John M. Crisp: 3 predictions for an unpredictable era

I've predicted #3 here.  No. 1 I hadn't thought of myself, but it really scares me.  No. 2 I think un likely.

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 12. Don't look . . . everything's just fine edition.

 

November 25, 2025.

The consolidation of the meat packing industry, which we've long complained about here, hits home, again:

Wyoming Cattle Ranchers Say Nebraska Plant Closure Is A Sign Of Deeper Problems

And the Federal Government gives a boost to the technology that's going to 1) take all our jobs, and 2), kill us.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose.  From the founding of our Republic, scientific discovery and technological innovation have driven American progress and prosperity.  Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth.  To that end, my Administration has taken a number of actions to win that race, including issuing multiple Executive Orders and implementing America’s AI Action Plan, which recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement.  In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.

This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.  The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.  The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.  We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.  The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership.

Sec. 2.  Establishment of the Genesis Mission.  (a)  There is hereby established the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.

(b)  The Secretary of Energy (Secretary) shall be responsible for implementing the Mission within DOE, consistent with the provisions of this order, including, as appropriate and authorized by law, setting priorities and ensuring that all DOE resources used for elements of the Mission are integrated into a secure, unified platform.  The Secretary may designate a senior political appointee to oversee day-to-day operations of the Mission.

(c)  The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) shall provide general leadership of the Mission, including coordination of participating executive departments and agencies (agencies) through the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the issuance of guidance to ensure that the Mission is aligned with national objectives.

Sec. 3.  Operation of the American Science and Security Platform.  

(a)  The Secretary shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing, in an integrated manner and to the maximum extent practicable and consistent with law:

(i)    high-performance computing resources, including DOE national laboratory supercomputers and secure cloud-based AI computing environments, capable of supporting large-scale model training, simulation, and inference;

(ii)   AI modeling and analysis frameworks, including AI agents to explore design spaces, evaluate experimental outcomes, and automate workflows;

(iii)  computational tools, including AI-enabled predictive models, simulation models, and design optimization tools;

(iv)   domain-specific foundation models across the range of scientific domains covered;

(v)    secure access to appropriate datasets, including proprietary, federally curated, and open scientific datasets, in addition to synthetic data generated through DOE computing resources, consistent with applicable law; applicable classification, privacy, and intellectual property protections; and Federal data-access and data-management standards; and

(vi)   experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.

(b)  The Secretary shall take necessary steps to ensure that the Platform is operated in a manner that meets security requirements consistent with its national security and competitiveness mission, including applicable classification, supply chain security, and Federal cybersecurity standards and best practices.

(c)  Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify Federal computing, storage, and networking resources available to support the Mission, including both DOE on-premises and cloud-based high-performance computing systems, and resources available through industry partners.  The Secretary shall also identify any additional partnerships or infrastructure enhancements that could support the computational foundation for the Platform.

(d)  Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall:

(i)   identify a set of initial data and model assets for use in the Mission, including digitization, standardization, metadata, and provenance tracking; and

(ii)  develop a plan, with appropriate risk-based cybersecurity measures, for incorporating datasets from federally funded research, other agencies, academic institutions, and approved private-sector partners, as appropriate.

(e)  Within 240 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall review capabilities across the DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities for robotic laboratories and production facilities with the ability to engage in AI-directed experimentation and manufacturing, including automated and AI-augmented workflows and the related technical and operational standards needed.

(f)  Within 270 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall, consistent with applicable law and subject to available appropriations, seek to demonstrate an initial operating capability of the Platform for at least one of the national science and technology challenges identified pursuant to section 4 of this order.

Sec. 4.  Identification of National Science and Technology Challenges.  

(a)  Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify and submit to the APST a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains consistent with National Science and Technology Memorandum 2 of September 23, 2025, including:

(i)    advanced manufacturing;

(ii)   biotechnology;

(iii)  critical materials;

(iv)   nuclear fission and fusion energy;

(v)    quantum information science; and

(vi)   semiconductors and microelectronics.

(b)  Within 30 days of submission of the list described in subsection (a) of this section, the APST shall review the proposed list and, working with participating agency members of the NSTC, coordinate the development of an expanded list that can serve as the initial set of national science and technology challenges to be addressed by the Mission, including additional challenges proposed by participating agencies through the NSTC, subject to available appropriations.

(c)  Following development of the expanded list described in subsection (b) of this section, agencies participating in the Mission shall use the Platform to advance research and development aligned with the national science and technology challenges identified in the expanded list, consistent with applicable law and their respective missions, and subject to available appropriations.

(d)  On an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall review and update the list of challenges in consultation with the APST and the NSTC to reflect progress achieved, emerging national needs, and alignment with my Administration’s research and development priorities.

Sec. 5.  Interagency Coordination and External Engagement.  

(a)  The APST, through the NSTC, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies to:

(i)    assist participating agencies in aligning, to the extent permitted by law, their AI-related programs, datasets, and research and development activities with the objectives of the Mission in their respective areas of expertise, while avoiding duplication of effort across the Federal Government and promoting interoperability;

(ii)   identify data sources that may support the Mission’s aim;

(iii)  develop a process and resourcing plan in coordination with participating agencies for integrating appropriate and available agency data and infrastructure into the Mission, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, including methods under which all agencies contributing to the Mission are encouraged to implement appropriate risk-based security measures that reflect cybersecurity best practices;

(iv)   launch coordinated funding opportunities or prize competitions across participating agencies, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, to incentivize private-sector participation in AI-driven scientific research aligned with Mission objectives; and

(v)    establish mechanisms to coordinate research and development funding opportunities and experimental resources across participating agencies, ensuring agencies can participate effectively in the Mission.

(b)  The APST shall coordinate with relevant agencies in establishing, consistent with existing authorizing statutes and subject to available appropriations, competitive programs for research fellowships, internships, and apprenticeships focused on the application of AI to scientific domains identified as national challenges for the Mission, to include placement of program participants at DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities, with the purpose of providing access to the Platform and training in AI-enabled scientific discovery.

(c)  The Secretary, in coordination with the APST and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, shall establish mechanisms for agency collaboration with external partners possessing advanced AI, data, or computing capabilities or scientific domain expertise, including through cooperative research and development agreements, user facility partnerships, or other appropriate arrangements with external entities to support and enhance the activities of the Mission, and shall ensure that such partnerships are structured to preserve the security of Federal research assets and maximize public benefit.  To facilitate these collaborations, the Secretary shall:

(i)    develop standardized partnership frameworks, including cooperative research and development or other appropriate agreements, and data-use and model‑sharing agreements;

(ii)   establish clear policies for ownership, licensing, trade-secret protections, and commercialization of intellectual property developed under the Mission, including innovations arising from AI-directed experiments;

(iii)  implement uniform and stringent data access and management processes and cybersecurity standards for non-Federal collaborators accessing datasets, models, and computing environments, including measures requiring compliance with classification, privacy, and export-control requirements, as well as other applicable laws; and

(iv)   establish procedures to ensure the highest standards of vetting and authorization of users and collaborators seeking access to the resources of the Mission and associated research activities, including the Platform and associated Federal research resources.

(d)  The APST, through the NSTC, shall, to the extent appropriate, identify opportunities for international scientific collaboration to support activities under the Mission.

Sec. 6.  Evaluation and Reporting.  

(a)  Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing:

(i)    the Platform’s operational status and capabilities;

(ii)   progress toward integration across DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research partners, including shared access to computing resources, data infrastructure, and research facilities;

(iii)  the status of user engagement, including participation of student researchers and any related training;

(iv)   updates on research efforts and outcomes achieved, including measurable scientific advances, publications, and prototype technologies;

(v)    the scope and outcomes of public-private partnerships, including collaborative research projects and any technology transitions or commercialization activities; and

(vi)   any identified needs or recommendations for authorities or interagency support to achieve the Mission’s objectives.

