Showing posts with label Marjorie Taylor Greene. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marjorie Taylor Greene. Show all posts

Sunday, November 23, 2025

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 109th Edition. Lost love. Painting Targets. Piggy. Articles of Surrender. Voting in opposition of something that isn't going on.

Lost love

The big news this past week is that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came to prominence as one of the most notable and frankly disagreeable figures on the far right, and then who moved away from Trump, is leaving the 119th Congress in January after her pension vests.

What's exactly going on here is really unclear, but Green's transformation was remarkable.  She used to come across like an ignorant howler monkey.  If  Eva_Vlaardingerbroek is the "Shieldmaiden of the far right", she was more like an buffoonish bouncer.

All of a sudden, however, she really came around to opposing Trump and in fact suddenly sounded like a different person completely.  That suggests her antics were always an act put on for her constituents.

Given her change, she was drawing the direct opposition of Trump who was opposing her in next year's Congressional election.  She already had stout opposition and may just be taking off because she doesn't want to spend the next year dealing with a pack of extremists.  Her transformation did not cause her to be loved by moderates who were baffled on her transformation, save perhaps for Thomas Massie, whom Trump also hates.  Trump is vicious to all who oppose him.

Well, as W. E. B. Dubois famously said, only a food never changes their mind.

The Seditionist accuses others of Sedition.

Oh horse shit.  No "great legal scholars" are venturing that opinion.  Pam Bondi probably would, if told to do so, but her sycophantry disqualifies her from being a great anything. 

Donald Trump is a seditionist insurrectionist.  He has not had his act of sedition excused by Congress, so he's actually ineligible to be President of the United States, and legally, isn't.

So that makes it all the more ironic and hypocritical that he's gone after a collection of Congressmen and Senators, all veterans, who reminded service members that they can, and must, obey an illegal order, under certain circumstances (they can't for instance, just assume an order may be illegal).

Some of this has actually already been happening.  Resignations of senior officers, and some firings, have hit the news, usually with a "gosh, I wonder why this is happening" sort of commentary.  It's happening because they're opposing illegal orders.  It's also the case that National Guardsmen have started a backchannel internet communication discussion that includes the same topic.

Trump seems to be in a full blown panic about this, and probably for good reason.  The US is currently murdering people on the seas in extrajudicial killings using military force that some regard as being on the edge of illegality.  Trump has sent National Guardsmen to cities with Courts repeatedly intervening to stop the deployments.  Trump is constantly rumored to be on the edge of using the Insurrection Act.  But as time goes on he gets more and more erratic.

The majority of American people already disapprove of Trump's presidency.  There's no national stomach at all for using the military against the population, but the administration has constantly flirted with it, and to some extent, already done it.  The legality of Trump's actions on all levels are in the Courts.  There's a reviving movement to impeach him, and his behind the scenes support may well be reaching the breaking point.  We still don't know what was in the Epstein files, other than that rich and powerful men feel they can get away with whatever they want, including screwing teenage girls.

Declaring the politicians who spoke to be seditionist is absurd.  They were no such thing.  But it does paint a target on their backs.  This was reprehensible.

It's also a sign of extreme desperation.  We'll note that below.

Piggy

One of the increased signs of Trump's dementia is his inability to hold his tongue.  Last week he called a reporter who asked a question he didn't like "Piggy".  It was a female reporter.

He's demented.

Any other politicians in the US who said such a thing would be howled down to the point they'd offer an apology.  Not Trump, of course.  The fact that he hasn't been is evidence of what redneck trash this country has become.  It's appalling.

It's also a sign that at this point Trump is so stressed by something that the wheels are really coming off of his psyche.

Articles of Surrender

One of the most notable things about Donald Trump is the degree to which he truly seems to abhor war.

Or does he?

It's actually a bit difficult to tell.

Regarding the Russo Ukrainian War, Trump has repeatedly issues statements that approach being homo erotic about the war and how it needs to end, due to all the "beautiful" young men it kills.  At the same time, of course, he doesn't mind killing South American men very much.

Going back to that, however, Trump has being trying and promising to end the Russo Ukrainian War for well over a year now.  He's flip flopped on positions, but one of those that he periodically occupies is acting as an agent for Russia.  We're back at that point again.

