Having not really completed anything meaningful with Venezuela, other than having tasted blood and developing fondness for it, and having gotten us into an endless war with Iran we're losing, King Donny the Mad is about to launch a war against Cuba, starting with a claim that Raul Castro, age 94, must be brought to justice over a US civilian aircraft that was shot down by the Cubans in 1996.
Oh horse poop.
Some in Demented Donnie's administration have been drooling over a chance to attack Cuba since the easily manipulated narcissist illegitimately moved back into the Oval Office. Military action against Cuba has been a desire of displaced Cubans and their descendants in the US since 1959. If the US attacked the island and removed the government, Lil' Marco would claim it as a victory attributable to him, one way or another, in the 2028 Presidential campaign he's clearly running in.
That's part of the problem. Influential "Republicans" (there are no real Republicans left anymore) like Marco and the Robot Ted Cruz would do anything for a Cuba Libre other than actually live in Cuba.
Of course, with this administrations lust for territorial acquisition, as desire expressed by some imperialist Republicans going into the Spanish American War, the annexation of Cuba with the goal of making it a state, would be the more likely goal in the short term. If Trump, or Marco, pulled that off, the irony would be that it would be solidly Democratic and admitting Puerto Rico as a state would happen immediately thereafter.
Probably the only thing that's really been holding this up has been the commitment of forces to Iran, where Iran is deploying Muhammed Ali's old "rope a dope" strategy and refusing to surrender even though King Donny assures us he won and the war is over. Actually defeating Iran will require a ground invasion that even Donny, who can choke down killing schoolgirls, can't seem to muster up the will for and which the American public doesn't want. The war itself has already achieved a level of unpopularity matched by that of the Vietnam War after Tet.
But, the thought is, this will go better. . . or at least Cuban Americans will like the result.
The threats against Castro started a couple of days ago. Within the last twenty four hours China, which Trump went to and acted like a orphaned puppy, has warned the US to knock it off.
May 22, 2026
The future of Cuba belongs to the people of Cuba is terms of how they're governed, what the system looks like and so forth, but the national security threat, that's 100% something we're going to focus on because that's about America.
Marco Rubio.
What crap.
Cuba has been a Communist country since 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrow the authoritarian government there (it wasn't obvious he was Communist at first).
They have not attacked us since then.
We have, however, effectively attacked them, landing Cuban contras there in 1961.
Rubio knows this, however. His parents were immigrants from Cuba who came over before the 1959 revolution, and who actually planned on returning to the country before the Communist nature of the revolution became apparent.
And that's part of the problem here. Cuban Americans are never going back to Cuba, but they imagine Cuba Libre with the same zeal as Irish Americans imagined a Republican Ireland. In the latter case, that unthinking zeal helped contribute to decades of strife in Ireland, and here it's contributed to decades of misery in Cuba.
Efforts to force a political change in Cuba should have ceased in 1961 when John F. Kennedy withdrew air support for the Cuban contras. There was no good reason at all other than anger not to normalize economic relations with Cuba at least by the early 1980s. That's what we should do now.
Ho Chi Minh wouldn't recognize Communism in Vietnam today and, if transported from wherever his soul went to, he's be convinced that South Vietnam had won the war and reformed itself. If we weren't keeping Cuba on the trophy shelf of failures, the same would be true for Cuba.
But we live in a dangerous age. Donald Trump is desperately searching for something for Americans to remember him by (and we certainly have plenty to recall right now). Marco Rubio has the misplaced child of immigrants probable loyalty to an imaginary paradise or imaginary would be paradise.
We're cruising right back into Havana's harbor where every American military adventure to date has been a disaster.
The mere fact that somebody is running against Bear, one of the most notable of the WFC, is a good thing. Here's hoping that Bear is solidly and permanently defeated.
Three Democratic Socialist won primaries in New York City in Democratic Congressional primaries, causing pundits to somewhat freak out.
