Lex Anteinternet: The Vandals.: American democracy has several great weaknesses, the primary one being that Americans believe that we have a "two party system". W...
The direct vandalism today was done by a Washington area demolition company that's been business for over 80 years.
Not too surprisingly, nobody had really taken much note in them until today, but apparently today they received it to their surprise, in spades.
What to make of that?
Well, people are really angry.
They probably shouldn't have taken the job, but then, things shouldn't be taken out on them either.
Genuinely surprised is Donald Trump and his administration, which is trying to downplay the entire event.
The Trump illegitimate regime is losing popularity, and this likely won't help. Trump has always had abysmal approval ratings and its getting worse. Still, there's a year to go until the midterm elections and the GOP is hard at work trying to gerrymander their way into surviving them. If they don't, much of this will come go a screeching halt in January, 2027.
That's a long ways off.
When it comes, Trump needs to be held to account. Some of this appears to be illegal. Trump today has claimed he's entitled to $230,000,000 from the DOJ for being investigated. Here he's acting without legal authority, maybe, to the tune of $250,000,000. He should be sued for damages.
And this monstrosity will come down. The question is how rapidly. It would be best if it came down following January 2027, but it's more likely that it will be at the beginning of the next President's term. Chance are this giant garden shed won't even be all up by then.
Chances are also good that Trump will have died of old age, or be so demented by that time as to have no idea what's going on. People hoping for Trump to suffer retribution for his actions are going to be disappointed. He's already advancing into senility and will be quite far gone by the second half of his term, if he doesn't expire prior to that time.
The people who will have to suffer damage to their reputations will be people like Thune, Barrasso, and Johnson. That process is well under way.
Having been attached to this will be a stink that will not wash off for some, however. The architect in particular, who has done fine work in the past, will not look good. Donors like Google and Lockheed are going to have a lot of explaining to do as well. The utter corruption of the Corporate Capitalist system has been fully exposed, but that will be very hard to address.
American democracy has several great weaknesses, the primary one being that Americans believe that we have a "two party system".
We don't. We've just allowed two parties to take over and even fund their party elections, the primaries, with government funds, and tolerate the creation of bogus Congressional roles, such "Senate Majority Leader".
That needs reform desperately.
Amongst other weaknesses, however, is that Americans believe that we have a free enterprise economic system. We don't. We have corporate capitalism which allows businesses to escape the implications of their actions through the corporate business form.
Americans believe so strongly in "free enterprise" that they basically never vote with their wallets. They'll let businesses absolutely screw them and keep supporting them. On the rare occasions in which they actually will vote with their wallets and boycott a product it's when its something trivial and otherwise readily available, as in when sales of Bud Light dropped off over a transgender personality advertising it.
Lots of companies brew beer.
I note this as the illegitimate occupant of the White House, who has no real authority, is having the East Wing of the White House destroyed for on oversized garden shed, aka, a ballroom.
The White House doesn't need a ballroom. This isn't 1875. What Donald Trump wants is something overblown and gaudy, which is his brand, so that hopefully people remember him after he departs this Earth for his final reward. It's much the same motivation that has him angling for the Nobel Peace Prize. He's hoping to be remembered as a serious person, rather than as a real estate developer/serial polygamist.
Before we move on, we should note that the White House was originally designed as a house, and its been modified continually. Frankly, it ought to flat out stop. The constant monkeying with the structure only encourages this sort of baloney, and the building isn't getting any better looking over time. The East Wing only dates back to 1942 and to some degree was built as a cover for the construction of a bomb shelter underneath it. I suppose you can argue the bomb shelter was a good addition, but this just goes on and on.
The West Wing has been modified a great deal over time, but basically dates back to 1902. Theodore Roosevelt was President then, and his large family was busting at the seams of the White House.
This is different, however.
The West Wing was built as office space. Basically it's an office space annexation. The East Wing, as noted, was originally added to cover the construction of a bomb shelter. In later years, offices for correspondence, calligraphers and the social secretary were placed in the East Wing. It became the offices of the First Lady, with the First Lady requiring offices a fairly dubious proposition, quite frankly.
Trump wasn't supposed to really touch the East Wing Structure but a Volvo bucket is out destroying part of the facade now. The new structure will be, of course, a garden shed. . .um a ballroom.
