More proof I'm culturally clueless.

Me:  "Why is her album called Cowboy Carter?"

Long Suffering Spouse:  "Because her last name is Carter.".

Me:  "I had no idea".

Also, she's not country, and I don't even like country.

Dave Dudley - Vietnam Blues 1966 "Viet Nam Blues" (Country War Songs). Lyric and music by Kris Kristofferson.

Omissions.

Apparently, the Bibles that Trump has been selling omit the deuterocanonical books.  No surprise, as Trump claims to be a Protestant and his religion's backing is primarily from Evangelicals, who follow Luther's dislike of them, Luther's reasons for having omitted them now proven to be based on a misunderstanding though they may be.

However, the omission of all the amendments to the US Constitution following the Bill of Rights, which is included in the Bibles he's selling, is a bit harder to grasp.

Of course, why the US Constitution would be included with the Bible, along with The Pledge of Allegiance and the lyrics of God Bless The USA, is also hard to understand.

Thursday, May 4, 1944. Smoke on the Water.

Sgt. Sam Marinkovich, Anaconda, Mont., Sgt. Raymond Pasvogel, Davenport, Iowa, write up daily paper "The Cyclops Sentinel". Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea. 4 May, 1944.  Sgt Marinkovich is wearing heavily hobnailed boots, something the US generally did not issue in World War Two.  The boots are almost certainly British pattern "clodhoppers" that were issued as replacements in Australia.  Boots are one of the very few items of Commonwealth issuance that Americans sometimes issued in World War Two.

Troops making C-Ration coco.  The soldier on the far left is wearing the rarely seen light pattern field jacket.   This photograph illustrates something that surprised Japanese soldiers, which was that American uniforms were comfortable and practical.  Of interest, every single uniform item depicted in this photograph came into US use either since the start of the war, or immediately before, except for the boots depicted.

From "Uncle Mike":

May 4, 1944: The St. Louis Browns Desegregate Sportsman's Park

Gaslight premiered in New York City.

It's another one I haven't seen, but should.

Sarah Sundin reports that another Overlord exercise occured:

Today in World War II History—May 4, 1944: In Exercise Fabius, a full-scale rehearsal for D-day, Allied troops who will land on Sword, Juno, Gold, and Omaha Beaches make landings on English beaches.

The RAF hit rail facilities at Budapest at night.

The U-371 was scuttled off of Algeria.  The U-846 was attacked and sunk in the Bay of Biscay by the RCAF.

Smoke on the Water was recorded. . . the patriotic Red Foley one . .  not the Deep Purple one.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 4, 1944. Japanese Command Changes.

1940s, 1944, 1948, 1949, Battle of the Atlantic, boats and ships, Burma, French Resistance Movements, Imperial Japanese Navy, Indian Army, Indian Ocean, Medicine, Movies, Personalities, War Crimes, World War Two

Holy Saturday, April 19, 1924.

The Saturday Evening Post went to press observing Easter with a Leyendecker illustration.

National Barn Dance, a direct precursor to the Grand Old Opry, premiered on Chicago's WLS, running a whopping four hours every Saturday night.  It would run until 1968.

The Washington Post depicted Coolidge holding fast in a political cartoon.

In Casper, there was a big meeting to oust a city councilman who had been convicted on a liquor charge.

And Arizona tourists could get into California before Easter.

It's interesting to realize that motor tourism had become a thing by 1924.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 17, 1924. Japanese reaction.

1920s, 1924, baseball, Cartoons, Democratic Party, Farmers Labor Party, Francis Warren, Government, Japan, Movies, Politics, Progressive Party, Prohibition Party, Republican Party, Sports, United States, Wyoming

Wednesday, January 2, 1974. 55 MPH.

The National Maximum Speed Law reduced the speed limit on the nation's highways to 55 mph.

While ultimately hated, the law had an immediate impact in reducing highway deaths, which of course was not its actual intent.  Reducing the consumption of petroleum was.

The first Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks were mailed in a program designed to address those disabled but unable to qualify for Social Security. The law allowing for this to occur had come into effect the prior day.

The People's Republic of China announced that eight senior military figures were being reassigned in an apparent attempt to disrupt their ability to form a base of power.

Early country music pioneer and actor Tex Ritter died at age 68 of what was believed to be a heart attack.  His son, John Ritter, would die in 2003 at age 54 of aortic dissection and its likely that this was actually the cause of his father's death.

Wake Me in Wyoming

Thursday, October 18, 1923. Country music

Wendell Hall, popular early country music artist.  October 18, 1923.

The Saxon government rejected the Müller ultimatum.

Monday, September 17, 1923. The Berkeley Conflaguration.

