Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Historical Society Kicks Out County Chapters As Rift Widens
Saturday, April 19, 2025
NO KINGS
When, the following year, the Continental Congress got around to declaring independence the following year, they listed twenty five grievances they accused King George III of, those being:
- Grievance 1 "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
- Grievance 2 "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them."
- Grievance 3 "He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only."
- Grievance 4 "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, and also uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."
- Grievance 5 "He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."
- Grievance 6 "He has refused for a long time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and convulsions within."
- Grievance 7 "He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
- Grievance 8 "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers."
- Grievance 9 "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."
- Grievance 10 "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
- Grievance 11 "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
- Grievance 12 "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
- Grievance 13 "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:"
- Grievance 14 "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
- Grievance 15 "For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:"
- Grievance 16 "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world".
- Grievance 17 "For imposing taxes on us without our consent:"
- Grievance 18 "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Jury trial:
- Grievance 19 "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:"
- Grievance 20 "For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries to render it at once an example and fit instrument
- Grievance 21 "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:"
Perhaps nearly as distressing is a new development that I'm seeing in some Conservative quarters.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The founders of the Republic didn't want to keep a large standing Army, which they regarded, rightly, as a threat to democracy. The early land defense of the country, therefore, relied on state militias, which had the added ability to take on local problems without the necessity of a Federal army having to intervene. After all, keep in mind that one of the cited reasons for the Revolution is that the English had kept large bodies of armed troops in the colonies.
Standing armies are always a problem and the current era might very well be starting to demonstrate that. Throughout the nation's history it usually didn't have large armies save in times of war, or leading up to war. But since the onset of the Cold War it has. Even now, in the post Cold War era, the Army is enormous compared to what it had been before World War Two.
Anyhow, the Second Amendment doesn't exist so that average people can take on a tyrannical government. It exists so that states can take on the British, basically. That hasn't stopped at least three decades of firearms owners being schooled in the thought that they might have take up arms against the government, with those claims uniformly coming from the right, although in the 1960s, there were those on the left who argued with some justification that oppressed minorities should arm to protect themselves.
Now, all of a sudden, I'm seeing anti Trump Conservatives suggest that the Second Amendment's clauses have what I've already noted as a mistaken view. And some on the left are goading the far right on this very topic, ie., now that we have an authoritarian, they're quiet. That shows, I think, how far down the road of chaos we've gotten. We haven't seen anything like that since the Civil War.
Moreover, there's some discussion going on in the military right now over what the duties are of military officers if they are ordered to take an illegal action. To some extent I think you can argue they already have been, with the Trump administration declaring the public lands along the Mexican border to be military reservations, but that actually has a long history. At any rate, Angry Staff Officer, whose blog we link in here, has put up two items recently on the military duties to disobey illegal orders. The Space Force has had one commanding officer relieved for criticizing J. D. Vance's territorially aggressive statements, something I'm sure she knew would occur when she made them. While we'd have to see what would actually happen, I suspect there's a lot of back barracks discussions going on amongst officers about the point at which they refuse to obey an illegal order from Trump.
Trump is a disaster, bringing the worse instincts in people to the top, and excusing them. This will get worse, and worse, if the 25th Amendment doesn't come into play. The man is an stupid, ancient, narcissist who may very well be bordering on insane. If Congress acted now, and truth be known a near majority likely grasp it and are too chicken to do anything, the situation could be salvaged.
Friday, April 18, 2025
Called on to defend the rule of law, Wyoming’s delegation says judges, not Trump, are the problem
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
"The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law."
The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law.
Retired Federal Judge Michael Luttig
There's so much every day that now many people just ignore it.
Trump, who isn't Constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President in the first place, has illegally imposed taxes, something reserved to Congress. He's either used emergency powers where there is no emergency, or he's actually imposed them where he's not even authorized through an emergency act.
A completely spineless Republican Party is in control of Congress, and therefore nothing is being done about it in that quarter.
He's ignoring a court order that a prisoner sent to a horrific El Salvadorian prison be returned, using the pretext that fellow traveler Bukele of El Salvador has chosen not to return him, something that I'm confident he could compel to occur.
And that's just a start.
Trump is acting like the Red Caesar desired by an anti democratic element of the far right. The Courts are stepping up. Congress needs to as well.
Monday, March 31, 2025
Blog Mirror: Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About Seeking a Third Term in Defiance of Constitution, by Erica L. Green
The worst President in American history, and the worst human being to occupy the office, seemingly has no bounds in his love of himself.
Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About Seeking a Third Term in Defiance of Constitution, by Erica L. Green
White House spokesmen immediately went into spin mode, but if we've learned anything about Trump is that we should take him at his word on his plans, no matter how illegal they may be. He's going to try this, there's virtually no doubt. And the GOP will support it.
One of the ways Trump thinks he can do this, which won't work, is to have J. D. Vance run for office, with Trump on the VP ticket, and then resign. That is against the Constitution but it also assumes that Vance is willing to be a giant patsy. Maybe he is, but. . .
By the way, Julius Caesar used the elephant as a symbol. . .
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025 It's Opening Day, and I'm Not Feeling It
A post I really sympathize with:
Thursday, March 27, 2025
I'm not feeling it either, and for a lot of reasons.
Emergency Video: March 26, 2025 The insanity of the signal
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 79th Edition. The Move along, nothing to see here addition.
March 24, 2025
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
This is going to require some explaining.
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic.
Last edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 78th Edition. We'd like to inform you that terrible things are being done in your name, edition.
Monday, March 17, 2025
I became a federal worker to serve my country, not to get rich
Thursday, March 13, 2025
RFK, Jr. opines that the best protection against measles is the breast milk from an unvaccinated woman. . .
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Going Feral: Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad...
Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff
Saturday, February 22, 2025
What's Wrong with the United States? We're really ignorant, and its getting worse.
21% of adults in the US are illiterate. 54% of American adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level.
And we wonder how Trump got elected?
The illiterate are ignorant, and blisteringly ignorant people vote for stupid stuff.
I had a very strange experience the other day, which I need to be indistinct about.
It had to do with homeschooling.
Twice in recent weeks I've run across a topic that's in the legislature, that being the legal requirement, which the Wyoming 2025 Legislative assembly is about to wipe out, that home schooling parents submit their educational plans to their local school districts. The requirement is there to prevent parents from basically not educating their children.
Not educating children is what homeschooling is all about.
This wasn't always the case, but it's become the case.
Some background.
My father was the first male in his family to graduate from high school. He might have been the third member of the family, as I don't know that much about my paternal grandmother's early life in that fashion. She probably graduated high school in Denver however, likely from a Catholic high school. His older sister graduated from a high school in Scottsbluff.
My father went on to a doctorate.
My paternal grandfather, who left school to work at age 13, had such an advance knowledge of mathematics that he helped his children with their high school calculus homework, which is revealing for two reasons, one that is amazing on his part, and secondly all of my father's siblings took calculus in high school.
I didn't take calculus in high school
My father could speak two languages, English and German, and had a knowledge of Latin. My paternal grandfather also could speak two languages, English and German, and had a knowledge of Latin.
My mother did not graduate from high school She was not given the opportunity to. She earned an Associates as a an adult. Her mother was university educated, as was her father. They all spoke two languages, English and French, and had a command of Latin.
Growing up in my family household was like getting a post doctorate in some things, history and science in particular. I read so early that I was on to adult books before I left grade school and had the odd experience of a junior high librarian not wishing to check a history book as she feared it was too advance. I read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire before I left junior high.
I was in fact educated on a lot of stuff at home. . . but I was sent to school.
There's an interesting pattern here. Some of my friends of my age had college educated parents, but not all of them did. But all of my friends attended college or university. Not all graduated, but they did receive some post high school education. One of my closest friends had a father who did not graduate from high school. He joined the Army in his senior year to fight in World War Two, following in the footsteps of a father who had fought in World War One. My friend has two bachelors degrees.
And there's another thing here. Even those people I knew from my generation, and the prior one, who had parents that didn't graduate high school, had quite literate parents. If I ever went into a house that didn't have a lot of books somewhere, it was shocking. I can only really recall one. The home of my friend noted above was like a library. My parents house and that of all of my aunts and uncles were packed with books. In my parents house you could find a few books that were in German or French. A friend of mine who did not graduate from high school, but none the less went off to university, recalled his grandparents house being packed with books in . . . Gaelic.
My paternal grandmother absolutely insisted that my father go on to get an advanced degree, something he briefly though about not doing. His unmarried sister near in age to him was sent to university as well. I was given no real choice but to go on to higher education myself.
And this was common for people my generation, and the preceding one. Farm and ranch family in particular often had a manic dedication to higher education.
