CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 128th Edition. Attempted assassination at a pointless event.

The 127th edition of this was teed up to go before last night's White House Correspondence Dinner, or this would be that edition.  Having the other one ready to go, I went ahead and ran it. 

I didn't realize anything had happened right away until I went upstairs and my wife was watching a little of the news feed.  It was fairly typical with the press doing the usual "oh gosh, who could the target have been" routine.  We all know who the target was, Donald Trump.

This is a tragedy, even though nobody was hurt, thankfully, for a variety of reasons, one being that while there are now questions about how the assailant "got so close" (in a country armed to the hilt, Trump probably comes surprisingly close to armed people every single day), what this accomplishes once again will be to help rally people around Trump.  I know that's not supposed to be the first observation, but it's quite true.

Trump has been sinking like a rock in popularity but people rally around somebody who is attacked.  And in the MAGA camp, where quite a few people believe that Trump is on some sort of Devine mission, it'll be seen as proof of that.

That this occurred is not a surprise at all.  Trump is an illegitimate President who vomits hatred on a nearly daily basis.  He inspires hatred of him and is likely the most hated American President since Abraham Lincoln.  He is a horrible human being.  

None of that justifies an attempt at murder, but it's not surprising the attempt was made.  What's additionally interesting, fwiw, is the far right of this country effectively adopted the concept of tyrannicide during both Biden's and Obama's terms in office, so in a way, that set the table for something like this to occur in a way that didn't exist when there were attempts on prior Presidents.

With this attempt, depending on how you look at it, Trump holds the record for the most attempts on a Presidents life.  Having said that, if you limit that to while a figure is in office, he's tied with Ford if you regard him as being presently in office.

I probably would have skipped mentioning the dinner as its shameful that it even occurs anymore.  

Some outside commentary on it:

Inside the Ballroom: Chaos and Confusion

One wonders if the surreal events of Saturday night might make it hard to return to the familiar conception of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

That article by a reporter who was there.  

Surreal?  Maybe, but by this point in Trump's illegitimate reign I suspect a lot of people are like me.  We know that this was a horrible event but it hardly even registered on the attention meter.  Trump so dominates the news with his horrible behavior that even when its directed at him, it's hard to really get too worked up about it.

Again, I don't condone this, and the effect will aid Trump, who needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment.  

About the dinner itself, a lot of people, myself included, flatly feel that it should have been cancelled, or at least Trump should not have been invited.  He treats the Press horribly, and yet there they are, worshipping him.

Aid and Comfort to the Enemy

The recklessness of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s self-own

A cartoon:

The WH Correspondents' Dinner

Unethical and tone deaf

Apparently J.D. Vance and sycophantic today Mike "Toady" Johnson were at the event.  Of interest, the Secret Service rushed Vance off first.

That's interesting.

If that comes up again, I'm sure there will be some solid explanation, but I wonder if its just not a combination of fatigue on the part of security as well.  Vance and Trump probably have separate security details and Trump's is probably numb from having to be around such a horrible person constantly.

On clearing the room, the excessive number of iPhone cameras anymore means everything is photographed to the hilt and then over analyzed.  That's already happening, but as horrible as something like this is, it can lead to some semi assuming photographs, none of which would be the slightest bit amusing if you were there.

One is that Kennedy Jr. appeared to leave his wife behind as he was escorted out to safety. His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, later explained that her formal dress hindered her ability to get out and she had to be carried.

Stephen Miller basically shoved his wife out, which is understandable, but photographically unfortunate too, as he was leading her while behind her and his hand was unfortunately placed for control on her upper torso, um, well anyhow.

On the post scene photographs, one security figure is clearly carrying a SIG M17 in the same photograph as a female security officer carrying a Glock 19.  The M17 is way larger.  It had the conventional iron sights.

The man carrying it was way larger than the female officers as well.  I know that in 2025 a person isn't supposed to feel these things but in at least two of the Trump attempts a female secret service officer has been present and just the photographs don't inspire confident in me.  That's probably just me.  Anyhow, well. . . 

