The Nixon Nitration Works disaster occured in which an explosion of ammonium nitrate killed at least 18 people, destroyed several miles of New Jersey factories, and demolished Nixon, New Jersey.
While a very famous industrial disaster, the Nixon Nitration Works and Nixon New Jersey are remembered now principally for being mentioned in Band of Brothers as Cpt. Lewis Nixon III, a major character Ambrose's depiction of the 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, mentions it. Lewis Nixon was in fact a member of the family that owned the plant, and it was the case that Richard Winters, his close friend and for most of his service in Europe his superior, worked there for a time after the war.
The Nixon's were troubled in general, and Lewis Nixon III was no exception. His marriage contracted just after the start of the war failed during it, as did a subsequent one. A third marriage to Grace Umezawa, formerly a Japanese internee, was successful. She helped him overcome the alcoholism depicted during the series.
The KDP, the Communist Part of Germany, was reinstated. The KDP, together with the NADSP, the Nazi Party, would figure enormously in the destruction of German democracy as the extremes grew increasingly powerful in the remaining years of the Weimar Republic.
Alice's Day at Sea, the first of 57 Alice comedies produced by Walt Disney, appeared. They were short films meant to be shown before the feature, something at one time common.
White rats paraded in San Pedro, California.
Hacks, i.e., cabs, were allowed back in Hyde Park for the first time since 1636.
Not a hack, but on this day, an Irish Traveler feeding his pony on this day in 1924.
Oilman Edward L. Doheny testified that he had loaned Senator Albert B. Fall $100,000, when Fall was Secretary of the Interior under Harding, breaking open the Teapot Dome Scandal.
New Mexico Senator Albert B. Fall.
Fall's political career would soon come to an end, and he'd serve a year in prison.
Doheny would be indicted, but acquitted.
Khiva fell to the Red Army.
Sister Marie of the Poor, the former Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde of Luxembourg, died of ill health and influenza at age 29. She had been the last royal of that country to wield real power, which caused her to abdicate after World War One due to her decision to try to steer the country clear of active resistance to the Germans. Following that, having never married, she had become a nun.
The United Kingdom concluded the forced expulsion of the Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago.
The extremely remote mid-ocean Indian Ocean islands were originally uninhabited, but came to have a population when under French administration. The original population was enslaved, and brought by the French from Madagascar and other African locations. They were emancipated in 1840, the islands having belonged to the United Kingdom since 1814. They were employed as workers on coconut plantations, that being the primary economy of the islands.
The British depopulation campaign was undertaken for the United States, which sought to use the islands for military purposes. The best known of the islands is Diego Garcia, which remains a U.S. Naval installation.
L. Patrick Gray resigned as Interim Director of the FBI after it was revealed he destroyed materials removed from E. Howard Hunt's safe. He spent the next seven years providing testimony regarding Watergate.
Gray was a 1940 Naval Academy graduate who attended law school while still in the Navy. His naval career was distinguished, and he was discouraged from leaving the service when he did in 1960, meaning that at that time he'd had a twenty-year Naval career.
He was a recent appointee to the FBI when the Watergate scandal broke out. Initially he was heavily involved in the investigation and pursued it vigorously. When it became clear the administration was involved, he turned the matter over to his deputy, Mark Felt, who later turned out to be the famous leaker to the press, "Deep Throat".
According to Gray, who does seem to have had no involvement with the Watergate conspiracy or its cover up, the papers he removed were told to him to be of national security significant. Prior to destroying them, he examined them, and later stated that one set of papers were "false" secret cables indicating that the Kennedy Administration was involved with the Diem assassination and the second set papers written by Kennedy about his "peccadilloes".
Gathering at USS Maine memorial on the 25th anniversary of its sinking.
Charles R. Forbes, the Director of the U.S. Veteran's Bureau, resigned the position from his self-appointed refuge of Europe, following suspicions that he had been selling surplus supplies at huge discounts to contractors for kickbacks. His confrontation with Harding on the matter had resulted in a physical altercation, with Forbes reportedly begging Harding to be allowed to depart for Europe prior to resigning.
The Scottish born Forbes had lived a colorful life, having been a Marine Corps musician at age 16, an engineer, a soldier in the Army charged with desertion and ultimately discharged as a Sergeant First Class after only eight years of service, employed in the construction field, and a Lieutenant Colonel in World War One.
He'd be prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud the Federal Government and end up serving 20 months in prison. He'd live until 1949, dying at age 74.
Greece expropriate additional dwellings from the Albanian Cham Muslims in order to free up dwelling space for expelled Greeks from Turkey, thereby compounding the injustice.
Albanians had nothing to do with Greece's situation and the event signals out how Greece, in some ways, set the table for the disaster it was experiencing. Turkey was being barbarous to the Anatolian Greeks, but the Greeks had not been kind to the Anatolian Muslims.
And this also demonstrates how something that began in World War One with good intention, independent nation states comprised of free peoples, was morphing into expelling minorities from lands they'd occupied for eons.
Margaret Lindsey Williams, working on her portrait of President Harding.
Also regarding Wyoming, Harry Ford Sinclair testified in front of a Congressional committee investigating the Teapot Dome lease his interest held.
The Klaipėda Revolt ended with an agreement to transfer Memelland to Lithuania. It was under French administration at the time with its ultimate ownership up until that point uncertain.
Sir Percy Cox, British Administrator for the Iraqi Mandate, agreed to a joint Anglo Iraqi declaration to create ea government for the Kurds provided that rival Kurdish leaders could agree on a constitution for the state, and to its borders.
Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji.
Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji, who had appointed by Cox as the governor or southern Kurdistan, refused to go along with it and allied himself with the Turks against the British, destroying the opportunity for an independent Kurdistan. He is regarded to this day as a hero in Kurdistan, but it can't help but be noted that his obstinacy may have frustrated Kurdish aspirations, perhaps permanently.
William Hays lifted the ban against Roscoe Arbuckle in the movie industry.
Poland appointed Stanislaw Wojciechowski as President of the republic.
The British launched Operation Braganza with the goal of capturing the ground around Deir el Munassib in Egypt. It would fail.
The Japanese tried again with a second submarine launched seaplane bombing mission against the forest in Oregon, hoping to set them on fire. They did not.
The great comedic actress Madeline Kahn was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
Lahn was born to Bernard and Freda Wolfson, who divorced when she was two. Her mother later married Hiller Kahn who adopted her. Her mother had wanted to be an actress and for a time pursued that goal. Kahn graduated in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy from Hofra University and began purusing an actiing career herself soon after.
Kahn in 1964.
Starting with roles on Broadway, she broke into film in 1968 and by 1972 was in the major motion picture, What's Up Doc?, which I've never seen. The following year, she was in Paper Moon, which is a great film, for which she secured an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was in a series of notable roles after that. In the 1990s she was in the television series Cosby, which was hugely respected, but which is now probably un-airable due to the later revelations about Bill Cosby. She died in 1999 of ovarian cancer at age 57.
Brittney Griner is accused of bringing CBD oil into Russia, supposedly in vape pens.
Did she do it? I don't know.
But what I do know is that Russia isn't the US, where a celebrated athlete would likely get a slap on the hands for a drug violation, and where this isn't one.
Americans seem to believe for some reason that if they fall afoul of the law in a foreign nation, the US should rescue them. The US has no obligation to do that.
And like it or not, other nations have much stricter laws on a host of things than the US does. The US in contrast has lots and lots of laws, which isn't necessarily a good thing either. In part, that leaves Americans with a sort of combined quite contempt and ignorance for the law. We don't know what all the laws are, so we don't tend to worry about them overly much. And people can do some pretty bad stuff and not get punished all that much.
