Showing posts with label Populism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Populism. Show all posts

Friday, May 9, 2025

Pope Leo XIV

As I'd predicted, the new Pope, Pope Leo XIV, was a cardinal that wasn't in the pundit list.

A quote from an AP news article:
Vatican watchers said Prevost’s decision to name himself Leo was significant given the previous Leo’s legacy of social justice and reform, suggesting continuity with some of Francis’ chief concerns.

Not just the AP, I said this yesterday, and in spades.  In fact, as a Distributist, Pope Leo XIII is one of my absolute favorite recent Popes.  He was an ardent opponent of communism and capitalism.

Some headlines:

NEWLY ELECTED POPE FIRST FROM US

From the Star Tribune.

MAGA Melts Down Over New Pope's Anti-Trump, Pro-Immigrant Social Media

Rolling Stone

This will be interesting. There was, yesterday, a flood of negative comments about Pope Leo from the mostly non Catholic populist far right.  I suspect that a hidden anti Catholicism in that quarter will really start to surface.

Indeed, Pope Leo being an American poses a real challenge to the isolationist, nationalistic MAGA populist elements now in power, as well as the pretending to be isolationist, nationalistic and MAGA fellow travelers.  Some have already wondered if that's part of the reason that he was chosen as Pope, but that will not be known for years, if ever.  At any rate, right now, it's really interesting to note that the US is lead by a not very smart almost octogenarian who has shown aggressiveness and extreme nativism, while global Christianity will be lead by a highly educated catholic concerned for the poor, who as a Cardinal corrected J. D. Vance's odd comments about an order of mercy.  

This leads, I suppose to noting that Pope Leo is, at this point, nearly as Peruvian as he is American.  But as noted, the Catholic Church is catholic, i.e., universal.  It's concerns are for humanity, not a narrow section of the American public.  But Pope Leo might serve to remind Americans of what the United States has, in its better moments, stood for. 

Friday, April 25, 2025

The Very American Roots of Trumpism | The Ezra Klein Show


This is the first commentary I've seen with a sense of American history and the Trump movement.  Like Klein, I'm not worried that there won't be midterms or a 2028 election.

Worth listening to.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

The 2026 Election, 1st Edition: Spring Training Edition.

Walter "Big Train" Johnson, April 11, 1924.

Yes, the 2024 Election hasn't even occured yet, and the 2026 one is clearly on, at least locally.

What we can tell for sure is that Chuck Gray is running for the office of Governor.  He always was.  The Secretary of State's office was very clearly a mere stepping stone in that plan, and the plan probably goes on from there.   By coming to Wyoming, a state with a low population and a pronounced history of electing out of staters (we nearly have some sort of personality problem in that regard), it was a good bet, particularly when combined with his family money, although it was never a sure bet that he'd make the legislature and on from there.  His plan requires, however, or at least he seemingly believes it requires, that he keep his name in the news, which he's worked hard to do, being involved in lawsuits, which is probably unconstitutional on his part, and releasing press releases that are extraordinary for his role, and for the invective language they contain.  Mr. Gray has probably used the term "radical leftists" more in his two years of office than all of the prior Wyoming Secretaries of State combined.

This explains something that was otherwise a bit odd that we noticed recently, which was Secretary Gray's appearance in Casper in opposition of something he'd otherwise voted for:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.

 


Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

The environmental populists?

Politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows.  But how strange, nonetheless still surprises.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who rose to that position by pitching to the populist far right, which dominates the politics of the GOP right now, and which appears to be on the verge of bringing the party down nationally, has tacked in the wind in a very surprising direction.  He appeared this past week at a meeting in Natrona County to oppose a proposed gravel pit project at the foot of Casper Mountain.  He actually pitched for the upset residents in the area to mobilize and take their fight to Cheyenne, stating:

We have a very delicate ecosystem, the fragility up there, the fragility of the flows … the proximity to domestic water uses. All of those things should have led to a distinct treatment by the Office of State Lands, and that did not happen.

I am, frankly, stunned.  

I frankly never really expected Mr. Gray to darken visage of the Pole Stripper monument on the east side of Casper's gateway, which you pass by on the road in from Cheyenne again, as he's not from here and doesn't really have a very strong connection to the state, although in fairness that connection would have been to Casper, where he was employed by his father's radio station and where he apparently spent the summers growing up (in an unhappy state of mind, according to one interview of somebody who knew him then).  Gray pretty obviously always had a political career in mind and campaigned from the hard populist right from day one, attempting at first to displace a conservative house member unsuccessfully.

We have a post coming up which deals with the nature of populism, and how it in fact isn't conservatism.  Gray was part of the populist rise in the GOP, even though his background would more naturally have put him in the conservative camp, not the populist one.  But opportunity was found with populists, who now control the GOP state organization.  The hallmark of populism, as we'll explore elsewhere, is a belief in the "wisdom of the people", which is its major failing, and why it tends to be heavily anti-scientific and very strongly vested in occupations that people are used to, but which are undergoing massive stress.  In Wyoming that's expressed itself with a diehard attitude that nothing is going on with the climate and that fossil fuels will be, must have, and are going to dominate the state's economy forever.   The months leading up to the recent legislative session, and the legislative session itself, demonstrated this with Governor Gordon taking criticism for supporting anything to address carbon concerns.  Put fairly bluntly, because a large percentage of Wyoming's rank and file workers depend on the oil and gas industry, and things related to it, any questioning on anything tends to be taken as an attack on "the people".

Natrona County has had a gravel supply problem for quite a while and what the potential miner seeks to do here is basically, through the way our economy works, address it.  There would be every reason to suspect that all of the state's politicians who ran to the far right would support this, and strongly.  But they aren't.

The fact that Gray is not, and is citing environmental concerns, comes as a huge surprise.  But as noted, given his background, he's probably considerably more conservative than populist, but has acted as politicians do, and taken aid and comfort where it was offered.  Tara Nethercott ran as a conservative and lost for the same office.

But here's the thing.

That gravel is exactly the sort of thing that populists, if they're true to what they maintain they stand for, ought to support.  It's good for industry, and the only reason to oppose the mining is that 1) it's in a bad place in terms of the neighbors and 2) legitimate environmental concerns, if there are any.  But that's exactly the point.  You really can't demand that the old ways carry on, until they're in your backyard.  