Adding offices made sense. Adding a bomb shelter in 1942 made sense, after all, German rocket technology brought the ICBM within reach during World War Two and submarine launched aircraft actually did made land strikes on the West Coast during the war.
A ballroom, however, is a superficial structure for somebody who likes to entertain.
Trump is a superficial person who has been spending a lot of his time at the golf course.
Trump can't molest the structure unless the forces of capitalism dutifully line up to give him his dream. There was never any doubt that they would. So, have you wondered who the Vandal hired by the illegitimate occupant of the White House/Real Estate Developer/Serial Polygamist to design and construct a giant garden shed is?
Well, wonder no more:
President Trump Hires National Civic Art Society Board Member to Design New White House Ballroom
James McCrery, a classical architect who is a co-founder of the National Civic Art Society and a member of our Board of Directors, has been chosen by President Donald Trump to design a new ballroom at the White House.
According to the administration, “The White House State Ballroom will be a much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space, with a seated capacity of 650 people — a significant increase from the 200-person seated capacity in the East Room of the White House.”
McCrery, who is principal and founder of McCrery Architects in Washington, D.C., is associate professor at the Catholic University of America's School of Architecture. He was a commissioner on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, appointed by President Trump during his first term. McCrery served alongside NCAS President Justin Shubow, who was chairman of the Commission.
According to Shubow, “The National Civic Art Society is ecstatic that President Trump selected James McCrery to design the new White House ballroom. McCrery is one of the best architects in America, and he will honor and respect one of the most beloved classical buildings in the United States. Our organization has no doubt he’ll design a beautiful, fitting addition. It was President Theodore Roosevelt who personally chose Beaux-Arts architect Charles McKim to renovate the White House in his time. President Trump has made an equally wise decision in hiring McCrery.”
Announcement from the National Civil Art Society.
The National Civil Art Society is an organization that sponsors the view that public buildings should be in a classic style. It's a worthwhile goal, as there sure are a lot of ugly public buildings around. And the architects firm, McCrery Architects, based on their website, designs a lot of nice classical buildings. Frankly, choosing them was a really good move for a really bad building. Things could have been a lot worse.
So should we rejoice?
Well, no,
McCrery clearly has a lot of talent, as do the people on his staff, but this is still a huge oversized shed that looks ugly. No matter, it'll go down on his resume, unless it turns out to be a national embarrassment, in which case it will be removed from his resume.
He's designed some beautiful buildings, including the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville, TN. To go from that, to this . . what a waste.
The contractor for the abomination is heavy contractor Clark Construction, whose website declares "Building What Matters".
M'eh.
This structure doesn't matter.
It is, however, no doubt a major contract. Nobody could blame them for bidding on it, as that's what they do.
Engineering was done by AECOM, whose website declares; "AECOM is the trusted global infrastructure leader committed to delivering a better world.".
Well, this structure and the project makes the world just a little bit worse. No matter, it's probably a big contract.
Funding for the project is not public. The $200,000,000 to $250,000,0000 vandalization will cost is going to be born by Real Estate Developer Donald Trump and donors. Donors include Google, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, and NextEra Energy, but there are a lot more. Lockheed Martin is chipping in $10,000,000.
And there's the real question.
Blogger, which this is published on, is a Google thing. Google itself is darned near impossible to avoid, so even though I think they're chipping in is inexcusable, I'll continue to use Google's products, making me just as hypocritical as can be. I don't buy anything from Lockheed, and I'm not a shareholder, but if I was I'd write in and complain.
Why would outfits like these chip in? Well, they're making a bet that King Donald will love them, or at least not hate them. That's why. And frankly, if some future administration wanted to build to whack it down, which will occur, and put up a Trump Hall of Shame, they'd contribute to that.
The overall shame, however, is that this is public property. It's being vandalized. And nobody can apparently do anything about it.
When this era is over, the country needs major reform. Part of that reform needs to be an effort to reign the Oval Office into reason. Another part needs to be to kick the dead asses in Congress back to work and require them to do their actual jobs.
