Pioneer Myths, Imported Politicos. Public land sales, part 2. The historo-religious motivation for some (but certainly not all) of the backers.

Indians attacking a wagon train, Frederic Remington.

Recently we posted this, arguing that Mike Lee's background and religion informs his views on grabbing Federal lands in the West:

Lex Anteinternet: Pioneer Day. Pie & Beer Day. Public land sales, ...: Flag of the putative State of Deseret. Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact - religion and politics should not be...

In that, we noted this:

One of the Salt Lake newspapers has started a series on this, noting basically what I just did (I actually started this tread prior to the paper).  This doesn't cover it all, however.  It'd explain none of what we see in Wyoming backers like Harriet Hageman.  We'll look at that next.

Now we're taking that look.  More specifically, we're looking at the question of how Harriet Hageman, John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis can look at the people who voted them in, and say, basically, "screw you and the horse you rode in on".

We'll note first that we don't think the answer is the same for all three of them.

Let's start with Hageman.

Hageman, unlike Mike Lee, is not a Mormon. For that matter, neither are Barrasso or Lummis (although we'll note that Barrasso's religious history should inform our views on him.  Indeed, it's difficult to learn much about Hageman's religious background at all.  Sometimes she's listed as a "Protestant", which she no doubt is, but that doesn't mean much in this context, as that category includes such things as Anglo Catholics and Missouri Synod Lutherans, to liberal Episcopalians.  It also includes the vast numbers of various small Protestant churches that often ignore vast tracts of American Christianity while being either very conservative or very liberal on things they pay attention to.  Hageman never really says what her Protestantism is allied to, or where she attends church, or if she even does.  One biography says she's a "non denominational" Christian, which fits in well with the far right she's part of.  A slight clue of her views is that she's married to a Cheyenne lawyer who is much older than she is with nearly twenty years on her age and who had a prior marriage.  They have no children.  Those last two items pretty much take her out of the Apostolic Christianity category, and out of those Protestant churches that are close to Apostolic Christianity.

If Hageman has no children, what she has is the weak tea of a career, the thing feminist sold on women as the fulfillment of their testimony and which, just as with men, turned out to be a fraud foisted upon them, and which continues to be each year at high school graduation.  I'm not saying having a career is bad, but the focus on it as life defining is pretty much living a lie.

What Hageman also has is a history.

Harriet Maxine Hageman was born on a ranch outside of Fort Laramie, Wyoming, in the Wyobraska region of Wyoming, a farming dominated portion of the state that lacks public lands and which is unique in many ways.  Her father was  James Hageman, who served as a longtime Republican member of the Wyoming House of Representatives until his death in 2006.  She is a fourth generation Wyomingite, descending from James Clay Shaw, who moved to Wyoming Territory from Texas in 1878.  Harriet is one of six siblings.  Her brothers are Jim Hageman, Dewey Hageman, and Hugh Hageman,   Her sisters are Rachel Hageman Rubino and Julie Hageman.  Rachel Rubio passed away in 2024, shortly after Harriet was elected to Congress.  One of her kids is a lawyer. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was read at her funeral.¹

When Harriet ran for Governor, all three of her brothers, but not her sisters, were included in a video talking about how much she loved people, and how family was central to her.  Maybe all that is true, but here's where the story, from our prospective, gets a bit interesting.  

Hageman went to Casper College on an ag scholarship.  Indeed, she was at CC at the same time I was.  From there, like me, she went on to US, and ultimately on to law school.

She didn't go on to the ranch, or a career in agriculture.

I guess I didn't either, but my story is the story of early death, which intervenes with our desires and which determines our path in life more than we care to admit.  I don't know what Harriet's story is, but I would note that as a rule, from her generation, daughters of ranchers weren't going back to the family ranch after high school graduation.  It wasn't that they would not, it was that they could not.  Those that retained a role in agriculture did so through the result of marriage, often knowing men who were farmers and ranchers.  Indeed, off hand, the few daughters of farmers or ranchers I know who ended up in agriculture ended up in it in just that fashion.

Hugh Hageman ended up in ranching.  Dewey Hageman seems to has well.  Jim Hageman seems to have as well, or at least he's still in the Ft. Laramie area.  In the video, all three really look like ranchers.