The West promised to secure Ukraine's sovereignty when it gave up its nuclear weapons.  The West has not fulfilled that promise fully.  President Biden did a good job of helping Ukraine right from the onset, but didn't go as far as he should have.  The various European nations have done far, far more than they've gotten credit for.  

Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and although he may have convinced himself that he ended "eight wars", so far, he's not really ended any, if we consider that the only real claim he could have made to that effect was the war in Gaza, where Israel conducted a bombing raid yesterday.  Most people who have really looked at the situation in Gaza don't expect the peace to hold permanently.

A real peace between Ukraine and Russia would be a major accomplishment, however.  The thing is, however, that the "peace plan" that Trump presented was basically that Ukraine surrender.  Indeed, it resembles the treaty that ended the Great War to some extent, in that Ukraine gives up land and limits the size of its army, which are two of the things Germany did at the end of World War One.

That worked out oh so well.

Of course, to realize that would require a sense of history, which Trump lacks.  That the plan smacks of the Munich Accords also would require that.

So, back to a couple of things .Why is Trump the only Western leader outside of Viktor Orban who  likes Putin?  It isn't because he's on the populist right.  Giorgia Meloni is on the populist right and she's not a Putin fan.  

But Meloni also is very intelligent and not trying to suck up unwarranted praise all the time.

It might be just because the Russians know that Trump is demented and a narcissist, and they play into that.  But it's hard to wonder if it isn't something else.

At any rate, member of the Administration are already attempting to walk the document back.  That's interesting, as Trump seemed very solidly behind it.  That suggest that there are some forces behind the scenes that can operate a bit independently of Trump.

Voting no on Socialism while Trump cozies up to it.

The House voted on a resolution to disapprove Socialism, which is just about as stupid of thing as they could done.  What on earth was that exactly supposed to prove?

The GOP has really gone off the rails on this topic in that it now asserts routinely that Socialism=Communism.  It doesn't.  All Communists are Socialist, but not all Socialists are Communists, and those who maintain the opposite need to go back to school.

Ronald Reagan's big French buddy Francois Mitterrand was a Socialist.  He was also completely democratic.

Of course, Donald Trump isn't completely democratic, but interestingly, some of his policies are socialist, and now he's had a fawning meeting with the new Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City.  He declared that they had a lot of views in common.

Look for the GOP to now propose joining the Comintern.  

Turning Point at CC

One of the things that the assassination of  Charlie Kirk seemed to do was to boost the creation of Turning Point USA chapters.  There's one at one of the local high schools now, and one at the local community college.

At that one, there was just an event at which the far right Secretary of State and a far right politician who wants less government but who is a major landlord, thereby occupying a role in society that only exists due the major support of the government, or else people would ignore your claim to property rights, spoke.  

Wyoming's far right is sounding more and more irrelevant, so its interesting how these things are a bit behind the curve.  Of course the Secretary of State, in order to try to keep ahead of the curve, has been sounding like a member of Greenpeace recently.  I thought this would have generated some news, but it doesn't seem to.

Interesting.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. Lost love.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

A fracture in MAGA?

I only take people's actions seriously. No longer words. I wasn't a Johnny-come-lately to the MAGA train. I was day one. I'll you right now, this has been one of the most destructive things to MAGA is watching the man we supported ... watching this turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart ... the American people won't tolerate any other bullshit.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Sunday, November 16, 2025

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. Lost love.

 


Avatar

@realDonaldTrump

I am withdrawing my support and Endorsement of “Congresswoman” Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the Great State of Georgia. Over the past few weeks, despite my creating Record Achievements for our Country including, a Total and Complete Victory on the Shutdown, Closed Borders, Low Taxes, No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everyone, ending DEI, stopping Biden’s Record Setting Inflation, Biggest Regulation Cuts in History, stopping EIGHT WARS, rebuilding our Military, being RESPECTED by every Country in the World (as opposed to being the laughingstock that we were just 12 months ago!), having Trillions of Dollars (Record Setting!) INVESTED in the U.S.A., and having created the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World from being a DEAD Country just 12 months ago (and so much more!), all I see “Wacky” Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN! It seemed to all begin when I sent her a Poll stating that she should not run for Senator, or Governor, she was at 12%, and didn’t have a chance (unless, of course, she had my Endorsement — which she wasn’t about to get!). She has told many people that she is upset that I don’t return her phone calls anymore, but with 219 Congressmen/women, 53 U.S. Senators, 24 Cabinet Members, almost 200 Countries, and an otherwise normal life to lead, I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day. I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support. She has gone Far Left, even doing The View, with their Low IQ Republican hating Anchors. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Nov 14, 2025, 6:31 PM
BASH: We have seen these attacks from the president at other people. It's not new. And I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I think that's fair criticism. And I would like to say, humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 107th Edition. Tacky Crap, Delusion, and the Sgt. Schultz defense.

