What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 2. Care, lack of care, and an existential lack of focus.

 

Basically- Save the tomboys, let little boys paint their nails, don’t be a jerk to your kid because there are bad people/groomers in the world- protect your child and teach them they’re great the way they are and doing those things doesn’t mean they’re a different gender

Luka "Bunny" Hein.

Last Sunday I had a long item on community, and how we're lacking it, and need to restore it.

In that, I also noticed the operation of synchronicity.  And here I find it at work again.

Among the various bills pending in front of the state's legislature are two regarding the horrific abuse of minors in the name of "gender affirming care".  Chemical and surgical attacks on gender and surgery to "reassign", or at least partially remove, a person's gender characteristics is "care" in the same way that the Holocaust was a "solution".  It isn't, it demonstrates extreme moral depravity, and it's an absolutely insane rejection of nature.

Some of this topic, and that one, started off with various items I'd read or heard, which was then followed, by what I just noted here:

Well, I was in the bookstore for three days running, but that's another story.

And just before the trip to the bookstore, I became aware that somebody who I've known their entire life now identifies as transgendered, but there's something else, I suspect, going on there that I'll not deal with here.

I noted in that I'd post another one on this particular topic.

And then the very brave Luka "Bunny" Hein testified in front of the legislature, saying a lot of this stuff more bravely than I could have.

I so thoroughly killed off my younger self to become what I was, what I am, that I truly feel as though trying to find any part of her left in me would just feel like resurrecting someone else’s corpse 

I suppose that metaphor is appropriate with how Frankenstein-like I feel now

Luka Hein.

Hein isn't alone.  She's joined by Chloe Cole, whose name has been given to one of the proposed statutes, "Chloe's Law".  Cole, like Hein, is an activist against this horror, but she's gone further and is crusading generally against what we might call the perversion of youth.  If you want to know why there's so much furor over a certain book that keeps getting mentioned in regard to school libraries, look at her Twitter feed. She put the pages of the book up, complete with the male on male dick sucking images, which are the reason people are complaining about the book.¹

I've known little boys who played with dolls who grew up to be men's men, and I've known plenty of girls who took up what had been formerly regarded as very male activities, or male habits.  Indeed, ironically in our day and age, younger women who have retained highly traditional ideas, or perhaps I should say highly feminine behavior, have been ridiculed and belittled, while women as a whole have been pushed into entire roles that are not only traditionally male, but in some (limited) instances, such as combat soldiers are likely genetically so.  Up until just recently, however, it wasn't the case that the conclusion was made on some societal level that this must mean those boys want to be girls, or those girls want to be boys.  

Now that's being shoved down upon them.² 

What's really going on here?

We discussed some of that just the other day, but there are a number of things going on, the first of which is the complete rejection by the WASP class of the concept of nature and standards, which we touched on in our earlier essay.  That's left them a ship adrift, and subject to the winds of forces which very much have an agenda.

As we've already gone into it in some depth, we won't here. But basically to sum it up, up until after the Second World War the dominant American culture, the WASP culture, was rooted in a Protestant sense of Christianity, which means that it was rooted in a Christian world view.  Even people who were not Protestant Christians picked up large portions of this world view, given us the oddity of Protestantized Catholics and Protestantized Jew, as well as Protestantized Agnostics and even Protestantized Atheists. Humorist Garrison Keiller has a joke in one of his monologues about claimed non believing bachelor farmers going to Lutheran Easter services and noting that "it was a Lutheran God they didn't believe in", but there's something to that.

As part of that, or related to it, American society, and European society wasn't all that far removed from nature in a way up into the early 1960s.  You certainly can find examples of people who lived an urban life for generations by the 60s, but more often than not you'd tend to find some recent rural connection.  People's parents, or grandparents, had been farmers quite often.  And certainly in North America, as Gene Shepherd noted in one of his essays, even urban people retained outdoor activities to some degree if they had no farm connection.³

Why does this matter? Well, for a couple of reasons.  Starting in the 60s, this really started to breakdown.  The Spirit of 1968 essentially rejected all conventions, existential or otherwise, and started society on a path of radical self defined, "if you feel good, do it" type of thinking, inroads into which were already being advanced by the Playboy culture that started attacking the family, in essence, in 1953.  Things were well advanced in this direction by the time Tom Wolfe redefined the Boomers as "The Me Generation" in 1976, by which time the Greed Is Good ethos was also taking root.  By the late 1970s the WASP culture was so diluted it was already about individual self definition, as long as that also included monetary success.  Ties to the land were being lost, in spite of efforts to revive it in an unrealistic idealized sense, so lessons that are plain in nature, were gone.⁴ 

With the guardrails removed, it's no wonder where things ended up, but it didn't happen, of course, overnight.  Indeed, it really took until the Boomers children raised in the larger WASP culture started having their own, and passed on only a very diluted sense of anything whatsoever, with that mostly being "be yourself" and "be successful".  Nobody was a loser, everyone (up until you needed to make money) a winner, and whatever you wanted to do was okay.

Well, nature is nature, sometimes cruel, and that's not the way things work.

And hence we see the fork of a dilemma here, which is impacting the modern age, and the rise of transgenderism in confused, mostly female, adolescents, and confused males in their early 20s.

And that means the root is likely not the same.

The Confused Girls

Luka Hein describes this, having lived through it, about well as anyone can.  By and large, what we see with these girls, and that's what they are, is this.  They're mostly distressed female teenagers with ADHD, some of whom are Tomboys, who are pushed in this direction or find temporary refuge in the identifier.  Totally lacking a community, with parents who are about as firm as milk toast and who have no existential concept of anything, they head that way and then are pushed that way.⁵

In a society grounded in nature, let alone the existential, they'd get real support from their families, which would like be sports, the outdoors, and a community with external standards.  Instead, they get "support" which amounts to pushing them into mutilation.

