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The Sign of Their Own Surrender: A misunderstood version of what was, doesn't get you to what ought to be.

This started off as a Blog Mirror on a post on a different blog.

I find the reference to Hillsdale particularly interesting here:

The Sign of Their Own Surrender

Why the Trump administration's new warning signs at the Smithsonian say more about conservative history's weakness than its strength.

I won't claim to have a lot of familiarity with Hillsdale, but what I do know, bothers me.  From my very little exposure to it, it seems to focus in part on a sort of rah rah Americanism, in so far as culture and history are concerned (and of course the two are highly related.

That sort of view of American history was once very common in general.  I'm old enough to have seen the very end of it when I was in grade school, and I'm also young enough to see it pass away.  To give a really bad example, as it doesn't involve school text or teaching at all, if you grew up in the 1970s, you could simultaneously see She Wore A Yellow Ribbon run as a not that old rerun on television, and find Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee in the bookstore.

Students had received a pretty narrowly focused history education prior to the 1970s  The United States was always right. There was that slavery thing but that was fixed.  The West had been won, not conquered, and even if it had been conquered, it was to the benefit of the conquered people.  

The Vietnam War really changed all that in a way that it had not been since the 1840s when the country had gone through the Mexican War.  Conservatives never got over that.

The oddity to it is that people in this cultural camp would rather be taught lies than the truth, which never serves anything, and they want children taught lies if it means they'll come out of school believing in an unvarnished version of American Exceptionalism.  The fact of the matter is, as this article points out, it won't.  In the age of the Internet, while many evils have been spread, you really can't just keep a lid on the past.  Pete Hegseth can restore Medals of Honor conveyed for action at Wounded Knee but you can't keep the facts, on both sides, from being known about what happened there.

People who are following Hillsdale on stuff like this think you can.  In reality, however, what happens is the miseducated student eventually hits university or just real life.  It only takes one crack in the dam to cause a flood, and soon they're off and questioning everything.

This is already happening in various spheres, I might note.  One of the most interesting example is in Christianity.  The entire Protestant Reformation was based on ignorance and its pretty provable.  Of all the Reformation era reformers, only Luther had some serious points, and he didn't intend to cause a separation from the Church at all but, rather, once he started rebelling, he couldn't stop.  At any rate, what this leaves Protestants with is that every single Protestant faith is founded on some sort of error, and often back with lies.  For those with enough savvy or interest, it's easy enough now to find that out.  What was the early Church like, they pose. Well, the Didache isn't too hard to find, nor are the works of the Apostolic Fathers.  Lots of very serious Protestants have done this, often trying to support their view that their brand of Protestantism reflects the early Church, only to find that it doesn't, and then convert to Apostolic Christianity.

The same is true of history.  The American Revolution was founded upon some amazing principals, but at the same time amongst the reason the colonists cited for rebelling was that the Crown was trying to halt westward expansion in recognition that the natives were also his subjects and that they were upset as the Crown hadn't forced the Church of England upon Quebec.  The Constitution is amazing but there was a giant acknowledged hypocritical compromise allowing Southern states partial credit for slaves for representation purposes.  The Civil War wasn't a glorious highly decorative contest between two equally valid points of views, but a rebellion against decency and humanity by Southern oligarchs.  We didn't enter World War Two to save humanity, but entered it only because were were attacked in spite of a real effort by FDR to get us into the war earlier, and once in it, we didn't defeat the Germans or Japanese single handedly by any means.  The British had more troops in the field in Europe until late 1944 and the Soviets always had many more in the field.  The Japanese regarded the war in China as the main event up until some point in 43 or 44.

It's just the attempt to whitewash American history, which by and large is admirable, that leads to something like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.  Indeed, that book came out while I was still in high school and within the last two years I was continually in a situation where a highly educated person who just discovered it was repeatedly engaging me with "did you know"?  

Locally there's been a movement in the Trump era to allow for "charter schools" here which are nothing other than private schools that come as close to being Protestant schools as conceivably possible.  I'm familiar with one and it proclaims that teaches an "American Classical Education" and that it is "a Hillsdale College Member School, a distinction that offers our school access to curriculum and training from the Hillsdale College K-12 Education Office.".  I've known at least two families that chose it as their own world view was in the MAGA camp.  The irony here is, as it is so often, that neither of the two families who are so concerned about their children receiving an "American Classical Education"  are living an "American Classical Life".

They probably just don't know that.

Which gets back to, well, this:

In order to get back to what you think needs to be restored, you need to know what actually was.  

I don't know about the rest of it, but history wise, the current variant of an "American Classical Education" ain't going to get you there.

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I was going to post on it individually, but the July 4, or thereabouts, editions of Catholic Answers had some fascinating discussions on Catholics and the United States.

In spite of what poorly catechized American Catholics may think, there's always been tension between being a Catholic and an American, and early on the country was outright hostile to Catholics.  As Catholics always have a worldview that's international in scope, as they view the Church as the Bride of Christ and serving all humanity, Catholics never have the really narrow world view that quite a few very far right wing Evangelical Protestants do.   The episodes are worth checking out, but the second of the two is really fascinating on how Catholicism can and is impacting the United States and American culture long term.

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I was also going to post on the recent excommunication of the SSPX and relate it to how far right conservatism has crawled out very far on a branch that's going to snap off.  I ended up shelving that, even though I'd started a pretty developed post on it.  I'll just complete my thoughts on it here.

Pope Leo XIV recently took an action which his immediate predecessors wouldn't.  He excommunicated the SSPX, the Society of Saint Pius X .  As this is sort of a confusing topic, we will refer you to this, which explains it.

This is a really serious action.  The Vatican didn't just address a few figures in the SSPX, but the whole SSPX.  If you are going to an SSPX Mass, you are excommunicated.

Frankly,. while the Pope doesn't consult me on such matters, he did what needed to be done here.  And there may be some who should take heed on on this, such as German bishops.  Pope Leo isn't messing around.   The SSPX is in schism which, in turn, introduces a certain element of irony.

