NO KINGS

This is the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

A big cause of the American Revolution, as everyone knows, was Parliament's (not the King's) imposition of taxes on the colonies, which was done to help pay for the French and Indian (Seven Years) War.  They were, in modern parlance, value added taxes, which the colonist had no say in, and they were specifically directed, on tea.

"No taxation without representation" was the cry.

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."

I think this charge can be levied against King Donald, but it is complicated by the fact that Congress is pretty much completely dysfunctional and has been for some time.

• 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." 

The Trump administration's outright hostility to the foreign born is at a level not seen since the 19th Century, and which exceeds any level in any prior administration in the country's history.  Included in this is an assault on birth right citizenship, which is featured in the Constitution.

• 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."

Trump's attacks on the judiciary are certainly evidence of this.  Right now, the Administration is ignoring an order to return a wrongfully deported prisoner.

• 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."

DOGE.

• Grievance 11 "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures." 

Just last week came the news that the Trump administration has basically martialized the public lands along the Mexican border.

• Grievance 12 "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power." 

See above and the use of the military for what the Border Patrol should properly be doing.

• 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.

Again, see above.

• 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".

Tariffs are accomplishing this.

• Grievance 17 "For imposing taxes on us without our consent:"

Tariffs again.

• 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:"

El Salvador prisons and Laotian deportation?

• 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 

This was directed at Quebec, but it could now pretty ably describe what Trump is doing in general.

• Grievance 21 "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:"

Again, see it above.

King Donald is repeating many of those same offenses, albeit in new forms, those being the ones emboldened.  Explanations, for the doubters, are provided above, but like British conservatives in the 1770s, they will not be able to see their own violations.

Perhaps nearly as distressing is a new development that I'm seeing in some Conservative quarters.

New York Times conservative columnists David Brooks called just recently for a "National Civil Uprising".

That's essentially a call for a massive act of civil disobedience, and frankly I think it has a good chance of happening.

And some are hinting at even more than that.

For decades, the Wayne LaPierre National Rifle Association fueled  the belief in the firearms community that the Second Amendment exists in order to allow civilians to fight Federal tyranny, if it came to that. That's really completely incorrect, as the text of the amendment clearly demonstrates:

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.

Posted on Twitter with the words "It won’t be long until the proletariat remembers why we have the second amendment".  This is suddenly a place where some on the left and some on the right are frighteningly meeting.

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.  

Posted on Blue Sky with "The 2nd Amendment exists for a reason. It was put in place to protect us against tyranny, even from our own elected officials. We have the right to stand up."

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.

Malcom X, who was a big proponent of the Second Amendment, looking out a window while holding a M1 Carbine.

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.

An example of the goading, but there's a point to it. Trump is rapidly evolving into a full blown authoritarian, just the kind of people that the NRA warned about for years.  This is why, quite frankly, I think the Trump administration will be the death knell of the Second Amendment.  Either Trump himself will ban entire classes of weapons as he'll conceive of them as a threat, or a successor President, if we get through this will, as the "we need these. . ." because argument will have shown to be baloney or worthless.

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.

Anticipating the worst, from Twitter.

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.

Called on to defend the rule of law, Wyoming’s delegation says judges, not Trump, are the problem

Called on to defend the rule of law, Wyoming’s delegation says judges, not Trump, are the problem: Senators and rep. say Congress should curb judges’ authority. The comments came in response to jurists’ letter urging them to protect the rule of law.

"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.

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 It's Opening Day, and I'm Not Feeling It

A post I really sympathize with:

Thursday, March 27, 2025

It's Opening Day, and I'm Not Feeling It

I'm not feeling it either, and for a lot of reasons.

Emergency Video: March 26, 2025 The insanity of the signal

 

Emergency Video: March 26, 2025

The insanity of the signal

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.

Predictably, the Administration denied this occurred, and rushed to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg.  However, then the government confirmed it happened, thereby making Pete Hegseth a liar, and making Karoline Leavitt look like a bigger hack than she already does.

Embarrassing.

This same administration has been threatening to prosecute "leakers".

Well. . . go right at it.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 78th Edition. We'd like to inform you that terrible things are being done in your name, edition.

