A Sorority (Fraternity) lawsuit, and a subject who could be helped.

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent's faith is to say that I must not discuss it.

G. K. Chesterton.

The Gibson Girl, the iconic female figure of the early 1900s created by Charles Dana Gibson. The thing is, you see, she isn't, and wasn't, real.

There's been a story much in the news here, and indeed elsewhere, about a figure who is a guy but who claims he identifies as a girl, or more accurately, a figure who is a man who claims he identified as a woman.

What impresses me about this story isn't that aspect of it, so much as nobody, up until very recently, and after I started this post, has really bothered to dive very deep into the story, particularly from a psychological level.

It seems that they should.

Not that we should be too surprised about this. People rarely do.  During World War Two, for example, in one rural area of Germany a figure held forth as a local open anti-Nazi member of the German nobility. . . except he wasn't a member of the nobility at all.  He was lucky to get away with it, and his anti-Nazi stance was genuine.  But a Junker he was not.  Why did he do that?

Backstories to the public positions people take are very rarely looked at, but really should be.  Some backers of causes that are strongly for them in a virulent way have a personal connection that undermines their position in one fashion or another.  Others just make you wonder.  Why, for instance, would a well-to-do young man with no employment history relocate to a Western state and run for office as a political firebrand on the populist libertarian front?  You'd think voters would ask, but they largely don't.  Why would an ostensible billionaire who has gone down in defeat in an election and who faces a pile of criminal charges be running so aggressively for office again?

We tend to take things at face value.

So too here.

There's some new data out that shows that for the majority of people who claim transgenderism, if left to develop that claim on their own, the claim itself is transitory and youthful.  Most girls, for example, who in their very early teens feel they want to be boys, don't a decade latter.  That's a good reason in and of itself not to allow "transitions" that can't be reversed, and any substantial one can't be reversed.  Indeed, it's criminal to allow it in an existential sense, and ought to be in a legal sense.  But what causes it?

Indeed, as a commentor on the story in Wyo File, which finally did look at some of the backstory, noted:

The strong correlation between trans identity and autism spectrum disorder has been recognized over the last three years by such professional organizations as the National Autism Society, The Institutes of Health, Autism Research Institute, and studies published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Noted was the observation that autistic youths were up to 6 times more likely to identify as trans than a similar non-autistic demographic. The medical field recognizes and treats autism as a disorder, not a normal expression of the spectrum of the human condition. Since it appears that trans gender identity is resultant from ASD, it should also be treated as a disorder rather than celebrated.

That's an interesting observation, to say the least.

Well, we've looked at it before, but in regard to the individual who has been so much in the news, why hasn't anyone looked up until now?

The data is there, or at least was, when this story first developed.  It doesn't appear to be a happy story.

When this news first broke, there was a blog up, and maybe there still is, by the father.  It wasn't on his sons, but his son appeared in the photos.  He already looked different from the rest, having gained a lot of weight even as a child.  But what the blog made clear is that the father was bitterly disillusioned.

Not with the son, but with his former wife.

His wife, he claimed, had left and divorced him, and her Mormon faith was the reason why.

Now, that was never explained.  Mormon's can and do marry outside of their faiths, so there are a lot of roads that could be gone down there. Whatever the story was, from his prospective, the wife had left him and their children for her Mormonism.

Now, that doesn't really make sense.  One of the things most noted about Mormon's is their deep devotion to the children.  It's hard to imagine what the conflict was, but it was at least perceived that way by the former father.

Maybe the topic of the young man had already come up, and now based on the Wyo File story, it seems it definitely had.  Perhaps that was the division.  Or not.  Maybe that had nothing to do with the split.  Again, we don't really know.

I don't really know the definitive Mormon position on transgenderism.  I do know the Catholic one which is that disorders are not sinful, but acting upon them if it's outside of the moral framework, is.  This has typically come up in regard to homosexuality. Being a homosexual isn't sinful, but sex outside of marriage is, and marriage is just between a man and a woman.  I believe the Mormon position is similar, but I can't say that definitively.  If the boy's declared sexual dysmorphia became an issue in the household, with one parent taking the boy's side, and one not (and I don't know if that was the case), I can see where it may ultimately have been fatal to the marriage.

What we do know, and from long, long experience, is that its difficult in the extreme to raise a child in a one parent household and that this is so much the case that when one parent is present but really absent, such as one works all the time, or one is a drug or alcohol addict, it statistically impacts the outlook of the children and often for life.

Daughters, it's been shown, of a checked out woman are much more likely to turn out to be lesbians than daughters where the mother is present. That doesn't mean their relationship is necessarily rosy. But the daughters of what now is so charmingly called "the day drinking moms" who sit there in front of the television at 1:30 in the afternoon getting blotto tend to have no real female role model.*  In contrast, a mother may be a Tiger Mom, or whatever, but if she's there, it makes a huge difference.

In contrast, the son's of men who are not there tend to be more likely to have same sex attraction as well.  The two impulses, one in male and one in females, are not otherwise similar and other aspects go into it. Women who perceive, while young, that men are a threat are more likely to take refuge with other women.  What about men?

Well, I don't know, but one thing that has been pretty clearly demonstrated is that young men who are exclusively around other young men, to the exclusion of females, are more likely to become homosexuals.  English Boy Schools provide a well known example.  

What about transgenderism?

One thing we do know, in spite of recent left wing attempts to scientifically legitimize it, much like was formerly done with eugenics, it has no biological origin.  No set of hormones or the like is going to send you off into a different gender. That means it's purely psychological in origin.

But what's going on with it?

We don't know for sure, but we do know that with females it mostly hits in the very early teens and is gone by the early 20s.  And we also know that young women are getting exposed to piles of gross pornography right now, and that those who are ADHD are more likely to take this direction.  Often it occurs in groups.

Which may mean that its origin is much like lesbianism, except its much more destructive, but also much more transitory.  Girls are seeking refuge outside of their sex as they fear the roles that their sex seems to have.  Once it starts to clear up that the life of adult women isn't something featured on Pornhub, it wanes.

And men?

Well, it would appear autism is an element of it, as the subject is apparently on the spectrum.  That's telling.

It would also appear that early on, he received "support" from elements after he started to reveal his claimed orientation.  For one thing, his school had a "SPEAK" club, standing for Genders and Sexualities Alliance, of which he was a member.**

That's telling not because he was a member, but because it's well known that recruitment of people to anything, particularly anything destructive, tends to take root if done very young. There's a reason that the Nazi Party in Germany eliminated youth organizations and replaced them with the Hitler Youth, or why the Soviet Communist Party had the Young Pioneers.  There's also a reason, although people now turn a blind eye to it, that homosexual men used to fairly notably recruit teenage men.  If you start to dive into debasement, it's really hard to get back out.

Young pioneers... for the struggle in the name of Lenin and Stalin... be prepared! (1951)

So what else is over all going on here?

I don't know, but I suspect that a certain element of refuge, or indeed a large role of refuge, from the male role is at work here as well, in the overall story of transgenderism.  In spite of a protracted effort to undermine it, male roles basically remain unchanged.

We tend, mentally, to still think of the Four things greater than all things are.

When spring-time flushes the desert grass,

Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.

Lean are the camels but fat the frails,

Light are the purses but heavy the bales,

As the snowbound trade of the North comes down

To the market-square of Peshawur town.