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Marjorie Taylor Greene sounding like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. . . something's going on.


Something is going on.

Recent comments by Marjorie Taylor Greene:

I've been in the Capitol, and there are two things I couldn't find this week: I couldn't find anywhere the Epstein files, and I also couldn't find the Republican plan to fix the health insurance industry.

____________ 

"Prices have not come down at all. The job market is extremely difficult. Wages have not gone up. Health insurance is going up. Home insurance goes up. Rent is going up. Young people have no hope of buying a home."

_____________ 

“Health care crisis? Ignored.

Wages? Flat.

Bills? Sky high.

And you think this wins midterms?”

______________ 

“I’d never speak on behalf of the president, but I don’t think he’s always getting the best advice.”

_______________

I'm talking to major manufacturing companies and they are saying we're having a problem with these tariffs... 

Has regular people's stress come off? No. That should be the focus. It shouldn't be helping your crypto donors. The focus should be the people that showed up at the rallies. I don't think those people are being served.

____________________

I'm not going to... keep talking the talking points, when my own adult children can hardly afford health insurance premiums.

______________________

I’m not some sort of blind slave to the president, and I don’t think anyone should be.

I serve in Congress. We’re a separate branch of the government, and I’m not elected by the president.

___________________

Have regular people's bank accounts been helped? No, that has not happened, and that needs to be the focus — it shouldn't be about helping your crypto donors.

___________________

I'm going to read you a little list... A Hollywood producer, a royal prince, a high-profile individual in the music industry, a very prominent banker, a high-profile government official, one former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, half a dozen billionaires, including one from Canada.

(This one riffs of of Massie, whom she is quoting). 

Something is going on.  Greene, who has typically sounded like a bombastic idiot, suddenly doesn't.  It's not just what she's saying, which is shocking given her prior servitude to the far right, it's the way she's saying it.

She's actually not dumb.

This means something. She's saying things that if they came from a Democrat would cause Mike Johnson to put on his little smirk and discount it.  

And then there's this:

They’re not Hamas. They’re literally women and children. And you can’t unsee the amount of pictures and videos of children that have been blown to pieces and are they’re finding them dead in the rubble. That isn’t—those aren’t actors, that isn’t fake war propaganda. It’s very real.

Usually MAGA supports anything Israel does.

This is interesting.  If it starts repeating with other far right figures we'll know that the political winds are shifting.

On rising discontent:

You better start obeying the Constitution. It's going to get real ugly if you don't follow the laws and obey the Constitution like you swore an oath to do.

National Federation of Federal Employees President Randy Erwin puts Trump on notice

A small business owner on Twitter, whose small business depends on Chinese imports, reported "hating" Trump.

Thursday, June 6, 2024

119th Congress, Part 3.

2011 Navalny designed poster about Putin's United Russia party, declaring it to be a "party of crooks and thieves".

March 29, 2024

The House of Representatives will see Speaker Mike Johnson push for funding for Ukraine through a bill that's been sitting in the dysfunctional House for a month when they return from their recess from not getting anything done.

Donald Putin, who loves Putin and hates Ukraine, has frustrated the advance of the Bill.  Marjorie Taylor Green will push to being Johnson down.

Absolutely pathetic.

And this while Ukraine fights for its life.

April 15, 2024

Still not having achieved a thing, the House will apparently consider aid to Ukraine this week as it will, in the same bill, consider aid to Israel, the drive for which was heightened by the weekend airborne flop by Iran.

Following this MTG, who is in Congress for some unfathomable reason, will push to remove Mike Johnson, who will survive the attack, particularly as his Trump has given him his seal of approval.

April 16, 2024

Speaker of the House Johnson signed the bill of impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, sending the issue of his performance in regard to the nation's immigration laws over to the Senate for rapid disposal, as this bill of impeachment is just theater.  