When I was growing up, as noted, women didn't end up in ranching except through marriage.  Usually no effort was made whatsoever to try to incorporate them into a ranching future.  Quite a few times, quite frankly, they were expected to marry into a ranching family, but even by the 1980s things had turned to where that was no longer the case, and many started to move into other careers.  Law has always been a really popular career for ranchers and farmers to send their children into, as basically farmers and ranchers don't believe that lawyers work.  Indeed, for the most part, they don't believe people in town actually work either.

Jim Hageman, the father of the family, himself came from a large ranching family in Converse County.  In the near hagiographies written about his daughter, it's noted how he built the ranch from nothing, but frankly, that's just not true.  He was born in an era in which the younger sons of ranchers could still secure ranch land, with help through loans and loan programs.  Now that's impossible.

But that puts Harriet straight into the Wyoming agricultural family myth.

I love ranching, as anyone here can tell.  But I'm a realist, and perhaps a cynic.  My own family has been in the region since at least 1879.  Hageman's, apparently, since 1873.  People who came out here didn't do so because, usually, they were wealthy, although some did, which is another story.  Rest assured the progenitor of the Hageman family in Wyoming, a Clay, wasn't.

What they were, however, were beneficiaries of one of the largest social welfare programs in American history, maybe the largest.  In 1873 the genocidal aspect of that program was still well under way.  Basically, the US used the Army to remove, at gunpoint, the native inhabitants and corral them into largescale concentration camps and then gave the land away to those willing to engage in agriculture.  Most of those who took up the opportunity were dirt poor.   The program was kept up and running until 1932, at which time the Taylor Grazing Act was thankfully passed and the land preserved.  

Homesteading was very hard and difficult work and the majority of homesteads failed.  But still, it wasn't as if homesteaders came into "virgin" lands and tamed it with their own two bare hands.  The government removed or killed the original inhabitants.  In many areas, the government built large-scale irrigation projects for the new ones, at government expensive.  Homesteaders were admirable in many ways, but they weren't without assistance.

James Hageman was born in 1930, which means when he was first starting his ranching life, land was still affordable, something that ceased to be the case in the 1980s but which would still have somewhat been the case when Harriet's brothers were entering their adult lives.  Most men from ranch families tried to stay in ranching, if they could.  Most still do.  When you meet somebody who talks about having grown up on a ranch, but isn't in ranching, it's because the "ranch" was a 20 acre plot outside of town (not a ranch) or because they were left with no alternative.

What those left with no alternative were given, so that their older brothers could carry on without trouble, was what English "Remission Men" were given in earlier eras. . . something else to do.  In a lot of cases, that something else was a career in law or medicine.

That's what Harriet got.

Well, what does that tell us?

Well, quite a lot.  A girl from a ranching family who had nowhere to go, she had to marry into agriculture or pursue a career.  While I knew her when she was young, a bit, I don't know if there was every a ranching suitor.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if there had been, as the tobacco chewing young Hageman was quite cute and very ranchy.

Well, whatever the case was then, she ended up with what lawyers call a boutique firm and made it the focus of her life, seemingly.  She ultimately married a lawyer twenty years her senior, more or less, and they didn't have a family for whatever reason.  Frankly, it's sad.

She was also left with a heritage that focused on the frontier pioneer myth.

Lots of ranch families have that, and in their heart of hearts believe they should have been given their public lands they were leasing by right, even though they couldn't afford it then, and they couldn't now.  They often don't believe that other people really work, as they falsely believe that their own work is exceptionally hard.  Many believe, at least in the back of their minds, that they are the population of the state, and those who aren't in agriculture are only able to get by as agriculture supports them.

It's a false, but deeply held, narrative.

And hence Hageman's, in my view, desire to transfer public lands from the Federal Government.  In her  mind, I suspect, those lands somehow, magically, go write to farmers and ranchers who, in her view, probably, rightfully deserve them.

That's not, of course, what would happen.  It'd actually destroy ranching.  But being from the  Wyobraska wheat belt, where most agriculture is farming, and the land is already publicly held, she doesn't realize it.