 

In a turquoise twilight, crisp and chill,

A kafila camped at the foot of the hill.

Then blue smoke-haze of the cooking rose,

And tent-peg answered to  hammer-nose;

And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,

Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;

And the bubbling camels beside the load

Sprawled for a furlong adown the road;

And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,

Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale;

And the tribesmen bellowed to hasten the food;

And the camp-fires twinkled by Fort Jumrood;

And there fled on the wings of the gathering dusk

A savour of camels and carpets and musk,

A murmur of voices, a reek of smoke,

To tell us the trade of the Khyber woke.

 

The lid of the flesh-pot chattered high,

The knives were whetted and -- then came I

To Mahbub Ali, the muleteer,

Patching his bridles and counting his gear,

Crammed with the gossip of half a year.

But Mahbub Ali the kindly said,

"Better is speech when the belly is fed."

So we plunged the hand to the mid-wrist deep

In a cinnamon stew of the fat-tailed sheep,

And he who never hath tasted the food,

By Allah! he knoweth not bad from good.

 

We cleansed our beards of the mutton-grease,

We lay on the mats and were filled with peace,

And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south,

With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth.

Four things greater than all things are, --

Women and Horses and Power and War.

We spake of them all, but the last the most,

For I sought a word of a Russian post,

Of a shifty promise, an unsheathed sword

And a grey-coat guard on the Helmund ford.

Then Mahbub Ali lowered his eyes

In the fashion of one who is weaving lies.

Quoth he:  "Of the Russians who can say?

When the night is gathering all is grey.

But we look that the gloom of the night shall die

In the morning flush of a blood-red sky.

Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise

To warn a King of his enemies?

We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,

But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

That unsought counsel is cursed of God

Attesteth the story of Wali Dad.

 

"His sire was leaky of tongue and pen,

His dam was a clucking Khattack hen;

And the colt bred close to the vice of each,

For he carried the curse of an unstaunched speech.

Therewith madness -- so that he sought

The favour of kings at the Kabul court;

And travelled, in hope of honour, far

To the line where the grey-coat squadrons are.

There have I journeyed too -- but I

Saw naught, said naught, and -- did not die!

He hearked to rumour, and snatched at a breath

Of `this one knoweth', and 'that one saith', --

Legends that ran from mouth to mouth

Of a grey-coat coming, and sack of the South.

These have I also heard -- they pass

With each new spring and the winter grass.

 

"Hot-foot southward, forgotten of God,

Back to the city ran Wali Dad,

Even to Kabul -- in full durbar

The King held talk with his Chief in War.

Into the press of the crowd he broke,

And what he had heard of the coming spoke.

 

"Then Gholam Hyder, the Red Chief, smiled,

As a mother might on a babbling child;

But those who would laugh restrained their breath,

When the face of the King showed dark as death.

Evil it is in full durbar

To cry to a ruler of gathering war!

Slowly he led to a peach-tree small,

That grew by a cleft of the city wall.

And he said to the boy:  `They shall praise thy zeal

So long as the red spurt follows the steel.

And the Russ is upon us even now?

Great is thy prudence -- await them, thou.

Watch from the tree.  Thou art young and strong.

Surely the vigil is not for long.

The Russ is upon us, thy clamour ran?

Surely an hour shall bring their van.

Wait and watch.  When the host is near,

Shout aloud that my men may hear.'

 

"Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise

To warn a King of his enemies?

A guard was set that he might not flee --

A score of bayonets ringed the tree.

The peach-bloom fell in showers of snow,

When he shook at his death as he looked below.

By the power of God, Who alone is great,

Till the seventh day he fought with his fate.

Then madness took him, and men declare

He mowed in the branches as ape and bear,

And last as a sloth, ere his body failed,

And he hung like a bat in the forks, and wailed,

And sleep the cord of his hands untied,

And he fell, and was caught on the points and died.

 

"Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise

To warn a King of his enemies?

We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,

But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

Of the grey-coat coming who can say?

When the night is gathering all is grey.

Two things greater than all things are,

The first is Love, and the second War.

And since we know not how War may prove,

Heart of my heart, let us talk of Love!"

Kipling, The Ballad of the King's Jest. 

But those four things are tough things too, resulting in physical and psychological injury and sometimes death, but also, in a proper view that Theophilus might hold, to quite another direction as well.

There's always been men who feared not measuring up to the male ideal or the male role.  This has expressed itself differently in different eras. World War Two saw a surprising number of suicides undertaken by men who were rejected by draft boards.  They couldn't stand the thought of what that meant, in their own minds, and took their own lives.  I've already noted, in other threads, that the Apostolic clergy provided refuge for a certain number of men in former ears for same sex attraction.  

It's been well documented that in prisons certain men who have never demonstrated a transgender inclination before, but who are physical weak and in need of protection, will take on female attributes and become the "female" object of a same-sex relationship.  

In the extremely rough and violent world of Plaints Indians, there were, as is sometimes famously pointed out, men who would declare, at an early age, that they were really drawn to femininity and then would drop out of the male role for the female role.  While moderns like to pretend there's no division of labor by nature in human beings, there very clearly is, and that tellingly reduced those men to cooking, cleaning hides, and the like.  It meant they were exempt from killing other human beings and fighting, a normal part of cultures which exalted warriors.

Lakota warriors.  No doubt, every one of these men had killed other men.

Put another way, Crow Heart Butte in Wyoming, and near where this boy is from, is named that because Washakie killed a Crow chieftain and ate his heart.  Not because they met for tea.

And this raises an interesting point.

The waif like Audrey Hepburn in 1956, who was pretty clearly the model of female beauty for a man who recently promoted Bud Light as a woman.  She's a model, however, of safe female beauty that wouldn't really attract unwanted male attention. By 1956, the other type of female beauty, one more admired by males, was very much in circulation, as Playboy was expanding and the screens were full of Marilyn Monroe.

Men who try to affect a female appearance tend to take on an exaggerated one.  In modern society, if you go out on a city sidewalk on any particular day, you'll find at least a few young women wearing blue jeans and t-shirts and who are healthy muscular, in a female sense.  In offices and in office culture, you'll find most women wearing suitable office attire. You'll never find, however, a woman walking around with a feather boa, or trying to look like Audrey Hepburn, or wearing something like a polka dress.

But in the transgender community, you'll find all of that fairly commonly, although in this particular case that's not being demonstrated.

Indeed, here, in spite of what we're supposed to say, what we really see is a guy who looks like a very large, soft looking guy. 

Actor Robert Conrad, right, in The Killers. Conrad was always a big guy, but definately a guy.

Now, in the male world, you can be overweight, but being soft is pretty difficult.  It no doubt goes back to our earliest origins.  Most likely, our Cro Magnon ancestors didn't get fat, they were too resource poor to pull that off, but softness probably simply couldn't be tolerated.  There wasn't any room for "I don't want to fight that new tribe that just showed up" allowed.  And to a large degree, there still really isn't.

Going back to when I was really young, I can think of some instances of pretty soft teenage boys, but the way that they and everyone else handled it was different.  They were soft, but not so soft that they were unreliable in a pinch. Basically, like a lot of people with different personality traits, they'd learned how to rise to the occasion, and in their cases often frequently, to overcome them.

