The Agrarian's Lament: The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it is time to be the people that founded the country.

The Agrarian's Lament: The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it i...:   The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument. : This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald...

The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it is time to be the people that founded the country.

 

The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.: This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. h...

On the 250ths Anniversary of American Independence it'd do us well to recall that while the Revolution may have been lead by landed patricians, it was fought by landed yeoman.

It's a great misfortune to the country, or perhaps a timely reminder, of exactly how far we've fallen in that regard. We have, in the form of Donald J. Trump, a President, albeit an illegitimate one, who is the very symbol of what Americans rebelled against 250 years ago. This monumental palace coach should serve to remind us. 

Had Donald Trump been alive in 1776, he'd have been a Loyalist. 

At the end of the war he'd have been packed up to Canada to annoy the French, who at least would largely have not understood him.  Not, in his dementia, that we do either.

Washington on Blueskin.

George Washington owned his own mounts.  John Adams broke one of his own mounts as late as his 80s.  Taft kept a cow on the White House lawn.

Donald Trump flies back and forth to his golf resort in Florida on the American taxpayers dime.¹  And now, at the expense of some $400,000,000 taxpayer dollars, he's unveiled the new one, and gushes about its "luxury":

Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.

This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. history, it just can't be avoided.

The Federal Government, funded by the American taxpayers in the form of taxes, and by individuals and foreign governments in the form of loans, has taken delivery of one Boeing "VC-25B Bridge", a military conversion of a Boeing 747-8 originally built as a Boeing Business Jet.  The plane was delivered in 2012 to Qatar Amiri Flight and used by the House of Thani. In June 2023, it was delivered to Global Jet Isle of Man. The Qatari government gave it as a gift. . . if we assume governments really give gifts to other governments.  Poor little King Donny just wasn't happy with the existing Air Force One and given that he's in his last term he couldn't wait for new ones under construction to be completed.

After he leaves office, which given his advanced age and rapidly declining mental status is likely to be before his term expires, the airplane, which has cost the United States at least $400,000,000 in "upgrades" to make it work in its role as a royal coach for his majesty, will be transferred to his presidential library foundation.  Indeed, that will happen before his unfortunate illegitimate reign is over.

This is complete bullshit.

I've posted on this story, and this airplane, here before:

Air Force One.

Air Force One has been in the news a lot recently, and it  started before the Qatari proposal to give the United States, or Donald Trump (it isn't clear which) a luxury outfitted Boeing 747.

Technically "Air Force One" is a call sign, and merely denotes an airplane the Chief Executive is a passenger in.  If a President rode in an Air Force Cessna, that would be Air Force One.  But everyone knows that it refers to one of two Boeing VC-25s, militarized 747s, that are designated for the Presidents use.

RD-2

Interestingly, the first aircraft designated for Presidential use was a Navy airplane, an amphibious Douglas Dolphin RD-2 that was luxury outfitted for use by President Roosevelt.  It was used from 1933 to 1939, and obviously not for transglobal flight.  The President didn't really do extensive travel until World War Two.

Roosevelt's once used VC-54C.

In spite of concerns over commercial aviation being used to carry the President during the war, it was in fact used and it wasn 't until 1945 that a new designated Presidential aircraft was acquired, that being a  Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC-54C) which was named the Sacred Cow.  It contained a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It's only use by Roosevelt was to fly the then dying President to Yalta.  Truman used it thereafter, but it was replaced by military DC-6 (VC-118) thereafter.

Truman's VC-118.

President Eisenhower, who of course knew planes well, to Lockheed C-121 Constellations, Columbine II and Columbine III. The Constellation was a very popular airplane at the time, and Douglas MacArthur also had one, that one spending many years after its service at the Natrona County International Airport on an abandoned runway.

Columbine II was the first Presidential aircraft to receive the designation Air Force One.

At the end of Eisenhower's Presidency Boeing 707s came in, in part because the Soviets were using a jet to transport their Premier.  707s remained through the Nixon era, giving good service in this role.