Home schooling has been around since time immemorial, I suppose, but when I was a kid, what it probably meant, where I live, is that the kid in question was living on a really remote ranch. Even then, most ranching parents made a dedicated effort to avoid that. More than a few had a teacher who lived at the ranch, paid for by the school district. The county I live in had four rural remote public schools, of which only one is still in operation. The neighboring one had some so remote that if you run across them on really rural roads its a shock. The teachers at these institutions were admired in a way that's hard to describe. Anything going on in the area always included them.
I didn't know a single homeschooled kid growing up.
Next to home schooling, of course, is private schooling. When I was young the only private school I ever heard of was the Catholic school. It was a big downtown school. It's moved from downtown, but it still exists. Catholic education had long been a thing in the US and apparently Catholics are supposed to send their kids to Catholic schools if they can, but I didn't go to it (it was full), nor did our kids.
When in high school I learned that there was a Lutheran grade school, to my enormous surprise, as I walked by it every day. After high school I learned that there was a "Christian" school, by which I mean a school attached to one of the sort of due it yourself evangelical Protestant groups. It started in 1978, so I would have been in high school when it commenced operating. The ministers for that church, at the time, were drawn from the congregation, and I later met one who was ironically adverse with its tenants as he was a geologist who accepted the truth of evolution, which the church did not.
A church that thinks evolution is a fib, probably doesn't have it taught in its schools.
Which is the point, really. The goal of a large amount of modern homeschooling is to keep students as ignorant as possible, which is conceived of as limiting tehir "exposure" to corrupting elements.
I've been exposed to a few homeschooled kids over the years and frankly a lot of them were rather weird and very socially awkward. Having said that, I've met one kid, and know of another, from a homeschooling family who were not that way, and one of which went on to a really high dollar career.
Now, with that comment, let me note that education isn't about getting rich, or shouldn't be. It's about the Allegory of the Cave. The problem here is that those exposed to the sunlight are seeking to drag the ir offspring back into it, deeper in the cave, and into chains.
The simple fact of the matter is that Americans were much more literate prior to the 1990s than they are now. They read. They read even if they hadn't graduated high school.
And they read a lot, and a lot of it is much more advanced than what people claim to read now. Even people who mostly read novels often read things much more advanced than people do now. I recall one parent of a family friend being a fanatic fan of C. S. Forester, whose novels were just that, but noen the less dealt often with the Napoleonic Wars, something a lot of current Americans probably don't know occured. One fellow I knew in the National Guard loved Louis Lamour, so much so that he read The Walking Drum, which is set in the Middle Ages, about which he was able to speak intelligently. Another fellow, who had been a career Marine, was reading War and Peace.
Everyone read the newspaper. You'd frequently see periodicals in people's houses, including unfortunately Playboy on occasion, but the latter had sufficiently good interviews that my high school newspaper teacher used those as examples and adopted them for the pattern of a series in that high school journal. Less unfortunately, you'd see Time, Newsweek and Life in people's houses routinely. And everyone read the local newspaper, by which I mean everyone.
The National Geographic seemed to be in the home of every household that had children, including ours. Our collection went back into the 1940s, from my father's parents home.
Cartoons didn't make much of an appearance in our house, and I"ve never developed a taste for most of the cartoon journal type of cartoons, like Superman, but what I do recall is when they showed up, it was often Mad Magazine, which actually is really adult oriented, and not in the juvenile way "adult" is often used.
The point is, when people claim people were "more educated" in the past, including populists who are not today, they tended to be, but in ways that people now just don't really quite grasp. They often had lower levels of educational achievement, but because they lived in a literate world, they were societally educated.
You can go into a lot of homes today and find that the occupants read. . . nothing.
Instead, people consume only what suits them.
In almost all of the 20th Century, it wasn't really possible to hear only the news you wanted to. Even if you limited yourself to radio, prior to the introduction of television, you were going to get a wide range of news. Newspapers were, as noted, almost a requirement for most households. When television came in, at first, it was highly local but the news was national and there was no avoiding it. You weren't going to get right or left wing propaganda from anyone.
That's all passed.
Americans aren't reading. What media they consume is self reaffirming, like Protestant sermons from the 1600s. People are listening only to like minds, and the nation is becoming more and more ignorant.
Which is why we have Donald Trump in office. No literate nation would elect him to anything.\
Note that this doesn't mean the population is dumb. Ignorant and dumb are not the same thing. But we suffer from the Jo Jo Rabbit Effect in a major way. We're listening, basically, to ourselves, and making excuses for our failures, and justifying our appetites.