Labels: Colorado (Denver), Conservation, Democratic Party, Denver Colorado, Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, Harriet Hageman, The Second Trump Administration, trends, Union Pacific Railroad, Zeitgeist

I became a federal worker to serve my country, not to get rich

I became a federal worker to serve my country, not to get rich: An anonymous federal employee shares their perspective amid widespread layoffs and cuts in Wyoming and elsewhere

RFK, Jr. opines that the best protection against measles is the breast milk from an unvaccinated woman. . .

presumably with the recipient being an infant, of course.

This is seriously weird.

At this point in time, the United States is being run by dimwit weirdos.

Going Feral: Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad...

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

Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff: A 110-year-old facility is still operating, but the federal government’s DOGE initiative has shrunk the staff to two and put the hatchery in a position that could overturn its workforce completely.

What's Wrong with the United States? We're really ignorant, and its getting worse.

Can you imagine this scene today?  The older man (who in context is probably in his 50s) would be staring blankly into space, while the young woman looked at TikTok videos.

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.

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.

Labels: concubinage, Conservatism, Disaster, Elon Musk, Highways, J. D. Vance, Military, Protestant Work Ethic, The wealthy, United States Forest Service, Wyoming State Highways, Zeitgeist

 

Are We Now the Bad Guys?

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

January 19, 1825. The reason that today is Tin Can Day.

TikTok? Good riddance.

A tragic day.

Saturday, January 20, 1945. FDR Reinaugurated.

Thursday, January 22, 1925. An emergency in Alaska and Life Magazine's Boob Issue.

Blog Mirror: Remarks of Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, regarding immigration at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City

Remarks of Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, regarding immigration at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City

Jan. 19, 2025

Español | Polski

While we wish the new administration success in promoting the common good, the reports being circulated of planned mass deportations targeting the Chicago area are not only profoundly disturbing but also wound us deeply. We are proud of our legacy of immigration that continues in our day to renew the city we love. This is a moment to be honest about who we are. There is not a person in Chicago, save the Indigenous people, who has not benefited from this legacy.

The Catholic community stands with the people of Chicago in speaking out in defense of the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. Similarly, if the reports are true, it should be known that we would oppose any plan that includes a mass deportation of U.S. citizens born of undocumented parents.  

Government has the responsibility to secure our borders and keep us safe. We support the legitimate efforts of law enforcement to protect the safety and security of our communities—criminality cannot be countenanced, when committed by immigrants or longtime citizens. But we also are committed to defending the rights of all people, and protecting their human dignity. As such, we vigorously support local and state legislation to protect the rights of immigrants in Illinois. In keeping with the Sensitive Locations policy, in effect since 2011, we would also oppose all efforts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies to enter  places of worship for any enforcement activities. 

The choice is not simply between strict enforcement and open borders, as some commentators would have us believe. Speaking this year to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, for example, Pope Francis spoke of the need to balance migration governance with regard for human rights and dignity. “We are quick to forget that we are dealing with people with faces and names.” The Holy Father has also been clear that “no one should be repatriated to a country where they could face severe human rights violations or even death.” This is not idle speculation. Millions of migrants flee their homelands for safer shores precisely because it is a life or death issue for them and their children.

For members of faith communities, the threatened mass deportations also leave us with the searing question “What is God telling us in this moment?” People of faith are called to speak for the rights of others and to remind society of its obligation to care for those in need.  If the indiscriminate mass deportation being reported were to be carried out,  this would be an affront to the dignity of all people and communities, and deny the legacy of what it means to be an American.

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream (Take 2, Complete)

Wednesday, January 24, 1900. Battle of Spion Kop.

Well that didn't take long. . .

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: Keeping Federal lands in public hands.

The 2025 Wyoming Legislative Session. Week 2.

The Harrying. The opening days of the Trump interregnum

Thursday, January 25, 1945. The Beginning of the Evacuation of East Prussia and the Nature of the Red Army.

If Trump isn't demented, what is he?

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List.

If Trump isn't demented, what is he?

I've consistently advocated the theory that Donald Trump has a rapidly progressing case of dementia, and I'll stand by it, even though I have no qualifications to maintain that at all.

But what if he isn't demented. How do you explain his behavior?

We'll take a look.

He's just stupid

This is a real possibility.