Well, a slight addition.

Since the decline in sartorial standards, Secret Service officers are absurdly easy to pick out. They're always wearing dark suits.  I have a photograph of Theodore Roosevelt from 1903 or so in which a Secret Service officer is wearing tweed and a newsboy cap.  Much harder to pick out.  The women are even easier to pick out as women don't normally wear dark business suits.

Glocks leave me unimpressed as well.  M'eh.

Trump promised to reschedule the event, which of course, wasn't his to schedule in the first place.

Trump offered some comments from the White House.  Included in those were that the military is demanding the ballroom.

The military probably doesn't normally provide any sort of security to the President at all, although the man with the M17 is interesting as he was clearly in some security role, and was not in the Secret Service, and probably in the military.  That aside, the military probably doesn't give a rats ass about the ballroom in this context.  Trump just makes crap up.

What does seem to be the case is that there's a giant bunker being built under where the ballroom is supposed to go, but won't.  We only know the details of that which we know as Trump can't stop his verbal diarrhea. 

It is an interesting aspect of this however is how much of the White House destruction was motivated by a military request, and then taken advantage of by the White House, if it was.

I'll add that building giant bunkers leads to an inflated sense of self worth on the part of everyone involved.  That part of this project ought to be halted as well.

One final note.  Most people who attempt to assassinate Presidents are nuts.  This is notable as by an large, their efforts are incredibly poorly done.  This is true of nearly every historical assassination attempt.  Of all of them, Lee Harvey Oswald's was by far the most competent attempt, which is probably why people insist it must have been a conspiracy.

Not that this isn't already happening here.  I've already read claims that this attempt, and all the prior ones, on Trump's life were staged.  They weren't, but something remarkable here is that Trump, Vance and Johnson were all present, which is stupid.  The argument would be that you know they were staged, as the government would never be so dim as to put the first three people in line for power in the same public room.

Oh yes it would.

Rubio was there too.

Given the line of succession, if a competent attacker was president, Chuck Grassley might now be President.  That would assume a lot of skill that most attempted assassins really lack, which is a good thing for everyone.  Indeed, even well trained assassins tend not to pull regime change off, as the repeated German Army failures on Hitler demonstrate.

It does demonstrated a lot of hubris, however.  We are presently at war with a country whose entire leadership was assassinated early on.  Murdering the leadership of opposing combatants is generally regarded as beyond the Pale in war.  We did not do it in World War Two, and our opponents didn't attempt it either.  The targeting of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in Operation Vengeance during World War Two is still controversial.  It was well known that Trump would be at this event and it was likely known that members of his cabinet would be too.  That Iran did not regard the event as a target of opportunity says a lot about their restraint, and frankly, their intelligence.   They could literally have decapitated the administration and left a person so old in charge that he would have had to resign.  I don't know how many members of Trump's cabinet were in fact there.  Maybe all of them.

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 127th Edition. The Dipshit Edition. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides the a General officer of the U.S. Army is too "woke" to be the President of UW.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Army, Education, Ignorance, Stupidity, United States Military Academy, University of Wyoming, Woke, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Zeitgeist

Have some of you seen any daylight recently?

 

This is amusing.  Chloe Winters is not unattractive, but the married Galwegian dresses like what she is, a market gardener.  It's a dirty job.  Her only adornment, normally, is a cross denoting her Christianity.

The fact that she's getting hit on for gardening videos. . . well it's just sad.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 119th Edition. Comments on Culture. A Galwaywoman's comment on men and women, Rubio's comments on Western Civilization, and Hegseth hosts a Christian Nationalist.

A series of posts on viewpoints that aren't related. . . well maybe there are.