April 20, 2024

After months of delay at the hands of a bloc of ultraconservative Republicans, the package drew overwhelming bipartisan support, reflecting broad consensus.

About bloody time, and better late than never, assuming it's not too late.

Finally, Mike Johnson, who apparently prayed about the matter, found his courage.

May 2, 2024

Greene of Georgia is carrying through with her threat to force a vote to remove Speaker Johnson, calling to attention as she does so that he will rely upon Democratic votes to keep his job, as if that's some sort of character defect.

Going Feral: U.S. House of Representatives votes to remove wolv...

May 10, 2024

The ultimate MAGA House member, Marjorie Taylor Greene, took a run at removing Speaker of the House Johnson and failed.

May 15, 2024

Speaker Johnson, fresh from finding his backbone, appeared outside of the courtroom where Trump is being tried for allegedly having illicit sex with Stormy Daniels and then paying her to shut up about it, demonstrated that he is perfectly capable of reverting to sycophant.

June 6, 2024

President Biden signed an executive order which shuts the border down once there are 2,500 encounters on the same.

Last prior edition:

119th Congress, Part 2.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

The Cheney Maxim and MTG.

Trump is the one that gave shock and awe to the whole world when he walked across the DMZ line, hand extended, shaking hands with Kim Jong Un, ending Little Rocket Man’s reign

Marjorie Taylor Greene 

Kim Jong Un is still the Communist monarch of the Stalinist theme park, North Korea.

He's a bigger problem now, then he was then.

He still has nuclear weapons.

Trump's shacking hands with him probably did nothing more than cause Kim Jong Un to run back to the latrine and wash his hand thoroughly.

What on earth is wrong with Greene's district that they return this person to Congress?

Friday, July 7, 2023

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVII. Eh?

Marjorie Taylor Greene was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus.

Apparently this was due to her recent squabble with Insurrection Barbie.

Greene, at this point, acts like a spoiled toddler most of the time, screaming, messing her drawers, and holding her breath until she turns blue. She's an attention seeker.

Ironically, after being booted out, she tweeted, apparently, that the key to success was avoiding "distractions", when at least from the outside, being a distraction is mostly her point.

But this is fairly interesting for all sorts of reasons.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVI. Vulgar, Gross and Distressing. Are we seriously going to pick one of these guys?

Saturday, February 25, 2023

A question that should be asked. Who are the dupes, fellow travelers, and assets? Op eds and the Russians.


Tucker Carlson has a lot of negative things to say about supporting the Ukrainian war effort.1

Just recently, one of the major news outlets drug a 1960s vintage peacenik out of the closet with an "Ukraine can't win" editorial.

Some oddball Representative from Georgia keeps saying we're giving too much to Ukraine.

Why is this happening?

Lex Anteinternet: Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part 2. The Gatherin...

Russo Ukrainian War.

The Institute for the Study of War credits Russia with a real information false flag, in the form of media propoganda designed to suggest back in December that they were ready for peace talks, when they were not.  This, the Institute maintains, delayed the supplying of armor to Ukraine.

There's no reason whatsoever to believe at this point that the Russians are aiming for anything else than the complete defeat of Ukraine.



Okay, let's start with this.  Americans have a long isolationist streak in which we tend to believe that we can basically close the door on our North American home and remain safe from the world, while it fights out its problems.  We've thought this pretty much from day one, even though, at the same time, it's never ever been true and, moreover, we've often messed with other areas of the world.  American intervention in far off lands is another topic, which we're not dealing with in this thread, but we will note isolationism, as we've long had an isolationist streak.

Indeed, some of us thought we could avoid World War One even as American commercial ships went down in the cold Atlantic and the servants of the Kaiser, while not plotting how to win the war by sending Lenin to Russia, plotted on ways to get Mexico to attack the US.  In the end, we couldn't avoid that one.

And some of us thought we could avoid World War Two until the Japanese decided we would not.

After the Second World War, some of us thought that we could ignore things again until the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb, blockaded Berlin, and invaded North Korea.

It turns out that yelling "say off my lawn" doesn't actually cause people not to stay off your lawn, which doesn't deter people from thinking that it might work this time.



Also, there is a real, and sincere, group of Americans who feel that the war is a tragedy, but it's not our tragedy, and it's too expensive, or perhaps too dangerous, to be involved with in any fashion.