Frankly the fascist nature of the current GOP is making this inevitable. The WFC is, for example, every bit as radical as New York's Democratic Socialist and Trump is governing as a dictator to the extent that the courts don't prohibit him, so the rise of the left wing within the Democratic Party isn't too surprising.
While the right freaks out about New York City, here locally the GOP demands you swear your loyalty.
My guess is that after the article, some who haven't signed, or who aren't aware of it, will sign or will feel compelled to sign.
Notably, in the House, the big money candidates, Gray, Freiss and Rasner have not signed. Gray's an entire political career has been based on being a lying asshole, so this puts him in a spot. When he gets up at night and stubs his toes he blames it on left wing radical communist Marxist socialist fascist monarchist podiatrist, so that would take a major part of his repertoire out of play and actually make him live part of his faith. Rasner has gone full comedic sideshow at this point, but it would take the extreme out of the candidate whose been the most extreme. It probably wouldn't impact Freiss who hasn't attacked his opponents, but who is, in a very nice way, relying upon "I'll bring jobs to Wyoming of a type that I've worked at myself because I believe you dumb twits want to exist in the imaginary 1950s".
It's also interesting that only one Senatorial candidate, Skovogard, has signed it.
June 25, 2026
Interesting development.
Rasner didn't appear recently in Casper's weekly candidate forum when it invited the house contestants to speak. That's odd as Casper is his home town. Now this.
During the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered his troops inoculated against Small Pox.
This week Pete Hegseth lifted the requirement that troops be inoculated for influenza for "religious" reasons.
The current GOP is heavily anti scientific.
Opposition to vaccinations has been in American history largely a thing of smaller Christian and non Christian sects which are fairly anti scientific, as opposed to the majority of Christians who have no objection to vaccination. However, when the far right of the country started to turn weird, listening to such medical lights as boob model Jenny McCarthy, that began to change a bit. Covid really made it worse as a significant portion of the country turned anti vax under the leadership of Donald Trump, who got the vaccine, but who recommended some really lethal approaches to the crisis as well.
Troops who don't get inoculated ought to just be given dishonorable or less than honorable discharges. That's what should have occurred to those who refused the Covid vaccine.
April 24, 2026
The war department stands ready for what comes next. Locked and loaded. May God continue to breast—bless our warriors each and every day and on each and every mission.
Hegseth.
Breast?
Okay, I get that it's a slip of the tongue, um, well, but it's an odd one.
May 12, 2026
The Aryan Nation, the Nazis, and the KKK are not far-right organizations. Those are far-left organizations, and they always have been. The KKK was created and started by the Democrats in the United States to prevent blacks from being able to participate in the political arena, if you will. So, I'm going to say they've never been associated with the right, they've always been associated with the left.
Harriet Hageman.
Hageman's no dummy and she knows this is crap, or has drank so much of the Kool Aide she'll spout stuff that's absurd.
Every one of these organizations is from the far right and any claim to the contrary is patently absurd. The claim about the Nazis, which I've seen before, comes from the party's very early, and frankly pre Hitler, days and its name, the National Socialist Party. The absurdity of that claim fails to realize that "socialism" in the context of nationalist parties doesn't necessarily mean Marxism, but "for society". In the case of the Nazis, way early on their did espouse Socialism but by the time they'd come to power they'd abandoned it in favor of autarky and the early socialist in the party were sidelined or expelled.
And the claim about the KKK being founded by the Democrats and therefore left wing completely ignores that originally the Republican Party was the left wing party, and the Democrats were a right wing party. The Democrats didn't evolve into the political left until the 20th Century and in the American South remained the conservative party into the 1980s. Hageman herself is old enough to have voted in Reagan's first run for the Oval Office and therefore should be well aware of that.
This is totally reprehensible.
Cont:
Reporter: What extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal?
Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation.