A fire in Wildcat Canyon spread to the town of Berkeley and destroyed much of the northern area of the town.  No lives were lost, however.

By Unknown author - https://www.flickr.com/photos/52614599@N00/3891503178, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124453545

When the area was built, masonry structures replaced the former wooden ones.

Hiram "Hank" Williams was born in Butler County, Alabma.

And the artist retorts.

I have to give him credit, he's not accepting the co-opting of his song by the populist right candidates, and includes them in the class of those he's singing about.

Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the "signs and wonders" and completely missing what's gong on.

Rich Men North of Richmond, which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not because it's good.

It is, as of this writing, on Billboard's Hot 100.

The ballad is played by Oliver Anthony, a genuine blue collar Virginian, apparently.  All of his music videos seem to be filmed in a heavily wooded lot, which also appears to be genuine, although the rural South provides a certain cache in country music to such an extent that a Canadian band has even affected it, calling itself The Dead South.  All of Anthony's music is played on a Resonator Guitar, a type of guitar I normally call a Dobro.  I associate resonated guitars with the blues, not with country music, so this is a bit odd in and of itself.

How I imagine a guitar with a resonator properly being used.

Fans have gushed on the "return" of "real" or "authentic" country music, and this may indeed be the first genuine example of authentic country music to become a big hit in decades.  Even 1st Lt. Austin von Letkemann, the author (host? mc?) of the wickedly funny Army satire series Mandatory Fun Day mentioned it the other day, as a real fan, citing Colter Wall at the same time.  Wall is authentic, that's for sure, but in a different genre, genuine Western, i.e., cowboy, music.

But I don't think it's the music that boosted Anthony's song to the top of the C&W charts.  It's the content.  Consider the lyrics:

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

Rich Man North of Richmond, it might be noted, comes hard on the heels of In A Small Town, by Jason Aldean.  

Consider its lyrics:

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk

Carjack an old lady at a red light

Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store

Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like

Cuss out a cop, spit in his face

Stomp on the flag and light it up

Yeah, ya think you're tough

Well, try that in a small town

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Got a gun that my granddad gave me

They say one day they're gonna round up

Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck

Try that in a small town 

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Full of good ol' boys, raised up right

If you're looking for a fight

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Ooh-ooh

Try that in a small town

Aldean, I'd note, isn't from a small town.  He's' from Macon, Georgia, population 150,000 or so, so it's a mid-sized city.  And In A Small Town isn't real country, but rather country and enjoyed the same popularity.

Both of these songs immediately became populist anthems.  So much so that none other than liberal economist Robert Reich, whom this blog has an obvious love/hate relationship, just posted on the song, with frankly a typically disappointing analysis.

Rich Men North of Richmond

Republicans court cultural populism, while Democrats eschew economic populism. But economic populism is the key.

Reich offers his view, but he's wrong on what's going on here, at least in part, and certainly wrong on the fix.  Like other left wing economists in the United States, Reich is a corporate capitalist, which is also what all the right wing economists are. Reich correctly believes that the system has gone wonky to the detriment of the working class (whatever the current working class may be), but he fails to grasp, as nearly every economist in the United States and perhaps the Western World, or maybe even the planet, that the economy is supposed to serve average lives and average lives come first.  I.e., it's 1) my life and;  2) I need to work.  Not I'm a worker in a glorious worker's state and work will exalt me, or I'm a consumer in a glorious consumption state and consumption will exalt me, which are effectively the flip side of corporate capitalism.

So what's going on here?

Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't.  Neither right nor left economists get it.  For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.

Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all.  Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).

Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics.  Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist.  He can't be considered one, however.  He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.

1.  39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏

2.  As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony

3.  I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it. 

Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it

4.  As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛  the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥

5.  And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.

And there are a lot more.

Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

 Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:

1.  He has "an old soul".

2.  The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.

3.  He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.

4.  He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).

Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .

There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy.  Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now.  One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.

Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.

But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.

If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pudits claim, its definately not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.

The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion.  People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?

Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.

One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.

Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't.  Neither right nor left economists get it.  For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.

Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all.  Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).

Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics.  Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist.  He can't be considered one, however.  He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.

1.  39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏

2.  As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony

3.  I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it. 

Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it

4.  As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛  the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥

5.  And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.

And there are a lot more.

Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

 Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:

1.  He has "an old soul".

2.  The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.

3.  He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.

4.  He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).

Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .

There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy.  Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now.  One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.

Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.

But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.

If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pundits claim, it's definitely not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.

The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion.  People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?

Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.

One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.

A meme version of the economics of the 1950s. . . dealing with more than economics.  This depiction of the 50s drives commentators nuts, who decry it as a myth, but there's more than a little truth to it, both in what it states, and in what it otherwise depicts.  