And it puts the entire globe in danger.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 75th Edition. Dim Wit.
Finnish journalist Mikko Marttinen after listening to Donald Trump's recent speeches:
Trump, 78, is the most dim-witted president of modern US history, and old age has made him even dumber.
Of interest, from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick was peppered with boos and catcalls throughout a town hall meeting in Roswell late Thursday, as hundreds of critics jeered the Republican for backing President Donald Trump’s agenda during his first month in office.
Last edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 74th Edition. Surgery by butchers, MAGA Concubines, the Gualieter of Ohio, Portents, and the blind and deaf.
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
On hating the government. Being careful what you wish for, if you don't really grasp what you are wishing for. American Populists and the return to a mythical age.
A friend and I were discussing the current state of affairs and the Donald Trump assault/Project 2025's aggault/Wyoming Freedom Caucus on the government. We both are pretty conservatives fellows. We both served in the Army. We both are lawyers. Both of our fathers were Korean War veterans.
We're both horrified.
In part we're horrified as it clear that a huge portion of Trump's base absolutely hates their own government. Just hates it.
In the discussion, something occurred to me.
The world the MAGA/Populist/Project 2025 people wish for is one they've never seen nor experienced. A lot of them, quite frankly, don't have the capacity to grasp what it was like.
More than a few of them don't have the capacity to live in a world like that either.
No American born before 1932 lived in the world these people imagine as perfect. That means, in my case, as a member of Generation Jones, and even more so for the Baby Boom Generation, the last people they know who experienced it was their grandparents.
Or more likely, their great grandparents.
And our grandparents are all dead.
There's no living memory of it at all.
Nobody has one, at all.
The first President I voted for, as noted here, was Ronald Reagan in the 1984 Presidential election. I thinking of it, the first Presidential election my father could have voted in, when the voatin gage was 21, would have been the 1952 Presidential election. The first Presidential election I can remember, although only vaguely, is the 1968 Presidential election, when I was five years old. If that held true for my father, the first one he would have remembered would have been the 1936 Presidential election, at which time FDR was already well into establishing the government that Musk and Trump are destroying.
It was the Great Depression that brought the government into people's lives in a major way, although that it was going to happen was foreshadowed by the Progressive Era. Theodore Roosevelt was really the first "imperial President" who was willing to broadly act with executive orders. Franklin Roosevelt expanded the government enormously, however, in reaction to the extreme economic distress. That gave us the government we have today, but World War Two and the Cold War expanded it.
FDR, of court, brought big government in, and with World War Two proving that it was necessary to retain it, and the Cold War building on that, we've had it ever since. But we might be able to state that modern American government goes all the way back to 1900, before Theodore Roosevelt really started to bring in the progressives and the concept that the government was supposed to make things safe and fair for average people.
The generation that had lived through the Great Depression and the war were grateful for the larger Federal role and accepted it. It wasn't until the late 1960s that things began to be questioned. Even by then most Americans had no real memory of a day when the Federal Government was only active nationwide to a limited extent.
Nobody has that memory now.
What will this all mean?
Well, assuming that Must/Trump pulls it off, starting here in a few months, a real schock. And the best evidence is, so far, that Musk/Trump will have enormously wrecked the Federal Government in that time period, no matter what happens with Trump himself (and there are growing signs that Trump isn't really going to be around that long).
And the shock that will ensue will be in everything from what amounts to minor irritations to body bags.
Wyoming is going to have to pay for its own forest fires, and fight them on their own for one thing, snarky comments from Cowboy State Daily imported columnist aside. The State's going to have to pay for its own highways as well, which it can't afford. Things will just burn, and the highways decay.
And we'll be at the tender mercy of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which seemingly hates state government as well. Municipal services are really going to take a hit, to include police and fire fighting.
Education, which the WFC basically opposes, as students might learn the world is older than 5,000 years and God might not be limited to the restrictions people who can't imagine a world older than that would demand to be placed on, will be gutted.
Benefits provided to all kids of people through the Federal Government, from Veterans benefits to Medicaid, are in real danger.
A Federal and state government that makes sure your food, water, and living conditions are safe, won't be there.
Robber Barons, however, will be there once again, for the first time in well over a century.
The truth is, most people won't like living in a United States that's a third world nation. But the rich will, as the rich have always profited in the third world. And that, not some sort of rugged paradise, is where we're headed.
