The heavy duty, or at least heavy, premium American automobile of the golden age of American manufacturing which Trump seems to dream can be restored through tariffs.
In reality, capitalism is based on the idol of money. The lure of gain gradually destroys all social bonds. Capitalism devours itself. Little by little, the market destroys the value of work. Man becomes a piece of merchandise. He is no longer his own. The result is a new form of slavery, a system in which a large part of the population is dependent on a little caste.
Robert Cardinal Sarah.
I don't use the term "insanity" here lightly. Donald Trump is, I am convinced, rather dumb, obviously economically ignorant, and suffering from dementia. That nearly half the country could vote for him is simply beyond me, but they did, and the Republican Party, which was once the party of business has fallen right into line.
I suspect Americans voted for him as they have a poor grasp of economics themselves and see it only through what they've experienced in their own live and that of their immediate predecessors. Americans, came to view the economy sort of like Billy Joel expressed it in Allentown:
Well, we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line
Well, our fathers fought the second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we’re living here in Allentown
But the restlessness was handed down
And it’s getting very hard to stay
Well we’re waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
Chromium Steel
And we’re waiting here in Allentown
But they’ve taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face
Well, I’m living here in Allentown
And it’s hard to keep a good man down
But I won’t be getting up today
And it’s getting very hard to stay
And we’re living here in Allentown
Problem is, a sense of economic nostalgia evolving into economic rage doesn't grasp economics at all.
1968 Oldsmobile 442.
The US didn't become an economic and manufacturing giant because of something really special in the American system or some amazing native genius. It was the simple forces of economics that apply to corporate capitalism, combined with the Second World War, that caused it.
Largescale industry can really only be developed through capitalism or socialism. In Europe, it was capitalism that introduced it in the form of the Industrial Revolution. The US as a manufacturing titan came about as the Industrial Revolution came to the US late, not because we were better at it. The arrival of industrialism in the United Kingdom and a united Germany reflected the eras in which it occurred, and it occurred there first. Capitalism, in the end, just like socialism, seeks to serve itself, and in the case of capitalism it does it by viewing human beings as consumers, as opposed to the socialist workers, and trying to get them to consume as much as possible. It does that by seeking to make products faster and cheaper, amongst other strategies. Seeking efficiency products not only relentlessly advance, but manufacturing methods do as well. But manufacturing method require massive investment of capital. Once machines are in place, the economic incentive is to use them as long as they can be, given the investment. This means that new start ups always have the advantage in equipment, as they are starting with newer stuff.
Added to that, industrial Europe was destroyed during World War Two to a large extent. The Allied air forces bombed German industry into rubble. What was left after the war was taken back to the Soviet Union if was east of the Elbe. The Soviets themselves had suffered massive economic dislocation in of their factories, which were forcibly created in the Communist system. Japan's industry, which was real, but not nearly as advanced as the other major combatants, had been destroyed by the United States Army Air Force. The US, however, remained untouched and with a massive consumer demand built up due to the war and the Great Depression, US industry came roaring back and dominated the globe. . . right up until other countries could rebuilt, which very much started to show itself by the late 1960s.
One of the things nearly destroyed during the Second World War was Distributism. Distributism really came up as a line of thought as a "third way" between Communism and Capitalism during the 1920s and the Great Depression The tensions that came out of World War One saw the Socialist far left dramatically rise in power and take over the government of Russia, and briefly Hungary. They vied for control of Germany, and effectively did take over Poland in a modified form. Wars and struggles broke out in numerous places as Socialism sought to effect global change. In opposition to it rose not only fascism, but extreme capitalism. Distributists sought to effect a more sane and humane path. But when the war came they, and their intellectual fellow travelers the agrarians, put aside their efforts to support the war effort, which in the West meant unleashing capitalism in aid of the war effort. When the war ended, the economic crisis that it had brought about in Europe and the Cold War caused it to carry on, and very successfully, with Distributism being all but forgotten.
Capitalism, however, if not heavily regulated, results in the same end result as Socialism, single entity control of a machine that serves itself. In Socialism the machine claims to serve the workers, but claims to identify itself as the workers. In Capitalism the machine serves itself while claiming to serve "consumers". Neither system really cares about people at all.
American capitalism, particularly after Ronald Reagan, favored unyielding corporate growth, with one corporate machine eating another. As foreign economies rebuilt after the war, or started up after the war, corporations naturally moved manufacturing overseas, and the American government did not stop to do anything about it, believing fully in capitalism. To a certain extent, it favored manufacturing moving overseas as it conceived as many manufacturing jobs as less than ideal, and with some reason to look upon them that way, but just as the nation had a "cheap food" policy that hurt family farmers, it had a "cheap goods" policy that hurt the domestic manufacturing sector.
It can well be argued, and it has been, that something should have been done to arrest the relocation of American manufacturing. But in reality, that day was long ago. It was clear in the 1970s what was occuring, but the nation, lead by a much more sober and serious group of politicians, did not elect to intervene. Now, of course, we have Donald Trump, who doesn't seem to grasp even basic economics and who has made his money, it might be noted, in a highly anti distributist industry.
It's nearly impossible to define what Trump's economic vision is, as he probably doesn't have one. It seems to be ruled by nostalgia and a complete failure to grasp basic economic principals. Trump seems to look back on the econmy of his youth as a natural one, and believe that if tariffs are imposed all the old industries will come home. A very wealthy man, he doesn't seem to care what that does in terms of imposing his tariffs all at once, and if it creates a devastating trade war, so be it.