Americans tend to look back to the 1950s as some sort of golden age, and have a really mythologized view of the era.  Be that as it may, in the 50s, most men could in fact support a family on their income alone, and not just from white collar jobs but from blue collar jobs.  Not only could most men do it, but most men did do it.  As late as the 1970s, a lot of husbands actually objected to their wives working, whereas now most married women not only do work, but must work.  Perhaps an error in here, however, is that in the 50s that a lot of people were going to college.  In reality, in 1950 only 7.3% of men had a college degree and only 5.2% of women did, which by 1960 was 10.3% and 6% respectively.  This means, however, that a university degree was like gold.  Of interest, both of my mother's parents had university degrees, which is phenomenal given that they obtained them in the early 20th Century.  Neither of my father's parents did.  Also of note, my mother had a college degree, an AS, but she obtained in the 1970s and was not a high school graduate due to the Great Depression, where has my father had a DDS and his brother and one of his sisters attended university in the 1940s/1950s.

The 50s through the early 1970s really reflect post World War Two conditions, however, and might not be the best era to look at.  The 40s can't be looked at either, due to World War Two, nor can the 30s, due to the Great Depression.  You really have to get back to the 10s and 20s for economies to compare to, with some comparison from later decades.  Any way you look at it, however, a lot more families were supported from a single, usually male, income, but it was also the case that a lot more women always worked than is recognized.

Myths have power, however, and they also reflect aspects of reality as a rule.  Beowulf may not have slain a dragon in Sweden, but a warrior named Bear (Bee Wolf) probably was an early Scandinavia warrior vassal of note.  There really was a big battle at Troy, and it probably did start off as a totally juvenile spat over a girl that somebody regarded as a babe, although it's likely there was more to it than that.  Arthur wasn't a chivalric knight, but somebody the legend was based on, probably was a British Roman who did take on the invading Teutons in defense of Roman Britain heroically before going down on a battlefield.  There was indeed an era, not long ago, when a high school education could bring a person a living wage for not only the graduate, but a spouse and kids, and provide a middle income life.

And there was also a time during which, as harsh as the reality is, that you weren't in grocery store lines behind people who are paying for food with assistance, but who had money for tattoos, and who have suspended any regard for their personal appearance.

This is all obvious to people who are barely eeking by, but who know that their grandparents, with no more education than they have, did relatively well.

To add to it, although only subtly grasped, people are also aware, even as they participate in it, that the country's become a moral sewer.  The problem, in a way, is not that Jeffrey Epstein is uncommon, but rather than he is common in a way.  Only the rich, of course, used him as a procurer for teenage prostitutes, but the entertainment industry is essentially a society wide procurer for cinematic prostitution that has become increasingly debased.

All that does involve wealth, but part of the underlying tone, and one that people like Reich can't seem to grasp, is that the American political left insists that it all conduct be accepted and each person's choices, no matter how self-destructive, anti-natural, debased, or weird, be celebrated.  People very well know that the entire movement to support surgical gender mutilation of children is wrong, for example, as well as deeply weird, but the left demands it be celebrated, just as it insists that what nearly amount to homosexual sex manuals be placed in public schools with public funds.  It is not that the standard bearers of the right are moral people.  Trump is a serial polygamist.  It's rather that there's a difference in promoting immorality and demanding that it be accepted and distancing policy from it, even if you engage in immorality yourself.  Double standards abound, but what the unhappy class is looking at doesn't seem to be grasped.  

Indeed, as the left repeatedly fails to grasp in regards to the that unhappy class, is that the class itself may not really apply the standards it mourns all that deeply, in regard to at least some of them.  Critics from the left, like Robert Reich, keep branding the movement "Christian Nationalist", as do some critics from the right, such as Susan Stubson.  They're both in correct.  Christian Nationalist take the practice of Christianity really seriously.  Southern Cultural Christian Populist, however, have a world roughly framed out by the Southern Baptist Convention, the pre-1970 Episcopal and Methodist Church's, or the African Methodist Church loosely in mind, but as a framework, not as a fortress.  Put another way, Christian Nationalist look to the Apostolic age and know what that meant, and aren't really comfortable completely with people who sit around watching NASCAR on Sundays.  Southern Cultural Christians are perfectly comfortable with watching NASCAR on Sundays and attend church for weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas. They aren't the same thing.

But what both are uncomfortable with, but in different ways, is a liberalism that insists that genders can be changed, and there's nothing wrong with books in public schools that explore sodomy.  That exceeds the boundaries of the loosely defined structure for Southern Cultural Christians and is definitely gravely immoral to Christian Nationalists, as well as frankly gravely immoral to any Christians of any stripe who are serious about what their faiths hold.

