Mid Week At Work. Overheard retirement conversations, random emails and musings.

Now it's 67, after a certain age. . . for the time being.  Just like Wyoming judges used to have to retire at 70 and Game Wardens at 60.  Now Game Wardens can stay until they die in the cabs of their trucks at advance old age, although few stay that long, and the state legislature would like to have judges stay on the bench so long, Judges who were serving at the time of the writing of the Book of Judges could still be on the bench.

Back in June, the parish priest as the parish where I normally go retired.

He was the priest at the Newman Center for most of the time I was at the University of Wyoming, and then twice here locally.  He must be 70 years old, but he looks remarkably fit and vigorous, and indeed almost exactly the same as he did 30 plus years ago in his late 30s and early 40s.

Not too many people can say that, although a fortunate few can.

I note this as in the last few months I've been overhearing a lot of comments on retirement, observing a few folks I know who retired, and receiving emails on the topic as well.  And in the news, of course, we have the proposed Pine Box Amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, which I posted about in the current election thread:

Proposed Amendment B.

The amendment summary that will appear on the ballot states:

Currently, the Wyoming Constitution requires Wyoming Supreme Court justices and district court judges to retire upon reaching the age of seventy (70). This amendment increases the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices and district court judges from age seventy (70) to age seventy-five (75).

The actual text of the amendment provides:

Article 5, Section 5. Voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges.

The sales pitch on this is that many highly qualified jurists are forcibly put out to pasture to do something else in their lives rather than remain on the bench until they're taken out in a body bag.

Okay, that's not quite how it's put, but that's basically it.  Added to that, if they die before the state has to pay them any retirement, the state saves some cash.

It's been interesting.

A young person that I know, in her early 20s, stated to me "what does a priest do in retirement"?  It's a good question.  I don't really know, but the few retired priests I've known sort of continued to serve as priests. They're not relieved of their obligations to say Mass.  For the most part, what those priests seemed to do was to move into a rectory and serve Mass, and hear Confessions.  I guess what they're relieved of is their obligations to run a parish, which no doubt are pretty significant.

One Priest I know, who reached retirement age, did not.  He was Nigerian and returned to his home country.  Before he left, he told me that Priests in Nigeria do not retire, they serve until they die, which was his intent.

The Wyoming Supreme Court and the state legislature, some of whom are late Boomers, maybe the majority of whom are late Boomers, are endorsing the view that they can continue to serve five years past their physical deaths.  

That's an exaggeration, of course, but as I've written about before, the assumptions that a person can work in a position of public trust until they go from the bench to a pine box and not suffer in their work in any fashion is foolish.

It's also, in my view, more than a bid arrogant.  Shouldn't these positions be opened up to people who are closer to the average demographic of the state and nation?

And do they have no other interests?

I worry a bit about that, as I've seen at least two ancient lawyers seemingly age past the point of their actually having any other interests. They didn't want to go to court anymore, but they seemingly had nothing much else to do. They took annual vacations, but otherwise came into the office until they died.  This is all the more interesting as neither one had started off to be lawyers, so the old fable that "I've always wanted to be a lawyer" that some lawyers lie about in order to convince themselves that giving up a chance to be a minor league baseball player or something made sense.

Another lawyer I know who is old enough to retire, but who is in good health, keeps on working a full schedule.  I note this as our lives intersect in some odd fashions, one of which is that he also had agricultural interests.  His father was a rancher and his sister married a farmer.  He told me that at one time he imagined himself sort of retiring to the ranch, but just before his father had a stroke and then died, they sold the place.  He seems set on being a lawyer until he dies, taking off sometime for nice biannual vacations.

I'm like my father in contrast.  I just don't take vacations, which is a very bad trait.  Maybe that's why retirement as a concept is on my mind, as I don't take much time off for myself, so I think I can catch up on that once I retire.

In overall contrast, one lawyer I know who has eased into mostly retired has in fact taken up some of his longtime activities in earnest.  I sort of regard him as a model that way.

Another lawyer I know pretty well who is far too young to retire, but has it on his distant radar screen (let's say he's 50), has all sorts of retirement plans, most of which involve being a globe trotter.

He is, however, obviously not a physical fitness bluff and hits the dinner table more often than the gym, which is to say he hits the gym never.  I don't hit the gym either, but up until this year I was in pretty good physical shape, maybe a beneficiary of genetics in that fashion.  I hate to say it, and I don't know how to say it to him, but my guess is that he'll die before reaching that age.  He speaks longingly and optimistically about what he's going to do, but there are things you have to do that, one of which his good health,¹

I've noted here before, my father enjoyed good health right up until he didn't, and he died at 62.  His father died at 47. Neither of them retired.²

A lawyer friend of mine and I have enjoyed good health up until this year, and we've both had scares in recent weeks.  I'm not going into it, but I'm in the category of having dodged a bullet, maybe.  Had I not, I would probably have been dead within a few years.