What Trump has no interest in, however, is disrupting capitalism. He's okay with whipping corporate entities into relocating into the US, or devastating the economy with the thesis he can make it happen, in what amounts to a type of autarky, but the basic evils of capitalism are of no interest to him.
Some closer to Trump envision something more sinister, it seems, a jump starting of an AI driving manufacturing economy. The concept is that tariffs will not only pressure industry to relocate here, but when it does, the next stage in the relentless Industrial Revolution evolutionary cycle will occur. Basically, baseball caps now made in Vietnam (none of them seem to be made here) will be made by robots in the US. Human laborers in Indochina, who depend on their jobs to feed their families, will be made unemployed while factories owning robots here in the US will profit.
It's immoral.
But what of Distributism?
Some of this probably should make any distributist rethink some basic propositions, as frankly Distributism, like Trump's tariff policy, would have the impact of making some things more expensive. Maybe many things. But the economic impact of it would be distinctly different.
Distributism policies, as long noted here, would take the corporations out of retail and agriculture. In agriculture, for the most part, that would not actually have a great impact on prices, save in certain instances (poultry for sure, perhaps pork). But it would also have a levelling effect. Virtually nobody would get fantastically wealthy in these industries, but many rank and file workers would get back up into the real middle class. Therefore the economic impact would be levelling, more than anything else.
Manufacturing, as we've noted here before, is a much tougher nut to crack. We've had some suggestions in the past, but frankly the lesson of the Trump tariffs is that they may frankly be unrealistic. We'd favor partial employee ownership of larger manufacturing entities. We could still argue for that, but it's tough for industries like the clothing manufacturing industry, whose workers are mostly overseas. I suppose it could still be argued for, however. A person here, however, can't be nativist. Economically, that is, it can't be argued that ownership in the corporation by Nguyen is any less important than Johnson, all things being equal.
It'd be pretty hard to effect, however, in countries whose economies are state run. Again, perhaps something could have been done about that, but it would have had to start in 1975, rather than 2025. Trump's policies, which don't fit this mold, are coming all at once, and fifty years too late. That might suggest, of course, that something could be done, but it would have to be done gradually.
If nothing else, however, Trump and his spastic policies might serve to give Distributism a little voice. Corporate Capitalism resulted in the situation Trump seeks to address. There's no reason to believe Corporate Capitalism is going to get us out of it. Distributists have been warning about capitalisms long term impacts for years. Socialism has demonstrated what its were, and that's what killed it.
Perhaps the Distributist Lament can get a little more heard.
Pastoral scene, pre Soviet Ukrainian village. Not a lot of homsexuality, transgenderism, etc. going on there.
Those who protest vehemently belong to small ideological groups," Francis told Italian newspaper La Stampa. "A special case are Africans: for them homosexuality is something 'bad' from a cultural point of view, they don't tolerate it".
"But in general, I trust that gradually everyone will be reassured by the spirit of the 'Fiducia Supplicans' declaration by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: it aims to include, not divide," the pope said.
We all see things through thick lenses of our cultures, and the history of our cultures. This was true even of the authors of the Gospels, which sometimes come through on certain items in their writings.
I think Fiducia Supplicans demonstrates this.
For that matter, to use a bad secular example, I think Justice Kennedy's opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges did as well, which is not to say that the documents are analagous. They are not.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy seems to have generally believed that the Obergefell decision overturning tens of thousands of years of understanding on the nature of marriage would be met with rapid universal acceptance, rather than turning out to be the metaphorical shot heard around the world that gave us Donald Trump in short order.1
The Supreme Court, in Obergefells, and the Papacy, in Fiducia Supplicans, are reacting to the same development seem to have made the assumption of thinking that what happens in European cultures is what happens, or what even really is of major concern, all over the world. That just isn't the case in this instance.
A pretty good case can be made that "homosexuality", as Western Society regards it, doesn't even exist, although certainly same sex attraction and sexual conduct does. They are not the same thing. Therefore, when the Pope says "A special case are Africans: for them homosexuality is something 'bad' from a cultural point of view, they don't tolerate it" it might in fact be the case that the opposite is true. That is, the "special case" is Western Europeans, for whom homosexuality exists, and is not a "something 'bad'", or at least a significant number of Western Europeans, of which North and South Americans are (once again) part, have now been schooled or accepted that it isn't bad.
In most, of the world, homosexuality is regarded as a European thing. Again, the conduct occurs, but not the gender characterization. And in no society, does it occur with the frequency it does in Western Society, which is also the society which as become the most libertine, albeit only in the last seventy years, particularly in regard to sex and manifestations of sex, including outward manifestations of sex.
We've dealt with that before, but now that It's come back up in this fashion, it's worth looking at again. Pretty much everywhere this conduct occurs, it's strongly associated with a variety of factors, one of which, in its broad manifestation we now see, is a wealthy society that has lots of idle time. Put another way, it's a factor of resources and availability to them.
This is true of a lot of human disorders that are closely related to elemental needs and what we tend to universally see is that when we have a society that is heavily deprived of an elemental needs, a disordered desire for it, combined with disorder conduct, pops up in a minority (never a majority) of the population.
Food is a good example.
Scarcity of food will result in a massively strong desire to eat. In some people, that leads to desperate acts under desperate situations. Cannibalism, for example, comes to mind in regard to the Donner Party, or the residents of Leningrad. People took measures they normally wouldn't.
