Vientiane fell to the Pathet Loa, bringing to an end the devided leadership of Laos and making it a fully communist country.
It effectively brought to an end the wars that broke out with end of World War Two over what type of governments former French Indochina would have.
Ironically, the new head of state was the French educated Communist Prince Souphanouvong. While we think of Communism as being inherently anti monarchical, in Indochina this was much less the case.
The big news this past week is that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came to prominence as one of the most notable and frankly disagreeable figures on the far right, and then who moved away from Trump, is leaving the 119th Congress in January after her pension vests.
What's exactly going on here is really unclear, but Green's transformation was remarkable. She used to come across like an ignorant howler monkey. If Eva_Vlaardingerbroek is the "Shieldmaiden of the far right", she was more like an buffoonish bouncer.
All of a sudden, however, she really came around to opposing Trump and in fact suddenly sounded like a different person completely. That suggests her antics were always an act put on for her constituents.
Given her change, she was drawing the direct opposition of Trump who was opposing her in next year's Congressional election. She already had stout opposition and may just be taking off because she doesn't want to spend the next year dealing with a pack of extremists. Her transformation did not cause her to be loved by moderates who were baffled on her transformation, save perhaps for Thomas Massie, whom Trump also hates. Trump is vicious to all who oppose him.
Well, as W. E. B. Dubois famously said, only a food never changes their mind.
The Seditionist accuses others of Sedition.
Oh horse shit. No "great legal scholars" are venturing that opinion. Pam Bondi probably would, if told to do so, but her sycophantry disqualifies her from being a great anything.
Donald Trump is a seditionist insurrectionist. He has not had his act of sedition excused by Congress, so he's actually ineligible to be President of the United States, and legally, isn't.
So that makes it all the more ironic and hypocritical that he's gone after a collection of Congressmen and Senators, all veterans, who reminded service members that they can, and must, obey an illegal order, under certain circumstances (they can't for instance, just assume an order may be illegal).
Some of this has actually already been happening. Resignations of senior officers, and some firings, have hit the news, usually with a "gosh, I wonder why this is happening" sort of commentary. It's happening because they're opposing illegal orders. It's also the case that National Guardsmen have started a backchannel internet communication discussion that includes the same topic.
Trump seems to be in a full blown panic about this, and probably for good reason. The US is currently murdering people on the seas in extrajudicial killings using military force that some regard as being on the edge of illegality. Trump has sent National Guardsmen to cities with Courts repeatedly intervening to stop the deployments. Trump is constantly rumored to be on the edge of using the Insurrection Act. But as time goes on he gets more and more erratic.
The majority of American people already disapprove of Trump's presidency. There's no national stomach at all for using the military against the population, but the administration has constantly flirted with it, and to some extent, already done it. The legality of Trump's actions on all levels are in the Courts. There's a reviving movement to impeach him, and his behind the scenes support may well be reaching the breaking point. We still don't know what was in the Epstein files, other than that rich and powerful men feel they can get away with whatever they want, including screwing teenage girls.
Declaring the politicians who spoke to be seditionist is absurd. They were no such thing. But it does paint a target on their backs. This was reprehensible.
It's also a sign of extreme desperation. We'll note that below.
Piggy
One of the increased signs of Trump's dementia is his inability to hold his tongue. Last week he called a reporter who asked a question he didn't like "Piggy". It was a female reporter.
He's demented.
Any other politicians in the US who said such a thing would be howled down to the point they'd offer an apology. Not Trump, of course. The fact that he hasn't been is evidence of what redneck trash this country has become. It's appalling.
It's also a sign that at this point Trump is so stressed by something that the wheels are really coming off of his psyche.
Articles of Surrender
One of the most notable things about Donald Trump is the degree to which he truly seems to abhor war.
Or does he?
It's actually a bit difficult to tell.
Regarding the Russo Ukrainian War, Trump has repeatedly issues statements that approach being homo erotic about the war and how it needs to end, due to all the "beautiful" young men it kills. At the same time, of course, he doesn't mind killing South American men very much.
Going back to that, however, Trump has being trying and promising to end the Russo Ukrainian War for well over a year now. He's flip flopped on positions, but one of those that he periodically occupies is acting as an agent for Russia. We're back at that point again.
The West promised to secure Ukraine's sovereignty when it gave up its nuclear weapons. The West has not fulfilled that promise fully. President Biden did a good job of helping Ukraine right from the onset, but didn't go as far as he should have. The various European nations have done far, far more than they've gotten credit for.
Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and although he may have convinced himself that he ended "eight wars", so far, he's not really ended any, if we consider that the only real claim he could have made to that effect was the war in Gaza, where Israel conducted a bombing raid yesterday. Most people who have really looked at the situation in Gaza don't expect the peace to hold permanently.
A real peace between Ukraine and Russia would be a major accomplishment, however. The thing is, however, that the "peace plan" that Trump presented was basically that Ukraine surrender. Indeed, it resembles the treaty that ended the Great War to some extent, in that Ukraine gives up land and limits the size of its army, which are two of the things Germany did at the end of World War One.
That worked out oh so well.
Of course, to realize that would require a sense of history, which Trump lacks. That the plan smacks of the Munich Accords also would require that.
So, back to a couple of things .Why is Trump the only Western leader outside of Viktor Orban who likes Putin? It isn't because he's on the populist right. Giorgia Meloni is on the populist right and she's not a Putin fan.
But Meloni also is very intelligent and not trying to suck up unwarranted praise all the time.
It might be just because the Russians know that Trump is demented and a narcissist, and they play into that. But it's hard to wonder if it isn't something else.
At any rate, member of the Administration are already attempting to walk the document back. That's interesting, as Trump seemed very solidly behind it. That suggest that there are some forces behind the scenes that can operate a bit independently of Trump.
Voting no on Socialism while Trump cozies up to it.
The House voted on a resolution to disapprove Socialism, which is just about as stupid of thing as they could done. What on earth was that exactly supposed to prove?
The GOP has really gone off the rails on this topic in that it now asserts routinely that Socialism=Communism. It doesn't. All Communists are Socialist, but not all Socialists are Communists, and those who maintain the opposite need to go back to school.
Ronald Reagan's big French buddy Francois Mitterrand was a Socialist. He was also completely democratic.
Of course, Donald Trump isn't completely democratic, but interestingly, some of his policies are socialist, and now he's had a fawning meeting with the new Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City. He declared that they had a lot of views in common.
Look for the GOP to now propose joining the Comintern.
Turning Point at CC
One of the things that the assassination of Charlie Kirk seemed to do was to boost the creation of Turning Point USA chapters. There's one at one of the local high schools now, and one at the local community college.
At that one, there was just an event at which the far right Secretary of State and a far right politician who wants less government but who is a major landlord, thereby occupying a role in society that only exists due the major support of the government, or else people would ignore your claim to property rights, spoke.
Wyoming's far right is sounding more and more irrelevant, so its interesting how these things are a bit behind the curve. Of course the Secretary of State, in order to try to keep ahead of the curve, has been sounding like a member of Greenpeace recently. I thought this would have generated some news, but it doesn't seem to.
The Indochinese Communist Party voluntarily dissolved itself "in order to destroy all misunderstanding, domestic and foreign, which can hinder the liberation of our country."
Flag of the Indochinese Communist Party
The party was the regions second Communist Party and had become a regional party, operating in French Indochina, by order of the Comintern. It's dissolution recognized the rise of regional nationalistic forces opposed to French rule, not all of which were Communist. Communism itself, of course, as a regional movement, did not disappear.
In Yugoslavia an election was held. Only Communist candidates appeared on the ballot.
The Independent Smallholders Party won the Hungarian parliamentary elections.
Contrary to what is commonly assumed, Eastern Europe didn't become Communist instantly upon the Soviet occupation of their territory. Where elections were allowed, often non Communist parties did well. It took some months for the Communists to effect what essentially amounted to coups in most places, with the exceptions being Poland and East Germany, where Communists were immediately installed, and the Baltic States, which were reabsorbed into the Soviet Empire.
The party revived after the fall of Communism, but only holds one seat currently.
Libyan rioters killed 121 Jews. British troops had to fire upon the rioters and arrested over 500.
The Sunday Parade magazine installment to newspapers across the country had a man and woman on the cover, goose hunting. This cover, posted under the fair use exception, shows how widely hunting remained part of the culture before the post war relentless advance of urbanization cut into it.
The man is carrying a Browning Auto 5 or the Remington equivalent of it. The device on the barrel of the shotgun on the right is a Cutts Compensator, which was designed to reduce recoil and in later versions allowed for changeable chokes.
It's noted on Reddit's 80 Years Ago sub that "Dick Winters finally embarks from Marseille to return to America." I wouldn't have regarded that as a "finally" item, really, which I suppose shows my failure to appreciate how rapid demobilization actually was.
I know I have an Ivy League education which is now supposed to make me ashamed.
