Labels: 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, 1975, Central Intelligence Agency, Congo, Dachau, Fidel Castro, Francisco Franco, German SS, National Conservatism, Ngô Đình Diệm, Spain, Spanish Civil War, The Holocaust, World War Two
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
The ascent of the ignorant.
I know I have an Ivy League education which is now supposed to make me ashamed.
But I am really tired of trying to argue with ignoramuses who don’t know anything about anything on this hellsite.
It will be a miracle if America survives this ascent of the ignorant.
Jon "Bowzer" Bauman.
We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ignoramus.
Bauman, famous for his portrayal as a deep voiced "greaser" in the band Sha Na Na, but in fact very well educated and now a Democratic political activist, has it right.
I've struggled to put together posts on this topic, unsuccessfully several times. Lots of people like me, Conservatives back in the day, and Social Conservatives still, keep wondering what happened, even while pretty much knowing what happened. We're horrified as the country rockets towards Petainism, or Francoism, or just outright stupidity, even while we wonder how on earth we went to a country in which homosexual propaganda is outright directed at the young.
Justice Kennedy. . . you are to blame for a lot of this.
Anyhow, one of the real stunning things of the Trump ascent has been the ascent of the ignorant.
And that's hard to take.
Conservatism used to be fairly intellectual. . .well it was fairly intellectual after the McCarthy era. In truth, it's always cycled between intellectualism and wild conspiratorial phantasy, just as the left has cycled between intellectualism and wild eye flaming goofballedry . To some extent, the poor nation is getting both of these now at the same time, but it's most prominent on the right.
A big part of Trump's intellectual, if you will, drive now comes from Dominionist who claim to be carrying a sword for Christianity but who don't grasp the mains intellect of it. It was Cardinal Newman who noted that to know history was to make a person a Catholic, and the Dominionist neither know history nor, for that matter, Christianity very well. Outside of those carrying a Pine Tree flag are those who are in the Petainist/Francoist Christian Nationalist movement, who at least aren't anti intellectual and are relatively intellectual themselves, when their beliefs are drilled into.
But beyond that are a great mass of people, including people now in power, who reflect blistering ignorance.
Anti vaxxers, who took their initial inspiration from a Playboy model whose only claim to fame was her boobs, and then having had a child (out of wedlock, of course), went into full bore ignorance during COVID, showing how low education in the country generally sunk. A person can oppose vaccines for themselves on philosophical, or even theological, grounds, but you can't oppose them on scientific grounds. That's just ignorant. Nonetheless, Trump has elevated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and "Dr. Oz" to positions of real power, when they ought to be in the waterfowl section of the local zoo. No serious nation would have either of these people in positions where they dealt with anything biological, even if that meant they were disqualified from being dog catchers.
Most of the cabinet officers we hear from on a frequent basis are total sycophants who sound like their on the losing end of a debate in a high school forensics team. Some sound like outright thugs. Our Ambassador to Israel is there as he wants to help bring about the Apocalypse.
Trump is outright weaponizing the Justice Department into the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and persecuting (not a typo) anyone who publicly opposed him. He's also sending the National Guard, converted into the Ersatzheer, into Republican cities illegally. While all this occurs a populace that would have previously flooded into the streets in protests sits on its hand believing that there must really Marxist, Communist, Fascists, Monarchist about to take over these cities and convert them into Communist Anarchist Monarchies.
It's really doubtful the nation can recover from this.
At a lower level, we're debating library books in the children's section which an adult nation ought to be able to sort out in about fifteen minutes. But perhaps a bigger example is the outright believe by people who believe that you ought to drink petroleum oil for breakfast that nuclear power is going to turn your housecat into the central character in 1950s Japanese horror film. In the meantime, a legitimate concern on the part of some, youth being exposed to pornography, has been captured by local members of the Freedom Caucus who are freely dumb in their local efforts to oppose it, going to public forums like school boards to act up.
The press rarely gets things 100% right, indeed a local big story that I know very well has recently amused me by how off the mark the reporting is, but the press has become a whipping boy for people with agendas on both sides. Chuck Gray, the Wyoming Secretary of State, is so enamoured of this that he can't pick up a lunch menu without claiming its the product of the "radical left wing media". The left accuses the press of ignoring Trump's mental decline, which is obvious to everyone, while the right basically seeks to totally shut down everything but the Völkischer Beobachter.
How we get out of this is really questionable, but education, and I mean public education, is going to have to be they key to a large extent. People need to learn science again.
I don't know how Americans became so uneducated.
I went through the local public school system which wasn't perfect, but frankly it was pretty good. My parents also took a real interest in how we were doing in school, and I think everyone's parents did. My own kids went through the same system after I had, and it had improved from good to really good.