Not everyone did, however.
At least in the Soviet examples, which repeated in various fashions from 1917 through early 1944, most people didn't. People would starve instead.
Conversely, in food situations where there's a surplus of food, the entire population will tend to gain weight, but not everyone tends to become excessively overweight. Modern dieticians will yell in horror at this, but overweight, and truly grossly obese are not the same things. Grossly obese happens for a number of reasons, including people having a makeup which is extremely efficient in order to avoid famine, but it's only in an unnatural situation of surplus calories that it manifest itself.
As a scene in Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee presents it:
Sergeant Chillum: Don't look to me like them gut-eaters has been feeding them very good.
Wiley: Did you ever see a fat Apache?
Sergeant Chillum: I ain't yet.
This scene depicts the pick up cavalry formation taking the kidnapped children and feeding them, but the point raised, accidentally, is a good one. Native Americans lived in a state of nature, and in that state, they were in good shape and not packing around extra weight. No culture in a state of nature does.
When things become disordered, such as in famine, some people will do something that can be argued to be disordered, eat other people. When there's too much food and no real need to work too hard, physically, to obtain calories, everyone puts on weight, but some will very much to their detriment.
So what's this have to do with homosexuality, let alone Fiducia Supplicans? Well, quite a lot, really.
Just as, in a balanced state of nature, or close to one, people don't get fat, and don't turn to cannibalism, in a balanced state of nature, they don't turn to the range of sexual deviations that they do in an unbalanced one.
Edgar Paxon's Custer's Last Stand. While it might seem odd to see this posted here, the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors who won this battle, and one just days before it at Rosebud, were never more than a day's ride from their families. Women were of course present in the Native camp at Little Big Horn, as the battle was brought on by the 7th Cavalry's attack on the village, but at least one native woman had been present at Rosebud as well. Native raiding parties might separate from their families for a period of days, but not months.
In a state of nature, people live in pretty small communities and there's pretty much a 1 to 1 sex ratio. Men would only be separated from women for very brief periods of time. A war party, for example, might separate for several days, but not months. The Great Raid of 1840, for example, which is regarded as the largest Native American raid every conducted, just lasted two days. Add in travel, and the warrior bands were gone longer, but it probably wasn't much more than a week, if that long.
Hunting parties are also often cited for periods of separation, but in a healthy native state, the separation was often just a matter of hours. Women were usually close enough to a really large hunting party that they could partake in the processing of the game. There were undoubtedly exceptions, but by and large, this was the rule.
Taking the war example again, consider this from Ethiopia's mobilization order of 1935 when Italy invaded:
Everyone will now be mobilized, and all boys old enough to carry a spear will be sent to Addis Ababa. Married men will take their wives to carry food and cook. Those without wives will take any woman without a husband. Anyone found at home after the receipt of this order will be hanged.
Emperor Haile Selassie
Married men, take your wives. Not married? Find a woman who isn't married and taker her.
It's only once you begin to mess with the basic human living patters that the opposite is true. Industrialization, which we'll get to in a moment, really brought in a major disruption from the normal living patter, but there are preindustrial examples that are notable. War provides a pretty good example again.
Major military campaigns in antiquity relied on theft of food, which is not ordered, and which is well known. If the fighters were separated from women, they also rapidly descended to disorder. Early military campaigns (and some recent ones) are famously associated with "rape and pillage", and by men who would not ordinarily do that.
Another example of adjusting to desperate times might be taken in Muhammed authoring his troops, who were ready to go home as they were tired of being without their wives, to have sex with their female saves taken in war. This is widely denied by Muslim scholars today, but it seems to be fairly well established and in fact the practice has been resumed by Islamic fundamentalist armed bands and its the origin of Muslim sex slave trading, which is an historical fact. That this is basically an example of licensed rape can't really be denied.
Conversely, in Christian societies the "marital debt" was taken very seriously up until recently, and it was taken so seriously in the Middle Ages that a wife of a man who wished to go on crusade could veto it simply by citing the marital debt. That's fairly extraordinary, but telling, in that she could simply declare that if her husband departed her needs in this category might cause her to fall into sin, and therefore, he couldn't go. Moderns like to look down on such things today, but in reality that was a very natural and realistic view of human sexuality.
Same gender attractions play in here too, but within bands of men kept away from women for long periods of time. The most famous example of that may be the Spartans, who were fierce warriors trained from young adulthood, in the case of men, to be soldiers. However, the warehousing of men, and boys, away from women brought about widespread homosexual conduct as the living conditions were, rather obviously, completely abnormal.
So too are much of our current living patters.
Industrialization separated men from women and parent from child in a major way, recreating the abnormality of living conditions noted above on a society wide level.
And that's deeply unnatural.
It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that men left their homes every day, working long hours, and were separated from their wives and children for what amounts to well over half of their adult waking hours. And this was not only true of industrial laborers, but also of their white collar bosses. In many industrial societies, moreover, this was amplified by the fact that men further segregated themselves, or were segregated by society, even on off hours.
It was essayist Henry Fairlie who noted:
Work still gives meaning to rural life, the family and churches. But in the city today, work and home, family and church, are seperated. What the office workers do for a living is not part of thier home life. AT the same time they maintain the pointless frenzy of hteir work hours on thier off hours. They rush form the office to jog, to the gym or the YMCA pool to work at their play with the same joylessness.