Sec. 7.  General Provisions.  

(a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d)  The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Energy.

                            DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    November 24, 2025.

$$$

Related threads:

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The Pandemic and Food, Part Three. A Good, Affordable, Steak

Ranchers Form Co-Op to Address Meat Processing Bottleneck

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (c). The Economy again. . . Agriculture

The Wyoming Economy. Looking at it in a different way.

Supply Chain Disruption and Other Economic Problems

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 11. The blistering ignorance edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, Carpetbaggers, Chuck Gray, Diaper baby, Economics, Education, Ignorance, National Outdoor Leadership School, Nuclear power, Wyoming (Bar Nunn), Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Arches.

Sigh. . . 

White House fires arts commission expected to review Trump construction projects

The move comes as President Donald Trump pursues efforts to build a White House ballroom and a triumphal arch in Washington.

So, if you've been distracted or are just sick of reading stories about the toddler in the White House, here's what this is about:

What we know about White House plans for an 'Arc de Trump'

The BBC article discounts Trump's ability to get this thing built, but that was penned before Trump showed that he'll just ignore the law in this area, as with everything else.

The United States needs a triumphal arch about as much as it needs to build its own version fo the Brandenburg Gate, which we should have blown to bit at the end of World War Two.  At least its not as butt ugly as McCreery's gigantic garden shed that will be a temporary "ballroom" attached to the White House.  That will get partially constructed and then ripped down, to be followed soon after by:

Did you work on illegal White House construction projects?  You were likely exposed to asbestos and should sue the ass of off Donald Trump, call . . . 

Anyhow, Triumphal Arches date back at least to the Romans, and they're particularly associated with them.  The gigantic one in Paris, the Arch de Triomphe, we can blame on Napoleon whom, we should remember was deposed by a coalition of non wacky powers in the 19th Century and sent to die on Elba, where he was likely poisoned.

Triumphal Arches have been emulated ever since the Romans built them, and they appear in many countries.  They are particularly associated with autocratic powers, which suffer from knowing they aren't worthy and therefore try to monument themselves into worthiness, but there are some in democratic states including in the U.S.

There's probably a smaller chance that construction gets started on this before Trump leaves office or collapse in his Happy Meal while babbling, but again, getting it rolling wouldn't be too surprising.  Keeping it up? That's another matter.

I give the White House Garden Shed about an 80% chance of being torn down.  If an arch goes up, I'd give it about a 40% chance.

A 2026 Election Storm Warning.

Donald Trump attempted to steal the 2020 Presidential Election and failed.  Having won the 2024 election, he's now working on stealing the 2026 mid terms.

The 2026 election will be the critical one.  Republicans are going to try to use everything they can think of, legitimately, nad illegitimately, to control the outcome of the 2026 midterms.  If they fail, they'll refuse to accept the results.

The 2026 election may well prove to be the election that breaks the republic.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 106th Edition A series of Zeitgeist predictions about New York City.

Mamdani is obviously going to win.

Republicans will freak out.  

Mike "Smarmy Smile" Johnson will be in full bullshit mode for weeks.  "I'm not keeping the House in perpetual recess because I'm afraid of the Epstein files but because a Communist Marxist Islamist has been elected to Mayor in New York and that means that we can't look at the Epstein files".  

Trump will wax poetic, "My Mommy, that's what I call him, mommy. . . I loved my mommy, she was from Scotland, where they invented golf.  Are we in Mar A Lago, no, well, the Communists, Marxists, Monarchical Islamist don't want me to build a ballroom, that's because they can't dance and their legs are thin. The Wonderful thing about Tiggers is Tiggers are wonderful things tops are made out of rubber their bottoms are made out of springs Their bouncey, trouncey, ouncey, pouncey fun, fun, fun, fun, fun But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one. Tiggers are cuddily fellows Tiggers are awfully sweet everyone el'es is jealous That's why I repeat and repeat The wonderful thing about Tiggers Is Tiggers are marvelous chaps They're loaded with vim and vigor they love to leap in your laps They're jumpy, bumpy, clumpy, thumpy fun fun fun fun fun But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers Is I'm the only one I-I-I'm the only...-oof Ouch.  I've decided to kill the entire population of South America. . . "

John Thune will say something, with an earnest looking John Barrasso behind him, but nobody will remember what it was, as nobody was paying attention to him to start with.

And then a weird thing will happen.

Mamdani will probably govern more or less from the center, as he'll have to, which is likely to make his administration a success.

Which is the biggest Republican nightmare of all.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 105th Edition. What's up with the rush on the White House?

Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2025 White House Vandalization, Architecture, Catholic, Christianity, Democratic Party, Illiberal Democracy, National Conservatism, The Second Trump Administration, Vandals, Washington DC, Wyoming, Zeitgeist

An East Wing Post Mortem.

 

Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception.

I've never seen the East Wing of the White House, and of course, now, I never will.  I have very little, as in no, interest in touring Washington D.C. and  have even less interest than that now that the illegitimate Trump gang of insurrectionist is occupying the nation's capital.  

This has been a very revealing series of events however, and we can take some things away from it.

The first thing we have learned is how utterly desperate Donald Trump is to amount to something.  He started too late in life and his character is too fixed in order to achieve that, absent late in life inspiration of an existential type which would require him to make a profound change in his behavior.  Born into wealth and a playboy by character, he's desperately trying to buy and build himself into seriousness and relevance.  In the back of his mind, or frankly maybe in the forefront, he knows that he's a fart in a windstorm.  After he's out of office, and no amount of far right fantasizing is going to keep him there, his successor, right or left, will begin the process of trying to repair the damage Trump has done.  If its a right wing leader, like wannabe NatCon J. D. Vance, it'll be National Conservative far right, but less insane than Trump.  It probably won't be Vance however, but somebody from the political center, particularly if the Democrats get their act together and dump their own wackadoodle far left, which there are signs they will, or from the actual libertarian populist right.

My prediction, early though it is, is that the next President will be Tammy Duckworth, maybe on a Duckworth Klobuchar ticket.  I can see, however, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul taking a run at Vance's dreams and keeping them from happening.

Vance would keep the Trump monument to himself up and pretend to like it, as he only is where he is now due to Trump, but as soon as somebody who wasn't a Trump sycophant is in the Oval Office, it's coming down.  That will be symbolic of the entire Trump legacy, destruction that will ultimately come down, and have to be rebuilt.

Trump want to see himself as a great man, a sort of Napoleon being crowned, but knows that he's more like Napoleon on Elba.  He's not going to get there.  He's really extremely pathetic.

Also sad is the degree to which it has been demonstrated that a life of extreme wealth is corrosive.  Trump's entire life of largess already showed this, but he really does believe that the White House needs a huge overblown rushed ballroom as he's seen those of failed monarchies in Europe.  The republics, or in one case dictatorship, that inherited that stuff still uses it as it's a human instinct not to rip things down.  That's why the Brandenburg Gate, which should have been blown to rubble in 1945, is still standing.  Yes, it's a monument to German militarism, but it's big and already there so we keep it around.  That's the reason the Eiffel Tower is there, even though its a giant ugly radio tower, or why the "egg beater" thing in Casper Wyoming is still there.  We just can't bring ourselves to rip things down, no matter hideos they are, or how symbolically problematic.

The egg beater in Casper Wyoming.  It's ugly.

This will come down.

It'll come down in part as it just won't work with an 18th Century large house built on a budget.  It wasn't constructed to be a palace, but just a big house.

Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps the West Wing, after actually going through the proper process, ought to be taken out as well.

No attachments to the structure are really consistent with its original concept.  It isn't supposed to have a lot of offices and the entire concept of the First Lady needing room for anything is absurd.  The First Lady is simply the President's wife, or Trump's case in regard to the monarchical role to which he aspires, the current concubine, or in the American Civil Religion context, his current wife. 

Maybe it ought to be just scaled back to its original footprint.

Some would object that that would mean that it wouldn't have enough room for its purpose Well, No. 10 Downing Street has less room than the White House.  And if more space is really needed, they can find it somewhere else in Washington D.C.  Nixon actually did that with the nearby Eisenhower Building.

The White House in 1846, when it was first photographed.

Restoring the White House back to scale would also be symbolic.  The entire office of the Presidency needs to be restored to scale.  Right now, Trump is in fact ruling as a dictator, with the complicitly of the Dixiecrat Party that has taken over the GOP.  That needs to end, and end to an enormous degree.

The drift towards an imperial presidency started with Theodore Roosevelt, who is a person I admire, but whom I admire more than I once did.  TR, like Trump, tended to act unilaterally, the difference being that Roosevelt was a profoundly intelligent and moral man, where as the opposite is true of Trump.  The East Wing started off in his administration as the fairly modest East Terrace, which looked nice and wasn't an overblown Sun King structure like the proposed ballroom will be, but it nonetheless got the modification trend rolling.

It would be TR's cousin Franklin that really got the modern Presidency established, however, and that due to the emergency of the Great Depression and World War Two.  Franklin Roosevelt did not rule as a dictator, although people liked to accuse him of that at the time.  Ironically, a President that the Republicans hate to this very day is the one, in some ways, that Trump has tried to emulate, even to the extent of wishing for a third term, which he cannot legally occupy.  Franklin, of course, redid the East Wing, which was done in part due to the bomb shelter that was constructed underneath  it.

The West Wing also dates back to TR's time in the White House with the construction of what was supposed to be a temporary structure.  That structure was expanded in 1909 and ultimately came to be the White House office space.  I don't doubt that they need office space, but as noted, maybe it can just be somewhere else.

And in fact, for the most part, it should be.

Taft family milk cow Pauline Wayne, one of two milk cows the Tafts kept and allowed to freely roam the White House grounds. What is now known as the Eisenhower building is in the background.  This is as things should be.

Storm Warning.

Two things.

The government is likely to shut down this week as the Democrats have actually grown tired of giving the Trump Party a blank check.

Yes, it'll be a disaster.

Yes, Trump will run around firing people, as that's all he can do.

Yes, the Wyoming Congressional set will howl that it's all the Democrats fault.

It needs to happen anyhow.

Secondly, Pete Hegseth is summoning flag officers to D.C. for some reason. Current scuttlebutt is that he's going to give him a pep talk on the Warrior Ethos, which will cost a government that's massively in debt millions of dollars.

If they haven't bought off on Pete Hegseth's Storm of Steel already, they're not going to via a pep talk.

Frankly, I don't buy that this is what he's going to do.  I think he's going to do something else.  Perhaps announce that he's expelling women and homosexuals from the military, or perhaps do something deeply anti democratic that will be super dangerous for the republic.  

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fourth Edition.

August 11, 2025

One of the really nutty things about the Second Trump Administration are the nuts who work for it, of which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is probably the nuttiest.

My vision that is every American is wearing a wearable within four years.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

If a Democrat had said that, the Republicans would come unglued.

cont:

We’re going to make DC beautiful..You see what we've done at the White House. I do that in my part time because it's a natural instinct as a real estate person. I like fixing things up.

Trump on calling the Guard up in D.C. and taking over the police force. 

August 13, 2025

The man who fired more than 180 shots at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was trying to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines according to authorities.

How does this relate to this topic.

COVID-19 vaccines are safe, as are the overwhelming majority of vaccines, but the populist right is anti scientific and the Trump administration has bought into far right fantasies and fueled them, as evidenced by the fact that RFK, Jr. actually has a job in the administration.

More violence by deluded wackos is a certainty.

And then, there's this.

King Donald, twice in the past few days, said he was meeting Putin in Russia, which of course he isn't.  And now this:

St. Petersburg, which was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great.  Peter the Great wasn't a big fan of Russians, just as Frederick the Great didn't really like Germans, and so the city wasn't given a Russian name.  It was later renamed Petrograd, however. Then with the Communist came in and Lenin died, they renamed it Leningrad.  In 1991 it's name was restored to St. Petersburg.

Not that Trump could be expected to know something from 34 years ago. . . .

Anyhow, this does give us a good reason to bring out the Leningrad Cowboys.

August 16, 2025

This:

Russo Ukrainian War

Trump files all the way from Washington D.C.

Putin all the way from Moscow.

Conference already over, and we still have a war.

Is there somebody who actually still takes this clown's promises seriously?

Some history (not that Trump would appreciate it).

New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the end of the Russo Japanese War, from the US, from August 9, 1905, through August 30, 1905.

But then, Roosevelt was a genuine article.

So, Trump flies all day to Alaska to a U.S. Air Force Base which has to prepare for his, and Putin's arrival.

Putin flies all day to Anchorage as well.

They meet for four hours, and Trump then talks to the press about "Vladimir" saying this or that.

A person would have to be intensely stupid to believe that a four hour meeting was going to accomplish anything.  Of course, nothing was going to happen without a Ukrainian delegate being there.

Trump is now well.  25th Amendment now.

August 17, 2025

A Trump tweet would appear to place Trump pathetically fully in the Putin camp today:

Basically this means Ukraine can end the war by surrendering, to the extent its capable of being deciphered.  

If Trump was a drinking man, which he's not, this would look like a drunk tweet.

August 18, 2025

One thing we've learned from the Trump meeting with Putin is how massively weak as a character he really is, and how extremely insecure he is.

It was obvious going into it that welcoming Putin to U.S. soil was a mistake, but Trump disregarded any counsel other than his own and looked like a gleeful little boy when Putin showed up. Putin shoved him around like a weakling and the meeting ended a couple of hours later, and ever since then Trump's been trying to figure out what to do, having landed, finally, on just agreeing to demand what Putin insisted he did.

When negotiations with the North Vietnamese broke down in Paris, which took months, not hours, Nixon ordered the resumption of B-52 strikes.  Nixon, who wasn't generally admirable, but who looks better all the time in comparison to Trump, wasn't a weakling.

Donny, it turns out, really is.  He's pathetic, in the true sense of the world.  Demanding attention, demanding love, and have petulant fits when he doesn't get it.  He is truly childish.

A situation a declining mental state doesn't help at all.

August 19, 2025

Now King Donny wants to do away with voting machines and mail in ballots.

This may be a "don't ask about the Epstein Files" distaction, as a segment of his MAGA base already held those views.  Harriet Hageman was asked about it last night in Casper and demurred.

Trump, yesterday, called the Democratic Republic of Congo, the "Republic of the Condo.

August 21, 2025

He’s in there fighting, they’re trying to put him in jail on top of everything else, how about that? He’s a war hero because we worked together. He’s a war hero. I guess I am too.

Donald Trump about Netanyahu and himself. 

Trump, a war hero?

Things must not be going well for Trump in general right now, as J.D. Vance has reemerged.  Vance usually appears when Trump's backers figure that he can't be trusted not to say really stupid things in the face of tough questions.  Otherwise Vance wisely hides in the background, probably hoping the stench doesn't attach to him too strongly.