Okay, that's an honest opinion. I don't agree with it, but it's honest.

Added to that, there are those who have looked at the Ukrainian situation and believe it's simply hopeless.  To credit them a bit, while I think they're wrong, figuring out a winning strategy for Ukraine is a little difficult, so this line of thought is now without a logical basis.  Those folks think investing in a doomed effort is economically risky and merely prolonging a war leading to an ultimate Ukrainian defeat.



There are also some who genuinely admire Putin.

There were Americans who admired Hitler and Mussolini.  Truly, there was.  They thought, basically, that the world was going down the flusher and fascism offered a strong backed way out of that situation.  By the same token, there were plenty on the left who thought Stalin was just nifty for the same reason.

Currently, there are those on the far right, often on the National Conservatism spectrum, who are willing to overlook all his hypocrisy in order to conclude that Putin is an Orthodox Democratic Caudillo whose example is admirable.  Sure, his troops rape and murder, but gosh, he stands for . . . well anyway.

Okay, so there's that group.


And then there are those who simply profit off of taking extreme positions.  Carlson is almost certainly in that camp.  He says something outrageous and people comment on him.  Marjorie Taylor Greene's entire fame seems based on this.  Greene may believe what she's saying, assuming her stream of thought is pretty shallow, and Tucker may just like the Green and not really even be all that invested in what he's saying, other than being invested in the cash of what he's saying.  He has to keep saying stupid crap to draw in an audience that expects it.


And then there's fifth columnist and Russian assets.

It's worth pondering how many op ed voices are people who are in Russia's orbit through pay, or compromise.

I'd wager that some are, and perhaps considerably more than we might suppose.

It's very well established that the Soviet Union maintained an extensive disinformation campaign during its lifespan, and the Russians have kept it up.  During the Soviet era, this included employing some journalists.  The most effective World War Two era Soviet spy, Richard Sorge, was a German journalist.  Whitaker Chambers, the writer, was a Soviet spy until he defected in 1938, prior to his time as a journalist for Time.  Journalist I. F. Stone, well known in his time, may have been a Soviet spy.  British journalist Cedric Belfrage was a Soviet spy.

And this doesn't touch, of course, other influential people who were Soviet assets.  Harry Dexter White, for example, was a very influential figure in the Roosevelt Administration who was also working with the Soviets.

Now, one thing about the Soviet fellow travelers is that most of them, but not all of them, tended to occupy that role due to left wing sympathies.  It would, quite frankly, be hard to believe that very many Americans today really have strong Putinist sympathies of that type.

But money is another matter.

And so do long held ties.

We already know from Tucker Carlson's example that figures loudly yapping one thing on television may hold the polar opposite opinion in private.  They're willing to say, at least to some extent, what they're saying on TV as it pays.  

There's no reason to believe that pay that comes through a Russian contact, as opposed to advertising, isn't as influential to those who might be willing to compromise their beliefs.

And, like prostitution, once a person starts selling their opinion just a little bit, they're pretty much in it no matter what, as they're compromised.  A few bucks here to say that Putin isn't such a bad guy a few years ago can easily turn into being compelled to claim that Ukrainians are Nazis now.

Moreover, for old voices, fellow traveler money that was around in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, taints.  Nobody wants to be sitting in near genteel retirement in College Town USA to find that they were paid a few rubles in a prior era as they were convenient to that fellow traveler.  In that case, writing the Ukrainians Will Lose op ed for the papers, after being suggested that you should, probably can be rationalized to not be all that different from being for radical social justice in the 60 through 80s.

Sound too much like a story line from The Americans?  Well, maybe it should.

But some of the media opposition to Ukraine is a little odd.  It's worth considering.


Footnotes:

1.  No, I am not saying that Carlson is a Russian asset.  Why anyone listens to him for any reason whatsoever is another matter.

Thursday, February 16, 2023

The Political Left, having recently rediscovered democracy, now rediscover's shame. A blog entry by Robert Reich.

Marjory Taylor Greene, left, Howler Monkey's right (By Steve from washington, dc, usa - howler monkees doing their thing, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3963947).  One of these examples is shameful, and it ain't the one on the right.