We don't do that anymore.  We face our failings by "accepting" them, which is not to face them at all.

Now, there's more to this than that, but perhaps not as much as we might think, for no sane man would ever want to be a woman.

Women like to be women, as their DNA provides for it.***  But very few men, if any, would be comfortable with bleeding a great deal on a routine and scheduled basis, being subjected to hormonal storms, or being subject to the numerous medical and physical problems just being a woman entails.  Women's worlds change at least monthly, and in reality more frequently than that.  Over the course of a lifetime, women's reality changed massively, once at puberty, later at childbirth, if they have children, and then again at menopause.  Women live longer, to be sure, but the existential nature of their existence practically means they undergo a deep physical and psychological chrysalis at least twice if not three or more times.  Women mature more quickly than men, but some of them endure such hard physical changes that the impacts are nearly shattering when they occur, and that doesn't even take into account the monthly cyclonic storms they endure.

To be male means having a predictable physical reality that only changes over decades and to some extent never does.  And indeed, transgendered men in fact avoid that.  They aren't going to endure the agony of menstruation for one thing, and they likely don't want to.  Most just keep their dicks and balls and call it good.

Old Man : Hey are all farmers. Farmers talk of nothing but fertiliser and women. I've never shared their enthusiasm for fertiliser. As for women, I became indifferent when I was 83. I am staying here.

Line from The Magnificent Seven.

Two imagines, once expected, and one exaggerated, of 20th Century manhood.  In the top image, a British Tommy holds the line. . . alone.  He's probably going to die.  In the second, the super macho and brooding Sgt. Rock, entertainer of thousands of juvenile males in the second half of the century, leads Easy Company into a charge.

To be a transgender male, in some ways, means dropping out of the expectations without picking up the pain and agony of being a woman.  Male strength remains, and repeated naturally programmed female physical distress does not arrive.  No matter what they may say, for the most part, transgendered men are dropping out of male society.  Men don't want them as lovers, and most of them have physical attributes, even with their pants buttoned up, that make them unattractive even if an unsuspecting male eye was cast on them.

Beyond that, however, they're omitted from the male warband when young.  Nobody is going to ever ask them what they'd do if they're drafted.  And nobody is going to conscript them into a bar fight, which almost every living Western male has had happened or nearly happen.  You aren't going to be asked to defend some woman's  honor.  You aren't going to intervene if somebody threatens your sister, girlfriend or wife.  You aren't, moreover, ever going to hear "go over and ask her to dance", and all that means and what follows.

U.S. teenage pregnancy rates from the mid 1970s to mid 2010s.  Contrary to what might be expected, if this chart went back to the 1950s, the rate would have started off even higher, as the 50s really saw the peak in recent U.S. teen pregnancy rates.  Exactly 0% of these pregnancies were to the transgendered expressing as female.  Some probably originated from the same group acting contrary to their declared expression.

You also, however, are going to usually be safe to women, except as alleged here where the allegations, which are denied, is that you are leering at boobs and getting erections.  This isn't true at all of other men, no matter how friendly they may be.  Some males, including some highly intellectual ones, hold that no real platonic friendship can ever exist between a man and a woman, as the man (not the woman) will always regard a female contemporary as at least a suppressed potential object of affection.****  While it may be misperceived, transgenendered men and homosexual men are usually received well by women, as that threat is generally absent, or at least conceived of being absent.

Highly romanticized illustration of a teenage mother from Street Arabs and Gutter Snipes, The Pathetic and Humorous Side of Young Vagabond Life in the Great Cities, With Records of Work for Their Reclamation 1884.

But none of that is natural, and all of it, in some fashion, is a cry for help.  Even the cry for acceptance is just that.

Over the years, sometimes personally, and sometimes professionally, I've known people who ended up needing help, some well after they'd received it.  I know one lawyer who is a convicted felon, but overcame that for a successful career.  I've met people who were addicted to drugs or alcohol, and overcame that.  Usually if you got down to it, you could see that they didn't take up their afflictions as they really enjoyed them, but because they were attempting to bury something else.  One lawyer I somewhat knew disappeared for about a month before his family found him, in another state, in a hotel room, having crawled into a bottle.  He wasn't there as he enjoyed drinking himself stupid in hotel rooms.

Some people, with more conventional afflictions, are like crashing trains right as you watch them.  And interestingly, if is a more conventional and traditional affliction, like addition to alcohol and sex, or the two combined, its commented about backdoor, but nobody ever says that being in that condition is just a life choice.  Everyone knows its not, and that is a disaster.

And so is this.

As the comment above notes, we help people on the autism spectrum, and we know that they may need help.  It's not regarded as a life choice.  But in 2023, everything sexual, except for pedophilism, is just an expression of individualism.  The ban on sex with children only remains as its so disgusting, as otherwise all the logic that applies to "accepting" every other sexual behavior applies equally to it, save for that its destructive to children.  But it's also destructive to adults, and its been shown that it tends to come on with people who have had multiple sex partners.

Transgenderism is like that.  There's no reason to believe that it is not a mental illness, one associated with other conditions, that can be arrested and addressed.

But in our political purity of the age, we're not doing that.  And that's destructive for the people making the declaration, who could have been helped.

We might, before concluding, stop to ask two questions. Does it really matter, would be the first.

After all, if somebody wants to drink themselves into oblivion, does it matter, if that's their choice?  Or more particularly, if somebody wants to present as a woman, who is a man, what does it really matter to me or anyone else?

Well, it does matter if your view of humanity is that we are our brother's keeper.  Oddly enough, in our contemporary world, it's the political left that claims that we are, while the political right, as exhibited by Jeanette Ward in a common in the last legislative session, feels we are not.  But most decent societies, and all Christian societies, feel that we are.

So there's a duty to the individual to help them live an ordered life. We know that living a disordered one leads to unhappiness.

There's a wider duty, however, to society.  Assaults on individual natures are assaults on nature in general, are destructive to us all.

And, additionally, telling a lie to yourself is one thing. But demanding, even with the force of law, that everyone else adopt the lie is quite another. That's completely destructive to the social structure, as enshrining lies as part of them inevitably leads to decay.

And finally, and more particularly, it's damaging to women in the extreme. Real women, that is.  Women know that they aren't men.  We all know that the biological life of a woman is radically different from a man's in nearly every sense.  Psychologically, it isn't the same either.  Reducing womanhood to appearing to have boobs is the most Hefnereque position of all, and an insult to women in every fashion.

Footnotes:

*I don't know how or why "day drinking", which is very often attributed to women, became cute. But it isn't.

**The existence of such non-academic clubs in schools is ample evidence of the intrusion of really left wing "progressive" values into schools. By and large I"m skeptical when such claims are made, but the recent library controversies over homosexual pornography in public schools shows there's definitely something to it, as do the existence of clubs that exist to effectively demand that inclinations that are poorly understood and fairly recently regarded as mental illnesses be accepted as normal.

***Having said that, there's plenty of evidence that well into the mid 20th Century, at least, plenty of women regretted having been born women, which isn't quite the same thing.

****Whatever hte truth of htat may be, it's pretty clear that it's not true of close relatives.  The "taboo" on incest is clearly ingrained enough into us to translate over to close relationship, such as cousins.

Some Gave All: Fort A. P. Hill renamed Ft. Walker.