August 25, 2025

Donald Trump is now threatening Chris Christie, formerly an ally and now a critic (like John Bolton) with prosecution.

Those who warned that Trump would be a vindictive autocrat have been proven correct.

By the way, Trump criticizing somebody's hair is rather extreme. His own hair is extremely weird, and the other day he wore a trucker's cap in the Oval Office.

August 26, 2025

China intelligently went in and they sort of took a monopoly of the world's magnets. Nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, 'let's all do magnets.' There were many other ways that the world could have gone ... we're heavily into the world of magnets now.

Donald Trump. 

cont:

We send hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day to the Pacific Ocean. They turn a valve and the valve heads out. And we turned the valve back. I actually had to do it using force. We turned the valve back and now they have water.

Donald Trump. 

August 27, 2025

His supporters will excuse them, and the rest of the country is numb, but Trump's latest press session demonstrated ramblings that were flat out bat shit crazy.

This is frightening for a variety of reasons.  He's clearly nuts.  But beyond that, he's drawing bizarre sycophantic praise from his cabinet members.  They're sharing in his sickness.  And this isn't limited to just his cabinet.  One comment I saw on John Barrasso, the Senate Whip and Wyoming's senior senator fairly accurately characterized him at this point as an "ass kissing sycophant."

The really scary part is that Trump may have so surrounded himself with a loyal Reichsregierung that there may actually no will to invoke the 25th Amendment, as frankly the time has come.  And if that's the case, were rocketing into unrecoverable Trump dictatorship with nobody to apply the brakes.

August 28, 2025

I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today...and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, inflammation—you can tell from their faces, movements, and lack of social connection

RFK, Jr.   

September 2, 2025

Lots of people are doing a 25th Amendment watch today.  Trump has announced a "major" address today at 2:00 p.m. ET, and roads around Walter Reed are apparently restricted today.

Chances are that it will amount to absolutely nothing.

cont:

It's now rumored that the announcement will be that the headquarters for the Space Farce will be moved.

cont:

And, indeed, that was the news. The Space Farce, formed during Trump's first administration, is being moved to Alabama.

It should be moved to the dustbin of history and its mission restored to the Air Force.

cont:

Additionally, Trump attributed his decision to move his pet military branch to Alabama on Colorado having bad voting laws.

It doesn't have bad voting laws, this is just more of Trump's demented vengeful nature coming out.

September 5, 2025

SENATORS GRILL RFK JR. IN RAUCOUS HEARING

Headline in the Trib.

Kennedy is a nut.

And this from the man who never served a day in the military:

Trump to change DOD to ‘Department of War’

September 11, 2025

It's probably in really poor taste to post this today, but Trump doesn't look well at all in this video taken on September 11, 2025.

Some have been claiming he's been having ministrokes.  His appearance here would support that.  Others are dismissing that saying that the stress of losing a friend last night is making him weary.

I really don't believe that Trump has friends, quite frankly.  He seems to have allies, and Kirk was clearly that.  Maybe I'm underestimating him, but I don't take the concept of loss and grief very far with Trump, but perhaps that explains it.  Anyhow, he looks terrible.

If he really is suffering in this fashion, that may explain why nobody has stepped in with the 25th Amendment.  He's likely to be severely impaired in a way nobody can question soon, or worse.

Anyway you look at it, this is not the appearance of somebody who is well.

September 12, 2025

Reporter: My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. How are you holding up?

Trump: Very good. And BTW, right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the WH…it's gonna be a beauty

Well on to the next story, apparently.  What a man of profound empathy.

And, apparently, the vandalization of the White House is a go.

September 21, 2025

Trump is the one who negotiated a U.S. exit from Afghanistan.  Now this:

And then there's this degusting bullshit:

THE GOLD CARD

Executive Orders

September 19, 2025

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose.  My Administration has worked relentlessly to undo the disastrous immigration policies of the prior administration.  Those policies produced a deluge of immigrants, without serious consideration of how those immigrants would affect America’s interests.

Most significantly, the prior administration permitted millions of aliens to enter the United States illegally, to the detriment of public safety, national security, and the rule of law.  International cartels, transnational criminal organizations, terrorists, and foreign malign actors took advantage of those open borders policies.  The prior administration also permitted abuse of the refugee process, swamping towns and cities with aliens and, in some cases, forcing them to declare emergencies to combat the crisis.

It is a priority of my Administration to realign Federal immigration policy with the Nation’s interests by ending illegal immigration and prioritizing the admission of aliens who will affirmatively benefit the Nation, including successful entrepreneurs, investors, and businessmen and women.

To advance that policy, I hereby announce the Gold Card, a visa program overseen by the Secretary of Commerce that will facilitate the entry of aliens who have demonstrated their ability and desire to advance the interests of the United States by voluntarily providing a significant financial gift to the Nation.

Sec. 2.  The Gold Card.  (a)  The Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall establish a “Gold Card” program authorizing an alien who makes an unrestricted gift to the Department of Commerce under 15 U.S.C. 1522 (or for whom a corporation or similar entity makes such a gift) to establish eligibility for an immigrant visa using an expedited process, to the extent consistent with law and public safety and national security concerns.  The requisite gift amount shall be $1 million for an individual donating on his or her own behalf and $2 million for a corporation or similar entity donating on behalf of an individual.  

(b)  In adjudicating visa applications, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, consistent with applicable law, treat the gift specified in subsection (a) of this section as evidence of eligibility under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(1)(A), of exceptional business ability and national benefit under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(2)(A), and of eligibility for a national-interest waiver under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(2)(B).

(c)  The Secretary of Commerce shall deposit the gifts contributed under subsection (a) of this section in a separate fund in the Department of the Treasury and use them to promote commerce and American industry, consistent with the statutory authorities of the Department of Commerce, see, e.g., 15 U.S.C. 1512.

Sec. 3.  Implementation.  The Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, within 90 days of the date of this order, take all necessary and appropriate steps to implement the Gold Card program.  Among other things, they shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law and their respective statutory authorities, including the limits on the numbers of visas specified in 8 U.S.C. 1151 et seq.:

(a)  Establish a process for application and expedited adjudication of Gold Card petitions, visa issuance, and adjustment of status.

(b)  Specify the date on which applicants (or sponsors if applicable) may begin to submit gifts for consideration under the Gold Card program.

(c)  Establish a process for a Gold Card holder sponsored by a corporation or similar entity to abandon his or her status and for the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to consider the original gift as evidence of eligibility under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(1)(A), of exceptional business ability and national benefit under 8 U.S.C. 1153 (b)(2)(A), and of eligibility for a national-interest waiver under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(2)(B), for a different individual specified by the corporation or similar entity.  The transferee shall otherwise be subject to the same procedures as an original visa applicant, including appropriate screening for public safety and national security.

(d)  Establish administrative fees to cover the cost of expedited processing under subsection (a) of this section.

(e)  Establish maintenance and transfer fees for corporations or similar entities sponsoring individuals under the Gold Card program.

(f)  Consider expanding the Gold Card program to visa applicants under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5).

Sec. 4.  Severability.  If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person, is held to be invalid, the remaining provisions and applications shall not be affected thereby.

Sec. 5.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d)  The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Commerce.

                               DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    September 19, 2025.

And now this:

This is outright nuts and enough to invoke the 25th Amendment all on its own.  If Bondi has any credibility or integrity, she'll resign her office now and come out swinging against Trump.

This stuff is outright scary.  The time in which rational thinking people would have invoked the 25th Amendment is long past.  What's happening now is like giving demented grandpa the keys to his car.