But I am really tired of trying to argue with ignoramuses who don’t know anything about anything on this hellsite.
It will be a miracle if America survives this ascent of the ignorant.
Jon "Bowzer" Bauman.
We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ignoramus.
Bauman, famous for his portrayal as a deep voiced "greaser" in the band Sha Na Na, but in fact very well educated and now a Democratic political activist, has it right.
I've struggled to put together posts on this topic, unsuccessfully several times. Lots of people like me, Conservatives back in the day, and Social Conservatives still, keep wondering what happened, even while pretty much knowing what happened. We're horrified as the country rockets towards Petainism, or Francoism, or just outright stupidity, even while we wonder how on earth we went to a country in which homosexual propaganda is outright directed at the young.
Justice Kennedy. . . you are to blame for a lot of this.
Anyhow, one of the real stunning things of the Trump ascent has been the ascent of the ignorant.
And that's hard to take.
William F. Buckley, conservative intellectual. He wouldn't recognize, or approve of, the current Republican Party.
Conservatism used to be fairly intellectual. . .well it was fairly intellectual after the McCarthy era. In truth, it's always cycled between intellectualism and wild conspiratorial phantasy, just as the left has cycled between intellectualism and wild eye flaming goofballedry . To some extent, the poor nation is getting both of these now at the same time, but it's most prominent on the right.
Ronald Reagan and conservative George F. Will. Will left the Republican Party due to Trump. This is the same room that Trump has made look like a movie set designers version of a 19th Century New Orleans whorehouse.
A big part of Trump's intellectual, if you will, drive now comes from Dominionist who claim to be carrying a sword for Christianity but who don't grasp the mains intellect of it. It was Cardinal Newman who noted that to know history was to make a person a Catholic, and the Dominionist neither know history nor, for that matter, Christianity very well. Outside of those carrying a Pine Tree flag are those who are in the Petainist/Francoist Christian Nationalist movement, who at least aren't anti intellectual and are relatively intellectual themselves, when their beliefs are drilled into.
But beyond that are a great mass of people, including people now in power, who reflect blistering ignorance.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Anti vaxxers, who took their initial inspiration from a Playboy model whose only claim to fame was her boobs, and then having had a child (out of wedlock, of course), went into full bore ignorance during COVID, showing how low education in the country generally sunk. A person can oppose vaccines for themselves on philosophical, or even theological, grounds, but you can't oppose them on scientific grounds. That's just ignorant. Nonetheless, Trump has elevated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and "Dr. Oz" to positions of real power, when they ought to be in the waterfowl section of the local zoo. No serious nation would have either of these people in positions where they dealt with anything biological, even if that meant they were disqualified from being dog catchers.
Mehmet Oz.
Most of the cabinet officers we hear from on a frequent basis are total sycophants who sound like their on the losing end of a debate in a high school forensics team. Some sound like outright thugs. Our Ambassador to Israel is there as he wants to help bring about the Apocalypse.
Trump is outright weaponizing the Justice Department into the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and persecuting (not a typo) anyone who publicly opposed him. He's also sending the National Guard, converted into the Ersatzheer, into Republican cities illegally. While all this occurs a populace that would have previously flooded into the streets in protests sits on its hand believing that there must really Marxist, Communist, Fascists, Monarchist about to take over these cities and convert them into Communist Anarchist Monarchies.
It's really doubtful the nation can recover from this.
At a lower level, we're debating library books in the children's section which an adult nation ought to be able to sort out in about fifteen minutes. But perhaps a bigger example is the outright believe by people who believe that you ought to drink petroleum oil for breakfast that nuclear power is going to turn your housecat into the central character in 1950s Japanese horror film. In the meantime, a legitimate concern on the part of some, youth being exposed to pornography, has been captured by local members of the Freedom Caucus who are freely dumb in their local efforts to oppose it, going to public forums like school boards to act up.
The press rarely gets things 100% right, indeed a local big story that I know very well has recently amused me by how off the mark the reporting is, but the press has become a whipping boy for people with agendas on both sides. Chuck Gray, the Wyoming Secretary of State, is so enamoured of this that he can't pick up a lunch menu without claiming its the product of the "radical left wing media". The left accuses the press of ignoring Trump's mental decline, which is obvious to everyone, while the right basically seeks to totally shut down everything but the Völkischer Beobachter.
How we get out of this is really questionable, but education, and I mean public education, is going to have to be they key to a large extent. People need to learn science again.
I don't know how Americans became so uneducated.