Truth be known, given their nature, a lot of big environmental concerns are in everyone's backyard right now.

The old GOP would have recognized that nationally, and wouldn't be spending all sorts of time back in DC complaining about electric vehicles.  And if people are comfortable with things being destructive elsewhere, they ought to be comfortable with them being destructive right here.  If we aren't, we ought to be pretty careful about it everywhere.

There actually is some precedent for this, FWIW.  A hallmark of Appalachian populism was the lamenting of what had happened to their region due to coal mining.  John Prine's "Paradise" in some ways could be an environmental populist anthem.

Right about the time I noted this, Rod Miller, opinion writer for the Cowboy State Daily, wrote a satiric article on the same thing:

Rod Miller: Flip-Flops Around The Ol’ Campfire

We have no idea, of course, who his opponent will be, unless it's Gordon, who is theoretically term limited out, but we already know from prior litigation that the restraint on his running again is unconstitutional.  And Gordon clearly doesn't like Gray, a dislike that's not limited to him by any means.  Gordon would have to challenge that in court, however, unless 1) a group of citizens does, and 2) the court ruled they'd have standing.

As voters, they should.

If that happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see Gordon run again, and to be asked to run again.  While he was a candidate initially I worried about him, as he was further to the right on public lands issues than any candidate since Geringer, but he's actually acted as a very temperate Governor, something made difficult by 1) the intemperate level of our current politics, and 2) the occasional shortsightedness of the legislature.1

Anyhow, if you've ever had the occasion to see, Gordon and Gray together in an official setting, it's clear they don't get along.  Indeed, on the State Land Board, it's clear that Gordon isn't the only one that's not keen on Gray.  Gray for his part reacts back, as he did recently when he sent an unprecedented lengthy letter to the Governor on his vetoes. 

Gray, like Donald Trump, has some feverish admirers.2  Indeed, this seems to be a hallmark of the populist right.  They not only run candidates, but they develop personality cults routinely.

Rod Miller, again, in a recent column noted a real problem that Gray has.  As, so far, they haven't really been able to advance their agenda without the help of conservatives, they have an advantage there as they always portray themselves as besieged by the numerous barbarians, the last legionnaire on Hadrian's Wall.  Trump has actually, at a national level, worked to keep that status by ordering his party to defeat immigration legislation that was probably a once in a lifetime conservative opportunity.

Anyhow, as noted, Rod Miller recently noted a problem that Gray has.  He's not married.

Rod Miller: Bride Of Chucky – Or – Advice To The Lovelorn From The Ol’ Campfire

Is this actually a problem?

It shouldn't be, but it might be.

Indeed, without going into it, there was a figure in Wyoming decades ago whose marriage was questioned by whisperers on the basis that they believed he married just to end the speculation on why he wasn't married.   The marriage lasted a very long time, so presumably the rumors were without foundation, but there were questions, which is interesting and shows, I guess, how people's minds can work.  

Another way to look at it, I supposed, was prior to Trump if a person was a conservative people would ask about things that appeared to be contrary to public statements about conservatism.  Not being married, for a conservative, was regarded as odd, and for that matter there are still people who whisper about Lindsey Graham, while nobody seems to worry about AOC being shacked up with her boyfriend or whatever is going on with Krysten Sinema. 

And then there's Gray's age.  It will make people suspicious of him at some point, or people will at least take note.  Indeed, some of his critics from the left already have, but in a really juvenile way.

Actually determining Gray's age is a little difficult, and indeed, knowing anything about his background actually is.  But Cowboy State Daily, a conservative organ, managed to reveal about as much as we know.

Gray was born in California and raised outside of Los Angeles.  According to somebody close to the family, or who was, he was homeschooled by his mother.3 He felt uncomfortable about his birthplace, and stated in the campaign

I come from a divorced family, like many people in our country. A judge said I was to live in a different place, but my dad lived here, built a business here, and I spent my summers here during the time that was allocated by the judge.

According to the same source, he didn't seem all that happy in Casper, Wyoming as a kid, but the circumstances could well explain that.  The same source, who probably isn't a family friend anymore, reported to the Cowboy that Gray's father had a focus on the family owned radio station impacting legislation at a national level.  Photos have been circulated of the father with President Reagan.

Gray graduated from high school in 2008 and the respected University of Pennsylvanian in 2012, which makes it all the more remarkable that he's been a success in Wyoming politics.4   If we assume the norm about graduation ages, he would have been 22 in 2012, which would make him 34 now.

In Wyoming, the average age for men to marry is 27.8 years on average, while for women it's 25.6.  Gray's now notably over the median age, but that is a median.  I was over it too when I married at age 31.  My wife was below the female one.  That's how averages work.

My parents, I'd note, were both over the median, although I don't know it with precision for the 1950s.  In the 50s, the marriage age was actually at an unusual low.  My father was 29, and my mother 32.

So his age, in the abstract, doesn't really mean anything overall, although it might personality wise.

As has been noted elsewhere on this site, Gray is a Roman Catholic and indeed I've seen him occasionally at Mass, although I would never have seen him every weekend as there are a lot of weekend Masses and my habits aren't the same as his.  I have no reason to believe that he didn't attend weekly as required by the church.5  Catholics are supposed to observe traditional Catholic teachings in regard to sex and marriage.  I'm not really going to be delving into that, but again we have no reason to believe that Gray isn't observant, in which case, as he is not married, he should be living as a chaste single man, and he probably is (something that has casued juvenile left wing ribbing).

Wyoming, however, is the least religious state in the union and while Catholics, Orthodox, Mormons and Protestants of traditional morality observe that morality, here, as with the rest of the United States, the late stage mass casualty nature of the Sexual Revolution means that a lot of people in these faiths don't, and the society at large does not.  We've gone from a society where such outside the bounds of marriage behavior was illegal in varying degrees, to one where, nationwide, society pushes people into things whether they want to or not.

Be that as it may, save for Casper, Laramie, and probably Cheyenne, sexual conduct outside the biological gender norm is very much looked down upon.  Indeed, in a really dense move, a Democratic Albany County legislator went to a meeting in Northeast Wyoming a while back on homosexual issues and was shocked by the hostile reception she received.  She shouldn't have been.