This last one is so weird, we're in a new spot in this story, and will close out this edition.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Third Edition and Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 98th edition. The Perverts and Fellow Travelers Issue.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Donald Trump, Epstein Scandal, Ezra Klein, J. D. Vance, National Conservatism, Populism, Republican Party, Scandal, Stupidity, Teenagers, The Madness of King Donald, The written word, Women, Zeitgeist

A deeply sick society.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honor and are shocked find traitors in our midsts.  We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.  

C.S. Lewis.

Let's start with a couple of basics.

You were born a man, or a woman.  We all were, and you can't change that.  If you are a man, no amount of surgery or drugs is going to make you bear life and bear all the consequences of the same, from hormonal storms on a monthly basis, to monthly blood loss, to a massive change of life, mid life.

Thinking that you can, and even wanting to makes you deeply mentally ill.

And a society that tolerates that attempt, is deeply sick.

An account I follow on Twitter notes the following:

22 years old Was 17 years old when Covid hitI wonder when he started going down the trans path

It's worth asking that question, and we'll touch on it in a moment. 

Part I.

Robert Westman,¹ who tried to be Robin Westman, but failed.  The photo alone shows you can't choose to be a woman if you are man, and that he was accordingly deeply mentally ill.  "You don’t need a weatherman. To know which way the wind blows"  Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan.

Robert Westman, mentally ill young man, raged against the reality of life that had tolerated his perverted molestation of himself and lashed out against the existential nature that doomed his molestation to complete failure, and a deeply sick society now will wonder why.  Moreover, even his final act shows how deeply he failed in his effort. Women nearly never resort to mass violence in frustration.

That's a male thing.

And so we start, again by finding myself linking back to some old threads on this blog, unfortunately.  This was the first time I tackled this topic. 

Lex Anteinternet: Peculiarized violence and American society. Looki...: Because of the horrific senseless tragedy in Newton Connecticut, every pundit and commentator in the US is writing on the topic of what cau...

And I did again here:

Lex Anteinternet: You Heard It Here First: Peculiarized violence an...: (Note.  This is a post I thought I'd posted back in November.  Apparently not, I found it in my drafts, incomplete.  So I'm posting...

The first time was intended to be the magnum opus on this, and indeed it likely still is.  It's still worth reading:

Peculiarized violence and American society. Looking at root causes, and not instrumentalities.

And on that, I'm going right to this:

Who does these things?

It's pretty apparent that you could go to the average gun owner, and actually equip him with a machinegun, and he'd never do anything with it.  It's also apparent, from a recent mass killing in Casper Wyoming, that if you arm some people with medieval implements, they'll use them for murder.  That's correct; recently in Casper Wyoming, there was an event that fit this pattern that was committed with a bow and arrow and a large knife. Grisly, to be sure, but telling.  It isn't something new in the arms that's causing this, it's something new in the mind. But what?

I'm not qualified to be a psychologist at all, but I am trained to observe human behavior and to analyze it, and there are certain things that seem quite connected here, but which are ignored.  These are the things that need to be looked at prior to our doing anything, as the solutions are to be found here.

What we're seeing in many of these murders is that the killers are mentally unstable in a truly insane sense. The attempted assassin of a politician in the US seems to fit this category.  Others, and here's where the New York Times article is helpful, are not so much insane, but they fit into a category of people who, by some means, are subject to a personality disorder that renders them socially marooned, and it would seem, it renders them also incapable of empathy, but fully capable of despair.

Some of these individuals are quite smart. The recent killer in Newton Connecticut, apparently afflicted with Aspergers Disease, seems to fit this category.  The killer in the Denver theater shootings also very clearly had some sort of personality disorder and was very well educated and intelligent.  Others are not so smart, but a consistent strain of some sort of very pronounced personality disorder runs through these stories.  The killer in the Casper Wyoming murders was self-diagnosed with Aspergers, and based on his personal history, I suspect his self diagnosis was correct.

Does this mean that everyone who has these conditions is a time bomb waiting to go off?  Absolutely and clearly not.  And, if we assume (perhaps quite incorrectly, however) that incidents of these conditions are not increasing in frequency (which they very well may be), what that tells us is something else.  If we've always had people who have been so afflicted, but haven't had this particular set of problems, something else has changed. What could it be?

First, before moving on in this, however, what is it about these conditions that make them unique. That's important. What we know is that the conditions make these people socially awkward. In some cases, they divorce them of empathy.  That seems to be all the more to the conditions that we can discern, that's relevant here.  But, as the vast, vast, majority of people who have these conditions also have moral standards, and usually go on to live fully productive lives, it tells us something is also wrong at the societal level, and not as much the individual one.

And also this:

Maybe the standard was destroyed

There's been a lot of commentary the last few years about the lack of prayer in school, and as recently noted on the Ramblings of a Teacher blog, there's been an email and Facebook item circulating that promotes the return of daily prayer to public schools.  Like the author of that blog, I think that idea misses the mark.

What I do think, however, is that we've seen an evolution from a loosely recognized general standard, which was frankly religion based, into the concept of "tolerance" for other ideas, which has now slipped into complete moral relativism that lacks any standards at all.

This is, I think, fairly demonstrable by history and the result isn't good.  A brief look at that history is instructive.

This is not to suggest that the country had a uniform Christian history and that this suddenly fell apart recently, that wouldn't be true.  And it wouldn't even be true to maintain that the country has been uniformly religiously observant throughout its history.  What would be true, however, is that a loose set of Christian standards was generally recognized, even by those who were not religious, or even a-religious, and even though the degree to which people closely identified with religion has changed varied enormously over the country's history.

Early in the nation's history the country was almost uniformly Protestant, although there was more than one Protestant church that was present in the country, and the doctrinal differences between them were in some instances quite pronounced.  It would be false to claim that they all had the same theological concepts, and indeed some of them had radically different theologies.  Indeed, even those several Protestant faiths that were present in North America had acted to strongly repress each other here, on occasion, and had been involved in some instances in open warfare in the British Isles..  Catholics, and Jews, were largely absent from the early history of the country, except with Catholics nervously present in some very concentrated regions.  The Catholic presence in the country really became pronounced first in the 1840s, as a result of the revolutions in Europe and the Irish Famine.  This actually created huge concern amongst the Protestant sections of the county, who were often very anti Catholic.  This started to wane during the Civil War, however.  Jewish immigrants came in throughout the 19th Century, some from Europe in chief, but many from Imperial Russia, where they sought to escape Russian programs.

The purpose of this is not to do a treatise on religion in the United States, which would be a massive work and which, at this point, would pretty much cease to be illustrative of anything relevant to this discussion, but rather to note something else.  Even though the degree to which the American population was adherent and observant of their Faiths, and even though the country has had, at various points, very strong doctrinal differences in the population, to the extent that it impacted public policy, the country had a culture that loosely recognized a very loose set of Christian principals as social principals.

This was so much the case that everyone, even members of non-Christian faiths, and even those who were members of no faiths at all, recognized what the standards were.  Interestingly, up until quite recently, people who chose to ignore those standards, and in any one era there are plenty of people who do, often recognized that they were breaching the standard and sometimes even that doing so was wrong.  To use a non-violent example, people generally recognized that cheating on a spouse was wrong, even if they did it.  Most people were a little queasy about divorce even if they divorced and remarried.  Nearly everyone regarded cohabitation out of wedlock as morally wrong, even if they did not attend a church.  Sex outside of marriage was generally regarded as wrong, and indeed even the entertainment industry used that fact as part of the risque allure when they depicted that scenario.