Fairlie wrote this in 1986, well after the most aggressors conditions of the Industrial Revolution had slackened, but he did note in The Idiocy of Urban Life what that had been like. Men left early in the morning and walked, on average, seven miles to work. They worked their all day, and then returned home after twelve hours of labor. Well over half their day had been spent away from their family.
By the 20th Century that had, in many heavily industrial regions, created a new pattern of living he didn't address, and one which lasted well into the 1970s. Men left for work in blue collar jobs, worked all day with other men, and at quitting time, they hit the bars. Men in the American Rust Belt, for instance, commonly hit a bar every night on the way home, spending a couple of hours drinking beer in an all male company, save for the barmaids whose tips went up as the beer flowed. Rough and tumble places, these were not the equivalent of charming English or Irish pubs of the same period. The maleness, if you will, of their work was all the more amplified by the nearly universal membership of men in organizations that excluded women.
Not surprisingly, this all encouraged conventional sexual vice. Some men, a minority but nonetheless an appreciable nature, took the jousting with bar maid and waitresses further, with some of the women reciprocating. When Hank Thompson and Kitty Wells sang about the "wild side of life" it's easy to wonder why they were hanging out in bars, not really appreciating that a lot of men in particular simply did. Indeed, the term "family man", conversely, had real meaning.
Not to dump this exclusively on blue collar workers by any means, philandering conduct was common in the white collar world as well, to such an extent that it became instantly recognizable to people who went to see 1960's The Apartment, the entire theme of which plays out through the vehicle of cheating married executives using their younger colleagues' apartment.
Indeed, when I was young, I can recall my parents openly talking about professionals in town who had affairs and mistresses. This certainly didn't include anyone in my family, which was 100% Catholic and meant it. That conduct was clearly not approved of, but my point is that it occured. While never discussed in this fashion, in the context of what we're discussing here, the mistresses were sometimes targets of opportunity, so to speak. Secretaries and assistants. Indeed, I heard a lawyer of the generation prior to mine, once relate of the generation of lawyers two generations older than hers, that quite a few of the paralegals of that old, now largely dead or very old, were effectively mistresses. One such assistant had mysteriously had a child out of wedlock when that was pretty rare, and it was widely known who teh employer father was.
There's a lot more that could be explored here, but the point is that the contra natural working conditions give rise to departures from morality and nature. Even now, or particularly now, you'll hear a close female colleague of a male be referred to as his "work wife". I've even heard a person refer to herself that way. Work wives have no marital debt, but hidden by the statement is the vague suggestion or fear that they might be providing such a service, illicit thought it would be.
Homosexuality, in large part, comes about, I strongly suspect, due to something similar.
In an earlier thread, we noted that there are in fact cultures that not only have low incidents of homosexual conduct, but none. As we earlier posted:
Somewhat related to this, interestingly enough, I also came upon an article by accident on the Aka and Ngandu people of central Africa, who are branches of the Bushmen, or what some people still call "pygmies". They've been remarkably resilient in staying close to nature.
A hunter-gatherer people, they naturally fascinate Western urbanites, and have been studied for many years by Barry and Bonnie Hewlett, a husband and wife anthropologist team. Starting off with something else, after a period of time the Washington State University pair "decided to systematically study sexual behavior after several campfire discussions with married middle-aged Aka men who mentioned in passing that they had sex three or four times during the night. At first [they] thought it was just men telling their stories, but we talked to women, and they verified the men's assertions."
The study revealed some interesting things, besides that, which included that they regarded such interaction as a species of work, designed for procreation. Perhaps more surprising to our genital focused society, they had no concept of homosexuality at all, no practice of that at all, and additional had no practice or concept of, um. . . well . . .self gratification. You'll have to read between the lines on that one.
Perhaps the Synod on Synodality ought to take note of the reality of the monotheist Aka's and Ngandu's as that's exactly what the Catholic faith has always taught.1 And so it turns out in a society that's actually focused that way, what Catholics theology traditionally has termed disordered, just doesn't occur. It's also worth noting that the rise of homosexuality really comes about after men were dragged out of the household's on a daily basis by social and economic causes, and the rise of . . . um., well, anyhow, recently is heavily tied to the pornificaiton of the culture that was launched circa 1953.
In other words, those like Fr. James Martin who seek a broader acceptane of of sexual disorder, might actually be urging the acceptance of a byproduct of our overall economic and social disorder, which itself should be fixed.
But what would be the conditions that bring it about in our culture?
We're not even supposed to ask that now, but for most people who have same sex attraction, it's a pretty heavy cross to bear. We should be looking at how it comes about.
Well, what we know is that if we separate men from women, particularly in their formative years, we'll get it at a higher rate than when that doesn't occur.
Going back to war, that fountain of all problematic things, we can look back as far as the Spartans to find this. Spartans, faced with a constant threat of war, took up separating men from women large-scale and raising boys in barracks. It also had a notable degree of homosexual conduct.
Hmmm. . . separate young men and keep them separates just as things begin, for lack of a better way to put it, turn on, and . . . .
The Spartans were a notable early example of this, which in turn tends to be exaggerated. It's not likely that every single Spartan male was a homosexual. It's also not the case, as is sometimes suggested, that Ancient Greece was wildly homosexual. Indeed, Plato abhorred it and regarded it as contrary to nature and proposed the Athenian assembly ban homosexual acts, masturbation, and illegitimate sex in general.
