Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle denim, part of the ad campaign causing all the furor. The outfit itself is very 1970s retro, which is more than a little ironic in context. Given the commentary, this is posted with the fair use exception.
Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.
Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle ad.
Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad shows a cultural shift toward whiteness.
CNBC headline.
Q: Your administration has been very open about the fact that American women are not having enough babies. There was an ad this week. Sydney Sweeney, an actress, was in an ad for Blue Jeans. Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?
Rob Finnerty in an interview of Donald Trump.
First, let us state something plainly.
Sydney Sweeney is hot.
Way hot.
And she looks good in the American Eagle Jeans, which are sort of retro 1970s denim really.
Really good.
So why are people having a fit?
Well, it's a really interesting tour through the culture, really.
Using attractive women to sell clothing is nothing new. Shoot, using attractive women to sell anything, is in fact not new.
So what's the big deal.
Basically, when you get right down to it, the big deal is two things. First of all, Sweeney is white. Secondly, this is a return to an obvious sex sells approach to selling that we haven't seen since the early 1990s.
The peak of the sex sells approach was really the 1970s. Coincident with the rise of feminism was the absolute exploitation of women in advertising. Calvin Klein really went to town with Brooke Shields, who was sexualized so young in her career that her image, in the movie industry, was basically a near example of child pornography. But in advertising, he wasn't the only one. There were in fact advertisements that would outright shock most Americans now as they used young teenage girls in sexualized poses. It was repulsive.
That seemed to have run its course by the mid 1980s, but even then, in the 1990s, Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith modeled jeans, in her case Guess jeans.
The 90s, however, also saw the really fruity elements of the American come into cultural power, and a lot of that gave us, unfortunately, what we have today in terms of a massive right wing populist reaction. In modeling, left wing media masters insisted that models not be, if possible, smoking hot young women and that instead they should be culturally diverse, and in some cases, fat.
Now comes this, in the midst of a real swing to cultural conservatism, but not culturalism of the Patrick Dineen type, but of the Dukes of Hazzard fan type.
What Sweeney said, quite frankly, is actually completely true. Genes are passed down from parents to offspring. Genes in fact determine external traits like hair color and eye color. That is a fact.
And, more than we like to admit, they determine a massive amount of our personality traits. If you hang around a family gathering and don't find people who have the same deep interests as you do, the same sense of humor, etc., you might wish to check to see if you are in the right place. Sure, some of that might be due to environment, you are all from the same family, but some not. It's well known that many of the traits that impact our personalities are in fact genetic.
So what's up with the upset.
Well she's white, as are 60.5% of the American population. That is who you are trying to sell to much of the time. The liberal left just can't have that.
If the same clothing promotion was being done by Anok Yai, the left wouldn't be having a fit, the right would be, and for the exact same reason.
Which is exactly why, if I ran American Eagle, I'd have Anok Yai join in the campaign.
Of course, that isn't the only reason people are enjoying being upset. They're also upset as the ads openly focus on Sweeney's assets, including having the camera in the jean jacket ad focus on her boobs until she intervenes to instruct the viewer to look at her face.
Well, gentle reader, that portrays reality. All the feminist reactions in the world are never going to stop men from observing cleavage when its right there. We're wired that way, and for a reason.
Which brings us to the next point. In the right wing defense, Trump, in a friendly Fox interview, was asked the bizarre question "Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?" after the pronatalist views of the far right were referenced.
That was weird.
The US, and for that matter the entire Western World, does not have a demographic crisis like the far right pronatalist like to imagine. But the suggestion that men are going to look at Sydney Sweeney and suddenly feel aroused and go out and procreate is truly odd.
But even this does give us a glimpse into how modern Western society has really gone off the rails No man who wants to "transition" is ever going to look like Sydney Sweeney. Nor will any of them suffer from the Girl Flu every month. That's reality.
New Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom (HCB) Recreational Use Advisory
A harmful cyanobacteria bloom (HCB) recreational use BLOOM ADVISORY has been issued for LUCKEY POND near Lander. The Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) works cooperatively with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality to issue recreational use advisories when cyanobacterial cell densities or cyanotoxin concentrations pose a risk to people engaging in swimming or similar water contact activities in areas where cyanobacterial blooms occur. HCBs may also pose a health risk to animals. The WDH is working directly with resource management agencies to ensure signs are posted at the reservoir. Additional details regarding advisories and other HCB resources can be found at WyoHCBs.org.
Bloom advisories are issued when a HCB is present and cyanotoxins may be present. Toxin advisories are issued when cyanotoxins exceed recreational thresholds. Waterbodies under an advisory are not closed since HCBs may only be present in certain areas and conditions can change frequently. Advisories will remain in place until blooms have fully dissipated and cyanotoxin concentrations are below recreational use thresholds identified in Wyoming's HCB Action Plan.
If you encounter a potential HCB, the Wyoming Department of Health and the Wyoming Livestock Board recommend the following:
Avoid contact with water in the vicinity of the bloom, especially in areas where cyanobacteria are dense and form scums.
Do not ingest water from the bloom. Boiling, filtration and/or other treatments will not remove toxins.