747s, as VC-25s, entered specialized manufacture for use as Air Force One during Reagan's administration, although the first one would enter service after that.  They've been used ever since.

These aren't normal 747s.  They are packed with communications and electronic warfare equipment in order to have combat survivability.  

Replacing the current two aircraft that are used as Air Force One is a topic that the Air Force started looking at quite a few years ago.  The 747 variant which the VC-25 isn't made anymore.  Production of 747s stopped in 2023 in favor of more modern aircraft.  Still, the airframe remains useful in this role, and after the Air Force started to look into options, updating a 747-8 appeared to be the best option.  Only Boeing was interested in the project anyway, and it will take a massive financial loss to do it.  

The aircraft that are being retrofitted for this role was built, originally, as a commercial airliner. The projected is a massive one, and the delivery date will be in 2027.

What the new Air Force Ones will look like.

Enter Qatar.

Qatar has offered to give the US (I guess) a luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One until the other 747-8s are complete.  But here's the thing.  Boeing has been working on the complicated task fo converting the two existing 747-8s for this use for several years. After all, it's basically a combat aircraft.  All accepting the plane would do is give Boeing a third one to convert, which wouldn't be ready for years.

Trump is being childish about this, as he is about a lot of things.  He doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the aircraft, and likely a lot of other people don't as well.  In his case, this is inexcusable.  It's a combat airplane.

Frankly, it's a Cold War combat airplane.

Which gets to this.

The 747 was a big massive airliner in an era in which it was the queen of the sky. That era is over and airlines have moved on to more modern aircraft.  The world in which Ronald Reagan ordered 747s is gone as well.  It's still useful to have an aircraft that can be used in a global thermonuclear war, which is what it is, but that's not going to happen and it makes no sense to use it to go on weekend golfing trips to Florida.

But that's what Trump tends to use it for.

That raises an entire series of other questions, many of which have little to do with aircraft, but some of which do.  It's notable that other Presidents have used lighter aircraft for more mundane trips.  In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C.  In 2000, President Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III.  In 2003, President George W. Bush flew in the co-pilot seat of a Sea Control Squadron Thirty-Five (VS-35) S-3B Viking from Naval Air Station North Island, California to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with that latter obviously being an exception. Barack Obama used a Gulfstream C-37 variant on a personal trip in 2009.

Trump can use something else than a 747 for what he uses Air Force One for in almost every single instance.

Indeed, the entire topic brings up a lot of things about the risks of having an airplane like this, a luxury airliner inside, which is really a combat aircraft.  It makes it easy to forget what it really is, and it makes a President feel like an Emperor, which he is not.

So why am I doing it again?

Since May, 2025 Donald Trump has used the existing Air Force One to fly back and forth to his Florida golf home/resort, effectively using the airplane as a toy, repeatedly.  He's also used it for what are basically campaign trips.  He's launched an illegal war against Iran for which the Department of Defense now seeks $80,000,000,000 to cover, and which killed thirteen Americans and untold numbers of Iranians.  That war encouraged Israel to not only participate in it, or perhaps the other way around, but also to engage in an invasion of Lebanon.  He's spent something like $13,000,000 to Rhino Line the Washington D. C. reflecting pool, he's trying to build a massive ballroom that will ultimately cost the taxpayer one way or another, and he's trying to build a triumphal arch, making the United States the first country in the world to build an arch after getting solidly defeated in a war.

He's demented, and he acts like an emperor. This airplane is part of that delusion.

Truth be known, the entire Air Force One thing hasn't made sense for years.  Having some sort of aircraft available for Presidential use for Presidential work makes some limited sense. But most of what Trump uses the aircraft for could be achieved through commercial aviation.  Indeed, not one single trip Trump has taken could not have been accomplished that way.

And that's how this should be done.  Back when transpiration was by rail, the President didn't own a train.  When Trump goes over to the G7 to insult the Italian Prime Minister with his lunacy, that could be done by commercial air, and should be done that way.  And I mean commercial air, not chartered air.  The government could get him a ticket on a regularly scheduled flight.

