The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Sixth Edition. The demented panicked Octogenarian edition.

November 15, 2025

Rep. Thomas Massie's wife passed away, and he's remarried.

Trump hates Massie as Massie is not a toady sycophant.  In that vein, he's posted:

This from a guy whose been "married" four times and has cheated on at least three out of the four of his wives, admits that he screwed around, literally, earlier, and who hung around with kiddy diddlers.

What a vile disgusting human being Donald Trump is.

Massie's first wife died a little over a year ago.  They'd been married some 30 years.  His second wife is somebody he's known since 2016 who has worked for Sen. Rand Paul.  FWIW, marriages in that time frame are pretty common for people in Massie's situation.  Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, remarried about two years after the death of his first wife, and when he did marry, it was to somebody he had known for quite some time.

Trump, on the other hand. . . 

November 17, 2025

Q: Your voice sounds rough. Are you feeling alright?

TRUMP: I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something having to do with trade and a country. I blew my stack at these people

Q: Well it sounds like there's a follow up there--

TRUMP: What? I thought you said there was a polyp. I don't want to hear that!

November 18, 2025

Trump had a confrontation with Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs yesterday on Air Force One in which he once again demonstrated he has dementia

Jennifer Jacobs: “If there’s nothing incriminating in the Epstein files why not…?”

Trump: “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.” 

Trump's clearing being kept in office by the NatCons as he's unintentionally running cover for them.  This can only go on so long. 

Also, while it didn't at first occur to me, as its so weird, this strikes me as quite misogynistic.  Calling a woman "piggy" is really vile, but it does serve to illustrate Trump's history with women, really.  Going into their dressing rooms, according to one of Epstein's former girlfriends, groping her in front of Epstein, etc.

cont:

There are times I look at him and I see my grandfather. I see that same look of confusion. I see that he does not always seem to be oriented to time and place. His short-term memory seems to be deteriorating. . . [Trump's] lifelong struggles with impulse control are also “deteriorating as well."

Mary Trump.

November 21, 2025

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, all veterans, released  a video urging member of the armed forces not to follow illegal orders.  Donald Trump is now threatening them with prosecution for sedition, and the death penalty, which is ironic, as Trump is a seditionist.

The government is in the hands of a mad man.

November 28, 2025

Trump had a full blown late night Thanksgiving meltdown.

He's now openly, and obviously, completely unstable.

This wasn't the only example of this.  He also called a reporter stupid for pointing out that assailant who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington D.C. had received asylum from the Trump Administration.

There can be little doubt at this point that Trump is no longer control of himself, and probably only partially in control of the nation.  NatCons behind the administration are likely largely in control, but not fully, which is in part which makes Trump doubly dangerous.  A NatCon coup is basically going on while Trump retains enough authority to be legitimately dangerous.

Having allowed this to go on so long we're now in the situation where it's actually becoming increasingly difficult for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.  By pretending that Trump is not deranged, the bar has been set so high that Trump's supporters will not be able to tell what he actually did that caused him to be removed.  We are, therefore, really gambling now.  We're gambling that his actions don't cause a war, and that the war doesn't see the use of weapons that have largely become unthinkable in modern times. We're gambling that force isn't used against American citizens. And we're gambling that Trump's disregard for the law doesn't set in on a permanent institutional basis.

And about those supporters:

Jonah Goldberg

@JonahDispatch

60 percent of the people who constantly use the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome” and 98% of those who use it as an all-explanatory theory for any inconvenient arguments or facts, suffer from pro-Trump Derangement syndrome. Forget the terminology. If you think any information that make you doubt yourself is crazy, you are in a bubble.

Regarding that deline, the New York Times ran a recent article with this headline.

Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office

President Trump has always used his stamina and energy as a political strength. But that image is getting harder for him to sustain.

The article notes that Trump has reduced his workload 39%.

Also of note, those close to Trump are begging to openly admit that they're stressed and fatigued.  Poor old Mike Johnson has complained about not having a vacation in two years (yeah, well, suck it up, buttercup, I haven't had one for at least twice that long).  Loyal sycophant Karoline Leavitt complained openly about stress recently.