And she hasn't been on the farm, really, since sometime in the late 1970s or early 80s, at least in the sense we're talking about.

The whole thing is really sad, quite frankly.  But personal grief shouldn't make for bad public policy.

What's the deal with Lummis and Barrasso.

Let's take Barrasso up first.

Barrasso isn't a Wyomingite and its an open question to what extent he identifies with the state or its people at all. He's from Reading Pennsylvania, and the son of an Italian American cement finisher who had left school after 9th grade and an Italian American mother.  He was born in 1952, putting him solidly in the Baby Boomer generation. The beneficiary of a Catholic education, he came here as a surgeon.  

He's nearly the archetypical Baby Boomer, and in more ways than meets the eye. But to start off with, he was the child of hardworking blue collar Italians from the Catholic Ghetto who were probably bound and determined not to see him suffer they way they had, so they aimed for the blue collar mid Century minority's dream. . . send your kids into a profession and they'd really be something.  Hence why there were so many Irish American, Italian American and Jewish American lawyers and doctors.

But a lot of that dream really went awry.

Dr. Barrasso and his first wife Linda had two children.  His ex wife has had a local public life, but remains pretty quiet about their marriage.  She remarried to a local lawyer.  

Barrasso remarried too to a widely loved local woman who had been to law school, but who was not barred. She's since tragically died of brain cancer.  I knew her before their marriage.

None of this is facially surprising or atypical, but in context, its' revealing.  Barrasso's early connection with Wyoming was professional.  That's why he came here.  And his early life has the appearance of being very Catholic. That is significant.

It's significant in that when Barrasso was growing up, Catholics did not divorce easily and bore the brunt of having done so for the rest of their lives.  In my family, back before World War One, or around it, one of my mother's uncles divorced and remarried and the relationship with the family was completely severed.  Apparently it was later somewhat repaired, but only somewhat.  Leaving a spouse and leaving the faith was a betrayal.  It's still not taken lightly by serious Catholics.

But seriousness was not what the Baby Boomer generation was about.  It was about "me".   The couple divorced, for some reason, and he remarried.  The whys of the topic were never raised in his political career as post 1970s, that isn't done.

It probably should be.

Barrasso has pursued his political career the way it seems he pursued his life.  He compromised.  He compromised on his faith (he's now a Presbyterian) and he's compromised in his political views.  He was a moderate, but now is Trump's lap dog.  His views change when they need to change.  Apparently here, he thought it better to side with Lee and stay as quite as possible.

What about Lummis?

I know very little about Cynthia Lummis, which frankly is fairly typical of Wyomingites.  He website says she was born on a Laramie County ranch, but Wikipedia just states Cheyenne.  Her father was active in Republican politics and she, a lawyer, was elected state treasurer at one point.  Like Hageman, she has an agricultural degree.  She's a Missouri Synod Lutheran, which puts her in a very conservative branch of the Lutheran faith, but that appears to have no bearing on this matter.

She tends to stay out of public view for the most part.

On the public lands matter, her connection with a southeast Wyoming ranch may indicate something. As noted here, there's very little public land in the eastern part of Wyoming.  But overall, we just don't know very much about her.  She's basically a legacy of an earlier era in Wyoming when we didn't feel it was important to really know too much about a person.

Maybe we should.

Footnotes:

1.  Blessings on the hand of women!

Angels guard its strength and grace,

In the palace, cottage, hovel,

Oh, no matter where the place;

Would that never storms assailed it,

Rainbows ever gently curled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Infancy's the tender fountain,

Power may with beauty flow,

Mother's first to guide the streamlets,

From them souls unresting grow—

Grow on for the good or evil,

Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Woman, how divine your mission

Here upon our natal sod!

Keep, oh, keep the young heart open

Always to the breath of God!

All true trophies of the ages

Are from mother-love impearled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Blessings on the hand of women!

Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,

And the sacred song is mingled

With the worship in the sky—

Mingles where no tempest darkens,

Rainbows evermore are hurled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

Related threads:

Pioneer Day. Pie & Beer Day. Public land sales, part 1. The historo-religious motivation for some (but certainly not all) of the backers.