Some Gave All: Fort A. P. Hill renamed Ft. Walker.: 

Fort A. P. Hill renamed Ft. Walker.

Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia was redesignated Friday as Fort Walker in honor of Dr. Mary Walker, the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor.

She was a surgeon who was awarded the medal during the Civil War.  Her citation, which was rescinded with the mass Medal of Honor retractions of the 20th Century, and then restored by President Carter, reads:

Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, “has rendered valuable service to the Government, and her efforts have been earnest and untiring in a variety of ways,” and that she was assigned to duty and served as an assistant surgeon in charge of female prisoners at Louisville, Ky., upon the recommendation of Major-Generals Sherman and Thomas, and faithfully served as contract surgeon in the service of the United States, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in a Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon; and Whereas by reason of her not being a commissioned officer in the military service, a brevet or honorary rank cannot, under existing laws, be conferred upon her; and

Whereas in the opinion of the President an honorable recognition of her services and sufferings should be made:

It is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the usual medal of honor for meritorious services be given her.

Given under my hand in the city of Washington, D.C., this 11th day of November, A.D. 1865.

Andrew Johnson,

President

A free thinker who had taken up medicine before the Civil War, she lived until 1919, dying at age 86.  In spite of her long life, her health was impared after the war due to conditions she indured with a Confederate prisoner of war.

Thursday, July 1, 1943. Romania seeks a way out, Cadet Nurse Corps established.

Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu met with Benito Mussolini in an effort to secure Mussolini's cooperation for both countries to leave the Axis and exit World War Two.  Mussolini was non-committal.

Romania clearly saw which way the war was going and that the time had come to get out.  It likely figured it couldn't get out on its own, however.

The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps became the Women's Army Corps, reflecting it having achieved permanent status.

On the same day, the Cadet Nurse corps was established.

The organization hoped to relieve wartime and peacetime nursing shortages.

The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare issued it's An Investigation of Global Policy, with the Yamato Race as Nucleus.  Based on Nazi concepts of racism and Lebensraum, it justified the ongoing attempt at expansion of the Japanese Empire and planned to impose Japanese names, the Japanese language and the Shinto religion on all minorities within the Empire.

President Roosevelt commuted the death sentence of German-born Detroit restaurant owner Max Stephan to life imprisonment.  Scheduled to hang in just seven hours, Stephan had been convicted for harboring a German POW who had escaped captivity in Canada, and even taking the fellow to a tour of Detroit restaurants.

An item about keeping your radio working from this month in 1943, something vitally important as there was no wartime radio production.

Keep Your Radio Working: 1943

Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.

Col. W. Randolph Lovelace, M.D. bailed out of a B-17 at 40,200 feet in a medical experiment which would lead to flight crews being instructed to delay opening parachutes until they reached a lower altitude, so as to not pass out from the shock of the parachute's opening at high altitude.

Dr. Lovelace at age 52, showing how, really, this generation took on the appearance of aging much more rapidly than current ones do.

Dr. Lovelace and his wife died in a December 1965 private plan crash near Aspen, Colorado.  The pilot, 27 year old Milton Brown, also died of injuries at the site, but not before he placed their bodies next to each other and covered them with a coat.

Head of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach engaged in an argument with Adloph Hitler over ending the war, which he urged.  The 36-year-old German Army veteran remained in his position, but Hitler would never speak to him again.

Schirach was born to a father who was a retired German cavalryman and a mother who was an American expatriate.  Indeed, three out of four of his grandparents were Americans, and he learned to speak English at home prior to learning to speak German, which he did not until age 6.

He was head of the Hitler Youth early on, but did serve as an infantryman early in World War Two, winning the Iron Cross.  He then served as Gauleiter of Vienna and was associated with the deportation of the city's Jewish population. He'd be sentenced as a war criminal for that following the war, being released in 1966.  He died in 1974 at age 67.  His wife, who had been the daughter of Hitler's photographer, divorced him while he was in prison.

Schirach serves as a disturbing example of a German who did not come from Nazi oriented roots, but who was corrupted into it as a very young man.

Stage Door Canteen, with a huge ensemble cast, was released.

I've never seen it, but it seems to be well regarded, or perhaps fondly recalled.

Monday, June 21, 1943. Spreading the Holocaust in the Baltic

Douglas SBD "Dauntless" dive bomber balanced on nose after crash landing on carrier flight deck, June 21, 1943.

Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler ordered that all remaining Jews in the Baltic States be transferred to slave labor camps.

Sarah Sundin notes, on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 21, 1943: US Marines land unopposed at Segi Point, New Georgia, in the Solomon Islands. Detroit race riot begins between whites and Blacks.

The NFL approved the temporary Merger of the Eagles and the Steelers, something we reported on the other day.  The declined the proposal to merge the Bears and the Cardinals.

Occupied Greece saw action as the SOE destroyed a railway bridge over the Asopos and the Greek Liberation Army conducted an ambush in the Battle of Sarantaporos.

The US Supreme Court rules in Stack v. Boyle that a foreign born citizen could not have that citizenship revoked for joining the Communist Party.

Harvard rejected a proposal to admit women to its medical school.

Wednesday, May 19, 1943. Penicillin.

The Army Medical Corps cleared the release of penicillin.  It would be administered for the first time two days later to an unidentified soldier.

Penicillin's possibilities had been known for fifteen years, but it wasn't until 1942 when a particularly potent strain of the mold it is from was discovered in Peoria, Illinois, the critical sample of which was donated by an unknown woman who brought in a moldy antelope.

Churchill addressed Congress.

The speech is a famous one, but I cannot find a written transcript of it, which is unusual for his speeches.  There are some well known exerts of it, including:

Sure I am that this day, now, we are the masters of our fate. That the task which has been set us is not above our strength. That its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause, and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.

And:

All this gives the lie to the Nazi and Fascist talk that the parliamentary democracies are incapable of waging an effective war. We will punish them with further examples.

Joseph Goebbels declared Berlin to be free of Jews.

He was incorrect.

Berlin had certainly suffered an enormous decline in its Jewish population, and there had been a large effort to detain and expel (to fatal consequences) Jewish Berliners in the Spring of 1943.  8,600 Jews were expelled in the early months of hte year.  However, 6,790 Mischlinge (half Jews), members of Mischehen (mixed marriages), Jewish widows and widowers of non-Jews, and Jewish citizens of neutral countries or German allies still resided in the city in the summer of the year.  Over the course of the war, 55,000 Jewish Berliners would be reduced down, however, to only about 1,000 by the war's end.

The U-954 was sunk off of Greenland, taking down with it Peter Dönitz, a son of the head of the German Navy, Karl Dönitz.  Of Dönitz's three children, only his daughter would survive the war, dying in 1990, outliving her father by only a decade.  His son Klaus had been withdrawn from combat duties under a Nazi policy regarding the deaths of other sons of leading figures, but was killed on an E-boat after persuading friends to allow him to ride along on a raid.

Pope Pius XII wrote to Franklin Roosevelt

Your Excellency,

Almost four years have now passed since, in the name of the God the Father of ail and with the utmost earnestness at Our command, We appealed (August 24, 1939) to the responsible leaders of peoples to hold back the threatening avalanche of international strife and to settle their differences in the cairn, serene atmosphere of mutual understanding. «Nothing was to be lost by peace; everything might be lost by war». And when the awful powers of destruction broke loose and swept over a large part of Europe, though Our Apostolic Office places Us above and beyond ail participation in armed conflicts, We did not fail to do what We could to keep out of the war nations not yet involved and to mitigate as far as possible for millions of innocent men, women and children, defenceless against the circumstances in which they have to live, the sorrows and sufferings that would inevitably follow along the constantly widening swath of desolation and death cut by the machines of modern warfare.