The question now is where all this leads.  Those who can invoke the 25th Amendment may simply have waited too long and now need Trump to do something that anyone would regard as fully insane. . . with the question being what that would be.

cont:

Trump is clearly vindictive and unhinged.  This will set the stage up for wiping out his executive orders, and perhaps reign back in the excessive use of executive orders.

November 30, 2025

Reporter: Walz called for the release of your MRI results

Trump: They can release it. It was perfect like my phone call where I got impeached.

Reporter: What were they looking at? 

Trump: For what? Releasing? 

Reporter: no, what part of your body was the MRI looking at

Trump: I have no idea. It’s just an MRI. It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.

Uh huh. . . 

First of all, I heard Walz's remarks, and he's right. They don't give MRI's for sport. They had some brain thing they were looking into.

And they tell the patient the result. . . if they're functioning and able to understand it.

And as for cognitive tests, the entire nation gets a dose of bat shit demented from Trump weekly. 

December 3, 2025

Not a sign of dementia, but rather of age, Trump is having a hard time staying awake during daytime events.

No doubt this problem is made worse by his staying up late into the night to post rage tweets.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fifth Edition. He's not okay.

Labels: Donald Trump, Illinois (Chicago), J. B. Pritzker, J. D. Vance, Mental Health, National Conservatism, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, Weird, You heard it here first

Donal Trump commenting on Thomas Massie getting remarried. . .

given  his vile history regarding women in general, and his own disregard for the sanctity of marriage, is like a thief commenting on private property rights, or a murderer on the value of human life.

Tuesday, November 3, 1925. Mitchell's Witness Demands Upheld, New Jersey Ballot, and the evolution of word meaning.

 Mitchell was having some success with his witness list.

And Cowboys Out Our Way illustrated the evolution of a word in a somewhat ironic way.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 31, 1925. Subpoena for Coolidge?

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1930, 1930s, Art, Automobiles, Billy Mitchell, Calvin Coolidge, Dancing, Elk, Food, Great Syrian Revolt, Halloween, Lodging, restaurants and bars, Ruth Eastman, Wyoming (Mills), Wyoming (Salt Creek)

Religion, J.D. and Usha Vance.

Because this blog is steadfastly horrified by Donald Trump and his administration, it'd be easy to assume that it's run by a rampaging leftist.  

It isn't.  

Indeed, if you follow the thread you'll see where we come out on the right a fair amount, which in our view doesn't mean supporting fascism.  I'm a conservative, not a right wing populist.

We note this, as there's been a flap over J. D. Vance's comments about hoping that his wife, Usha, converts to Catholicism, as if that's somehow inappropriate.

It isn't, and any sincere Catholic with a non Catholic spouse, which includes me, hopes for that.

Vance wasn't a political figure that I followed at all until he started to campaign for the VP slot next to Donald Trump.  Frankly, I found and still find his political migration to Trumpian authoritarianism appalling.  Anyhow, I knew that he was a convert to Catholicism, but I wasn't really aware of how recent of convert he is.  Vance grew up in Evangelical Protestantism, which isn't surprising given his "hillbilly" background, and at least according to an interview I heard of him some time ago, his influential grandmother was of the non churched Southern type of Christian view.  Vance himself was an atheist by the time he went to college   By 2014, the time of his marriage, he had resumed being a non denominational Protestant Christian but he was evolving towards Catholicism by 2016.  He converted to the Faith in 2019.

Vance's path is a lot more common than people suppose.  Vance is an intelligent man, my numerous political disagreements with him notwithstanding, and he became an atheist in ignorance.  The more educated he became, the more Christian he became, and exhibiting Cardinal Newman's Rule, that lead him ultimately to Catholicism somewhat against his own will, much like C. S. Lewis became a High Church Anglican after having been an atheist, or like G. K. Chesterton argued himself into the Faith.