There's no real reason to believe that Trump is intelligent.  His success in business, which is often cited is pretty much based on his having inherited a vast amount of wealth.  As studies have shown, people who inherit a lot of money are likely remain wealthy no matter what.  It actually takes real effort for them to fall down into a lower economic class.

There's plenty of evidence that Trump is simply dumb.  He appears to say whatever floats through his head he adopts the views of people around him without thought, he asks questions of his aid that are really, well, dumb.

And really stupid people often tend to be either profoundly kind, or profoundly mean.  Trump seems to fit in to the latter category.  The nuances of morality that most people have require some degree of intelligence.  Trump simply lacks that, perhaps, so being really mean just comes naturally to him.

How then did he get to be President?

Well one thing is that people tend to assume that wealth equals smarts.  He has a lot of money, so he  must be smart, right?

Nope.

But as people tend to believe that, they tend also to fill in the blanks for the stupid person so that their support of him is rationalized.

In the past, we saw that a lot with sports.  Some sports figure may be as dumb as a box of rock, but as people want to idolize him, they make excuses for everything the person says or does.

And the entire celebrity worship thing in American culture is part of that.  People take seriously things celebrities say, as they must be smart, or they wouldn't be celebrities, right?

To add to it, the dumb int he public eye tend, normally to be protected by handlers, which Trump was up until very recently.  Now that he's not the stupidity of much of what he says and does is really coming to the forefront.

Finally, intelligence is complicated.  There are polymaths who are sort of universally intelligent, but there are also people who can excel at one thing without really being smart at anything else.  Trump clearly has skills as a salesman.  That frankly seems to be the only talent he has.

On that, I've known a few salesmen really well and often been surprised by how little interest they have in the topic of what they sell, or anything else.  An extremely successful real estate broker I know, for example surprised me when he revealed he had once been a car salesman.  They are, however, both sales.

A car salesman that I knew once surprised me in a conversation by revealing he really knew nothing about automobiles at all, and wasn't interested in them.  Cars bored him pretty clearly, but he was really good at selling them.  Selling is what interested him.

Trump may very well be like that.  He has good sales skills, which doesn't mean he's really very interested in anything he's selling.

A problem with the stupid is that they won't acknowledge it.  I don't think its true that most stupid people don't have an inkling they're dumb, but how they react to it is different.  Some simply accept it.  Others reject it.  Some seek constant affirmation that they aren't dumb.  Trump seems to fit into that category.

Aiding that, we'd note, is that he's been surrounded by people who have been telling him that he's really smart his entire life.  Everyone has witnessed something like that personally, where somebody is protected from reality until they simply don't know what it is.

There's sort of a Chauncey Gardiner element to this, we'd note.  In the film Being There, a simple minded man is mistake for a genius and becomes an advisor to the President simply because of his appearance and apparent station in life.  It's very difficult for most people to accept that somebody who has achieved apparent success isn't extremely smart.  I recall my mother, for instance, being of the view that Barrack Obama must be a genius (I'm not saying that he wasn't) because he was a lawyer.  It doesn't take smarts to become a lawyer, and one of the most successful ones I ever met with not a smart man at all.  He was just lucky.

Added to this, people, once they latch on to a figure, tend to attribute their own values to him.  We've seen this in spades with Trump. He's not a religious man, but people believe he is. There's no reason to believe he cares about most of the populist agenda, unless doing so aids him personally, but people believe he does.

The scary thing here is, unlike the first time when Trump had people to real him back in, he doesn't now.  If he's not demented, and therefore not capable of being removed, he can do pretty much any dumb thing he wants to over the next four years.

He's simply narcissistic and amoral.

Full bore narcissism and complete amorality is really rare.  Even people that most other people accuse of narcissism are capable of at least some empathy.

Likewise, complete amorality is very rare as well. Even people with loose morals usually have some.

But not always, in either case.

Indeed, it's well know that psychopaths have no empathy for other people.  And some of them, we'd note, are pretty smart.  According to some, Julius Rosenberg, the Communist spy, was an example of all we've mentioned here.  He was really smart and only cared about himself.

Trump was raised in an environment in which only success mattered and only money determined what was success. That was the Trump culture, and by all available evidence, Trump took to it and thrived in it.