The succeeding years unfortunately have seen heart-rending tragedies increase and multiply; yet We have not for that reason, as Our conscience bears witness, given over Our hopes and Our efforts in behalf of the afflicted members of the great human family everywhere. And as the Episcopal See of the Popes is Rome, from where through these long centuries they have ruled the flock entrusted to them by the divine Shepherd of souls, it is natural that amid all the vicissitudes of their complex and chequered history the faithful of Italy should d feel themselves bound by more than ordinary ties to this Holy See, and have learned to look to it for protection and comfort especially in hours of crisis.

In such an hour today their pleading voices reach Us carried on their steady confidence that they will not go unanswered. Fathers and mothers, old and young every day are appealing for Our help; and We, whose paternal heart beats in unison with the sufferings and sorrows of ail mankind, cannot but respond with the deepest feelings of Our soul to such insistent prayers, lest the poor and humble shall have placed their confidence in Us in vain.

And so very sincerely and confidently We address Ourselves to Your Excellency, sure that no one will recognize more clearly than the Chief Executive of the great American nation the voice of humanity that speaks in these appeals to Us, and the affection of a father that inspires Our response.

The assurance given to Us in 1941 by Your Excellency’s esteemed Ambassador Mr. Myron Taylor and spontaneously repeated by him in 1942 that «America has no hatred of the Italian people» gives Us confidence that they will be treated with consideration and understanding; and if they have had to mourn the untimely death of dear ones, they will yet in their present circumstances be spared as far as possible further pain and devastation, and their many treasured shrines of Religion and Art, – precious heritage not of one people but of ail human and Christian civilization – will be saved from irreparable ruin. This is a hope and prayer very dear to Our paternal heart, and We have thought that its realization could not be more effectively ensured than by ex- pressing it very simply to Your Excellency.

With heartfelt prayer We beg God’s blessings on Your Excellency and the people of the United States.

Hogwash

That's what the most recent entry by Robert Reich is: 

The Republican threat to our children

Reich is an intelligent man, and a highly left wing one.  Like a lot of intelligent pundits, right and left, he's mastered the art of connecting the disconnected.

The two major political parties do this all the time, which is part of the reason American politics are dysfunctional.  One proposition is stated, and then a chain of them are linked in, in order to support a thesis that is, well, hogwash.

A lot of issues in the world just flat out stand on their own, or nearly so. Abortion is one example.  Reich, who perversely, given his Jewish heritage, is pretty much for infanticide in the womb without restraint, makes the BS link that "if you are pro-life, you must be pro gun control".

In truth, a lot of pro-life people probably are pro gun control. But the two are not really linked. And if they were, Robert Reich would be manning the picket lines against abortion at abortion clinics, as infanticide factories are euphemistically called.  Indeed, as the arguments for abortion are pretty much the same as the arguments for the Holocaust were, i.e., "they aren't real people", "they're a burden on real people", and therefore the two really are linked, he should be in any event.

In this article, he notes the conservative opposition to teenage gender mutilation and then links that into gun control, etc.  It's patently absurd. There's no connection whatsoever.

There are connections, however, with a host of other "liberal" laws that are not under attack and should inform an intelligent audience, or perhaps Mr. Reich.

You can't get tattoos legally as a minor.

You can't buy firearms, in spite of what Mr. Reich seems to be suggesting, as a minor.

Child labor laws do exist, in spite of what Mr. Reich is suggesting, and at a Federal level.

You can't legally bind a minor to a contract, and therefore minor's can't contract.

In more and more states, minors aren't allowed to marry, which is something the left supports.

The left, however, is bizarrely fascinated by sex, and including sex in the most odd ways imaginable.  In 2023, with so many problems facing the nation, a rational legal effort to prevent minors from being mutilated in the name of a passing and likely bogus set of theories is a good effort.

Remember eugenics?

It was a big deal prior to World War Two.

Do you remember it Robert?  You probably ought to consider that at one time it was the up and coming "scientific" "medical" theory, and so those of low IQ or who were impaired were chemically neutered, people were lobotomized, and ultimately, millions of Europeans gassed.

Transgenderism will pass as well, and just as the left has manged to forget its prior associations with things inconvenient, such as how nifty the early Soviet Union was, they'll wash their hands of this.  

Probably, trial lawyers will do the washing.

But those backing it will just go back to their comfortable lives and linking in one improbable with another.

Blog Mirror: 870: On Reading Sigmund Fraud

This is linked in from the Dumbest Blog Ever, which we have linked in in our General Interest blog categories but, while most of the enteries there are a certain species of satire, this one is not:

870: On Reading Sigmund Fraud

Well worth reading, and spot on.

Trust the Science

On Twitter I saw a photo somebody posted of a sign in Washington D.C., in a hallway, which said "There are two genders, male and female, trust the science", praising it.

And I agree with the statement.

Knowing the underlying politics of the person who posted it, somebody replied: "But we shouldn’t trust science on Covid and vaccines, correct?!"

An excellent point.

The science goes where it goes, it cares not about right and left, and people caring about the science have not the option to ignore that.

Monday, March 23, 1943. Last sighting of the Xerces Blue.

The last spotting of the Xerces Blue butterfly was made. The species is believed to have gone extinct due to the expansion of San Francisco into its habitat.

Sarah Sundin's blog has a number of interesting items:

Today in World War II History—March 23, 1943: RAF drops 2000 tons of bombs on Dortmund, Germany. At El Guettar in Tunisia, US 1st Infantry Division manages to defeat German armor (10th Panzer Division).

She also discusses the Danish parliamentary elections, which took place in spite of Nazi occupation. The German occupation of Denmark, it might be noted, was quite odd in that Denmark retained its government and even retained its army while occupied.

The Social Democrats took 66 out of 148 seats.  The Danish Nazi Party received a mere 3.3% of the vote.

The British troopship RMS Windsor Castle was sunk by an HE 111 off of Algiers.  All on board save one of 2,700 were rescued by the Royal Navy.

The multinational commando raid styled Operation Roundabout, made up of two enlisted members of No. 12 Commando, four enlisted men of the 29th Ranger Battalion, and four Norwegian soldiers, commanded by a British officer and with an American officer in support, failed in its mission to destroy a bridge over a fjord when a Norwegian soldier dropped his machine gun magazine.  The sound altered the Germans.

The 29th Ranger Battalion was short lived, existing only in 1943.  It was made up of volunteers from the 29th Infantry Division and was trained by the British. The unit was successful but it did not have the supporter of higher headquarters and therefore was disbanded in October 1943 with its men sent back to their units.

29th in training.

The combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen marketed as Vicodin was approved by the FDA.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLIII. Doomsday? Me'h.

The doomsday clock gets a big yawn.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist moved the hands on their doomsday clock from 100 seconds to midnight to 90s seconds.

The globe yawned.