In contrast, there can be real penalties for things in foreign countries. In one Southeast Asian country, for example, people get beat with canes for spitting gum on the street. When I went to South Korea with the National Guard in the 1980s I recall us all being warned that you could be jailed for possessing a Playboy magazine, which didn't bother me as I wasn't going to be running around the Korean Peninsula with one, but that's a much different approach to pornography that the US has.
You get the point.
On Griner, my present understanding is that she plays basketball in Russia as women basketball players make less than male ones in the U.S. So she goes there on the off season, where apparently they are then running their leagues. I get that, and that's not just, but that's not a reason to be careless, if she was. Her minority status, her numerous tattoos, her homosexual status, and her American citizenship all made her a target in a nation where all of those are either very unusual or not at all tolerated. On top of that, there's a war going on.
There's not much the US can do to spring her. The Russians will let her go when holding her no longer serves a purpose.
Senseless Destruction.
Somebody blew up the Georgia Guidestones.
For those who are not familiar with them, there's a really good episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World about them, identifying the builder and why he did it. For a really brief synopsis, based on memory, a physician who lived in another state built them out of concern that things were going down the tubes and giving his own personal guidance and thoughts on how to avoid going down the tubes in the future.
Frankly, they were very 1970ish.
Why would somebody blow them up?
Apparently, some people believed they were evil, which is silly.
Regarding guidestones, with all the crap going on in the US right now, the builders thoughts probably wouldn't be altered if he were around right now.
Boris Johnson falls.
Americans tend to be so self focused on their own politics, which are distressingly weird right now, that they miss the politics of other nations. On top of it, the American press is phenomenally bad on reporting political events in other nations. Added to that, the press of the subject nations tends to be no better, so you are only left with the suggestion that he did something horrible, with nobody ever telling you what it was. An article in the Guardian, for example, calls him the worst leader the Tories every had, but won't say why.
Canadian changes of power, by the way, are completely that way. It's like the entire topic of the election is a big secret.
Anyhow, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned. He will briefly remain Prime Minister until his replacement is chosen.
Usually this happens following an election with the party in control loses. This, however, was due to an internal revolt in the Conservative Party.
Apparently a lot of this has to do with "Partygate", a scandal in which parties were held at No. 10 Downing Street (as if they were going to be able to keep that secret) which violated COVID restrictions in the UK.
I guess it says something in favor of the British that this would bring a Prime Minister down, whereas in the United States a sitting President would attempt to illegally retain power and nothing happen to him.
Russia threatens Alaska.
One of the Russian strategies to deal with its pathetic performance in Ukraine is to threaten everyone else. Now it is threatening the United States, stating it might fight us to take Alaska back.
Seriously?
Usually, bullies have to win to be credible.
And now. . . ?
I'm not going to bother to name names, but there is a politician in Congress who came on Twitter nearly daily to blame Biden for rising gasoline prices.
Now gas prices have fallen for eight days straight. So is he going on and giving credit?
On this day in 1921 one of the most infamous, most misreported, and one of the most still most mysterious deaths in Hollywood history occurred. And one that features all the things that still cause Hollywood to fascinate and repel.
The death of young actress Virginia Rappe.
Even though the critical events in the death of Rappe, then age 26, occurred at a party, where lot of people were around, what really occurred leading to her untimely death remains a mystery. From what seems to be clear, we can tell the following.
Rappe was a guest at a party hosted by Fred Fischbach, a friend of celebrated silent movie comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The party was partially in celebration of a hit Arbuckle movie, Crazy To Marry. The five reel movie was a recent release and doing well, although it is now obscure and may be in the category of lost film (I'm not sure of that). At the time, Arbuckle was making $1,000,000 a year from films, a gigantic sum not only now, for most people, but particularly then, given the respective value of a dollar compared to now. Arbuckle, we'd note, was married, with his spouse at the time being Minta Durfee, although the couple had recently separated. In spite of that, it should be further noted, Durfee would call Arbuckle in later years the most generous man she'd ever met, and that in spite of their 1925 divorce, if given the choice, she'd do it all again.
Minta Durfee.
Fischback rented three hotel rooms, and, in the spirit of the times, supplied them with large quantifies of bootleg booze. Rappe was an invited guest, and arrived with Bambina Maude. At the party Rappe drank a lot of alcohol. At some point in the party it seems that he and Rappe went into room 1219 of the hotel alone, and shortly thereafter some sort of commotion occurred, Arbuckle emerged and Rappe was desperately sick. She was taken to the hospital and died four days later from a ruptured bladder and peritonitis.
One of the hotel rooms after the party.
Arbuckle was arrested and accused of rape and manslaughter, with an essential element of the accusation being that forced sex had caused Rappe's death.
Seems, at first blush, clear enough, but it gets very confused from there.
Arbuckle maintained his innocence throughout. He was tried three times, resulting in two mistrials, and then an acquittal. Bambina Maude was a witness in the story, filling in lurid details, but she was later revealed to be a procurer who used that role to blackmail recipients of the favors she'd arranged to supply, although there was no evidence that she was acting as a procurer at the time of the attendance at the party. Indeed, while there are multiple stories as to what occured, one of the versions that exists is that the room that Rappe went into was the only one with a bathroom and she went into it to throw up, going through the bedroom where Maude was having sex with a movie director. In that version, which isn't the only one, Arbuckle went in the room to carry the collapsed Rappe out.[1].
The final jury apologized to Arbuckle for what he'd been through. And, indeed, it seems fairly clear that whatever occurred between Arbuckle and Rappe, it wasn't that which resulted in her death, but rather a chronic medical condition that was exacerbated by alcohol. It's likely her drinking at the party, which killed her.
Rappe, who was at one time regarded as the "best dressed girl in films".
Even that, however, doesn't flesh the entire tragic story out. Rappe was only 26, but by that age was already a photographic veteran, having worked as an orphan raised by her grandmother as a model since age 14. She had some trouble holding alcohol and was inclined to strip when drunk. She'd been the live in with Henry Lehamn only fairly recently, to whom she'd been engaged. According to at least some sources, which may be doubted given that they are a century old, she was freer with her affections than the norms of the time would have endorsed.
What occurred between Arbuckle and Rappe is not known and never well be and now too much time has passed to sort it out. About as much as we can tell is that it seems that Arbuckle might have made some sort of advance on Rappe and that at first Rappe might have welcomed it. That she was desperately ill is clear. Her illness killed her.
This, in turn, provides an interesting look at public morals and standards, then and now. At least some of the conduct Rappe and Arbuckle were engaging in was immoral by Christian standards, and Christian standards were clearly the public standards of the day. Be that as it may, it's clear that in his trials, the fact that Arbuckle was doing something with a drunk woman doesn't seem to have been held against him, or at least it ultimately wasn't. Of course, maybe the jurors didnt' feel he was doing anything with her, or even aiding her, or at least some must have thought that in all three trials. If Arbuckle was advancing on her, it most definitely would be regarded as improper today. Having said that, it wasn't all that long ago that "get her drunk" was sort of a joke which implied that inebriation to the point of being unable to consent was consent.
Arbuckle's career would never recover from the evening. Perhaps, in some ways, it shouldn't have. He wasn't a killer, but what occurred was unconscionable for other reasons. . reasons we seemingly have managed to forget, however, over the years. Even after his acquittal he was more or less blackballed in the industry for a time, and then when that was lifted his star power was gone. He changed his name and made a much smaller living behind the scenes before starting to stage a minor comeback in the 1930s. He died in 1933 in a hotel room from a heart attack. He was 46.