No, I'm not saying this applies to Gray.  I have no reason to believe that, and indeed I believe the opposite.

However, we've gone from a state whose ethos was "I don't care what you do as long as you leave me alone" to one in which, largely due to the importation of Evangelicals from elsewhere, a fairly large percentage of the population really care about what you do, particularly if they don't like it.

Indeed, at the time that Matthew Shepard was murdered, I was surprised when I heard an anti-homosexual comment.  Such comments do not surprise me now, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear one now in the context of a murder.  As noted, the exceptions seem to be Laramie (where Shepard was murdered, but which has never been hostile to homosexuals), Casper (which has had a homosexual 20 something mayor and which has a lesbian city council member) and Cheyenne (which has a homosexual member of the state House, as does Albany County).  Well, I omitted Jackson and should include it here too.

At any rate, being an open homosexual and aiming for major office probably is impossible, although for minor ones it hasn't proven to be.  The point is, however, that Miller is right. At some point, people are going to start wondering why staunchly populist Gray isn't married.

Maybe it's because he is in fact a staunchly populist out of state import.  There aren't that many women in that pool.  Indeed, having a one time vague contact with our staunchly populist Congresswoman, I was very surprised when it turned out she was a populist, or even a conservative.  I'm not saying that she's not, I'm just surprised.

Gray is in a sort of oddball demographic.  Not being from here, he wouldn't be in any circles in which women from here, professionals or otherwise, would be in.  He appears to really be a fish out of water in terms of the local culture.  When he appears at things, he does wear cowboy boots, but you can tell they've never been in a stirrup, and he otherwise is, at least based on my very limited observation of him, always dressed in what we might sort of regard as 1980s Denver Business Casual.  I'd be stunned if I saw him on a trout stream or out in the prairie with his bird dog, Rex.  I've seen him at a bar once, for a grand opening of something, but I don't imagine him walking up to the tender at The Buckhorn or The Oregon Trail and ordering a double Jack Daniel's either.

I was once told by an out-of-state lawyer who had been born in the state but who had moved to Denver after graduating from law school, regarding Wyomingites, that "you have to be tough just to live there".  People who live here probably don't realize that, but there's more than a little truth to it.  I'm often shocked by the appearance of populist legislature Jeanette Ward, as it's so clear she just doesn't belong here.  She's not the kind of gal who would be comfortable sitting next to the ranch girl chewing tobacco who has the "Wrangler Butts Drive Me Nuts" bumper sticker on her pickup truck.6   Gray probably isn't comfortable with such a gal either.  "Tomboys", as they used to be called, are sort of the mean average for Wyoming women.  

Gray is well-educated, of course, which is part of the reason that I suspect a lot of his positions are affectations.  I don't think he really believes the election was stolen, for example, unless he's doing so willfully, which would mean that he really doesn't believe that.  Recently he's taken on the topic of firearms arguing, as part of the State Facilities Commission, that the state needs to open up carrying guns at the capitol, which is frankly absurd.  While I don't know the answer, I suspect that Gray isn't really a firearms' aficionado. 

Up until very recently, Wyomingites knew a lot about the people they sent to the legislature and public office, often knowing them personally to some degree.  We actually knew the Governor and the First Lady on some basis other than politics, quite frequently, and our local reps we knew pretty well.  The populist invasion defeated that to some degree, and in some cases, a great deal.  The question is whether this is permanent, or temporary.  It wasn't until the last election that people looked at Gray's background at all, and they still have very little.  People haven't really grasped until just now that many of the Freedom Caucus are imports, not natives.  We don't know much about some of them or their families, and chances are an average Wyomingite, or at least a long term native, would regard them as odd on some occasions.  Chuck Gray just ran an op ed that was titled something like Only Wyomingites Should Vote In Wyoming's Elections.  Most long term and native born Wyomingites feel that strongly, and wouldn't actually regard a lot of our current office holders as being Wyomingites.

There's evidence that the populist fad is passing. We'll see. This and the 2026 election will be a test of it.  2026 is a long ways off.  For that matter, it's sufficiently long enough for these candidates to evolve if they need to. Some are probably capable of doing that.  Others, undoubtedly not.  The question will be if they need to.

May 11, 2024

It's very clear, to those paying any attention, that Wyoming elected executive branch officials really dislike Chuck Gray, including those who are very conservative.  This became evident again when Superintendant of Education Degenfelder indicated Wyoming would join a Title IX lawsuit in opposition to the Federal Government's new rules on "transgender" atheletes.  Degenfelder indicated that she'd been working behind the scenes with Gov. Gordon on this matter.  In doing so she blasted Gray who earlier made comments wondering where the state's officials were on this matter, even though his office has less than 0 responsiblity in this department.  Degenfelder stated in regard to Gray, "I would encourage Secretary Gray to join those of us actually making plays on the field rather than just heckling from the sidelines".  Gray, who is a Californian who has lived very little of his life in Wyoming save for summers here while growing up, declared in response he was on "Team Wyoming".

FWIW, Wyoming really doesn't need to particpate in lawsuits maintained by other parties, as they're already maintained.

July 8, 2024

Now here's an interesting development. . . 

I may have mentioned on this blog before that I feel Gov. Gordon should consider running, text of the Wyoming Constitution aside, for a third term.  In doing so, if I did (I know that I've discussed with people) I've noted that the Constitutional prohibition on him doing so violates the Wyoming Constitution.

Turns out that I'm not the only one speculating on that.

Chuck Gray Says He Won’t Certify Candidacy If Gordon Seeks 3rd Term

And it turns out that Chuck Gray doesn't like the idea at all.

January 7, 2025

I managed to miss it, but back in November, Brent Bien announced for Governor.

Bien is on the far right, and is a Wyoming native, but he spent 28 years in the Marine Corps before retiring in 2019 and coming back to the state.  This puts him in the camp of far right Republicans in the state who spent their entire working lives drawing on one of richest portions of the government t** while also never actually having to make sure a business actually functioned.  