The SSPX is not as large of group as the controversy might cause a person to suppose.  Part of the reason this briefly received so much attention is that the SSPX stream sort of flows into the lake of traditional Catholicism, and that's a much larger group.

The actual SSPX has approximately 1,500 formal, professed members globally, including about 750 priests. The SSPX claims around 600,000 worshippers worldwide, with an estimated 25,000 adherents in the United States, but that's a rough number as not everyone who enters the doors of an SSPX church actually quite appreciates what it is, and some are Trads flirting with the society.  The SSPX dates back to November 1, 1970 when  French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who had served the Catholic Church as Apostolic Delegate for French-speaking Africa, Archbishop of Dakar, and Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, a missionary order of priests, formed it in contravention to the Vatican.  In 1988 the organization went into schism the first time when it ordained Bishops without the authority of the Vatican.  The ordinations, as they were done by Bishops with valid holy orders, were illicit, but valid ordinations.  They were slowly brought back into the Church and the ordinations lifted, but now they've done it a second time.

Okay, so what's behind this all?

Archbishop Lefebvre, who was at Vatican II and seemingly approved of it at the time, was in the group of traditionalist Catholics that came to take exception to it, most specifically, in the case of the SSPX, ecumenicalism and the new form of the Mass.  Ecumenicalism is more of a European thing than an American one, so that one might baffle Americans a bit.  It was a big deal here for awhile, but as the Baptist and Baptist like churches are such a big deal here, as opposed to everywhere else, it's more or less gone away.  At the same time, in the US, the churches that were closest to Catholicism, the Anglican churches and the Lutheran churches, have been suffering a substantial decline and, as their churches "liberalized" and they began to self educate, they've started to cross over to Catholicism on their own.  

For that matter, the Catholic Church globally has become more conservative in recent decades. The Latin Mass, however, is another matter.  After Vatican II, and actually separate from it, the new form of the Mass came in and it came in with the "vernacular".

The Latin Mass, in its high version particularly, is beautiful, but frankly the new ordinary form of the Mass is as well, and, well, it has real advantages, the ability to understand it in your own language being a big one. Beyond that, however, the Church enormously expanded the set of readings with the new Ordinary Form from the much more limited set in the Latin Mass.  There are real historical reason for both the long lasting use of Latin, which had started off as the vernacular for the Roman Rite, and the limited number of readings, but neither of them held any longer by the mid 20th Century.

The real dispute, however, is over Vatican II's reforms or more particularly, "Dignitatis Humanae," which recognizes a civil right to religious freedom, and "Nostra Aetate," which encourages dialogue with non-Christian religions while recognizing elements of truth and holiness within them.   The SSPX feels that these went too far because (to reduce the argument unfairly) "there's no salvation outside the church".  The SSPX maintains that these documents are not magisterial whereas the Church maintains they are.

The ultimate irony here is that there's no question that all observant Catholics acknowledge a duty of obedience and that the Pope is the head of the Church.  As ultra traditionalist, the SSPX acknowledges this as well.  Given that, it's almost impossible to rationalize their taking the SSPX into schism, which is a grave sin.

There's probably a forlorn hope in the part of members of the SSPX that the Church will change its mind on the excommunication and, for that matter, on  "Dignitatis Humanae," and "Nostra Aetate".  It's not going to.  

While the SSPX may refuse to accept that, the entire event brings into focus why Pope Francis clamped down on the Latin Mass.  The Mass can still be said, and for that matter the Ordinary Form of the Mass can still be said in Latin, but to say the Traditional Latin Mass requires permission and that's largely been withdrawn.  

This was baffling to American Catholics when it happened, but the fact of the matter is that Traditionalist Catholics center around TLM, even if that's not what makes them traditionalist.  It's probably difficult to explain to outsiders, but it's one form of observance that's very obviously traditional.  Added to that, the persistent use of forms from the TLM in the Ordinary Form (kneeling when others are standing, not taking communion form Extraordinary Ministers, the wearing of manteas, all are visible form.  You could be, however, a traditionalist, and I'm sympathetic with traditionalist, without doing any of those things.  The line, I suppose, is when a type of devotion crosses into intolerance of a certain sort, or a rejection of something that's magisterial.  

I'd thought that Pope Leo might open the TLM back up, but now that this has occurred, I doubt it.  I think he's acting forcefully in keeping the sheep inside the gate for their own good.

Before "liberal" Catholics start rejoicing, however, I suspect certain "liberal" groups within the Church are next.  

A hint that Pope Leo may be redirecting cames nearly simultaneously.  The Pope has called for meeting of the Presidents of the world's Bishops' conferences to discuss Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family, and which was not popular with "conservatives". On June 30 Pope Leo announced that he is calling the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences to Rome in October for “synodal discernment” on how “to proclaim the Gospel to families today, in light of Amoris laetitia.”  My guess is that it's going to be scaled back.

Pope Leo has been left with the Synod on Synodality, started by Pope Francis, which is supposed to issue its final report in October, 2028. June 30, 2027 is the deadline for Dioceses and Eparchies to prepare their reports. An international Ecclesial Assembly is slated to occur in October 2028.  Some of the group reports have been released already, although that gives input on their thoughts and not really on where the Vatican may be headed.  Pope Francis had throughout this process wrestled with the German Bishops who, in the eyes of many, were headed towards schism.

Whether it comes in October, or in 2028, I suspect the German Bishops are going to get the same message the SSPX did and told to conform or be excommunicated.  The big difference, however, is that the laity who follow the SSPX are all volunteers, so now they have to determine if they follow their desires, or the Church.  My guess is that a fair number will follow the Church.  German Catholics, however are to the right of their Bishops by quite some measure and are much more conservative, and the Bishops themselves have been faced with the fact that their leadership has been plagued with declining attendance.  If Pope Leo excommunicates the Bishops, or some of them, a large number of their laity are not going to be that upset, and the Bishops for that part have no real ability to follow the example of Martin Luther and take entire congregations out of communion with Rome. Those days are over unless you have a willing laity, and they do not.