May 13, 2026
So it turns out that Trump's advisors uniformly told him not to launch the war against Iran, but he did anyway, and the advisors, not wanting to be blamed for his stupidity, leaked. He wants them prosecuted for treason, and sycophant Todd Blanche is looking to to it.
The real crime here is Trump's, who launched an illegal war. With no declaration of war, every single Iranian killed in it has been the victim of some sort of crime, and every American who has died has been the victim of some sort of crime ultimately attributable to Trump as well.
Blanche is pathetic. When this is over, and it will be, his careers should be flushed down the toilet.
And then there's this:
PabloReports: Ted Cruz called you a parasite and disparaged your work as a bartender.
AOC: I think it’s funny that he’s been taking a government paycheck for 23 years but has the audacity to criticize someone who has come from a family that had to work their way up and earn their place here.
This is really becoming a Republican specialty around here. We get retired servicemen who come in after sucking on the government tit for 30 years, retire, and then start sucking on the other government tit, and then run for office on the "I hate the government" ticket.
In that sense, the Democrat running against Collins in Maine is really refreshing. He's given a speech about his combat service and then noted how he can't figure out how that's relevant to being a Senator. It isn't.
Recently I saw somebody post something in favor of Brent Bien here in Wyoming, noting that he's served in combat or dangerous conditions all over the world, and how that will make him ready to lead. Yeah, lead troops, not a state government.
We have a whole host of candidates from the He Man Government Haters Club running locally. They have a right to run, but while they're doing it, they shouldn't be draining their mommy. It's hypocritical.
June 22, 2026
Unqualified for her office Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said her office would prosecute individuals caught vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
That would mean prosecuting Donald Trump, which should be done for a variety of reasons.
June 24, 2026
The ideology of the Mooslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Mooslims. Slightly different. But Venezuela has been great and Iran has been great.
Donald Trump.
Insulting in the extreme.
The ideology of Catholics, of which I am one, is the ideology of Christianity, as Catholicism is the first and original Christian religion It's more than "slightly different" than Islam.
This provides a good reason for those Catholics who support Trump to really question what they are doing.
Trump's endorsement again turned out to be a predicator that the endorsed candidate would go down in well deserved flames as Péter Magyar defeated the illiberal democrat darling of the far right Viktor Orbán.
Also a figure of the Hungarian right, and in fact once an Orbán protege, he is a sign that even in a country that's be converted into the model of an illiberal democracy and hence adored by the Heritage Foundation set, a corrupt autocrat can come down. He's also a sign that support by Trump means nothing in much of the world, and is becoming meaningless in the United States.
Orbán, who is not insane as Trump is much of the time, does deserve credit for conceding defeat.
April 14, 2026
Canadian liberals gained a majority in the Canadian parliament through by elections yesterday.
While less clear, the Donald Trump Effect, i.e., repulsion over his vile politics, is moving everything to the left that's associated with him.
June 22, 2026
Colombian Trump backed right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella narrowly won Colombia's presidential election, apparently.
On the 250ths Anniversary of American Independence it'd do us well to recall that while the Revolution may have been lead by landed patricians, it was fought by landed yeoman.
It's a great misfortune to the country, or perhaps a timely reminder, of exactly how far we've fallen in that regard. We have, in the form of Donald J. Trump, a President, albeit an illegitimate one, who is the very symbol of what Americans rebelled against 250 years ago. This monumental palace coach should serve to remind us.
Had Donald Trump been alive in 1776, he'd have been a Loyalist.
At the end of the war he'd have been packed up to Canada to annoy the French, who at least would largely have not understood him. Not, in his dementia, that we do either.
Washington on Blueskin.
George Washington owned his own mounts. John Adams broke one of his own mounts as late as his 80s. Taft kept a cow on the White House lawn.
Donald Trump flies back and forth to his golf resort in Florida on the American taxpayers dime.1 And now, at the expense of some $400,000,000 taxpayer dollars, he's unveiled the new one, and gushes about its "luxury":
This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. history, it just can't be avoided.