The first one is from Chloe Winter's vlog, which is one of the agricultural ones that we link in here.  Ms. Winter is a married Galway greenhouse farmer (that's how I'd put it) in her very early 20s (maybe actually 20) who took up greenhouse farming when a close friend of hers died.  Galway is very rural Ireland and Galwegians are very rural Irish.  I've actually heard them referred to as "Bog Irish" by other Irish.  The county is one of the few areas of Ireland where there are bonafide Irish Gaelic speakers and it has its own accent, which Ms. Winter very thickly has.

This entry was surprising, in a way in that its very anti first wave feminist, but in a really genuine way.  It may actually be fourth wave feminist.  If released in the US (I believe most of Ms. Winter's followers are Irish), it'd create some sort of firestorm in some social medial communities.

Having said that, she isn't wrong.

And her vocabulary and manner of speech is delightfully Irish.

Two different right wing cultural views emerged from Trump servants so far this week.  What's interesting in part about them is that many commentators aren't able to realize that they actually express radically different world views, which shows how poorly people are informed and educated in some things.

The State Department, which still calls itself the Department of State, posted a photo of Marco Rubio with this entry, summing up his recent deliveries to European figures:

The United States and Europe belong to a civilization that stretches over continents, crossed over oceans, and persisted for thousands of years: from Athens to Rome to America.  

Western Civilization must embrace its noble legacy if it is to reverse its decline.

This flat out puts Rubio in the National Conservative movement and is their thesis to the core.  It doesn't say anything, you'll note, about religion at all, it's all about culture.  You can perhaps read more into that if you want, any many would, but this is pretty much the Dinneen/Dreher/Reno thesis.

You can pretty much rest assured that its not the Trump thesis. Trump just isn't smart enough or interested enough to grasp something like this at all.

Rubio has endorsed Vance for 2028, but it's probably an endorsement of convenience.  By doing this, Rubio has raised his flag in the National Conservative camp.  This, moreover, may actually be what Rubio believes.

Rubio is drawing a lot of attention, and getting a lot of excitement, in Reaganite and other genuinely conservative camps.  He's not a populist.  The big question is whether he can overcome the stench of having been associated with Trump.  A secondary question is whether contemporary American culture, less than half of which is all that conservative, sees itself in this fashion very deeply.

In contrast is Pete Hegseth, who will never overcome the stench of Trump.

The Department of Defense posted this item about its activities this past week:

We have gathered at the Pentagon for our monthly worship service.

We are One Nation Under God.

 

First of all, the Department of Defense has no business whatsoever having monthly prayer meetings.  The United States may be One Nation, Under God, but this basically is a forced acknowledgement of a certain type of Christianity, that being a minority branch of it by far, over every other religion.  Yes, I'm a Christian, and a member of the original Christian faith, but not every soldier is, and no doubt there are soldiers who have no religion at all.  

Moreover, this is Doug Wilson, who appeared here in an earlier discussion.  He's a Calvinist who holds really extreme views.  You can be rest assured that considerably less than half of the American population wants a Puritan Calvinist regime in the U.S. Indeed, a couple of people responded to this Twitter post with:

Christopher Hale@ChristopherHale 13h

Doug Wilson routinely mocks the pope and the Catholic Church.

It’s beyond shameful that  @PeteHegseth  allowed him to lead taxpayer-funded anti-Catholic worship services.

Hale a Democratic Catholic blogger who has a pretty good blog dedicated to Pope Leo that you can also find on our blog lists.  He served in a prior Democratic administration and I'm still waiting for him to explain how an insider Democrat reconciled that with the Democratic Party's support of abortion.  That's an side, but that issue is one of the ones that keeps people like me from being Democrats, even though we aren't voting for very many Republicans any more.

Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸@jimstewartson 13h

Listen. Doug Wilson is one of the most disgusting revanchist monsters on Earth. He doesn’t think women should vote, wants slavery back, and believes the U.S. should be a theonomy—Government by God. He runs a cult in Moscow, ID.

This is wildly unconstitutional & deeply immoral.

I don't know who Stewartson is, but describing Wilson as a revanchist is correct.  Monster might be a bit much, but he doesn't think women should vote and does think that the U.S. should be a Calvinist theocracy.  I don't know what he thinks about slavery and I'm not going to look it up, but Wilson is articulate and extreme.