The doomsday clock dates back to 1947, when the bulletin, not without good reason, began to worry, originally, that the United States and the Soviet Union were going to blow the world to smithereens with atomic weapons.  Originally, in 47, when the US had most of the globe's atomic weapons, it was put at seven minutes to midnight, i.e., complete oblivion.

Since that time, it's been set up and down, with the end of the Cold War setting it way back.

It's still mostly based on the threat of nuclear war, but at some point they began to include other threats, such as climate change.  

This year they moved the hands up to 90 seconds, mostly based on the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, which poses next to no threat of going nuclear whatsoever.Other factors are in there, but that was the biggie.

M'eh.

When I was a kid in the 70s, when the hand was much further back on the clock, this was terrifying and people took it fairly seriously. They no longer do, and with good reason.  We were probably closest to a real nuclear exchange in the 1950s, when the hand was moved up, and throughout the 1960s.  The closest we ever came to a nuclear war was during the Cuban missile crisis, when a Soviet submarine commander and an underling got into an argument about launching their nuclear torpedoes and then violated protocol by surfacing and asking for instructions.  Had they followed their standing orders, they would have nuked local vessels of the U.S. Navy.

Indeed, while we're no fans of the Soviet military, at least three times during the Cold War the Soviets held off on nuclear launches in spite of having reasonable beliefs that war was about to commences. That's really to their credit.

I don't mean to make light of our current problems, but the problem with this is that a lot of things have actually improved since 1947, and being this close to oblivion again and again isn't really credible, and nobody is listening to this anymore.  Indeed, the best reaction was that of the Babylon Bee which had a headline that millions had died as they inadvertently set their clocks ahead to daylight savings time.

The Bulletin may want to reconsider how they approach this.

Speaking of things hard to take seriously:

Carlson insults Canadians specifically and everyone else's intelligence.

Tucker Carlson: “We're spending all this money to liberate Ukraine from the Russians, why are we not sending an armed force north to liberate Canada from Trudeau? And, I mean it.”

I don'tat know how much Carlson actually means in regard to anything he says.  He's basically a populist circus clown.

But why do people watch him?

Speaking of clowns

Donald Trump, as we reported in our running thread on wars, claims he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, which the Russians then endorsed.

I continue to fall into that category of observer who keeps wondering what it is about Trump and Putin. There's something there, but what?

Putin, no matter what else a person might say about him, is extremely intelligent.  Trump?  Some have claimed that, but the evidence isn't there. Given his age, it's impossible not to wonder about mental decline.  He may in fact have been a brilliant man at one time, although I'm not saying he was, and have descended into minor imbecility at this point. It's interesting that the same class that routinely accuses Biden of this doesn't see that in Trump.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder, the author of Bloodlands, which I am presently reading, is convinced that something is there.  I'll note that while I'm reading Bloodlands and impressed with it, I don't know that I'm convinced by what seems to be his central thesis, so I'm not claiming to be a Snyder fan.  Snyder has drawn criticism as he's gone from historian to commentator, but then that's common as well.  I can't help but note that it'd be interesting to get Snyder and Victor David Hanson in the same room, as their views on Trump are so different.

Snyder just published an item on his blog that starts off with this:

We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.

On 23 January, we learned that a former FBI special agent, Charles McGonigal, was arrested on charges involving taking money to serve foreign interests.  One accusation is that in 2017 he took $225,000 from a foreign actor while in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI's New York office.  Another charge is that McGonigal took money from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, after McGonigal’s 2018 retirement from the FBI.  Deripaska, a hugely wealthy metals tycoon close to the Kremlin, "Putin's favorite industrialist," was a figure in a Russian influence operation that McGonigal had investigated in 2016.  Deripaska has been under American sanctions since 2018.  Deripaska is also the former employer, and the creditor, of Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

That's interesting, but it doesn't prove anything, maybe. 

But it also might support the thesis that Trump is closer to the Russian orbit, probably due to weaknesses in his character, than his fans are willing to concede in any fashion.

What we should all concede is this.  Trump's 2016 campaign really was supported by the Russians.  No, they weren't giving him cash, but they were doing what they could, and effectively, to get him elected.

At the time the claim, for those who care to remember that it was widely known it was occurring, was that they simply wanted to undermine faith in democracy.  If that was the goal, they were enormously successful at it.  Some have claimed, however, that they feared having Hilary Clinton in office and preferred a Boofador as President.

Others, however, have asserted they wanted their man in the Oval Office.  And it's certainly possible.  Trump had long connections with Russia.  Maybe they had something on him.  Or maybe they'd just played to his vanities so as to make him an unwitting asset.

There's certainly a Russian history for both.  The Soviets were enormously successful in recruiting Western agents to their cause in all sorts of ways. Some people became spies or unwitting spies simply due to their intellectual allegiance, but others through being trapped in honey pots, or through being members of isolated disliked groups, such as well-educated British homosexual intellectuals.  Trump can't be accused of being an intellectual, but he certainly has his personal faults.

One of them is narcissism, and that's a trait that just doesn't suddenly develop, but which can be facilitated and groomed.  I suspect that might be it.  Narcissist tend to love their loyal fans or sycophants, and Putin might fit into that category for strategic purposes.

They certainly act like it.  As soon as Trump said he could end the war in 24 hours, they endorsed that absurdity.

But what about guys like Tucker Carlson.

This is all simply too weird not to raise questions.

The Pope says things that aren't really new, and aren't really shocking.

For years and years, one of the favorite things for the Press to do is to misreport Papal news.  Nearly anything the Pope says is shocking to the press.

By the same token, nearly everything he says is misinterpreted by Protestants, who don't grasp what the Pope's actual role is, and any more by Catholics who are looking for a reason to be mad.

The AP just interviewed Pope Francis, and he said a bunch of things that were to be expected and frankly aren't, in some instances, even all that interesting.

One is that he said homosexuality shouldn't be illegal, but homosexual conduct is sinful.

This isn't news.  This isn't even new.  More specifically, he stated:

Being homosexual is not a crime. It's not a crime. Yes, it's a sin. Well, yes, but let's make the distinction first between sin and crime

Frankly, even that is more conservative than the regular Catholic thought on this.  Most thoughtful Catholics would say that being a homosexual isn't sinful at all, but engaging in sex outside of marriage, and marriage can only occur between a man and a woman, is sinful.

Lots of stuff work like this.  For Catholics, divorce and remarriage is sinful, but nobody proposes to criminalize it. Sex outside of marriage is sinful, but Catholics aren't proposing to re-criminalize it.  You get the point. 

The Pope also lamented on the resort to firearms for self-protection, going beyond that and becoming habitual with people. Frankly, that is a real risk and we see it going on here.  It used to be the case in Wyoming that you had the common law defenses on the use of force, but then the legislature saw fit to codify it, and now its expanded to the point where if I declare myself threatened while car camping I can gun somebody down.  The current state legislature has a bunch of bills right now that would pretty much make Tom Horn thing we'd gone nuts in this area.

Pope Francis lamented that the use of guns by civilians to defend themselves is becoming a “habit.”

What the Pope actually said was:

I say when you have to defend yourself, all that’s left is to have the elements to defend yourself. Another thing is how that need to defend oneself lengthens, lengthens, and becomes a habit. Instead of making the effort to help us live, we make the effort to help us kill.

Based on the current state of the law and legislature, I'd have to say that's right. 