The point of this isn't to suggest that various topics regarding marriage and non marriage are somehow related to this topic. Rather, the point is to show that there was more of a concept of such things at work in society, and that's just an easy one to pick up on, as the changes in regards to it have been quite pronounced.  But, if the argument isn't to be extremely strained and fall flat, other examples would have to be given.  So, what we'd generally note is that there were a set of behavior and social standards that existed, and they generally seem to have a root in the "Protestant" ethic.  I'll note here that I'm not claiming this as a personal heritage of mine, as I'm not a Protestant. Simply, rather, it's been widely noted that this ethic has a long running history in the US, and North American in general, and has impacted the nation's view on many things.  These include, I'd note, the need to work and the value of work, and the relationship of the individual to society, all of which have greatly changed in recent decades. Again, I'm not seeking to campaign on this, merely observing that it seems to have happened. This is not a "Tea Party" argument, or direction towards one political thesis or another.

The point of this is that, even though there were multiple Faiths, and people of no faith, there was a general concept of a set of standards that were almost universally accepted and they had roots that went way back into the country's early history..  Included in that set of beliefs was that you didn't harm others.  It isn't that people didn't do it, it's that they knew it was wrong to do it.

Starting in the 1960s, however, American society really began to break a global set of standards down.  The concept of "tolerance" came in. Tolerance means to tolerate, not to accept, but over time the two became confused, and it became the American ideal to accept everything.  Even people with strong moral beliefs were told that they must accept behavior that was previously regarded as morally wrong, or even illegal in some places. There are many present examples of this that a person could point to.  The point here is not that toleration is bad, but rather that confusing tolerance with acceptance, and following that a feeling that acceptance must be mute, probably isn't good.  Toleration sort of presupposes the existence of a general standard, or at least that people can debate it.  If they can't openly debate it, that' probably is not a good thing.  If self declared standards must be accepted, rather than subject to debate, all standards become fairly meaningless as a result.

The overall negative effect this has on a society would also be a major treatise in its own right and I'm not qualified to write it..  Most cultures do not experience this, as most are not as diverse as ours. Whether any society can in fact endure an existence without standards is open to question,  and the very few previous examples that creep up on that topic are not happy ones.  It is clear that most people do in fact continue to retain  bits and pieces of the old standard, and perhaps most people are very highly analogous to our predecessors who lived in eras when standards were very generally held, and there were decades of American history that were just like that.  But for some people, who are otherwise self-focused, and with problems relating to other people, the weak nature of the standard is now potentially a problem.  Unable to relate, and in a society that teaches that there are no standards, they only standards they have are self learned, in a self isolation.

But what are they learning then, and how?

No place to go, and the lessons of the basement and entertainment.

Standards were taught, first in school, and then in the workplace  And, frankly they still are.  That's quite a burden on both, however, as a society that otherwise has such loose standards is asking an awful lot of the school and the workplace.  Truth be known, there was never an era when schools were really expected to impart a standard, it was assumed that kids came into school with one and that some re-enforcment could be done there.  Asking schools to impart a moral code is a pretty tall order,, and pretty darned unreasonable to expect.  It's even more unreasonable for the workplace to do so, so no standards are going to be taught there, save by individuals through their own examples.  But is there even a workplace to go to? 

There is a school to go to, that much we've made clear.  And as evident, I'm not keen on the trend in some quarters to blame schools.  I doubt very much that the average public school of 1912 was teaching a lot more in the way of a set of standards than the school of 2012.  Kids came into school with one, and as noted, it was re-enforced.  And I'm not keen on expecting schools to teach what parents and society simply earlier did.  I don't even know if that's possible, but it doesn't seem really reasonable.   At any rate, what about after school? That is, after graduation?  What do people graduate into?

I've analyzed that here from time to time, and need to do so more as it related to the changes in society topics I've addressed from time to time, but this is a critical aspect, I suspect, of this overall topic that's been missed.

The recent killer in Casper Wyoming was very intelligent and highly educated, but his lack of an ability to interact meant he couldn't find work. School, didn't fail him.  Something else did.  The killer in Newton was an adult, and he seems to have been fairly intelligent but with severe personality problems.  The killer in Colorado was also very intelligent, but was dropping out of school.  All of this is reflective, to a degree, of modern American economics

Since World War Two we've gone from a manufacturing society to a consumption society. And in doing that, we've sent a lot of manufacturing overseas.  What on earth, you'd be justified in asking, does that have to do with this?  Here's what.  It has completely changed the nature of available American jobs.

Prior to World War Two less than 50% of the American population graduated from high school.  This wasn't seen as a  problem really, as at least the males departing from school had jobs they could generally enter, save for period of economic distress.  And many of the jobs provided for life long careers.  Machinist jobs, for example, and heavy manufacturing jobs, did not require a high school education and they did provide a solid middle class career.  There were a lot of analogous employments.  Indeed, it wasn't until after World War Two that anywhere near the current number of Americans, or Canadians, or Europeans, went on to advanced education

Most of the men who entered these careers were average men, the same guys who take up most jobs today in any one field, but a few of them were not.  There were always a certain percentage of highly intelligent people with bad social skills who were not capable of relating to others who could find meaningful productive work where their talents for detail were applied in a meaningful way.  There were also places for individuals like that on farms and fields.  And in retail, indeed in retail shops they owned themselves.  Even as a kid I can remember a few retail shops owned by people who had next to no social skills, but who were talented in detail work.  The Army and Navy also took a percentage of people who otherwise just couldn't get along, often allowing them to have a career path, even if just at the entry level, which allowed them to retire in 20 or 30 years.

Now, this is all gone.  We live in the age of certification, and that promotes college education for some who are not well suited for the careers that they're studying, and it encourages certification of everything, which requires some social skills. Now even a college degree does not guaranty employment, and worse yet some level of social skills are necessary for most people with a college degree.  This means that some of the class of people we've been discussing are dangerously marooned.  They can get an education, but they have a very hard time doing anything with it. And that leaves them at home, bitter, and highly educated.

So what do they do with their time?

As noted, there was once an era when even the severely socially disabled generally worked.  People didn't know not to encourage them to work and having to work was presumed as a given.  Not all work is pleasant by any means, but the irony of this is that many of these people were well suited for fairly meaningful work.  Some men silently operated machine tools day after day in a setting that required a lot of intelligence, but not very much interaction.  Others worked in labs. Some on rail lines, and so on. This isn't to say that everyone who had these jobs fit into this category, which would be absolutely false.  But my guess is that some did.  And some ended up as career privates in the Army, a category that no longer exists, or similar such roles.  They had meaningful work, and that work was a career and a focus.

Now, for some of these individuals, this is all gone. The expectation of work probably isn't, but the ability may very well seem to be. So what do they do?

One thing it seems that they do with their time is to play a lot of video games, or computer games, and a lot of those games are highly male oriented, and highly violence oriented.  Quite frankly, by all appearances, they appear to be highly sexualized as well.

This is one aspect of this situation that is completely new.  Violence isn't new, and the implements aren't new, but this type of cartoon active violent entertainment is.

Violent works of literature have existed forever.  Beowulf, for example, is pretty darned violent.  The Nibelungenlied is awash in blood and gore. The Iceland sagas are pretty darned violent.  But they're all written. And the written word is just a tiny evolution of the spoken word.  Both seem to serve the function of redecoration and entertainment, but neither seem to lodge in the brain in a way that comes out as "I'd like to replicate that".  Indeed, to a degree they seem related to the function of play, in which humans replicate certain scenarios as unconscious rehearsal for what we'd do in similar situations.  In other words, to use the Beowulf example, "if confronted by hideous evil I will. . . ."