Rinse fish with clean water and eat only the fillet portion.
Avoid water spray from the bloom.
Do not allow pets or livestock to drink water near the bloom, eat bloom material, or lick fur after contact.
If people, pets, or livestock come into contact with a bloom, rinse off with clean water as soon as possible and contact a doctor or veterinarian.
Questions about health effects and recreational use advisories can be directed to Courtney Tillman, Surveillance Epidemiologist, Wyoming Department of Health, at courtney.tillman@wyo.gov or (307) 777-5522. Questions regarding cyanobacteria sampling can be directed to Rachel Eyres, Recreational Water Quality Coordinator, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, at rachel.eyres@wyo.gov or (307) 777-2073.
Current HCB Recreational Use Advisories*
Waterbody Name
Observation or Sampling Location(s)
Advisory Type
Date Issued
Boysen Reservoir
Brannon Ramp
Bloom
6/23/2025
Grayrocks Reservoir
Southwest boat ramp
Bloom
5/13/2025
Little Soda Lake
Shore
Bloom
5/12/2025
Lower North Crow Reservoir
South Shore
Bloom
6/10/2025
Luckey Pond
Shore
Bloom
7/18/2025
Pathfinder Reservoir
Bishops Point Ramp
Bloom
7/15/2025
Viva Naughton Reservoir
East Ramp
Bloom
7/1/2025
Wheatland Reservoir #1
East Shore
Bloom
6/18/2025
Wheatland Reservoir #3
Northwest Ramp
Bloom
7/17/2025
Woodruff Narrows Reservoir
North Ramp
Bloom
7/1/2025
*There may be additional waterbodies with HCBs that WDH and WDEQ are not aware of. Please report potential blooms to WDEQ and HCB-related illnesses to WDH.
Yes, the 2024 Election hasn't even occured yet, and the 2026 one is clearly on, at least locally.
What we can tell for sure is that Chuck Gray is running for the office of Governor. He always was. The Secretary of State's office was very clearly a mere stepping stone in that plan, and the plan probably goes on from there. By coming to Wyoming, a state with a low population and a pronounced history of electing out of staters (we nearly have some sort of personality problem in that regard), it was a good bet, particularly when combined with his family money, although it was never a sure bet that he'd make the legislature and on from there. His plan requires, however, or at least he seemingly believes it requires, that he keep his name in the news, which he's worked hard to do, being involved in lawsuits, which is probably unconstitutional on his part, and releasing press releases that are extraordinary for his role, and for the invective language they contain. Mr. Gray has probably used the term "radical leftists" more in his two years of office than all of the prior Wyoming Secretaries of State combined.
This explains something that was otherwise a bit odd that we noticed recently, which was Secretary Gray's appearance in Casper in opposition of something he'd otherwise voted for:
Politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows. But how strange, nonetheless still surprises.
Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who rose to that position by pitching to the populist far right, which dominates the politics of the GOP right now, and which appears to be on the verge of bringing the party down nationally, has tacked in the wind in a very surprising direction. He appeared this past week at a meeting in Natrona County to oppose a proposed gravel pit project at the foot of Casper Mountain. He actually pitched for the upset residents in the area to mobilize and take their fight to Cheyenne, stating:
We have a very delicate ecosystem, the fragility up there, the fragility of the flows … the proximity to domestic water uses. All of those things should have led to a distinct treatment by the Office of State Lands, and that did not happen.
I am, frankly, stunned.
I frankly never really expected Mr. Gray to darken visage of the Pole Stripper monument on the east side of Casper's gateway, which you pass by on the road in from Cheyenne again, as he's not from here and doesn't really have a very strong connection to the state, although in fairness that connection would have been to Casper, where he was employed by his father's radio station and where he apparently spent the summers growing up (in an unhappy state of mind, according to one interview of somebody who knew him then). Gray pretty obviously always had a political career in mind and campaigned from the hard populist right from day one, attempting at first to displace a conservative house member unsuccessfully.
We have a post coming up which deals with the nature of populism, and how it in fact isn't conservatism. Gray was part of the populist rise in the GOP, even though his background would more naturally have put him in the conservative camp, not the populist one. But opportunity was found with populists, who now control the GOP state organization. The hallmark of populism, as we'll explore elsewhere, is a belief in the "wisdom of the people", which is its major failing, and why it tends to be heavily anti-scientific and very strongly vested in occupations that people are used to, but which are undergoing massive stress. In Wyoming that's expressed itself with a diehard attitude that nothing is going on with the climate and that fossil fuels will be, must have, and are going to dominate the state's economy forever. The months leading up to the recent legislative session, and the legislative session itself, demonstrated this with Governor Gordon taking criticism for supporting anything to address carbon concerns. Put fairly bluntly, because a large percentage of Wyoming's rank and file workers depend on the oil and gas industry, and things related to it, any questioning on anything tends to be taken as an attack on "the people".
Natrona County has had a gravel supply problem for quite a while and what the potential miner seeks to do here is basically, through the way our economy works, address it. There would be every reason to suspect that all of the state's politicians who ran to the far right would support this, and strongly. But they aren't.