Vance's path to Catholicism coincided his increasing rightward political draft and his barely camouflaged transformation into a Illiberal Democrat.  He's trod the same path in that regard ad Rod Dreher, whom is a friend of his (and who is pretending, frankly, to be Orthodox).  There's numerous other intellectuals on the right at this time who likewise share that distinction, such as J. R. Reno and Patrick Dineen, and amongst them are notable converts like Eva Vlaardingerbroek.  Indeed, there's a notable movement amongst conservatives from Lutheran nations in this direction, even as a non political boom in conversions occurs in various areas in Europe.  For cradle Catholics the association with illiberal democracy can be disturbing, and even result in outright internecine fights, but it is going on.  We here will note, as we have before, that becoming politically conservative does not mean having to become a populist let alone an illiberal democrat.

Anyhow, one of the things about Catholicism is this.  We are not religious pluralist.  If Vance did not wish for his wife to become Catholic, he'd be a very bad Catholic.

Usha Vance is a Hindu.

Catholics believe extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.  There is no salvation outside the church.

Now that's a doctrine that Catholics don't emphasize much, and often real diehard radtrad Catholics don't understand.  It isn't the case that Catholics believe that only Catholics can go to Heaven.  For that matter, Catholics are very far from any kind of "once saved always saved" theology and accept that a lot of Catholics might very well go to Hell.  Rather, Catholics believe, as the Catechism states it:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.

848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."

Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

Vance can of course hope, and should hope, that Usha converts, as her chances of salvation are heightened.  Does that mean that if she doesn't, she's damned to Hell?  Well, we can't know the state of anyone's soul, but the fact that she hasn't would suggest that she's not consciously rejecting Christianity, but rather hasn't overcome something.

Vance himself should be worried about the state of his soul. Catholics reject IVF, which he's been backing, and lying on serious matters is a serious sin, which Vance has been doing at an epic level.

At any rate, Vance isn't doing the wrong thing by hoping his wife becomes Catholic.  He's completely correct to wish for that, including openly.

This is, however, where the liberal side of American culture, and even the American Civil Religion, and frankly the Evangelical Christians, all come into conflict with Catholics.

At some point in American history and in American culture, and it goes back pretty far it became really common for people to be sort of religious relativist.  "It doesn't matter what religion you are, as long as you are a good person."  Well, it does in fact matter what religion you are, and of course you should be a good person no matter what religion you are.

Catholicism was an oppressed religion in the United State up until basically the 1960s.  Open oppression of it lessened steadily in the century prior to the 60s, and in fact was intense prior to the 1860s.  Catholics really kept themselves in a major way as a result, and only really began to enter the wider culture after World War Two.  Al Smith's Catholicism is generally regarded as what made it impossible for him to win the Presidency prior to the war.  An early Casper politician of Irish extraction was controversial in the town's Catholic community because of the distance he put between himself and his religion.  The first Catholic Governor of Wyoming was probably Frank A. Barrett, who was a devout Catholic who went on to become the state's U.S. Senator thereafter.  Joe Hickey, another Catholic came after him.  Both Barrett and Hickey were Governors in the 1950s.  Of course, Kennedy broke the dam in 1960, but in part by pledging basically not to let his Catholicism influence him, which was a despicable pledge. 

Vance hasn't pledged that.

The only U.S. Army generals known to be Catholic during World War Two, we might note, were Lieutenant General John E. Hull and Major General Patrick J. Hurley.  This fits into the culture of the professional military class at the time and it might be noted that the first Jewish general in the U.S. Army, Maurice Rose, was a practicing Episcopalian.  Patton, often noted to be very devout, was an Episcopalian, as was Marshall.  

Anyhow, as noted, it's not the case that Catholics feel all non Catholics are going to Hell as they are not Catholic, and Catholics certainly do not believe that all Catholics are going to Heaven as they are Catholic.  Rather, Catholics believe that the Catholic Church, which is the oldest and original form of Christianity, is the church Christ founded and the one entrusted with the instruments of salvation.  In some ways, everyone who is ultimately saved is saved in some way because of the Catholic Church.  As, to use a mistranslation of von Balthasar's statement, we wish "for all men to be saved", we want everyone to be Catholics as that makes it much more assured.