Labels: 1838 Mormon War, 1840s, 1847, 1890s, 1896, Fr. Hugh Barbour, Harriet Hageman, Mormon, Pioneer Day, polygamy, religion, Second Great Awakening, State of Deseret, Third Great Awakening, Utah War, WASP

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If anyone of our three Congressional reps vote for this, they shouldn't receive our votes after this. 

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Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling thread.

Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.

How some lawyers apparently want the public to imagine them.

A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.

Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense.  I don't know him well, but I do know  him.

When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual.  I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it.  Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.

And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.

Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century.  It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period.  I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray.  Maybe none of is, which is why  the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.

Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.

Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time.  Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time.  I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time.  I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.

Affecting the image, however, miffs me.  It's fake.  If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing.  Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.

Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:

Come As You Are

I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:

A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .

If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.

And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about.  He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.  

Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here.  I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out.  Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course.  Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.

Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:

Spence's use of it, however, seem to have pushed into another sort of use, at least locally.

On this, it's interesting that the cowboy image can be coopted this way, whereas other "manly" professions genuinely cannot.  Fighters (boxers) have been a little bit, and I suppose that was an obviously one, but nobody, for example, talks about "whaling for justice".

Anyhow, dressing up like a cowboy for affect if you are not punching makes you a Rexall Ranger, not a cowboy.

While I'm at it, a Wyoming lawyer has affected the cowboy appearance for her columns on one of the local electronic journals.  In this case, she's gone for the a way too big hat big pushed way up on the forehead so you can see the face look, which to a working stockman looks absolutely absurd.  The same journal actually as a working rancher who wears his hat correctly as a columnist, and up until recently had another who did the same.

As a total side, if you notice in old cowboy portraits they often have their hats pushed to the back of their head, something moderns have wondered about, and for which they've even assumed that must be how they wore them.

No, the cameras were bad.

Isom Dart at Brown’s Hole Wyoming.

If they hadn't pushed them up some, their faces would have been in shadow

On identifies, I had a couple of odd encounters recently, one of which involves mental decline, and the other which involves gender attraction.

I'll start with the latter one first.  There's an older profession that I don't know well, but who've I've been familiar with for a very long time.  Somebody much more familiar with him than me dropped that he's a homosexual.  I was shocked.  Not because homosexuality in general shocks me, but because it was very well closeted for decades.  Indeed, he's married with children.

I suppose that might be the rule for people north of 70, the closteting, that is.

In retrospect, it pretty quickly made sense for some reason.  It just explained some personality quirks that I'd long noticed.  The point of posting it here, however, is that if it's true, he's lived a lifetime with sort of an interesting strained identity.

He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category.  Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well.  In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.

Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality.  I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was.  My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.

I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many.  Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it.  People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.

Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders.  I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch.  It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.

I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment.  But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so.  I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s.  For one thing, it's just sad.  Surely there was something else that interested them once.

Back to occupational identities.

One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page.  Minor.

I like M65 field jackets.  When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more.  The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.

I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued.  But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.

Well, time, etc.

A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones.  I just really like them.  I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself.  The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.

Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting.  Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one.  Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered.  Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.

Some of these have the US Army tape on them.  One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape.  I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings.  I'm not a paratrooper.  The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches.  I took everything off but the US Army tape.

For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes.  I can now sew those on.

Why?  I'm not sure.  I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason.  Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now.  Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.

Odd

Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it.  It won't have any patches.

I need to stop buying them.

As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer.  My old one is pretty much blown out now.  It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to.  Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.

Back to occupational identities for a moment.  It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today

People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young.  But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves.  I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.

Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests.  Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen.  Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't.  Some were dramatically so.  Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life.  I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew.  More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.

It isn't good.

Last Sunday I ran this item:

Pack Animals - the 🇩🇪 German Mountain Infantry Brigade

I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.

I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit.  Outdoors. . . animals, etc.  By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.

Hmmm. . . 

Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.

Have a nice day at work.  

Mehr Mensch sein,

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.: 

Looking for Nate Champion.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse;

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V.

The views of average Wyomingites, by a huge margin, are clear on public lands.  We want them to remain public.