The fact that Gray is not, and is citing environmental concerns, comes as a huge surprise. But as noted, given his background, he's probably considerably more conservative than populist, but has acted as politicians do, and taken aid and comfort where it was offered. Tara Nethercott ran as a conservative and lost for the same office.
But here's the thing.
That gravel is exactly the sort of thing that populists, if they're true to what they maintain they stand for, ought to support. It's good for industry, and the only reason to oppose the mining is that 1) it's in a bad place in terms of the neighbors and 2) legitimate environmental concerns, if there are any. But that's exactly the point. You really can't demand that the old ways carry on, until they're in your backyard.
Truth be known, given their nature, a lot of big environmental concerns are in everyone's backyard right now.
The old GOP would have recognized that nationally, and wouldn't be spending all sorts of time back in DC complaining about electric vehicles. And if people are comfortable with things being destructive elsewhere, they ought to be comfortable with them being destructive right here. If we aren't, we ought to be pretty careful about it everywhere.
There actually is some precedent for this, FWIW. A hallmark of Appalachian populism was the lamenting of what had happened to their region due to coal mining. John Prine's "Paradise" in some ways could be an environmental populist anthem.
Right about the time I noted this, Rod Miller, opinion writer for the Cowboy State Daily, wrote a satiric article on the same thing:
We have no idea, of course, who his opponent will be, unless it's Gordon, who is theoretically term limited out, but we already know from prior litigation that the restraint on his running again is unconstitutional. And Gordon clearly doesn't like Gray, a dislike that's not limited to him by any means. Gordon would have to challenge that in court, however, unless 1) a group of citizens does, and 2) the court ruled they'd have standing.
As voters, they should.
If that happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see Gordon run again, and to be asked to run again. While he was a candidate initially I worried about him, as he was further to the right on public lands issues than any candidate since Geringer, but he's actually acted as a very temperate Governor, something made difficult by 1) the intemperate level of our current politics, and 2) the occasional shortsightedness of the legislature.1
Anyhow, if you've ever had the occasion to see, Gordon and Gray together in an official setting, it's clear they don't get along. Indeed, on the State Land Board, it's clear that Gordon isn't the only one that's not keen on Gray. Gray for his part reacts back, as he did recently when he sent an unprecedented lengthy letter to the Governor on his vetoes.
Gray, like Donald Trump, has some feverish admirers.2 Indeed, this seems to be a hallmark of the populist right. They not only run candidates, but they develop personality cults routinely.
Rod Miller, again, in a recent column noted a real problem that Gray has. As, so far, they haven't really been able to advance their agenda without the help of conservatives, they have an advantage there as they always portray themselves as besieged by the numerous barbarians, the last legionnaire on Hadrian's Wall. Trump has actually, at a national level, worked to keep that status by ordering his party to defeat immigration legislation that was probably a once in a lifetime conservative opportunity.
Anyhow, as noted, Rod Miller recently noted a problem that Gray has. He's not married.
Indeed, without going into it, there was a figure in Wyoming decades ago whose marriage was questioned by whisperers on the basis that they believed he married just to end the speculation on why he wasn't married. The marriage lasted a very long time, so presumably the rumors were without foundation, but there were questions, which is interesting and shows, I guess, how people's minds can work.
Another way to look at it, I supposed, was prior to Trump if a person was a conservative people would ask about things that appeared to be contrary to public statements about conservatism. Not being married, for a conservative, was regarded as odd, and for that matter there are still people who whisper about Lindsey Graham, while nobody seems to worry about AOC being shacked up with her boyfriend or whatever is going on with Krysten Sinema.
And then there's Gray's age. It will make people suspicious of him at some point, or people will at least take note. Indeed, some of his critics from the left already have, but in a really juvenile way.
Actually determining Gray's age is a little difficult, and indeed, knowing anything about his background actually is. But Cowboy State Daily, a conservative organ, managed to reveal about as much as we know.
Gray was born in California and raised outside of Los Angeles. According to somebody close to the family, or who was, he was homeschooled by his mother.3He felt uncomfortable about his birthplace, and stated in the campaign
I come from a divorced family, like many people in our country. A judge said I was to live in a different place, but my dad lived here, built a business here, and I spent my summers here during the time that was allocated by the judge.
According to the same source, he didn't seem all that happy in Casper, Wyoming as a kid, but the circumstances could well explain that. The same source, who probably isn't a family friend anymore, reported to the Cowboy that Gray's father had a focus on the family owned radio station impacting legislation at a national level. Photos have been circulated of the father with President Reagan.
Gray graduated from high school in 2008 and the respected University of Pennsylvanian in 2012, which makes it all the more remarkable that he's been a success in Wyoming politics.4 If we assume the norm about graduation ages, he would have been 22 in 2012, which would make him 34 now.
In Wyoming, the average age for men to marry is 27.8 years on average, while for women it's 25.6. Gray's now notably over the median age, but that is a median. I was over it too when I married at age 31. My wife was below the female one. That's how averages work.
My parents, I'd note, were both over the median, although I don't know it with precision for the 1950s. In the 50s, the marriage age was actually at an unusual low. My father was 29, and my mother 32.