The big root in this is the lack of a community, combined with an exposure to the perverse early on.  Girls this age don't want to be pushed into sex, let alone pushed into sex, which up until very recently was regarded as extremely weird.  Now they are.  They're pushing back and away. Getting away is the real desire.  Given enough time, and support, to realize that they don't have to yield to whatever weird conduct Reddit is boosting at the moment, or appearing on the cover of "teen" magazines, and they'd be okay.  Moreover, being somebody like Hein, whose Twitter photo is a baby rabbit sitting on a large caliber handgun, doesn't mean you have interest which mean you have to be a closet male.

Polish mountain climber Wanda Rutkiewicz, Tomboy extraordinaire, difficult personality, married woman, and a real woman.  Polish Olympian Maria Magdalena Andrejczyk provides another, very contemporary, example.

The Confused Young Men

Some of what we noted above applies to men as well, but I suspect that we have more often is a cry for attention, or the Laying Flat culture, or both, at work.

While it's not popular in any fashion to say it (although it is being said), it's always been hard to be a man.  This is not to say that it's been easy to be a woman, but frankly the burdens of life have traditionally fallen on men and women quite differently. The historical burden on women is indeed tied to their biology, bearing children is dangerous, or at least was up into the 20th Century, and hard on the body.  And up until the Government stepped in to be the husband of women who cared not to marry the father's of their children, having even one child tied a man to the father if she kept the child permanently as there was no other economic option for the most part.  People have tended to therefore look back and be wistful on the "patrimony".

Truth be known, however, male roles in societies have been blisteringly simple traditionally, if not always easy.  Men were expected to take a societally defense role, with their first obligations being to protect their families first, protect women and children in general secondly, and protect their nation last.  On that last one, you can put in tribe if you are thinking of a more aboriginal society.

Men were also expected to "provide" for their families.  When I was young, it was still the case that people would excuse some other real or imagined failure of a man by stating "he's a good provider".  This had all sorts of meanings in context.  In one hand, a man might have some real moral failings, perhaps he hit the bars a lot, or perhaps he dallied with other women, but if he made a good income and brought it principally home to his family, that was regarded as excusing a lot of other conduct.

Conversely, it was also used in the instances in which a man might otherwise be regarded as boring, plain looking, or not an otherwise romantically attractive person.  "He's a good provider" would be regarded as excusing those failings on one hand, or be used as a basis for suggesting to an unmarried woman why somebody should be regarded as a prospect for marriage.⁶

This goes back to the dawn of the species and reflects the original genetic dimorphism, physically and psychologically, that our species exhibits.  In modern industrial times it reflected itself in a number of interesting ways that directly made, if you will, men's life "hard".

Men working themselves to death wasn't really regarded as abnormal and in certain societies with thin resources, such as Finland, men died much earlier than women did. Men in general still generally die younger than women for that matter.  And dangerous work was a male role, including not only industrial work, but the most dangerous work of all, war.  Indeed, in spite of feminism and a general societal effort to suppress this, this is still largely true.

Much less true, however, is how society reflected this.  

Men were expected to respect women in a much more formal manner than they do now, where this is very much no longer the case.  They were expected to defend them, even in a situation in which they really didn't know them.  They were expected at some point to plan to make a living which "would support a family", or if they didn't feel up to that, and not all did by any means, to drop out of the family raising role for some other societally acceptable one.  They were expected to support families if they had one, including marrying a woman if they got her pregnant and were not married. And they were expected to bare arms if need be.

A good example of this in the early 20th Century is interestingly the Titanic.  A monument in Washington D.C. introduces to us the reason why on its front and back inscriptions:

TO THE BRAVE MEN WHO PERISHED IN THE TITANIC

APRIL 15 1912

THEY GAVE THEIR

LIVES THAT WOMEN

AND CHILDREN

MIGHT BE SAVED

ERECTED BY THE

WOMEN OF AMERICA

Back:

TO THE YOUNG AND THE OLD

THE RICH AND THE POOR

THE IGNORANT AND THE LEARNED

ALL

WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES NOBLY

TO SAVE WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The men on the Titanic, rich and poor, stepped aside so that women and children would live.  This was the traditional expectation, and they fully fulfilled it, stupid modern movies notwithstanding.

The reward, so to speak, for the role was in part simply genetic.  Husky's, the dog, are happy pulling sleds, which coyotes would not be.  Much of this just worked the same way.  Additionally, however, male life tended to result in male societies, formally and informally, going all the way back to tribal society.  Membership in them was part of being male, and amazingly universal.⁷ Indeed, it started off in childhood, with the first "band of brothers" usually being a "band of boys", and later some formal organization, like the Cub Scouts.

Now all of this is shattered.  A society that confused equality of the sexes, which existed much more than imagined prior to feminism, but which has been confused by the failure to understand how technology impacted that, with samism, has created a societal requirement that, save for professional sports, the physical differences between women and men are not to be mentioned.  Men have become shy about defending women the way they once did, least they receive a rebuke. Well-intentioned government subsidies combined with the society wide adoption of the "Playboy Ethic" has blinded society to the physical and psychological impacts of sex so that not only are men not really expected to take care of any children they cause, or the women who bare them, but they're actually expected to put out irrespective of the consequences.  This is so much the case that in a fairly recent notorious event in which somebody was unjustly killed, the press was full of his being a "good father", which in real terms simply meant that he'd fathered a lot of children, and not all by the same woman.  Not that he was acting as a parent.

Added to that, the traditional role of "defense" has seen female intrusion as something that must be accepted, although in reality it hasn't gone that far at the armati homines level.  

Male societies now are completely verboten. You can't do that.  The Boy Scouts must admit girls, and is the Scouts.  Men, basically, have no larger societal refuge from their male lives.

And the point of those lives is now warped. The "get a good job" pressure is still there, but point is missing. Getting a good job is supposed to occur, so you can buy toys.  In the WASP end of things, many of the upper middle class WASPs avoid children entirely.  Ultimately procreation, a reality of earlier years, is just regarded as recreation, and therefore the object of it on the giving and receiving end easily disposed of.

As feminist author Susan Faludi has put it, men have been "Stiffed".

That gets to this.

If young teenage women, on the cusp of becoming young women, have been freighted by the Reddit/Internet portrayal of their expectation that they serve as harem concubines for men in general, and have opted out through transgenderism, young men, a little past their early teen years, and perhaps fully past them but still in their very young 20s, have looked at this in some instances and looked for the door out.