And yet our Congressman voted to transfer 500,000 of FEderal land in Arizona and Utah over to private hands. It's clear that at least one of our Senators is okay with doing something similar in Teton County.

Wyomingites aren't in favor of this at all.  Indeed, one of the most rabid Trumpites I know actually expressed bewildered opposition to this.

So here's the problem, and the question.

Why are Wyomingites still supporting the people who support this?

Politics are varied and complicated.  The reasons that Wyoming has gone so far to the right in its recent politics are as well.  A lot of it has to do with social issues, abortion, transgenderism, immigration, and so on, and much of that, here, has to do with the death of the Democratic Party and there being, seemingly, no where else to go.

But at least on the local level there certainly is, and what Wyomingites are presently doing is not in their own best interest.

Much of what they're currently doing is, frankly, based on a host of lies.  Donald Trump was not the victim of a stolen election with Joe Biden won.  Joe Biden won.  Global warming is not a fib.  The long drift away from coal cannot be arrested.  The state's petroleum industry was never under any governmental assault (leases went up under Biden).  There is no war on the West.  The region's agricultural sector isn't under governmental attack, but rather under real estate developer attack.  The Democrats really weren't advancing gun control.  

But we've been bought off on a bunch of dramatic assertions designed to cause the rise up of what plaintiff's lawyers call our "lizard brain".

Well, now we have a whole host of legislators, many from out of state, who don't share local values at all, and a Congressional delegation that is more interested in supporting the agenda of the far right and its ostensible leader, a nearly 79 year old real estate developer suffering from dementia, than paying attention to what we actually believe.

And that's because that's exactly what we let them do.

In reality, those close to the inside know that John Barrasso doesn't believe  what he's supporting.  It's pretty clear from her past that Cynthia Lummis doesn't either.  Harriet Hageman, well she probably does, as she's a political family that has always had this set of views.  Having said that, and importantly, she intends to run for Governor next election and Chuck Gray, who is a Californian with very little connection to Wyoming, will run for House.

In the next election Wyomingites have a chance to make their views known, although they really need to start doing so right now.  That can have an impact.  John Barrasso, in the last election, adopted a whole host of new views he probably doesn't hold at all to hold off an attack from his right.  Lummis just quietly mostly didn't say what her views actually are the last time she ran, which she could do under the circumstances, and which leaves her room to maneuver.

Maneuvering will, it must be noted, need to occur.  In 2026 the House is going to be Democratic and the MAGA reign will be over, save for in Wyoming, where there's every reason to belive it will keep on keeping on.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus of its day, the Johnson County invaders.

Much of this, we'd note, is perfectly consistent with Wyoming's history.  Early on Wyoming sent a solidly Republican group of legislatures to our solon in  Cheyenne in spite of its association with large outside agricultural interest which were oppressing local interest.  That didn't end until the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which briefly swept the Republicans out of power, and brought Democrats into the legislature and which sent Governor Barber packing, although not until after he tried to actually remain as Governor a la Trump insurrection in a way.  That event, however, shows the electorate can react.  It also shows us that politicians can too, as Francis E. Warren managed to survive the event, career entact, when really she shouldn't have, by changing views.

And this is happening in Montana, which was a little in advance of Wyoming in tilting to the far right, right now.

Posted in

A new Montana majority defangs the far right

Just sitting and complaining "well that's not what we think" won't get much done.  

Politicians from any party ought to represent the views of their state.  They ought to also intelligently lead.  There's not much intelligence being manifested in the populist far right, which is mostly acting with a primitive response on a set of social issues combined with false beliefs, andy in Wyoming, with views they brought up from their own states which don't have much to do with us here.  We aren't Sweet Home Alabama.

But that won't happen unless Wyomingites educate themselves as to the truth, and what is truly going on, and how they're simply being fed raw meat for the dogs.  Until that occurs, we're going to go further into the abyss.

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Horse Shoeing

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Horse Shoeing: Thankfully, Chief is not lame this spring like he was last fall. That was worrisome. To prevent it from happening again, I think we better s...

 

Ranch Life in 1925

Saturday, March 13, 1875. Sheep.

M.E. Post was noted as having added five thousand sheep to his flock on Pole Creek by the Cheyenne Leader.