And that's why Hegseth's actions here are really disturbing.  Rubio is trying to stake a claim for Western Civilization as special, something the National Conservatives hold and which a lot of people disagree with.  Hegseth is here advancing Christian Nationalism of a type that holds a very peculiar view on the United States' place in the world. 

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 118th Edition. Why are the women discounted? The corruption of wealth. Hanging around in a cult will make you a weird cultist. New links and the fallen. A gift of cash on the floor of the legislature.

Labels: Distributism, Epstein Scandal, Seven Deadly Sins, Sex, Standards, Taxes, The wealthy, Yeoman's Twentieth Law of Behavior, Yeoman's Twenty-fifth Law of Behavior, Yeoman's twenty-third law of behavior, Zeitgeist

Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’

Newspaper ads soliciting potential spouses.  Somewhat amusing, I suppose, is the German working girl "anxious" to meet a mechanic, followed by an advertisement from a 36 year old mechanic looking for a "working girl". The typesetter had to have arranged that order intentionally.  

This is a topic that tends to fascinate people as a relic of the past:

Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’

The truth of the matter is, of course, that since the Internet arrived, mail ordering spouses has returned.  Witness the discussions on Reddit:

I am "mail order bride" ask me anything

20f Mail Order Bride, husband is 53 AMA

I'm 26 and married a mail order bride from Cambodia and I could not be happier - AMA

This, from a Thai in the AFA Reddit threads probably explains a lot of it currently:

If you want to get out of Thailand, you marry a foreigner. It's a better life for me, and my family as I bring them over. So my parents, my sisters and I are all here in the US now.

I met Paul online through a mail order bride agency when I was 16. We talked, and he flew here when I was 17 to meet me, and he met my family. He got the approval from my parents, and when I turned 18 we got married and he brought me to the US.

I have a nice house, a man who cares and takes care of me, and a good job. I don't think I would have this back in our home country. I'm glad for Paul, and everything he's done for us. So, I am happy.

Icky aspect of this aside. . . well maybe the whole thing is icky, this probably defines things in a way, then and now, for mail order brides.  Economic desperation.  Perhaps more then, a bit, than now, but both.

Men meeting their "mail order" spouse to be at Ellis Island.  These women were from Armenia, Turkey, Greece and Romania, and likely were all Eastern Orthodox.

This is a popular story for things like romance novels.  It's the topic of at least one movie, 1974's Zandy's Bride, which was based on a 1942 novel called The Stranger.  I suspect it was way less common than generally supposed, but I don't know.  Added to that, some of what we regard as "mail order" were actually very long distance courtships by correspondence.  I.e, they knew each other that way, which is apparently at least somewhat the case for modern mail order brides as well.

Gree, women entering the country to marry correspondent fiances.

The photos that were put up here, and the advertisement, show an aspect of this that was really significant at the time, and seems to be forgotten (including by current mail orders) that being religion and culture.  The Greek women, at least three of whom appear to be very young, were escaping poverty, but they were marrying into their own culture.  Pretty rough, but they were at least marrying somebody who spoke Greek and who was Greek Orthodox.  Likely all the women in the first photograph were marrying somebody from their own culture as well.  The advertisement, however, provides less of that, but some of it.  Some men were just looking for somebody to marry.  The Jewish man was looking for a Jewish woman, however.  The German working girl, on the other hand, wanted a "mechanic" (somebody who worked with machinery) and a comfortable small home.  Two men wanted widows for some reason, which would probably make sense if I knew the context (perhaps they wanted somebody who was used to be married and whom they didn't have to romance).  Even where culture wasn't referenced, chances are they would likely be ofose cultures.

Of course, if you go further back, you can find more peculiar examples, such as the French "King's Daughters" who were sent to Quebec.  Up to 1,000 of them were sent between 1663 and 1673, which followed prior private efforts starting in the 1640s.   The King's Daughters were actually vetted for their future role, and were held to scrupulous standards based on their "moral calibre" and physically fitness. Authorities in Quebec actually sent some back that were found not to be vigorous enough, which presumably was disappointing for them.