In the past, as noted, there was an outdoor, even before much of this became so perverse.  In rural societies, bachelor farmers, who often weren't terribly good farmers, were a pretty common and accepted thing. Farming, and ranching, was good honorable work, and not getting married as part of that was more common than a person might suppose.

The unmarried industrial worker was also surprisingly common.  A sort of portrayal of this, combined with one man's desire to get married, is shown in the movie Marty.  Enlisted men in the Army, with the exception of senior NCO's, sometimes, tended to be unmarried.  Indeed, junior officers were usually unmarried, and in some militaries, such as the British Army and, while a bad example, the Imperial Russian Army, marriage was highly frowned upon. Moreover, certain male occupations tended to fall towards unmarried men by default, and some, such as the Catholic priesthood, required it.  Just as male society tended to accept the mentally off a bit into it's ranks in the larger group, it accepted unmarried men into it as well.⁹

With the rise of the societal acceptance of homosexuality as ostensibly normal, this dynamic completely changed. While there have always been people with same sex attraction, unmarried men were not assumed to be "gay", they were assumed to be unmarried.  Homosexual men did fall into the categories mentioned, as the wealth in society started to rise mid 20th Century and certain low paying occupations became increasingly societally unacceptable to obviously intelligent men, this increased. But the postwar economic boom, the Playboy culture onset, the Sexual Revolution, and Feminism completely destroyed what had been.

At some point, by the late 1980s, society would no longer let men who wanted to basically drop out of things, for whatever reason, do it.  A couple of decades prior society accepted that a guy could take an industrial job, for instance, and work it his entire life as a single man, with a single dwelling, and not be homosexual. By the late 80s, no longer.  And no longer was such a person really even allowed to peaceably dwell in that condition, but an absolute need for sex of some sort was presumed.  Such people were presumed to be homosexual and if they were younger, relationships they might not really want were forced on them.  The Friends and Big Bang Culture had arrived.

At the same time, the rise of the Me Generation meant that money for individual hedonistic purposes was now the point of being.  You needed a "career" so you could live well, even if living well really meant that everything was for entertainment, including other people.

How do you get out of that?

Well, "transitioning" will work.

Based at least on some observation, young men just getting ignored in their plight, with parents who aren't going to provide any guide rails, is a big factor in this.  They aren't really seeking to change genders, they're trying, ironically enough, to get back to the 1950s.

How does this end?

I'm usually pretty cautions about quoting Rod Dreher.  I like some of his stuff, and not so much others.  Be that as it may, he's spot on here:

There will be no justice until every damn doctor, hospital, and medical association responsible for this atrocity has been sued into the ground, and some of them imprisoned. Forgiveness? Yes, in time (though that's easy for me to say, as I have not suffered what this father has suffered) -- but only after full lustration, only after Nuremberg-like tribunals, only after the trials, only after utter and complete shame shattering all the luminaries and the institutions -- including the Democratic Party, the TV networks, the major newspapers -- which brought this evil onto the lives of American children and their families.

Those who did this to young women like her -- people like Dr. Gallagher above, who revels on social media in her success in slicing the healthy breasts off of women -- God willing, they will pay within the limits of the law for what they have done. As evil as the Tuskegee Experiment was, this is even more damaging, because it has created, and is creating daily, thousands of more victims.

He's exactly right.

Indeed, it's already happening. Chloe Cole has filed suit.  My prediction is that if she doesn't win, somebody soon after her will.  And like the Opioid lawsuits that are now so common, they'll drive this out of the societal field by litigation force and judgements.  In the meantime, the same society that was just lately pushing pills will be "oh my, oh my, how could this terrible of thing have happened.

But that won't solve the larger problem.

Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things.

Philippians; 3:19.

This pretty much defines where we are, even though's worshiping their stomachs and glorifying in their shame don't recognize it.   That has to change, and changing that is a tall order.

Because in order to do that, the lens, in society has to be turned back to me, towards the whole, and the existential.

Footnotes:

1.  I really haven't tracked the library debate much and have discounted it, but Cole's posting makes it plain how far things are gone.  The book clearly illustrates the author's descent into homosexual conduct and is frankly pornographic.  It shouldn't be in a school library, and it does amount, intentionally or not, to transgender propaganda.

At no point prior to our current era would there even been a debate on whether a book which graphically depicts sexual acts, let alone homosexual acts, should be available to be checked out of a public school library. The fact that there is such debate now is a sign of how far gone things really are, and additionally how entrenched certain interests are that not only want to defend their contra natural lifestyle, but actually promote it.

2. To state this bluntly, what people feared about the Obergefel decision has not only come to pass, but it's surpassed those fears.

This should not have surprised anyone.  Many years ago the homosexual book After the Ball, according to those who have read it, and I have not, not only argued for the normalization of homosexuality, but apparently for the dismantling of marriage and the traditional and long-established incidents of male/female relationships.  Presently, not only are those campaigning for the normalization of transgenderism, but campaigning for it, which is accompanied by foisting medial "treatments" upon the very young, and the accompanying large-scale transfers of cash that entails.  

This has happened before with other industries.  Think, for example, this:

3.  Shepherd noted in one of his books how the men in the Indiana city in which he grew up all subscribed to Field & Stream, even though they largely were not outdoorsmen.  It was a retained desire.

4.  One of the odder examples of this, very widespread, is the change in our relationship with animals.

Our species is one of those which has a symbiotic relationship with other ones.  We like to think that this is unique to us, but it isn't.  Many other examples of exist of birds, mammals and even fish that live in very close relationships with other species.  When this occurred with us, we do not know, but we do know that its ancient.  Dogs and modern wolves both evolved from a preexisting wolf species starting some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to the best evidence we currently have. That likely means it was longer ago than that.

Cats, in contrast, self domesticated some 7,000 or so years ago, according to our best estimates.

Cat eating a shellfish, depiction from an Egyptian tomb.