Even then, there were some hints of things changing, mostly in the form of a handful of homeschooled showing up in sports and the rise of a series of private Christian schools and schools that were private Christian schools but which wouldn't admit that they were. Homeschooling was, and is, mostly marked here by what the parents don't want their children to learn. Some of those parents were really well educated themselves, but imports from elsewhere and often members of distinct minority religious communities. Outside of the Catholic school, and probably the Lutheran school, this was true of the Christian schools as well.
Following COVID, here locally, we got the influx of people from somewhere else who detested education even as they put their kids in schools One member of the legislature enrolled her two kids in the local high school noting how she was a "refugee" from Illinois, where she'd been on a school board. Now we have a Freedom Caucus legislator being such a problem at a school board meeting she had to be escorted away from the podium when you can bet that every member of the school board is, in fact, conservative.
What I think that tells me is that education elsewhere had declined, and we took in an influx of the uneducated, who in the sprit of the times, spread their views to elements ready to accept it locally.
Another thing is this.
Americans have always had a sort of populist anti intellectual streak, which is heavily ironic as the Founding Fathers of the nation were largely well to do elitists. Indeed, Jefferson figured the republic would not last, as ultimately it would yield from hard working yeoman farmers to a city living mob, dependent upon the government. He wasn't quite right, but he wasn't all that far off. We've had two prior New York born Presidents in the country, a highly educated but quite rural intellectual, a more urbane intellectual, and a real estate developing complete buffoon.
The essence of populism is that people have a native wisdom. The problem is, only an educated public does. Jefferson appreciated that, which is why he so heavily depended on the yeomanry to carry the republic. Family units, living independently, and frankly as somewhat genteel hardworking Christian farmers. He wasn't a yeoman himself. He did foresaw a day in which the republic would be much like it has become, a screaming mass of poorly educated people who were easily lead.
Populist movements have in fact always been easily lead. The Nazis were able to do it with the German populace. The Communist were able to do it with the Russian people. The Fascists were able to do it with the Italians.
For the Fascist, it was the Socialist, Communists and Slavs.
For the Communists, the population is the workers, whose enemy are capitalists, those who own their own businesses, and people who believe in any kind of religion.
For Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, which has been co opted by the National Conservatives, it's anyone who isn't a Christian conservative.
And so we have Trump and his followers. Trump probably has no real solid moral beliefs at all, and is a serial polygamist who was born obscenely wealthy and is getting richer in the office.
The problem with populism is that the bloom always comes off the rose. It turns out that native intelligence is often pretty ignorant. It always collapses in one way or another, often violently It's followers are left to pick up the pieces often having been exposed, by the end, as people who were enemies of the very movement they espoused.
It didn't have to be this way.
There were real reasons that the mass of people were discontent. Ignored on immigration and the erosion of an industrial base for decades, and watching the decay of moral values even as they joyously participated in that decay themselves, there was a real opportunity for a return to true conservatism. Even National Conservatives had the opportunity to participate in that, although they'd lost faith in democracy in general which caused them to choose not to.
When this flies apart, and it will, the reckoning is going to be huge. What will have been achieved is to anger those who became victims of it. The real number of populists in the country is fewer than supposed, and the true diehards fewer yet. Trump mostly won because Joe Biden chose to run in his dotage, which was obviously advanced, and which camouflaged Trump's mental decline. That can't be camouflaged any longer.
Nonetheless, like good fascists, the GOP is going to go down with Trump, even though it need not to. Mike Johnson is effectively releasing cheery news from the Führerbunker as the edifice of the Republic literally collapses around him. The Leader and his Favorite Architect plan a monumental building as an old one is destroyed. Miller and Bondi send their thugs out to hang supposed enemies from lamposts. Loyal reports from loyal lieutenants about not being able to hang on are ignored. Vance consults his Plans for the Fatherland book as if he has a political future.
It should be obvious where this is headed.
But it's easier just to blame it on Trump's style, or his amazing intelligence that we can't grasp, and just ignore it.
Sunday, October 19, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America. Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America.
Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America.
Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It
From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fifth Edition.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti vaxxer who has no business running the HHS, announced with Donald Trump today that its recommending pregnant women not take Tylenol due to what it terms an increased risk of autism in children.
But for being born a Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is a certified quack, would not be occupying this position. Donald Trump simply offered him this position to remove him as a political threat during the primary.
This will get worse, taking on childhood vaccines is next.
Dr. John Barrasso. . . . remember your original profession?
Tylenol has been around since 1955.
Trump designated ANTIFA, which actually isn't an organization, a terrorist organization.
Rather, it's a movement of persons on the left who regard the Trump prior administration and this one as fascistic, which this one has in fact become. The name is drawn from an unsuccessful German Communist resistance movement that opposed the rise of Nazism.