This puts us way outside of the American Civil Religions' views that all religions, or perhaps all Christian religions with Judaism thrown in for good measure, are equal.

One thing it should also do, however, and recent conversions should help cradle Catholics to refocus on this, is to be concerned about people in our immediate orbit.  Vance is basically doing that, but frankly he's in a bit of a tough spot because he and his wife married before his conversion.  

Simply being in a marriage in which one member is a Catholic and the other is not, if the Catholic is a sincere Catholic, has some real challenges.  Catholicism is different and even after decades the non Catholic spouse can be really surprised by the application of the Faith by the Catholic spouse.  In "mixed" couples where the non Catholic spouse is a member of one of the churches that's very close to the Catholic Church this is less so, but even here I've known couples who attended Mass faithfully where one was a Catholic and the other a Lutheran, for instance, with the Lutheran never converting in spite of the two churches being so close.  

As Yeoman's First Law of Human Behavior is a powerful force, general run of the mill Protestant spouses may attend Mass and support their Catholic spouse early on, but over a period time, simply stop attending as most Protestants aren't under a requirement to attend any service on a Sunday. That's inevitably extremely hard on the Catholic spouse who soldiers on.  This has to be even more difficult in a situation such as Vance's in which the other spouse isn't even a member of a Christian religion at all.

Indeed, at one time Catholics were very much discouraged from marrying non Catholics, although its always occurred, and it was often a stipulation by the Catholic spouse that the other convert.  I've known several Catholic couples where this was what happened, although I think it much less common now.  The religion where this frequently occurs is the Mormon religion, which is not a Christian religion and which isn't compatible with any.  Of note there, usually fallen away Mormons simply become intensely anti religious, rather than some other religion.

Catholics only marrying Catholics was a lot easier when Catholics pretty much were associated, culturally, only with other Catholics. That day is long gone, but there's still some wisdom to the old custom here.  As with many things, the Catholic viewpoint on something like marriage is much different than the cultures, if taken seriously.  Catholics married to non Catholics are adding weight to their cross, no matter what.  And part of that weight is the hope the other spouse become Catholic.

Wednesday, October 28, 1925 Mitchell challenges Jurisdiction.

 

Billy Mitchell questioned the Army's jurisdiction to try him.

The Casper paper ran Out Our Way.

Turning down pie?

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: October 28, 1925: What sort of monster...: Since the French Cabinet can’t force Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux to resign when he rejects a capital levy, the whole Cabinet resigns i...

The age 25 year thing on marriage permission is really interesting. That's surprisingly high. 

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 27, 1925. Ethel: Then and Now.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Cartoons, Ethel Hays

Ezra Klein looks at the state of the Democrats. . twice.

The Ezra Klein show recently ran two really interesting vlog episodes on why the Democratic Party is in the dumpster, even as the Republican Party makes the entire country a raging dumpster fire.  They're instructive, but in the case of the first one, not for the reason the guest likely hoped for.

It wasn't all that long ago, we should note, that political scientists had declared that the GOP doomed to demographic extinction.  It was, and is, a small tent party.  The party needed to reach out, it was told, and bring in all the people in the Democratic camp.  Long time readers here, of which there are likely very few, will recall that I predicated that some of the demographic  analysis was flat out wrong, and that Hispanics in particular would start moving into the Republican Party.

I was right.  

Now we live in the opposite world.  People hate the Republican Party but they hate the Democratic Party more.  Really a new party is needed, one that doesn't see global warming as a fib but which opposed abortion, for example, would have a lot of appeal.  But that's a post for some other time.

Let's look at what the experts have to say.  First, as it was first in time, is the interview with  Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell and co-author of the new book “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy"

The interview is here.

I could tell in listening to it that Klein thinks the book is wrong, and while I haven't read it, I know it is, if it espouses the same views that Mettler did in her interview.  She looks at everything economically and that's about it. Social issues don't mean anything.