We have a proclivity for both domesticating animals, and accepting self domestication of animals, the truth being that such events are likely part and parcel of each other. Dogs descend from some opportunistic wolves that started hanging around us as we killed things they liked to eat.  Cats from wildcats that came on as we're dirty.  Both evolved thereafter in ways we like, becoming companions as well as servants.  But not just them, horses, pigs, sheep, cattle. . .the list is long.

As we've moved from the natural to the unnatural, we've forgotten that all domestic animals, no matter how cute and cuddly they are, are animals and were originally our servants. And as real children have become less common in WASP culture, the natural instinct to have an infant to take care of, or even adore, has transferred itself upon these unwilling subjects, making them "fur babies".

It's interesting in this context to watch the difference between people who really work with animals, and those who do not.  Just recently, for example, our four-year-old nephew stayed the night due to the snow, and was baffled why our hunting dog, who is a type of working dog but very much a companion, stayed the night indoors.  The ranch dogs do not. . . ever.  The ranch cats, friendly though they are, don't either.

5.  Both Hein and Cole have been reluctant to criticize their parents, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be criticized.  These strong daughters honor their parents by providing the backbone that their parents completely lacked.

Having said that, this illustrates the point I noted above.  These young women are roughly in their early 20s, which means they were born either in this century, or the tail end of the last one.  This means that their parents were likely born in the 70s or 80s, to parents who had come up in during the 60s.  So in effect they are the grandchildren of Boomers whose children were often raised with the ethos of the 60s and 70s, which combined would be there are no standards and your goal is to make money.  Additionally, their parents came up during the GOP's gutting of science funding in schools.  So they were born to parents whose grasp of the physical and metaphysical is weak, and whose principal world view is that it's nice to be nice to the nice.

6.  While citing to fiction is always dangerous, an interesting example of this are well depicted in the fiction of Jane Austen.  Not really intended for wide circulation, and limited to the concerns of her class, they nonetheless demonstrate the basic nature of male and female relationships across the ages, which is why they remain incredibly popular, particularly amongst young women who tend to see themselves in the characters.

A feature of this is the "provider" aspect.  Tending to focus on families made up of women, the unmarried women are the concerns of their parents and concerned themselves.  Finding a suitable match, to so speak, dominates the novels, with tension between that and romantic love.  An example in Pride and Prejudice, her best novel, is found in the character of Charlotte Lucas, the protagonist close friend, who opts to marry the Episcopal Churchman, William Collins, who is the epitome of boorish and overbearing, as she's 27 and has no other prospects, and his position is secure.

7.  An example of this given that at some point, it must have been in the 1950s and perhaps early 60s, my father was a member of the Knights of Columbus.

Now, my father was not a joiner by any means, but in the 50s and 60s a man would almost by default be a member of some organizations.  He was the President one year of his profession's statewide professional association, which means that he had been active in it.  And based on some recollections he related to me over the years, he'd been a member of the Knights when the Knights still had a downtown clubhouse.  So had two of my uncles, at least.  Maybe, and probably, all four of them were.

The Knights were a much different organization then, at least locally, than now.  Now I know that they act as a mutual benefit society, as I am sure they did then, and I note them most frequently for having pancake breakfasts at one of the parish churches every Sunday after the early morning Mass.  They may have done that then as well, but the big difference is that their clubhouse, like most men's clubs of the day, had a bar, and it could get a little rowdy.  The long serving Parish Priest of the era stopped in every night at closing time to make sure that they were actually closing, and their St. Patrick's Day parties were legendary.

Be that as it may, it's almost impossible to imagine my father in that setting. Probably after he married, or at least after I was born, he chose not to be, which was in keeping with his character.  Still, it's interesting that you pretty much had to be a member of some social club, probably male only, if you were a man prior to the 1970s.

I've never been a member of anything like that, really, although when I was first practicing law the county bar association was amazingly active and often met one evening, right after work, in a bar, ostensibly to present a CLE.  My enduring memory of one of those meetings was getting there in time, but just in time, and having to squeeze into the back row of table seating, only to have one notoriously rude female lawyer saying something like "so you think you can get around my fat ass?"

She later was subject to a scandal when her husband turned her over to the authorities for molesting him when he was a minor.

9.  This is reflected back to us by the culture of earlier eras in some odd ways.  

For instance, in cartoons, an unmarried male character was really common. Gasoline Alley's central protagonist was, at first, unmarried, with this changing as female readership was low.

New Zealand's new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, is. . .

 44 years old.

For the second time in a row, New Zealand has chosen a PM who was not old enough to have served in, or avoided serving in, the Vietnam War.

There's a lesson in here, US voters.

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 2.

October 11, 2022

I didn't plan on doing a second one of these before the election, but the existing one got too big, so here we are. . . again.

Hopefully this is the last one in this tread, in a fairly sad election year.

The primary election really demonstrated Wyoming's lurch to the hard right with two of the state wide candidates receiving Trump endorsements, along with Harriet Hageman's whose only real issue was her loyalty to Donald Trump.  This upcoming legislative session promises, quite frankly, to be absolutely frightening and in the Congress Wyoming goes from having a respected, but not disliked in GOP circles, figure to one who will be, at least at first, a reliable GOP nullity.  In the Secretary of State office, which is the central business office for the state, a person who, back door, is widely disrespected in many circles goes into the fall completely unopposed.

And that points out the collapse of the Democratic Party in the state.  There are some notable Democrats who should be capable, in a sane situation, of easily beating a candidate like Chuck Gray, but they aren't running.

The races:

U.S. House of Representatives

Republican Party

Harriet Hageman.  Anointed by Donald Trump to take out Liz Cheney, and a late adopter of the stolen election theory, Wyoming lawyer Hageman is the favorite, albeit one who is seemingly now fairly quiet.

On that, Hageman won't even debate her Democratic challenger, which is both arrogant and rude.

Democratic Party.

Lynette Gray Bull.  Running a second time, the Native American candidate can be regarded as a "progressive" who is emphasizing her commitment to democracy, in opposition to Hageman's adoption of the stolen election story.  Gray Bull has challenged Hageman to a debate, but Hageman has rudely declined, as noted above.

Governor

Republican

Mark Gordon.

Democrat

Theresa Livingston.