As a final note, Hitler was fond of monumental projects too, planning on building a monumental Berlin after the Second World War. Franco had the monumental Valley of the Fallen built, which at least commemorates something. Fascist Italy had a bunch of monumental structures built, and of course Mussolini was in power for quite some time. The Soviets had Lenin stuff in a mausoleum, the latter of which provides an idea.
Seeing as a modern White House doesn't need a ballroom, and given that Trump is really old and will pass from natural causes in the foreseeable future anyhow, perhaps AECOM can design this structure with hydraulic jacks and wheels so when that day comes this can just be jacked up, hooked up, and wheeled down the highway to Mar A Lago, which it can serve as the Trump Mausoleum and library (I serious doubt Trump has very many books that he's actually read, so the size won't be a problem). Probably Google, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, and NextEra Energy will be willing to pay for it.
The heavy duty, or at least heavy, premium American automobile of the golden age of American manufacturing which Trump seems to dream can be restored through tariffs.
In reality, capitalism is based on the idol of money. The lure of gain gradually destroys all social bonds. Capitalism devours itself. Little by little, the market destroys the value of work. Man becomes a piece of merchandise. He is no longer his own. The result is a new form of slavery, a system in which a large part of the population is dependent on a little caste.
Robert Cardinal Sarah.
I don't use the term "insanity" here lightly. Donald Trump is, I am convinced, rather dumb, obviously economically ignorant, and suffering from dementia. That nearly half the country could vote for him is simply beyond me, but they did, and the Republican Party, which was once the party of business has fallen right into line.
I suspect Americans voted for him as they have a poor grasp of economics themselves and see it only through what they've experienced in their own live and that of their immediate predecessors. Americans, came to view the economy sort of like Billy Joel expressed it in Allentown:
Well, we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line
Well, our fathers fought the second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we’re living here in Allentown
But the restlessness was handed down
And it’s getting very hard to stay
Well we’re waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
Chromium Steel
And we’re waiting here in Allentown
But they’ve taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face
Well, I’m living here in Allentown
And it’s hard to keep a good man down
But I won’t be getting up today
And it’s getting very hard to stay
And we’re living here in Allentown
Problem is, a sense of economic nostalgia evolving into economic rage doesn't grasp economics at all.
1968 Oldsmobile 442.
The US didn't become an economic and manufacturing giant because of something really special in the American system or some amazing native genius. It was the simple forces of economics that apply to corporate capitalism, combined with the Second World War, that caused it.
Largescale industry can really only be developed through capitalism or socialism. In Europe, it was capitalism that introduced it in the form of the Industrial Revolution. The US as a manufacturing titan came about as the Industrial Revolution came to the US late, not because we were better at it. The arrival of industrialism in the United Kingdom and a united Germany reflected the eras in which it occurred, and it occurred there first. Capitalism, in the end, just like socialism, seeks to serve itself, and in the case of capitalism it does it by viewing human beings as consumers, as opposed to the socialist workers, and trying to get them to consume as much as possible. It does that by seeking to make products faster and cheaper, amongst other strategies. Seeking efficiency products not only relentlessly advance, but manufacturing methods do as well. But manufacturing method require massive investment of capital. Once machines are in place, the economic incentive is to use them as long as they can be, given the investment. This means that new start ups always have the advantage in equipment, as they are starting with newer stuff.
Added to that, industrial Europe was destroyed during World War Two to a large extent. The Allied air forces bombed German industry into rubble. What was left after the war was taken back to the Soviet Union if was east of the Elbe. The Soviets themselves had suffered massive economic dislocation in of their factories, which were forcibly created in the Communist system. Japan's industry, which was real, but not nearly as advanced as the other major combatants, had been destroyed by the United States Army Air Force. The US, however, remained untouched and with a massive consumer demand built up due to the war and the Great Depression, US industry came roaring back and dominated the globe. . . right up until other countries could rebuilt, which very much started to show itself by the late 1960s.
One of the things nearly destroyed during the Second World War was Distributism. Distributism really came up as a line of thought as a "third way" between Communism and Capitalism during the 1920s and the Great Depression The tensions that came out of World War One saw the Socialist far left dramatically rise in power and take over the government of Russia, and briefly Hungary. They vied for control of Germany, and effectively did take over Poland in a modified form. Wars and struggles broke out in numerous places as Socialism sought to effect global change. In opposition to it rose not only fascism, but extreme capitalism. Distributists sought to effect a more sane and humane path. But when the war came they, and their intellectual fellow travelers the agrarians, put aside their efforts to support the war effort, which in the West meant unleashing capitalism in aid of the war effort. When the war ended, the economic crisis that it had brought about in Europe and the Cold War caused it to carry on, and very successfully, with Distributism being all but forgotten.