So his age, in the abstract, doesn't really mean anything overall, although it might personality wise.
As has been noted elsewhere on this site, Gray is a Roman Catholic and indeed I've seen him occasionally at Mass, although I would never have seen him every weekend as there are a lot of weekend Masses and my habits aren't the same as his. I have no reason to believe that he didn't attend weekly as required by the church.5 Catholics are supposed to observe traditional Catholic teachings in regard to sex and marriage. I'm not really going to be delving into that, but again we have no reason to believe that Gray isn't observant, in which case, as he is not married, he should be living as a chaste single man, and he probably is (something that has casued juvenile left wing ribbing).
Wyoming, however, is the least religious state in the union and while Catholics, Orthodox, Mormons and Protestants of traditional morality observe that morality, here, as with the rest of the United States, the late stage mass casualty nature of the Sexual Revolution means that a lot of people in these faiths don't, and the society at large does not. We've gone from a society where such outside the bounds of marriage behavior was illegal in varying degrees, to one where, nationwide, society pushes people into things whether they want to or not.
Be that as it may, save for Casper, Laramie, and probably Cheyenne, sexual conduct outside the biological gender norm is very much looked down upon. Indeed, in a really dense move, a Democratic Albany County legislator went to a meeting in Northeast Wyoming a while back on homosexual issues and was shocked by the hostile reception she received. She shouldn't have been.
No, I'm not saying this applies to Gray. I have no reason to believe that, and indeed I believe the opposite.
However, we've gone from a state whose ethos was "I don't care what you do as long as you leave me alone" to one in which, largely due to the importation of Evangelicals from elsewhere, a fairly large percentage of the population really care about what you do, particularly if they don't like it.
Indeed, at the time that Matthew Shepard was murdered, I was surprised when I heard an anti-homosexual comment. Such comments do not surprise me now, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear one now in the context of a murder. As noted, the exceptions seem to be Laramie (where Shepard was murdered, but which has never been hostile to homosexuals), Casper (which has had a homosexual 20 something mayor and which has a lesbian city council member) and Cheyenne (which has a homosexual member of the state House, as does Albany County). Well, I omitted Jackson and should include it here too.
At any rate, being an open homosexual and aiming for major office probably is impossible, although for minor ones it hasn't proven to be. The point is, however, that Miller is right. At some point, people are going to start wondering why staunchly populist Gray isn't married.
Maybe it's because he is in fact a staunchly populist out of state import. There aren't that many women in that pool. Indeed, having a one time vague contact with our staunchly populist Congresswoman, I was very surprised when it turned out she was a populist, or even a conservative. I'm not saying that she's not, I'm just surprised.
Gray is in a sort of oddball demographic. Not being from here, he wouldn't be in any circles in which women from here, professionals or otherwise, would be in. He appears to really be a fish out of water in terms of the local culture. When he appears at things, he does wear cowboy boots, but you can tell they've never been in a stirrup, and he otherwise is, at least based on my very limited observation of him, always dressed in what we might sort of regard as 1980s Denver Business Casual. I'd be stunned if I saw him on a trout stream or out in the prairie with his bird dog, Rex. I've seen him at a bar once, for a grand opening of something, but I don't imagine him walking up to the tender at The Buckhorn or The Oregon Trail and ordering a double Jack Daniel's either.
I was once told by an out-of-state lawyer who had been born in the state but who had moved to Denver after graduating from law school, regarding Wyomingites, that "you have to be tough just to live there". People who live here probably don't realize that, but there's more than a little truth to it. I'm often shocked by the appearance of populist legislature Jeanette Ward, as it's so clear she just doesn't belong here. She's not the kind of gal who would be comfortable sitting next to the ranch girl chewing tobacco who has the "Wrangler Butts Drive Me Nuts" bumper sticker on her pickup truck.6 Gray probably isn't comfortable with such a gal either. "Tomboys", as they used to be called, are sort of the mean average for Wyoming women.
Gray is well-educated, of course, which is part of the reason that I suspect a lot of his positions are affectations. I don't think he really believes the election was stolen, for example, unless he's doing so willfully, which would mean that he really doesn't believe that. Recently he's taken on the topic of firearms arguing, as part of the State Facilities Commission, that the state needs to open up carrying guns at the capitol, which is frankly absurd. While I don't know the answer, I suspect that Gray isn't really a firearms' aficionado.
Up until very recently, Wyomingites knew a lot about the people they sent to the legislature and public office, often knowing them personally to some degree. We actually knew the Governor and the First Lady on some basis other than politics, quite frequently, and our local reps we knew pretty well. The populist invasion defeated that to some degree, and in some cases, a great deal. The question is whether this is permanent, or temporary. It wasn't until the last election that people looked at Gray's background at all, and they still have very little. People haven't really grasped until just now that many of the Freedom Caucus are imports, not natives. We don't know much about some of them or their families, and chances are an average Wyomingite, or at least a long term native, would regard them as odd on some occasions. Chuck Gray just ran an op ed that was titled something like Only Wyomingites Should Vote In Wyoming's Elections. Most long term and native born Wyomingites feel that strongly, and wouldn't actually regard a lot of our current office holders as being Wyomingites.