I've never quite grasped "trust me, I know how run things for the common man. . .I've never actually had to work in a business. . . "

Moreover, Bien was a prime mover on the initiatives that will be on the ballot to cut property taxes 50%, essentially meaning he's backing bankrupting local governments and schools.  So, after living off of taxpayers for his adult life, having retired, with a retirement funded by taxpayers, he doesn't want to pay them himself.

Well, Bien will have competition, as we know.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 70th Edition. Inside Wyoming Political Baseball

March 14, 2025

Cynthia Lummis ‘Gearing Up For Reelection’ To US Senate In 2026


Rob Hendry leads slate in sweep of Natrona County Republican Party leadership

Footnotes

1. There are numerous examples of this, but a really good one is Gordon's effort to buy the UP checkerboard, which the legislature defeated.  It would have been a real boon for the state, but fiscal conservatives just couldn't see it that way.

Recently, Gordon hasn't been shy about vetoing highly unadvised bills that have come out of the legislature, or shutting down bad regulations that come out of the Secretary of State's office.

2.  And not just Gray, Harriet Hageman does as well.

3. Homeschooling, for whatever reason a person does it, can be developmentally limiting.  I don't know about Gray's case, but its notable that some on the far right have done it, as they believe that schools are left wing organs and there are things they don't want their children exposed to them.  The problem this presents is that children who are homeschooled grow up in a very narrow environment, whereas, at least here, those who go to public, and for that matter religious schools, do not.

4. There used to be a school interview of him from the University of Pennsylvania, in which he expressed a desire to become a lawyer.  He's clearly not going to do that now, unless of course his political career ended, which is perfectly possible.

5.  As noted here in prior posts, lying is regarded as a potentially serious sin in Catholicism, and lying about something like who won the 2020 election would be, in some circumstances, a mortal sin if you were a political figure.  

6.  Ward is from Illinois and openly calls herself a political refugee. At the time of moving here, she posted something about her children not having to wear masks in our public schools, adopting the far right wing view that trying to protect others in this fashion is somehow an intrusion on liberty.  I suppose it is, but not relieving yourself in public is as well.  Anyhow, at some point, presuming those children remain in public school, she'll be in for a shock as Casper's schools truly have a really wide demographic and are not exactly made up of an Evangelical populist sample of the population.

March 25, 2025

Hmmm. . . the tide seems to be coming in.

Former Wyoming Legislators Win Big In County Republican Party Elections

March 29, 2025

Donald Trump has endorsed Cynthia Lummis.

April 2, 2025

While a non partisan race, in Wisconsin the liberal Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court prevailed over the Musk backed conservative Republican.

The race was widely regarded as a test of how people are feeling about Trump.

In Florida two Republicans won election in open House seats in heavily Republican districts, but the Democrats did better than expected.  A Democratic victory would have been a huge upset, so in some ways this also showed that people aren't keen on the GOP path.

April 17, 2025

And the race for Governor is sort of on.

Now in the GOP race are two declared candidates, one of whom has filed, Joseph Kibler.  Brent Bien has said he's running as well.

Both are in the far, far, right.  Kibler moved to Wyoming (his wife is from Wyoming) in 2020.  Bien is a Wyoming native, but completed a Marine Corps career and therefore fits into the crowed of Wyoming anti government candidates whose careers were in the government.

Related threads:

Want to Play a Game? Global Trade War Is the New Washington Pastime. Two dozen trade experts gathered recently to simulate how a global trade war would play out. The results were surprisingly optimistic.


Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 70th Edition. Inside Wyoming Political Baseball

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

"The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law."

The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law.

Retired Federal Judge Michael Luttig

There's so much every day that now many people just ignore it.

Trump, who isn't Constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President in the first place, has illegally imposed taxes, something reserved to Congress.  He's either used emergency powers where there is no emergency, or he's actually imposed them where he's not even authorized through an emergency act.

A completely spineless Republican Party is in control of Congress, and therefore nothing is being done about it in that quarter.  

He's ignoring a court order that a prisoner sent to a horrific El Salvadorian prison be returned, using the pretext that fellow traveler Bukele of El Salvador has chosen not to return him, something that I'm confident he could compel to occur.

And that's just a start.

Trump is acting like the Red Caesar desired by an anti democratic element of the far right.  The Courts are stepping up.  Congress needs to as well.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

A Primer, Part 2. How did we reach this lowly, and dangerous state. Soap Poisoning and Grape Nuts. (Written before the election).

We left off the last edition with this:

A warning

And here we get, in a way, to where we are now.

Conservatives in the modern West, and always in the English-speaking West, have democracy as a primary virtue, in spite of being aware that they're never in the majority, although the National Conservative movement, which is reactionary in the true sense of the word (it's reacting to something) is weakening that and looking to a pre Second World War model of European conservatism.

Liberals are always in favor of democracy.

Progressives and Populists really aren't quite often. Sometimes they are, but often they are not.

And Progressives and Populists only are in the forefront of politics in odd, and dangerous, times.

We are in odd and dangerous times.

To put it another way, like Ralphie's dad in A Christmas Story asks about Ralphie's imagined blindness, how did we reach such a lowly state?

Do we have soap poisoning?

Well, sort of.

A little history

We've gone into this before, so we won't belabor it too much, but in large part what we're seeing now is the combined effect of ignoring what was going on in the country on a political and social level.  

As we already noted, populism only rises in strength during times of severe stress. The mere fact that its strong now, and has taken over one of the two parties, means something extremely stressful is going on.  Progressivism is always there in some form, but it rarely takes over either.  The fact that it too is so strong right now indicates something has occured that is fueling it. 

The fact that the two of them are vying for the country right now, and this is going on in other country's as well, means that we are really at some massive tipping point for global politics.

What happened?

Well, we should know. We've been here before.  More than that, Europe has been here before, and gone further down the road than we have.

An American Tale

If we go back to 1900 or so we'll see that Progressives, Populists, Conservatives and Liberals were all significant forces in the US, and in Europe as well.


The 1890s had been extremely strained economically in the 1890s.  Added to that, the late stages of the industrial revolution were taking people off of fields everywhere and putting them in factories, under grim conditions.  Agriculture, which had been the economic backbone of the US, was under severe strain.  Conservatives chalked everything up to the business cycle, which they did not believe should be tinkered with.