Arbuckle movie poster from 1932.
It's interesting to see how this event compares to contemporary ones. We have a person in attendance at the party who associated with the rich and famous whose role seems to have been supplying female favors (Maude), much like Jeffrey Epstein and his hangers on have been accused of. We have a Hollywood set who lived personal lives that departed greatly from public standards, something that's still the case, although less so now as standards have declined so much, and we might have some sort of sexual contact between a male Hollywood figure and a very drunk actress (or not), something that in our contemporary culture would be a career ending event irrespective of the accusations of rape. Indeed, accusations of rape in Hollywood, not all of which are substantiated, have become very common in recent years.
In the end it was a terrible tragedy. People thought they were going to a party Rappe probably knew she was drinking too much. Arbuckle surely knew he shouldn't make advances on her. Death came like a "thief in the night", which nobody anticipated.
On the same day, elsewhere, the League of Nations convened for the second time and admitted Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland and Luxembourg.
Footnotes:
1 Yet another version, upon which a book was written asserts that Rappe had received botched abortion that had nicked her bladder, and it ruptured when she tickled Arbuckle and he accidentally kneed her.
Others criticize that assertion, which would by definition be based on a large element of speculation. It seems based on Rappe having reported received something like five prior abortions in an era when they were all fully illegal.
Well, it's pretty clearly now the case that absolutely everyone who hopes to be in politics or has dreamed of it, and who is to the right of Liz Cheney, is now set to run against her.
I last reported on this on May 2014. Since then, there's been new entrants. Here's the current list, with new additions, and slight changes:
Of note this is just the Republican field. No Democrats have filed yet. Some will.
Liz Cheney. You know who she is, of course. She's the incumbent and probable nominee, in spite of the heavy rightward leaning slate of candidates against her.
Robin Belinsky: Belinsky is a business woman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene and therefore predictably endorses the Trump's narrative that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.
Greene is among the most disturbing of the Congressional Trump backers, so not only does Belinsky make a strong contrast to Cheney, it's one that isn't likely to get very far.
Anthony Bouchard: Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature. He originally came into the public eye through a firearms organization he's central to. He was also the first well known candidate to announce against Cheney.
Bouchard is firmly in the Trump camp and appeared, with Chuck Gray, at the Matt Gaetz rally against Cheney. Bouchard is well known due to his prior political activities and therefore is likely to make it to at least the primary, which many in this crowded field will not.
Chuck Gray: Gray is a hard right member of the legislature whose first appearance in the Wyoming political scene was an unsuccessful run at the seat he now occupies in the House. He was appointed to that seat upon his predecessor's death and is a Natrona County radio personality.
Gray and Bouchard will be competing for essentially the same demographic and in some ways have analogous political careers after having obtained office. When this occurs, it tends to result in a regional contest, with supporters from various regions supporting their local candidate. That disfavors Gray as candidates from Casper are rarely supported by the rest of the state, although a lot of the state isn't that keen on Cheyenne either. In any event, if Gray and Bouchard stay in through the end of the primary, which they are likely to, they'll soak up a lot of the support base for each other.
Bryan Eugene Keller: He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered but I don't know anything else about him. A Google search didn't turn up much either. It's likely safe to say that Keller, absent something really surprising, will draw very few votes in the race.
Denton Knapp: Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard. He's from Gillette originally and claims to be generally fond of the Cheney and to respect her past role in Congress.
Knapp received a lot of press for his announcement yesterday, but almost all of it boils down to "Retired Army Colonel. . . " which won't get him far. In the last Senate Race one candidate was prominently noted to be a retired Air Force officer and that didn't take him anywhere. Truth be known, while the country remains in a post war hagiographic era regarding veterans, a lot of that has become shallow acknowledgement and his long career in the service isn't likely to get him very far and may even hurt him in nativist Wyoming. Gone for thirty years? Brig Gen of the California National Guard? He'll have to come up with a lot more than that.
Knapp is presently a Californian, living in Orange County, and will have to reestablish residency in Wyoming. This will also hurt him. After a thirty year absence and then a relocation to Wyoming, coming back just to run for Congress won't be well received. In fact, it wasn't well received when Liz Cheney did that, which is why in her first race she took fewer votes than her two combined opponents in the primary.
Bryan Miller: Miller is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel who has twice run for Senate and lost. Now he's trying the House against a candidate who is presumed to be embattled.
Miller is a strong Trump supporter and supports Trump's false claims that the election was stolen.
Miller's association with Trump's false claims makes him somewhat distinct from the other retired military officer running this election, Knapp. There's something disturbing, beyond what is otherwise disturbing, about a military man supporting Trump's attempts to subvert the election. My prediction is that Miller's campaign won't go far although he'll stay in until the end of the primary as he seems to have a very strong desire to be elected to office and there has become a perennial candidate.
Marissa Selvig: Mayor of Pavilion. Selvig announced early and has a website, but has received very little attention thereafter. She's disadvantaged to a degree as Bouchard and Gray have a bigger audience by default.
Selvig interestingly focuses on her dedication to the constitution, which she holds is the "second" most important document in the American system, the first being the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is a single purpose document with no post declaration legal import, so that's an unusual position. Otherwise, her stated positions are conventional typical local Republican.
Selvig's campaign is unlikely to gain steam anywhere. Her stated positions don't really serve to distinguish her from Cheney, and if she was to distinguish herself by going in the now trendy rightward direction, she'd be indistinguishable from Bouchard and Gray.
Darin Smith: Smith is a businessman and lawyer in Cheyenne, according to the information he's put out. He was the campaign manager for the failed Foster Freiss Gubernatorial run and his views reflect that. Freiss is a backer of his. That fact probably gives Smith a spending advantage over other candidates trying to unseat Cheney. He stands out in that he's less fanatic in his endorsement of the Trump election stolen myth while still endorsing it in a lukewarm fashion.
Smith's stated positions on his campaign site by and large are typical for the Wyoming GOP including the insistence that "we" need to get coal back on the market. The problem with some of those positions is that they fail to acknowledge trends that have now passed a certain jump the shark level. Coal was declining, for example, under Trump. Regarding Trump, Smith's campaign site has the "Take America Back" phrase on the first page, which is really slang for "I believe the election was stolen" to some ears, whether Smith means that or not.
Smith joins Cheney in being a lawyer, which none of the other candidates are, which means that he knows that a lot of the pro Trump rhetoric that's grounded in the Constitution and what not is legally baseless and he should know its factually baseless as well. It'll be interesting to see if he, like Knapp, attempts to nuance his position on the 2020 election.
The thing that uniformly distinguishes all of these candidates from Cheney, except perhaps for Selvig and Keller, the latter of whom is a mystery, is that they're all backing Trump to some degree, with Knapp the less enthusiastic about it. Indeed the irony of this race is that Cheney's stance has brought her a fair amount of support from rank and file Wyomingites while also bringing her the ire of the county parties. Her original weakness was that she wasn't from here, which was a strike against her the first time she ran. In that race, the two main opponents split the vote and she took office. Since then she's risen in Congress and as a result of her stance, has risen in admiration in the eyes of a lot of people who were lukewarm about her before. She's almost certain to win this race.
Other races? Well, there is one that has a competition, sort of, right now, and that's the Governor's Race.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent, he'll run again. He hasn't registered yet.
Gordon defeated a slate of hard right candidates in the 2018 election. Some of those candidates were pretty unhappy about the results with Foster Freiss being the most unhappy. Given this we can expect some hard right Republicans to surface and challenge him, although he'll win reelection.