Capitalism, however, if not heavily regulated, results in the same end result as Socialism, single entity control of a machine that serves itself. In Socialism the machine claims to serve the workers, but claims to identify itself as the workers. In Capitalism the machine serves itself while claiming to serve "consumers". Neither system really cares about people at all.
American capitalism, particularly after Ronald Reagan, favored unyielding corporate growth, with one corporate machine eating another. As foreign economies rebuilt after the war, or started up after the war, corporations naturally moved manufacturing overseas, and the American government did not stop to do anything about it, believing fully in capitalism. To a certain extent, it favored manufacturing moving overseas as it conceived as many manufacturing jobs as less than ideal, and with some reason to look upon them that way, but just as the nation had a "cheap food" policy that hurt family farmers, it had a "cheap goods" policy that hurt the domestic manufacturing sector.
It can well be argued, and it has been, that something should have been done to arrest the relocation of American manufacturing. But in reality, that day was long ago. It was clear in the 1970s what was occuring, but the nation, lead by a much more sober and serious group of politicians, did not elect to intervene. Now, of course, we have Donald Trump, who doesn't seem to grasp even basic economics and who has made his money, it might be noted, in a highly anti distributist industry.
It's nearly impossible to define what Trump's economic vision is, as he probably doesn't have one. It seems to be ruled by nostalgia and a complete failure to grasp basic economic principals. Trump seems to look back on the econmy of his youth as a natural one, and believe that if tariffs are imposed all the old industries will come home. A very wealthy man, he doesn't seem to care what that does in terms of imposing his tariffs all at once, and if it creates a devastating trade war, so be it.
What Trump has no interest in, however, is disrupting capitalism. He's okay with whipping corporate entities into relocating into the US, or devastating the economy with the thesis he can make it happen, in what amounts to a type of autarky, but the basic evils of capitalism are of no interest to him.
Some closer to Trump envision something more sinister, it seems, a jump starting of an AI driving manufacturing economy. The concept is that tariffs will not only pressure industry to relocate here, but when it does, the next stage in the relentless Industrial Revolution evolutionary cycle will occur. Basically, baseball caps now made in Vietnam (none of them seem to be made here) will be made by robots in the US. Human laborers in Indochina, who depend on their jobs to feed their families, will be made unemployed while factories owning robots here in the US will profit.
It's immoral.
But what of Distributism?
Some of this probably should make any distributist rethink some basic propositions, as frankly Distributism, like Trump's tariff policy, would have the impact of making some things more expensive. Maybe many things. But the economic impact of it would be distinctly different.
Distributism policies, as long noted here, would take the corporations out of retail and agriculture. In agriculture, for the most part, that would not actually have a great impact on prices, save in certain instances (poultry for sure, perhaps pork). But it would also have a levelling effect. Virtually nobody would get fantastically wealthy in these industries, but many rank and file workers would get back up into the real middle class. Therefore the economic impact would be levelling, more than anything else.
Manufacturing, as we've noted here before, is a much tougher nut to crack. We've had some suggestions in the past, but frankly the lesson of the Trump tariffs is that they may frankly be unrealistic. We'd favor partial employee ownership of larger manufacturing entities. We could still argue for that, but it's tough for industries like the clothing manufacturing industry, whose workers are mostly overseas. I suppose it could still be argued for, however. A person here, however, can't be nativist. Economically, that is, it can't be argued that ownership in the corporation by Nguyen is any less important than Johnson, all things being equal.
It'd be pretty hard to effect, however, in countries whose economies are state run. Again, perhaps something could have been done about that, but it would have had to start in 1975, rather than 2025. Trump's policies, which don't fit this mold, are coming all at once, and fifty years too late. That might suggest, of course, that something could be done, but it would have to be done gradually.