Nothing other than Trump matters to Trump.  That's pretty much it. And given that, cheating on spouses, dumping associates, switching positions, lying, and screwing the entire nation are okay if it benefits his view of himself.

And that explains why he completely baffles his opponents and why his admirers admire him. Those opposed to him cannot grasp how anyone can't see through Trump.  Those who admirer him can't bring themselves to believe that he doesn't care about them whatsoever, or the country, or anything other than himself.  

Normal people don't behave like Trump to that degree. Trump's an example of what the world would really be like if John Lennon's Imagine ruled the day.

Trump sees a world in which there are no values, no religion, and nothing, other than Trump getting all he can get.

I'd note, however, that in a way, Trump, if viewed this way, is the ultimate expression of his generation, the "Me Generation".  Not everyone, or even most, in it, but the generational ethos as a whole.  What matter was "me", not much else.  Trump expresses an extreme form of that, even if he acquired it at home from a father who was definitely not part of that generation.  That also makes it easier for his acolytes to vote for him, as some of them growing up sort of viewing the world that way themselves.  Other, however, likely most, really believe that Trump cares about their cost of living, their pocketbooks, and making "American Great."

Well, as we know, Leopards won't eat my face.

He's a Goodfella

Not literally, but rather by association.

Trump developed his real estate business in New York at a time at which if you were going to get by, you were going to deal with the mob.  If he has just as big of "big brain" as he claims, then he would have picked up how mobsters work, which to some extent is on bluff and threat.

The best example is from the movie The Godfather, which was closely based on the real behavior of the New York mafia.  When they wanted Jack Wolz to do something, they put a severed horse's head, from a beloved horse, in his bed. Wolz, who wasn't harmed himself, caved to their demands.

Trump constantly makes bluffs and threats, and in fact quite often his adversaries give him what he wants.  That may be his undignified and reprehensible negotiation style.  If a person is immoral enough, and unprincipled enough, that works. . . right up until it doesn't.

There's no "art" to this deal.  It's brutish.  

And, of course, sooner or later, it doesn't work.

And when that day comes, you have no friends.

Indeed, somebody ought to give Trump the test now.  When he says "I need this" somebody ought to say, come and get it.  

Harold Hardrada asked Harold Godwinson "How much of England will you give me?".  Godwinson replied "six feet, because you are bigger than other men".   In this administration, and soon, somebody is going to tell Trump "fuck you, and the horse that you rode in on", and the whole bluff thing just goes down the tubes.  Once you can't back a bluff up, it's implodes really quickly.

And then, you have no friends at all.

Here, for example, Denmark ought to tell the US to get its Space Farce base out within a few days.  We'd have to.  And if I governed Panama, the Canal  would actually be run by the Chinese within a few days.

Whatcha Gonna About It?

Not much.

And his supporters?

They'll just all claim they were never actually for him.

That's not the only possibility.

The Kremlin Candidate

Trump is a Russian asset. The only question is, is he knowingly one, or not, and why.

It's worth noting that it would truly be a master stroke politically if you could get your man into the Oval Office, if you were one of our enemies.  And then he could go about wrecking things on your behalf, destroying alliances, the economy and even simply our place in the world.

Nobody has every proven that Trump is a knowing Russian asset.  He's definitely a Russian asset, to be sure, but it may simply be because of his view of the world and his childish admiration of strong men, and maybe his wanting to be one.  Maybe its because on the eve of his own death, he wants to be remembered for something, and the only think he can think of is to be remembered as an American Napoleon.

But his relationship with the Russians has never been explained.  Do they have something on him, and if so what?

Many have wondered about this very question, but nothing has been proven.

Still, he's successfully taken a page out of the Nazi Party's book and broad cast lies so consistently that large sections of the US population believe them.  And now he's threatening our allies, and has to be taken seriously.

If Trump is a bought and paid for Russian asset, and largely only cares for himself, he's in an ideal position to simply bring the United States down.  He can alienate our relationship with our allies, destroy our economy, leave us a wreck, and turn us against each other.

And that's the best evidence that he's a Russian asset. That's exactly what he's doing.

Soviet literacy poster.

Related threads:

Hubris and Strange Coincidence.

What is wrong with the Putin supporting right?

A question that should be asked. Who are the dupes, fellow travelers, and assets? Op eds and the Russians.