And when he goes to Mar A Lago he can pay for his own ticket.

I know that the objections will be "oh my, it isn't safe".  That is, frankly, for the most part complete BS.  Trump could get a ticket on Ryan Air and be just as safe as anyone else. 

And if its a little less safe, that's a good thing.  One of the problems with the modern presidency is that the occupant of the White House is too insulated from the people he supposedly serves.  At one time the President shook the hands of all who lined up on New Years Day.  Not anymore.

If the President had to travel with the great unwashed masses maybe he'd be less of a lunatic.  Or maybe he'd just realize that its a real job.  

Anyway you look at it, Air Force One is a titanic waste of money.  The Air Force has aircraft.  If he needs to go, he can load up on a C5A with the equipment going wherever its going.  

And this waste of money is going to a Trump library just before Trump leaves office.

WTF?

If the US had to spend money on it, it should keep it.  This is appalling.  That should be addressed as soon as possible.  If there's a current way to address it, it just should be silently done.  Trump can leave office and his library, which frankly is a pointless thing in the first place, can buy a Revell model kit of a Boeing 747. This absurd flying castle can carry on in its existing role and join the two that are being built, or preferably at least one of those two contracts cancelled seeing as the US has this thing.

At that point, the signature on the under panel that Trump affixed yesterday can be fittingly modified, recalling World War Two nose art.  A realistic Trump nude torso doodle, a la Epstein, can be installed.  A fitting monument.

It's a gift form Qatar, an authoritarian, semi-constitutional hereditary emirate monarchy ruled by the House of Thani.  The Emir is the absolute authority.

Just the sort of government that King Donald can related to.  Apparently they could relate to him, or more likely, thought they could obtain some advantage by appealing to his pathetic vanity.

The plane will be transferred to his Presidential library before he leaves office.  What books would even appear in Donald Trump's library boggles the imagination.  He does not appear to be a well read man, or even really read anything.  Figures from his last administration related he had a hard time reading memos they gave him as he lost interest so rapidly.  He does not appear to be a smart man.²

And, current American worship of wealth aside, we shouldn't expect him to be.  What I've long suspected turns out to be true.  The wealthy are often stupid.

Does Being Rich Make You Stupid?

False consciousness goes upscale.

Billionaires Are Actually Less Intelligent Than Lower-Paid People New Study Shows

Does Having Too Much Money Make Us Stupid?

World’s Richest People May Actually Be Dumber Than Those Who Earn Less, Study Says

Luck and circumstance has plenty to do with it.

This actually doesn't surprise me at all.  The question is whether wealth makes you stupid, or encourages the breeding down of intelligence.  Either can be maintained.

It was Chesterton who noted that "AMONG the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."  There's something to that.  But beyond that, there's plenty of evolutionary evidence of the latter point.  Wild cattle are quite a bit smarter than domestic ones.  Wolves are smarter than dogs.  Wild turkeys are very smart birds whereas domestic ones, apparently are dumb as a post.

Cave drawing of an Aurochs.  Modern cows can be dicey, but aurochs wanted to kill you.

The question would be, of course, why this is true, and selective breeding by human beings largely explains it.  We'd rather not have a mean cow that seeks to break free, raising a gang of mean cows, and lay siege to the village.  Hunters and herdsmen like smart dogs, but bred to be fairly compliant. If you've ever owned a standard poodle, one of the oldest hunting breeds, you'll see how much of the wolf wasn't bread out of them, they think for themselves, we've worked a lot on dogs since then.  

French Poodle in the early 1900s. The coat may look weird but they're a hunting dog, and a German bred one.  Even now, the Puddle Dog has opinions on everything and isn't shy about giving you them. The only other modern hunting dog that rivals them that way is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, another old breed..