All of this means, accordingly that Pope Leo is acting, well, very Catholic, and very traditional Catholic at that.  For those who were hoping for a Pope that acted that way, it appears we now have one.

Speaking of Bishops, it was Pope St. John Paul II who required Catholic clergy to no longer hold elective office, as a small number did.  That didn't prevent association with politicians, however.  One figure who has done that a fair amount since Donald Trump's second term started has been Bishop Robert Barron, who was a highly popular Bishop with a blog.  Bishop Barron's close association with Donald Trump has made some of us quite nervous, as Trump definitely isn't a religious man.

There's a lot that occurs within the Trump administration that should worry Catholics.  A core membership of the Trump inner circle are American Evangelicals of the far right persuasion who don't believe Catholics are even Christians (and therefore share an interesting mindset with the SSPX which believes that pretty much all American Evangelicals are going to Hell).  

Trump's far right positions has naturally caused the rise of the far left in some quarters, notably in New York, which will be sending a Democratic Socialist to Congress, and in Colorado which appears slated to do so.  Democratic Socialists are not Communist and, indeed, in the revolutions of the 1910s through 1970s, Democratic Socialist would get the bullet in any country Communists took over.  Nonetheless, Donald Trump, who did not seem that gung ho about fighting communists in the 1960s when he actually literally could have, had he wanted to, is all about fighting the Reds now.

All of the above gets back to what should true conservatives and true traditionalist do?

In terms of the Church, as I noted above, I'm sympathetic with traditionalist and I feel badly for them about the general loss of the Latin Mass.  But I've noted that when there's a very orthodox priest and traditionalist Catholics in the Catholic population, it tends to show up best a devotionals in their behavior.  Frequent attendance at confession, the wearing of outwardly Catholic clothing, and often large families  Good for them. They serve, I'd note, as an influence on the larger Catholic community as a sobering and inspiring reminder of the core of the Faith.

But here's the thing.  The education of everyone, like it or not, at a younger age, is much better now than it was in the 1960s. For that matter, it's much better now than it was in the 1990s, or 2000s.  Vatican II is actually part of that. Following Vatican II the new Mass included many more readings than the TLM did, and no wonder.  Advances in printing and the like no longer meant that the Church was challenged with the transmission of the Gospel to a polyglot world the way it had once been.  If there are beautiful traditions to look back on, we have to acknowledge at the same time that restoring something means restoring what should benefit us, and that we can't go back, as much as we might want to, to an era when most people knew less and their world was smaller.

Put another way, modern Americans are not going back to what they think the 1950s were like in terms of education (what the 50s were actually like is another matter) and even Rod Dreher doesn't think we're going to build Benedictine walled cities any longer.  

That doesn't mean accepting the present either, particularly one in which Americans, civilly, are in the Age of Stupidity.

Trump's simply a very bad person, declining into senility. Who is backing him?

And by backing him, let's leave MAGA to the end of the discussion, although we'll address it.

Last week we saw Donald Trump at his outright worse.  He delivered a speech in what would normally be prime time, although it wasn't covered on two of the major networks in what seems to have been an extraordinarily late acknowledgement that he's a lying liar who lies and a danger to  humanity.  He's been trying to subvert democracy for years.  The speech this past week was an open declaration of war against the franchise.

This has been oblivious to the point of absurdity now for months and to anyone who cared to pay attention for years.  We've discussed this several times over the past couple of years.  For those of certain age, the rise of Trump has been an almost indecipherable phenomenon, although we've discussed and tried to decipher it quite a few times (and frankly, we've been largely correct).

Where we were wrong, however, is in predicting that the 25th Amendment would be applied to him. . . by now.  We still feel there's a good chance, but its fundamentally different than it was previously. At this point the non fanatic elements around him, such as they are, must be talking.  It could take any number of roads, from a Curragh Mutiny to a type of the Blue Flu.  We'll see.

What's very clear, is that the non MAGA forces, mostly in the Democratic Party, but elsewhere, must, and will, start mobilizing. Trump's a menace to humanity.  And to add to that, the speech fell flat and even m many Republicans have openly admitted that it not only failed to miss the target, the gun was never loaded.  It came across as the pathetic ramblings of a demented old man.

What's crystal clear at this point is that Donald Trump is working right now on stealing the 2026 elections.  He's doing everything he can, with a major effort being the SAVE act which would have the immediate effect of wiping out the ability of huge numbers of Americans to vote.  So far it appears unlikely to pass, although that cannot be assured.  The next step is going to be a direct attack on the polls themselves. Trump will station his SA and perhaps even the military at polling locations he wishes to disrupt and following the election he's going to proclaim the results invalid.

That's not a maybe. This will occur.

Trump's goals are personal.  He's mentally ill and he's never been mentally right.  He was a bully as a child which caused his parents to send him to military school.  He helped his father deride his troubled brother.  His life has been based on greed, greed for money and greed for a certain profile of women.  He's been a frequent failure at business and frankly he's not that smart.  He is a good salesmen, however, and he sold his image and reputation multiple times over the years, finally selling it to viewers of American television stupidly, a sales job that got him into office.  He lost the 2020 election and cannot personally stand to be thought of as a loser.

Stealing the election for him is personal, not political.  

So, with that being the case, why would any sane person support him, and who are they?

The Useful Idiot

Let's start with what's really the case with Trump. Why are people surrounding him willing to put up with him?  Why are they willing to soil themselves with lavish heaps of praise on the man?  Do they really adore and admire him the way they say they do?

Not likely, save for a very limited few.

No, he's a useful idiot.  And he's a useful idiot for two of the camps in his circle.  They are, however, two camps.  And their goals are not the same.

The Francoist

The coat of arms of the Spanish Francoist state.  The motto is "Una Gran de Libre", a Latinized version of the motto in Spanish which was "Una Grande y Libre"; "one, great, and free".

Back in 2024, not long ago, an intern to Harriet Hageman, Gabe Saint, lost his position when his social media contest was discovered.  It included links to Francoist, as well as to Groypers, like Nick Fuentes.

What's this have to do with Trump?

Quite a lot.