I went through the local public school system which wasn't perfect, but frankly it was pretty good. My parents also took a real interest in how we were doing in school, and I think everyone's parents did. My own kids went through the same system after I had, and it had improved from good to really good.
Even then, there were some hints of things changing, mostly in the form of a handful of homeschooled showing up in sports and the rise of a series of private Christian schools and schools that were private Christian schools but which wouldn't admit that they were. Homeschooling was, and is, mostly marked here by what the parents don't want their children to learn. Some of those parents were really well educated themselves, but imports from elsewhere and often members of distinct minority religious communities. Outside of the Catholic school, and probably the Lutheran school, this was true of the Christian schools as well.
Following COVID, here locally, we got the influx of people from somewhere else who detested education even as they put their kids in schools One member of the legislature enrolled her two kids in the local high school noting how she was a "refugee" from Illinois, where she'd been on a school board. Now we have a Freedom Caucus legislator being such a problem at a school board meeting she had to be escorted away from the podium when you can bet that every member of the school board is, in fact, conservative.
What I think that tells me is that education elsewhere had declined, and we took in an influx of the uneducated, who in the sprit of the times, spread their views to elements ready to accept it locally.
Another thing is this.
Americans have always had a sort of populist anti intellectual streak, which is heavily ironic as the Founding Fathers of the nation were largely well to do elitists. Indeed, Jefferson figured the republic would not last, as ultimately it would yield from hard working yeoman farmers to a city living mob, dependent upon the government. He wasn't quite right, but he wasn't all that far off. We've had two prior New York born Presidents in the country, a highly educated but quite rural intellectual, a more urbane intellectual, and a real estate developing complete buffoon.
The essence of populism is that people have a native wisdom. The problem is, only an educated public does. Jefferson appreciated that, which is why he so heavily depended on the yeomanry to carry the republic. Family units, living independently, and frankly as somewhat genteel hardworking Christian farmers. He wasn't a yeoman himself. He did foresaw a day in which the republic would be much like it has become, a screaming mass of poorly educated people who were easily lead.
The "new people", German propaganda poster from 1938. In reality, most Germans never looked like this, just as right now most Americans don't really reflect the ideals of the New Apostolic Reformation.
Populist movements have in fact always been easily lead. The Nazis were able to do it with the German populace. The Communist were able to do it with the Russian people. The Fascists were able to do it with the Italians.
Manipulation of the masses by forces co opting populist movements is uniformly simply. The people are worshipped for having common sense, with their leader supposedly reflecting back their wisdom. Out side of that group, are the enemies, some vague, often faceless group, who are out to destroy the common people. For the Nazis, those horrific enemies were the Communists and the Jews, as well as Gypsies, Catholics, homosexuals, and Slavs.
For the Fascist, it was the Socialist, Communists and Slavs.
Soviet realist painting of female farm worker. Female farm workers were a favorite subject for Soviet propaganda posters. They were always smiling, and tended to be a little chunky.
For the Communists, the population is the workers, whose enemy are capitalists, those who own their own businesses, and people who believe in any kind of religion.
Chinese girls are a favorite of Chinese Communist posters
For Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, which has been co opted by the National Conservatives, it's anyone who isn't a Christian conservative.
Now, it's always the case that populist movements, after they get co opted, are shot through with hypocrisy The movements become vehicles for obtaining power and people at the top either never believed in the movement, or they regard themselves as exceptions. Nazism was virulently anti homosexual, but Ernst Röhm was a flaming homosexual. Goebbels had been a Communist. Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler all lived well, not as common people. English roundheads in the English Civil War may have fought for Calvinist morality, but they kept in some cases mistresses.
And so we have Trump and his followers. Trump probably has no real solid moral beliefs at all, and is a serial polygamist who was born obscenely wealthy and is getting richer in the office.
The problem with populism is that the bloom always comes off the rose. It turns out that native intelligence is often pretty ignorant. It always collapses in one way or another, often violently It's followers are left to pick up the pieces often having been exposed, by the end, as people who were enemies of the very movement they espoused.
It didn't have to be this way.
There were real reasons that the mass of people were discontent. Ignored on immigration and the erosion of an industrial base for decades, and watching the decay of moral values even as they joyously participated in that decay themselves, there was a real opportunity for a return to true conservatism. Even National Conservatives had the opportunity to participate in that, although they'd lost faith in democracy in general which caused them to choose not to.
When this flies apart, and it will, the reckoning is going to be huge. What will have been achieved is to anger those who became victims of it. The real number of populists in the country is fewer than supposed, and the true diehards fewer yet. Trump mostly won because Joe Biden chose to run in his dotage, which was obviously advanced, and which camouflaged Trump's mental decline. That can't be camouflaged any longer.