The Federal Government, funded by the American taxpayers in the form of taxes, and by individuals and foreign governments in the form of loans, has taken delivery of one Boeing "VC-25B Bridge", a military conversion of a Boeing 747-8 originally built as a Boeing Business Jet. The plane was delivered in 2012 to Qatar Amiri Flight and used by the House of Thani. In June 2023, it was delivered to Global Jet Isle of Man. The Qatari government gave it as a gift. . . if we assume governments really give gifts to other governments. Poor little King Donny just wasn't happy with the existing Air Force One and given that he's in his last term he couldn't wait for new ones under construction to be completed.
After he leaves office, which given his advanced age and rapidly declining mental status is likely to be before his term expires, the airplane, which has cost the United States at least $400,000,000 in "upgrades" to make it work in its role as a royal coach for his majesty, will be transferred to his presidential library foundation. Indeed, that will happen before his unfortunate illegitimate reign is over.
This is complete bullshit.
I've posted on this story, and this airplane, here before:
Air Force One has been in the news a lot recently, and it started before the Qatari proposal to give the United States, or Donald Trump (it isn't clear which) a luxury outfitted Boeing 747.
Technically "Air Force One" is a call sign, and merely denotes an airplane the Chief Executive is a passenger in. If a President rode in an Air Force Cessna, that would be Air Force One. But everyone knows that it refers to one of two Boeing VC-25s, militarized 747s, that are designated for the Presidents use.
RD-2
Interestingly, the first aircraft designated for Presidential use was a Navy airplane, an amphibious Douglas Dolphin RD-2 that was luxury outfitted for use by President Roosevelt. It was used from 1933 to 1939, and obviously not for transglobal flight. The President didn't really do extensive travel until World War Two.
Roosevelt's once used VC-54C.
In spite of concerns over commercial aviation being used to carry the President during the war, it was in fact used and it wasn 't until 1945 that a new designated Presidential aircraft was acquired, that being a Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC-54C) which was named the Sacred Cow. It contained a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It's only use by Roosevelt was to fly the then dying President to Yalta. Truman used it thereafter, but it was replaced by military DC-6 (VC-118) thereafter.
Truman's VC-118.
President Eisenhower, who of course knew planes well, to Lockheed C-121 Constellations, Columbine II and Columbine III. The Constellation was a very popular airplane at the time, and Douglas MacArthur also had one, that one spending many years after its service at the Natrona County International Airport on an abandoned runway.
Columbine II was the first Presidential aircraft to receive the designation Air Force One.
At the end of Eisenhower's Presidency Boeing 707s came in, in part because the Soviets were using a jet to transport their Premier. 707s remained through the Nixon era, giving good service in this role.
747s, as VC-25s, entered specialized manufacture for use as Air Force One during Reagan's administration, although the first one would enter service after that. They've been used ever since.
These aren't normal 747s. They are packed with communications and electronic warfare equipment in order to have combat survivability.
Replacing the current two aircraft that are used as Air Force One is a topic that the Air Force started looking at quite a few years ago. The 747 variant which the VC-25 isn't made anymore. Production of 747s stopped in 2023 in favor of more modern aircraft. Still, the airframe remains useful in this role, and after the Air Force started to look into options, updating a 747-8 appeared to be the best option. Only Boeing was interested in the project anyway, and it will take a massive financial loss to do it.
The aircraft that are being retrofitted for this role was built, originally, as a commercial airliner. The projected is a massive one, and the delivery date will be in 2027.
What the new Air Force Ones will look like.
Enter Qatar.
Qatar has offered to give the US (I guess) a luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One until the other 747-8s are complete. But here's the thing. Boeing has been working on the complicated task fo converting the two existing 747-8s for this use for several years. After all, it's basically a combat aircraft. All accepting the plane would do is give Boeing a third one to convert, which wouldn't be ready for years.