Of course, life is fickle, and you really never know when you are going to board the barque across the River Styx.  Just yesterday, an old Guard friend of mine let me know that a guy we were in the Guard with died following a surgery that was supposed to have worked well.  He was only about 65.

Leaping back up, my unhealthy friend also has a very large family, which is his right.  There are certainly people with very large families that retire, but he's looking at a long list of college tuition payments, the first of which he just started and the last of which isn't anywhere near to commencing.

We pick our lies and take what that means, but some people don't seem to realize that.  I.e, having a giant sized rib for lunch might not be your best option.

All of which gets to the topic of being able to afford to do that.

I married later than most men do (I was 32) and so we started our family late.  My wife comes from a ranching family and while we've been very frugal, working to get her over the agricultural concept of money, which is extraordinarily short term and which features the concept of constant loans as normal, has been difficult.  And a diehard absolute dedication to our children, now in their 20s, that she has, and which is common to mothers, is highly exhibited.  All this means that while we haven't done badly, we haven't done as well as we could.

Maybe, however, we just don't know what that means.  One of the blogs linked in here, Mr. Money Mustache, strongly takes that position. Lots of people can retire who don't, as they don't grasp they can.

In that context, I've tended to find that for men in my situation, I'm ten years older than Long Suffering Spouse, the latter personality resists the older retiring.  We're past that point now, really, but it had been a pretty clearly on the horizon of resistance for a long time.  In most relationships like this, with ours being no exception, the older person gets the larger income and that means a lot.

I'm not, I'd note, of Social Security retirement age, either.  So this is more than a little hypothetical.

A good friend of mine who is a lawyer constantly talks about retiring, and then doesn't.  Recently, he's been expressing the concept of stepping back into lesser roles.

This is interesting.  When a person finds that there are aspects of his work that he doesn't want to do, but he'd like to keep doing the ones he does as a retirement plan, he better be working in a field that accommodates that. Law isn't that, at least by my observation.  You are in, or you are out.  It's not like you can decide to take a lesser role as a football player, for example.  Law is sort of like that.

Still, I see a lot of lawyers go into their late 60s and then their 70s still practicing, which is the point of the proposed Pine Box amendment to the Wyoming Constitution. It's interesting.  Some do seem to have stepped into some sort of genteel role, others not.  

I've tended to notice that family businesses tolerate the stepping down role better than others. Farms and ranches often are, for example, and some small stores are.  Before the complete corporatization of the economy, that might explain why these lines of work were so admired, really.  They were part of life, with life predominating.  Now your role as a consumer does.

Which might be part of the current war against retirement.  It's interesting.  Everyone in the larger society wants you at work.  I've noticed this on a few things recently.  It seems no one wants people in the US to retire. Ever.

Indeed, I saw this entry on Reddit the other day.

This is a rant. I’m sick of all the articles with the same message: work, work, work and never stop. The biggest reasons are: you want that “full Social Security benefit” at 67, (but hey why not hold off until you’re 70 and get even more?) The other reason is “healthcare is expensive”. The push from the media outlets telling us to keep working is essentially propaganda. Instead, why isn’t anyone lobbying for us to fight for better? It’s complete bullsh*t. “ If you run out of your own money, SS alone isn’t enough to live on.” Well I’m not planning to live out my life on a cruise ship FFS, just staying put in my own little house. I’m sorry I live in a country that lets poor people die. Is it too much to ask for our government to provide a decent pension and healthcare to it’s oldest citizens? Nope. This is how it is and rather than try to get the government to fix it, just keep working until you die. BTW I rage-retired 2 months ago, at age 61, due to burn out and I’m living on my savings while my 401k hopefully recovers a bit. But, it was always my plan to start collecting Social Security at 62 (even though my own Financial Advisor is against it) because my mother died at 51 and my father at 69. If I wait I may never see a penny of SS. I know this rant won’t change anything. I just felt like screaming into the void.

And then there's this item that was run in the online version of the ABA Journal. 

A funny thing happened on the way to my retirement

Some items from it:

My attorney friend Ron Taylor, the former general counsel of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Texas, once advised me not to retire from something “unless you have something to retire to.” That struck me as a truth, and I am fortunate to have other passions to pursue; for you see, my mistress, the law, gave me the freedom to develop them without totally giving her up.