Nonetheless, like good fascists, the GOP is going to go down with Trump, even though it need not to. Mike Johnson is effectively releasing cheery news from the Führerbunker as the edifice of the Republic literally collapses around him. The Leader and his Favorite Architect plan a monumental building as an old one is destroyed. Miller and Bondi send their thugs out to hang supposed enemies from lamposts. Loyal reports from loyal lieutenants about not being able to hang on are ignored. Vance consults his Plans for the Fatherland book as if he has a political future.
It should be obvious where this is headed.
But it's easier just to blame it on Trump's style, or his amazing intelligence that we can't grasp, and just ignore it.
Women voted in a French election for the first time as France chose a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution for a Fourth Republic.
The elections were won by an alliance of the French Communist Party, the Christian Democratic Popular Republican Movement and the Socialist French Section of the Workers' International.
A disaster for French conservatives, the coalition saw the Communists take the most votes, drawing 26.08% and taking 148 seats, followed by the Republican Movement taking 24.91% and 141 seats. The Socialists took 23.77% and 134 seats. The pre war far left, the Radicals, took a beating, as did all the conservative parties, given that they had supported the government of Petain.
Basically, all the parties that had not participated in prewar French politics came out on top, which resulted in an alliance, albeit one that was temporarily very much left wing. Socialist Guy Alcide Mollet became the Prime Minister, with Communist Maurice Thorez the deputy prime minister.
The Fourth Republic would last until 1958, having seen, in spite of its hard left origins, the French effort to retain Indochina and much of its efforts to retain Algeria.
In Luxembourg the Christian Social People's Party won the general election.
The Detroit Tigers won the World Series, beating the Chicago Cubs 9 to 3 in game four.
The Chongqing Negotiations (Chinese: 重慶談判) came to an end.
The negotiations were between the Nationalist and the Communists and marked a resumption, after a twenty year gap, of efforts between the two contesting sides to resolve their differences. Both sides signed the Double Tenth Agreement at the end.
This day would be the last meeting between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong.
The Double Tenth Agreement provided:
The CCP recognized the KMT as the legitimate ruling party of China
All political parties within China were legalized.
The KMT and CCP would end the war between them.
The formation of a political consultative conference to discuss plans for state building with guaranteed representation of all political parties.
The abolition of CCP and KMT secret services.
Holding a general election to determine the next ruling party of China.
Putting an end to political tutelage within China.
Neither side really fully intended to honor the treaty and it is clear that the Communists did not.
The British completed the reoccupation of the Andaman Islands.
The Allied Control Council abolished the Nazi Party.
The Communist Party of Korea was founded, unfortunately.
Joseph Darnand, a French hero of the Great War, far right politician between the wars to the point of belonging to the La Cagoule terrorist organization, decorated French soldier again upon the German invasion of 1940 only to form the collaborationist militia, Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL) and become a member of the SS, was executed. He was 48.
CBS successfully conducted an experiment in color television.
The Eastern Orthodox Church granted autocephaly to the Polish Orthodox Church. The church has approximately 500,000 members today, of which 156,000 live in Poland.
Metropolitan Dionysius, head of the Polish Orthodox Church in 1925. He'd be removed due to Communist pressure in 1948.
The Escadrille Cherifienne, a French Foreign Legion unit composed of Americans, bombarded the city of Chefchaouen, considered a holy shrine of the Jebala people.
Syrian rebels attack Al-Musayfirah. The attack was at first successful but deployment of the French Air Force caused the rebels to withdraw.
The Republic of China's finance minister, Liao Zhongkai, was assassinated as he stepped out of his limousine for a meeting of the Kuomintang's Executive Committee. The Kuomintang had barred British and Japanese ships from entering or leaving Canton's harbor the day prior.
At the time, the Kuomintang was heavily left wing, with right wing elements, and veered towards a sort of Communism. It was backed by the USSR. It was also not fully in control of the country, and in fact, it never would be.
It's choice of allies and backers over the years would evolve enormously. After the right wing deposed the Communists, and the Chinese Civil War started, it continued to receive support, oddly, from the USSR, but also did from Germany, that support starting during the Weimar period and lasting right up until the Sino Japanese War, at which time the Germans withdrew it due to Japanese protests with some reluctance. It'd continue to be a friend of the Soviet Union's all the way through World War Two, but during the war itself, the United States became its major supporter.
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