Trump is being childish about this, as he is about a lot of things. He doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the aircraft, and likely a lot of other people don't as well. In his case, this is inexcusable. It's a combat airplane.
Frankly, it's a Cold War combat airplane.
Which gets to this.
The 747 was a big massive airliner in an era in which it was the queen of the sky. That era is over and airlines have moved on to more modern aircraft. The world in which Ronald Reagan ordered 747s is gone as well. It's still useful to have an aircraft that can be used in a global thermonuclear war, which is what it is, but that's not going to happen and it makes no sense to use it to go on weekend golfing trips to Florida.
But that's what Trump tends to use it for.
That raises an entire series of other questions, many of which have little to do with aircraft, but some of which do. It's notable that other Presidents have used lighter aircraft for more mundane trips. In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C. In 2000, President Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III. In 2003, President George W. Bush flew in the co-pilot seat of a Sea Control Squadron Thirty-Five (VS-35) S-3B Viking from Naval Air Station North Island, California to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with that latter obviously being an exception. Barack Obama used a Gulfstream C-37 variant on a personal trip in 2009.
Trump can use something else than a 747 for what he uses Air Force One for in almost every single instance.
Indeed, the entire topic brings up a lot of things about the risks of having an airplane like this, a luxury airliner inside, which is really a combat aircraft. It makes it easy to forget what it really is, and it makes a President feel like an Emperor, which he is not.
So why am I doing it again?
Since May, 2025 Donald Trump has used the existing Air Force One to fly back and forth to his Florida golf home/resort, effectively using the airplane as a toy, repeatedly. He's also used it for what are basically campaign trips. He's launched an illegal war against Iran for which the Department of Defense now seeks $80,000,000,000 to cover, and which killed thirteen Americans and untold numbers of Iranians. That war encouraged Israel to not only participate in it, or perhaps the other way around, but also to engage in an invasion of Lebanon. He's spent something like $13,000,000 to Rhino Line the Washington D. C. reflecting pool, he's trying to build a massive ballroom that will ultimately cost the taxpayer one way or another, and he's trying to build a triumphal arch, making the United States the first country in the world to build an arch after getting solidly defeated in a war.
He's demented, and he acts like an emperor. This airplane is part of that delusion.
Truth be known, the entire Air Force One thing hasn't made sense for years. Having some sort of aircraft available for Presidential use for Presidential work makes some limited sense. But most of what Trump uses the aircraft for could be achieved through commercial aviation. Indeed, not one single trip Trump has taken could not have been accomplished that way.
And that's how this should be done. Back when transpiration was by rail, the President didn't own a train. When Trump goes over to the G7 to insult the Italian Prime Minister with his lunacy, that could be done by commercial air, and should be done that way. And I mean commercial air, not chartered air. The government could get him a ticket on a regularly scheduled flight.
And when he goes to Mar A Lago he can pay for his own ticket.
I know that the objections will be "oh my, it isn't safe". That is, frankly, for the most part complete BS. Trump could get a ticket on Ryan Air and be just as safe as anyone else.
And if its a little less safe, that's a good thing. One of the problems with the modern presidency is that the occupant of the White House is too insulated from the people he supposedly serves. At one time the President shook the hands of all who lined up on New Years Day. Not anymore.
If the President had to travel with the great unwashed masses maybe he'd be less of a lunatic. Or maybe he'd just realize that its a real job.
Anyway you look at it, Air Force One is a titanic waste of money. The Air Force has aircraft. If he needs to go, he can load up on a C5A with the equipment going wherever its going.
And this waste of money is going to a Trump library just before Trump leaves office.
WTF?
If the US had to spend money on it, it should keep it. This is appalling. That should be addressed as soon as possible. If there's a current way to address it, it just should be silently done. Trump can leave office and his library, which frankly is a pointless thing in the first place, can buy a Revell model kit of a Boeing 747. This absurd flying castle can carry on in its existing role and join the two that are being built, or preferably at least one of those two contracts cancelled seeing as the US has this thing.