In 2008, I stopped at the liquor store on my way home from work to buy a six-pack of beer.  It was late summer.

In the liquor store there were two young women, in their very early 20s, with a young man of the same age.  One of the young women was holding a baby.

The girl, and that's really what she was, holding the baby was pretty, but in a trashy sort of way, and in the way that you know won't last.  The other girl was not.  Both young women were wearing t-shirts that were too small for them, and too tight to be decent.  They were both wearing Daisy Dukes.  The young man was shaking and incredibly disheveled.  It was pretty clear that he was the father of the baby, equally clear that he and the young woman weren't married, and just as clear that he was a tweaker.

The pretty girl holding the baby had eyeliner and a proud visage, sort of like the pretty but trashy girls did back when I was in high school. They'd retained the eyeliner sort of make up that girls in junior high wore, back when I was in junior high, after girls of that age first started taking up makeup.  Most girls abandoned that by high school, but the ones that were of a certain type didn't.  That girl, the pretty one, was wearing an Obama for President t-shirt.  I knew at that moment, well before the election, who would win.

The image that was on the girl's t-shirt.  It wasn't "Hope" that they had a vested interest in.

Now, this isn't a comment on President Obama at all, but rather on something else, and that something else gets back to Rich Men North of Richmond.

The young man in that group is likely dead by now.  Tweaking in his early 20s, it's unlikely he survived another fifteen years.  The girl who the mother likely is, and if she was 21 then, she's 36 now.  She's also likely in the 300 lbs category the song referenced, the signs of that already being there.  And indeed, what she was supporting, and likely at least her female cohort, wasn't "hope", as Obama was espousing, it was government assistance.  The child, now 15, has probably spent his or her entire life on it.

And that, in some vague sort of way, is what Oliver Anthony is lamenting.  

All of these people likely descended from people who had held blue collar jobs.  But a modern society reconstructed in a liberal image had turned them into wards of the government in some ways, and they weren't ashamed of it.  Their attachment to any sort of conventional morality had lapsed, perhaps beyond repair, and they were reproducing without structure and raising a generation behind them, perhaps as they'd been raised, that recalls Philippians,  "Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things."  They didn't go on to be Megan Rapinoe, who would be just about their age, almost undoubtedly, but probably heavily tattooed, and living on the funds generated by others.

A large number of abandoned rust belt and other blue collar Americans are well aware of this, even if they aren't necessarily beyond some of the call of that themselves.

That's what liberal pundits are missing, and that's what populist, some sincere and some not, have picked up on.

El Paso Sheriff : What's it mean? What's it leadin' to? You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago, that I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you.

Ed Tom Bell : Signs and wonders. But I think once you quit hearing "sir" and "ma'am," the rest is soon to foller.

El Paso Sheriff : Oh, it's the tide. It's the dismal tide.

No Country For Old Men. 

And that's why their message is failing.

And for traditional conservatives, as, well as liberals, there may now be, by this time, something even scarier at work. . . . 

Tuesday, June 19, 1923. the Little Old Log Cabin.

 

John Carson

"Fiddlin" John Carson recorded "The Little Old Log Cabin" in the Lane in what is now inaccurately regarded as the first "country" music recording.  The flipside was "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going To Crow."

It was "country", but not in the country pop or modern C&W understanding, but rather in the "Hill Billy" music understanding of the word. That type of music, often highly evolved, is still within the "country" genre, but much, indeed most, of modern C&W music is as much related to pop music than anything else.

Carson would record off and on until 1935.  He died in 1949 at age 81, spending his final years as an elevator operator.

The US and the UK came to an agreement on the UK's war debt.

Saturday, January 20, 1923. Children singing, railroad mergers, German mines, and when masks didn't cause political posturing.

 

As it was Saturday, the Saturday Evening Post hit the stands.  On this occasion it had an illustration of children playing music, probably loudly but badly, by Alan Foster.

For some reason, uploaded versions of period illustrations from the Saturday newsstands are a lot harder to find after late 1922 for a while.  Probably the drama of the war and the comparative lack of drama of the early 20s was the reason. The Country Gentleman hit the stands with an excellent illustration of Independence Hall.  Judge had a fascinating, nearly photo realistic painting of flappers in a club.

The Canadian Northern Railway and the Canadian Government Railways merged into the Canadian National Railway.  The merger of the CNR and the CGR was forced by the government due to the financial failure of the CNR, although at one time the railroad had steamships as well as trains.

The CNN is one of the world's great railways, spanning all of Canada and the Eastern United States.

You'll note that the creation of this system is either an application of the American System of economics, albeit in Canada, or of Socialism. At one time the nationalization of railroads was not the controvery it would be now.