Secretary of State

Republican

Chuck Gray. Gray has only been in the state for a decade and is widely held in many circles to be temperamentally and professionally unqualified for this position.

Gray, who wasn't universally popular in the legislature, focused on bogus election concerns in his campaign.  He'll take over from an even more unqualified interim Secretary of State who assumed this position when Ed Buchanan resigned to take a judicial appointment.

Democrat

None, the Democrats have defaulted in a race in which many feel the worst Republican candidate in the State's history won the GOP race, nearly assuring that the same individual will take that position. 

State Treasurer

Republican

Curt Meier won the GOP nomination for a second term.

Democrat

None.

State Auditor

Kristi Racines took this race in the Republican primary, and she seems to be the only candidate in the state that everyone likes.

Superintendent of Public Instruction

This is the only race for statewide office which actually features two qualified candidates.

Republican

Megan Delgenfelder.

Democrat

Sergio Maldonado.

Proposed Amendments to the Wyoming Constitution.

This year features two proposed amendments to the Wyoming constitution.  I'm not sure where the first one came from, but the second one is part of the general geriatric drift in the country, in which the generation that warned us to never trust anyone over 30 doesn't trust anyone under 60.

Proposed Amendment A

This proposed amendment's ballot summary states:

The Wyoming Constitution allows the state to invest state funds in equities such as the stock of corporations, but does not allow the funds of counties, cities and other political subdivisions to be invested in equities. The adoption of this amendment would allow the funds of counties, cities and other political subdivisions to be invested in equities to the extent and in the manner the legislature may allow by law. Any law authorizing the investment of specified political subdivision funds in equities would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature

The actual text of the revised statute would read as follows:

Article 16, Section 6. Loan of credit; donations prohibited; investment of funds; works of internal improvement.

(a) Neither the state nor any county, city, township, town, school district, or any other political subdivision, shall:

(i) Loan or give its credit or make donations to or in aid of any individual, association or corporation, except for necessary support of the poor; or

(ii) Subscribe to or become the owner of the capital stock of any association or corporation, except that:

(A) Funds of public employee retirement systems and the permanent funds of the state of Wyoming may be invested in such stock under conditions the legislature prescribes;

(B) The legislature may provide by law for the investment of funds not designated as permanent funds of the state in the capital stock of any association or corporation and may designate which of these funds may be invested. The legislature may prescribe different investment conditions for each fund. Any legislation establishing or increasing the percentage of any fund that may be invested under this subparagraph shall be passed only by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of all the members of each of the two (2) houses voting separately.

(C) The legislature may provide by law for the investment of county, city, township, town, school district, or any other political subdivision's funds in the capital stock of any association or corporation and may designate which of these funds may be invested. The legislature may prescribe different investment conditions for each type and class of political subdivision and for each type of fund. Any legislation establishing or increasing the percentage of any fund that may be invested under this subparagraph shall be passed only by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of all the members of each of the two (2) houses voting separately.

(b) The state shall not engage in any work of internal improvement unless authorized by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the people.

I'm not really sure where this comes from, and I don't know what my opinion of it is.  The theory, I guess, would be that the legislature could provide for a means for local governments to invest their funds in hopes of getting higher yields than they do from banks, which would also mean that they'd have to be able to tolerate downturns in the market.

Proposed Amendment B.

The amendment summary that will appear on the ballot states:

Currently, the Wyoming Constitution requires Wyoming Supreme Court justices and district court judges to retire upon reaching the age of seventy (70). This amendment increases the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices and district court judges from age seventy (70) to age seventy-five (75).

The actual text of the amendment provides:

Article 5, Section 5. Voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges.

The sales pitch on this is that many highly qualified jurists are forcibly put out to pasture to do something else in their lives rather than remain on the bench until they're taken out in a body bag.

Okay, that's not quite how it's put, but that's basically it.  Added to that, if they die before the state has to pay them any retirement, the state saves some cash.

October 13, 2022

Wyoming's interim Secretary of State Karl Allred made good on his promise to address a non issue by sending letters out to County Clerk's asking them to remove drop boxes.  Only seven counties use them.

Prior Secretary of State Ed Buchanan, who abandoned the post he was elected to in order to be appointed a district court judge, thereby effectively disrupting the election leading to the GOP nomination and probable election of Chuck Gray, had encouraged their use due to COVID during the last election. Gray has promised to ban them.

Probably most people don't realize that drop boxes probably include the election machine outside of the clerk's door.  I've only seen one dropbox that was located outside of a courthouse rather than in it, but I haven't been to all of these locations.  Clerks are free to tell the unqualified to tell Allred to pound sand, and the Clerk of Laramie County, in her interview with the paper there, basically did, noting that her office already complied with the security requests that the never successfully elected Allred suggested in his cheery letter which acknowledged that prior elections had been successfully conducted.

Flag of Laramie County, Wyoming.  By Jens Pattke - http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-wy-la.html, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58499517

While time will tell, this probably foreshadows an upcoming potentially hostile relationship between Clerks and Gray, if Gray tries to build on his "stolen election" campaign to tell the elected clerks what they can do.

Tulsi Gabbard, who left the GOP officially two days ago, has already endorsed a Trump backed Washington candidate.

According to the Tribune, a council for Casper's city council had to be shut down from speaking at a recent school board meeting when he got a bit out of control.

October 13, cont.

Governor Ron DeSantis relaxed voting rules for the areas of Florida recently impacted by a hurricane.

It should be noted that the GOP Governor has been riffing off of Trump populists, who also feel that just such actions in regard to the 2020 election resulted in it being stolen.

Hmmm. . . .

October 14, 2022

A debate of candidates for the U.S. House, save for Harriet Hageman, occurred last night.

Hageman was castigated by the other candidates for her failure to appear, which is either rude, arrogant, or cowardly.  At least one candidate called her actions cowardly.