At that point, the signature on the under panel that Trump affixed yesterday can be fittingly modified, recalling World War Two nose art. A realistic Trump nude torso doodle, a la Epstein, can be installed. A fitting monument.
It's a gift form Qatar, an authoritarian, semi-constitutional hereditary emirate monarchy ruled by the House of Thani. The Emir is the absolute authority.
Just the sort of government that King Donald can related to. Apparently they could relate to him, or more likely, thought they could obtain some advantage by appealing to his pathetic vanity.
The plane will be transferred to his Presidential library before he leaves office. What books would even appear in Donald Trump's library boggles the imagination. He does not appear to be a well read man, or even really read anything. Figures from his last administration related he had a hard time reading memos they gave him as he lost interest so rapidly. He does not appear to be a smart man.2
And, current American worship of wealth aside, we shouldn't expect him to be. What I've long suspected turns out to be true. The wealthy are often stupid.
This actually doesn't surprise me at all. The question is whether wealth makes you stupid, or encourages the breeding down of intelligence. Either can be maintained.
It was Chesterton who noted that "AMONG the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it." There's something to that. But beyond that, there's plenty of evolutionary evidence of the latter point. Wild cattle are quite a bit smarter than domestic ones. Wolves are smarter than dogs. Wild turkeys are very smart birds whereas domestic ones, apparently are dumb as a post.
Cave drawing of an Aurochs. Modern cows can be dicey, but aurochs wanted to kill you.
The question would be, of course, why this is true, and selective breeding by human beings largely explains it. We'd rather not have a mean cow that seeks to break free, raising a gang of mean cows, and lay siege to the village. Hunters and herdsmen like smart dogs, but bred to be fairly compliant. If you've ever owned a standard poodle, one of the oldest hunting breeds, you'll see how much of the wolf wasn't bread out of them, they think for themselves, we've worked a lot on dogs since then.
French Poodle in the early 1900s. The coat may look weird but they're a hunting dog, and a German bred one. Even now, the Puddle Dog has opinions on everything and isn't shy about giving you them. The only other modern hunting dog that rivals them that way is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, another old breed..
It's a dangerous thing to say, and contrary to the thesis advanced by eugenicists, but there's pretty good evidence that people on average were getting smarter and smarter all along throughout human history, in very real terms, up until just recently. Evolution was forcing it. Some evolutionary biologist argue that the homo sapien sapien of our current era is demonstrably smarter than homo sapiens of, say, 100,000 years ago. . . or 50,000 years ago. . . or 10,000 years ago, or 5,000.3 And it makes some sense.
In a normal, i.e., not rich, environment a lot of things go into mate selection, oh heck let's say spouse selection other than what goes into attracting people, oh heck let's say men, to Only Fans. Love has always been an aspect of it, but its interesting to note how even when I was a teen, teenagers selected dates on character, which included intelligence, more than anything else. It's funny to think of now, but if a guy had a "pretty" girlfriend, he was just considered lucky, and a girl with brains and other positive characteristics would have a boyfriend who featured the same, irrespective of her looks. When the girl was good looking, it was just sort of like winning a bonus prize. Purely good looking girls, if that's all they had going for them, weren't really sought out.
This remained true, I'd note, throughout my entire single life. Maybe it's largely true now.
But with the wealthy, it's another matter.
Future Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith and her first husband, Billy Ray Smith. She was 17 and he was 16 when she married. He was cook. She changed her image enormously after they divorced and ended up married to an octogenarian after being a Playboy Centerfold and Guess Jeans model. Do we think that late union was a marriage for love on either side? She paid the price, of course, dying young. Her first husband is still alive, but never speaks much. He was apparently crushed by the death of their son, pictured here, when he was in his twenties. He never remarried.