And;  

While many senior lawyers are resting on their laurels and leaving the legal profession, I’m still going strong after more than 41 years of practice as a civil defense lawyer, defending companies in mass casualty high-exposure cases. As I approached my 65th birthday last year, I struggled mightily with how to end my 41-plus year romance (43 including law school) with the law and the law firm, Wilson Elser, I have loved for 30 of those years.

When considering retirement, you can stage and prolong and enhance your career in the process, but to do so, you must first understand that in some ways, retirement for lawyers is a misnomer. It can perhaps better be framed as, “What do you want the next stage of your career to look like?” Retirement is an intensely personal matter, and the answer to this question depends on your interests inside and outside the law and what you want to do now.

At the core of this process is the ability to allow yourself to step back from what you were doing before in order to make more time for other things, such as your outside interests and hobbies. This is an opportunity to rebalance your life and to give you more time to do things outside the law while extending your career inside the profession. Work less at what you were doing before and do more of what you are passionate about. In other words, mix them up to suit your new reality. This can and should be a win-win situation.

The law as a mistress line is a common one among lawyers, and it isn't used in a complimentary fashion.  "The law is a jealous mistress" is the line, and what it means is that the law takes up your time to the exclusion of all else. She won't let you hae any other interests.

The advice Ron gave the author essentially was to marry the mistress, I guess.  Or sort of. That author seemed to be one of the balanced lawyers who was able to do other things.  I'm much less so.  Anyhow, when I read this line, I'm always reminded of the lines spoken by the wounded bandit in The Professionals, about how "the Revolution" goes from being a great love, admired from afar, and pure, to a jealous mistress, to a whore.

Not a pleasant thought.

Anyhow, this is an example, I think of society, which in the 1930s through 70s asked you to look forward to retirement, now wants to keep you from doing it.

"What do you want the next stage of your career to look like?”³ 

Indeed, society wants you at work no matter what you do. Thinking about retiring?  Hang on a few more years.  Thinking about staying home with your infant?  Let's warehouse the little non-productive snot in a daycare.  Thinking about staying home with your elderly parent?  Let's put the used up geezer in a "home".  Pregnant?  Let's kill that drain on society before it's born and takes you out of the workplace for a few weeks.

Footnotes:

1.  This puts me in an odd position, as I tend to be pretty honest and when I can't be, I tend just to hold my tongue.  But when somebody who eats three gigantic meals a day and is extremely overweight tells you about their plans to travel when they retire, if you know then, what is your obligation?  Do you say, "Bill, if you don't keep eating the cheesy entire walrus lunch special, you are going to stroke out and never retire?"  Nobody wants to hear that, but maybe you should.

2.  My father was at the point where he wanted to retire.  He just didn't make it.

3.  This fellow, fwiw, recommended the following:

Take your own deposition to gain clarity

Where do you begin? I took a novel approach—I took my own deposition! As a trial lawyer I’d taken thousands of depositions in my career but never one sitting across the table from myself. Lawyers are great at asking questions—after all we are trained in the Socratic method—so why not make a little exercise of taking our own depositions regarding this important decision? The goal is to “know thyself” and what thyself wants to do next.

Questions to ponder:

• How much longer do you want to work?

• Do you have any unfinished goals or projects you’d like to complete?

• What alternate legal work matches your skills and abilities, such as alternative dispute resolution?

• What legal topics interest you that you’d like to know more about?

• What bar activities would you like to pursue?

• Are there any pro bono projects that interest you?

• Would you like to teach law students?

• How about that book you were going to write inspired by your legal experience handling cases and closing deals?

There’s an incredible wealth of possibilities.

In cross-examining ourselves, we can arrive at clarity as to what comes next. You’ve given most of your life to the law, so put your experience to work for you. Make a plan based on your answers to your own personal deposition and follow it into your transition.

This cannot help but bring to mind the scense in the early Woody Allen film Banana Republic in which Allen, who accidentally ends up a Central American revolutionary, ends up subjecting himself to a devestating cross examination when he calls himself as a witness in his trial.

Related threads:

Overheard on retirement

King Charles III is the oldest person to ever assume the throne of the United Kingdom.

And yet, in spite of that, he's three years younger than Donald Trump and six years younger than Joe Biden.

Blog Mirror: Is Biden too old?

 An interesting essay by 76 year old Robert Reich:

Is Biden too old?

The death of Ivana Trump serves as a reminder. . .

that Donald Trump, who seems to have decided to run for President again in 2024, and Joseph Biden, are quite old and frankly are as likely as not to have naturally shuffled off their mortal coil by that date.