There's evidence that the populist fad is passing. We'll see. This and the 2026 election will be a test of it. 2026 is a long ways off. For that matter, it's sufficiently long enough for these candidates to evolve if they need to. Some are probably capable of doing that. Others, undoubtedly not. The question will be if they need to.
May 11, 2024
It's very clear, to those paying any attention, that Wyoming elected executive branch officials really dislike Chuck Gray, including those who are very conservative. This became evident again when Superintendant of Education Degenfelder indicated Wyoming would join a Title IX lawsuit in opposition to the Federal Government's new rules on "transgender" atheletes. Degenfelder indicated that she'd been working behind the scenes with Gov. Gordon on this matter. In doing so she blasted Gray who earlier made comments wondering where the state's officials were on this matter, even though his office has less than 0 responsiblity in this department. Degenfelder stated in regard to Gray, "I would encourage Secretary Gray to join those of us actually making plays on the field rather than just heckling from the sidelines". Gray, who is a Californian who has lived very little of his life in Wyoming save for summers here while growing up, declared in response he was on "Team Wyoming".
FWIW, Wyoming really doesn't need to particpate in lawsuits maintained by other parties, as they're already maintained.
July 8, 2024
Now here's an interesting development. . .
I may have mentioned on this blog before that I feel Gov. Gordon should consider running, text of the Wyoming Constitution aside, for a third term. In doing so, if I did (I know that I've discussed with people) I've noted that the Constitutional prohibition on him doing so violates the Wyoming Constitution.
Turns out that I'm not the only one speculating on that.
And it turns out that Chuck Gray doesn't like the idea at all.
January 7, 2025
I managed to miss it, but back in November, Brent Bien announced for Governor.
Bien is on the far right, and is a Wyoming native, but he spent 28 years in the Marine Corps before retiring in 2019 and coming back to the state. This puts him in the camp of far right Republicans in the state who spent their entire working lives drawing on one of richest portions of the government t** while also never actually having to make sure a business actually functioned.
I've never quite grasped "trust me, I know how run things for the common man. . .I've never actually had to work in a business. . . "
Moreover, Bien was a prime mover on the initiatives that will be on the ballot to cut property taxes 50%, essentially meaning he's backing bankrupting local governments and schools. So, after living off of taxpayers for his adult life, having retired, with a retirement funded by taxpayers, he doesn't want to pay them himself.
1. There are numerous examples of this, but a really good one is Gordon's effort to buy the UP checkerboard, which the legislature defeated. It would have been a real boon for the state, but fiscal conservatives just couldn't see it that way.
Recently, Gordon hasn't been shy about vetoing highly unadvised bills that have come out of the legislature, or shutting down bad regulations that come out of the Secretary of State's office.
2. And not just Gray, Harriet Hageman does as well.
3. Homeschooling, for whatever reason a person does it, can be developmentally limiting. I don't know about Gray's case, but its notable that some on the far right have done it, as they believe that schools are left wing organs and there are things they don't want their children exposed to them. The problem this presents is that children who are homeschooled grow up in a very narrow environment, whereas, at least here, those who go to public, and for that matter religious schools, do not.
4. There used to be a school interview of him from the University of Pennsylvania, in which he expressed a desire to become a lawyer. He's clearly not going to do that now, unless of course his political career ended, which is perfectly possible.
5. As noted here in prior posts, lying is regarded as a potentially serious sin in Catholicism, and lying about something like who won the 2020 election would be, in some circumstances, a mortal sin if you were a political figure.
6. Ward is from Illinois and openly calls herself a political refugee. At the time of moving here, she posted something about her children not having to wear masks in our public schools, adopting the far right wing view that trying to protect others in this fashion is somehow an intrusion on liberty. I suppose it is, but not relieving yourself in public is as well. Anyhow, at some point, presuming those children remain in public school, she'll be in for a shock as Casper's schools truly have a really wide demographic and are not exactly made up of an Evangelical populist sample of the population.
While a non partisan race, in Wisconsin the liberal Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court prevailed over the Musk backed conservative Republican.
The race was widely regarded as a test of how people are feeling about Trump.
In Florida two Republicans won election in open House seats in heavily Republican districts, but the Democrats did better than expected. A Democratic victory would have been a huge upset, so in some ways this also showed that people aren't keen on the GOP path.
April 17, 2025
And the race for Governor is sort of on.
Now in the GOP race are two declared candidates, one of whom has filed, Joseph Kibler. Brent Bien has said he's running as well.
Both are in the far, far, right. Kibler moved to Wyoming (his wife is from Wyoming) in 2020. Bien is a Wyoming native, but completed a Marine Corps career and therefore fits into the crowed of Wyoming anti government candidates whose careers were in the government.
Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger 10m
It’s a struggle to understand why @SenThomTillis is now suddenly “over it” in DC after personally ensuring Kash Patel gets the FBI director job
Kinzinger knows the answer, he's just justifiably angry.
