We noted the passing of Wendell Berry here on September 1, but I didn't go into much introspection on him in relation to us. This omission was, ironically, time caused.
I didn't have time to.
Since Berry's death I've ready comments by people, principally on Twitter, reflecting on how influential Berry was on them. He was certainly influential on me, but not quite in the way that he was on others. Berry wasn't the source of my world view. Rather, what he was was the distiller of it.
I had an Agrarian mindset before I'd ever heard of Berry. I came into Berry, in fact, because I had an agrarian mindset. Indeed, I had an agrarian mindset before I had heard of agrarianism in a philosophical sense. I was really a nascent agrarian by the time I graduated from high school, although only vaguely so.
By the time I had graduated from university as an undergrad, I was a full blown, if undefined, agrarian. What I really wanted to do was to hunt, fish and garden, and be allowed to do so. If I could have, I would have ranched. I didn't have the means to do that, or to make my other goals my present habitus or mode of living, at least in full, although at the time wildgame provided most of my meat, and my father's garden most of my produce. What I didn't have, was a good and steady income and the destruction of the extractive economy, which I was disenchanted with anyhow, kept me from having one. I had already found a literary fellow traveller in the form of Aldo Leopold.
Law school seemed my only option, and so I went.
The Agrarian impulse however only strengthened during that time. Getting out of law school in 1990 I recall telling a friend of mine that I had no ambition, as all I wanted to do was ranch. He told me that didn't mean I had no ambition, that was my ambition. Well, that's one of those insights that is a bit shocking when you first hear it, but it was correct. At that time I still carried a sort of weltanschauung that required me to make something of myself in the eyes of the world, something that had been instilled by my mother.
In spite of starting practicing law, my agrarian world outlook only increased. At that time I discovered the Southern Agrarians somehow, which was mind blowing. For the first time, really, I learned that there others who held the same viewpoints on many things that I did. The Southern Agrarians, who are very problematic on some things, nonetheless really helped define my philosophical worldview to me and I realized that what I was, was an agrarian.
The Southern Agrarians were almost all dead by that point in time. Only Andrew Nelson Lytle was left alive. So the movement seemed to be dead itself, but the arrival of the Internet allowed even a very isolated person such as myself to learn who else was out there. That lead me to Gene Logsdon and Wendell Berry. Berry was by far the more influential.
Indeed, Berry took the world out look I had and really distilled it. There were a lot of things I believed but I didn't have the existential nature of defined. Berry did that for me. His influence on how I sese the world was massive.
Distilling my world view didn't stop with Berry. Sometime after discovering him I discovered the Distributist, including Chesterton, and that really completed it, basically. I often say, when there's ears to hear it, that while not all Distributists are Agrarians, all Agrarians are Distributist.
Berry stands in my intellectual formation with Leopold and Chesterton, three men who now are at some lively gathering beyond the veil.
Berry's death is a major and tragic loss for the intellectual life of the nation. Not just agrarianism, but the soul of the United States itself. Berry lived life the way it really should be lead. He was deeply Christian (he was a Baptist) and a man of letters who farmed. He saw America for what it was, what it had become, and what it should return to. He advocated for Christian principles and lived a Christian life, while having a deep land ethic and understanding of the land itself. He urged us to "become native to this place".
I've never really been able to pull off what he lived and advocated. But I may be about to.
Berry, in his youth, was an opponent of the Vietnam War in a region that was likely not opposed to it. His departure comes during the reign of Donald Trump.
Berry, like all true agrarians in contemporary society, likely knew that what he stood for was not going to be adopted by the culture at large. The Southern Agrarians were already lamenting the destruction of the last of agrarianism during the 1930s. The Unsettling of America, a masterpiece, was published in 1977. Particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan, each passing year has made the plight of agrarians worse in this country, as its yielded to an unprincipled culture and greed. Restraints placed on the evolution by the law, which do exist, and by the culture, which also exist but which are greatly weakened, have nearly fallen by the wayside.
Berry was 93 when he died this past week. Donald Trump, suffering from dementia in the Oval Office while nearly ruling as a dictator, is 80 years old. Berry was of the Silent Generation (Leopold was of the Lost Generation). Trump is a Baby Boomer and virtually defines that generation, in spite of what many in it would like to believe.