Going forward in time, when we really start to see references to the acts (but not a claimed "homosexual" status) comes with the first semi modern navies. It was a constant concern, for instance, of the Royal Navy, which perhaps might be regarded as the first modern navy. A great navy, it was not necessarily recruited in the most charming way and many sailors were simply press-ganged, a type of conscription, into it against their will. As press gangs favored hitting bars in ports, many of the men conscripted into the Royal Navy already lacked a strong attachment to home and family, and ports were notoriously associated with prostitution. Anyhow, a lot of men away from sea for months, or years, at a time, and a lot of them being fairly young. . . well the problem rose again.
It replicated itself in large modern armies as well, interestingly often among the officer class. In European armies where the officer class was made up of minor nobility as a rule, the men in it had entered as the only other real employment option, if they were not set to inherit the estate, was the clergy. In some European armies officers were strongly discouraged from marrying, which in part reflected the fact that their pay was very bad, as their countries knew that they could rely on family money. While it didn't occur universally in every such army, in some, such as the pre World War One German Army, there was a strong streak of hidden homosexuality.
English private schools, which were widely used by the upper class, were notorious for homosexuality for the same reason. Homosexual conduct became so common in them that homosexuality used to be referred to elsewhere as "the English Disease". Private schools were segregated effectively by class, and very much by gender. Unlike the charming portrayal in the Harry Potter series of works, boys went to boys schools and girls to girls school. Quite often, over time, parents enrolled their children in the same schools they'd gone to. Overtime, a closeted institutional homosexuality, or at least its common occurrence, crept in.
It could be legitimately asked how on earth any of this relates to our current era, but it does in more ways than we might imagine.
In most Western societies today, we make no effort, for the most part, to separate men and women in anything, formally. But as we've already detailed, we do send men, and now women, out of their families and into an unnatural environment on a daily basis. People often meet their future spouses in periods of time when young people are constantly together, such as in school or university, but as soon as they are established, we pull them apart.
Starting during World War Two, moreover, a false academia combined with the corruption and destruction of the war, gave rise to the Sexual Revolution. We commonly think of that as arriving in the 60s, but in reality it probably really started in the 1940s with the publication of Kinsey's false academic narratives. That was the first shot, so to speak, and the publication of Playboy the second one. While Playboy was opposed in some localities into the 1980s, by the 1950s it was so well established, in spite of completely rejecting conventional morality, and in spite, moreover, of publishing photos of women younger than 18, that the ground had been massively lost. The pill followed in the early 60s, work patterns changed due to the introduction of domestic machinery, and sexual morality took a beating. Once its natural purpose was obscured, and then lost, which really basically took all the way into the 1990s, the widespread acceptance of homosexual sex was inevitable.
None of which means that a large number of people will take it up.
But what does mean, that some people, in some circumstances, will. And the unnatural conditions that we live in, amplified by societal moorings having been cut by the Sexual Revolution, help bring that about. And as society has chosen to simply embrace everything that deviates from the norm, and natural, as it applies to ourselves, those afflicted have almost no place to go, but deeper in, no matter how destructive that may be.
All of which is a good reason that people in this circumstance need blessings, if blessing are properly understood.
And which would, therefore, support Fiducia Supplicans.
But none of which suggests that the Church's view on sex is what is causing a decline in attendance in Europe, and that a wider acceptance of homosexuality as normal, as some would urge, would actually do anything. This all is a problem in the West, to be sure, but the underlying evolution of thought that some have, that this is all natural, is not supported by the evidence.
The evidence supports the contrary.
Which gets us back to our original point. African and Asia, for all of their problems, have lived closer to nature, longer, than we have. But that is rapidly changing, and in much of Asia in particular it already has. People who like to imagine that there is such a thing as broad progress, for which there is no good evidence, would argue that this is all progress, so that everything we have noted as a byproduct of the evolution of industry in the West will necessarily happen everywhere else. But that's not necessarily the case at all.
And indeed, in the West itself there seem to be an awakening of tradition, and a desire to return to a more rooted lifestyle. Ironically, evolutions in technology may bring that about. We know that populations are declining everywhere in the Western Northern Hemisphere, which is seen as a disaster but which in fact may emphasize this sort of return to the village.
Footnotes:
1. Obergefell is an incredibly weak decision which, if it were to reappear in front of the United States Supreme Court today, would be reversed. My prediction is that it will be within the next decade as it devoid of solid legal reasoning.
When it was handed down, it was my prediction here that it would cause massive social disruption and resistance, which in fact it has. Pollsters like to point out that the views on same gender unions have moved greatly since it was handed down, which is true, but what they seem to miss is that it was basically the last straw on the part of traditional social conservatives, as well as (Southern type) populists on forced social change. The latter group had long ago accommodated itself to divorce, to people shacking up, and begrudgingly to homosexual conduct but it wasn't about to be told that homosexual unions equated with marriage. In very real terms, Anthony Kennedy, whether he realizes it or not, has always been Donald Trump's running mate.
Today is International Women's Day, as March 8 always is.
I've put this poster up before, it apparently means something like "let's rebuild together", perhaps an appropriate slogan for International Women's Day 2018.
I'm not sure what I make of this day, as I find myself in the category, quite often, of marveling at modern contemporary society struggling to cure its ills created by becoming too modern by reaching vaguely out towards the standards of the past. And frankly International Women's Day has a rather Communist, if you will, sound to it.