The French arrested twenty-one German mine operators for failure to cooperate in the occupation, and Essen's banks all voluntarily closed.

The London Daily Mirror ran this cartoon:

Some current Chicago expats in the solon in Cheyenne would likely take offense.

As odd as it is to realize it, with yesterday being the birthdate for Janis Joplin, this is the same for Slim Whitman.  The country music star who came to prominence in the 50s, but who continued to record through the 90s, died at age 90 in 2013.

In Memoriam

2022 closed out with enough departures from this life of interesting and significant people that it has that portents feeling to it.  Let's hope that's just being naturally ill at ease.

Pope Benedict XVI

The most significant death, of course, is that of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died on the last day of the year.  His death was not unexpected.

The German-born Joseph Ratzinger was an intellectual and a theologian.  For misguided reasons, he was regarded as the "Panzer Cardinal" by some of his supporters, a nickname that never reflected his personality but which rose out of his stout defenses of orthodoxy.

His resignation as Pope, the first that had occurred in centuries, was due to ill health and was controversial at the time.  There is, frankly, much to be lamented by it, at least by those who have a conservative religious bent (as I do), who lost, if nothing else, and there was much else, a conservative Pope who would have appointed conservative cardinals and perhaps been in a better position to take on the German Bishops.

Benedict grew up in Nazi Germany, where his father was an outspoken anti-Nazi policeman.  His family was deeply religious.  He was conscripted into a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft batter late in the war at the time in which Germany was reaching down into the early teens for that role.  He lived an exceptional life, but by some accounts, given his academic nature, wasn't ideally suited for his role as Pope.

Ian Tyson

Ian Tyson was a Western, not Country and Western but Western, musician who was a giant in that arena.

Tyson was early on a folk musician who sang with Sylvia Fricker, whom he later married, and then divorced.  Following his divorce, he moved to Alberta to train horses and when Bob Dylan recorded Four Strong Winds he used the royalties to buy his ranch. Following that, he focused on traditional "Cowboy Style" music is distinct from the Hillbilly Country Music and Country Pop so popular in the U.S.  He was a pioneer in a small revival that's spread back into the US, but which still sees its most significant members being Canadian, showing the Western nature of Western Canada.

He died on December 29, at age 89.

Pelé

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, was the greatest soccer player in the world in his era, and will go down as one of those figures who are famous in a sport, and outside of it, forever.  

I know little about him, other than his fame in soccer, but as I don't follow soccer, that says something.  He died on December 29 at age 82.

Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters was born the same year as my late father and was a major newscaster and interviewer when I was growing up.

It's perfectly fair to say that she was a female pioneer in the area, although as we've pointed out in regard to the very early history of Meet The Press there were significant women, albeit few in number, in the field prior to her.

I'll be frank that I never liked her interviewing style and found her voice ill-suited for her role, as she was somewhat hard to understand, which some people are.  She died on December 30, at age 93.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist Part XVIII. Ambition and Gregariousness

Ambition

By Roy K. Moulton.  Topeka State Journal, July 29, 1913.

Let others work and lose their health
In piling up the sordid wealth,
    But that is not my wish.
Let others burn the midnight oils,
Devising ways of grabbing spoils;
    I’d rather sit and fish.

Let others solve the problems great,
Affecting the affairs of state;
    None of that on my dish.
Let others hew the nation’s path
And bear the thankless public’s wrath,
    I’d rather sit and fish.

Let others lead the strenuous life
That’s full of worry, toil and strife,
    But that’s not my ambish.
Let others wear their lives away
By living five years every day;
    I’d rather sit and fish.

Simone Biles dropped out of Olympic competition.

The reason was a simple, and yet complex, one.  It was the pressure of it.

Biles is a 24-year-old American gymnast, as most presumably know, who was in her second Olympics. She's truly great.

She was also under the public eye like nobody else in the Olympics, at least from an American prospective.  I don't know if this was anticipated going in, as I don't follow sports much, but it very clearly came to be the case very soon.

The pressure was getting to her, and it impacted her performance.  So, basically for the team, and for mental health reasons, she's dropped out.

The reaction has been interesting.

Indeed, the entire phenomenon has been interesting.

The day after it was clear that she was dropping out of team competitions Michael Phelps was interviewed on a network that he's been on during the Olympics.  Asked about if he understood it, Phelps basically gave a negative reply and went on to state how he thrived on the pressure and put more pressure on himself than would otherwise be there.

I hate people like that/

That may sound odd, but this story has really been a revelation on a series of things, one of them being the asshole nature of western society which revels in a moronic level of competition.

This was on my mind recently anyhow for an odd reason, that being that I'm not a competitive person whatsoever.