What all of this says we could debate.  Contrary to what some people like to assert, it's never been the case, ever, that regular people didn't marry for love.  They always have.  The thing is that modern people often have a hard time recognizing that in the conditions of earlier times.

Catholicism brought in the requirement that there be consent on the part of both parties in order for their to be a valid marriage, and after that marriage ages jumped to the current norms.  Chances are pretty good that the way most couples relationships developed looked a lot more like what's depicted in Flipped, set in the 1950s, than Dirty Dancing or something.  I.e, the ultimately married couple knew each other from childhood.  That still occurs, of course, particularly in some communities.  Doug Crowe's ribald A Growing Season references that being the case in ranching communities of the 1950s, and I'd seen the same thing as late as the 1990s.  But where women were in short supply, desperate times always called for desperate measures.

Photograph from Montana, 1901.  Clearly the man with the cat was the most eligible Batchelor.

Something that should be noted is that there was a pretty high incentive for women to marry prior to the 1920s, or even prior to the 1940s, in comparison to currently.  Obviously marriage remains, but to be a "spinster" prior to the mid 20th Century came with a massive set of problems for the woman and her family.  The classic Pride and Prejudice deals with this repeatedly as the failure of the Bennet sister to marry is creating an impending financial disaster for the family and Charlotte Lucas accepts a less than desirable proposal because, in part, she's a burden on her parents. Those concerns are subtle in the film, but they were real.  The "German working girl" in the advertisement above was likely looking at serving out a life's sentence as a domestic servant if she couldn't find somebody to marry.  Most women who weren't married lived at home, and when they aged into their 30s they were looking at taking on that role for increasingly elderly parents.

All of which raises the question, do you have a couple that met in your background this way?  It'd be almost impossible to know, I'd think.  Having said that, in thinking of it, my chances of being descended from a King's Daughter are fairly high and, while not really the same thing, one of my aunts who did a family genealogy claimed that one married couple we descend from did not speak the same language when they married, although her information was notoriously unreliable (the husband was Scottish, the wife Irish. . . I think they both clearly would have spoken English).  On my wife's side, my father in law told me once that one set of his grandparents were both from Ohio originally, but that they had not met there.  Somehow the bride was sent out to marry the groom, and they married.

Some unwanted Christmas introspection.

 

Today, of course, is Christmas Day.

Yesterday was Christmas Eve.  The occasion is one in which I've participated in the same workplace tradition now for almost four decades, a scary thought in and of itself.  I'll admit that I've grown very weary of it and have been now for quite a while.  It involves going to lunch with my coworker professional colleagues and it usually involves having drinks, a delay in ordering, more drinks, etc.

We always go to Mass on Christmas Eve.  Indeed, even as a child my family always went to Mass on Christmas Eve, although not Midnight Mass.  I've never been a night owl and I just don't want to be up that late.  That's the same reason I don't like to go to alte Easter Vigil Mass either.

I am, rather obviously, an early riser.  That's about the sole reason this blog even exists.  Almost everything on here is written very early in the morning.

Anyhow, as I was noting, I've grown really weary of the lunch.  It's clear to me that it's a big deal for some of my colleagues, but in noting that, what I further note is that the more secular they are, or the more convivial, the bigger the deal it is.  And for some it's a rememberance of those who started the tradition, in a decade that is now long past, and which is from nearly another world, the world of men at work without women as colleagues.  I'm not going into that here, although I will in the future.  I've never lived in it, and I don't imagine that world nostalgically.  My best workplace colleagues are women.

For me, with a sense that things must be on time and on target, I get really worried about things dragging on too long to get to Mass on time.  It's never happened, although for the first time yesterday it nearly did.

Things have been really odd recently, for reasons I'll not go into.  I realized right about noon that people had left, save for me and the one coworker I'm really a friend of/with/to.  I noted to her that everyone had left and perhaps we should too.