German "Women's Day" poster from 1914. This poster was rather obviously sponsored by the German Socialist left. It was also banned by the Imperial German government.
None of which would mean that the day, which has been endorsed for some time by the United Nations, isn't legitimate. Nor would my comments suggest that women don't deserve an International Day. Indeed, they do.
And on that, the theme for 2018 perhaps very ably demonstrates that. The theme this year is "Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives." The UN says of this year's theme:
This year’s theme captures the vibrant life of the women activists whose passion and commitment have won women’s rights over the generations, and successfully brought change. We celebrate an unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality, safety and justice, recognizing the tireless work of activists who have been central to this global push for gender equality.
All that's probably true, and indeed brave women all over the world do struggle, as noted. Cudos to the UN for noting it, even if the UN rather oddly regards nations co-equally that abuse women's rights, as well as act anti democratically in all sorts of other ways.
In the US I suspect that there won't be much attention to the plight of rural women around the globe. There should be, but we're in the second half of the "Me Too" era which demonstrates a different set of problems. . . maybe. . . for women. An age-old one that social progressive keep trying to solve by suggesting that that they've discovered a new standard that's actually a very, very old one. That's had its own interesting dynamics, as those same forces struggle not to admit the historical truth that equality for women is a movement that's not only western, but Christian. There's a reason that western societies are in the forefront of this movement, and always have been, and that's where that reason is to be found.
And this from somebody who doesn't care much for her husband, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, who is married to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is taking heat over an International Women's Day post.
She asked people to "celebrate the boys and men in our lives who encourage us to be who we truly are, who treat girls & women with respect" on 8 March. Ms Gregoire Trudeau urged followers to post images with their "male ally".
But some Facebook commenters said Ms Gregoire Trudeau's post was "tone deaf" and even "shameful".
The post included a photo of her and her husband holding hands.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau: Canadian PM wife sparks 'help' debate
International Women's Day 2017: History, strikes and celebrations
"Why do we have to celebrate men on international women's day?" Facebook user Bibi Ebel said in one popular comment. "I am puzzled.
"There are so many things that can be done to celebrate women, and yet the call goes out to celebrating men. Allies and unity are crucial, but so is womanhood.
From the BBC.
She received support as well.
Still, what this does, I think, is illustrate the extent to which in the Western World some focus on things because their real goals have been signficantly achieved. Yes, women have not achieved full equality anywhere. But enormous strides have been made in the Western World and countries influenced by the Western World. Indeed, to such an extent that a heavy element of the unreal attaches to events like this and they lose their legitimate focus.
So, well I think that PM Trudeau comes across poorly in my book, politically, give Sophie Gregoire a break for goodness sake.
Well, all the prior entries, apparently.
I'm really only going to note a couple of ironies associated with this deserving day, and it is a deserving one.
The great accomplishment in the West, that Westerners honor, is basically extracting women from family life, just as men had successfully been extracted, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, in order to make them greater servants of the economy. Yes, huge strides in equality have been made, but an understanding of organic domestic and familial Christian equality was largely lost, with a later overall loss of equality in that women's roles are now, in a greater sense, once again chosen for them. I.e, they've gone, in the West, from having few options available to them and those in a limited number of "traditional" roles, to now having no easy option to adopt the traditional ones while being saddled with an expectation of non-domestic employment. The direction remains, forcing that conclusion, although it likely won't be. Indeed, my prediction is that in the upcoming and scary world of AI we're entering just now, the impact on women may prove to be considerably different from that upon men. The fact that I'm unlikely to be around to really witness it doesn't hurt my feelings, however, as the new AI world stands to be so troubling.
Another irony is that in our present age, when women have in fact made so many strides, women find their hard won status in the world threatened by the rising tide of faux women, men who have chosen to pretend to be women and to demand female status. This is something that is only safe to do now, in part, as women fought for the right to be treated equally in society, even if they haven't fully achieved it. It's no accident that not too many men chose to assume female roles when being a woman meant second class status and relegation to a domestic role. Men affecting a female appearance, in other words, aren't going to find a world in which they're confronted with no female sports, and no women in the boardrooms and courtrooms, etc. They won't be confronted by the hard lives that were the female routine up until mid 20th Century, which is not to say that male roles, which were different, weren't pretty hard as a rule as well.
Man works till set of sun,
Woman's work is never done.
Indeed, in some ways, women in achieving greater equality have not only had some "male roles" opened up to them, but have been a bit forced into them. This lets men who think they wish to appear as women, for whatever reason, retain male roles, with no real risk of living women's real lives.
I had one item here I was going to cautiously blog about, and then a second came up by surprise. I'll start with the second and take it first.
I ought to note that these are both items that figure into the "fools rush in" category of things.
Dissing the Guard
National Guard M88, South Korea, 1987.
A friend of mine called me up mad.
He and I had been National Guardsmen together at about the same time.
"Yeoman, you and I both took basic and advanced training at the same time and you know that we were at Ft. Sill so long that we received discharges from the Regular Army".
"Um, yeah. . .?"
"Then why aren't we veterans?"
"Um, well Phil, we are. . . "
Phil went on. What he meant was that while we are both veterans, with honorable discharges from the U.S. Army, we don't qualify as veterans for Federal employment consideration.
Phil is correct. According to an online Guard publication that's supposed to be in the nature of good news for former Guard members:
ARLINGTON, Va. – A recently signed law gives official veteran status to National Guard members who served 20 years or more. Previously, Guard members were considered veterans only if they served 180 days or more in a federal status outside of training.