Well, I lived through this and saw a Wyoming that had a large, but minority, Democratic Party almost completely die.  Most of the major active Democrats in the party started to move to the Republican Party during the Clinton Administration and that trickle became a flood.  All sorts of respected "traditional" elder Republicans in Wyoming were once Democrats.  They left as it increasingly became impossible to be a centrist or conservative Democrat.  There's no room for a pro life Democrat, for instance, in the party anymore.  Once homosexual marriages, transgenderism, and showing up at rallies with blue hair became the norm, the normal largely dropped out and won't come back.

That's what killed the Democrats in the West.

This interview with Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, is much better as Abbot is realistic and not hopelessly clueless, as Mettler seems to be:

Abbot actually admits that he isn't sure if the Democrats can come back from political exile in rural areas, but the examples he gives of people running from the outside are excellent.  Nebraska equivalent of Wyoming's John Barrasso, Deb Fischer, provides an interesting example as she nearly went down in defeat to independent Dan Osborn.

Osborn's race is really instructive as he wasn't a Democrat, but called bullshit on a lot of Fischer's politics.  Osborn himself is a working man, and he's pretty conservative.

And there's the real lesson.

Democrats right now can't get any traction in rural areas as frankly nobody can stand to vote for anyone they are putting up, most of the time, and then when they do put up a good candidate, the party's platform kills them.  The Democratic Party became, quite frankly, the Transgendered Vegan Party, and that's going nowhere.  It not only became that, it can't get away from it.  Look at any protest of Trump's policies that's a public one, and you'll see the usual suspects.  If there isn't a hugely overweight middle aged woman with blue hair, you just aren't looking hard enough.

Indeed, this has become so much the case that that left wing protests that are popular now are sometimes all Republican.  In Natrona County the recent Radiant Energy No Nuke protests were lead by Republicans including a Wyoming Freedom Caucus member of the legislature.  Chuck Gray came up and lead his support, sounding like he was Chuck Gray from Greenpeace.  If Democrats can't own that issue . . . .

There seems to be a little waking up, but only a little.  Public lands is what did it.

Back in the 1980s, when I switched from the Republican Party into the Democratic Party (I left the Dems with the great flood of us who couldn't hack the weirdness), public lands and attention to environmental issues is what did it.  People worship Ronald Reagan now, but James Watt, his Secretary of the Interior, was an Evangelical Christian zealot in favor of ravaging the land now, as he was certain that the Second Coming was going to be very soon.  That land ravaging instinct remains very strong in the GOP and recently came out in spades.

Wyoming Democrat Karlee Provenza picked right up on that and came out in front.  The Democrats need to do more of that.  Land issues are near and ear to Wyomingites and the Republicans are very vulnerable on them.  That issue alone might, if really exploited, bring the Democrats back if their campaigns were really strategic.  

Some of that strategy has to be getting really personal.  Sure, Hageman is for turning public lands over for sale. . she's from a "fourth generation" ranching family, and the ranchers always believe they'll get the land, even though they won't.  Same for Lummis  Sure, Dr. John is for it, he's a Pennsylvanian not a Wyomingite.  Did you every see him at your favorite fishing hole?

But one issue alone is a risky proposition. What they also need to do is dump the weirdness.  Being lashed to transgenderism is a completely losing proposition.  A Democratic candidate is going to be asked about it . . and could really make hay on it.

But only if they're willing to fight dirty, which the GOP definitely is.  But they're not prepared for the same.

For instance, if a public lands Democrat was running for the House, and asked about this issue, we would expect the usually milk toast fall in line answer they normally give.  But if they said, "oh gosh no, that's a mental illness and it needs to be treated that way, and women's sports and role in society needs to be protected. . . " it'd leave the Republicans flat footed.

They'd be on their heels, however, if it went further.  If you added "and by the way, I constantly hear our GOP talk about being pro family.  I don't know how pro family you can be if you are jacking up their cost of living and particularly their insurance rantes, but what about that family stuff?  Hageman's been married for years and she ain't got any children. . nephews and nieces aren't the same thing, and Chuck Gray is 36 years old and unmarried. . .what's up with that?  Why I think a decent man ought to marry a decent woman young and have some kids. . . and when that doesn't happen that's because they aren't focused on families, darn it".