It's a dangerous thing to say, and contrary to the thesis advanced by eugenicists, but there's pretty good evidence that people on average were getting smarter and smarter all along throughout human history, in very real terms, up until just recently.  Evolution was forcing it.  Some evolutionary biologist argue that the homo sapien sapien of our current era is demonstrably smarter than homo sapiens of, say, 100,000 years ago. . . or 50,000 years ago. . . or 10,000 years ago, or 5,000.³   And it makes some sense.

In a normal, i.e., not rich, environment a lot of things go into mate selection, oh heck let's say spouse selection other than what goes into attracting people, oh heck let's say men, to Only Fans.  Love has always been an aspect of it, but its interesting to note how even when I was a teen, teenagers selected dates on character, which included intelligence, more than anything else.  It's funny to think of now, but if a guy had a "pretty" girlfriend, he was just considered lucky, and a girl with brains and other positive characteristics would have a boyfriend who featured the same, irrespective of her looks. When the girl was good looking, it was just sort of like winning a bonus prize.  Purely good looking girls, if that's all they had going for them, weren't really sought out.  

  Two young couples.  Migrant farm workers in Louisiana and their children, 1939.

This remained true, I'd note, throughout my entire single life.  Maybe it's largely true now.

But with the wealthy, it's another matter.

Future Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith and her first husband, Billy Ray Smith.  She was 17  and he was 16 when she married.  He was cook.  She changed her image enormously after they divorced and ended up married to an octogenarian after being a Playboy Centerfold and Guess Jeans model. Do we think that late union was a marriage for love on either side?  She paid the price, of course, dying young.  Her first husband is still alive, but never speaks much.  He was apparently crushed by the death of their son, pictured here, when he was in his twenties.  He never remarried.

Donald Trump, who gives no evidence of being an intelligent man, has been married three times, with each spouse having a certain sort of look save for one.  Two have been Slavic beauties of a certain sort, which means they present a certain look that certain people regard as glamorous beauty.⁴. The second, Marla Maples, actually presents as pretty smart. That marriage lasted six years.⁵

The point here?

I'm not thinking that a lot of the super rich determine their mates the way regular people do.  I don't think "is he/she a good helpmate?" or "do we have the same interests, faiths, worldview?", or to be really old school, "can this guy/gal help me around the farm?" has gone into it much.  Rather, they often seem to be chosen on looser characteristics that might more resemble how oriental potentates chose concubines for the harem, i.e., looks.

When Arab raiders stole Irish women, after all, smart as those women tend to be, they weren't marketing them on "look at this ginger. . . she's really got the brains!"

Now, a person can take this too far, but we live in a rich society.  The richest of us may in fact be stupider than the rest of us, or a lot of us.  And we collectively, just like a placid cow in the field, may be starting to get dumber overall.

We live in a materially very wealthy culture.  Even the average impoverished American is wealthier than many thought to be well off in former eras. And to add to that, the decay in morality, brought about by material wealth, which has allowed us to focus only on ourselves, has developed a self centered sexual culture that contributes to this.

Put another way, as one female observer seriously noted:

But its not making people happier.  People know something is wrong.

Gallup informs us that most Americans believe in the "American Dream", whatever that is, but that a very high percentage believe its unobtainable.

American Dream Endures as U.S. Approaches 250 Years

That's because it is unobtainable.

The American Dream has been defined in various ways.  I think it might be best defined in the film The Best Years Of Our Lives.

In that film there's a moment when discharged sergeant Fred Derry gives a loan to a discharged Navy vet who is a tenant farmer.  He wants to buy his own farm.  He knows he can do it.

That's the best description of the American Dream I've ever seen.

The real dream is to own your own.  And at the time of the American Revolution, most did. That's what had brought them to the country.

I don't know what they teach the young now, but when I was growing up it was a lot of crap about how people came over for freedom, mostly freedom of religion.

Yeah, some did, sort of. The best example might be the Puritans on the Mayflower, who were seeking freedom to worship in their own way and to tell everyone else in the world how they were supposed to do it.  If you were in a Puritan community you were worshipping with them or getting punished, severely.