Indeed, my guess is that at least one of them, if not both, with be undergoing the review of their Earthly deeds by that time.

I don't mean to be morbid.

My mother was 90 when she died.  

Her mother was older than that when her time came.  Her brother Terry, who died a few years ago, was either 99 or 100, I can't recall which.

My father was 62 when he died, his father was 47 when he passed.

There are of course no guarantees.  There are those in their 70s who are as fit as somebody in their 40s, and whose minds are as sharp as ever.

Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden strike me that way.

The Presidency, it is often noted, ages a person.  It's common to compare before and afters. Trump seems somewhat of an exception. We'll see if Biden is. But whether or not their appearances show it, the job, if they are really doing it (and Biden clearly is, it's questionable how much Trump did) takes its toll.

Most Americans are not yet 40 years old.

To most Americans, the Cold War, and hits hot expressions such as the Vietnam War, are pure ancient history.

To most Americans, the cold 1970s, weather wise, isn't thing they recall.

The recent shock over the Dobbs decision shows that to many Americans the mere concept that only 50 years ago, not really that long ago, states had to make up their minds about abortion rather than having the Supreme Court foist a decision was how things worked.

Most Americans have little connection with the formative eras for Biden or Trump.

And, beyond that, we're gambling as a nation.  

Most Americans don't age out with no problems at all. Those who do are blessed.  But then, it's a rare politician, although there are some, who serves in his old age.

We aren't really that likely to have Trump or Biden actually on the ballot in 2024. If we do, we are even less likely to have them serve until 2028.

All of which is a reason to hand the wheel to somebody else, in both warring camps.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXX. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition.

I started this post prior to the commencement of the war

And several of the comments then related to it. Rather than toss them out, I'm going note them as quotes, FWIW.

Here they are.

On the eve of war?

This installment of this trailing thread finds us teetering on the brink of a war between Ukraine and Russia, which, depending upon how you count such things, would likely be the third such war in a little over 100 years. They're all over the same thing, Ukrainian independence.  The Russians, in their heart of hearts, don't really think Ukrainians are a thing.  The Ukrainians do.

Indeed, several years ago I met a Ukrainian American lawyer, who had the added minority distinction of being a female Jewish Ukrainian American lawyer, who had immigrated to the US as a small girl.  Even though she was a Ukrainian, she told me that as a child she'd first become aware of Ukrainians, of which she was one, was on a bus with her family and some people from rural areas were on it, speaking Ukrainian. She thought it was just a weird accident, even though she herself spoke Ukrainian, and Russian.  Indeed, I sat through a deposition in which she continually corrected a Russian interpreter's translation of her Ukrainian client's testimony.

Bloody

We should note here that all these prior wars between Ukraine and Russia have turned into bloodbaths. Indeed, the last one, which trailed into 1947, featured Ukrainian atrocities against non-Ukrainian populations within their borders.

The memories of that may be strong, as the Russians are claiming that's been occurring recently, which it has not, as part of their false flag operation to justify their probable upcoming invasion of Ukraine.

Eh?

I thought about starting a thread titled "Useful idiots", borrowing the phrase frequently but inaccurately attributed to Lenin.  In fact, he never appears to have used the term.

I don't know if I would have actually have used it.  The term "idiot" is pretty strong, and I don't think most of those whose views I find baffling are in fact idiots by a long measure.  Indeed, I have no doubt many of them are much smarter than me, which doesn't necessarily credit their views here.  At any rate, somethings are just bizarrely baffling.

First, , as an example, let's take Candace Owens.

Candace Owens

@RealCandaceO

STOP talking about Russia. Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro. He has fundamentally declared himself dictator and is waging war on innocent Canadian protesters and those who have supported them financially.

What the crap?

Candace's odd association of Justin Trudeau, whom I don't care for as a politician, with Vladimir Putin, who is a potentially unhinged autocratic monster armed with nuclear weapons, is, in fact, stupid.

She wasn't alone in making that association, however.  Lauren Boebert stated:

But we also have neighbors to the north who need freedom and you need to be liberated and we need that right here at home.

Beobert came to that by way of praising the Ukrainian President and the Ukrainian decision to arm its civilian population, which I also think is praiseworthy.  But the linking to Canada. . . ?

Back to Owens, for a moment, earlier this week she appeared to be fully on board with the ludicrous assertion that the US and Ukraine had been engaged in secret biological weapons production prior to the war. That's such a dumb assertion that it is pretty much impossible not to conclude that Owens is rooting for the Russians, something for which she's not alone on the far right.  Congressman Madison Cawthrorn called Ukrainian President Zelinskyy a "thug" earlier this past week.