This gave rise to the first real liberal movement in the US since the Civil War, although there had been liberals all along.  Calling themselves "Progressives", even though they were not that as we've defined the term, they sought government intervention in the economy to address these ills.  Theodore Roosevelt, in his campaign of 1912, proposed something like Social Security for the first time.  He also proposed treating large corporations as public utilities, a radical, but liberal, proposition.

Progressives of that era were really basically the Socialists. We have a pretty good idea of what they stood for, so we probably don't need to dwell on it. Of note, Progressives of the GOP and Progressive Party, which we've defined as being liberal, campaigned partially on the concept that if they didn't prevail, the Socialist ultimately would.


The Populists, whom as we have noted had their own party at the time, campaigned in 1892 on graduated income tax, a radical proposition in a country that didn't have an established one, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, restrictions on immigration to the United States, and public ownership of railroads and communication lines.  As the country fell into a depression, "free silver" became a bid deal with them.  Some of them fell into radical Anti Catholicism, and some became virulently Anti-Semitic. . . sound familiar?

In 1896 the Populist Party united with the Democratic Party, giving us an example of a movement co-opting an established party which had sympathies with it. The Democrats indeed had a strong populist base in the American South, which had seen populist sympathies from before the Civil War and which retains them to this day. Populist William Jennings Bryan ran as the candidate for both parties, and lost.  He did so again in 1900, although by that time the Populist Party as an independent party was declining both because it had captured the Democratic Party, as because the economic crisis seemed to be passing.

Both parties had learned their lesson from two election in a row. The GOP lurched to the left in 1904 and ran Theodore Roosevelt, a liberal.  Alton Parker's campaign went nowhere.  By 1912, however, the Democrats were running a liberal of their own, Woodrow Wilson.  Populism, except in the South, disappeared in the US as a political force, the stress gone.  Progressivism remained, but very much on the back burner.

Both would be back during the Great Depression.  Populists rose up with figures like Huey P. Long and Fr. Charles Coughlin, both of whom posed a serious threat to Franklin Roosevelt's administration.  Long was ultimately assassinated and Coughlin was silenced by the Catholic Church, but the fact is that populist radicalism was alive and well in the 1930s.

So was Progressivism.

Radical progressives found roles in Roosevelt's Administration, demonstrating one of the weaknesses of both parties in believing that fellow travelers are pretty much just like you.  Mainline Communists, Trotskyites and Socialist all found homes in the numerous agencies created in the 1930s.  Attempts to warn the administration fell on deaf ears until really very late, when at least worried Democrats were able to remove Henry Wallace from FDR's final Presidential ticket.  It wasn't really until the late 1940s when it became clear how deep this had gone, at which time the Democratic Party undertook a monumental effort to hide it, something that they were so successful at that it remains largely unappreciated to this day.

Coming out of World War Two the US had the only industrial economy that hadn't been bombed, and accordingly the country had an extremely good economy from the end of the war into really the very early 1970.  It's interesting that in this period the liberals and conservatives moved very much towards a consensus on things, giving us pretty much what might be regarded as a second Era of Good Feelings.  It would be difficult, really, to hold that Eisenhower's administration was much at odds with Truman's, or Kennedy's.  There were difference, but in that era, which was one of low economic stress, the differences weren't large enough to cause severe distractions, in spite of the dangers of the Cold War.  Populism remained in the American South, but without much influence.  Progressives existed, but not until 1968 did they really start to emerge back to the forefront.

And then things fell apart.

It really started with the Courts, although it was not obvious at first.

American society, and politics, following 1945 moved towards the center, but it was a center left where it moved to.  The two Republican Presidents fo the era, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, would be regarded as being quite liberal today.  Interventions in the economy were accepted.  And brining civil rights to the South, and elsewhere, became a dominant feature of both parties.  Populists, mostly located in the South, were squashed.  Progressives were largely satisfied with the direction of things.   But it all took a lot of court intervention to get things done.

Conservatives and Liberals were fine with this throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and for good reason.  Progress on long dormant things they both agreed upon, such as Civil Rights, was really being made.  But the Courts were, without it really being noticed, drifting increasingly to the left.  At the same time the number of lawyers in the country exploded as the revolution in education following World War Two vastly increased the number of people with university degrees.  Courts, without people really noticing it, began to become effectively a second legislative and second executive branch, without being elected.

Thing began to really fly apart in 1968, as a result of the Vietnam War.  But they came off the rails in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision.  Conservatives suddenly realized that they couldn't be heard on social issues that really mattered anymore.  Liberals went asleep to a large degree because now the Courts were achieving for them tasks that they wanted to, without having to do any work for them.  The political consensus that had dominated the 1945 to 1973 era collapsed.  By 1976 Conservatives were moving steadily to the right, and railing against the courts.

At the same time, Southern Populists were a force in the South, but an ineffective one, throughout the 50s and 60s.  Southern Populism being part of the Democratic Party had initially made sense in the 19th Century, and even as late as Woodrow Wilson's Presidency, but it stopped being natural during the Liberal administration of Theodore Roosevelt.  It was kept together as a marriage of convenience as the Republican Party remained associated with the Southern defeat in the Civil War and the GOP, for its part, remained the party of civil rights into the 50s and 60s.  By 1968 Southern Populists were seething over desegregation and busing.

Rust Belt populism was just beginning to rise.  Solidly Democratic in the 40s, 50s and early 60s, as the economy became more strained in the late 60s and the Democrats moved increasingly to the left, they began to rebel against their party.  It'd grow much worse in the 1970s as the Great Recession started to change American heavy industry forever.

The now more conservative Republican Party was well aware that conservatism in and of itself, while increasingly popular to sections of the electorate, remained in the background enough not to be able to come into power on its own.  People were unhappy with the economy and the distress brought about by inflation, the loss of the Vietnam War and social changes brought about by court action, but they weren't so unhappy that they were willing to take a radically new direction, or they didn't' think they were.  The election of Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford was as much about competence, which Carter proved not to have, as anything else.  Conservative Ronald Reagan, however, saw an opportunity to recruit Rust Belt and Southern Populists into the Republican Party, and did so for his 1980 campaign.