This is odd. Why the sudden change?
Last edition:
The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fourth Edition.
Friday, September 19, 2025
Lummis on limiting free speech.
Kimmel’s suspension prompts free-speech Republicans to reconsider their boundaries
Pretty much what those supporting totalitarian states have said about freedoms throughout history.
Absolutely shameful.
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 103d edition. The tragic co-opting of death and politics.
Lex Anteinternet: What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the...: This is not intended, I'd note, to be a hagiography of any kind for Charlie Kirk. The populist far right is already trying to do that, ...
This morning I walked into a church I’d never heard of, let alone stepped foot in. I prayed with strangers. I cried with people I’ve never met before. I held hands with them and sang about God.The Pastor openly talked about how important our gun rights are. How you cannot legislate against evil. How we cannot be afraid to speak out for fear of consequences from the HR department (this is an actual quote!!). He honored and spoke genuinely about the life and impact of Charlie Kirk for *the entire* service. It was absolutely amazing.If I told y’all how improbable it was that of all the churches I could have chosen to attend for the first time in many many many years that it would be this one…and that it would be so perfect…you’d believe me when I say that God absolutely led me there….He led me back home.
Numbers 21:4b-9With their patience worn out by the journey,the people complained against God and Moses,"Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,where there is no food or water?We are disgusted with this wretched food!"In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents,which bit the people so that many of them died.Then the people came to Moses and said,"We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us."So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,"Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live."Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole,and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpentlooked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Philippians 2:6-11Brothers and sisters:Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.Rather, he emptied himself,taking the form of a slave,coming in human likeness;and found human in appearance,he humbled himself,becoming obedient to death,even death on a cross.Because of this, God greatly exalted himand bestowed on him the namethat is above every name,that at the name of Jesusevery knee should bend,of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue confess thatJesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.
John 3:13-17Jesus said to Nicodemus:"No one has gone up to heavenexcept the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,so must the Son of Man be lifted up,so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,so that everyone who believes in him might not perishbut might have eternal life.For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,but that the world might be saved through him.
As already noted here, it was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Most pastors of the Apostolic Faiths preached on that.
People have a strong tendency to want the Church to reflect their political views. That's a lot easier for people who are members of Protestant Evangelical churches which are often sort of do it yourself type of faiths. That doesn't challenge people in the pews at all. Here locally there's a massive Evangelical congregation which, I know, contains unmarried couples living in sin, people who have multiple marriages, and the like. They go to hear the Good News, and they should be hearing the Good News. But part of that news is a person needs to confess and repent.
We're not hearing much of that out there on the net.
Sunday, September 7, 2025
Monday, September 7, 1925. Failed landing at Al Hoceima.
It was Labor Day.
Nolan Motors, I'd note, was still in business into the 1990s.
The Spanish Army attempted to make an amphibious landing at Alhucemas Bay at Spanish Morocco. It was a complete and disastrous failure.
General Maurizio Ferrante Gonzaga was appointed by Prime Minister Mussolini as the Commandant-General of the Fascist Party's Voluntary Militia for National Security (MSVN), the "Blackshirts".
British troops fired on Chinese protesters at Shanghai.
Last edition:
Saturday, September 5, 1925. Picnic Etiquette
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Wednesday, July 29, 1925. Traffic stop.
L'Osservatore Romano printed a long list of Fascist offenses against Catholics.
Italy announced a new law providing that any newspaper publishing attacks on the government that were "too strong and too frequent" would receive two warnings, after which the paper would no longer be recognized.
Mikis Theodorakis (Μιχαήλ "Μίκης" Θεοδωράκης), Greek composer known for Zorba the Greek's score, was born.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Tuesday, May 6, 1975. Authoritarian victims.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
We are a fascist state when we have ICE agents not in uniforms and hiding their faces behind masks. That is right. We have a law enforcement agency that is running around more like the Gestapo of Nazi Germany than what we are supposed to have and what is valued in America.
Sunday, January 5, 2025
January 5, 1925. Nellie Tayloe Ross sworn in as Governor.
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Sunday, January 4, 1925. Death of Red Shirt. Ignoring the warning signs.
Red Shirt (Ógle Ša) Oglala Lakota leader and supporter of Crazy Horse during the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 and the Ghost Dance Movement of 1890, died at age 77 at Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
Italian prefects were ordered to control "suspect", i.e., non fascist, political organizations. Mass searches resulted.
Adolf Hitler pledged his loyalty to Bavarian Minister President Heinrich Held.
Hitler's pledge, of course, would turn out to be a lie. Held maintained Bavarian state sovereignty until the end, but ultimately the Bavarian government was removed in 1933 by Hitler. Held's pension would be revoked by the Nazis. He died in 1938.
Last edition:
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