Hageman needs to be heard from on her failure to debate, and not with the excuse that she has other more effective means of communicating with Wyomingites. So far, more or less, her campaign has been limited to the fact that she supports now subpoenaed Donald J. Trump no matter what, whereas Liz Cheney has the courage of her convictions.  Other than having united herself to Trump no matter what, there's nothing really known to distinguish her from Cheney, but the voters really haven't heard much from her otherwise in a widespread way.  Public forum's she's attended to date have been principally populated with Hageman Fans/Cheney Haters, so that does not suffice.

October 14, 2022

Long serving (37 years) Deputy Secretary of State Karen Wheeler is leaving the office. She's the second prominent member of the Secretary of State's Office to leave, with the first one expressly leaving due to Chuck Gray coming into the office.

There have been rumor that resignations would be widespread.  It would have been anticipated that this would have commenced after Chuck Gray assumed office in January, if it was going to, but with Interim Sectary Allred being of a similar mind to Gray, it may start sooner.  If it does it will create the very election crisis that Gray and Allred claimed to be dedicated to avoiding, but because of their attacks on an institution which was not in trouble.

October 15, 2022

None of the clerks replying to Allred's request have agreed to comply with it, thereby making him 100% ineffective in that effort.  Of course, the effort was pointless to begin with, but it foreshadows a likely showdown between the county clerks and incoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who has no more authority over them than Allred does.

This is not a minor manner.  The clerks are rightfully telling Allred, and Gray by extension, to butt out.   This is likely to visit the courts in some fashion.

October 20, 2022

The Deputy Secretary of State Karen Wheeler and Election Division Director Kai Schon announced in front of the Corporations Committee of the Legislature last Friday that they're resigning after the November election.  While they termed it as being a good time to pursue other opportunities, it's pretty clear that neither wishes to serve under the likely winner, Chuck Gray, who based his campaign on fictional election security concerns.  It's no wonder that either would wish to serve under Gray, although it remains a wonder that Gray won the primary. A lack of a primary opponent means that Gray almost certainly will tragically win the office.

Both individuals are graciously remaining through the general election, and Schon indicated he'll reach out to the "Secretary Elect".

October 23, 2022

Liz Cheney appeared as a guest on Meet The Press today.  Relevant to the current election, she indicated that she's not voting for Harriet Hageman or Chuck Gray, and that anyone who is concerned about democracy, cannot.

Mary Peltola, Democratic Congressman from Alaska, received a number of Republican endorsements in that state for much the same reason.

October 25, 2022

The Natrona County School Board election is getting more attention than it normally would.

Superintendent for Public Instruction candidate Delgenfelder appeared at last night's meeting to support the district's right to make the decision to leave the book Gender Queer on the shelves, but to oppose the book itself, thereby basically taking both sides of the issue regarding the book. She suggested that it is pornographic.  The book has drawn the ire of three candidates who are members of something called "Moms For Liberty".

I'd never heard of the group, but the name is a poor one and a bit ironic in some ways. Basically they're a conservative, nationwide, organization that emphasizes parental control of schools and fears that schools engage in liberal indoctrination.  I'm not going to comment on that one way or another, but the "liberty" aspect of that shows the odd misuse of that word in our current culture.

The political right accuses, in essence, the political left of being "libertine", a word that I'd wager the majority of Americans are ignorant of nowadays.

The online etymology dictionary defines liberty as follows:

late 14c., "free choice, freedom to do as one chooses," also "freedom from the bondage of sin," from Old French liberte "freedom, liberty, free will" (14c., Modern French liberté), from Latin libertatem (nominative libertas) "civil or political freedom, condition of a free man; absence of restraint; permission," from liber "free" (see liberal (adj.)). At first of persons; of communities, "state of being free from arbitrary, despotic, or autocratic rule or control" is by late 15c.

The French notion of liberty is political equality; the English notion is personal independence. [William R. Greg, "France in January 1852" in "Miscellaneous Essays"]

Nautical sense of "leave of absence" is from 1758. The meaning "unrestrained action, conduct, or expression" (1550s) led to take liberties "go beyond the bounds of propriety" (1620s). The sense of "privileges by grant" (14c.) led to the sense of "a person's private land" (mid-15c.), within which certain special privileges may be exercised, which yielded in 18c. in both England and America a sense of "a district within a county but having its own justice of the peace," and also "a district adjacent to a city and in some degree under its municipal jurisdiction" (as in Northern Liberties of Philadelphia). Also compare Old French libertés "local rights, laws, taxes."

How much does the current use of the term, by anyone, reflect that?

That Delgenfelder would appear at the meeting is odd, frankly, as the political advantage of a Republican candidate appearing in this venue, when she seemingly doesn't need to, is an odd strategic choice.

October 26, 2022

Superintendant of Education Brian Schroeder appeared at an event earlier this week on the topic of sexualization of children in school, a topic related to the one noted immediately above.

Steve Bannon predicted that Anthony Fauci will be "hunted" following the mid terms, a particularly distrubing comment by Bannon who is out of the pokey following his contempt conviction pending appeal.

October 30, 2022

Harriet Hageman has an op ed in the Trib today in which she claims that 1) inflation, 2) high illegal immigration, 3) "record breaking human trafficing", 4) "record breaking drug running" and 5) high food costs (which would seem to be included in inflation), are all part of a "Democratic plan" to bring about a "leftist Utopia".

This places Hageman squarely in the really extreme category, rhetoric wise, and its fair to assume at this point that she probably believes what she's saying.

Hageman lashed out two days ago at University of Wyoming professors studying her tweats for "toxicity", stating:

I’ll tell you what’s ‘toxic’ . . . trying to freeze free speech with ominous warnings that ‘we’re watching you’ from pointy-headed college professors and the leftist corporate media.

Speaking of toxic, Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was attacked by an unhinged lunatic this past week.  This has of course resulted in discussion on whether the atmosphere created by the late Trump administration and Trumpism since then has contributed to this event, as the actor had bought into all sorts of conspiracies.

Well, let's take a look at just what's noted here.  From the Trib:

In the Biden administration, we are seeing the most dangerous, most destructive administration in U.S. history. President Biden and the radical Democrats are responsible for record-breaking inflation, record-breaking illegal immigration, record-breaking human trafficking, record-breaking drug running, and record-breaking energy and food costs.