Now, Trump wouldn't know Saint from Adam, but the fact of the matter is that a far right Wyoming politicians had somebody on her staff who was effectively a Francoist Groyper, and only the seeming embarrassment of that, at the time, cause Saint to drop off her staff. Saint, however, didn't disappear.  He remained in the background, associated with Charlie Kirk's organization, and popping up every now and then in the far right Wyoming Freedom Caucus camp. 

Now, I bet it'd make hardly any difference at all.

Una Gran de Libre.

Groypers are, to a certain extent, the SA or the Roter Frontkämpferbund.  Some have a grasp of what they're fighting for, but that grasp is on a big scale from fully committed Ernst Röhm's who very much do, to single basement dwelling 20 something men who are mad at the world because they can't get a date.  There's every scale in between.  But the Francoist element has tapped into a real movement, and that movement, small though it is, is National Conservatism.

National Conservatism is very closely aligned, in some quarters, with Christian Nationalism.  It has a real thesis, and it has a real set of intellectuals behind it. Those intellectuals are Rod Dreher (who now seems to be questioning it), Patrick Dineen, and Kevin Roberts, amongst others.

J.D. Vance is a close associate of Roberts. Vance is in this camp.

The thesis is this.

The United States is a Western Nation.  All Western Nations are defined by the Edict of Thessalonica (380 A.D.) accepting Christianity in the Roman Empire.  That makes Western Europeans a Christian culture.  Similarly, the Christianization of Russia in 988 makes that region a Christian culture as well.

So far so good .That is essentially correct.  The United States is undoubtedly a Western Nation and in fact Western European culture is undoubtedly defined to an enormous degree by the Roman Empire accepting Christianity (and it is additionally enormously defined by having been in or under the influence of the Roman Empire).

Beyond that, however, National Conservatives (and Christian Nationalist) do not believe in democracy at all.  The reason varies, with some willing to ground it historically in the  French Revolution and its aftermath which is much less connected with religion of any kind than they think.  The French Revolution was, in the cities, definitely opposed to religion, but it was effectively, at its start, mob rule until Napoleon turned cannons on the mob.  The French revolutionaries were operating effectively on the same ethos as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause.

Not all of the French populace as like that at all. And what was occuring in France had been effectively predicted by the writings of the Agrarian Jefferson about large urban populations.

Anyhow, that experience left some in this camp distrustful of democracy to this day.  In their view, democratic states always turn to mob rule, and they always feature declining morality.  And there is evidence they can site to, starting effectively with the Supreme Court's 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade and carrying it through to 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges.  They feel that "liberalism", meant in the classic sense, and liberal democracy, have failed.

The solution, in their mind, is illiberal democracy. That was the political thesis that Viktor Orban operated on, which explains why Rod Dreher had decamped to Hungary (he's unfortunately returned.  Democracy of this type would sort of exist, but in the same fashion that it did, sort of, in Imperial Germany. There would be elections, but what you could really vote on would be predefined in a way.  Serious cultural issues would never be on the ballot.  Those would have been dictated.  So you could only decide matters in a sort of narrow, non cultural, sense.

You can see a lot of that in the warp and woof of the Trump Administration where these figures have had serious influence.  It explains not on the opposition to the fraud of transgenderism, but also the periodic insistence that everyone have more children, by which is meant those of very direct Western European ancestry have more children.  If you look carefully in the background you'll fine that not only are they opposed to abortion, but also to pharmaceutical birth control (and maybe to birth control of any kind).

Now, some conservatives hold these views as well.  I'm not far from some of them, or I outright agree with some of them. But the real difference here is that as National Conservatives do not trust or believe in democracy, these things would be dictated.

Effectively they are for a Francoist state.  

Trump isn't their Franco.

J. D. Vance is.  But they can't get to Vance, or complete their project of illiberal democracy, directly  It has to be camouflaged.  And Donald Trump is a giant orange clown who serves that purpose.

The Roundheads

The second group surrounding Trump are members of an Evangelical Right movement, the New Apostolic Reformation.  Not all precisely aligned, the generally see the United States as a Protestant nation that has gone badly astray and in need of being taken back over so that Puritanism can be restored.  Many hold to Seven Mountains Dominionism holding that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to and must dominate, those being: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government.  If they succeed, and many believe that they will as God has ordained it, the United States will become, effectively, a Calvinist theocratic state.  In that state, only those who closely adhere to a Calvinist world view will really have right, and everything will center around that.  

It's important to note that those holding this view are constantly improperly described as "Christians" or "Christo Fascist".  Most Christians in the United States and the vastly overwhelming number elsewhere do not hold the political or theocratic views that the NAR does by any means.  Indeed, most Christians on earth are Catholics, and the second largest group are Orthodox, with both groups being Apostolic Christians.  Apostolic Christians do not see any country on Earth as ordained with a Christian mission and never have.  NAR adherents are not, we might observe, reading City of God.

They don't, in many instances, even regard Apostolic Christians, who are the original Christians, as Christian.  In this sense they are not only radical, but ignorant.  But as a small radical group, they're reinforced in their ignorance, only tending to lose it when they start to widely associate with other Christians.  

What exactly the NAR would seek is not completely clear as there's enough diversity amongst the Evangelical right to force it to be unclear.  They don't all see things the same way.  But we have major glimpses of it from some of their major figures.  If they had their way, they'd be like the Puritans were in New England, forcing the state to adhere to their religious views.  A lot of what they seek, or rather oppose, is pretty clear, but only where it overlaps with other conservatives.  They're opposed to abortion, transgenderism, and the like.  But there's a lot beyond that.  They generally oppose women being involved in politics and some would remove the right to vote from them.  They don't approve as minorities as not only is this nation to be a Calvinist one, it's to be strictly white one, what it should have been, in their view, had the original 1620 landing formed the complete demographic future of the country.  

When a person realizes what they want, Mike Johnsen's view that he was to be a new Moses makes sense.  He meant it.   

This group does not see Trump as a figure adhering to their movement, but many do see him as divinely ordained.  They believe he's a latter day Cyrus the Great, delivering them but not part of them.  