Twenty years or more. . .
Phil lost his job in the oil slide that's been going on over the past year and he's been looking for a new one. He's not out of work actually, he's a handy guy and one of those people who seems to pick up employment even with things are in the dumps. Having worked at the same place for now 30+ years I'm not a handy guy, that way, and even though I can do a lot of things, I know that if the same thing happened to me, I'd be doomed.
"Thirty years as a lawyer? Go apply at the U.S. Attorney's office. . ."
"But sir, I'm the only living person who knows how to plow a field with a California Plow and a mule named Sparky and. . ."
"U.S. Attorney's office. . . "
You get the picture.
California plow.
Or so I suppose. I haven't seen any job openings for plowmen and for that matter, while I know what a California Plow is, I don't actually know how to plow with one with any sort of equine, let alone a mule named Sparky.
Which raises another point, one touched on below, but I'll get back to that.
I loved being in the National Guard and was in it for six years. So was Phil. That is, he was in for six years. I don't know if he loved the Guard but he didn't complain about it. Anyhow, we were in during the Cold War, which is significant here as it means that during our six years of service we were trained in, and told to expect, fighting the Red Menace.
It wasn't really obvious at the time that the Red Menace was having serious problems. Reddit Marxists would claim that's because "real" Socialism has never been tried, but the experiment wasn't working well and Poland left the orbit, followed by the collapse of the USSR. China was still a menace at the time, of course, but it wasn't acting like Wilhelmian Germany yet and was mostly a menace in its own neighborhood. Of course there was North Korea, like now, which makes a theme out of menacing.
Anyhow, during the Cold War era reservists didn't see much activation for small wars as, for one reason, there weren't very many small wars that the U.S. directly got into, as once it did, they turned into big wars. So, while the US messed around in central Africa and in Central America, it mostly did it in the late Cold War stage through proxies or clandestinely.
Once the USSR collapsed, that changed. In 1980 going into a war in Iraq would have been dicey with the USSR so near. In 1990, with the Soviet Union folding up, not so much.
So we drilled and trained and went to war games. But we never shot at Ivan, or Lee, or Chan.
Which is just fine.
But apparently that's not good enough for the Federal Government if you are seeking employment.
Cold War reservists can't claim veterans status of Federal employment forms.
My supposition is that post Cold War ones called into active service for various wars we've fought since 1990 can, because they were activated and therefore qualify.
Which is odd as Phil and I are veterans for other things. Indeed, it was once suggested to me that for some sort of vaccination I ought to go to the VA, which wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise.
Is Phil right that this is unfair?
Well, my instinct is that he's right. We served for six years in a climate which actually was dangerous to some degree. If there'd been the war we were training for, we would have had to go, and there's a good chance a lot of us wouldn't have come back. Our combat rating was as high as the Regular Armies, and just because we were also training from home doesn't really make an intrinsic difference in that. Sgt. Smith serving in the RA at Ft. Sill and Sgt. Smith working at Haliburton in Wyoming both would have seen the same combat experience. But only one of them is eligible to claim veterans status for Federal employment.
Without knowing for sure, I suspect that some of this is a legacy of really long prejudice in the active military against the Guard, and some of it is lingering prejudice from the Vietnam War. Thanks to Robert Strange McNamara and his bad of deluded technocrats combined with the bumbling of Lyndon Johnson the Guard was not deployed to the Vietnam War until late. The irony is that the US used the Guard in every major war of the 20th Century and couldn't have fought any of them, save for Vietnam, without the Guard.
The mishandling of the Army, including its reserve components, during the Vietnam War nearly destroyed the entire Army during the war and didn't lasting damage to the Guard's reputation. Often missed in the story is that by end of the Vietnam War the U.S. Army was in such bad shape that it was rapidly reaching the point of combat ineffectiveness in the war and it was in a very sorry situation everywhere else. The Guard had declined during the war as well as it became a haven for those trying to evade active service, although following the war it rapidly became a haven for combat vets that weren't able to adjust back to civilian life, meaning that it had an inordinate number of combat veterans. By the late 1970s both forces were rebounding and today they're both excellent.
Be that as it may, the intentional decision not to deploy the Guard during the Vietnam War in order to avoid community discontent by removing a large number of men from any one town lead to some prejudice against it that lingered really until the Gulf War. Never mind that those soldiers who served in it during the Cold War would have been just as likely to die in any major conflict as a soldier of the Regular Army, and also never mind that by and large the US avoided the small wars that its fought since the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, out of a fear that they'd turn into big wars. And, as noted, the Regular military has had a prejudice against the Guard that runs back to the 19th Century, even though time and time again its proven unmerited.
So, while I don't know this for certain, I suspect that Guardsmen and Reservists whose Regular service was for training, no matter how long, are dissed in Federal employment due to a legacy of this prejudice.
Or maybe because I was a Guardsmen who holds an Honorable Discharge from the Regular Army, I just think its unfair as Phil does. A personal connection with things will do that.
I'll note by the way that for some of us, that six years meant a lot more than "drills on weekends and two weeks in the summer". For one thing, some summer ATs actually run three, not two, weeks in length. Be that as it may if I include time in which I was simply employed at the armory by the unit in the summer, it's add about eight months of service to my original RA three, which would give me element months. Add to that actual drill times and training periods outside of the summer, I'm up over that. I figured once that I had about two years of time, cumulative, serving.