Now, I participate in some competitions, including one that is regarded as a sport, but frankly in those categories I've always just focused on my own performance.  Generally, as baffling as it is to a lot of people, I don't care much if I win or lose an individual sporting competition.

Indeed, I absolutely detest the way that some competitive people insist on interjecting competition into daily life.  A hyper-competitive friend of mine, for example, can't bring up the topic of hunting dogs without the stupid "my dog's better than your dog" sort of conversation.

I don't give a f***ing rat's ass how your dog generally fares in competition with somebody else's.

Now, people don't generally do that to me, as I'm not competitive, but I do have a sarcastic wit.  And as noted here in a recent thread, I don't argue for sport.  If I'm drawn into an argument and engage in it, it's for the kill.  I'm not interested in the fun some people seem to derive for pursuing perpetual arguments.  I don't do that.  So people don't try to draw me into the "oh golly, let's have the same stupid argument again here today!" type of conversation.  Last time somebody drew me into an argument on dogs, I had a single observation that ended the argument with the arguers left, literally, speechless.

Anyhow, our society really values competition.  We have a free market economy that's all about competition.  Our legal system, of which I’m part, uses the adversarial system, which is a competition, to sort out disputes between people, as opposed to the discovery method used in the Latin/Nopoleonic systems.  Indeed, as I'm in litigation, I’m ironically in a constant state of competition.

As noted, I view that differently than most people.  Some lawyer I know well engaged me in a conversation just recently I've heard a million times before recently about the glory of being in trial and how invigorating that is.

That's the kind of perpetual bullshit, I'd note, handed out by people who are rarely in trial.  I’m not rarely in trial, I'm in trial a lot.

The reason for that is that I'm not a competitive person.  I don't measure litigation by the "oh golly, it's so fun to be wearing a suit acting like an adult making arguments".  That's childish crap.  

I view it as a task I must weigh and calculate for the result. Totally different.  I'm not going to be experiencing any "highs" as a result. Indeed, when the fellow was waxing remantically about the joys of being in trial in heavy-duty competition, even if you were taking a pounding, and losing, I replied "I don't know what you are talking about".  This floored him, and he replied "but you are a competitive person!". ^[1]

No, I'm not. 

But that's not the way a lot of people think, and that's not the way our entire society is engineered. And it makes me wonder.

I'm glad for Simone Biles that she was in a position to drop out, which is what she did.  

Most people aren't, and most men definitely aren't.

I could now more go into work today and declare that I need a mental health holiday or that I can suspend my participation in something big, not that I'm suggesting in any fashion that I would like to do so, than I could declare myself Emperor of Russia.  Not going to happen.

Now, let me be frank here.  I think that competition is inevitable, and its often the best system for something, although something that often has to be restrained as well.  I.e., I don't want to try to tell Chevrolet what the best way to make an electric vehicle is and I don't want to tell Ford that either.  I don't want to protect Tesla for being the first on the scene.  Competition will figure that out.

And I also feel, oddly enough for a post of this type, that, like Chesterton, the problem with our economy isn't too much competition, but not enough.  We've moved towards giant industrial concerns at the expense of smaller ones and that's wrecked competition in a lot of areas that would greatly benefit from it.

Apply the Sherman Anti Trust Act, darn it.

And I don't want the marketplace of ideas dominated by things that I have to think because somebody had determined I have to think them.  Not hardly.  

Indeed, if you want to look for a society that's geared towards no competition, look at a Marxist one.  Everything was planned including what you could think.  

And that was, quite frankly, horrific.

Well, I probably don't really have much of one.

But if I do, this is it.

Not everything in the world has to be a competition to the death.

And also, some people aren't competitive and that's not some sort of defect in them.  I feel like they aren't listened to whatsoever however.

Indeed, I ran across a lawyer sometime ago who probably pegging out on the competitive meter.  If I had a second cup of coffee, he'd probably have a third, just to "win".  So I was surprised that he bills himself as being involved in lawyer "mental well-being".

Having that sort of personality and thinking that you can help any lawyer with "well-being" is, well, mental.  Indeed, the entire lawyer "help the members of the bar" movement is, as its basically geared, like a field hospital, to patch you up and send you back into battle so that you can get killed.  Nobody is going to ask "is fostering war a good idea", even on a metaphorical level.

And all the more so if you are male.  Times change, and people and professions with them, but then they don't.  Society is basically perfectly comfortable with men competing themselves to death, and it probably always will be.  We'd rather express surprise that ol' Bob died at his desk or ol' Phil drank himself under the table and expired than ponder if there's a systemic problem here somewhere.

Not grasping the gregarious

I had an errand I had to run while at work the other day and in the course of it I grabbed my extremely gregarious co worker to lend a hand.  It was a short errand, but it involved going to a public place, buying something, and coming back.