Only about 1/3d of the Mayflower passengers were Puritans.  The rest were likely members of the Church of England which itself was less than 100 years separated from the Catholic Church, and even less separated from the Prayer Book Rebellion.⁶ Point is, those passengers, who were all part of the group that put in as they were out of beer, didn't come for religious freedom.

They came for land.

Land is, and was, independent.  People knew then, and they knew now, that land was independence, freedom, and a decent life worth living.  If you could obtain, as Chesterton would later put it, "three acres and a cow", or more likely 40, and a mule, you had it made.  You were not rich.  You were not poor. You were your own family.

Land is what caused Englishmen to risk their lives in 1607 to come to a new continent, or Frenchmen to come to it in 1608, or Spanish to come to it in 1565.  Here they could get it, at some cost, but a none the less obtainable one.  In Europe, they could not.  And if not all came as farmers, tradesmen who came, came because they could open their own shops, essentially operating on the same ideal.  Those who couldn't muster up the cash for transit indentured themselves to do so which, in spite of latter day white apologist, was not slavery.  It was a temporary means of getting started, in some ways like apprenticeships or joining the service operates for many today.

We cannot say that it was universally benign. That would be a lie. The land in fact already belonged to somebody else, the native inhabitants, whose claims were excused due to their rotational agricultural practices and low population density. But that doesn't change the basic fact.  It was land, not "freedom" of any type that drew the immigrant.

By moving, they freed themselves from some landowning overlord and made themselves independent farmers.  That dream lasted all the way up until the mid 20th Century in some fashion.  While it remains alive today, the truth is that the reality it of it is as dead, yielded to the bloated interests of the rich.  The largest landowner in the US today is billionaire sports and real estate mogul Stan Kroenke, who owns land in Wyoming.  Mom and pop shops have yielded to the nightmare created by Sam Walton.  

People who think the American dream is alive are largely fooling themselves.

Nonetheless, a dream is a dream, and revolutions are based on dreams.

The American Revolution was based on a landowning dream.  It wasn't, frankly necessarily wholly admirable.  The Intolerable Acts included, in a very real sense, the sense that the Crown was going to restrict the right of expanding countrymen's families to settle new lands, and they were right. The fear also was that the Crown would restrict economic activity in the Colonies for revenue purposes, and that was partially correct.  Common Sense and the like aside, a real cause of the Revolution was the native sense that the free right to settle land, and engage in small free enterprise, was the only thing that separated American Colonist form the English and European masses.

They were right, if not necessarily morally right.

A large number, maybe most, revolutions since that time, and some before it, have been based on the same cause. The French Revolution was not, and it remains a global oddball.  The Russian Revolution, failed as it was, is such an example, however, as was the Russian Revolution of 1905.  The Chinese Revolution of 1911, and the Chinese Civil War, both failed examples, also were.  The Mexican Revolution, also a failed revolution, very much was.

The Mexican Revolution provides, in fact, an excellent example.  Through every phase, from 1911 onwards, the rich landed class fought back, and when defeat arrived, they stepped aside and regrouped.  It kept the Revolution from really being successful.  Indeed, of all the revolutions we have noted, only the American Revolution was really successful.

But the success it created is dead.  Today,. we have the Donald Trumps and Elon Musks and other 1%ers that control the economy, and which some like Jonah Goldberg even feel we should celebrate (as to Musk).

Well, no.

Time for a second American revolution.

Not, we might note, one with guns.  Indeed, that would inevitably be not only immoral, but outright moronic, lead by people festooned with Second Amendment tattoos while advocating outright fascism.

No, something more radical than that, a revolution at the ballot box.

It's time to end the moronic celebration of a "free market system" that isn't free in any sense.  Corporate Capitalist are shoving pablum down the throats of the electorate while pocking the largess. Large-scale corporatism needs to end.