No matter, it wasn't twenty reserve time. So you can't claim the status for Federal employment purposes. It doesn't matter if your job was combat arms and the guy you are competing against manned the soft serve ice-cream machine in San Diego. . .he's getting the status and you are not.
Oorah.
The Old Rules on Male/Female Employment remain more than people imagine.
It's really common for articles to appear once per year decrying, and legitimately so, the inequality between the pay of men and women.
It's not that easy of a story, however, as often men's pay is due to their being in occupations that men gravitate towards and women do not, and often they're hard, physical and dangerous jobs. In Wyoming, where the income inequality is huge, lots of men have in recent decades worked as oilfield roughnecks.
Very few women have.
But it's a well paying job.
Statistics report that women still make less in truly equal positions, such as, supposedly, female lawyers making less then men, but I somewhat doubt those figures and if that was true, it's rapidly ceasing to be true.
The point may be that, in spite of the efforts of the Woke to compel people to believe that all occupations are gender neutral, in reality they aren't, and men and women tend to gravitate towards certain types of employment.
And one of those areas is the home, for women.
I don't mean to suggest that this is a poor choice in any fashion whatsoever, but rather note that this is a reality.
The reason that this came to mind, although I've thought about posting on it before, is also due to a discussion with a friend. The friend just turned 50 years of age and is now really focused on retirement.
It's an odd focus in his case as he has five children and none of them are out of school yet. None. That means that he has years and years to go in which they'll be in school, and then in university. I don't know the ages of his younger kids so I don't really know how that plays out, but it would mean that he'd be at least 60.
I'd also note that his wife opted to stay home to raise the five.
In our conversation, he mentioned age 55, but that's not realistic in his case at all Be that as it may, it turns out to be the case that at age 55, or maybe 55.5, a person can start drawing on their 401K in some fashion.
Now, this isn't retirement advice as I haven't studied this and I don't know what the parameters are, but I hit 55.5 over two years ago and that therefore was an interesting fact. It was an interesting fact right up until it dawned on me, which was pretty quickly, that my long suffering spouse is a little over ten years younger than I am.
That's significant as when people look at retirement they ought to be looking at the burn rate of their retirement savings. Will you have enough, that is, to last until you die?
Nobody really knows when they're going to die, of course, but a person retiring at age 55 probably ought to expect to live at least to their point of life expectancy, if not longer, even though they very will might not. It'd be the pits to burn through retirement by 65 and then be waiting for the Social Security check to arrive to buy groceries. Of course, that may well mean that a person in that position may die by 57 and never have retired. That may sound extreme but my father died at age 62 and he never retired. For that matter, his father was in his 40s when he died, and my long lived mother's father was 58 when he died. He was medically retired, however, at the time, not a pleasant situation either.
Anyhow, if you are happily figuring "hey, I'll have enough to retire at 55 if I plan on living until 80, when the last drop of my savings runs out", but your wife is 45. . . . , well perhaps you better rethink that.
And here's where the basic nature of the sexes comes back in.
At least in my generational cohort, a lot of women aren't as well educated as men, and their employment choices are therefore much more limited. They aren't absent, but they're limited. My wife's a good example. She has some post high school education, but not at the same level that I do.
Now, lots of professional men I know have a wife that's also a member of the same profession. They probably met at school or work. But here's where the difference comes back in again. I've known a fare number of women who have dropped out of their professional employment in order to stay home with children. I've known exactly one man, and only one, who has done the same.
Why is that?
Well, that's because its a feature of The Old Law. It may be the case that society holds that men and women should each have equal employment, but in reality, biology makes this a different matter. Men can father children, but they can't give birth to them, they aren't physically equipped to feed them when they are infants, and they aren't really emotionally equipped to nurture them when they are young. They just aren't. Women are.
Which is an application of biological reality and therefore, fine.
It also means, however that the iron law of male employment is always at work.
Men have fewer options on employment than women, in existential terms. Sure, by nature men can be roughnecks and by biology and temperament they're suited to be soldiers, which women are not, in my view. But they can't just drop out of the work force and stay at home like their wives can. They cannot.
They also at some point are not only pulling the freight, but for a lot of them are pulling it after they probably shouldn't be, as they have no choice.
Is that unfair? Well, probably some people reading this, if anyone does, are assuming I'm endorsing unfairness. Rather, what I'm doing is noting the way of the world. We may deem it personally unfair in all sorts of ways, but that's the way of the world. The fact that I have to wear glasses may strike me as unfair, or that the prior two generations of my male ancestors died young and diverted the agricultural directions of our family into the office, twice, may strike me as unfair. But universal fairness isn't part of the deal.
Basic biological reality, i.e., the difference between the sexes, isn't unfair, however. It just is. The fact that we ignore this to the extent that we do is because; 1) in an a period of unprecedented societal wealth we can get away with ignoring that to some extent, and 2) in the advance stage of the industrial revolution we live in, we've forced, for a bunch of reasons (many just societal) women into the work force full scale the way we did with men in the late 20th Century and 3) with really advanced technology and outsized industrial might, we haven't had to fight and evenly matched wars or quasi evenly matched wars since the end of the Vietnam War (which was evenly matched in part due to the competence of the NVA, and in part due to the fact that we also had to worry about full scale wars in Europe and South Korea, and elsewhere, the entire time).
So what of that? Well, not much. Just that the old existential laws are never far from the surface, no matter how much we might imagine that we're exempt from them.