Most people regard Zelniskyy as a hero and he's certainly not a thug.

Owens and Cawthorn, but not Beobert here, are basically falling in line with Donald Trump.  Since this crisis developed, I've continued to be amazed by common Republicans who somehow believe that if Donald Trump was President, Putin would never have ordered this invasion.  And this in spite of what Trump keeps stating about Putin, which isn't exactly critical of him, to say the least.

To an outside observer, the relationship between Putin and Trump is so bizarre that it's logical to assume, as many do, that Putin has something, and something serious on Donald Trump.  The question is, what is it?

Maybe it's nothing, of course, and Trump just likes Putin as Putin is a genuine dictator and Trump aspires to be one.  But the relationship is undeniably odd.

Beyond that, Trump hardly had what anyone would call an aggressive foreign policy.  He was always clear that he wanted an isolationist one in which the US basically ignored foreign wars if at all possible.  Regarding Ukraine itself, while Republicans like to point out that his administration provided more military assistance to Ukraine than Obama's did, Obama had declared as far back as 2014 that if Russia invaded Ukraine there'd be serious consequences.

The Obama Administration was fearful, wrongly, of providing weapons to Ukraine out of a fear that it'd amount to a provocation to the Russians.  But it wasn't Trump who wanted to change that.  Trump's operatives went around him and forced him into it, against his will. This was very well known at the time.  Sure, Trump's administration provided increased aid to Ukraine, but not because of Trump, but rather in spite of him.

And yet somehow some oddly believe that if Trump was President, Putin would have been cowering in the Kremlin.

For all we know, Putin may have reacted no differently whatsoever.  If anything, however, a person has to suspect that Donald Trump would have been reminded about that tape, or that payment, or that deal, or something.  Or maybe just his fawning admiration of a strongman would take him there.

Alternative realities

Since this crisis developed, I've continued to be amazed by common Republicans who somehow believe that if Donald Trump was President, Putin would never have ordered this invasion.

Seriously?

To an outside observer, the relationship between Putin and Trump is so bizarre that it's logical to assume, as many do, that Putin has something, and something serious on Donald Trump.  The question is, what is it.

Maybe it's nothing, of course, and Trump just likes Putin as Putin is a genuine dictator and Trump aspires to be.  But the relationship is undeniably odd.

Beyond that, Trump hardly had what anyone would call an aggressive foreign policy.  He was always clear that he wanted an isolationist one in which the US basically ignored foreign wars if at all possible.  Regarding Ukraine itself, while Republicans like to point out that his administration provided more military assistance to Ukraine than Obama's did, Obama had declared as far back as 2014 that if Russia invaded Ukraine there'd be serious consequences.

The Obama Administration was fearful, wrongly, of providing weapons to Ukraine out of a fear that it'd amount to a provocation to the Russians.  But it wasn't Trump who wanted to change that.  Trump's operatives went around him and forced him into it, against his will. This was very well known at the time.  Sure, Trump's administration provided increased aid to Ukraine, but not because of Trump, but rather in spite of him.

And yet somehow some oddly believe that if Trump was President, Putin would have been cowering in the Kremlin.

For all we know, Putin may have reacted no differently whatsoever.  If anything, however, a person has to suspect that Donald would have been reminded about that tape, or that payment, or that deal, or something.  

And then there's Television Evangelist Pat Robertson, who came out of retirement to state:

People say that Putin’s out of his mind. Yes, maybe so. But at the same time, he’s being compelled by God. He went into the Ukraine but that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to move against Israel, ultimately.

Oh no, it isn't.

A person has to be careful here, as this is a religious topic, and it fits into a certain Apocalyptic worldview that is strongly represented in certain strains of Evangelism.  While the Apostolic Churches have no defined interpretation of the text that this strain of Protestantism interprets this way, it tends to be the case that they view much of Revelation as pertaining to the era in which it is written, while also holding that some of it is yet to pass.

Back in the 70s, for those old enough to remember them, this strain of thought was very strong. The common assertion you'd hear from some quarters was that a big war in the Middle East was going to occur at any moment and that would feature the Battle of Armageddon, which would usher in in the Apocalypse.  If you caught television in the early afternoon hours, as kids coming home from school did, that meant you were going to catch television ads for a book called The Late Great Planet Earth on this very topic.

Well, of course, like much human prognostication, the impending disaster didn't occur.

That apparently hasn't meant that those who were invested in the thesis have really given up on it, as this shows.

Ummm, nice weather we're having . . . 

One of the interesting things about the war is that for those locally who have decided that Liz Cheney is a big traitor because she didn't stay on the Trump train following the insurrection are being reminded that she was off of it before then, and part of that was her insistence Russia was a menace while Republicans were saying it wasn't.  She turned out to be right.