The answer is that The Big Ugly is just a bridge too far for anyone who's following it and is awake, including real fiscal conservatives. None of those people, who if they have actual following constituents, want to be there in the fall of 2026 trying to explain things.
The 2026 election has begun.
It'll interesting to see how this pays out.
Lummis is up for reelection, assuming she runs, and she will. She'll blame the Democrats for anything that goes wrong, and talk about being the Cyberqueen.
If she faces a solid challenger, after the Public Lands vote, she'll be in trouble.
The House seat is also up. Hageman won't run for that however, she's going to run for Governor. She's going to lose that.
Chuck Gray is going to run for the House, and he'll lose that.
Times are changing. Whether or not The Big Ugly passes, Trump has shot his bolt. True acolytes can wear "Trump was right about everything" truckers caps, but the opposite is proving to be true.
And this is about to get a lot worse for the GOP.
cont:
And now Nebraska's Don Bacon. The Congressman is in a district that's becoming increasingly Democratic, and my guess is it likely now will be a Democratic seat. The Republicans only hold a seven seat majority right now, which will be reduced to a five seat majority once the Democrats fill two vacant seats. Even assuming the Republicans hold every seat they currently have with out Bacon, that would reduce them to a four seat majority.
But they won't hold every seat. The House will flip.
It's really interesting to watch the hardcore MAGA mind at work.
The same people who, last month, were all atwitter with Elon Musk now reject him and claim that "Liberals" are flocking back to Musk.
No, they aren't.
For not MAGAites, Must is forever tainted, as he well should be. What those outside of the Trump orbit are rejoicing in is the fight between Musk and Trump. That doesn't amount to welcoming Musk back to anything. Rather, it's enjoying the mutual assured destruction between two such damaging personalities.
Trumpites who are claiming a welcoming back are, rather, trying to comfort themselves from the reality that Donald Trump really only stands for chaos, not for Conservatism (which is where I reside), or much else. If Musk fell out with him, it's because Musk seems to have a slight bit more fiscal sense than Trump, and the majority of Republican Congressman, who are wrecking the nation's finances. The populists don't seem to appreciate that's happening, and the National Conservatives, which have other goals, don't seem to care.
Conservatives in the modern West, and always in the English-speaking West, have democracy as a primary virtue, in spite of being aware that they're never in the majority, although the National Conservative movement, which is reactionary in the true sense of the word (it's reacting to something) is weakening that and looking to a pre Second World War model of European conservatism.
Liberals are always in favor of democracy.
Progressives and Populists really aren't quite often. Sometimes they are, but often they are not.
And Progressives and Populists only are in the forefront of politics in odd, and dangerous, times.
We are in odd and dangerous times.
To put it another way, like Ralphie's dad in A Christmas Story asks about Ralphie's imagined blindness, how did we reach such a lowly state?
Do we have soap poisoning?
Well, sort of.
A little history
We've gone into this before, so we won't belabor it too much, but in large part what we're seeing now is the combined effect of ignoring what was going on in the country on a political and social level.
As we already noted, populism only rises in strength during times of severe stress. The mere fact that its strong now, and has taken over one of the two parties, means something extremely stressful is going on. Progressivism is always there in some form, but it rarely takes over either. The fact that it too is so strong right now indicates something has occured that is fueling it.
The fact that the two of them are vying for the country right now, and this is going on in other country's as well, means that we are really at some massive tipping point for global politics.
What happened?
Well, we should know. We've been here before. More than that, Europe has been here before, and gone further down the road than we have.
An American Tale
If we go back to 1900 or so we'll see that Progressives, Populists, Conservatives and Liberals were all significant forces in the US, and in Europe as well.
The 1890s had been extremely strained economically in the 1890s. Added to that, the late stages of the industrial revolution were taking people off of fields everywhere and putting them in factories, under grim conditions. Agriculture, which had been the economic backbone of the US, was under severe strain. Conservatives chalked everything up to the business cycle, which they did not believe should be tinkered with.
This gave rise to the first real liberal movement in the US since the Civil War, although there had been liberals all along. Calling themselves "Progressives", even though they were not that as we've defined the term, they sought government intervention in the economy to address these ills. Theodore Roosevelt, in his campaign of 1912, proposed something like Social Security for the first time. He also proposed treating large corporations as public utilities, a radical, but liberal, proposition.
Progressives of that era were really basically the Socialists. We have a pretty good idea of what they stood for, so we probably don't need to dwell on it. Of note, Progressives of the GOP and Progressive Party, which we've defined as being liberal, campaigned partially on the concept that if they didn't prevail, the Socialist ultimately would.
The Populists, whom as we have noted had their own party at the time, campaigned in 1892 on graduated income tax, a radical proposition in a country that didn't have an established one, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, restrictions on immigration to the United States, and public ownership of railroads and communication lines. As the country fell into a depression, "free silver" became a bid deal with them. Some of them fell into radical Anti Catholicism, and some became virulently Anti-Semitic. . . sound familiar?