Visual images seem to be different to us, as a species.  This seems, therefore, to dull us to what we see, or to actually encourage us to excess.  It's been interesting to note, in this context, how sex and violence have had to be increasingly graphic in their portrayals in order to even get noticed by their viewers.  In terms of films, even violent situations were not very graphically portrayed in film up until the 1960s. The first film to really graphically portray, indeed exaggerate, violence was Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.  Peckinpah used violence in that film to attempt to expose Americans to what he perceived, at that time, as a warped love of criminal violence and criminals, but the nature of our perception largely defeated his intent.  At the time, the film was criticized for being so violent, but now the violence is celebrated.  In that way, Peckinpah ended up becoming the unwitting and unwilling equivalent, in regard to violence, to what Hugh Hefner became intentionally in terms of pornography.  Ever since, violence has become more and more graphic and extreme, just to get our attention.  Likewise, Hefner's entry into glamorizing and mainstreaming pornography starting in the 1950s ended up creating a situation in which what would have been regarded as pornography at that time is now fairly routine in all sorts of common portrayals.

Recently, due to video games and computer games, both of these items, sex and violence, have crossed over from film into a type of hyperactive concentrated sophisticated cartoon portrayal.  Video games have popularized the concept of over muscled, hyperactive, amoral violent men, whose glory is their violence.  Their reward very often is an over endowed cartoonish female.  Neither portrayal is realistic in anything that it seeks to portray.

So, then, certain people are left with no work, and no socialization.  In a prior era, these people fit in, even if they were awkward themselves. Their work was valued and on Friday night, when pay came, they were dragged along to the local bar, the Union Hall, or the Enlisted Man's Club, even if they had little to say and were work oriented.  More than a few probably found a family that way.  Others never did, but their work and workers became a sort of family

Now, they're in the basement watching a make believe world glamorizing violence with M4 carbines which seems to offer them hero status and sex.  

This, I would note, rolls us back around to the analysis that this sort of violence and the Arab suicide bomber are committed by the same type of people.  Youth unemployment in the Middle East is massive.  Those societies have a set of standards, to be sure, but they're under internal attack, with one group arguing for standards that only apply to the group itself.  And violence has been massively glamorized in the region, with the promised reward for it being highly sensual in nature.  In other words, out of a population of unemployed young men, with no prospects, and very little in the way of learned standards, recruiting those with narcissistic violent tendencies should not be very difficult.  The difference between there and here is that there, those with a political agenda can recruit these disaffected misguided youths with promises of the reward of 70 virgins, while here we're recruiting them through bombardment by violent entertainment. 

All of that is still valid, and in particular, I think, we need to consider again:

I've analyzed that here from time to time, and need to do so more as it related to the changes in society topics I've addressed from time to time, but this is a critical aspect, I suspect, of this overall topic that's been missed.

The recent killer in Casper Wyoming was very intelligent and highly educated, but his lack of an ability to interact meant he couldn't find work. School, didn't fail him.  Something else did.  The killer in Newton was an adult, and he seems to have been fairly intelligent but with severe personality problems.  The killer in Colorado was also very intelligent, but was dropping out of school.  All of this is reflective, to a degree, of modern American economics

Since World War Two we've gone from a manufacturing society to a consumption society. And in doing that, we've sent a lot of manufacturing overseas.  What on earth, you'd be justified in asking, does that have to do with this?  Here's what.  It has completely changed the nature of available American jobs.

Prior to World War Two less than 50% of the American population graduated from high school.  This wasn't seen as a  problem really, as at least the males departing from school had jobs they could generally enter, save for period of economic distress.  And many of the jobs provided for life long careers.  Machinist jobs, for example, and heavy manufacturing jobs, did not require a high school education and they did provide a solid middle class career.  There were a lot of analogous employments.  Indeed, it wasn't until after World War Two that anywhere near the current number of Americans, or Canadians, or Europeans, went on to advanced education

Most of the men who entered these careers were average men, the same guys who take up most jobs today in any one field, but a few of them were not.  There were always a certain percentage of highly intelligent people with bad social skills who were not capable of relating to others who could find meaningful productive work where their talents for detail were applied in a meaningful way.  There were also places for individuals like that on farms and fields.  And in retail, indeed in retail shops they owned themselves.  Even as a kid I can remember a few retail shops owned by people who had next to no social skills, but who were talented in detail work.  The Army and Navy also took a percentage of people who otherwise just couldn't get along, often allowing them to have a career path, even if just at the entry level, which allowed them to retire in 20 or 30 years.

Now, this is all gone.  We live in the age of certification, and that promotes college education for some who are not well suited for the careers that they're studying, and it encourages certification of everything, which requires some social skills. Now even a college degree does not guaranty employment, and worse yet some level of social skills are necessary for most people with a college degree.  This means that some of the class of people we've been discussing are dangerously marooned.  They can get an education, but they have a very hard time doing anything with it. And that leaves them at home, bitter, and highly educated.

Over the coming days and weeks pundits will ponder this event, and mostly spout out blather.  The explanation here may have deeply disturbing aspects to it, but the underlying root of it is not that complicated.  Robert Westman fell into the trap that ensnares some of the young in our society and hoped to completely change his nature by changing the outward morphology of his nature.  He was mentally ill.

A just society treats compassionately the mentally ill.

We do not live in a just society.

By and large, we just turn the mentally ill out into the street to allow their afflictions to grow worse until those afflictions kill them. Go to any big city and you'll see the deranged and deeply addicted out in the street.  This is not a kindness.

Gender Dysphoria is a different type of mental illness, but that's what it is.²

And its deeply delusional.

To put it bluntly to the point of being crude, no man, no matter what they attempt to do, is going to bear children and have the risk of bearing children, bleed monthly, and be subject to the hormonal storms that real women are subject to.  And, frankly, men generally become subject to some, if varying, degrees of drives that are constant and relenting, and never abate.³ 

No woman, no matter what she attempts to do, is going to hit a certain age in their teens have their minds turn to women almost constantly, as men do, in a way that women do not understand, and frankly do not experience the opposite of themselves. 

Indeed, no man really wants to be a woman, or vice versa.  What those engaging in an attempt to pass through a gender barrier seek is something else, and what that more often than not in the case of men likely is to drop out of the heavy male burdens in an age in which it increasingly difficult to meet them.  In spite of everything in the modern world, women remain conceived of as more protected, and therefore not as subject to failure for not meeting societal expectations.

Being a man has never been easy.

In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man

And now I've reached that age

I've tried to do all those things the best I can

No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam

Good Times, Bad Times, by Led Zeppelin.

I don't think lectures on what it means to be a man occur anymore.  I  know that I've never delivered one, but I didn't need one to be delivered either.  The examples were clearly around me, including all the duties that entailed.  We knew, growing up, that good men didn't abandon their families, and provided for their families, and were expected to protect women to the point of their own deaths.  Women weren't expected to protect men, at all.

Some men have always sought to escape their obligations, of course, and we all know or new those who did.  Most aged into disrepute over time.  Others got their acts together.  

You can’t be a man at night if you are a boy all day long.

Rev. Wellington Boone.

And some have always descended into madness.  But society didn't tolerate it, and it shouldn't have to.

So what do we know about Westman?

Not that much, but what we do know is revealing:

• He killed himself after his cowardly murders.
• He'd developed an inclination towards violence.⁴
• He once attended the Catholic school whose students he attacked,  leaving in 2017 at the end of Middle School.
• He started identifying as a female in 2019, age 17, and his mother signed the petition to change his name.⁵
• After middle school attended a charter school and then the all-boys school, Saint Thomas Academy, which is a Catholic military school. ⁶
• An uncle said he barely knew him.⁷
• His parents were divorced when he was 13.
• He worked at a cannabis dispensary, but was a poor employee.⁸

What can we tell from this?