Trump, accordingly, is their man.

The NAP cannot bring the country into a Calvinist promised land without Trump and they cannot do it within the next two years. They also can't do it with J. D. Vance at the helm.  Vance is a Catholic who hangs around with traditionalist Catholic intellectuals and they don't like Catholics or intellectuals  This is why a figure like Rod Dreher, who helped get us to this disaster, is now worried about the glidepath into what he brought about.  This also helps explain why the 25th Amendment has not been invoked. Vance would actually have the impact of terminating this movement in a major way and they know it.  They need Trump to stay in office.

And by stay in office, I don't mean until 2028, I mean beyond that.

They believe he's protected by God.  They believe that its morally justified to steal the election this year as that's what they need in order to bring their goals about, and they believe that God has decreed that it shall come about.  The wrong people, in their view, do not have rights anyhow.  

Oliver Cromwell, who held very similar views.

Who succeeds Trump in 2032, or even later than  that, is something they aren't focused on.  It's not Johnson.  Moses was not allowed to enter the Holy Land.  It'll be somebody else, after all the corrupt and debased influences of liberalism are put to rest.

Fellow travelers.

Those are the two main forces in Trump's cabinet and orbit.  Vance is the primary National Conservative in the cabinet, with Rubio tilting towards it.  Behind the scenes you have people like Bannon, Fuentes, Bishop Robert Barron, and others.  The NAR is better represented, with people like Johnson being prominent.  The conflict between the two, as noted, is what I think is keeping our prediction of the 20th Amendment from being invoked from occurring. The National Conservatives aren't strong enough to bring it about.

But  there are others who are in the orbit.  That keeps this nightmare going as well.

• The Confederates.

Diehard ignorant racism has always been there, but it actually increased in the first half of the 19th Century, and ultimately of course gave rise to the Civil War.  The losers in that war never accepted the results, and unfortunately a forgiving nature in American culture allowed them to get away with that. Had Radical Reconstruction being carried out, much of what we're enduring right now would not be occurring.  The 1877 abandonment of Reconstruction allowed Southern oligarchs to restore a condition of near slavery over blacks in the South.  The Lost Cause Myth was developed and glorified in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  In spite of the post World War Two Civil Rights movement, people with a Confederate mindset have never given up.

This movement is crude and really only has as its central points a hatred of everyone who isn't lily white and a sense that "liberty" means whatever they say it means.  This group also intermixes with the NAR but it also includes members of other Protestant denominations, often in sort of a ignorant fashion.  The American Civil Religion is strongly represented, in which a person can conceive of themselves as a decent person as long as they're not having gay sex.

Groups like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus have a large element of Confederates in them.  Generally they're better defined by what they hate, than what they actually support.

This group's spark was ignited by two things, one being the election of Barack Obama and the other being the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.  I didn't vote for President Obama.  I voted third party.  But I did mistakenly see Obama's election as the sign that the country had made it past its racist past.  It hasn't,  It sparked a renewal of it by those shocked that the country would elect a black man.

I thought and still think that Obergefell was a horrible decision, devoid of legal support, and demonstrating a complete lack of the understanding of the history of marriage and natural law.   Obergefell was the wake up call for National Conservatives and the NAR as well.  But with this group it was more primitive.  National Conservatives basically have the view I just stated as well as a belief that its contrary to Christian beliefs.  The NAR believes the latter as well.  But most Confederates really don't care who you fuck, as long as they're of the opposite sex.

Trump is their man as well, as he's the NAR's man, and because he speaks well of them.  Profound ignorance of history, religion, and culture tend to dominate in this group, and always have.  That makes them easy to command. . . up until a  point.

The line of departure for many of them is when things become really personal.  If they're hurt economically, or if Trump policies hurt locally, they start to awaken.

• Opportunists, the ambitious, and cowards.

Sen. Dr. John Barrasso, who probably doesn't believe most of the crap he's shoveling.

This may seem like a summary of three groups, but it's basically one.

The GOP right now is packed with politicians and figures who have no love for Trump at all, aren't National Conservatives, and who haven't darkened a church door in years.  But they'll express undying loyalty to Trump. 

They don't mean it.

The problem with the political class is that many of them are hyper ambitious, some are lazy, and others are outright cowards.  Many of them combine all three of those characteristics.   Their primary motivation is just to keep their job.

Lots of currently serving Republicans expressed disdain for Trump before it became imprudent to do so.  J. D. Vance is one of them, so is Marco Rubio.  Chances are that neither of them have actually changed their views one bit.  Lindsey Graham sacrificed his dignity by become a Trump apologist, and didn't live long to restore his reputation.  All of these figures profited politically by supporting Trump.

Indeed, the entire current Wyoming Congressional delegation fits this category.  John Barrasso has mastered the art of never giving you a clue of what he's thinking at any one time, so he didn't have to live any statements down, but to people who are close to him, it's well known that he doesn't agree with what's going on even as he acts as the majority whip.  That makes him both ambitious and cowardly.  Cynthia Lummis was open about her disdain for Trump at one time.

And in the current political field, hoping that you fit into the Confederate or NAR groups, lots of local politicians are on the Trump bandwagon when you can strongly suspect that some don't actually support him at all.  Megan Degenfelder has her endorsement by Trump on her signs.  Steve Friess sends out endless flyers with his love for Trump, when what he probably really is would be much closer to Reagan's views, mixed in with some lingering Confederatism.  Reid Rasner, whose flyers have dried up, loudly proclaimed his undying loyalty to Trump while is gadfly reels have gone after Democrats but also the transgendered.  Rasner is a homosexual and there's no real good reason to believe that he believes what he's saying, or that he is what he proclaims to be in terms of his image (gun toten' horse likeing, Frontier type).

Which brings us to a real problem of the political class in general. As it can become a career, and as careerism itself means compromise, something needs to be done to keep it from being a career.

• The besotted and the ignorant.

Finally, some of MAGA is made up of people who are just amazingly ignorant or completely besotted by Trump, the latter of which is completely creepy.