And so too does a weird millennialism appropriations of public lands by people like Deseret Mike Lee and pathetic fellow travelers like John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman.

A revolution can be had at the ballot box.  It won't happen all at once, but if started now the two party system can be ended, and the creation of wealth for the wealthy can be as well.  Remote land ownership, something the colonist came here to escape, can be as well.

It won't happen as long as people don't think.  But they need to think now.  At some point they will, and if we don't take on the yoke of this burden now, when the plow ox bulks, it'll be bad.

Footnotes

1.  Donald Trump is such a WASP, with the adherence to the "P", that he's converted some property in Washington D.C. to become a golf course and is putting in courses on some military bases.

Put in shooting ranges or something.  Not something that fat old white guys play.

2. The fact that Trump is a Wharton graduate is really a slam at the Ivy League. Yes, they have some great schools, but the system they operate in really has graduated some failures.  Pete Hegseth provides such an example.  

Wharton owes the country an apology, and I say that as somebody who has a relative that graduated from there. The fact that Trump graduated is applying. The fact that Chuck Gray is their product is as well.

3.  Some theologians have speculated that there was a point with our species when God converted us from just a smart hominid into what we are in the Divine Plan, with an immortal soul. The speculation is that it was the moment language arrived, and there's some archeological and biological evidence that moment was in fact sudden and radical.  

4. Frankly, Trump spouses 1 and 3 really aren't bombshells.  Melania is more properly characterized as "handsome".

5.  We can't really speculate on the smarts of 1 and particularly 3.  Melania is hard to figure as she's never obtained a really good command of English.  None the less, people who admire her, are frankly doing so willfully.

6. Recusant Catholics are estimated to be less than 5% of the English population at the time, which means that were likely to probably have actually been 10 to 15%.  Today, more Catholics attend weekly services in the UK than the established church.  Recently one Anglican convert in the UK described her transition as "going Full Fat Catholicism"

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th Edition appendix. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes. So does Beyonce Knowles. And stuff.

The Sydney Sweeney jeans ad praising her genes is genius: How nice to have the Sydney Sweeney “great genes” controversy. It is happily of no consequence, which is . . . 

Froma Harrop.

The massive overreaction to Sweeney being in an American Eagle ad while being white continues on, and is nicely addressed by Froma Harrop above.  Harrop's article reminds us of a few other pretty women, which likely means that it's a good thing the article was written by a woman.

Coincidentally, Beyoncé Knowles ad campaign for Levis continues on as well.  It predates Sweeney's ad for American Eagle.  I don't know anything about American Eagle jeans at all, but I do about Levis as I wear them a lot.

Knowles is also hot.

From Knowles Levis commercial

Knowles, of course, is an African American.

Of interest in this, both Knowles and Sweeney manage to be hot while fully clothed, a good trend.

Sweeney from her American Eagle ad.

Also of note, they're both actually really curvy and not sticks.  In other words, they look like actual women, which is of course what they are.  Knowles is particularly notable as she's been regarded as hot all along, even though she doesn't fit into the traditional stick figure model category that modeling agencies have tended to use for years.  She's big.  

Of course, all this brought out the political clowns.  Robot from Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz (why hasn't ICE deported this foreign born interloper yet?) felt compelled to state that due to the Democrats  “beautiful women are no longer acceptable in our society.”  That's really absurd.  One of the things that Sen. Krysten Sinema, now an independent but up until recently a Democrat, basically took criticism for was being hot while in office.  Sinema, whose politics are eclectic, is clearly highly intelligent. She's also a fallen away Mormon who is "unaffiliated" in terms of religion, and a lesbian, all of which puts her in the infamia category for Republicans.

Republicans, it might be noted, really lashed on to Sweeney when they found out she's a registered Republican, which means almost nothing.  Most of the MAGA politicos would have been regarded as fringe Republicans at best up until King Donny.  Real Republicans, as Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray likes to point out, are now regarded as Democratic infiltrators by the current GOP, which is lead by a lifelong former Democrat, Trump.  We really don't know about her actual political views at all.