I'd forgotten how gregarious the gregarious can be.

This actually starts off a day prior, actually.  I had to go to a meeting and was in a rush when I met the same fellow in the hall.  His question to me was "Have you met Father Terry?".

I haven't met Father Terry and indeed I didn't know who Father Terry actualy was.  I quickly told my colleague that I had to run to a meeting as, truthfully, I didn't wish to be drawn into a conversation and then bolt.  I was running behind as it was.

But tha'ts only part of it.

Something about stuff like this really puts me very ill at ease.

Father Terry, it was pretty clear when I saw him, was a Francican monk.  He looked every inch the part. Tall, heavily bearded, wearing a full length heavy gray robe.  He was also obvsiously a gregarious man like my co worker.

I've been friends, over time, with a couple of Catholic Priests.  In the oversall scheme of things, there's probably three that I could genuinely claim as friends, keeping in mind that I draw that line pretty close to me.  Acquitances, even ones I'm friendly with, I don't count as friends.  In addition to those three, I can state that there was a fourth who was on the edge of being a friend, but not quite, and maybe a fifth just a little more distant than that.  Interestingly, of the Priests  in this category, the one that I was not quite friends, with, whom I'm still somewaht in touch with, was simply hard to get to know.  He was highly reserved.  I'm also highly reserved.

To a degree, I think certain people in certain occupations and vocations probably ahve to instinctively headge their bets.  Being a lawyer is a little bit that way.  I always dislike it when somebody casualy mentions to a stranger that I'm a lawyer, but it comes up in conversation all the time. A very routein question for men to ask another man is "so what do you do for a living?", or "where do you work?".  Oddly, I don't ask that causally at all.  But most men, and even a lot of women, will ask that. I'm also a cattleman and I often briefly think of saying "I raise cattle" but I never do.  "I'm a lawyer".

My gregarious friend, as we'll see in a moment, is super proud of that fact, i.e., he and we are lawyers, and has no problem bringing that right up.  I'm much more reserved about it for a variety of reasons.  Indeed, I don't start up conversations with strangers as a rule and beyond that I never start up a conversation with a complete stranger and then volutneer that "I"m a lawyer and that's my partner".  That's really just asking for trouble, in my view.  And I don't want to expend the mental energy to do that either.

Anyhow, back to Father Terry.

Because I'm so reticent about contacts of all types, and perhaps I figure other people are the same way, I'm super hesistant about introducing anyone I know to anyone else if that person is some sort of person of status.  My gregarious friend is not.  Only if a person has reached the point where they're really a personal friend would I do that.

Well, maybe I would, but I wouldn't tour the office doing that.

Some of that has to do with the concept of "friend".  My friends are definatley my friends.  I don't really have light friendships.  I do have friends that I know in context, such as through work, but if they reach that status, they're more than light associates.

A lot of gregarious people, it seems to me, count light associatiates as friends.  I guess they feel they make friends easily and therefore everyone is their friend.

I really don't understand, however, how some people like to take somebody around to all of the offices.  It completely escapes me.

I'm glad that religious (those who occupy a religious vocation) do get out and about.  Indeed, I think its something that needs to occur.  So its not that.  Rather, it's the odd habit of the gregarious taking somebody around where they work and introducting them to everyone.  Why do they do that?

I have no idea.

The TVA Demolishes a coal fired plant

It was in Tennessee and it was an old plant.

One of the local political ads claims that a politician saved our coal jobs.  This isn't related, but there's no evidence that any coal jobs have been saved, or can be.  The decline of coal has been going on for more than a century and that can't be reversed legislatively.

But it can be denied as a reality temporarily, and we're busy doing that.  Another legislator recently proposed to reduce the coal severance tax on the theory that if coal isn't taxed as much as it currently is, it'll be more competitive.  This is close to hte same logic which applied when the coal severance tax was first passed in Wyoming, which had opposition out of the fear that it would drive coal away.

In reality, in both Wyoming and Montana, the latter state having the coal severance tax first and at a higher rate, coal is passing.  

Must the show really go on?

Dusty Hill, ZZ Top's bassest, died this past week.

They are still touring, however, with a long time associate of the band taking Dusty Hill's place.

I don't know.  ZZ Top was the rock band with the longest continuous line up, which is part of what made it special.  The members are in their 70s. 

At least in my view, and I"m a ZZ Top fan, there is no ZZ Top without Hill.