The ignorant are pretty strongly represented in the rank and file MAGAs.  They are extremely poorly informed and believe that Trump is in their camp as he says he is.  Frequently there's something they know they like, or they know that they hate, and based their decision on something very narrow.  Because of very strong prejudices, wants or the like, they're willing to go along with everything else.  They don't really think anything through.  I have friends I see in sporting goods stores who fit this definition.  As long as the Second Amendment is protecting firearms, which in spite of the way they may see is a strong hobby interest for them, they don't care about anything else whatsoever.

And then there's the besotted, the most pathetic of all of Trump's supporters.  They love him because they love being in love with him. He's their Frank Sinatra and they're his bobbysoxers.  He's their Elvis.  He's their Beetles.  They don't look at anything else, as they don't want to.  They don't want to know about Sinatra's personal life or connections with mobsters, they don't want to remember Elvis as sweaty and fat, and they don't want Yoko Ono coming in and messing things up.  They love him, and they always will.

Which says more about them, than him.

Some of these people have, I think, an odd deficit to their lives and this is what they fill it with.  Chuck Gray seems to fill it with Trump and hatred, for example.  Looking at his life, it seems as if there's a big gaping hole he's trying to fill.  Only child of a divorced couple, spends summer in Wyoming, etc.  Anyhow, if  Trump turns out not to be their beloved, they'll be crushed, so they'll go on imagining that he loves them as they need to..

The Cold Civil War and the uneasy alliances.

The US hasn't faced a crisis analogous to this, ever.  The closest we actually come is the English Civil War that was fought from 1642 to 1651, before we were a country, but still part of our overall history.  Indeed, the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 already expressed the tensions that would lead to that horrible event.  Post 1776, the only crisis that's semi analogous is the American Civil War, which has the distinct difference of the pro democracy forces being solidly in charge of the government, as opposed to what we're experiencing now which is the opposite.  Still, lessons are there as well.

The English Civil War saw what we could regard as populist religious zealots seizing control of the government and struggling against the forces of tradition and true conservatism.  The war isn't commonly fully portrayed that way, but it's a fair way to look at it.  Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan religious zealot whose views did not represent the majority of Englishmen.  He succeeded in deposing King Charles and installing himself as Lord Protector over a theocracy so extreme that to this day the location of his head is kept secret.  As hated as he came to be, Mike Johnson, the Huckabees, and Pete Hegseth would all recognize the man as a kindred spirt.

It didn't last, however.  The monarchy was restored in 1660, along with football on Sundays, and the like.  In a lot of ways, while the Parliamentary forces won the Civil War, the harshness of the following regime resulted in an appreciation of what the Puritans were not, and that set the country, including the country's colonies, on to what they later became.  Not only that, but the Puritan figures who were still living were hunted down by restored monarchy.

In the American example, which is different for the reasons noted above, the wrongdoers really weren't hunted down, which preserved the evil we're confronting today.  If the English Civil War suggests that people won't endlessly endure a regime like Mike Johnson wants to install, the American Civil War suggests that after this is over, the perpetrators of an assault on democracy should be marginalized beyond the point of return.

And one final thing.  An attempted revolution with two completely separate sets of goals is unlikely to succeed long term.  The Dineens, Roberts, Drehers and Vances are not going to be able to make common cause with the Johnsons and Hegseths.  And that may be MAGA's Achilles heel.

Johnson, Lee, Hegseth and the like are just as much religious zealots of minoritarian sects as Oliver Cromwell was.  If they get within reach of their goal, they'll begin to enact laws accordingly.  MAGA members of the American Civil Religion will be fine with reversing Obergefell, but they really won't be keen on reversing Griswold v. Connecticut, something already being discussed in right wing circles, let alone Eisenstadt v. Baird.  Defining citizenship by a person's whiteness might be okay with far right populists who regard the country as Puritan, but it's not going to be with people whose predecessors came from Galway, Lebanon, or who founded Santa Fe.  MAGA, at the end of the day, is a ragged tent in which numerous small factions are gathered under the banner of Trump to either use him or be besotted by him.  He won't last forever.

But he'll try to, which makes from now until January extremely dangerous.

Labels: 1870s, 1877, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, 2028 Election, 2032, Catholic, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Curragh Mutiny, homosexuality, Orthodox, Protestant, Reconstruction, religion, Viktor Orbán, Wyoming Freedom Caucus,1640s, 1642, 1650s, 1651, 25th Amendment Watch List, Chuck Gray, Civil War, French Revolution, Kevin Roberts, Moses, Patrick Dineen, Puritans, Rod Dreher, Roman Empire, Stuart Restoration, The Lost Cause, The Madness of King Donald

America, We Need a New Beginning | Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

 

Happy Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day, Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fastnachtsdienstag.

Holy Ghost in Denver.  While you cannot see it in this photograph, opposite this wall is a row of confessionals.  Confessions are heard during Mass.

Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove derives from "shrive", which means to give absolution. So, while I don't know how many parishes offer confession the day prior to Ash Wednesday, that's what it refers to.

It's also called Shrovetide, the evening before the Shrove, which makes more sense, really, reflecting the penitential nature of Lent.

Pancake Day.

It's also Pancake Day in England and strongly English countries, for the custom of eating pancakes on this day.  Pancakes use a fair amount of fat in them and this was part of the Lenten practice of abstaining from fat during Lent.  It's also therefore one of the odd little ways where England's history as a once deeply Catholic nation is retained.

In Ireland the day is known as Máirt Inide, from the Latin initium (Jejūniī), "beginning of Lent".  It's still associated heavily with pancakes.  That's sort of indicative of Ireland's history of being heavily impacted by the English.

Of some interest here, potentially, the Anglican Church retains confession, but not the requirement that its members annual confess, like Catholics have.  Catholicism is now outstripping Anglicanism in actual practice in the UK.  It's often noted that Catholicism has declined in Ireland, a prediction that the Church made at the time of the Anglo Irish War when it did not want to become involved in the Irish government and was forced to against its will, but the Irish remain very heavily Catholic.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1937.