This is an interesting and in my view largely correct, insightful blog entry by Robert Reich:
It also comes, I'd note, on the same day that a Wyoming Republic commentator made what are somewhat similar comments, calling a member of the GOP Central Committee a hypocrite in no uncertain, and indeed highly crude, terms, although if true, they'd be deserving ones.

And hence, I guess, my comment.

While I think that what Reich is complaining about is in fact shameful, which starts with Marjorie Taylor Greene acting like a Howler Monkey during the State of the Union Address, how the crap can anyone on the hardcore political left sincerely make this claim? The hard left in the country has spent the last 50 years totally dismantling any concept of shame in absolutely everything whatsoever.

And that's a lot of the reason why we are exactly where we are.

Do we have no shame?


Of course not. We were told that nothing is shameful.

And indeed, this tracks well into the purpose of this blog, looking at then. . .and now.  And, moreover, we often fail to note this trend, i.e., descent, in literature, as we assume that everyone in the past was living in the sewer or wanted to be like us, in the sewer.

That's truly not how it was.

I'll admit that I am torn in how to present this post.  When I started drafting it, I found I went into detail on where shame has exited.  I hadn't intended in the first place that the thread be a catalog of things formerly shameful, and now no longer shameful.  And in looking at it, I don't think that's the correct approach.  Maybe I'll expand on individual items later.

But what I will note, is there are a lot of things that were once regarded as highly shameful, in the arena of personal conduct, that no longer are, and in some instances, left-wing social engineers have gone so far as to impose shame on anyone commenting on them, or not engaging in them. Shame hasn't really left in that sense, it's been transferred.

Taking what is a short arch of history, but a long one in terms of individual lives, since World War Two, and really, since the late 1960s, a massive effort has been expended on this by the left.  Even as late as the early 1980s, for instance, many things that are now not shameful, were.  

Sex outside of marriage, particularly for women (or girls) was shameful.1   Having a baby out of wedlock was shameful.2  Homosexuality was shameful.3   Men dressing in women's clothes or affecting a female appearance was shameful. Prostitution was shameful. Avarice was shame, including avarice in these areas.5

Even into the 1970s, being divorced conveyed an element of shame.6   Living with the opposite gender and not being married was shameful. 

Well beyond that, having a child and not supporting the child economically, even to the point of your own well-being being impaired, was shameful.

While it was definitely changing during the 60s, putting yourself on display, i.e., being an "exhibitionist" was shameful.

Pornography, even after Playboy, and its consumption, was shameful.

All this started getting ripped down in the late 1940s, it accelerated in the 60s and 70s, and it's gone on to really stretch the balloon in our present age.  The results have quite frankly been a disastrous assault on nature.

Now, I don't wish to suggest that every conveyance of shame was warranted or a good thing. There were some really bad results.  The high abortion rates of the 70s and 80s were partially due to it being simply too shameful in many people's minds to bear a child out of wedlock, with the shame being imposed both on the young woman, but also on her family.  That this has ended is a good thing.

But the Me Generation's deep dive into themselves, and "if it feels good, do it", as the ethos, has been hugely destructive.  The KIA, MIA, and WIA of the Sexual Revolution has caused a limping society.  The focus on "me" lead to a focus on "mine", destroying community and boosting greed.

And in no small part, it's lead to where we are in things like Reich has complained about, and not just in this post.  It's all sort of the same package.  If the whole world is about me, me, me, and my needs, needs, needs, I really don't need to care what anyone else thinks or even reality.  The difference, therefore, between Marjorie Taylor Greene howling for attention and a transgender advocates demanding that a man be viewed as a woman, as he wants to be, are really thin. Likewise, the difference between a AoC and Elon Mus isn't all that much.

Also, really thin is the difference between individualized self-expression, including pantless individualized self-expression, and Harvey Weinstein pulling the latter off of somebody else.  It all just goes together.  In a way that they likely couldn't recognize, Hugh Hefner, Harvey Weinstein, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert are all fellow travelers on the same destructive cultural bus.

Reich cites to shame being a necessary social engine, and it is.  But you can't partially restore shame, really, as it has to be based on a larger something.  You can't just say "bad", and it's bad, because it's bad.  Bad things are bad, but due to something else making them bad. 