Bristol Palin's self mutilation

Bristol Palin has been on Twitter complaining about the after effects of her self mutilation.  She stated:

Sharing wayyyyy tmi right now, but had my 9th breast reconstruction surgery last night – yes, NINTH all stemming from a botched breast reduction I had when I was 19 y/o,I’ve had previous surgeries trying to correct that initial damage of muscle tissue and terrible scaring. The whole situation has honestly made me very self-conscious my entire adult life. Praying that this is the last surgery needed.

Well, the first ones weren't needed.

I know very little about Bristol Palin other than that she's Sarah Palin's daughter and was in the news for a while for having a child while an underage (17) teen.  She later married the father and they later divorced.  I really don't particularly care about any of that.

At any rate, we now know that she had breast reduction surgery when she was 19.

Breast reduction surgery is the one breast related plastic surgery not involving cancer or injury that can make sense, as some women are so large in this area its painful.  Maybe that was the case here.  I don't recall her appearance that well, as I'm not a Palin fan, but I don't recall people routinely stating that she was gigantic.  At any rate, the real cautionary tale here is just leave the mammaries alone unless there's a real medical necessity to do something.

That, moreover, goes for anything.  Don't remove them for sport or transitory belief of "transitioning", and don't enhance them because you think they are too small.  These things are the size they're supposed to be.  Leave them alone.

Youthful mistakes

You'll note that I'm not criticizing Palin for her youthful motherhood, although that certainly isn't an ideal start in life.  Teenage pregnancy followed by teenage breast reduction shows a whole string of bad decisions at work.

I note that as the Democrats in Congress have proposed a bill to reduce the voting age to 16.

We all know that's going nowhere, but as recent science has confirmed what the founders of the republic originally thought, that you really ought not to be making adult decisions until your early 20s, this is not only an idea whose time hasn't come.  It's one whose time shouldn't come.

Hypocrisy?

Hypocrisy? Or just not really thinking things through?

As noted here before, although it might not always be very obvious, I'm conservative.

I do, however, think things through.

What about our legislators?  I wonder.

The bill to extend Medicaid, which only aids the poor, to mothers past 60 days to a year passed its committee, but barely.  

It was supported by Governor Gordon.

It was supported by physicians.

Deacon Mike Lehman, lobbyist for the Diocese of Wyoming, spoke in favor of it.

None of which kept some of the legislative guardians of public morals from speaking against it.  Jeanette Ward of Illinois spoke against it as an "entitlement program".

Eh?

Not hardly.

Deacon Lehman noted:“that not every government program is an inevitable slide into the fiery pit of Socialism.”  He further noted, according to the Cowboy State Daily: “We’re talking about a segment of the population that qualifies for Medicaid coverage while pregnant, then, when the mother and child are still extremely vulnerable, they no longer qualify.”

The physicians noted they were supporting it even though the program really doesn't pay them very well at all, just barely, in fact.

I don't know, I'd note, Ward's religious affiliation, but I’m sure she's some sort of Christian.  Prior to coming to Wyoming, she was very active in Illinois politics, where she was predictably controversial.  An example of that is as follows:

Do you know what your children are being taught: Muslims believe in the same God as Christians and Jews?

My 6th-grader came home with this assignment today. She was supposed to read the article and answer the questions. (She will not be completing this assignment). The full text of the article is below. Quiz questions are depicted in the pictures. This article is utterly incorrect and false on many levels. This is one of the many reasons I voted no on this curriculum resource.

Well, Christians, Muslims and Jews do in fact all worship the same God.  Their understanding of God's nature if quite different from each other, but they all worship the same God.

Are we really willing to deny this small class of women and their infants medical help?  Seems really mean.

It's also the sort of thing that causes some people to slam the Pro Life folks on the basis that they don't care at all once people are born.  That's actually completely false, and indeed many of the more dedicated pro lifers do indeed support helping mother and infant post birth.

Indeed, while often missed, there's a strong streak of liberalism in at least the Catholic pro-life crowd, which is not only opposed to abortion, but opposed to the death penalty as well.  It's not actually easy to politically pigeonhole it.

Which unfortunately doesn't appear to be the case for Ms. Ward.  She's pretty predictable.

So, frankly, this doesn't surprise me very much.

Without knowing more, I sort of guess that Ms. Ward is a fundamentalist of some type.  I don't want to pick on fundamentalist too much, as they are highly varied, and the term is one that is put on them, rather than one they adopt, but fundamentalist of any type, and there are Islamic Fundamentalist, Hindu fundamentalist, etc., risk reducing their religion to a set of sort of Pharisaic type rules and becoming mean thereafter.  Abortion is wrong because it is, premarital sex is wrong, aborting the results of premarital sex is wrong, but after that you are your own and if you get sick and die, well that's your problem.

I'm not saying that all fundamentalist of any type hold that view, but the fundamentalist of any stripe, and I'd note that for the Apostolic religions as well, run that risk.

Note, orthodox, and fundamentalist, are not the same thing.

There's a real element of solidarity and subsidiarity missing in that thinking.  Yes, just the other day I criticized free school breakfast and lunches, on the basis that it encouraged parents in irresponsibility, but here a different concern exists, which is helping the most helpless in the most efficient fashion.  I.e, both solidarity and subsidiarity apply here, and they argue strongly for extending Medicaid here.  To argue against it as an unwanted "entitlement" really misses the boat.

And then there's the gun them down bill on trespassing.

One of the sponsors of that bill is a devout member of my parish.  

Would Jesus really suggest that you can violently toss people off of land.

And it came to pass on the second first sabbath that, as he went through the corn fields, his disciples plucked the ears and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. And some of the Pharisees said to them: Why do you that which is not lawful on the sabbath days? And Jesus answering them, said: Have you not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was hungry and they that were with him: How he went into the house of God and took and ate the bread of proposition and gave to them that were with him, which is not lawful to eat but only for the priests? And he said to them: The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

Luke, 6.

Would the legislators have suggested that Jesus and the Apostles be roughed up for violating the law.

Probably.

Lex Anteinternet: Down the rabbit hole.

 

Having recently posted this. . . 

Lex Anteinternet: Down the rabbit hole.: Down the Rabbit Hole And so, we find, a contemporary warped Zeitgeist, virtue signaling, cowardice, and bad reporting, have taken the state ...

a person might reasonably ask what we think of the large billboard on the same street as the hospital.

You know, the one with the woman in bikini bottoms and her chest covered up by the logo "Think Big".

Well, I feel the same way. That's not natural.

I've actually posted on this before, but in my view, undergoing medical procedures for mere appearance is wrong.  Not as wrong as attempting to mimic the appearance of the opposite gender, but wrong nonetheless. 

Now, a person can go down another rabbit hole with this.  What about getting braces for cosmetic reasons, for example?

Well, actually, braces normally actually serve a medical purpose.  Straight teeth look nice, but properly aligned teeth can avoid physical problems.  Inflating boobs does not do that.

And that's where the line here is really drawn. We're not prefect, and we all have ailments, injuries and defects. But medicine for purely self-centered psychological reasons is contrary to nature, whereas medicine to address injuries illnesses and legitimate deformities seeks to restore it.

Now, no doubt, some would say that mental status is no doubt real, and it no doubt is.  But here too, there is a mean to run buy. If a person is agitated or disturbed in some way, yes, address it. But confirming in them that their self perception of a defect which is not real isn't addressing it.