Last edition:

Friday, March 5, 1875. The death of Andrew Johnson.

Labels: 1860s, 1870s, 1875, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Reconstruction

Monday, March 13, 1775. The Westminster Massacre.

William French and Daniel Houghton were killed by a sheriff's posse, after a crowd occupied the Westminster Courthouse to protest the evictions of several poor farmers from their homes by judges and other officials from New York.

Some regard it as a battle of the American Revolution.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 5, 1775. The Boston Massacre.

Labels: 1700s, 1775, 1970s, British Army, Colonial North America, Court, Crime, John Adams, Kent State Incident, Massachusetts, Massachusetts (Boston), The Boston Massacre

Monday, March 2, 1925. Delta Air Lines. . .

Huff Daland Dusters Inc., a crop dusting company, which would ultimately become Delta Airlines, was founded.

The United States and Estonia signed an agreement for mutual most-favored-nation treatment in customs.

Last edition:

Monday, March 1, 1915. Locusts.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Aircraft, Dardanelles, Imperial Russian Navy, Ottoman Empire, Palestine

The Agrarian's Lament: Imports and Exports Coexist in Harmony

The Agrarian's Lament: Imports and Exports Coexist in Harmony:   Imports and Exports Coexist in Harmony

The Agrarian's Lament: Broken Promises: Over 30,000 Farmers Denied Funds

The Agrarian's Lament: Broken Promises: Over 30,000 Farmers Denied Funds:   Broken Promises: Over 30,000 Farmers Denied Funds

Sunday, February 1, 1925. Balto, the future King Zog, wild party in Laramie.

The final leg of the serum run began with Gunnar Kaasen setting out with lead dog Balto.  The Norwegian born Kaasen is the only musher who became famous due to the event.

The story made the first page of the Tribune:

A party in Laramie had apparently gotten out of control.

Ahmed Zog became the first President of Albania. He'd later be its first king. . . sort of a cautionary tale there.

Irish President W. T. Cosgrave appealed to the United States for food aid as the country's potato crop had been severely reduced due to excess rain.

Last edition:

Saturday, January 31, 1925. Leonhard Seppala and Togo.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Serum Run, Alaska, Animals, Art, Daily Living, Dogs, Kven people, Lapp people, tools and appliances, Transportation, Trucks

In Memoriam. Jimmy Carter.

James "Jimmy" Carter died on December 29. He was, of course, the 39th President of the United States.

I'm late to noting his passing and therefore everyone has already read tributes to him.  Even Donald Trump, to my surprise, lauded him and indicated he'd attend his funeral. Carter did, it might be noted, feel that the early criticism of Trump was unfair.  I don't know what he thought about Trump later.

I've listed to a lot of the audio obits and read a few, and what I'll note is that, as so often, they approach being hagiography and tend to omit somethings that should be of real interest.

I'll start with the biggest.  Carter was a failure as a President.  Coming into office with an American public sick of inflation (sound familiar?) and disgusted with the Republicans due to Watergate (sound unfamiliar?), and also fatigued by the Vietnam War, he really didn't accomplish much.  He proved incapable of tackling inflation, which would fall to Reagan, and the US military, probably not surprisingly, lapsed into a weakened state, which Reagan also would address.  

While he was not a success as a President, he was one in life, however.

Carter, it was often noted, was from a peanut farm in Georgia.  What's oddly less often mentioned is that he was a Naval Academy graduate and a submariner.  To enter the submarine service you must be an engineer and a genius.  He was both.  He may be the smartest man to occupy the office since the Second World War. 

He was certainly the most moral.

He was a dedicated Baptist Christian, which nobody could rationally doubt.  The degree of his devotion was such that its almost surprising that he was elected, particularly as he gave an interview to Playboy during the height of its influence, noting how deeply Christian he was.  After he lost his bid for reelection, he devoted his remaining long life to public service, often to the poor.

Like the law, politics is an occupation that frequently initiates people into compromising their morals and attracts a certain percentage of people who are willing to do so.  And power, as is so often noted, corrupts.  Carter was unique in that he was a deeply moral man and the office did not change him.