Yeah, that's nasty, but how do they reply?  It is the case that Hageman and her husband have never had children.  Maybe there's a medical reason, but maybe it was a focus on careers and using pharmaceuticals to avoid it.  If so, that ain't very populist Republican.  And Chuck Gray is 36 years old and unmarried.  I know that he's a Mass attending Catholic, and I'm not accusing him of any intimate immorality, but I will note that by age 36 men are usually married, or in our current society, living with some female "partner".  Gray doesn't appear to fit either of these which is odd, as it demonstrates something about his character, perhaps simply an unlikeable character, that's keeping it from occurring, unless he just doesn't want to get married, which is unlikely.

FWIW, as I'm a bit connected, I know that Gray dated women while living in Casper.  Obviously those relationships didn't work out.  I'm not claiming he's light in his loafers.

I will say, however, that once you get out there, there are die hard right wing Republicans in this state who are subject to some unwelcome attention on their personal lives.  Is that fair?  Well, if you are calling for suppressing certain groups, and you are part of them, you owe people an explanation.

Which gets back to the inevitable question that comes up now, "what about gay marriage".  Again, it's easy for a Republican to say "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman".  A Democratic coming back with "so do I, and I believe that union arises once. . . what do you think about that Dr. John. . . and is that why you abandoned your original faith?".  

Nasty.  But Dr. John wouldn't have a very good answer for it.

Abortion is always going to come up.  Abortion is the issue that ultimately drove a lot of us out of the Democratic Party, including me.  The Democrats should simply abandon a position on it and let candidates stake out their own ground.  There remain a few pro life Democrats out there, and to be one shouldn't be an anathema. 

And, indeed, if that was allowed, it allows uncomfortable questions to be asked.  Republicans claim to be pro life, but now their massively in favor of IVF, which kills most of the embrioes that it creates.  Current Democrats can't really ask about that without hypocrisy.  A pro life Democrat could.

Can the Democrats do all that?

Probably not.

Saturday, October 17, 1925: When two ride one horse.

Hasan al-Kharrat' rebels entered Damascus.

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: October 17, 1925: When two ride one ho...: French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand says the Locarno Conference lays the foundations for the United States of Europe. Hurrah! In Locarn...

This item contains an interesting one one regarding modification of the wedding vows in the Episcopal service. 

"What a Protection Electric Light is" advertisement for Edison Mazda . The Saturday Evening Post, October 17, 1925.

 

Last edition:

Friday, October 16, 1925. The Locarno conference ended with several agreements in place and an atmosphere of optimism.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Diplomacy, Europe, Locarno Conference

Friday, October 12, 1945. Operation Beleaguer.

I missed this when it started, which was October 10, so I'll note it here. This was day two of Operation Beleaguer, the Marine Corps occupation of northeastern China's Hebei and Shandong provinces from 1945 until 1949.

Members of the 1st Marine Division in China.  Two Chinese women appear in this photograph, one dressed in Western clothing, even though the Marine Corps attempted to strictly prevent romances breaking out between Marines and Chinese civilians.  People are people, so such interactions are essentially impossible to stop, but this particular story is very understudied, in part because Asian women were not covered by the War Brides Act, but marriages nonetheless occured. 5,132 Chinese women entered the United States as spouses of servicemen after World War Two, which included women who married Army Air Corps servicemen who had served in China during the war.  This is, overall, a small number, and indeed its must smaller than the number of Japanese women who married U.S. servicemen after 1950, which reflects official policy, cultural differences, and lingering US prejudice in the period against the Chinese.