Mardi Gras.

Of course, it's also Mardi Gras, or "Fat Tuesday", from the custom at one time of trying to use up all the fats in the house on this day, in French speaking countries. Contrary to American belief, Mardi Gras is in fact not unique to New Orleans but occurs everywhere that French speaking people are located.

Knights of Revelry parade down Royal Street in Mobile during the 2010 Mardi Gras season, By Carol M. Highsmith - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID highsm.05396.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11990882

American Mardi Gras, or rather American New Orleans Mardi Gras, has become heavily Americanized which means, like all American holidays, it's associated with booze.  It is always a big party wherever it occurs, but the weird boozy topless event is an American thing, not a real French thing or culturally French.

Carnival in Rome, 1650.

Carnival and Fastnachtsdienstag

Carnival, from the Medieval Latin carne vale, "farewell meat",  is the same holiday in other Romance Language speaking countries.  The same sort of linguistic intent is found in the German name for the day, Fastnachtsdienstag.  The latter reflects the fact that European Lutherans observe Lent, but in the same fashion as the Anglicans.  It's not associated with the same Canon Law that it is with Catholics, but the observance remains.

We've actually touched on all of this, fwiw, before.

All of these days reflected a period when the Lenten fast was much more severe than it currently is.  People were using up fats as they wouldn't keep for the forty days of Lent.  Now, in the Latin Rite, there's no restriction on using fats at all, the obligation to fast is just on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, when the obligation to abstain from meat also exist, during Lent.  All the Friday's of Lent are meatless for Catholics.

In the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church the fasting rules are much more strict.  Starting on Pure Monday, yesterday,   As Catholic News Service explains it:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the eyes of Latin-rite Catholics, the extent of Eastern Catholics’ Lenten fasting and abstinence is perceived as particularly strict.

The traditional Byzantine fast for Great Lent includes one meal a day from Monday to Friday, and abstinence from all animal products, including meat, fish with backbones, dairy products and eggs, as well as oil and wine for the entire period of Lent. Shellfish are permitted.

Fasting and abstinence are maintained on Saturdays, Sundays and on the eve of special feast days, although loosened to permit the use of oil and wine. On important feast days, such as the Annunciation and Palm Sunday, fish may be eaten.

“Oil and wine were restricted because, in the past, they were stored in animal skin,” explained Mother Theodora, the “hegumena” or abbess of the Byzantine Catholic Christ the Bridegroom Monastery in Burton, Ohio. “Though this is no longer the case, the tradition continues.”

There are varying degrees of fasting, from stricter to more lenient, depending on one’s work and state of health. Monks and nuns will often submit to the most strict fasting.

Holy Week is not considered part of Great Lent but “an additional, more intense time of fasting and prayer,” said Mother Theodora.

However, Eastern Catholics don’t plunge into fasting and abstinence cold turkey. “Meatfare” and “Cheesefare” weeks help them enter into the Great Fast gradually. By Meatfare Sunday, one week before the start of Lent, Eastern Catholics will have emptied their refrigerators and pantries of meat products. By Cheesefare Sunday, they will have cleared out all of their egg and dairy products, ready to enter into the Great Fast that evening, after Forgiveness Vespers.

In an effort to keep Eastern Christians faithful, yet creative, in the kitchen, cookbooks with fast-friendly recipes have been published.

By Laura Ieraci, Catholic News Service.  The rules for the Eastern Orthodox are similar, although I'm never certain of the degree to which the Orthodox are required to observe them.  Orthodox churches using the "Old Calendar" start Lent this year on February 23.

With all this, Catholics in the US enter Annual Question Time and the time of slightly difficult observances, the latter taking note of the fact that unlike some past times in the country, we're not likely to get killed or anything, so its nothing like it used to be.  Rather, as the US is not only heavily Protestant, but Puritan, Lenten practices baffle non Catholics.

Puritans disapproved of pretty much everything, including observing Christmas as a special day, so Lent was way beyond the Pale for them.  English culture, on the other hand, loved sports, so when the English dumped the Calvinist, which they did as soon as they could, their love of sports came roaring back. American culture has been impacted by English culture in every way, so Americans love sports but don't understand the Apostolic Faiths very well, in many instances, and in fact sometimes fail to realize that their own branches of Christianity are fairly recent innovations not reflecting the original Apostolic faith.

So for Lent, including its beginning, and its end in Holy Week, Americans just don't really have any observations, other than using Mardi Gras, like St. Patrick's Day, as an excuse to drink.  They way it shows up for Catholics, however, is that things that are fairly easy to observe in Catholic countries, like Holy Week or Ash Wednesday, are a lot tougher to do in the US, and of course, you'll be getting a lot of questions if you are Catholic about "why do you do that" and "why can't you . . .".

Going Feral: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.

Going Feral: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyom...: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G... : China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict ...

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G...: China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins. The Chinese Civil War w...

Linked over from Lex Anteinternet, which also discussed the Chinese Civil War.

Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, Game Wardens Killed.

China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins.

The Chinese Civil War was the topic of a political cartoon as well.

The murdered Game Wardens were Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson who were killed by ardent Nazi sympathizer and German immigrant Johann Malten.   The same Game Wardens had arrested Malten for game violations when investigating, interestingly enough, claims that Malten had been involved in espionage and was relaying weather reports on shortwave, something that was illegal during the war when there was a blackout on weather reporting as the information was useful to submarines.  Upon visiting Malten's cabin in the Sierra Madres they found he had committed numerous game violations.

On this occasion they were stopping by to see if Malten had continued to ignore the law.  They were shot down out of hand when they arrived.

Malten burned his cabin down and it was officially reported that he'd died within it, although the evidence of that is very poor.  There were reported sightings of him for years thereafter.

And a selection of 1945 cartoons.

I knew about this story because former Wyoming Game Warden David Bragonier wrote about it in his book about Wyoming Game Wardens, Wild Journey: On the Trail With a Wyoming Game Warden in Yellowstone Country.  It's a good book, and I recommend it.