Reagan had the first conservative US administration since Herbert Hoover, but it was never purely so.  Reagan was an actor and a compromiser, who brought in elements that he didn't really believe in so that htey could be used.  Hoover had never done anything like that.  The conservative Republicans thought they could control the imported populsits, and at first they proved correcdt.  Indeed, following Reagan the next two Republicans were more Nixon like than Reagan like.  But the populists having come over, did not leave.

Nor did their concerns get addressed.  By the 1980s the economy was fundamentally changing in the wake of the 70s.  Heavy industry was not returning, "good" blue collar jobs were evaporating.  Ethnic enclaves in urban areas were smashed.  The progressivism of the late 60s and 70s felt free to attack long standing social matters. The liberals in the Democratic Party went to sleep and Democratic politicians appealed increasing to Progressives the way that conservatives had to Populists.

The breaking point proved to be a court decision again, that being the Obergefell decision.  I warned it would have that impact at that time, but it was such a shock to core beliefs of conservatives and populist that a reaction by both was inevitable.  The populists reaction carried along with it rage over a host of issues they'd been ignored on, many of them essentially economic, but some of them social.  Because the social issues were there, conservatives did what they'd been doing since 1980, figure they could simply carry the populist along.  

The 2016 election proved that to be completely incorrect.  Two populists emerged, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.  Election controls built into the Democratic Party's' process kept Sanders from being the Democratic nominee.  No such controls existed in the GOP, and Trump ended up winning the election against Hillary Clinton, and incredibly poor choice for the Democrats, but only through the electoral college. Clinton carried the popular vote.

It was populists, particularly Rust Belt populist, who carried the day for Trump.

Enough of the conservatives remained in the party, and Trump was incompentent enough as a President, that conservatives kept the Trump Presidency from goign full bore populists.  He knows that and his supporters do as well.   A second Trump Presidency will not repeat that.

A European Tale

Giving the European story is more difficult than the American one, as Europe is of course a collection of countries, not one, and each country has its own story.  So we'll do broad generalizations.

Europe, going into the 20th Century, remained more traditional, and hence more conservative, than the United States.  Almost every European country, save for France, had some kind of monarch who at least represented tradition, but who had very limited, if any, powers, save for Austro Hungaria, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, whose monarchs held real power.  The Russian Czar actually held absolute power.  Many countries, however, such as Sweden, had monarchs who had a least some veto type power over their  parliaments.

In this system extremism was bound to rise, but underground.  The more substantial a European monarchy was, the more likely it was to have really radical underground movements which, in the way we are analyzing this, would be termed Progressive.  Imperial Russia had a host of far left Socialist parties.  Germany had a strong radically left Socialist Party.

Other more democratic countries had radical movements as well, but they tended to never get as strong, or they would see their radicalism dissipate if they received voter support.  So, for example, French socialist were elected to power, but they never behaved like a Communist Party once in power.

World War One smashed the old order in Europe.  Democratic countries became more democratic.  Countries with parliamentary democracies began to make their monarchs symbolic or eliminate them altogether.  Monarchs in Austro Hungary, Germany, Russia, Finland (which had just become independent) and Turkey were tossed out, with the Russian one and his family losing tehir lives.  

The 1920s accordingly saw struggles between liberalism and conservatism all over Europe, and in the most stressed countries, a type of populism and progressivism enter the mix as well, sometimes as arm contestants for the future of the country.  The Russian Revolution can be seen as a contest between liberals and conservatives as allies, against progressives as enemies, with the radical left winning.  The Russian Civil War can be seen as a contest between Progressives and Populists as allies, against Conservatives.  Weimar Germany saw endless contests between Liberals and Conservatives, with Populists being the allies of extremists on the right and the left, giving their support to the KDP and the NASDP.

All of that, of course, gave rise to Communism, Nazism, and FAscism, which in turn gave rise to the Second World War.  

World War Two, like World War One, smashed the existing order and saw the triumph of Liberalism in the West.  Communism, won in the East, of course, but not in the same fashion.  Like in the US, the post war free European states were very much consensus oriented and remained so even after the stress of 1968.  AFter the Cold WAr, however, all European states began to see some of the same economic issues, and cultural issues, that had arisen in the United STates rise in Europe.  Some of the state accordingly began to fall into extremism.  Russia retreated into a weird sort of conservative imperialism that recalled its pre World War One status, but without a Romanov.  Putin became the new imperial head.  Hungary outwardly abandoned liberal democracy in favor of illiberal democracy.  Poland teetered on the edge of liberal and illiberal democracy.  Ukraine went for the long pass of liberal democracy.

And now we have a war in the former Russian Empire over the question.

Grape Nuts.



And in the US, we're about to have an election over it.  

Unfortunately, that election will feature only two parties, and in one of them the ancient candidate feels he must take input from progressives in his party. The other party's candidate is an ancient narcissistic oddball who tells populists what they want to hear, and who feeds from them in an application of the Führerprinzip.  

This is not good, to say the least.

The Democrats, of course, retain liberals in their party still.  The progressives are few, but influential.  The Republicans retain conservatives, but hey'v ebeen largely silenced and castrated.  The GOP is the populist party.

Part of the reason we're where we are is due to a poverty of parties, and language.  Populists have never been conservatives, and they aren't now.  But they think they are.  Progressives aren't liberals, but liberals don't really understand the extent to which that's not true.

Grape Nuts aren't made of grapes. . . but there's probably a lot of people who think they are.

Last prior edition:

A Primer, Part I. Populists ain't Conservatives, and LIberals ain't Progressives. How inaccurate terminology is warping our political perceptions.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Monday, March 19, 1945. The Nero Decree.

Hitler issued the Nero Decree, which stated:

I. Hitler’s Order of March 19, 1945

RE: Destruction Measures within Reich Territory

Our nation’s struggle for existence forces us to utilize all means, even within Reich territory, to weaken the fighting power of our enemy and to prevent further advances. Any opportunity to inflict lasting damage on the striking power of the enemy must be taken advantage of. It is a mistake to believe that undestroyed or only temporarily paralyzed traffic, communications, industrial, and supply installations will be useful to us again after the recapture of lost territories. During his retreat, the enemy will leave behind only scorched earth and will abandon all concern for the population.

