their own situation is.  Are they living the "family" life themselves, for example. Do they really hunt, fish, etc., if they cite those things.

"Values" candidates are common, but the point here, are they exhibiting those values in their daily lives?

2.  Loyalty is my honor", as earlier discussed here, was the motto of the SS.

3.  Those are, of course, 70 years of age and 80 years of age.

4.  If the civil war that some are predicting comes about, well my region can count on me sitting it out.  I'm not going to take up arms to shoot at anybody in an internecine spat.  I guess that lets me know how I would have reacted if I'd been, let's say, a Texan in 1860-65.

Monday, November 8, 2021

Tuesday November 8, 1921. Dignatary.


Crow Chief Plenty Coups, (b circa 1908), a Crow leaders since 1876 when he was 28 years old, was back East in order to serve as the Native American representative at the upcoming dedication of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The US Austrian peace treaty came into effect, officially ending the state of war between the US and Austria.  On the same day, Yugoslavian troops advanced into Albanian territory.

Monday, October 25, 2021

Tuesday, October 25, 1921. Comings and Goings.


Bat Masterson in 1911.

On this day in 1921, Bartholemew William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, of OK Corral fame, died at age 67.  He'd been working as a columnist there since 1902.

Like a lot of frontier lawmen, Masterson had a few run-ins with the law as well as enforcing it.  He was born in Quebec to an Irish Canadian family and had served in most of the classic frontier roles in the West before becoming well known due to the events in Tombstone.   His family moved to the United States while he was a child, and he grew up on a series of farms before becoming a buffalo hunter and Army scout.  He was at the famous battle of Adobe Walls in 1874.  He became a lawman in 1876 and after his famous career in Arizona he occupied that position in Colorado.  He  moved to Denver in 1882 where he was involved in various scrapes and then to New York in 1902.

Masterson was an acknowledged expert on boxing and became a columnist in New York, a position he occupied for the remainder of his life.

Masterson provides an interesting example of how we tend to compartmentalize figures by their historical period.  He was a classic Frontier figure, but lived well beyond the Frontier's close and, no doubt to himself, seemed to always be living in the present even while depictions of the gunfight would continue to be famous all through his own life.  He was outlived, FWIW, by Wyatt Earp, who died in 1929.


King Michael I of Romania was born.  He was Romania's last king, having became a king as a child due to his father abdicating following his inability to reconcile an illicit relationship with his status as king and renouncing his rights upon his own father's death in 1925.  He lost that title in 1930 when parties dissatisfied with the regency reestablished his father as monarch, but he became king again in  September 1940 when a military coup led by Ion Antonescue returned him to the position of king and removed his father.  He was 18 at the time.

He would be king when Romania declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, but would lead the coup against the military government in 1944, combining with pro Allied officers who also no doubt saw the handwriting of the results of the war on the wall.  He was removed from power in 1948 and died in 2017, by which time he was once again allowed to live part of the year in Romania.



A terrible Categroy Six hurricane hit Tampa Florida. The storm had previously hit Cuba with minimal damage, but Florida was not so lucky.



The government issued a report on the work of government hunters/trappers.



While I know the current thing is to think, "oh, how awful that the Federal Government did that", if I'd been alive then, the life of a government hunter would have appealed to me.  Having said that, you could still homestead in 1921, and likely that would have appealed to me more.


Mrs. Ed Chambers and Mrs. Sid Hatchfield on this day in 1921.

Hatchfield had been the sheriff of Matewan County, West Viriginia and was murdered on August 1, 1921, along with his friend Chambers.  The killings were probably connected with labor problems in the mining industry.  Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Hatchfield must have been in Washington on this date in some capacity connected with the murders of their husbands.