I've been seeing some political signs around town that say "America First!"
Americans are, I'm afraid, notoriously dense about history, which doesn't keep Americans from citing it. Just recently, for example, as I already noted here, the state's populist's caucus cited Operation Overlord as a great example of American virtue and heroism, apparently dim to the fact that Operation Overlord was made necessary by the US sitting out the post 1917 to 1941 world stage's drama and that the heroism was made necessary by the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, not the US waking up one day to the dangers of fascism. Indeed, recently populist have been itching to repeat the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, in the form of Ukraine, so we can finally bring World War III about, although they are dim to the fact that's what they're doing.
Part of that late 1920s and 1930s drama that it seems people have forgotten (in addition to massive tariffs being a horrific idea, and that taxing upper income levels at the 50% rate actually doesn't hurt the economy at all) was the rise of the America First idea, which was that the US could just sit around and ignore the world, safely. It turned out, of course, that ships going down daily in the Atlantic, numerous people being murdered due to their religion, and the Japanese fleet proved that concept wrong in a bloody fashion, but populists are imagining it again. This time its pretty likely, I'd estimate in the 75% range, that the Chinese navy and ballistic missile force will prove that idea wrong again.
Anyhow, when I read "America First!" on political signs, having a sense of history, I can't help but recall this Woody Guthrie song:
While I suppose it's not directly applicable to the current times, I love the last line of the song:
And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks
They say "America First, " but they mean "America Next!"
It is so easy for those who have made their money under a given system to think that that system must be right and good. Conservatism is for that reason nothing else than a pseudo-philosophy for the prosperous. -
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, p. 81
This is going to hit California and Baja Mexico:
Coastal Watches/Warnings and Forecast Cone for Storm Center
Forecast Length*
Forecast Track Line
Initial Wind Field
* If the storm is forecast to dissipate within 3 days, the "Full Forecast" and "3 day" graphic will be identical
This graphic shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated. The dot indicating the forecast center location will be black if the cyclone is forecast to be tropical and will be white with a black outline if the cyclone is forecast to be extratropical. If only an L is displayed, then the system is forecast to be a remnant low. The letter inside the dot indicates the NHC's forecast intensity for that time:
D: Tropical Depression – wind speed less than 39 MPH S: Tropical Storm – wind speed between 39 MPH and 73 MPH H: Hurricane – wind speed between 74 MPH and 110 MPH M: Major Hurricane – wind speed greater than 110 MPH
NHC tropical cyclone forecast tracks can be in error. This forecast uncertainty is conveyed by the track forecast "cone", the solid white and stippled white areas in the graphic. The solid white area depicts the track forecast uncertainty for days 1-3 of the forecast, while the stippled area depicts the uncertainty on days 4-5. Historical data indicate that the entire 5-day path of the center of the tropical cyclone will remain within the cone about 60-70% of the time. To form the cone, a set of imaginary circles are placed along the forecast track at the 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 120 h positions, where the size of each circle is set so that it encloses 67% of the previous five years official forecast errors. The cone is then formed by smoothly connecting the area swept out by the set of circles.
It is also important to realize that a tropical cyclone is not a point. Their effects can span many hundreds of miles from the center. The area experiencing hurricane force (one-minute average wind speeds of at least 74 mph) and tropical storm force (one-minute average wind speeds of 39-73 mph) winds can extend well beyond the white areas shown enclosing the most likely track area of the center. The distribution of hurricane and tropical storm force winds in this tropical cyclone can be seen in the Wind History graphic linked above.
Considering the combined forecast uncertainties in track, intensity, and size, the chances that any particular location will experience winds of 34 kt (tropical storm force), 50 kt, or 64 kt (hurricane force) from this tropical cyclone are presented in tabular form for selected locations and forecast positions. This information is also presented in graphical form for the 34 kt, 50 kt, and 64 kt thresholds.
Interestingly, it's going to basically go right over Bakersfield, California, where this lifelong resident of that city is now serving in Congress:
Bakersfield is an oil town, and a rough one. Kevin McCarthy never worked in the oil patch, but he comes from blue collar roots. He graduated with a MBA from California State University, Bakersfield, in 1994, but was already in politics by that time. He's been a member of Congress since 2006.
Kern County is representative of a type of California we hardly think of. An oil and gas province in a state that we associate originally with agriculture, and then with. . . well itself. In some ways, McCarthy has been sort of an odd man out in his native state his entire life. And it must be frustrating, as he's a fourth generation Californian.
That sort of frustration has expressed itself in the nation's politics, on both the left and the right, for some time now. It's given rise to populism, and that populism has morphed into a form of fascism. Right McCarthy's party is struggling to see if it will be, after the nomination process is over, a conservative party, a populist party, or a fascist party. The fascist is in the lead, but he disregards of the law, a common trait for fascist leaders, may be his undoing. If it isn't, it risks being the undoing of American democracy.