We've been seeing a lot of this recently, interestingly, and some of that's a good sign.  The Me Too movement is an effort to restore shame where it had once been.  At least up into the 50s, if not beyond, men who expected women to put out were called "wolves", and to be tagged that was shameful.  While the name was no longer around by the late 70s, early 80s, the same conduct was still not admired at that time, but Hefner and company were ripping it down, and in deed, raping it down, basically.  Hollywood, where actress self prostitution was pretty common all along, was interestingly the first to really say "enough", on an individual level, and try to reverse it.

But you really have to restore the metaphysical basis for why that's wrong, to really get anywhere.

Young people, left without the guide rails of the culture that was torn down, have partially restored it as well, although groping for a basis for it remains.  And in some odd ways, as we recently addressed, even the transgender movement, deep down, is an effort to reach out to get back to a less material, less perverted, time.

So here we now are.  Having become comfortable with a Quasi Judaical Dictatorship that's suddenly betrayed autocracy and restored democracy, the left finds itself now championing what it had become comfortable omitting, and here at last, its rediscovered, shame.

So is this a "everything was better in the past" post?  No it isn't.

But shame exist for a reason, and excising it wholly was a mistake.

Footnotes.

1.  People will instantly claim that there was a double standard, and to some degree that was true, but not to the degree that people commonly imagine.  It is true that it's becoming public knowledge that a girl had sex outside of marriage would tarnish, and often severely, her reputation, and if it was a case of multiple men, it would put her in a category that would be difficult to ever get out of, but men who were multiple standard violators likewise got tagged with a permanent, indeed lifelong, reputation they couldn't get out of either.  They had greater leeway than women, but not absolute leeway.

2. As noted in later in the thread, this probably partially lead to the high abortion rates of the 70s and 80s.  It also, however, lead to a lot of children being given up for adoption in a process in which the pregnant girl often absented herself, or her family absented her, for a period of time so that the pregnancy would not be discovered.  I know at least one person who experienced, this, later going on to a very respected adult life and the pregnancy not being discovered until after she had died.  As there was a high demand for healthy infants to adopt, and frankly white healthy infants (and there still is), this often worked out well for the adopted as well. Again, I personally know one such person whose mother was a college student when she became pregnant and the father never knew.

Indeed, that latter item is surprisingly common.  You'd think the distressed young woman would have always told the father, but often, they didn't.  This is because they didn't want, quite often, to be faced with the choice of marrying the individual, which also often occurred.  Such marriages usually happened quickly before the woman "showed".  In cases in which the women were in their 20s, they often just didn't want to be married to the man in the end, and for teens, their families didn't want to put them in that spot, quite often.  And of course, date rape wasn't really a concept at the time, and therefore in cases in which that resulted in pregnancy, not wanting to marry the man made sense.

3.  This tended to have an arresting influence on open displays of homosexuality, and it also led to quite a few homosexuals simply suppressing it individually, or even refusing to acknowledge it in any sense.

4.  It still mostly is, of course, but there are ongoing efforts to break this down.

The degree to which prostitution is shameful, although not really being a prostitute, tends to change by era.  In rough and ready frontier areas, the institution tends to exist pretty openly, and it also tended to very much be associated with certain armies, sometimes by compulsion.  That doesn't necessarily mean that the individual shame associated with it evaporates, but rather the tolerance of it is pretty open.  In other eras, there's very low tolerance for it.

There tends to be a myth that prostitutes were the founding women in a lot of regions of the frontier, which is just flatly false.  I've heard this myth associated with one local, now long deceased, historian, but as I've never read his work, and for acquired bias reasons I'm unlikely to, I don't know if that's really true.  Be that as it may, the most typical fate for prostitutes was early death, due to the lack of protection from disease.

5.  But not just in these areas.  Being "greedy" has been something that's always been around, but which wasn't tolerated in the way it now is until after the Reagan Administration came in.  

Americans have always had a very high tolerance for the accumulation of wealth, but not to the present level.  Simply being wealthy is not a sign of avarice, but having wealth was at one time very much associated with a social expectation of charity. Quite a few wealthy people still exhibit that trait today.

"I pay my taxes", while something nobody likes doing, was actually something the very wealthy used in their self-defense at one time, as the upper tax rate was extremely high.

6.  Fault, of course, had to be demonstrated for divorce up until nearly everyplace, or maybe everyplace, adopted "no-fault divorce".

Divorce is really regarded as being routine today, but even into the 1970s it was a mark against a person.