In fact, one such candidate has announced he'll run, but hasn't registered.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
May 20, 2021
The State Republican Party reelected its leadership.
The leadership in the past few years has been solidly populist. Frank Eathorne, who was elected to the top position in the party, specifically stated that Trump is the leader of the GOP, even though he occupies no such position formally. He went on to state that the Wyoming Republicans don't "worship" Trump, but he speaks to the state GOP like no leaders since Reagan, a statement that is more than a little ironic as the philosophical connections between Reagan and Trump would be mostly nonexistent. Indeed, the remaining Buckeyite conservatives in the GOP, which Reagan represented, largely detest Trump.
The election of Trump backers to the state's leadership is very significant, but it doesn't actually necessary reflect party registration, which thinly participates in the party itself. Indeed, the Wyoming GOP has been so successful at dominating the state's politics that its become, effectively, the only party, which means that it contains a large majority of people who barely participate in politics other than voting, and who tend to pay attention to the candidates therefore on an individual rather than party basis. As nearly any candidate can claim to be a Republican in Wyoming, most who run, run as Republicans.
What's mostly clear is that its the formation of an organization dedicated to taking the GOP back from the Trumpites, which is something, but which right now is a long haul. The organization is holding a national town hall on June 16.
May 21, cont:
In the form of the release of a video, in an effort to get ahead of the story, Anthony Bouchard has gone public with the revelation that when he was 18 he got a 14 year old girl pregnant, and that he married her the following year. The marriage later ended in divorce and apparently the relationship with the child, a boy, is somewhat strained and the boy's life somewhat problematic. The woman's must have been, as she committed suicide some time after their divorce (which I'm not saying is Bouchard's fault in any fashion, I don't know anything about it).
Also of note, Bouchard was living in Florida at the time and therefore is, at least it would seem, not a Wyoming native. This is of interest as Wyomingites tend to be nativist and at least two of the notable hard right Cheney opponents are imports.
FWIW, at least in Wyoming, a sexual relationship between an 18 year old and a 14 year old would be, I believe, felonious. This might not have been the case in Florida, I have no idea.
Whatever the nature of this stuff is, this will be a hurdle for Bouchard to overcome.
Note, this is in the spirit of noting political developments, not casting stones. I'm only commenting on the political race.
May 22, 2021
And the plot thickens, as the phrase goes, on the Anthony Bouchard story.
It's now been revealed that Bouchard, in breaking the story himself, was getting ahead of a news story that was getting ready to run in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail. Bouchard became aware of this when he was called by the Mail for an interview. Bouchard claims this was done by a "company", and as of yesterday it was vaguely sort of hinted Cheney was to blame, but the Cheney campaign completely denies this, and frankly the best evidence is that this is attributable to one of the campaigns running against Bouchard for a short at taking on Cheney, not Cheney.
The Daily Mail is a notoriously trashy British newspaper, something that defines a lot of British newspapers, but that doesn't mean its article is inaccurate. By all appearances, it's spot on the money. And the Mail's interview with a "Republican operative" makes it plain that the operative it interviewed is in the "Trump wing of the party". The "operative" was quoted, and said that details regarding Bouchard have been well known behind the scenes in the GOP and then stated something that's undeniably true and which Bouchard should have been aware of, that being ". . . the higher you climb on the flagpole, the more people see your ass", further indicating that Bouchard's blemishes are going to come out.
Something true of all the candidates.
So what the story now is that Bouchard, age 18, impregnated Frances Lynn Webb, age 14, in Florida, around 1983. This is interesting in part because knowing the actual background of the hard right Bouchard has been hard to do. I usually try to put something about a candidates background in if it can be determined, but for such a well known candidate, anything about Bouchard has been hard to find. In contrast, his nearest rival, Chuck Gray, is easy to find information out about (from South Dakota, went to the Wharton School of Business, once aspired to be a lawyer, moved to Wyoming to work at Gray media which owns media outlets, is a practicing Catholic but doesn't note that in his campaign). Bouchard is mostly known for being the head of Wyoming Gun Owners, a gun owners organization that's more radical, if you will, than the NRA and in which Bouchard has been in very vocal public spats. Otherwise, the only thing easily known about his non political life is that he attended, but apparently didn't graduate, from a Florida university.
In Wyoming at any point in recent decades an 18 year old having sex with a 14 year old would be a felony. According to the Tribune, its impossible to know if that's the case or not in regard to Florida in 1983. The Mail also had trouble determining that but it seemed to lean towards it being a crime. According to the Mail, under a Florida "Romeo and Juliet" law, it was possible for a person convicted of what is commonly called "statutory rape" in circumstances in which the couple were in their teens and within a certain age to have his requirement to register as a sex offender removed, but that still doesn't otherwise remove the conviction itself.
Bouchard was never charged with a crime. In Wyoming there is no statute of limitations on crimes, so if this was a Wyoming event, he could still be charged and in fact Wyoming does levy charges against sexual crimes that occurred decades prior. I don'[t know the situation in Florida.
Bouchard married Webb in 1984 and claims that this was, basically, to do the right thing. He further claims that he resisted pressure to urge Webb to abort the child, and that she resisted it too. That may all be 100% true. It's worth noting that in the early 1980s, and indeed well into the 1990s, it was still the case in the larger American culture that having a child out of wedlock was a scandal and many couples that found themselves in this situation, removing for a moment the statutory rape element of it, married to mitigate the scandal Having said that, it was also fairly common at the time for a girl in this situation to have the baby and give it up for adoption.
Which gets to the next thing. In this region of the country a marriage between a 15 year old, which is what Webb was at the time, and an adult was extremely unusual. Given the years involved, this makes me only slightly older than Bouchard and I can't recall anything of this type happening here of which I'm personally aware. I do recall a married high school student in my graduating class, but the marriage would likely have been when she was 17 or maybe 18. Indeed, in my graduating class there wasn't any of the "getting married right after high school" stories that you hear about now, and have classically heard about. But I don't live in Florida.
Florida is part of the South and I don't know where in Florida this all occurred. I'll note that as even as late as the 1980s it was still the case that in some parts of the South really young girls got married, even without scandal. As I've noted here before, I once knew a man from Louisiana who married his wife when she was 13 and he was 19, without the scandal element attaching at all. They just got married, and were when I knew him some twenty years later.
Having said that, there's something deeply odd, putting it mildly, between these relationships. People change at a blistering pace at that age and generally 18 year old men are not interested in 14 year old girls. Again, back when I was that age we tended to have girlfriends, if we had them, who were just about the same age as we were, or perhaps one year younger. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and looking back the only girl I dated in that period was probably 17 when I briefly dated her, 16 at the absolute youngest, but I don't think so. The only one of my friends who had a steady girlfriend at the time dated one of my cousins who was slightly older than he was, so 18 nd 17.
Having said all of that, right out of high school a friend of mine who must have been 18 at the time dates a really young girl who was 14 or 15. I recall that for two reasons, one of which was that we regarded it as deeply creepy, and the other being that he was a member of a religion where there's pressure to marry really young and she was too. He soon dumped her and soon thereafter was dating a second girl who was also a member of that religion and who was within about a year of his age.
The latter point illustrates something, however. The changes in people in this age range are so swift that normally, in most of American society, 18 year olds don't have much interest in 14 year olds, and 14 year olds are children. As people age, the gap between their years widens, and later on its not unusual at all to see a decade between the ages of a married couple, with the man usually being the older. Once girls hit 18 years old, its not unusual for them to date men several years older. By the time they're 20, that age gap widens. Right about then, a decade's difference isn't unusual and that gap tends to remain for the rest of a person's years. I.e., a 50 year old marrying a 40 year old doesn't' raise eyebrows.