Maybe nothing at all, but the keys are that in spite of they're being Catholic, his parents divorced, and his mother thereafter tolerated to some degree his drift into delusion, while at the same time there's evidence they were trying to correct it.  After school, he drifted into drugs, which is what marijuana is.

Blame the parents?  Well, that would be too simple.  But societal tolerance of divorce and transgender delusion is fostering all sorts of societal ills.

It's notable that he struck out at a childhood school.  That may be all the more his violence relates, but probably not.  His mother had worked there.  He was likely striking out at her too.  And he was striking out an institution that doesn't accept that you can change your existential nature, because you cannot.  He likely was fully aware of that, which is why he acted out with rage at it, and then killed himself.

There may, frankly, be an added element to this, although only recently have people in the secular world, such as Ezra Klein, began to discuss it.  Westman may have been possessed.

Members of the American Civil Religion don't like to discuss this at all, and frankly many conventional Christians do not either.  Atheist and near atheist won't acknowledge it all, of course.  But Westman's flirting with perverting nature may have frankly lead him into a really dark place, and not just in the conventional sense.

Part 2. What should we do?

Well, what will be done is nothing.  Something should, however, be done.

The topic of gun control will come up, which brings us back to this:

You Heard It Here First: Peculiarized violence and American society. It Wasn't The Guns That Changed, We Changed (a post that does and doesn't go where you think it is)

We're going to hear, from more educated quarters defending the Second Amendment, that firearms have not really changed all that much over the years, society has. This is completely true.

But we're at the point now that we need to acknowledge that society has changed.  And that means a real effort to keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill needs to be undertaken.

When the Constitution was written, Americans were overwhelmingly rural.  Agrarianism was the norm everywhere.  People generally lived in a family dwelling that included everyone from infants to the elderly.  Normally the entire community in which a person lived was of one religion, and everyone participated in religious life to some degree.  Even communities that had more than one religion represented, still had everyone being members of a faith.  Divorce was not at all common, and in certain communities not tolerated whatsoever.⁹ 

Westman was mentally ill.  Transgenderism is a mental illness. He was a drug user.  Cannabis is a drug.

In 1789 the mentally ill, if incapable of functioning, would have been taken care of at home by their families.  Transgenderism would not have been conceived of and not tolerated.  Alcohol was in heavy use.  Marijuana was not.  The plethora of narcotics now in circulation were not conceived of.

Yes, this will sound extreme. Am I saying that because a tiny number of transgendered might resort to violence they shouldn't own guns?  Yes, maybe in a society that simply chooses to tolerate mental illness, that's what I'm saying, although it also strikes me that the people who have gone down this deluded path might be amongst those most needing firearms for self protection. So, not really.  I am saying that attention needs to be focused on their mental state.

Am I saying that marijuana users shouldn't own guns?  Yes, that is also what I'm saying, along with other chronic users of drugs, legal and illegal.

And as we choose to simply ignore mental illness, perhaps the time has come to see if a would be gun owners is mentally stable and societally responsible before allowing them to own guns.  People in chronic debt, with violent behavior, with unacknowledged children in need shouldn't be owning firearms.

Of note, at the time the Second Amendment was written, none of these things was easily tolerated.

Part 3. Getting more extreme.

Knowing that none of this will occur, I'll go there anyhow.

Societal tolerance of some species of mental illness should just end. There shouldn't be homeless drug addicts on the street and gender reassignment surgery and drugs should be flat out illegal.

For that matter, in the nature of extreme, plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons should be banned.  Your nose and boobs are fine the way they are, leave them alone.

No fault divorce should end, and for that matter people who have children should be deemed married by the state, with all the duties that implies.  Multiple children by multiple partners should be regarded as engaging in polygamy, which should still be regarded as illegal.

Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial. It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman.

St. John Paul II.

Yes, that's rough.

Life is tough for all of us.  Ignoring that fact makes it harder on all of  us.

Part 4. Doesn't this all play into Dementia Don and his Sycophantic Twatwaffles?

Unfortunately, it does.  I fear that this may prove to be the Trump Administration's Reichstag moment.

Indeed, this event is like a gift to people like Stephen Miller who will now assert that this came about due to the liberal policies of Minneapolis, and moreover, as proof that outright attacks on transgendered are needed, the same way the Nazis asserted that dictatorship was necessary in Germany after the Reichstag fire.

Isn't that what' I'm stating?

I am not.

I think we need to address mental illness as a mental illness, and do what we can to treat it.  And rather obviously, what I've stated above doesn't square with Second Amendment hardcore advocates.

And as part of that, we need to get back to acknowledging that the mentally ill are mentally ill, rather than "tolerating" it.  

And we need to quite tolerating "personal freedom" over societal protection, right down to the relationship level.  A married couple produced this kid.  Once they did that, they were in it, and the marriage, for life.  That included the duty not to make dumb ass decisions for their child, like changing Robert's name to Robin.

Part 5.  What will happen?

Absolutely nothing.

People on the right will argue its not the guns, it's the sick society.  People on the left will argue that the society isn't sick, except for the guns, and the guns are all of the problem.

Nothing, therefore, will occur.

Well, maybe.

If anything occurs, it'll be that Dementia Don will use it as an excuse to send the National Guard into Minneapolis.

Footnotes

1.  His name was Robert, not "Robin". The free use of female names for men afflicted by this condition and the press use of "she" for what is properly he, is part of the problem.

2  By gender confusion, I"m referring to Gender Dysphoria, or whatever people are calling it, not homosexuality.  Homosexuals don't fit into this discussion at all.  For one thing, homosexuals are not confused about what gender they are.

3.  This does not advocate for license, although some men argue that it does.  Inclinations are not a pass for immorality.

Anyhow, I'd note that even honest men in cebate professions acknowledge this.  Fr. Joseph Krupp, the podcaster, frequently notes having a crush, for example, on Rachel Weisz.

4.  Again, some women grow violent, but its a minority and, when it occurs, tends to be accompanied by something else.  There are exceptions.

5. I don't know all of the details of his personal life, of course, but that was inexcusable on his mother's part.  I'll note, however, that by this time his parents were divorced and no woman is capable of raising children completely on her own.  Again, I don't know what was going on, but this screams either extreme "progressive" views, or a mostly absent father, or extreme fatigue.

6.  I didn't even know that there were Catholic military schools.  

Military schools have always been institutions for troubled boys, and this suggests that there was an attempt to put him in a masculine atmosphere and hopefully straighten him out. The school had both a religious base and a military nature.  Both of his parents must have participated in this.

7. The modern world fully at work.  People move for work, careers, etc., with the result that nuclear families basically explode, nuclear bomb style.  People more and more are raised in families that are the immediate parental unit, or just one parent, that start to disintegrate the moment children turn 18.  This is not natural, and is part of the problem.

8.  I don't know of course, but I'd guess that in order to be a poor employee at a cannabis dispensary, you have to be a really poor employee. There are bars with bartenders who don't drink, but I bet there aren't any dispensaries with employees that aren't using.

The impacts of marijuana use are very poorly understood, but as it becomes more and more legal, that there are negative psychological impacts for long term and chronic use is pretty clear.

9.  Contrary to widespread belief, not only Catholicism prohibits divorce.  The Anglican Communion does not either, and at that time particularly did not tolerate it.  Divorce occurred, but it was not common.

Also, and we've touched on it before, the United States at the time of its founding was a Christian nation.  It was a Protestant Christian nation, but a Christian nation.  Protestants of the 19th Century would not recognize many Protestant denominations today at all, even if they are theoretically the same.  A 1790s Episcopalian, for example, would be horrified by many Episcopalian congregations today.  In contrast, a Catholic or Orthodox person would find the churches pretty recognizable, save for the languages used for services.