When I arrived it was rapidly clear something was gravely wrong.  The whole meal had that feeling, and at the end of it, a massive argument broke out/resumed between two individuals who had been engaged in it prior to our arrival.  Indeed, in reality, it was the culmination of an argument that had broken out in a heated fashion after the company Christmas Party (which this was not) and which, in retrospect, has been burning hot and cold now for months and months.

The whole spirit of the country is like that right now.

Around here, where it should be extremely cold right now, it's nearly summer temperature warm. That's not only weird, it's a massive warning sign.  This morning Doug Burgum is posting on "clean coal".  That's moronic and anyone with the slightest bit of sense knows that this has to stop.  Donald Trump, for his part, posted his typical stupid comments oozing anger and this:

I note this as part of what I think I witnessed was both the nation's politics and the nation's political atmosphere bleeding into daily life.  You can feel it everywhere. This must be what it was like to live in Nazi Germany in the mid 1930s.  The nation's gone insane, and a certain percentage of the nation is now angrily insane.

But it's more than that.  Part of it is, I"m sure, the inability to endure big changes and big expectations, combined with gross misunderstanding.  Part of it also is the anger that idol worshippers have when they realize their hero is human.  Maybe some of was the march of time on both parties.

Like several other things I've seen like this recently, I was so ill prepared for what I saw that my reaction time to it was just insufficient to deal with it.  It happened, nad was over, before I could do anything to stop it. And looking back, I should have stopped what I should have seen coming weeks ago. 

I've wearied and I'm not the man I used to be.  I'm too tired to put up with and endure such things. But why bring this up at Christmas? There must be some really hurt feelings today, and there must have been going into things.  For me, who has had to take up roles I never anticipated, it's a bitter failure and now a delicate matter to repair.

One thing I think I'm going to repair is the tradition.  It came out of the all male workplace past, and that day is over.  The tradition can remain in the past. The present and the passage of time overcame it.

More and more, the Mass part of Christmas, Christ's Mass, is the important part to me.  It always was really, but I managed to take the wrong road, the American Road, when I was young, even though I knew better.  The field, vette and prairie is what always appealed to me, and the book.  The courtroom not so much.  I've been dealing with the fact that its now too late to change that.

Or at least its too late to change the past.  Enduring the present and future of that, and the office, well not so much.  Sometimes the messages are clear.

"The man's done enough. Leave him alone."  Field of Dreams.

Hegseth announces troops in combat jobs will have to meet highest male physical standards

Not quite no women in combat. . . but you can see it from there:

Hegseth announces troops in combat jobs will have to meet highest male physical standards

I always find mindself in an odd spot, vis-à-vis Hegseth.  I'm obviously not a fan of the Trump Administration, or of Hegseth, but I think moves like this are in fact in the right direction.

Odd that this comes up when it does, by the way.

Related threads:

Women and combat

Labels: Donald Trump, Evolutionary Biology, hunting, Men, Military, Pete Hegseth, The Madness of King Donald, The roles of men and women, Women, World War Two

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 88th Edition. A predictive issue and other ramblings. Order coming on women in combat roles. Trump's bolt shot.

Labels: Christian Nationalism, Military, National Conservatism, Predictions, The Madness of King Donald, The relationship between men and women, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, You heard it here first, Zeitgeist

Yes, it's bad behavior. Immoral, and criminal. But at what point is it nature?

Labels: Army, Commentary, Men, Military, nature, The relationship between men and women, The roles of men and women, United States Marine Corps, Women

Killing people and breaking things. . . and women in the service.

Labels: Army, Men, The roles of men and women, trends, War, Women, Work

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

Additional Labels for :

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

Monday, September 8, 1975. Leonard Matlovich on Time and the UFW.