The difference between age 14 and 18 is four years. So is the difference between age 14 and age 10.
To complete the story, the couple's son was born. The marriage lasted only three years. Webb's father was dead from suicide prior to their relationship commencing. She took the same path at age 20. Not much more than that can be said about that, other than that she was troubled in some regard. The son is as well, as he's being held in California on some extremely serious sexual assault charges. Bouchard claims to be "nearly estranged" from the son he raised, and which he always had custody of after the divorce, and that may well be true.
Turning to the overall event, Bouchard should have realized from the onset, as the GOP operative stated, that this was going to come out. But what impact will it have?
Well, it probably ought to have some. It's getting a lot of press and the reaction has been interesting.
Bouchard termed the tragic story a Romeo and Juliet story, and that quote has gotten a lot of press. Bouchard's probable reference here is to the fact that the story is a tragedy and that the couple in the story were teenagers. I don't know the ages, however, of the couple in Shakespeare's play as I've never seen it performed and its one of his works that frankly doesn't interest me. Looking it up, apparently Shakespeare never says the protagonist ages, but there's scholarly speculation that she's 13 and he's somewhat older, which gives me even less incentive to read this than before.
Bouchard's use of the play has, interestingly, received a lot of criticism for improper citation to Shakespeare. I don't want to defend Bouchard, but here he's actually using the play correctly in my view. It's a tragedy, and the story related by Bouchard, no matter what you think of him, is overall really tragic.
Some of the commentary in this area tries to defend the play by noting that, in context, the central characters would be older now. Well. . . I get that, but probably not It probably reflects something else in those cultures and that time. For what its worth, the central characters in War and Peace are introduced at a party in which the female protagonists are also that age, and the male ones in their 20s, which is creepier still. But before we take that too far, its worth noting, as we have before, that marriage ages in earlier times actually aren't higher than they are now, and that child brides were really unusual then as well. Young marriage ages may have been legal, and girls, who weren't in school at the time, perhaps introduced as future marriage candidates fairly young, but actual really young couples and marriage wasn't a thing, for the most part, in western society. Exceptions of course exist.
Beyond that, what's really interesting is that Bouchard's die hard supporters, and he had them before he announced, aren't phased a bit but are actually fired up. They see him as the victim of a conspiracy and his confession as proof of his nobleness. It's the last part that's really baffling.
Donald Trump's supporters have frequently talked of "Trump Derangement Syndrome", a phenomenon they claim features a person having a violent reaction to all things Trump. There's something to that, but it could also be claimed that there's a Derangement Syndrome that operates the other way. I've repeatedly seen populist who have fallen in love with Trump excuse things he did, when they were revealed, even if it meant doubling over backwards on their beliefs. Now we're seeing that with Bouchard.
There's no way to defend an 18 year old screwing a 14 year old. None. Granting the classic "people make mistakes", with this being a particularly icky mistake, this is a really icky story. There's now way to sweep it under the rug, but there are ways to handle it, I guess. Bouchard has tried to do that, apparently (I haven't watched his video), but something he should do is to damp down the "see what a hero he is" reaction. Granted further, if the story is true that he resisted calls for an abortion, and she did too, they really did act heroically in that fashion, but this story is gross any way you look at it. Bouchard probably owes it to the facts to call on people to stop praising him in this area.
He might owe it to everyone to call of his race, but he doesn't seem inclined to. A mistake can disqualify a person for later office, even if they've repented. Sex with a 14 year old and a following tragedy that keeps on may be one of those.
Certainly the same political camp that's praising Bouchard now offered no such mercy to Joe Biden over the story of his son Hunter. Will they apologize now?
Resigning from campaigns doesn't seem to be a Republican thing anymore. So he may very well keep on. But what we now know about this candidate is that he had a real skeleton in his closet that produced an ongoing tragedy, and that he's not a Wyomingite in the way that a lot of Wyomingites qualify that category. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a Nebraskan who is associated with Wyoming, and who has taken a lot of heat, including from me, for think associations with the state. Bouchard moved here at some point and has lived here for some time, but for how long?
Bouchard's campaign claims that Wyoming needs a Congressman as conservative as he is. One more conservative than Cheney is almost impossible to imagine. Wyoming also needs an effective one, which Cheney has been. Bouchard has been loud, for sure, and is in the Legislature, but we're only now getting to know much about him. The Republican operative is right. The higher you climb on the flagpole, the more your ass shows.
May 25, 2021
The Wyoming Senate is considering censuring Anthony Bouchard over the 18/14 pregnancy matter.
Bouchard indicated that he's not dropping out of the race and his campaign coordinator indicates that he's campaign donations have gone up since the story broke.
That's frankly a bit disturbing.
The Tribune article on this matter interviews another member of the legislature that Bouchard has claimed is a supporter of the "deep state". That individual noted that Bouchard's video breaking the news, as we've noted above, isn't really an apology for what occurred. The Tribune article also makes it plain that the Republican "operative" acted to "clean" the field for Cheney opponents, so the suspicion that some have that its people associated with Cheney, as noted above is unwarranted.
Frankly, digging up dirt to discredit an opponent is reprehensible, for the most part. But there's something really unsettling here overall about the Bouchard reaction and that of his supporters. Democratic candidates over the last decade have apologized and resigned for much less than this. Bouchard isn't resigning (that's definitely his call) but dismissing this as merely a mistake, and some of his supporters really rallying to him, basically excuses what most people would regard as an extremely reprehensible act. And when such acts are excused, at some point, they become fully excusable.
This is probably an overall symptom of where the nation's politics are right now. If things like this really mean nothing, particularly in regard to Republicans, we're in a pretty bad place in terms of our overall culture right now, not that this is really a surprise, and our politics are in a really distressing place, not that this is a surprise.
May 25, 2021, cont:
The fight over and with Bouchard has actually grown much worse than the Trib has let on. Indeed, Bouchard ought to be praising the Tribune for its restraint.
One of the conservative Internet Wyoming news organs isn't showing such restraint however, and Bouchard is now in a real public spat with Ogden Driscoll, the majority floor leader in the Senate. For example:
Calling Bouchard a “predator”, Driskill said there is a “huge difference” between a high school student dating a younger peer and a high school dropout who had a job and was “hanging out with 13 and 14-year-olds”.
“That was not acceptable back then,” he said. “In fact, where I’m from you took your life in your own hands if you went out to date junior high girls.”
Yikes.
All this would suggest that the members of the GOP do more details than have hit the press. Somebody has now asked Bouchard if he was in high school when this happened, and at least as of press time, he hadn't responded.
Bouchard has, in turn, accused Driscoll of "lining his pockets", without details, and in a new video calls him "scum".
May 26, 2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the gadfly freshman Congressman who is pretty clearly a type of troll, has entered the Wyoming political scene in a bizarre way because of Anthony Bouchard.
Bouchard turns out to be a Greene supporter and he recently returned to his home state of Florida to participate in her "America First" rally . Matt Gaetz, facing potential charges for alleged sex with an underaged women, was also there giving a certain extra added element of irony to the Bouchard story.