She was also right about Afghanistan, we'd note, which turns out to be another embarrassing thing for those who somehow feel that Donald Trump was right on foreign policy.  On that one, Trump loyalist were pretty quick to claim that the withdrawal that Trump initiated woudln't have been the disaster it became when Biden carried it out, because. . . well because.

The Putin invaded Ukraine.

At first there were a lot of the odd claims that "well if Trump had been in office" but those have weakened in no small part because it's obvious baloney.  Indeed, after this fawning expressions of admiration for Putin early on, he's been pretty quiet over the last few days, and for that matter the press has quit paying attention to him.  Even a near air disaster he experienced has received next to no attention.  Voices like Tucker Carlson, whom personally I don't think really believes a lot of what he says, haven't received much attention either after their initial attempts to backtrack seeming admiration of Putin.

More locally, however, a question directed to Harriet Hageman about her position simply resulted in a sidestep.  She's was campaigning with Rand Paul in Cheyenne, which didn't receive that much press either, when the Ukraine question came up.  She really can't. . . well actually she could, say "well, ol' Liz sure was right on that one".

Regrets

March 12, 2022

Adam Kinzinger tweeted yesterday:

Adam Kinzinger

@AdamKinzinger

Thread (and admission): 1) I want to be honest, in congress I have only a few votes that in hindset, I regret. My biggest regret was voting against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

Adam Kinzinger

@AdamKinzinger

·

Mar 11

Replying to

@AdamKinzinger

2) It’s important for political leaders to be transparent and admit regret when needed. The bottom line, Donald Trump withheld lethal aid to Ukraine so he could use it as leverage for his campaign. This is a shameful and illegal act, directly hurting the Ukraine defense today…

Adam Kinzinger

@AdamKinzinger

·

Mar 11

3) I wish i could go back in time and Vote for it, but I cannot. What we can do now is to ensure that this NEVER happens again, and that we all put the interests of our nation above our party.

@AVindman

and others deserve our appreciation.

Most Recent Prior Thread:

The danger of mental decline.

While he may not really look it, Vladimir Putin is an old man.

I've noted it here repeatedly, but people's mental health becomes increasingly dicey as they age.  People quested Trump's mental health the entire time he was President, and not without some reason.  People are doing that now with Biden.  And a lot of the analysts who know something about Putin are stating that he's not right.

People continually point this out in regard to Biden, but seemingly him alone.  The Supreme Court is old.  Putin is old.  Donald Trump is old.

All of which raises the question of why the legislature just passed a bill seeking to enact a change to the Wyoming constitution, pushing the retirement age of judges up to 75.

This lock grip of the boomers on things, I'd note, isn't something that the whole world is engaged in.  Lots of European leaders are much younger.

Vesting so much of the world's power in the elderly is dangerous.  We don't know, for example, what Putin's mental status is and there's no way to know.  At his age, moreover, he may not really care how much he destroys if he figures the long term historical legacy in Russia will be to his liking, as he won't have to endure that much of the short term.

Unmoored

On all of this, it is seemingly very difficult for people to accept a swing in things when things were going their way.  The absolute refusal of a minority of Americans to accept that they are in fact a minority, no matter how legitimate their positions or grievances, is part, I'm convinced, of what is giving rise to the section of the GOP that simply can't believe that they lost the election.

I think it was Chesterton, or perhaps Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who observed that if one person is right, he's still right, if everyone else disagrees with him.  Those in the minority who are convinced of their position, and I'm frequently in that position, should take comfort in that.  What you don't get to do is to insist that everyone agrees with you and that if they don't, there's something nefarious going on.

None the less, we do that frequently.  Our sports team didn't lose, the opponent cheated.  You get the drift.  Of course, most of the time people eventually concede a legitimate loss.  But not always.

There's a lot of that which has gone on with the last election, with people seemingly ignoring that the last Republican President to have won the majority of the popular vote was Ronald Reagan.  Trump lost the popular vote beyond a doubt twice, but to listen to some, you'd believe that simply isn't possible.  People take comfort in their own views and own kind, which is easier to do than ever in the modern Internet age.