The fact that "conservatives" no longer apply the broad scope of the word "conserve" may prove to lead to multiple undoings as well.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen hit on something that ought to be obvious to us all, but in fact It's something rarely occurs to anyone. Liberals, or progressives as they like to think of themselves, decry the rich as evil on the basis that bad things happen due to wealth and therefore that's evil, and the evil must know that it's evil. In truth, "It is so easy for those who have made their money under a given system to think that that system must be right and good.", and that doesn't apply only to those who make vast amounts of money in something. Regular workers feel the same way. Tobacco farmers probably almost never thought to themselves about how their product directly resulted in cancer, and if they did, they must have mentally excused it, for example.
Systems are big, and big systems have to be addressed at a big level. Germans who worked in factories that were converted to war products as the war went on weren't in the same position as Albert Speer. But attempting to sanctify your occupation and livelihood (something I'll note that is very common for lawyers to do) doesn't change the reality of things.
This the first tropical storm to hit California like this in 84 years, the last such one being 1939's El Cordonazo. That storm was not only the last one, it's the only one to have made landfall in California in the 20th Century. We've had the terrible fires in Maui. We've had terrible fires in Canada all summer long. The list goes on.
The GOP is loud on the Biden "radical climate agenda". At least one of our local Congressional representatives, I'd wager, can be guaranteed to come on Twitter or Fox News within the next 30 days and complain about "Biden's radical climate agenda". The truth is, humans should not dare alter the climate, and just because I make money from things that might doesn't mean that it can't happen.
After this storm hits Bakersfield, McCarthy, along with the other top GOP leaders, should go to Kern County and explain what they're doing. McCarthy is Catholic (one of our three Congress people was, but long since adopted a Protestant faith, the latter allowing divorce and remarriage, although I don't know that's the reason that he did so). In Catholic theology, lying about serious matters is a grave sin.
I note that as I feel that most of these people, although not all of them, know better. If they don't know better, they can be excused, I guess, for not knowing better, but they can't be for willfully blinding themselves to the truth, which certainly can and does occur.
We really don't need Kevin McCarthy blathering about Hunter Biden. There's no excuse for ignoring the real, and difficult, problems of the day. You can feed red meat to the dogs, but once that's gone, and they're starving, they'll be coming for you.
People cheered Mussolini when he marched on Rome. They then hung around and celebrated his demise 20 years later. Austrians lined the streets when Hitler visited after the Anschluß, and were pretty glad to see the Nazi go just a few years later.
People who faced reality and undertook to engage it are better remembered than those who buried their heads in the sand and tried to ignore it. People don't sing the praises of John C. Calhoun today. They're not going to sing the praises of Ted Cruz tomorrow. People remember Lindbergh for what he did heroically, not for being an American Firster before December 7, 1941.
There's an opportunity here to be grasped, but will it be. Of couse, is there even an audience for it. The Wyoming GOP has been busy censuring its members for not falling into the fantasy right. People like to hear that they're beautiful, that smoking won't hurt you, and that you can go ahead and have that fourth beer before you drive home.
It's a great article, with many good observations, but Drake is reading his audience, the Wyoming voter, incorrectly.
And that's a tragedy.
Drake is correct about this:
Hageman, by contrast, has now irrevocably tied her political identity to backing Trump’s lies about the “rigged” election. Even if she wanted to abandon him, Hageman cannot simply walk away. You don’t just shuck off those handcuffs when you get tired of wearing them.
No, Hageman has made the political calculation to double down on her support, even as many incumbent Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump after the GOP’s disastrous midterm election results. Our freshman congresswoman doesn’t have much choice.
And this:
She hitched her wagon to what she thought was the most powerful horse in the field. Now the world is quickly realizing her rotund orange steed was a jackass all along. And Cheney is leading it to the glue factory.
But will "Wyoming's" voters wake up, and will it make a difference to Hageman?
Not a chance.
Nor will it matter to her supporters.
Hageman will go on to be reliably right of the right for the rest of her political career. In her early 60s, she'll be there for at least 16 years, and have little influence on anything.
In the meantime, something occurred to me.
I have a friend who is a fanatic Hageman supporter. I have another who was a real Chuck Gray supporter.
What do they have in common?
Not from here, and not from any of the neighboring states.
They've imported their politics from the Midwest. . . and there's a lot of that going around. Indeed, we have a Secretary of State that hails from far away and his district has elected a replacement for him, in the legislature, that hails from Chicago.
Wyoming has always been a very odd state in this way. It has a highly transient population and a core of locals. But the locals themselves are divided between various regions. And generally, for some reason, people have tended to politically look to outsiders in the state, although our current era is a real exception. The Governor is actually a Wyomingite, as is Hageman (from the farm belt). Lummis is as well.
Indeed, Lummis may be the best political barometer of what that local core may be thinking. She dissed Trump when most did, made up to him in spades when things were clearly going the other way, and has dumped him like a hot rock now that he's sinking fast.
Drake is right, Hageman can't do that.
But Drake is wrong to think most Wyoming voters will. The real Hageman supporters, who include an interesting group who brought their political views from somewhere else, would rather ride the Trump jackass into oblivion than admit they've been grifted.
It's sort of self satisfying, really.
But it doesn't help address anything, however.
History will judge Hageman and Cheney by their choices, and Wyoming in general. Hageman and Wyoming are going to look pretty much the same way America Firsters did by 1945. But there were still a few America Firsters, even those who backed fascists, around in 1945. History judged them by forgetting them, and they did in fact become pretty irrelevant politically.