A story was circulating the past couple of days that suggested that the Senate was looking a censuring Bouchard over his involvement with a 14 year old when he was 18. This lead to a very public spat with Senator Driskill whom he apparently doesn't get along with, which we noted above, which in turn led to Bouchard comparing himself to Greene and posting:
“The RINO establishment led by Sen. Ogden
Driskill wants to strip me of committees. Just like Pelosi did to #MTG BRING
IT,”
Cheney supported the Republicans in the House who condemned Greene's recent statements comparing mask wearing to the holocaust. Condemnation, we'd note, on this was very wide. Robin Belinsky, the doomed Wyoming candidate who calls herself Wyoming's Greene, distanced herself from the comments, a pretty good sign of how extreme they are, while still stating that Greene had a right to say them. Bouchard didn't comment on them, but this gave the Tribune the opportunity to note Bouchard's support for Greene, which given his participation in her populist rally in Florida, is obviously pretty extensive.
It turns out that the Senate isn't really considering stripping Bouchard of his committee assignments, but what is the case is just what one of his anti Cheney GOP critics noted, the higher he climbs on the flagpole the more his ass is showing. Driskill was brutal in his criticism of Bouchard, and if what he's hinting is correct it does put another element into this. Bouchard, moreover, who has some real populist support in the GOP but who no doubt wasn't widely followed in wider circles, let alone by the general (Republican) public is shown to really be in the extreme end of things thanks to the press he's now getting, as for example that he's a supporter of Greene. Greene seems to be focused on being a troll and has no committee assignments at all in Congress, meaning that she's reduced to nothing but making outrageous statements for attention.
Rather than taking a repentant tone over things, Bouchard is asserting that the "deep state" is coming after him.
The primary, it should be noted, isn't until next year. All the inside predictions favor Cheney, but obviously that's been no deterrent to a flood of primary candidates. This field will narrow enormously as time goes on but Bouchard, who some populists favored, is being subject to a spotlight that's sufficiently bright that at lease one member of the state Senate doesn't mind openly criticizing him and, moreover, much more is coming to light about him. While its very early, my predictions are that he'll stay in through the primary, but his Wyoming political career has basically ended.
May 28, 2021
Foster Friess, Republican "megadonor" who had relocated to Wyoming and involved himself in the state's politics in recent years, albeit not successfully, died at age 81. While is death of bone marrow cancer takes him from the political scene directly, it will none the less have an impact on the race as he was the campaign manager for Darin Smith, who had been Friess' campaign manager when he ran for Governor.
Friess was not a Wyomingite, but had grown up in Wisconsin and then later lived in Texas, but in very recent years was eligible to run as he'd claimed Jackson Hole as his residence, making him part of the super wealthy set from there. He ran in the 2018 Governor's race unsuccessfully and was somewhat bitter about his defeat in the primary election, coming in second, but a not too distant second. In 2019 he had an exploratory committee working on his chances for another run but terminated it soon thereafter. His 2018 campaign had a real southern feel to it, featuring for example scantily clad young women. Smith's present campaign, absent the young women, somewhat has a feel reflective of Friess. He definitely had an impact on the state's politics, although it can be debated whether it was good or bad, with that probably being reflective of your political views.
While potentially in bad form to note it, Friess' death points out, to some degree, the lack of wisdom in continually electing ancient candidates to office. He did not win, of course, but had he, the Secretary of State in Wyoming would now be the Governor.
Looking back on the 2018 election, Friess competition with Harriet Hageman perhaps was indicative of disturbing trends to come. Both candidates were hard right candidates, but Friess always came across as affable and even jovial, which perhaps won him some votes. It's difficult to know, of course, but the split in the vote in 2018 might mean nothing at all, or it might have been a sign of how far to the right the GOP was drifting. Friess, it should be noted, can't really be regarded as having been a populist.
June 6, 2021
Harold Bjork has started a campaign for the GOP nomination for Governor, although he hasn't yet registered as running.
Who is he? I don't know, but from what little you can tell, this "conservative" candidate is running pretty far to the right of Gordon and seems to be strongly opposed to the now expired mask mandate.
FWIW, all the candidates who run for this position, including the Democratic top contender, are conservative by conventional, or at least pre Trump, definitions. As the current trends have made these terms a bit obsolete, realistically candidates to the far right likely really fit into some other category.
June 14, 2021
Some sort of debate was held for the Congressional election on June 12, which was we might note an exceedingly busy day in Casper where this event was held. On the same day, Mills, the neighboring city, celebrated its 100th anniversary with concerts and a summer festival, the College National Finals Rodeo started, and the LGBQT community held a Pride event at Casper's Durbin Street Station. Suffice it to say, getting any attention in a day that had so many varied things going on would be difficult to say the least.
It appears to have been sponsored by an entity using the American First moniker, now associated with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Liz Cheney was not in attendance and there is no reason that she would be, as this event was specifically a remove Cheney event. Interestingly Anthony Bouchard, the standard bearer for the this line of thought in Wyoming, up until perhaps recently, wasn't there either. A supporter notes that he was elsewhere in the comments, but he's also been somewhat quiet since the events of his early years described above came to press. His nearest rivals were there, however.
A note, I haven't watched this video.
June 19, 2021
Candidate Gray visited the Arizona partisan audit, something some other far right populist have recently done. Liz Cheney has termed the audit an attempt to "subvert" democracy.
Gray, in his campaign materials, has a poster showing the diminutive Wharton School of Business educated Gray in suit and tie wearing boxing gloves taking on "never Trumpers" Cheney and Mitt Romney. Clearly he's angling for the populist vote. At some point, however, serious questions probably ought to be asked if some of these candidates are pitching softballs to what's being hit, or if they truly believe what they're stating, and if so, why.
June 21, 2021
Ammon Bundy, a member of the Bundy family that occupied a Federal wildlife refuge under a claim that they had the right to graze it, which ended up in a standoff with Federal authorities, is running for the Governor of Idaho. Given convictions due to that event its not clear to us how he can actually run.
June 24, 2021
It turns out that the individual who sponsored the America First debate mentioned above is a resident of Florida.
And, in an odd turn of events, both Liz Cheney and Anthony Bouchard have criticized the individual, K. W. Miller, who acted as the forum moderator. The spat with Cheney is an obvious one, but with Bouchard less so. None the less, an entity supporting Miller has attacked Bouchard and accused him of being in league with "George Soros affiliated" leftwing groups and have accused "Bouchard sycophants" of trying to disrupt the debate.
Miller has endorsed Chuck Gray.
Whatever the merits or demerits of Bouchard, it seems fairly clear that he and George Sorors are unlikely to share any connections.
June 26, 2021
The New York Times is reporting that Wyoming's Democratic Party, combined with some Republicans, were part of a targeted effort at, for lack of a better word, infiltration that had ties to the founder of Blackwater and funding from the Wyoming Liberty Group.
The effort appears to have been unsuccessful, and even inept, but it's a shocking example of just how weird politics have become recently.
On the same day, the same item, had an item about the sinking, on the same day, of the SS Conte Rosso. Those two events both resulted in massive loss of life, with man of those lives being young. The Conte Rosso, a pre war Italian cruise liner, is forgotten, but the Hood certainly is not.
I don't note this to suggest moral equivalency or something in this, but rather to note something completely different.
The Battle of the Denmark Straits is an epic event of World War Two, but like all epic events of the Second World War it resulted in massive loss of life. It's not funny.
One of the things that has occurred since World War Two is the pornification of everything, and across cultural lines. This is bad in the US, but frankly its worse in other countries. Japan, which doesn't have a Western culture, and therefore doesn't have the remaining restraints of the Apostolic faiths and their protestant split offs, has a much different culture in this regard, and indeed in regard to the societal view of women in general. Japan, quite frankly, tolerates a lot of things in this are area that are outright perverse.
One of the things that it tolerates is a pornographic cartoon industry. Unfortunately, with the Internet, that's developed a huge American fan base, predictably. And oddly enough, and it is really, really odd, a feature of Japanese weird cartoon art is the cartoon treatment of World War Two warships, personified as improbably shaped women in the Japanese cartoon style.