Added to that, things like this are easier to believe in troubled times, which we've been in for some time, and the fact that Trump won the elector vote in 2016, but some Democrats made noise about rejecting his legitimacy for that reason, even though the electoral college remains part of the system, unfortunately, didn't help. And all two or three Boomers who were somehow rabid Clinton fans felt cheated about that.  But it goes far beyond that. The disenfranchised voters who voted for Trump in 2016, many of whom are former Democrats, convinced themselves that they are the majority of voters, even though they originally probably didn't even make up a majority of Republicans.  Now with Trump having adopted the thesis that the election was stolen, for some reason that even now isn't really clear, those who are inclined to view things conspiratorially are, although again not always for the same reasons.  Some, for example, are simply focused on COVID 19 election year voting changes, which they feel frustrated the normal process.  Others, however, have adopted much more involved fantastical conspiracy theories.  Impacting that are the many politicians who know the election wasn't stolen, but won't stay that as it isn't in their personal best interest.

I'm noting all of this for an introductory reason that doesn't actually have anything to do with the 2020 election.

I'm noting it due to Patrick Coffin.

Patrick Coffin was the long term host of the radio show Catholic Answers, and was really good in that role.  Here a few years ago he left that position, and I wondered why at the time.  It was announced that he was starting a "new project", but frankly, how many jobs are there of that type?  Not many, I'd think.

As it happened, while I liked Coffin in that role, his replacement, Cy Kellett, is hands down much better.  Kellett is humble, and coming from a Dorthy Day branch of Catholicism, he brings in a refreshing view.

Anyhow, Catholic Answers is highly orthodox in its views.  That causes some liberal Catholics to be frustrated, but they've done a real service by giving voice to the orthodox.  That doesn't make them politically conservative, however.  For example, in a couple of instances during the last year various figures have referenced the the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 as a monstrous evil, which is a position I agree with, but almost no American does, and which when that view is expressed, tends to be viewed as a politically liberal one.

Anyhow, when Coffin left he started his own podcast and website which, right away, was undoubtedly much further to the right in everything that Catholic Answers ever had been.  I frankly wonder if Coffin was somewhat invited to leave now.  Anyhow, I used to listen to his podcast for a while, which had some interesting guest, but after a point it clearly started to veer in a certain directly. The first time I really noticed it was when Dr. Taylor Marshall and somebody else were guest with the basic point being women shouldn't work.  Later Cardinal Burke was on and Coffin kept trying to basically get him to cast doubt on the Francis Papacy, which Burke would not do.  Later, and the last straw, was a podcast casting the COVID 19 pandemic as some sort of a conspiracy.  

More recently Coffin released a pathetic podcast episode on seven reasons that Pope Emeritus Benedict is still the Pope.  It's really pathetic.  That caused Catholic Answers to respond, which they did charitably with a nice podcast that pretty much cut through what arguments Coffin had like a broad sword through butter.  Even there, at one point, they came pretty close to calling one of Coffin's arguments unhinged, and they did accuse him, on another, of calumny in one of its slight, ancillary comments.

Anyhow, this is an interesting example of the same thing.  From the beginning of Pope St. John Paul the Great's Papacy through Pope Benedict conservative and orthodox Catholics had Popes they really could like.  Now they sort of don't, but that doesn't mean he isn't the Pope.  Adjusting to reality is a moral duty in something like this, and certainly an existential duty otherwise.

It's all about the oil!

How many times have you heard that about various wars?

Afghanistan, we would note, is claimed to be the United States' longest war, and it has no oil at all.  None.

And here, we're cutting off the import of oil.

It's almost like, well, it's not all about the oil.

We'll deal with this on some other post, but as we've noted lots of times, wars change everything.  Not only is this war not about the oil. . . . it may be a big step towards the end of the oil age.

Speaking of using petroleum

Speaking of cluelessness, what on earth is the American trucker's convoy about?

Whatever it was supposed to be over, that moment passed. This for all the world has the feel of people who arrived at an event about a week late. "What, this isn't the Johansen wedding. . .where's the food?"

This was, of course, inspired by the Canadian Freedom Convoy.  I had a post on that, but that was really distinctly different in the way it spilled over into other complaints.  I'm not sympathetic with the event, but it came to be the focus of a lot of conservative Canadian discontent with a nation's politics that has become extremely liberal.

It really was a Canadian thing, none of which prevented confused right wing Americans from voicing their support on something that they don't really know anything about.  Most Americans, I fear, couldn't pinpoint Edmonton on a map if their life depended on it.

Anyhow, the spectacle inspired a pretty pointless American truckers convoy, which is protesting. . . well who knows what it's protesting.  In a column by a liberal columnist, one of the protesters, for example, noted that they didn't want to be "digitalized", which means this protest just seems to be, well, a protest without a point.

Or maybe it does have one, but not the one that they're voicing or that they even realize.