I therefore command

1. All military traffic, communications, industrial and supply installations as well as objects within Reich territory that might be used by the enemy in the continuation of his fight, either now or later, are to be destroyed.

2. It is the responsibility of the military command posts to execute this order to destroy all military objects, including traffic and communications installations.

The Gauleiters and Commissioners for Reich Defense are responsible for destroying the industrial and supply installations, as well as of other objects of valuable; the troops must give the Gauleiters and Commissioners for Reich Defense the assistance they need to carry out this task.

3. This command is to be transmitted to all troop commanders as promptly as possible; orders to the contrary are null and void.

Adolf Hitler

Albert Speer and various officers of the Wehrmacht conspired against its implementation.

Ostensibly a war measure, at this point in the war Hitler was lashing out against the German people themselves, whom he was punishing for, in his mind, having failed him by losing the war, something he now clearly knew had occurred.  

Also at this point, internal German attitudes were rapidly changing.  While still fighting in the field, German troops were now surrendering in large numbers to the Western Allies, rather than die in the final weeks of the war.  German commanders, including some in the SS, were seeking to make back deals with the Western Allies, unsuccessfully, and without Hitler's knowledge.  Some were preparing for their own post war futures.  Members of the German government and military were starting to conspire to save what they could.

Again, there's a lesson here.  Hitler was a populist politician who had risen to power backed by lies.  His policies inevitably lead Germany to shame and ruin.  Rather than resign when things turned bad, he hung on, supported by fanatic supporters, and in the end sought to destroy the very country he claimed to represent.

All U-boats in the Baltic were transferred to the west.

The British Indian Army took Mandalay.

The USS Franklin was hit by kamikazes and badly damaged.


724 men were killed and 265 wounded.   Captain Gehres regarded those who had jumped into the sea during the event as having acted improperly, leading to post incident tension and ultimately his relief. She'd return to service and was ultimately stricken in 1964.

The Soviet Union notified Turkey that their non aggression pact would not be renewed after it expired in November.  It demanded territorial concessions from Turkey, which Turkey rejected.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 18, 1945 Landings in the Philippines, the largest air attack on Berlin.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

The Populist Far Right and their goal to touch Social Security.

 


Eh?

I know, you're thinking, I voted for Don Trump and I sure didn't vote to eliminate retirement.

Well, first of all, Donny isn't exactly dialed in most of the time.  He's out golfing.  

That he wouldn't be dialed was obvious to those who had eyes to see.  And likewise was that the Project 2025 cabal would be running the show.

Barely noticed in all of this are the statements by far right punditry that are outright hostile to retirement, but they're there.  Comments about how "nobody should retire".  Not there?  Consider this:

And let's be real about this - it's insane that we haven't raised the retirement age in the United States. It's totally crazy. Joe Biden -- if that were the case, Joe Biden should not be running for president. OK? Joe Biden is 81 years old. The retirement age in the United States, at which you start to receive Social Security and you are eligible for Medicare, is 65. Joe Biden has technically been eligible for Social Security and Medicare for 16 years, and he wants to continue in office until he is 86, which is 19 years past when he would be eligible for retirement. No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old. Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem. Everybody that I know who is -- who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years. And if you talk to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, things go to hell in a handbasket real quick.

Ben Shapiro.

Now, Shapiro was largely populist babbling, so there's an extra element of stupidity in what he said.  In the Trump era, saying really stupid stuff as a populist has become almost mandatory for that class.  But is there something to what Shapiro said?

Well yes and no.

On the yes side, a fair number of men in particular become their jobs, their souls basically a burnt out husk with nothing left, and they slip into missing their job or depression  It happens.

But like the polls that deal with lawyers who hate practicing law (a surprisingly high percentage), I suspect the figure are weighted towards confirmation bias.

Lots of people retire and love it.  

And exactly what retirement is, isn't the same for everyone.  By retirement, what quite a few people actually have is time to devote to something else they've always wanted to, but couldn't.

And that gets to this.  The current crop of Cultural Calvinists don't like the concept of retirement, as all they value in the world is work. That's it.  Work makes them part of the Elect and without work, they'd have to be human beings.  They don't want that.

So they're attacking retirement itself.  

It'll be hard to pull that off, so what they'll do is push the retirement age up closer to death.  Project 2025 would like the "full" Social Security age to be 69, up two from 67, which was up two from 65.  At some point they'll start moving the bottom age upwards.  And their argument, which at least makes fiscal sense, is that this is necessary to save the fund.

My guess is that within a decade the full will be 70, and the lower something like 67.

The dirty little secret, however, is that starting in a person's late 50s, an increasingly number simply can't carry on at work.  The average retirement age in the US right now falls between 61 and 64, with layoffs and health playing into that.

And a good argument can be made that for some jobs, those requiring a license, the retirement age really ought to be something like 60.

Thursday, March 12, 1925. Passing of Sun Yat-sen. British rejection of the Geneva Protocol.

Sun Yat-sen died at age 58.

The British government rejected the Geneva Protocol on the basis that the lack of US participating in the League of Nations rendered the Protocol unenforceable.

It's interesting that while the US had competent leadership at the time, as opposed to the rampaging buffoons who govern it now, the isolationist mallogic was strong at the time, helping to doom the world to a Second World War.

The Nazi stand in Großdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft disbanded in favor of the Nazis, with its populist members folding right back in.

Yes, populists.  The Nazi Party was a populist right wing party.

Retired General W. R. E. Murphy, Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, launched overnight raids on all of the brothels ("Kip-Houses") in the Irish capital signalling the end of the tolerance of prostitution.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 11, 1925. Private manufacture of arms.

Sunday, March 2, 2025

The week of February 23, 2025. The week the US became Brazil.

J. D. Vance boring Peru, Tuvalu,  and Kiribati while the adult nations meet elsewhere.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

This last week saw the conclusion of existential shift in the United States.  The country went from being a great nation, albeit with greatness foisted upon it due to World War One, World War Two and the Cold War, to becoming a second rate regional power hated by its neighbors and regarded as an also ran by the rest of the world.