Oh, what's the harm, others might note. But something invasive always does some harm by definition.  And even in a minor thing, like chest size, a larger societal harm exists by deforming the human reality. Some are big, some are small, that's the way things are. Whether they work or not is the ultimately real question.

Monday, December 14, 1942. Buna taken by the Allies, the USS Nevada at sea, Ethiopia declares war.

Today in World War II History—December 14, 1942: US and Australian troops occupy Buna, New Guinea. On sub USS Grayback in the Bismarck Islands, an appendectomy is performed by a pharmacist's mate.

Reports Sarah Sundin.

Ethiopia declared war on Germany, Italy and Japan.  

The country had lost a bitter war against the Italians prior to World War Two, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, but then was liberated by the British Army in 1941, after which the remaining Italian forces launched a forgotten guerilla war that continued on into 1943, ending with the Italian surrender to the Allies.

Ethiopian head of state, Emperor Haile Selassie I at Jubilee Palace in 1942.

Royal Navy cruiser Argonaut was torpedoed and heavily damaged in the Mediterranean by Italian submarine Mocenigo.

Dodging the Bullet.

My grandmother died in her mid 60s of an ailment that was vaguely attributed to her love of sweets, although whether that really contributed to it or not is more than a bit vague.  Basically, she died of either a colon or a gall bladder ailment.

My father, who died at 62, likewise did, although much less directly, a severe infection spread though his body following his having become ill. They did a colonoscopy at that time, which was well before they were routine, and there was some feeling that the infection was already pretty severe and that spread it around.  Anyhow, I recall my father telling me as he was in the hospital that he was acquiring all of his mother's ailments, which has been on my mind recently as I had to have colon surgery, which went well, but which turns out to have had a nick of time aspect to it.  I was as close to having colon cancer as you conceivably can, without actually having it, yet.

Therefore, but for getting a colonoscopy, recommended by my doctor, and emphasized by some folks around me, like my grandmother and my father, I'd have been dead of an intestinal matter in my early 60s.

What can you say?  It's simply true.

Of course, you can say more than that, but it nearly says itself.

Mid Week At Work. Traveling Nurses

Almost all (but not all) of the nurses who attended to my care in my recent hospital stay were traveling nurses.

I'd never heard of traveling nurses until a few years ago when the daughter of some folks I know became a nurse, and opted to be a traveling nurse.  It sounded awful to me, but she was young and unmarried, and well that's about all I knew about it.

More recently, I've become aware of how it's now common, but I had no idea how common.  It predominates at our local hospital.

Even before I was in the hospital, I had become a bit aware of this.  Most recently, just before I went in, I was behind a guy in a grocery store line who was married to a traveling nurse.  He didn't work, and was talking about learning the local fishing spits.

Pretty good gig for him.

One of the nurses in my recent stay, the only male nurse in the recovery area (I had another on the surgical floor) related how he and his family had traveled all over the US in this role, living out of their big trailer. And when I mean all over, I mean all over. And when I say family, I also mean that. He and his wife had a very young child.

So here's an occupation that's an old and long one, nurse, in a new setting.  One that, up until recently, I knew very little about.

On the sick list.

This has been my view for the past several days.  It's a view of the mountain, between the parking garage and an administrative building belonging to the hospital.

I took the photo from here.

I'm out now.

I was in as I had a robotic right colectomy.  In other words, I had a large (very large) polyp in my large intestine that had to be removed.  I learned this was there when I went in for a colonoscopy, which I wrote about (in its entirety) here:

On modern medicine

As I wrote here the other day, I went in for a colonoscopy.

I'm almost a decade past the point where you are supposed to get one.  Just too busy, I guess, to have made it in back then, or in between, when I should have.  Having said that, a couple of my contemporaries I know very well only made it in recently as well.

In my last post on this topic, I discussed the statistics of colon cancer.  What I learned in my colonoscopy was that I have a polyp that was too big to be removed, and now I'll have to have surgery to address it.

The doctor is nearly certain that its not cancerous, but it has to be removed.  He also basically indicated it would turn to cancer if it wasn't removed, at some point.  Not yet, basically, but some day.

Which puts me in that statistic in a way.

Lesson learned.

Another lesson learned, however, is that this also puts me in the class of people who'd die early on for sure but for modern medicine.  A sobering thought.  We all imagine ourselves living until 102 worry free, but that isn't the case for most of us.  Lots of us make it further now than we would have, thanks to modern medicine.

This was the following surgery.

This turned out to be a bigger deal. . . a much bigger deal, than I wanted to admit it was.  In my mind, I wanted to pretend that it would be in and out, or at least I'd be out by Friday.  Nope.  I did get out on Saturday, but I'm feeling rather beat up, and it's clear that it's going to take several days to get back to normal.

Army with two IV hookups.  I had two, as I was so dehydrated when I came in they had a very difficult time finding my veins.

I am on the mend now, however.

A few observations.

Colonoscopies have been around, but they didn't become common until 1985 when Ronald Reagan had one which saved his life.  The screening recommendations came into effect in 1995, after the death of my father, who had one when he fell extremely ill in the early 1990s.  While it was probably unconnected, there was some suspicion at the time that a severe infection in his intestine was moved around by the scope, leading to the infection to spread.

As noted, in retrospect, that's probably not what occurred.

Anyhow, whether from that unhappy event or just a family reticence to seeking medical attention for anything, I ignored the current advice which is to go in for a scope at age 50.  You really should, and my failure to do so caused me to end up with this, probably.

That's the first observation here.

A second one is this.  It's interesting to note, I guess, that if I hadn't had this, I probably would have died from this right about the same time my father died from something sort of related, if not perfectly.  So my life has probably been extended by modern medicine.

The boyfriend of the sister of a good friend of mine died from colon cancer, I'd note, and it was a very bad way to go.  He'd been a tobacco chewer, and that may have caused it.  In my case, I don't use tobacco, so that isn't it.  Maybe genetics is.

The night before the procedure, as a distraction, I finished watching Father Stu, the cinematic treatment of the life of Father Stuart Long, who was born the same year I was, but who died of a terrible disease in 2014 which robbed him of his physical abilities.  He had been a boxer at one time, and was quite athletic.  There was some thought of not ordaining him at all, because of his affliction, but the Bishop of Helena moved forward as he sensed himself receiving the message that there was power in suffering, and he should be moved forward.  At his ordination, Father Stuart stated: "I stand before you as a broken man. Barring a miracle, I'm going to die from this disease, but I carry it for the cross of Christ, and we can all carry our crosses."

I note that here as the movie concluded with comments from Father Stuart himself noting that he felt his afflictions were given to him as a gift to overcome things that were a barrier to his union with Christ.  I sort of feel that way about this too, albeit very minor in comparison they may be.

I'd also note, in thinking about it, that this relates back to the purpose of this page, which is ostensibly research for a book.  One of the characters in that book is in his late 40s when the tale takes place, which oddly enough is about the age I was when I started this blog.  Anyhow, that character, perhaps the central protagonist, would be recognizable in lots of ways to people who know me.  Which also means, if I follow that through, he's likely a character that would have died a pretty bad death of disease in his early 60s, a very common experience at the time.

Modern medicine.

Long suffering spouse.