Long haul trucking in the United States doesn't really have a long history.  Prior to the Second World War most long distance hauling of anything was by rail, not by truck.  Rail itself dated only back to the second quarter of the 19th Century.  Before that, for millennia, anything of substance moved by boat, and less bulky things moved by land at the speed of a draft animal.  Indeed, for that reason, early in the nation's history projects to extend aquatic transportation, like the Erie Canal, were a big deal.

Rail was a radical alteration of the transportation system with a massive impact on the nation in all sorts of forgotten ways, including the pattern of settlement.  Cities like Denver, Colorado became viable due to rail, without it, they'd be towns.

But through Federal subsidization of roads in the 20th Century, and particularly after World War Two, combined with advancements in automotive technology, long haul semi tractors with large trailers became a viable option in the mid 20th Century.  By the 1950s, but not before then, they began to supplant rail.  By the 1960s the process was well under way, while at the same time air travel and improved roads cut into rail passenger service as well, with railroads seeking to abandon that the latter.

Trucking as a profession was in fact glamorized.  Even early on, Hollywood portrayed it that way, with such movies as They Drive By Night.  Convoy, the Country & Western ballad, was one of only a collection of trucking songs that were on the airwaves in the 70s.  At least two movies, once based on the Convoy song, portrayed trucking as glamorous in the same era.

Well, that's all largely passed. We're told now that there's a nationwide shortage of truck drivers, with the country being 80,000 drivers short. 

All of the major automobile manufacturers are working on electric automobiles.  That transformation will come much more rapidly there than in trucking. Automated trucks, without drivers, are being explored and exist on an experimental level now.  But lurking in the back is the ultimate competition to the semi truck, the electric train.

Locomotives are already much, much, more efficient than trucks, and accordingly far, far more "green". The Burlington Northern in fact advertised that fact a few years back.

Predicting the future is always difficult, but I suspect that on a fairly significant level, the future of long distance transportation looks backwards.  It's rail.

From one population crisis to another.

Twitter, the location of all brilliant insight, recently had this exchange before the war started..

It started with the British newspaper, surprisingly enough, The Telegraph.

The Telegraph

@Telegraph

·

19h

Once a problem far in the future, the population crisis is arriving earlier than expected after the Covid baby bust. Populations in countries including Japan are already in decline, while those in the likes of Spain and China are set to halve by 2100

To which some replied in both an indignant and misanthropic way, clinging to the pretty provable statistically invalid concept that nope, we're going to grow and grow until we all die, population wise.  It's been known for a long time now that while immigration waves around the world are a genuine and ongoing crisis, the world is actually almost at the tipping point right now where populations are set to start declining.  Indeed, in the Western world they already are, and they just reached the point in the United States where, but for massive immigration rates, they would be.

Well, some people who seem to really dislike people won't accept that and made that known.

To which somebody replied:

The problem isn't fewer people, the problem is no people! You can't reverse the downward trend. No Government to date has been able to do that; Not China, Japan, Sweden. At the current trend there will be extinct by the year 2400.

M'eh.

Extinct? Ain't going to happen.

Just a few years ago the headlines were we were going to procreate ourselves into extinction.

Now, apparently, we're going to abstain ourselves into extinction.

We're going to do neither.

I'd note that things have gotten to such an odd state that tehreare those who post, and aren't banned from Twitter for doing so, who hate mankind so much htey hope we go extinct for the "benefit" of everything else. As the only species that has a concept of a benefit, if we disappear that's a stupid nullity.  If that seems anthropocentric, well it is.  

Speaking of population, a headline:

Nick Cannon issues apology to the 5 mothers of his children

This on the occasion of the apparently unrestrained and amoral Cannon announcing that he's sired an eighth child with one Bre Tiesi.

Apparently, Nick is doing his part to keep the Playboy lifestyle alive and the population from crashing.

Wage cause and effect.

We recently noted on another post (maybe another Zeitgeist post), that Chuck Todd of Meet the Press sort of smugly maintained that a recently decreased immigration rate was causing inflation by removing immigrants who took certain jobs, seemingly not noticing that what this also means is that the high immigration rate was depressing the wage rate.

Apparently liberals everywhere make this same argument, as this item shows.

HOWEVER AMUSING THE CONCEPT, LET US TAKE CHRISTINE LAGARDE SERIOUSLY FOR A MOMENT

That from the British Adam Smith Society, which is a masterful example, we'd note, of British snark.

The point however, is exactly the same one we made here.  By keeping immigration rates high, wages are depressed.  If you keep immigration rates low, wages climb.

What seemingly isn't noticed is that what this also means is that, contrary to the widespread claims made for decades, Americans will take any job inside the US, as long as it pays a living or at least decent wage.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgiest Part XXIX. The Income Inequality Edition.