In 1896 the Populist Party united with the Democratic Party, giving us an example of a movement co-opting an established party which had sympathies with it. The Democrats indeed had a strong populist base in the American South, which had seen populist sympathies from before the Civil War and which retains them to this day. Populist William Jennings Bryan ran as the candidate for both parties, and lost. He did so again in 1900, although by that time the Populist Party as an independent party was declining both because it had captured the Democratic Party, as because the economic crisis seemed to be passing.
Both parties had learned their lesson from two election in a row. The GOP lurched to the left in 1904 and ran Theodore Roosevelt, a liberal. Alton Parker's campaign went nowhere. By 1912, however, the Democrats were running a liberal of their own, Woodrow Wilson. Populism, except in the South, disappeared in the US as a political force, the stress gone. Progressivism remained, but very much on the back burner.
Both would be back during the Great Depression. Populists rose up with figures like Huey P. Long and Fr. Charles Coughlin, both of whom posed a serious threat to Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Long was ultimately assassinated and Coughlin was silenced by the Catholic Church, but the fact is that populist radicalism was alive and well in the 1930s.
So was Progressivism.
Radical progressives found roles in Roosevelt's Administration, demonstrating one of the weaknesses of both parties in believing that fellow travelers are pretty much just like you. Mainline Communists, Trotskyites and Socialist all found homes in the numerous agencies created in the 1930s. Attempts to warn the administration fell on deaf ears until really very late, when at least worried Democrats were able to remove Henry Wallace from FDR's final Presidential ticket. It wasn't really until the late 1940s when it became clear how deep this had gone, at which time the Democratic Party undertook a monumental effort to hide it, something that they were so successful at that it remains largely unappreciated to this day.
Coming out of World War Two the US had the only industrial economy that hadn't been bombed, and accordingly the country had an extremely good economy from the end of the war into really the very early 1970. It's interesting that in this period the liberals and conservatives moved very much towards a consensus on things, giving us pretty much what might be regarded as a second Era of Good Feelings. It would be difficult, really, to hold that Eisenhower's administration was much at odds with Truman's, or Kennedy's. There were difference, but in that era, which was one of low economic stress, the differences weren't large enough to cause severe distractions, in spite of the dangers of the Cold War. Populism remained in the American South, but without much influence. Progressives existed, but not until 1968 did they really start to emerge back to the forefront.
And then things fell apart.
It really started with the Courts, although it was not obvious at first.
American society, and politics, following 1945 moved towards the center, but it was a center left where it moved to. The two Republican Presidents fo the era, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, would be regarded as being quite liberal today. Interventions in the economy were accepted. And brining civil rights to the South, and elsewhere, became a dominant feature of both parties. Populists, mostly located in the South, were squashed. Progressives were largely satisfied with the direction of things. But it all took a lot of court intervention to get things done.
Conservatives and Liberals were fine with this throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and for good reason. Progress on long dormant things they both agreed upon, such as Civil Rights, was really being made. But the Courts were, without it really being noticed, drifting increasingly to the left. At the same time the number of lawyers in the country exploded as the revolution in education following World War Two vastly increased the number of people with university degrees. Courts, without people really noticing it, began to become effectively a second legislative and second executive branch, without being elected.
Thing began to really fly apart in 1968, as a result of the Vietnam War. But they came off the rails in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision. Conservatives suddenly realized that they couldn't be heard on social issues that really mattered anymore. Liberals went asleep to a large degree because now the Courts were achieving for them tasks that they wanted to, without having to do any work for them. The political consensus that had dominated the 1945 to 1973 era collapsed. By 1976 Conservatives were moving steadily to the right, and railing against the courts.
At the same time, Southern Populists were a force in the South, but an ineffective one, throughout the 50s and 60s. Southern Populism being part of the Democratic Party had initially made sense in the 19th Century, and even as late as Woodrow Wilson's Presidency, but it stopped being natural during the Liberal administration of Theodore Roosevelt. It was kept together as a marriage of convenience as the Republican Party remained associated with the Southern defeat in the Civil War and the GOP, for its part, remained the party of civil rights into the 50s and 60s. By 1968 Southern Populists were seething over desegregation and busing.
Rust Belt populism was just beginning to rise. Solidly Democratic in the 40s, 50s and early 60s, as the economy became more strained in the late 60s and the Democrats moved increasingly to the left, they began to rebel against their party. It'd grow much worse in the 1970s as the Great Recession started to change American heavy industry forever.
The now more conservative Republican Party was well aware that conservatism in and of itself, while increasingly popular to sections of the electorate, remained in the background enough not to be able to come into power on its own. People were unhappy with the economy and the distress brought about by inflation, the loss of the Vietnam War and social changes brought about by court action, but they weren't so unhappy that they were willing to take a radically new direction, or they didn't' think they were. The election of Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford was as much about competence, which Carter proved not to have, as anything else. Conservative Ronald Reagan, however, saw an opportunity to recruit Rust Belt and Southern Populists into the Republican Party, and did so for his 1980 campaign.
Reagan had the first conservative US administration since Herbert Hoover, but it was never purely so. Reagan was an actor and a compromiser, who brought in elements that he didn't really believe in so that htey could be used. Hoover had never done anything like that. The conservative Republicans thought they could control the imported populsits, and at first they proved correcdt. Indeed, following Reagan the next two Republicans were more Nixon like than Reagan like. But the populists having come over, did not leave.