Bragonier discusses this event, although I clearly don't remember everything I read in his account.  That's probably not too surprising as I read the book in 1999.  What I recall but didn't see in the accounts on the murder you can find here is that the investigation was associated not only with the killer's German nationality and his strong Nazi sympathies, but also with shortwave radio transmissions that could not be pinned down.  

There's a bunch of interesting things that could, and if a person had time, should be explored here as the story raises all sorts of undeveloped oddities.

One of them is that Lakanen and Simpson are two out of the three Wyoming Game Wardens who were murdered by immigrants (to the extent I know why the various ones who lost their lives in the line of duty did).  I'm not saying that immigrants murder game wardens, but this is an interesting fact.  The other one is John Buxton, who was murdered by a youthful Austrian immigrant in 1919.  In that instance he had taken a .30-30 Savage rifle from a 17 year old who drew a revolver and killed him.  The reasons that Buxton was checking the boys is unclear.  Stories frequently claim they were hunting out of season, but that seems incorrect.  They were certainly overarmed for rabbits, however, with a .30-30 being way too large for that pursuit.  Buxton might have been checking them as their activities seems suspicious, which frankly they do, or because there was a state law at the time that prohibited aliens from carrying firearms.

The killers handgun, we might note, was concealed.

I only note this as its odd.  Hunting is common in Germany and Austria, and indeed there's a strong hunting culture there, but it's highly regulated.  As a result, poaching is fairly common as well, even though its highly criminal.  Indeed, one of the SS's units during World War Two, the Dirlewanger Brigade, was originally made up of convicted poachers, although it moved on to other criminals over time.

Anyhow, I wonder if these people were just hugely out of sink with any culture at all.

In the earlier murder, it's been noted that the young men had been in run-ins apparently with Italian immigrants in the same location. Austro Hungaria and Italy had been on opposite sides of World War One.  Again, I'm not saying that caused the murder, but I do wonder if they conceived of themselves as being very much on the outside of things.

Another interesting thing, although having nothing to do with the focus on this page, is the lingering Nazi sympathies in some quarters amongst German immigrants who chose to continue to live in the country.  That carried on, quietly, well after the war, even after the news of the Holocaust became known.

Odd.

If Malten was actually a spy, that may explain the killing in and of itself.

Another thing this story oddly brings up is the extent to which trapping remained economically viable.

Trapping was pretty common in Wyoming up into the 1970s, when there was a fur market price collapse.  I had, well still have, traps, although I haven't set them for decades.  In the 1970s high school kids like myself supplemented our incomes by trapping or hunting coyotes for their furs.  The market was so lucrative at the time that there were people who flew in from out of state and hunted coyotes near Miracle Miles, something we didn't appreciate very much as we didn't have those sorts of resources available to us.  The Federal Government was also big into predator control at the time which we also didn't appreciate much for the same reason.

Furs are, fwiw, an actual renewable resource fabric, one of the few.

Fur coats were a big deal for women at this time and would, again, be throughout the 1950s.  They were not nearly as much of a luxury item as people like to remember.  My mother had a heavy mink coat that she brought down from Montreal that she wore on really cold days.  As a kid I loved it when she brought it out, due to the feel of the soft minks.  

It was, in spite of Donald Trump and the Sweet Home Alabama crowe dof the GOP may believe, colder then.

I've never looked into it but I suspect that synthetic fabrics had as much to do with the decline in furs as anything else.  That started during World War Two and is well evidenced by the Air Force's switch from sheepskin flight altitude flight jackets to synthetic ones.  That trend continue into the 1950s and I suspect it just generally caught up with fur coats by the 1980s.  Indeed, the association of fur with luxury somewhat increased in that time, with it generally being the case that things are regarded as luxurious not only for their scarcity, but because they really aren't needed.

More on fur clothing some other time.

I guess the final thing I'll note is how dangerous of job being a game warden is.  A lot of the crimes you investigate are, by default, armed crimes.  

Given that, it's amazing to look back and realize that when I was a kid wardens didn't carry sidearms.  They weren't allowed to.  I recall when that changed and many did not take up what was then the option to carry them.  Now they're required to.

Indeed, I was recently stopped by a warden and frankly he wasn't very nice.  That's a new trend as well.  I don't like it.  But not only was he not nice, he was extremely intimidating carrying a government issued handgun on a government issued gunbelt and wearing a government issued flak jacket.  

I've really hated the militarization of the policy and this is all part of it. Everytime I see a policeman anymore, including a game warden, they're dressed like they're going into Hue in 1968.  All policemen of every type are civilians.  They're simply deputized civilians.  They shouldn't look like an occupying army.  And if the treat people rudely, and many do, and are standing their armed treating you like you are a detained Vietnamese villager, it's scary.

A little of that comes across, I'd note, in Bragonier's book, in spite of my recommendation of it.  It's a good book, but he displayed an element of contempt for the public he served in it.

David Bragonier must be, I'd suspect, gone to his reward by now  His biography indicates that he was born in Iowa in 1937 and moved to Wyoming after graduating high school.  He became a game warden over twenty years later, in 1958, something that would be extremely difficult to do now due to the education requirements.  He briefly worked for the Forest Service before that.

A man becoming a Game Warden at 39, which he did, would be really unusual now.  Probably impossible.

I actually have twice tried to plow that field myself, rejecting it once as I just go engaged.  I would have been about 30 at the time.  It'd be completely impossible for me to become a Game Warden now as I not have a wildlife management degree.  I suppose that requiring that specific degree is a good thing, but I do miss the days when a lot of Game Wardens were basically from ranching families.  Even when I was that age, many of them fit that category.  My cohort was probably about the last one that would meet that description.

I went on, of course, to a successful career in the law, and I was already a lawyer, of course at age 30, and had been for a few years.  I took one fork in the road.  You aren't supposed to look back.  Luke tells us, in a different context, that "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God".  I'll confess I've looked back a lot.

Having said all of that, I spoke the same warden (turns out he's very green) as I found a poached elk about two weeks later.  I had to guide him in, by phone, to the location.  He was very nice on that occasion, and that's how things should be.