She registers in Florida, and of course she might register Republican for the same reason that horrifies Chuck Gray in Wyoming, it might for the most part be the only place to register. The Unconstitutional Primary Election in Wyoming tends to be the real election, so that's where people register.  Maybe that's why Sweeney registers that way in Florida. Who knows?

Republicans, starting with Trump, have really latched on to her already, which is a metaphor that should make Sweeney uncomfortable.  Some real boofador from Fox News even went so far as to suggest that seeing Sweeney in jeans might remind American men of their demographic obligation to procreate, whic his extremely weird, and referenced Dylan Mulvaney as an example of what might be deterring them. While Mulvaney is genuinely bizarre, and transgenderism not a real thing, that's probably not what's keeping the WASPs home alone in their basements rather than going out and meeting someone.

Somebody in this category, who is going out, as in out of the state, is Artemis Langford, who, having graduated from university, is packing up and leaving, claiming the state doesn't want people like him here.  Langford, who deserves real pity, demonstrated self pity in the interview, as he had to have known that being a big overweight man in a sorority would draw attention, although he no doubt didn't expect all the litigation that ensued.  The basic gist of his complaint is that he doesn't like it that there have been laws passed to protect actual women from being displaced in women's sports and the like, and he doesn't like it that society has moved towards recognizing "transgenderism" for what it is, a mental illness, so he's leaving.  At least as of two years ago, his intended career path was law school.  Being a man presenting as a woman wouldn' t stop a person from practicing law here, although it probably would be limiting, so pursuing that career elsewhere probably would be a good idea, if that's his actual intent.

All of this gets into the topic of conservatism, cultural conservatism, culture, and populism, but we'll try to take that up somewhere else.  Maybe in our 100th Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist edition.

Anyhow, one denim glad guy saw an opportunity here, and took it:

Wyoming Outdoorsman Spoofs Controversial Sydney Sweeney Jeans Ads

He does like the Sweeney ad.  I'll bet he likes the Knowles one too.

And all this comes up, sort of, due to denim, something that women didn't often appear in, and for that matter decently dressed men, until after World War Two.  While women wearing jeans had taken off well before that, Levis didn't introduce 501s for women until 1981.

Related threads:

Levis

Labels: 1870s, 1873, 1890, 1890s, 1940s, 1947, 1950s, 1960s, Agriculture, Clothing, Growing up in the 1970s, It was because of World War Two, Standards, technology, trends, World War Two

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Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th edition. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes.

Labels: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2020s, Advertising, Clothing, Conservatism, Culture, Ethnicities, Evolutionary Biology, flap de jour, Liberalism, nature, Patrick Dineen, Pronatalism, Sydney Sweeney, Women, Zeitgeist

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th edition. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes.

Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle denim, part of the ad campaign causing all the furor.  The outfit itself is very 1970s retro, which is more than a little ironic in context.  Given the commentary, this is posted with the fair use exception.

Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.

Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle ad.

Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad shows a cultural shift toward whiteness.

CNBC headline.

Q: Your administration has been very open about the fact that American women are not having enough babies. There was an ad this week. Sydney Sweeney, an actress, was in an ad for Blue Jeans. Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?

Rob Finnerty in an interview of Donald Trump.

First, let us state something plainly.

Sydney Sweeney is hot.

Way hot.

And she looks good in the American Eagle Jeans, which are sort of retro 1970s denim really.  

Really good.

So why are people having a fit?

Well, it's a really interesting tour through the culture, really.

Using attractive women to sell clothing is nothing new.  Shoot, using attractive women to sell anything, is in fact not new.  

So what's the big deal.

Basically, when you get right down to it, the big deal is two things.  First of all, Sweeney is white.  Secondly, this is a return to an obvious sex sells approach to selling that we haven't seen since the early 1990s.