If nothing else, however, Trump and his spastic policies might serve to give Distributism a little voice. Corporate Capitalism resulted in the situation Trump seeks to address. There's no reason to believe Corporate Capitalism is going to get us out of it. Distributists have been warning about capitalisms long term impacts for years. Socialism has demonstrated what its were, and that's what killed it.
Perhaps the Distributist Lament can get a little more heard.
Remember that some things aren’t for sale: Wyoming's congressional delegation should review the "Code of the West" before they sell off our public lands, attorney Ryan Semerad writes.
In reality, capitalism is based on the idol of money. The lure of gain gradually destroys all social bonds. Capitalism devours itself. Little by little, the market destroys the value of work. Man becomes a piece of merchandise. He is no longer his own. The result is a new form of slavery, a system in which a large part of the population is dependent on a little caste.
In reality, capitalism is based on the idol of money. The lure of gain gradually destroys all social bonds. Capitalism devours itself. Little by little, the market destroys the value of work. Man becomes a piece of merchandise. He is no longer his own. The result is a new form of slavery, a system in which a large part of the population is dependent on a little caste.
My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three
generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.
Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.
I suspect we're past that point now. We've elected a plutocrat who promised to be sort of what Franklin Roosevelt actually was, "a traitor to his class".
He won't be.
I suspect the rage will amplify.
So, what am I talking about?
I've never had any problems with my health insurance. People complain about their health insurance a lot, however.
I'm noting that here as the public reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been shocking. I've seen people I know and respect actually rejoice at his killing, and that reaction has been extremely widespread. I even saw somebody who is associated sort of with the insurance industry rejoice at the murder. Moreover, one of the most right wing people I know, who voted for Trump twice, made a positive comment about the killing.
Let that sink in. Far right, voted for Trump twice, and expressing some sympathy with the killer.
We find ourselves, at the same time that populists elected a childish billionaire who started nominating his billionaire buddies to government positions, in a situation in which a large section of the American population, including no doubt many of the people who voted the overaged rich child into office, pretty much cheering a terroristic assassination of a health insurance company CEO.
That it was an assassination, there can be no doubt. Expended shell casings were labeled "delay", "defend" and "depose", showing both a familiarity with civil litigation and the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.
What's that tell us?
Well it tells us in part that the social fabric in this country is a lot more ripped than we even began to imagine.
And it also tells us people attempting to read the populist weather vein might be reading it wrong. The rage might not be as fully right wing as imagined, as now we have Americans cheering the killing of an industry figure, something that Trump/Musk and his cronies love. That's its populist, however, there can be no doubt.
I can't recall things like this happening in the US, the targeted assassination of industry figures, since the 1920s, when it was a feature of real radicalism. We're entering a very bad space.
It suggest, however, that in spite of what Trump/Musk imagine, the country might actually be ready for some real economic reform as it received in the 1930s. Assassination is not tolerable, but it would appear some aspects of corporate capitalism may not be so much any longer either.
Indeed, the same right wing fellow I mentioned above proposed that all health insurance companies should be forced to be 100% policy holder owned, a highly distributist suggestion.
It is, I'd note, worth noting that plenty of current Trump backers from the far right are noting that the killer, Luigi Mangione, is from a well to do family. He is. This is supposed to tell us that this was a deluded left winger.
Deluded, no doubt. Left winter, maybe. But it's also worth noting that before Trump was the populist darling, Bernie Sanders was. Tulsi Gabbard, one time Democrat and now Trump nominee for security chief, was a Sanders supporter before she supported Trump.
Joseph Goebbels was a Communist before he was a Nazi.
Goebbels in 1916.
Lenin was from a middle class family, whose parents were monarchists. He was a lawyer, hardly a proletarian occupation.
The point of this? Well, just because Mangione was from a well to do family, who no doubt supported none of this, doesn't mean that he became a populist assassin as he was radicalized by the left. He personally may have been. We don't know. He may be just a nut.
But the widespread cheering for him, and it is widespread, shows that Hanauer may very well be very right.
Yesterday, I made some observations on Denver, and today I'm doing the same on Labor Day, 2024.
Of course, it's immediately notable that I'm making these the day after Labor Day, which was a day I didn't get off. I worked a full day.
I was the only one in the office.