Berry stood for, and will continue to stand for, the opposite that everything Donald Trump does. He was a sincere Christian deeply in nature and the virtues of self control on al things. Trump is, at best, a faux Christian who stands for destruction and avarice. They represent the two poles that struggle for the soul of the nation, one who would anchor us in a quiet and unassuming harbor, and another who would drag us out into and down under in the tempest.
Wendell Berry, August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026. May the perpetual light shine upon him.
By Guy Mendes - Guy Mendes, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57041629
The great agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry has died at age 92.
A giant in the agrarian community, and a great intellect, he was an English professor, a novelist, social critic, environmentalist and dedicated Christian pacifist.
Probably more than any other figure, he defined the post World War Two agrarians in the United States.
July 4, 1826 was the fiftieth anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, of course. By that time the country had not only achieved independence, but it had also survived a second war with Britain, one which the United States provoked and which nearly caused New England to succeed from the union. And it had grown from 13 states, to 24.
The United States in 1825/26.
It's probably best remembered in the United States for being the date on which both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died. What's even more peculiar about that, however, is that while 90 year old John Adams was living in Quincy, Massachusetts and 83 year old Thomas Jefferson was in Monticello, Virginian, Adams knew when Jefferson died, and commented on it.
The two men were not very much alike temperamentally. Adams was a lawyer and a farmer who first entered the public's consciousness when he defended British troops in court following the Boston Massacre. He was truly one of those rare characters who loved the law, something made even better for him as he was a circuit riding lawyer who also loved horses. Active in farming his entire life, he was more closely matched Jefferson's yeoman ideal than Jefferson. Somewhat taciturn, he dreamed of being a soldier at the beginning of the Revolution, but his talents lay elsewhere and he never was.
His place in history is secure due to his being the second President of the United States, but by the 20th Century he was one who was very little focused on. His popularity enjoyed a resurgence, however, due to David McCullough 2001 book which is somewhat of a hagiography.
During his lifetime he had a falling out with Jefferson, who served as his Vice President, but they repaired their rift in later years.
If Adams was well known during his lifetime and the somewhat placed on the shelf, Thomas Jefferson has never been out of the public imagination. At the same time, probably no American President has had his character analyzed and reanalyzed as much.
From a Puritan background, Adams is problematic for modern American far right-wing Evangelist in that his religious views were unconventional. While a Congregationalist, he tended towards Universalist views and did not regard the Trinity as well founded. While we have argued here that the United States is a Protestant nation, figures like Adams cut against that argument. Adams was very much opposed to state established churches, for instance.
Like Adams, Jefferson was also a lawyer by training but what he really was by temperament and occupation was a planter. An absolute renaissance mind he dabbled in everything, including engineering and agronomy. One of the most influential figures of the founding generation, he served as the country's third President and was the first American President to engage in an undeclared war.
Regarded as a founding member of the Democratic Party, it was Jefferson's foresight that caused the U.S. to purchase Louisiana, converting the country from an Atlantic maritime power to a continental power. Arguably, no President is more responsible for what the US became than Jefferson, even though he did not see it becoming what it became. An Agrarian philosopher, he thought that it would take Americans 1,000 years to spread across the continent and that gave the country a 1,000 year chance at remaining a democracy.
Historians have been tortured by trying to define Jefferson's character ever since he died. He was clearly a genius but his personal life was often in grave conflict with his stated beliefs. Once hugely adored, in recent years his relationship with his sister in law and slave, Sally Hemings, has caused a great deal of debate on his personal morality.
North America with territories as claimed by the United States.
That the country had survived fifty years was somewhat amazing. The War of 1812, not well remembered in the United States, had been a US war of choice that had not been supported by New England and which the United States, in spite of what is commonly claimed, lost. The central seaboard South, which had favored the war, proved to retain a sizable population that retained strong sympathies with the United Kingdom. The US Army was twice very badly defeated by Canadian militias which gained ground in the Midwest, something also rarely noted. Only the logistical difficulties faced by the British and a high desertion rate of its troops kept the country from returning to British possession.
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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