ZZ Top achieved a certain sort of legendary status over the years of course, and their style of music actually evolved signficantly.  I first heard them in the car of a friend who moved up here from Oklahoma during one of our periodic oil booms. That would have been in the 1970s and at that point in time the band would really have been fully in its blues/rock stage, that is, more of a Southern blues band than a rock band.  There were a lot of acts that met that definition.  Over the years, most of them, but not all of them, fell back into the blues more than rock, which is where their original strength lay.  ZZ Top went the other direction.  Early on, they really emphasized their connection with Texas.

While I am a fan, that also means that I'm a qualified fan.  I liked the band that was defined by Tush more than the one that was defined by Sharp Dressed Man.   And great act though they were, they never compared to Johnny Winters or Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Because of a long break they took at one point they ended up growing long beards, something I myself might do if I had the luxary of taking a lot of time off.  When they reemerged it became sort of an affectation, and I have my problems with that.  Be that as it may, they were a great band, but they were a band.  In my view, it's time to hang it up and perserve their legacy as a unified band.

Speaking of affectations. . . 

Lalapalooza Drops DaBaby Over Homophobic Comments Hours Before His Performance 

So read a headline.

I don't know who DaBaby is or what he said.  All I can say is that a grown man ought not to call himself "DaBaby".

A person has to be really careful about this so it doesn't sound completely wrong, but one of the things about fans of jazz and blues is that we don't like affectations.  When like music that's real.

That doesn't mean that music nad musicians in any one era or genra don't or can't take on certain affectations.  Since the decline of blues following the 1970s, some blues artists definately affected a certain physical image for their acts, for example.

But certain musical styles have become affectation dominant, including rock (post KISS), country and rap.  Rap is particularly interesting this way as it started off about as stripped of affectation as it could conceivably be.  When it crossed over into general popularity, the affectation that its artists took up often were very much associated with wealth, and demonstrated excess, but they were entitled to that.  Lots of rap acts still do that, so I'm not dissing the genra or the affectations of its artists.

Rather, what I'm going after is the juvenilization of American men, which is rampant at this point.  A moniker like the "DaBaby" is, well, speaking of a certain sort of infantilization that should be avoided.

The Fire This Time.

I drove from Casper to Denver last week. Dense smoke the entire time.

This is being noted in conversations by regular folks all the time, and its on the cover of the Tribune today.  But the remarkable thing is that its being ignored locally on a larger scale.

The national news notes it to be sure. We're in a record fire season.  But locally, in the region where the dense smoke is everywhere, nobody is stating anything about what's the cause of this.

This isn't the way things have always been.  Growing up here, smoke in the air was very unusual in the 1970s nd 1980s.  It was something that began to make a notable appearance in the 1990s and the last two summers its been the dominant feature of the summer sky.

With this being the case, you'd think that the legislature would be discussing what's becoming an annual tragedy.  Nope.  Nobody is brining these topics up.

It was Trotsky who stated "You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."  That's probably one of a handful of things Trotsky ever stated that are worth repeating.  The same thing is true of climate and weather.  You might not be interested in it, but it's interested in you.

It's time to start discussing these things.

Blind Assumptions

There was an interesting letter to the editor for Anthony Bouchard in today's Tribune.  The author was obviously extremely distressesd that Bouchard was not invited back to meet Donald Trump in anticipation for an anticipated endorsement of some Wyoming candidate to run against Liz Cheney.

What was interesting about it was the set of assumptions built into it. The author obviously loves Trump and stated the same, i.e., "loves".  She maintained that it was Bouchard who is most like Trump, even if her hero is set to dump him like a hot rock on a mid August day.

Fawning admiration of politicians is something I don't get, but then as noted above I'm a questioner of ambition and authority.  But that sort of desperate fawning is odd.

The Tribune also ran a column by one of its columnists, Tom Gagnon, all about his registering as a Republican in order to vote for Cheney. Gagnon makes it plain he's a Democrat, and if you read his piece, he's a really far left Democrat.

I don't care if he does re-register, that's his right.  One of the things about American political parites is that there are no restrictions on who resigsters as what, and for that reason, they can change.  Frankly, I don't think the Wyoming GOP is actually anywhere near as right wing as its really active members think, as most Wyomingites are in it, and most are centrists.  But Gagnon is doing the classic Wyoming Democratic thing of killing his own party.  If he was going to do that, he should have just shut up, rather than broadcast it and confirming the far rights suspicition that everyone in the GOP who isn't in the sleeper car of the Trump Train is a communist.

Footnotes:

1.  I also feel, quite frankly, that many such comments reflect either propaganda that we feel we're required to say, as in Republican members of Congress saying "oh, um, yes, I believe the election (in which I myself was elected) was stolen. . . "when they don't, or in the dulce bellum inexpertis manner that so many people have about so many things they really don't engage in, or rarely do.  Put another way, watching The Sands of Iwo Ima might be fund, but actually landing on Iwo Jima. . . not so much.