Nor did their concerns get addressed. By the 1980s the economy was fundamentally changing in the wake of the 70s. Heavy industry was not returning, "good" blue collar jobs were evaporating. Ethnic enclaves in urban areas were smashed. The progressivism of the late 60s and 70s felt free to attack long standing social matters. The liberals in the Democratic Party went to sleep and Democratic politicians appealed increasing to Progressives the way that conservatives had to Populists.
The breaking point proved to be a court decision again, that being the Obergefell decision. I warned it would have that impact at that time, but it was such a shock to core beliefs of conservatives and populist that a reaction by both was inevitable. The populists reaction carried along with it rage over a host of issues they'd been ignored on, many of them essentially economic, but some of them social. Because the social issues were there, conservatives did what they'd been doing since 1980, figure they could simply carry the populist along.
The 2016 election proved that to be completely incorrect. Two populists emerged, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Election controls built into the Democratic Party's' process kept Sanders from being the Democratic nominee. No such controls existed in the GOP, and Trump ended up winning the election against Hillary Clinton, and incredibly poor choice for the Democrats, but only through the electoral college. Clinton carried the popular vote.
It was populists, particularly Rust Belt populist, who carried the day for Trump.
Enough of the conservatives remained in the party, and Trump was incompentent enough as a President, that conservatives kept the Trump Presidency from goign full bore populists. He knows that and his supporters do as well. A second Trump Presidency will not repeat that.
A European Tale
Giving the European story is more difficult than the American one, as Europe is of course a collection of countries, not one, and each country has its own story. So we'll do broad generalizations.
Europe, going into the 20th Century, remained more traditional, and hence more conservative, than the United States. Almost every European country, save for France, had some kind of monarch who at least represented tradition, but who had very limited, if any, powers, save for Austro Hungaria, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, whose monarchs held real power. The Russian Czar actually held absolute power. Many countries, however, such as Sweden, had monarchs who had a least some veto type power over their parliaments.
In this system extremism was bound to rise, but underground. The more substantial a European monarchy was, the more likely it was to have really radical underground movements which, in the way we are analyzing this, would be termed Progressive. Imperial Russia had a host of far left Socialist parties. Germany had a strong radically left Socialist Party.
Other more democratic countries had radical movements as well, but they tended to never get as strong, or they would see their radicalism dissipate if they received voter support. So, for example, French socialist were elected to power, but they never behaved like a Communist Party once in power.
World War One smashed the old order in Europe. Democratic countries became more democratic. Countries with parliamentary democracies began to make their monarchs symbolic or eliminate them altogether. Monarchs in Austro Hungary, Germany, Russia, Finland (which had just become independent) and Turkey were tossed out, with the Russian one and his family losing tehir lives.
The 1920s accordingly saw struggles between liberalism and conservatism all over Europe, and in the most stressed countries, a type of populism and progressivism enter the mix as well, sometimes as arm contestants for the future of the country. The Russian Revolution can be seen as a contest between liberals and conservatives as allies, against progressives as enemies, with the radical left winning. The Russian Civil War can be seen as a contest between Progressives and Populists as allies, against Conservatives. Weimar Germany saw endless contests between Liberals and Conservatives, with Populists being the allies of extremists on the right and the left, giving their support to the KDP and the NASDP.
All of that, of course, gave rise to Communism, Nazism, and FAscism, which in turn gave rise to the Second World War.
World War Two, like World War One, smashed the existing order and saw the triumph of Liberalism in the West. Communism, won in the East, of course, but not in the same fashion. Like in the US, the post war free European states were very much consensus oriented and remained so even after the stress of 1968. AFter the Cold WAr, however, all European states began to see some of the same economic issues, and cultural issues, that had arisen in the United STates rise in Europe. Some of the state accordingly began to fall into extremism. Russia retreated into a weird sort of conservative imperialism that recalled its pre World War One status, but without a Romanov. Putin became the new imperial head. Hungary outwardly abandoned liberal democracy in favor of illiberal democracy. Poland teetered on the edge of liberal and illiberal democracy. Ukraine went for the long pass of liberal democracy.
And now we have a war in the former Russian Empire over the question.
Grape Nuts.
And in the US, we're about to have an election over it.
Unfortunately, that election will feature only two parties, and in one of them the ancient candidate feels he must take input from progressives in his party. The other party's candidate is an ancient narcissistic oddball who tells populists what they want to hear, and who feeds from them in an application of the Führerprinzip.
This is not good, to say the least.
The Democrats, of course, retain liberals in their party still. The progressives are few, but influential. The Republicans retain conservatives, but hey'v ebeen largely silenced and castrated. The GOP is the populist party.
Part of the reason we're where we are is due to a poverty of parties, and language. Populists have never been conservatives, and they aren't now. But they think they are. Progressives aren't liberals, but liberals don't really understand the extent to which that's not true.
Grape Nuts aren't made of grapes. . . but there's probably a lot of people who think they are.