Calvinist believers were psychologically isolated. Their distance from God could only be precariously bridged, and their inner tensions only partially relieved, by unstinting, purposeful labor.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism
As part of that, the National Conservatives and the populists seem to outright hate government employees. That's already come up in of comments about them, one being how they'll go into "more productive" work. This group has a very Protectant Work Ethic view of life, in which your Calvinist purpose is to prove your worth by working harder and longer and for less than the value of your work, and never retire.
Many street level conservatives have hated Federal employees for years. I've heard them complain about how they're all lazy as they didn't do the correct Protestant thing and choose to go into the rough and tumble of the free market, by which they mean the corporate controlled market.
This is sometimes stated by people who actually depend on the government in spades themselves, and can't recognize it. For instance, if you are truck driver, you are living on the government dole, Mr. Knight of the Road. Fortunately, in this instance, truckers will soon be out of business as highway subsidies will end and railroads will take back over, which is a good thing.
More than one of the NC/Populist crowd who holds this view also abhor retirement. The comments are out there, people just refuse to recognize it. The push in this crowd, short term, is to raise retirement age to 69, but the real push will be just to do away with Social Security in the end. That neatly solves the Social Security crisis.
So, anyhow, like driving on Interstates?
Get used to your state funding them, and they won't.
Like safe air travel?
Notice how many air disasters there have already been since Trump took over, they're likely not his fault, but you probably ought to get used to that too.
Miss polluted air and water?
Well, it'll be back.
Come to expect the Federal government to be there if you are black, or Catholic, and can't get hired?
Well, lower your expectations.
Looking forward to retirement?
Forget it.
Injured and need assistance?
Well, you have your family to turn to. Or the church.
Lose your job and need help?
Well, move in with your parents, or your children.
Miss the days when the Marine Corps was used to make sure American economic interests weren't harmed in Central America and around the world?
Well, you'll get to live out the nostalgia.
Like living in a country where the rich get richer, the poor get dead, and the middle class are on the verge of poverty?
Well, you'll get to.
Welcome back. . . to about 1900 really.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Thursday, February 9, 1775. Privileged shortsightedness, then and now.
A joint resolution of Parliament declared:
We find, that a part of your Majesty's subjects in the province of the Massachusetts Bay have proceeded so far to resist the authority of the supreme legislature, that a rebellion at this time actually exists within the said province; and we see, with the utmost concern, that they have been countenanced and encouraged by unlawful combinations and engagements, entered into by your Majesty's subjects in several of the other colonies, to the injury and oppression of many of their innocent fellow-subjects resident within the kingdom of Great Britain, and the rest of your Majesty's dominions
February must be the month for deliberative bodies declaring dumbass things. Goodness knows that the Wyoming Legislature's SJ 2 does. Ironically, those making aristocratic decisions either believe themselves, or in some cases pretend themselves, to be heirs to the American Revolutionaries, when in fact, in some instances at least, they're heirs to the British landed aristocracy. But, in reality, at least some of those voting for SJ2 are much like the House of Lords. Landed gentry benefiting from the good fortune of their forbearers believing in their own superiority, or that they somehow worked for their position.
Up the Revolution!
La tierra es de quien la trabaja. Some of you ought to remember that. . .
Related threads:
Wyoming Senate demands Congress hand over federal land, including Grand Teton
Saturday, February 4, 1775. Logan's Lament published by the Virginia Gazette.
Last edition:
Saturday, February 4, 1775. Logan's Lament published by the Virginia Gazette.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Friday, January 31, 2025
Trump achieves historically low approval rating.
Right out of the gate, more disapprove of Trump's job than approve, and he's only one week in.
This will get worse, and his administration will get worse. The economy will get worse. The national behavior will get worse.
25th Amendment. . .
Anything good? Yes, only 4% are undecided.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Best Posts of the Week of January 19, 2025. The Death of the United States as a great nation.
A monumental week, which will go down in history in which a free people formalized the inauguration one of the worst leaders imaginable, and passed from a great nation, into just another country. Far from "Mak[ing] America Great Again", America was rendered embarrassing, pathetic, and dangerous to humanity.
There will be no coming back form this.
That the United States would not be a great nation forever does not surprise me. I have, after all, a sense of history. I just didn't expect to see such a dramatic end to its greatness in my own lifetime
Nor did I expect to see it go from great, to weird, such as happened to Reformation England.
Such a sad ending.