Discharged Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich appeared on the cover of Time in his Air Force Class B uniform with the words "I Am a Homosexual", for which he was discharged, on the cover.  The decorated Vietnam Veteran had come out just before with his status and it seems he had not become a practicing homosexual until after the war.  He'd begin a protracted legal battle with the Air Force for reinstatement, which was offered to him originally with a promise that he discontinue homosexual activities, but he declined that.  At the time, an exception to the rule prohibting homosexuals in the military existed which would have allowed that.  Ultimately he'd accept a financial settlement.  The rule itself was removed.  It'd be somewhat revived in a different form in 1993 under the Clinton Administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Matlovich was raised Catholic but had converted to Mormonism.  He was subsequently excommunicated from the LDS for homosexuality.  He died in 1988 at age 44 of AIDS.  His actions made him a public figure in the homosexual rights movement, which was just beginning to become a thing at the time.  The DSM classified homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973 and was only removed that year due to a paper published by a homosexual psychologist.

I can recall the issue of Time and it was quite shocking at the time.

Matlovich is probably largely forgotten now.   The story is interesting in light of subsequent developments, mentioned in part above.  Homosexuality was not expressly prohibited by military law for most of the U.S. military's history, but then homosexuality itself was not used as a term defining what it currently does until the late 19th Century.  Servicemen were discharged for sodomy, without it expressly being in the military's legal code, as it was seen as a moral abomination, but not as a sort of character defining conduct.  This occurred as early as the American Revolution.¹   It wasn't until 1921 when it became an expressed military crime.  It wasn't until World War Two however that the Service actively worked to bar homosexuals from the Service, making that policy one that had a much shorter period of being in existence than generally imagined.  Interestingly a two man panel of psychologists who worked on mental profiles for enlistment just before the war did not recommend excluding homosexuals.

The prohibition was lifted in 2011.

Part of the reason that all of this is interesting is that I'd predicted that the Trump Administration would restore the prohibition on women serving in combat, which was lifted in 2013 (I don't think it should have been).  So far, that has not been done, but the Administration has barred "transgendered" from serving.  That frankly makes a lot of sense as a "transgendered" person cannot carry on that status without pharmaceutical assistance, something that obviously doesn't pertain to homosexuals.  Anyhow, there doesn't appear to be any Trump administration move to restore the ban on homosxuals in the Service, which perhaps shows how far views have evolved on this matter.  The prior Service policies clearly reflected widely held societal views.

Farmworkers in California working for Bruce Church, Inc. voted to join the United Farm Workers, in the first such instance of that occurring.

Footnotes:

1.  It's been speculated on whether or not Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian officer who introduced Prussian drill and training methods in the Army during the Revolution may have been a homosexual, although it wouldn't have been understood in that fashion at the time.  There certainly seems to have been reason to suspect that and homosexual conduct was common in the Prussian and later Imperial German officer corps.  That's interesting in and of itself as it was common for officers to enter the service in their mid teens and serve in consistently all male environments, which would argue for a environmental origin to the orientation.

The same is true, it might be noted, for the pre World War Two British officer corps, which was additionally impacted by the odd British education system which tended to warehouse the male children of the well off in all male boarding schools.  At least a few well known British officers have been speculated about in this fashion.

In the U.S. military this environment didn't exist, and it's pretty difficult to find examples of well known servicemen who are suspected of having been homosexuals.  Unlike European armies, the U.S. Army did not discourage officers from marrying, although it was often financially impossible for junior enlisted men to do so.  Most U.S. officers in fact married at the usual ages, and long serving enlisted men often did as well.  Getting out of the service after a single three year enlistment was common for enlisted soldiers who wanted to marry.  Of course, like all armies, prostitution was rampant near U.S. Army posts, even on the frontier.

Related threads:

The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.

Labels: 1950s, 1960s, 1968, Catholic, Christianity, Economics, homosexuality, mehr Mensch sein, Men, pornography, religion, The relationship between men and women, The relationships of men with each other, trends, Work

Last edition:

Friday, September 5, 1975. Attempts.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Crime, England (London), Gerald Ford, London England, Provisional Irish Republican Army, United Kingdom