It would be one thing if these calamities were happening by accident, though it would still be tragic, but what we are enduring is actually the Democrats’ plan. Their goal is to completely upend our economy, to force people to bend to their will and compel behavioral changes to establish their leftist Utopia. We need members of Congress who will expose these nonsensical policies and fight to return us to a commonsense path that will lead us back to liberty and prosperity.

There you have it, from Wyoming's almost certain next Congressman. President Biden's administration is the most dangerous and destructive in the nation's history, out to create a left wing Utopia through all sorts of intentional bad acts.

No responsibility for rhetoric?

November 7, 2022

Cheyenne Representative Dale Zwonitzer blasted the direction the state's legislture has been heading in an interview with the Laramie Boomerang., accusing newer idealogues of being unable to read or even think.

I've heard similiar comments from legislators privately or ones who stepped down, but Zwonitzer was extremely blunt for a candidate who is not only an incumbant, but running for reelection.

Last Prior Edition:

The 2022 Election Part XII. The General Election Race, Edition 1.

Why won't Harriet Hageman debate?

Quiet Quitting and Lying Flat. Looking at the trend with a long generational lens.

From The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The other day I got an email from some news source about "quiet quitting".  I only read the headline and the first paragraph, so I didn't inform myself on whatever it was about in any depth.

Then this headline hit the news sources:

Conan O'Brien's assistant who's 'quiet quit' her job for over a decade says it's okay to be 'mediocre' and find ways to do the 'minimal amount of work possible'

Now there's a blizzard of such stories, so many in fact that I saw a story about how many there are.  Another story, on NPR, put it this way:

Over the last several weeks, the concept of "quiet quitting" has exploded like a supernova across the media universe.

And they don't all apply to just the US.  Here's one about our supposed arch economic nemesis, the People's Republic of China:

Before ‘quiet quitting’ in the U.S., there was ‘lying flat’ in China. How the anti-work movement swept the world’s two largest economies

Apparently "quiet quitting" means two things.

To some people, it apparently means just doing as little as possible and not getting too invested in your job.

Conan O'Brien's longtime assistant just wrote a book on the topic, and claimed this status for herself, which is interesting.  In some ways, the book sort of recalls the 1967 film How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.¹

The other meaning is close, but not quite the same.  It means to do the amount you are paid for, and nothing else.  I.e. your own time, is your own time.  Again, the NPR article put it this way:

"You're still performing your duties, but you're no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it's not — and your worth as a person is not defined by your labor."

Indeed, both of these trends have the latter as their common theme.

So what is going on here?

I probably ought to put my usual peremptory rejection of the Stauss-Howe Generational Theory in here, as once again I'm citing to it, but there's something generational going on here, I'm pretty sure.  Interestingly, it really shows where the theory is lacking, vindicating, I suppose, my skepticism about it.  This trend is generational, but it doesn't fit into the "this generation, then that" categorization the Stauss Howe theorist back.  About the only thing that rings true on this development is that changes tend to follow a crisis.

Crisis you say?

Well, I could hand you a veritable cornucopia of crises.  COVID-19 provided a huge one, and perhaps just now we're really getting to learn what its long term societal impacts are. As one Lying Flat Chinese individual noted:

But when the pandemic hit, life as he knew it came to an abrupt stop. Like many other workers Covid made him reassess his priorities in life.

Chatting with artist friends back in his home town it struck him how although they had little money they always had something interesting to say about their day and what they were up to - while all he had was work.

From the BBC. 

Anyhow, what that would mean that they should have these sets of characteristics.

What I've observed before here is this regarding the generations that follow the Boomer, and the Boomers themselves.  The Boomers were the most fortunate generation, as a generation (individual stories can and often do run counter to a generation's story).  They were born into a post-war world in which wealth was abundant like never before. Their parents sent large numbers of them to college at a time when you could still get a good job with just a high school diploma.  The US was the dominant economic power.² 

Like spoiled children often do, in their late teen early adult stages, they rebelled against their parents, and did so spectacularly.  But also, like privileged children, they came back into the fold pretty quickly as a rule.

Again, huge disclaimer, this might apply to you if you were listening to Richie Havens at Woodstock, but very well might not if you were listening for the VC in Vietnam.  Individual circumstances vary.³

As a generation, however, the same generation that didn't want to trust anyone over 30, hit their 30s, and went into careers of all sorts.  Pretty soon, the same generation that was lampooning their parent's generation for being interested in "plastics" was looking for all sorts of new uses for it.

As a huge generational cohort, and one that stepped over their parent's heads economically pretty quickly, they've been enormously reluctant to let go of the reins.⁴   The ultimately irony is the same generation that criticized their parents, a damaged generation that had grown up on the Second World War and the Great Depression, they ultimately espoused much of the same ideals in the workplace, even though they damaged much of their parent's generation's ideals in other areas (more on that in a separate post coming up).

So, what occurred, it seems to me, is that the generations that followed the Boomers more closely resembled some prior generations rather than have bold new features.  Generations Jones, growing up in the boomers wake but also enduring the tail end of a crisis, the 1970s inflation, came to have much the same view that the Depression Era or World War Two era generation did about work, although they differed on many other thins. Better find some and keep it.  They simply endured the Boomers as they had little choice, knowing that they were going to be seated at the children's table forever, must like teenagers in their mid-teens who find themselves seated with ten-year-olds at the Thanksgiving Table. No, you can't choose your own cut of turkey.  No, you can't have a glass of wine.  Yes, you are getting gravy whether you like it or not.

The Millennial's, and the generation behind them, seem to me to be a lot like the generation that fought World War One, that being the supposed Lost Generation.  No matter how they are defined by demographers and social scientists, those generations, when looked at, generally came into their own young, as prior generations had, and had little concept of employer loyalty.  Indeed, the same generation in the teens and twenties was often strongly pro labor and strongly anti "fat cat".  