Donald Trump, who gives no evidence of being an intelligent man, has been married three times, with each spouse having a certain sort of look save for one. Two have been Slavic beauties of a certain sort, which means they present a certain look that certain people regard as glamorous beauty.4. The second, Marla Maples, actually presents as pretty smart. That marriage lasted six years.5
The point here?
I'm not thinking that a lot of the super rich determine their mates the way regular people do. I don't think "is he/she a good helpmate?" or "do we have the same interests, faiths, worldview?", or to be really old school, "can this guy/gal help me around the farm?" has gone into it much. Rather, they often seem to be chosen on looser characteristics that might more resemble how oriental potentates chose concubines for the harem, i.e., looks.
When Arab raiders stole Irish women, after all, smart as those women tend to be, they weren't marketing them on "look at this ginger. . . she's really got the brains!"
Now, a person can take this too far, but we live in a rich society. The richest of us may in fact be stupider than the rest of us, or a lot of us. And we collectively, just like a placid cow in the field, may be starting to get dumber overall.
We live in a materially very wealthy culture. Even the average impoverished American is wealthier than many thought to be well off in former eras. And to add to that, the decay in morality, brought about by material wealth, which has allowed us to focus only on ourselves, has developed a self centered sexual culture that contributes to this.
Put another way, as one female observer seriously noted:
But its not making people happier. People know something is wrong.
Gallup informs us that most Americans believe in the "American Dream", whatever that is, but that a very high percentage believe its unobtainable.
The American Dream has been defined in various ways. I think it might be best defined in the film The Best Years Of Our Lives.
In that film there's a moment when discharged sergeant Fred Derry gives a loan to a discharged Navy vet who is a tenant farmer. He wants to buy his own farm. He knows he can do it.
That's the best description of the American Dream I've ever seen.
The real dream is to own your own. And at the time of the American Revolution, most did. That's what had brought them to the country.
I don't know what they teach the young now, but when I was growing up it was a lot of crap about how people came over for freedom, mostly freedom of religion.
Yeah, some did, sort of. The best example might be the Puritans on the Mayflower, who were seeking freedom to worship in their own way and to tell everyone else in the world how they were supposed to do it. If you were in a Puritan community you were worshipping with them or getting punished, severely.
Only about 1/3d of the Mayflower passengers were Puritans. The rest were likely members of the Church of England which itself was less than 100 years separated from the Catholic Church, and even less separated from the Prayer Book Rebellion.6 Point is, those passengers, who were all part of the group that put in as they were out of beer, didn't come for religious freedom.
They came for land.
Land is, and was, independent. People knew then, and they knew now, that land was independence, freedom, and a decent life worth living. If you could obtain, as Chesterton would later put it, "three acres and a cow", or more likely 40, and a mule, you had it made. You were not rich. You were not poor. You were your own family.
Land is what caused Englishmen to risk their lives in 1607 to come to a new continent, or Frenchmen to come to it in 1608, or Spanish to come to it in 1565. Here they could get it, at some cost, but a none the less obtainable one. In Europe, they could not. And if not all came as farmers, tradesmen who came, came because they could open their own shops, essentially operating on the same ideal. Those who couldn't muster up the cash for transit indentured themselves to do so which, in spite of latter day white apologist, was not slavery. It was a temporary means of getting started, in some ways like apprenticeships or joining the service operates for many today.
We cannot say that it was universally benign. That would be a lie. The land in fact already belonged to somebody else, the native inhabitants, whose claims were excused due to their rotational agricultural practices and low population density. But that doesn't change the basic fact. It was land, not "freedom" of any type that drew the immigrant.
By moving, they freed themselves from some landowning overlord and made themselves independent farmers. That dream lasted all the way up until the mid 20th Century in some fashion. While it remains alive today, the truth is that the reality it of it is as dead, yielded to the bloated interests of the rich. The largest landowner in the US today is billionaire sports and real estate mogul Stan Kroenke, who owns land in Wyoming. Mom and pop shops have yielded to the nightmare created by Sam Walton.