The peak of the sex sells approach was really the 1970s.  Coincident with the rise of feminism was the absolute exploitation of women in advertising.  Calvin Klein really went to town with Brooke Shields, who was sexualized so young in her career that her image, in the movie industry, was basically a near example of child pornography.  But in advertising, he wasn't the only one.  There were in fact advertisements that would outright shock most Americans now as they used young teenage girls in sexualized poses.  It was repulsive. 

That seemed to have run its course by the mid 1980s, but even then, in the 1990s, Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith modeled jeans, in her case Guess jeans.  

The 90s, however, also saw the really fruity elements of the American come into cultural power, and a lot of that gave us, unfortunately, what we have today in terms of a massive right wing populist reaction.  In modeling, left wing media masters insisted that models not be, if possible, smoking hot young women and that instead they should be culturally diverse, and in some cases, fat.

Now comes this, in the midst of a real swing to cultural conservatism, but not culturalism of the Patrick Dineen type, but of the Dukes of Hazzard fan type.

What Sweeney said, quite frankly, is actually completely true. Genes are passed down from parents to offspring.  Genes in fact determine external traits like hair color and eye color.  That is a fact.

And, more than we like to admit, they determine a massive amount of our personality traits.  If you hang around a family gathering and don't find people who have the same deep interests as you do, the same sense of humor, etc., you might wish to check to see if you are in the right place. Sure, some of that might be due to environment, you are all from the same family, but some not.  It's well known that many of the traits that impact our personalities are in fact genetic.

So what's up with the upset.

Well she's white, as are 60.5% of the American population.  That is who you are trying to sell to much of the time. The liberal left just can't have that.

If the same clothing promotion was being done by Anok Yai, the left wouldn't be having a fit, the right would be, and for the exact same reason.

Which is exactly why, if I ran American Eagle, I'd have Anok Yai join in the campaign.

Of course, that isn't the only reason people are enjoying being upset.  They're also upset as the ads openly focus on Sweeney's assets, including having the camera in the jean jacket ad focus on her boobs until she intervenes to instruct the viewer to look at her face.

Well, gentle reader, that portrays reality.  All the feminist reactions in the world are never going to stop men from observing cleavage when its right there.  We're wired that way, and for a reason.

Which brings us to the next point.  In the right wing defense, Trump, in a friendly Fox interview, was asked the bizarre question "Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?" after the pronatalist views of the far right were referenced.

That was weird.  

The US, and for that matter the entire Western World, does not have a demographic crisis like the far right pronatalist like to imagine.  But the suggestion that men are going to look at Sydney Sweeney and suddenly feel aroused and go out and procreate is truly odd.

But even this does give us a glimpse into how modern Western society has really gone off the rails  No man who wants to "transition" is ever going to look like Sydney Sweeney.  Nor will any of them suffer from the Girl Flu every month.  That's reality.

Anyhow.  Givc the woman a break.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Third Edition and Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 98th edition. The Perverts and Fellow Travelers Issue.

Tuesday, July 21, 1925. Scopes verdict and the Great Syrian Revolt.

The infamous Scopes trial concluded with John Scopes being found guilty of violating the Butler Act, and being ordered to pay $100.00.

The Great Syrian Revolt started in reaction to the French High Commissioner of the Levant, Gen. Maurice Sarrail, ordering the arrest of nine Syrian delegates and their deportation to Palmyra.

The Soviet Union adopted the metric system, that being the only good thing the Communists ever achieved in the country.

Last edition:

Monday, July 20, 1925. Salkhad.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art, Croatia, Druze, French Army, French League of Nation Mandates, Immigration, It was because of World War One, Italy, Oklahoma, Syria, Yugoslavia

Saturday, July 18, 1925. Nazi tome and Scopes trial.

Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published.

The press was covering the Skopes trial, and lampooning the characters in it.

Last edition:

Tuesday, July 14, 1925. Getting out of the Ruhr and trying to kick them out of Vietnam.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1929, Communism, French Indochina, French Occupation of the Ruhr, Indochina, It was because of World War One, Ruhr, Vietnam