I've noted these two instances before, but regarding this generation, back with the Pritzker Military Library still had its excellent podcast, it had a very good podcast regarding that generation. An author had interviewed a large number of very elderly American Great War veterans, and their interviews had some striking similarities.  One veteran recalled how he'd graduated from high school, taken a job at a local insurance brokerage right after that, fought in the war, came home, went back to work for it, married and lived out his entire life right there, ultimately owning the brokerage.  Collectively the men interviewed, many of whom were from farm families, had the view that life was hard, sudden death was common, the war came, it was hard, and sudden death was common, got out of the service, and life was hard, with sudden death being common.

World War One was one more thing.

So how does this relate to quiet quitting and laying flat?

More than you might suppose, I'd submit.

Generation Jones silently concluded, almost from the moment that they turned 18, that life was hard, and they were going to have to work in the shadow of the Boomers, with the Boomer set to use up as much of everything absentmindedly and remaking the world in the plastic image of the time, as The Graduate lampooned.  Their opinions didn't matter, and never would.  They pretty much resigned themselves to dying at their desks, and now that they're nearly 60, they're still resigned to it, with that resignation reinforced by their fellows, set to die at their desks, and often by their spouses, who grew up in the same era and are afraid of any thought that a person would do anything other than keep on keeping on, until the last row is plowed, and the tired mule dies in harness.

And to make it all the better, the Great Inflation, the horror of the economic times when they entered the workforce, has returned, robbing them at the begging of their entry into the work force, and cheating them at the period that should be the end.

Millennials, X and Y are different, however.  And maybe in this way, they're looking back.

Romanticizing the past is really dangerous.  Past times were typically much less ideal than we'd like to imagine.  But things in fact can be lost.

Much of what we see today in general family trends is merely a return to the past.  Adult children who are not married living at home is a return to the past.  Even married children living in a parent's home is a return to the past.  Not really feeling like moving all over the country, and focusing on work to support your life, rather than it being your life, well. . . that is in some ways too.

Footnotes

1. I'm not going to read it, in part because Conan O'Brien isn't funny. Also, however, writing a book is a pretty ambitious endeavor and I somewhat doubt that the author had quietly quit, but who knows.

2.  This isn't intended to be a bash on the Baby Boomers post, and indeed, most of the post on this site that seem to, aren't meant to be.  What this post documents is trends.

There are no perfect generations, I'd note, including the "Greatest Generation" that has come to be untouchable.  If this were a much longer post, it'd go into that in some detail as well, as much of what we're seeing right now stems from their experiences, with lives shattered from the Great Depression and World War Two, and being unable to really put them back together thereafter.

Right here, however, is a good place to note this.  The parents of the Boomers were different to start with, as they had been through a crisis that dated back to 1929 and their lives had no chance of being normal until 1945. The impact on the personality of the generation was inevitable.

3. See 2.  This can't be emphasized enough.

When I was a National Guardsmen in the 1980s my unit was full of Vietnam Veterans who hadn't gone to college and who had instead gone to war.  Their histories didn't match that of the generational archetype in a lot of ways.

4.  A bizarre example of this was given to the country the other day when the Biden White House had James Taylor perform at the signing of a bill.  Taylor performed Fire and Rain.

Seriously?

Fire and Rain was released in 1970.  

In terms of years passed, this would be equivalent to having had Al Jolson sing That Haunting Melody at the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was the top hit of 1912.  For that matter, Taylor's era was closer to Glen Miller's than to the current one.  There's no way having Taylor signing at a White House event makes it relevant to most current Americans given that most were born after 1970s.

Besides, Taylor is overrated and boring.

King Charles III is the oldest person to ever assume the throne of the United Kingdom.

And yet, in spite of that, he's three years younger than Donald Trump and six years younger than Joe Biden.

Liz Truss has become the British Prime Minister.

She's 47 years old and an accountant by training.

Just noting, FWIW, that it really isn't necessary to elect people to higher office who first voted over fifty years ago.

2022 Wyoming Legislative Session. Part III. Okay, Boomer.

 

And yes, the phrase came from a legislature, albeit not ours.

A bill.

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. HJ0001

 

 

Supreme court justices and district judges-retirement.

 

Sponsored by: Joint Judiciary Interim Committee

 

 

A JOINT RESOLUTION

 

for

 

A JOINT RESOLUTION proposing to amend the Wyoming Constitution by amending the retirement age requirements for Wyoming supreme court justices and district court judges.

 

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WYOMING, two-thirds of all the members of the two houses, voting separately, concurring therein:

 

Section 1.  The following proposal to amend the Wyoming Constitution, Article 5, Section 5 is proposed for submission to the electors of the State of Wyoming at the next general election for approval or rejection to become valid as a part of the Constitution if ratified by a majority of the electors at the election:

 

Article 5, Section 5.  Voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges.

 

Subject to the further provisions of this section, the legislature shall provide for the voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges of the supreme court and district courts, and may do so for any other courts, on account of length of service, age and disability, and for their reassignment to active duty where and when needed. The office of every such justice and judge shall become vacant when the incumbent reaches the age of seventy (70) seventy-five (75) years, as the legislature may prescribe.; but, in the case of an incumbent whose term of office includes the effective date of this amendment, this provision shall not prevent him from serving the remainder of said term nor be applicable to him before his period or periods of judicial service shall have reached a total of six (6) years. The legislature may also provide for benefits for dependents of justices and judges.

 

Section 2.  That the Secretary of State shall endorse the following statement on the proposed amendment:

 

Currently, the Wyoming Constitution requires Wyoming Supreme Court justices and district court judges to retire upon reaching the age of seventy (70). This amendment increases the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices and district court judges from age seventy (70) to age seventy-five (75).

 

The Constitution also currently provides an exception to the mandatory requirement to retire upon reaching age seventy (70) for justices and judges who had not yet completed six (6) years of judicial service as of December 12, 1972. The proposed amendment would remove the now-obsolete six (6) year service guarantee.

Seriously?

At some point, why don't we just declare the Boomer Generation the only one that is qualified to run the government, the courts, and industry, so that they can have unchallenged control of absolutely everything until the last one passes at age 120.

Why does American Society hate youth with such burning passion?

This has already reached the absurd level. The retirement age in our society, for positions such as this, shouldn't be moved up.

It ought to be moved down.

Give the youngsters a break, man.