People who think the American dream is alive are largely fooling themselves.
Nonetheless, a dream is a dream, and revolutions are based on dreams.
The American Revolution was based on a landowning dream. It wasn't, frankly necessarily wholly admirable. The Intolerable Acts included, in a very real sense, the sense that the Crown was going to restrict the right of expanding countrymen's families to settle new lands, and they were right. The fear also was that the Crown would restrict economic activity in the Colonies for revenue purposes, and that was partially correct. Common Sense and the like aside, a real cause of the Revolution was the native sense that the free right to settle land, and engage in small free enterprise, was the only thing that separated American Colonist form the English and European masses.
They were right, if not necessarily morally right.
A large number, maybe most, revolutions since that time, and some before it, have been based on the same cause. The French Revolution was not, and it remains a global oddball. The Russian Revolution, failed as it was, is such an example, however, as was the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Chinese Revolution of 1911, and the Chinese Civil War, both failed examples, also were. The Mexican Revolution, also a failed revolution, very much was.
The Mexican Revolution provides, in fact, an excellent example. Through every phase, from 1911 onwards, the rich landed class fought back, and when defeat arrived, they stepped aside and regrouped. It kept the Revolution from really being successful. Indeed, of all the revolutions we have noted, only the American Revolution was really successful.
But the success it created is dead. Today,. we have the Donald Trumps and Elon Musks and other 1%ers that control the economy, and which some like Jonah Goldberg even feel we should celebrate (as to Musk).
Well, no.
Time for a second American revolution.
Not, we might note, one with guns. Indeed, that would inevitably be not only immoral, but outright moronic, lead by people festooned with Second Amendment tattoos while advocating outright fascism.
No, something more radical than that, a revolution at the ballot box.
It's time to end the moronic celebration of a "free market system" that isn't free in any sense. Corporate Capitalist are shoving pablum down the throats of the electorate while pocking the largess. Large-scale corporatism needs to end.
And so too does a weird millennialism appropriations of public lands by people like Deseret Mike Lee and pathetic fellow travelers like John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman.
A revolution can be had at the ballot box. It won't happen all at once, but if started now the two party system can be ended, and the creation of wealth for the wealthy can be as well. Remote land ownership, something the colonist came here to escape, can be as well.
It won't happen as long as people don't think. But they need to think now. At some point they will, and if we don't take on the yoke of this burden now, when the plow ox bulks, it'll be bad. Footnotes
1. Donald Trump is such a WASP, with the adherence to the "P", that he's converted some property in Washington D.C. to become a golf course and is putting in courses on some military bases.
Put in shooting ranges or something. Not something that fat old white guys play.
2. The fact that Trump is a Wharton graduate is really a slam at the Ivy League. Yes, they have some great schools, but the system they operate in really has graduated some failures. Pete Hegseth provides such an example.
Wharton owes the country an apology, and I say that as somebody who has a relative that graduated from there. The fact that Trump graduated is applying. The fact that Chuck Gray is their product is as well.
3. Some theologians have speculated that there was a point with our species when God converted us from just a smart hominid into what we are in the Divine Plan, with an immortal soul. The speculation is that it was the moment language arrived, and there's some archeological and biological evidence that moment was in fact sudden and radical.
4. Frankly, Trump spouses 1 and 3 really aren't bombshells. Melania is more properly characterized as "handsome".
5. We can't really speculate on the smarts of 1 and particularly 3. Melania is hard to figure as she's never obtained a really good command of English. None the less, people who admire her, are frankly doing so willfully.
6. Recusant Catholics are estimated to be less than 5% of the English population at the time, which means that were likely to probably have actually been 10 to 15%. Today, more Catholics attend weekly services in the UK than the established church. Recently one Anglican convert in the UK described her transition as "going Full Fat Catholicism"
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