Labor Day dates back to the mid 1800s as an alternative to the more radical observance that takes place in many countries on May 1. Still, nonetheless, early on, and for a long time, there was a fair amount of radicalism associated with it during that period when American labor organizations were on the rise. The day itself being a widely recognized day off is due to organized strikes on the day that started occurring during the 1930s, to the day as sort of a "last day of summer holiday" is fairly new.
Even now, when people think of it, they often think of the day in terms of the sort of burly industrial workers illustrated by Leyendecker and Rockwell in the 20s through the 40s. Otherwise, they sort of blandly associate it with celebrating work in general, which gets to the nature of work in general, something we sort of touched on yesterday with this entry;
Early on, Labor Day was something that acknowledged a sort of worthy heavy work. There are, in spite of what people may think, plenty of Americans that still are engaged in that sort of employment, although its s shadow of the number that once did. Wyoming has a lot of people who do, because of the extractive industries, which are in trouble. Ironically, therefore, its notable that Wyoming is an epicenter of anti union feelings, when generally those engaged in heavy labor are pro union. There's no good explanation for that.
When Labor Day became a big deal it pitted organized labor against capital, with it being acknowledged by both sides that if things went too far one way or another, it would likely result in a massive labor reaction that would veer towards socialism, or worse, communism. Real communism has never been a society wide strong movement in the United States, in spite of the current stupid commentary by those on the political far right side of the aisle accusing anyone they don't like, and any program they don't like, of being communistic. But radical economics did hae influence inside of unions, and communists were a factor in some of them, which was well known. As nobody really wanted what that might mean, compromise gave us the post war economic world of the 50s and 60s, which were sort of a golden age for American economics.
One of the unfortunate byproducts of the Cold War era, however, was the exportation of jobs overseas, which brought us the economic regime we have today, in part. The advance of technology brought us the other part. Today we find the American economy is massively dominated by capital in a way it hasn't been for a century, and its not a good thing at all. The will to do anything about it, or even understand it, seems to be wholly lacking. As a result of that, while an increasing number of Americans slave away at meaningless jobs in cubicles, and the former shopkeeper class now works at Walmart, we have the absolutely bizarre spectacle of two Titans of Capital, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, spewing out populist rhetoric. Populism, of course, always gets co-opted, but the working and middle class falling for rhetoric from the extremely wealthy is not only bizarre, its' downright dumb.
Indeed, in the modern American economy, having your own is increasingly difficult. Entire former occupations that were once local have been totally taken over by large corporations while agriculture has fallen to the rich in terms of land ownership, making entry into either field impossible. Fewer and fewer "my own" occupations exist, and those that do are under siege.
One of those is the law, of course. Lawyers, because of the nature of their work, still tend to own their practices, as to medical professionals of all types. The latter are falling into large corporate entities, however, and the move towards taking down state borders in the practice is causing the consolidation of certain types of practice in the former.
Not that "having your own" in the professions is necessarily a sort of Garden of Eden either, however.
Recently, interestingly, there's been a big movement in which young people are returning to the trades. That strikes me as a good thing, and perhaps the trades are finally getting the due they deserve. Ever since World War Two there's been the concept that absolutely everyone had to achieve white collar employment, which demeaned blue collar employment, and which put a lot of people in occupations and jobs they didn't care for. I suspect the small farm movement reflects that too.
Indeed, on my first day of practicing law as a lawyer over thirty years ago the long time office manager, who must have been having sort of a bad day, made a comment like "you might just end up wishing you had become a farmer". I remember thinking to myself even then that if that had been an option, that's exactly what I would have become. It wasn't, and it never has been for me, in the full time occupation sort of way.
Oh well.
And so we lost the garden to labor in, but we can make things better than they are. And we could do that by taking a much more distributist approach to things. Which seems nowhere near close to happening, a populist uprising notwithstanding.
In the early 1930s, upset with President Franklin Roosevelt, some well-placed businessmen plotted to stage a coup and install Gen. Smedley Butler (an odd choice, given Butler's independent character) as a fascist "President", or at least there's reason to believe they were plotting that.
Butler wouldn't go along with it, the plot failed, and FDR, thinking it best to not disrupt the country too much, never brought it out in the open, if in fact he did not outright encourage a general belief that the whole thing had never happened.