Basically, since November, and concluding last week, we went from being what the country was following World War Two, to Brazil.

The concluding act was Donald Trump, whom the nation is pretending to be President, berating a heroic embattled President of a heroic embattled nation.  At that point, every head of state around the globe just switched the senile narcissist developer off.  He showed himself to be stupid and by extension, showed the US to be worshipping stupidity. 

Why would anyone care what we think.

In the next few days the act will play itself out.  The US will impose tariffs on our neighbors and sink into a recession that will last a decade or more.  We'll be lucky if it isn't a depression. This assumes, of course, that we're nto at war with China within a year and a half.  If that occurs, we'll fight it, and lose, on our own.  Our former allies have written us off all over the globe, and for good reason.  As an importing nation, we're about to find out economically that we just slit our wrists and everyone is going to let us bleed out.

And they should.

The decline of the US was perhaps inevitable.  Americans, and its Americans, not their government, have never figured out how to live within their budgets.  Government wise, we ran a big government from 1932 on, but always had a hard time balancing it.  We went off the charts thsi way in the first Trump administration, with the country lead by a stupid man who never had to live wthin his own budget.  The country, which has always had a strong element of anti intellectualism as Richard Hofstadter well explored in his published in 1963 Pulitzer Prize winning book on the topic in which he concluded  both anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism were in part consequences of the democratization of knowledge but also embedded in America's national fabric as a result of its colonial and evangelical Protestant heritage. He believe,d and we've recently discussed, that Evangelical American Protestantism's anti-intellectual tradition valued the spirit over intellectual rigor.  In the turbulent times that have come from 1963, that's festered and become a near worship of ignorance over science, something that the Reagan Administration's abandonment of science fostered.

But its also the case that being ain international power is expensive and nobody has been able to maintain a singular global status forever.  The British run of it, for example, was much shorter than generally imagined. So was Spain's.  The Japanese effort barely got off the ground bfore it collapsed.  So our 1945 to 2025 run probably was a good run.

But it didn't need to end this way, with the nation collapsing as an international joke.

Some nations have come to this point and managed to transition with dignity.  The United Kingdom particularly did, realizing after the failed 1958 Suez Canal intervention that it could no longer hold on it its empire.  It simply announced the arrival of The Winds of Change and worked with those winds.  In the 1960s the United Kingdom was still a major colonial power. By the 1970s it no longer was, and was then a European power.  Today, it's one of the leading European nations.

A former British colony, however, provides a contrary example.  Unable to accept those winds, Rhodesia chose to stand against them and declared itself independent and unyielding to change.  Change was violently foisted upon it, giving us the mess of Zimbabwe today.

France may really provide the example we need to consider.

In the 1930s France was a political mess and appeared to be teetering on the edge of taking the same path that Spain had, a civil war between a strong left and a strong right.  World War Two interrupted that, but it also temporarily completed it, throwing the government to the far right autocracy of Marshall Petain.

France from 1940 to 1944 was not the every Frenchman in the Resistance nation that France and Hogan's Heroes pretended existed by any means.  A huge percentage of the French were comfortable with a new France that replaced "liberty, equality  and fraternity" with "work, family, and country".  Petain was, in significant ways, what Franco also was, an earlier version of National Conservative.  He was also, and this should not be forgotten, part of an elected government that even the Socialist who remained supported.

Not all Frenchmen supported the rightest government, of course, and as the months rolled by, and it was a mere matter of months, World War Two for France became a French civil war.  After June 6, 1944, and then after World War Two itself, Franch struggled with what it was to become and made a desperate effort to hang on to its empire, failing first in Indochina and then in Algeria.  France was lucky to have Charles de Gaulle, heroic, haughty, deeply Catholic and committed to democracy.  De Gaulle saved France, but huge elements of French society, particularly within the military, were opposed to his agreeing to dismantle the remaining parts of the empire and become, once again, a major European country.  De Gaulle and French democracy barely survived.

We're effectively in the same position these countries were after World War Two. And indeed, there were things to address.  The United States acclimated itself to running huge deficits and the last two chief executives, Biden and Trump, or rather Trump, Biden, and Trump again, vastly accelerated out of control spending.  The US remains a powerful global power, but this would have resulted in some reckoning sooner or later.  The American public has become poorly educated in many was post Ronald Reagan, and it no longer grasps why the US should be a world power.  Basically, Americans are like the French of the Vichy era, folding in on themselves into work, family, and love of a country that doesn't have to deal, they think, with anyone else.

National Conservatism, which will follow Trump's demise will fail. The US won't convert itself into isolated mythical kingdom, and it won't enjoy being the temporarily biggest bully on the block.  The real question is whether or not it will enjoy being Brazil.

Trump's stupidity and lack of releavant experience has caused the United States to be removed to the children's table.  The opinions of the country no longer matter on the global stage.

And honestly, some of this will be a good thing, while much will be bad.  While the US has been a major force for democracy and good in the world since the Second World War, starting with the Trumpist decline in the Republican Party, suppressed elements of real ignorance have been harming the world, chief among them being a stubborn refusal to recognize that the fossil fuel era needs to change, and quickly.  We've been, essentially, like China in that regard.

Now with the Western World's axis shifted back to Europe, with Canada and the other English speaking nations with it, the US will have to change, and quickly.  A blistering sense of arrogance and ignorance that has come to define Americans in recent years will have no currency and will not be tolerated. We'll be told what to do, and like it.

All empires fall. Some fall into stupidity.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

The best entries of this sad week:

We started to look into the elements that have caused Americans in this era to worship the rich and reject knowledge, and started with this one.

What's wrong with the United States? The Protestant Work Ethic.


We also looked back on an event from when we were a great nations.


What were the Trumps doing in the war. . . . well not fighting.

We posted one we thought would be controversial, but which received very little attention.


We also looked at another source of our ignorance and arrogance.


We reminded people that all of this is happening under a man who isn't even the President, he can't legally qualify to be that, but who has no mandate at all.



We also revived our warning that Christians in general are going to take a lot of this on the chin.






We concluded our first entry on wars for 2025 with Trump's petulant childish tantrum, which is basically where this thread starts.

Last edition:

Best Posts of the Week of February 16, 2025.