I note this as when I ran the item on the Hood I ran across quite accidentally, on a net search, a cartoon depicting the Hood, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in this fashion, in what I guess was intended to be a cartoon representation of the Battle of Denmark Strait. And its deeply, deeply, weird and perverted.
We have the Internet in part to thank for this. It's not good.
A existential shift?
One of the things about living in one place for a long time is that you both experience changes and aren't aware of them when they're happening. The recent Anthony Bouchard matter brings this to mind.
I've followed Wyoming's politics since I was a teenager. The first election I really recall closely watching was the 1972 Presidential election. I was nine years old at the time. I paid more attention to the 1976 Ford v. Carter election, where I definitely had an opinion (I was for Ford). So I have a long political rear view mirror.
My entire life the Republican party has been the majority party, although we've also had three Democratic governors, one Democratic Senator and one Democratic Congressman in that time frame. And for almost all of that time we've never fit the national mold.
Wyoming Republicans tended to be more like independents elsewhere. Wyoming Democrats, it was often noted, would have been Republicans elsewhere.
Something happened when Clinton was President and its still hard to figure out looking back. Clinton was not, in retrospect, a bad President and he wasn't actually detestable while he served in any real sense. But the Democratic Party simply died here during that period and it reflects the fringe today. The serious Democrats, including the ones in the legislature, pretty much picked up and moved to the Republican Party.
You'd think that would have cemented the party in the center, and for awhile it sort of looked that way. Maybe it has, but we're about to see.
The Wyoming Republican Party of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, was highly centrist and independent. When a Natrona County member attempted to introduce an anti phonography bill in the 80s he was pretty much howled down as messing in other people's business. Efforts by out of staters to move into the Powell region of the state to set up a white enclave met with an open public demonstration. Whether you thought they should or not, the party wouldn't touch social issues. An effort by ranchers to take over hunting licenses met with a near public rebellion.
But something has happened since then.
I'm not sure what it is, but that party has been captured by real right wing populists and they actually openly hate the old party. By accident and without my desire, I ended up being a silent recipient on an email list for at time made up of Republican figures in the state who are fairly well known. I asked the list owner to drop me off as frankly I'm sure that they wouldn't have wanted me there and I don't know why I was included in the first place.
What that revealed, however, is an open contempt of the populist who control the state's GOP for the old party.
The question is, where are the voters and is the old party still around?
Up until recently, I've thought it was. And I still think and hope it is. But I have to acknowledge that something has really crept into the GOP here and taken it over.
Whatever it is, it isn't conservatism.
To some extent, I wonder to what degree this is imported, and if that's the case, to what degree the importation is permanent. Some of the figures I recognized are very much Wyomingites, but perhaps notably of demographics and regions that were outside the mainstream up until now. But other figures in this change are out of staters.
That really matters as out of staters, or more accurately out of the region immigrants, bring their views and politics with them. They often don't know it, however. Be that as it may, people come here for various reasons and instantly set about trying to make this place like the place they left.
In the last Gubernatorial election the state had a candidate that hailed originally from Wisconsin but who had taken an adult trip, so to speak, through Texas and Arizona before ending up here, part, I suppose most, of the year in that county that's the domain of the wealthy, Teton County. His campaign struck me like something out of the South in the 1970s, complete with lightly clad young women in a climate that's cold most of the time. At one time I saw a car licensed in Colorado that had a bumper sticker for him that proclaimed "Christians for ".
Now, I'm a Christian, but prior to the 2018 race you never would have seen that sticker here. Wyomingites aren't anti Christian, but they tend to be "leave me alone" in their view of things. People simply wouldn't have attempted to garner the support of somebody by citing their religious faith prior to that time. Indeed, I know one of the prior Governors somewhat and know that he is very observant in his faith. At least one of the other prior ones had a profound personal conversion. And yet another candidate in the 2018 race was Greek Orthodox but that was largely unnoted.
That's because what's really meant by that claim is "I'm an evangelical Protestant", usually. And that's interesting as Wyoming is the least observant state, religion wise, in the country.
That's not new to Wyoming, it's always been the case. Over the state's century long history there's been an evolution in Protestantism however. The Episcopal Church was once very prominent in the state, but it's now declined massively and continues to. The Presbyterian Church and the Lutheran Church had pretty strong bases in certain demographics. The Latter Day Saints are very strong in certain regions and have been since before the state was a state. And Catholics form a unique demographic as they're a minority in Wyoming by a long measure, but they're a fairly observant one which actually makes them sort of prominent in terms of groups actually going to church.
Fundamentalist Christian faiths have always been here as well, but the real growth of them is quite new. In the 60s and 70s, your church attending Protestant school mates, probably went to a Lutheran, Episcopal or Presbyterian church. I can recall having one friend who went to a Baptist church, but only one. One of the girls I knew in junior high and high school was the daughter of the Methodist minister and I later knew some Methodists. I knew one Mormon. I knew one Jehovah's Witness.
Indeed, of my immediate grade school friends, one was a Baptist (mentioned above), two were Lutherans (although oddly one of the brothers of one of them became an Episcopal, and then Anglican, priest), one a Mormon, and one wasn't of any religion I can recall, which probably means his parents didn't attend church.
Of my close junior high/high school friends, two were Lutheran, one Episcopalian, one Mormon, and one nominally Catholic. In my wider circle, one was the aforementioned daughter of the Methodist minister and one the son of the Greek Orthodox priest.
Well so what, you may ask?
Well, on my work now there's two churches that are of very much different theology, one being a very large Assembly of God church and one purporting to be free of a denomination, which actually puts it into the evangelical protestant arena. Across town there's a very large non denominational church in that category. A person may say, so what, but this is evidence of something. Truth be known, up into the 1970s these latter types of Christian denominations were pretty rare here and had small congregations. That's changed.
And that's evidence of something demographic, and that reflects back to what I've just noted above about politics.
In the 1970s we had an oil boom that died by the early 1980s. When it died, the folks who had come in during it left. This was the age old pattern here. The mainline protestant churches and the Apostolic churches had congregations made up of people who had roots here, or who had sunk roots here. Some were oilmen and oilfield workers, but an awful lot of them had some other long standing base here.
The recent oil booms, there being two, of post 2000 vintage also brought in the oil demographic, which tends to be from Texas and Oklahoma, and that's really when we saw the rise of the evangelical protestant churches. It's also when our politics really began to change as well.
Now, I'm not saying that everyone who goes to one of the evangelical protestant churches is an outsider, nor am I saying everyone in the populist GOP is. As we'll note on the latter, however, some definitely are. But there's a phenomenon in invasions, if you care to look at it, of the outnumbered invader changing the culture of the invaded territory.
Pre Saxon Britain was populated, not surprisingly, by the British, a Celtic people. It was long wondered if the Saxons killed most of them, although there was little evidence of that, when they came in. We now know, thanks to DNA testing, that they didn't. Indeed, the modern English, or the Anglesch, or the Angles, are pretty much Celts, genetically. The Saxons simply took over and their culture became the dominant one.
I wonder if we something like that going on here. The population of Wyoming at any one time contains more outsiders than Wyomingites. A lot of the immigrants are from the region, who largely share the same culture, but not all of them are. Some are form outside and bring their culture with them.
Indeed, I'm personally familiar with just one such example of a transplanted Midwesterner who is pretty much incapable of leaving his big city, Midwestern view, behind him. He can't, as that's who he is, and there's nothing wrong with that. But very few people realize that they have a regional culture, and that the culture is shaped by where they are from.