Read the recent Robert Reich item here:
The dangerous anti-democracy coalition
American oligarchs are joining Trump and his faux working-class MAGA movement
Reich reports that Elon Must recently held a billionair's gathering with the tehme of defeating Biden in which he invited; well. . . :
The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury secretary.
You've heard of Murdoch, of course, the Australian-born billionaire who owns newspapers of a certain type, and who has recently been opposed to Trump. And you've heard of Michael Milken. Certainly you've heard of South African born Elon Musk.1
Theil contributed $15,000,000 to J.D. Vance's campaign. And according to Reich:
Just 50 families have already injected more than $600 million into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of it is going to the Trump Republican Party.
One of the really remarkable things about politics of the last 20 or so years has been the swamping of right wing money into it. Rank and file Republicans like to worry about George Soros, but it's really the far right that's getting the cash infusion, and it's showing. It had a major impact on altering Wyoming's politics existentially, taking a more or less "leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone" brand of local Republicanism into far right populism. Early on, that was accompanied by lots of money. So much so that one frustrated legislature told me that those forces were "buying the legislature".
The amazing thing to see is the degree to which those who have radically different economic interests simply follow along. Again, the far right likes to call everyone else "sheep", but the analogy actually applies to Republican voters far more, who vote against their own economic interests continually.
The extremely wealthy can use their wealth in any number of ways. It's notable that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates weren't on the list. But that this occurs at all is troubling, to say the least.
Capitalist may believe that their interests serve everyone else, and that "freedom" would be "preserved" in an odd sort of Pax Capitalismus with a Cesarean Trump at its head, and probably as a figurehead but wealth, business and capital doesn't exist for the wealthy, but for everyone.
Panem et circenses, hatred and discontent, and false internal enemies. Sadly, the trend is well-developed, helped on by a Democratic Party beholding to its own blood soaked, genitals obsessed left wing.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Footnotes:
1. There's something concerning here that two really rich guys who were not impoverished when they showed up here are now messing with American politics in some fashion. This, as much as anything, shows how screwed up our immigration policies are. Both Murdoch and Musk ought not to be in the US at all.
2. It's getting impossible not to note the real rise of misogynistic commentary by the far right.
It's not the comments of people like Harrison Butker so much, as the comments by other characters on the far right. Butker's comments have to be taken from the position of traditional Catholic thought. In some Evangelical corners of Christianity, however, there are now some really beyond hostile views of the current roles of women. Interestingly, these same forces seemingly have no problems with conduct well outside the Christian norm, ranging from Trump's serial polygamy to Theil's homosexuality.
All this should give the far right pause. People like Trump, or Theil, clearly aren't in the traditional Christian camp if their own conduct is observed.
USS LST-289. Arrives in Dartmouth Harbor, England, after being torpedoed in the stern by German MTBs during an invasion rehearsal off Slapton Sands, England, on 28 April 1944.
We've already discussed Exercise Tiger and won't repeat what we set out there, but we will note that while focus on Tiger tends to be on the American loss of life it caused, it very well may have resulted in avoiding disaster at Operation Overlord.
In that sense, Exercise Tiger might be remembered justifiably in much the same way that the August 19,1942 Anglo Canadian raid at Dieppe can be, a disaster whose lessons were so significant that the event is sort of a Pyrrhic defeat. That is, the lessons learned as a result of the disasters encountered there were so significant they served to avoid them occurring on the beaches in Operation Overlord.
British family moving from the Slapton Sands area when it was being taken over as an exercise area.
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox died.
Knox had been ill for a while, having suffered a series of recent heart attacks. He was 70 years old at the time of his death.
A Bostonian, he's served with the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the "Rough Riders", during the Spanish American War. After the war he had been a newspaper editor in Michigan, where he was also the state chairman of the Republican Party. He supported Theodore Roosevelt for President in 1912 and had agitated for U.S. entry into the Great War, in which he went on to serve as an artilleryman. He was a Vice Presidential candidate in the 1936 campaign, on the Landon Knox ticket. Roosevelt appointed the Republican Secretary of the Navy in 1940. After Pearl Harbor, Knox, while still Secretary of the Navy, was shunted aside to a significant degree in favor of Admiral Ernest J. King, that being somewhat of a tradition by that time.