It was not a combat operation, although some combat would ultimately occur, but focused on the repatriation of more than 600,000 Japanese and Koreans that remained in China at the end of World War II to their homelands.  Having said that, the looming crisis in post war China in which a seemingly defeated Communist Party began to advance in the country's civil war was not far from anyone's mind and the primary mission of force was to prevent the People's Liberation Army from accepting the surrender of Japanese soldiers in Northern China and to secure that region of China for the Nationalist Government, which had been an American ally throughout the war.  Landings actually commenced as early as September 30. By the end of the operation in 1949, the 1st Marine Division would be a covering force for the evacuation of foreign nationals.

 

U.S. Marines had been in China well before World War Two, but in this instance the it was effectively a different Marine Corps than the one that had existed up until 1940.  The Marine Corps had only been a major combat force once previously, and that had been during World War One when the 4th Marine Brigade had been part of the US Second Division.  The 1st Marine Division dated back only to February 1, 1941 when the military started to enormously expand in anticipation of going to war.  Given its prior history, only the Marines themselves really anticipated being a major ground combat element in the war, ultimately expanding to six divisions.  Six divisions is a huge Marine Corps, but the Corps was dwarfed in size by the Army, even in terms of Pacific combat, where the Army deployed twenty two divisions.

With the end of the war the service began to return men quite rapidly to civilian status and members of the Marine Corps, the vast majority of whom were wartime volunteers, anticipated the same.  Prior to the war Marines tended to be career oriented to a high degree, and frankly about as rough of set of characters as could be imagined.  By 1945 most of them were toughened civilians in uniform, comparable to volunteers in the U.S. Army, and some were conscripts.  Nobody anticipated being sent into China, even though prior to the war Marines had served there.

Because the military was in fact demobilizing, this would prove to be a problem for the 1st Marine Division in China, as it soon began to suffer attrition due to members being discharged.  It's combat efficiency dropped, and at the same time, it became increasingly obvious that the Communists were going to win the Chinese Civil War.

While going to China was a surprise to the Marines, the found when they arrived that the Chinese were wildly enthusiastic about their appearance.  No doubt their showing up meant not only that they were liberated from the Japanese, but also from the Communists and the Nationalist, at least for a time.

On this, while we're jumping way ahead of our story, it's also worth noting that this points out a problem in the "who lost China" line of the Republican Party following the evacuation of the Chinese Nationalist from the mainland.  There are a lot of elements to that story, but the GOP at the time, suddenly shocked following the Berlin Blockade and then the fall of the Nationalist government in China, looked for somebody to blame.

It might be noted at first, that they should have looked at themselves.  The GOP had been actively highly isolationist prior to World War Two and evcen leading up the last year before the war there were strong elements within the party that opposed entering the war.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor followed by the German declaration of war on the U.S. solved that for a time, but upon the restoration of peace, the main branch of the GOP returned to isolationism.  The US didn't become isolationist as the 79th Congress remained controlled by Democrats.  The 80th Congress did not, but it was somewhat ineffectual for that period (which is nothing compared to today).  The 80th Congress, however, notably presided over the fall of China.

Be that as it may, some have suggested that US inaction over China was due to the penetration of the US by Soviet spies in the 1930s, and there may be a little to that, but only a little.  M. Stanton Evans hinted at that in his revisionist biography of Joseph McCarthy, which is quite well done and a good read. But even there, the suggestion was that Communist elements managed to hold up arms shipments to the Nationalist.  Even were that true, any follower of this site could see that in 1945 China was awash in arms and yet at the same time the Nationalist were losing battle after battle.

It is something worth exploring.  Before the war with Japan, the Nationalist were winning.  After the war, it just took five years for them to lose.

Anyhow,, realistically, looking at Operation Beleaguer, what really could have been done?  The US was not going to be able to send U.S. troops into a Chinese Civil War right after World War Two. There was no public will for that at all and no moral within the U.S. military that would have allowed for that to have occured.

Elsewhere in China, the Shangdang Campaign ended in communist victory.

German general Anton Dostler was sentenced to death in Rome for war crimes.

The Norwegian Supreme Court upheld the death sentence imposed on Vidkun Quisling.

Last edition:  

Thursday, October 11, 1945. Racism in "the good old days".