The traditional Wyoming culture is pretty Woody Guthrie-esque. "This land is my land", in other words. A lot of the imports don't view it that way at all. And most of the old Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Mormons here pretty much figured that their religion informed their daily actions and politics, but none of them would have said "vote for me, I'm a . . . "
Maybe what I'm noting hasn't really happened. I hope not. But I wonder. One of the current Congressional candidates came out of hte chute announcing he was "pro-God, pro-family, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-business, pro-oil and gas, pro-coal." No Wyoming candidate of the 1970s and 80s, would have dared say that they were "pro God" as it would have been presumptuous in the extreme. For that matter, none would have said they were "pro gun" as that would have been assumed, and statements on the extractive industries would have been more intelligent than that.
That candidate is from Wyoming, but he's backed by the Teton County former candidate mentioned above. Of the remaining field we have one from Florida who has acknowledged, but not really show contrition, for what would amount to statutory rape in Wyoming, followed by what would have been pretty much regarded as a shocking marriage to a child by most Wyomingites prior to 2000, but which doesn't seem to now. One who has made a comment about Liz Cheney not really living here, a fair enough criticism that I've made myself in prior years, isn't from here either, but is at least from a neighboring state. Two have long military careers which by definition puts you out of contact with the state and I'm not sure if one is from here. The other most recently lived in California, supposedly the antithesis of all things Wyoming.
Some have noted that Idaho's politics were basically taken over by the populist wing of the GOP and Idaho has definitely gone through something like this in the last decade. Maybe we have too. [1].
I hope not.
Je ne regrette rein. . . mais peut-être que je devrais
Another thing, I suppose, we have the Internet to thank for is the recent decline of politics and the rise of anger as a virtue.
A lot of the current crop of GOP candidates here, which is all we really have so far, are just hoping pissed off mad.1. Now, being mad in politics can make sense, but it's really gotten out of hand.
It has to be kept in mind that people rarely make rational decisions when mad, and the essential element of a demagogue is keeping his followers mad. Mussolini never went to the balcony, and said, "gee, Romans, its such a nice day. . . let's do what Italians do and just take the day off . . . ". Nope was mad, and so his followers were mad.
While comparing anything contemporary to the Nazis is always fraught with danger, the same is true of Hitler. You can view, and if you speak it listen, to lots of Hitler speeches. And he's hoping mad. He's really mad at the Jews. Mad, mad, mad. His followers were mad too. . . so mad they never stopped to think "what exactly has this tiny minority of people in our country actually done to us. . . oh yeah. . nothing".
As I noted in another post, Wyoming populists are busy accusing old line Republicans of being not Republicans. Some mad person put up a RINO billboard here recently, apparently not realizing that may be the majority of the state. Anthony Bouchard is mad at the "fake press" for reporting news that isn't fake.
In earlier eras it took radio and posters to keep people whipped up to this state of perpetual frenzy. Now its the Internet, and that doesn't take nearly as much effort. In large part, that's why the Trumpites of the GOP are mad, and its' why the left winger of the Democratic party, who really love being mad, are made.
Everyone ought to listen to Gene Shepherd's "Fanatics". Truly.
As part of this, nobody seems to publicly repent of their sins.
Not that everyone has to, but let's be honest. If you are public figure and you acted badly, you ought to acknowledge that. Now, nobody is. Up until recently, they did.
And there's some bridges that you just can't cross. Rape, including statutory rape (which is usually consensual we'd note), is one. If it comes out, you have to confess guilt or it says something about you that's icky. Even if you do the right thing, you have to. You can note that you did the right thing, but you can't blame "the fake news media."
And you can't praise the guilty either. Mussolini did make the trains run on time, and Hitler did fix the rather odd German civil legal structure, supported a modernized highway system, and backed the Volkswagen, but that's not a reason to set his greater transgressions aside.
In other words, you can't really let Roman Polanski off the hook. You just don't want to go where that leads. If you start to try to wipe off the shit, you'll smell like it. No two ways about it.
Retrospect
I typed most of this out on a day that happened to be my birthday.
My birthday tends to be no big deal to me. Indeed, I'm always caught off guard when people note it and to a certain degree, with people that I don't know, it can irritate me to have it noted. I know this is unusual.
I note it here as the past year has been hopelessly odd, globally, and only now things are beginning to become less strained. Be all of that as it may, because of a variety of things, I'm irritated and disappointed, but not at anyone I know. From deep thinkers, however, I do appreciate thoughtful wishes.
One of the things that routinely happens on birthdays where I work is a communal late day birthday celebration. I absolutely dread it. Indeed, I always note to people who aske me what I want, etc., for my birthday that I don't really want anything, or if they are going to get me something, they ought to get me a mule, which I really do want. I'm perfectly serious about the mule, but nobody ever gets me one. I think they think I'm joking.
People don't take seriously the request that a birthday not be observed either.
I suppose that's because most people really enjoy having their birthdays celebrated widely. I don't really.
I always try to keep in mind that this is a view that's personal to me. And it isn't for the reason that you hear some people cite about being closer to death. I'm now 58, and at 58, if you are honest, death can come at any time. Oh well, that's the way that is.
Rather, I think it has to do with my early years, which of course people will always say is responsible for everything. But here it actually is.
When I was growing up, we always observed birthdays, but after your very early years it was an immediate family type of deal. And this was the case for the entire extended family. I get birthday wishes from my cousins, and they're sincere, but we don't have parties or exchange gifts. After I was about 7 or so, there were no birthday parties with friends and I can recall my parents even discussing that. It just wasn't done. You'd always get some gifts, but big gifts were particularly associated with real milestones. They didn't come every year. As my birthday comes during the school year, when I was at university I was usually not home when it occurred, and a phone call was about it, which is about all I expected and frankly I appreciated that. To compound things, after I was 13 my mother was so ill birthdays were really a thing that my father, whose birthday was one day after mine, was really the one observing it, and vice versa.
With that background, birthdays are deeply personal and private to me. I don't expect nor desire light wishes and I really don't want gatherings, particularly at work. One at home with my family is fine. I almost always work my birthday and when I'm at work, I'm working. I don't want to take a break late day to eat something. I know that's weird, but that's the way I feel about it.
I don't mind celebrating other people's birthdays, as they aren't mine. I get that. I get the larger cultural tradition. I'm just not participating in it and I never have.
An added part of that is that personal focus or attention is something that a really private person keeps really private. I don't want to respond to a fully day of birthday wishes as people stop by my office as the day is private and frankly, given my history with it, wounded.
I oddly feel the same thing about my first name. My mother was the only one, when I was growing up, who called me by my entire first name. Everyone else, absolutely everyone who knows me, uses a truncated form of it. My mother and I shared that truncated name as our names are male and female variants of the same name. I note that only her siblings called her by her full name. The same name reoccurs in my extended family and nobody uses the full variant of it commonly.
But at work people do. You can't break them of it, and you can't really tell them to knock it off. Why would they know?
Finally, I suppose, birthdays are a reminder of the things I didn't get done over the past year, which are the same things I didn't get done the year before that, and the same things I made resolutions on at New Years. At this age the things you need to work on are persistent, and even if they'd be easy for a younger person to address, at over half a century, they're not. I suppose the reminder is a good thing, in a way, and the birthday serves as a speedbump in that sense, but being reminded of perennial failure is a bit irritating.
Footnotes
1. Ironically, if this upcoming election is like the last, the real Wyomingite who gets the Democratic nomination may be the real Wyomingite.
.jpeg)
.jpg)
