It's worth noting that before World War One there were no restrictions at all.

Army lays out criteria for evaluating religious waivers for beards

Cowardly Men

She's a young beautiful woman, never smiles. I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred because we have borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes...

Donald Trump in a recent press conference.

Donald Trump is a creepy old man.

A few years ago there was a lot of ink spilled and electrons expended on whether or not there was a "crisis of masculinity" in American culture.  There's still a fair amount of discussion of it, as evidenced by this New York Times op ed from this year:

America Has a Masculinity Crisis

A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.

I've thought about posting in it from time to time, but never had as its a difficult topic to really address, even though, as it involves a shift in social standards, it fits right into this site's purpose.

Seeing Donald Trump insult of a female reporter the other day however, makes it impossible not to address.

Trump is a creepy old man who came of age in the 70s and had early sexual morals like that of an alley cat.  He seems to lack any morals today.  The comment he made was not only demeaning, it demonstrates an absolute contempt of women.  The reporter is supposed to be a pretty adornment, in his view.

How many women have been confronted by the lech stating "why don't you smile more".  Indeed, if you are of a certain age, "why don't you smile more?" or "why don't you wear prettier dresses" or the like is pretty much raising the flag of an intended sexual assault of the pressure type.  Given Trump's dementia, it's not impossible to wonder if that was a line other women in other context have heard before.

It should have been met with a male reaction.

When I was young, even though I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, there was a set of expectations that boys learned and men followed.  I think to some extent they've fallen aside as in the 1970s men lost track of what was expected of them due to the wave of First Generation Feminism.  That era has passed, but knowing what to do and how to behave seems to have gone out to sea.

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Chesterton, The Thing. 

The old standards weren't quaint, they existed for a reason.  Two of the reasons are that men are more powerful than women and if the law of the jungle applies, lots of men will abuse women, and by abuse, you know what we mean.  The vulnerable girls at Epstein Island, where Trump traveled with the other rich and often unprincipled, provide an example of that.  Another reason is that the rules restrained men and oriented them towards decent behavior.  Finally, and quite frankly, the rules in fact reflected centuries old views of the relationship between men and women, much of which underwent assault in the 1970s, but frankly which reflect women, and men, in their more natural roles.

Now, let's be clear.  There were men who always violated these rules, some very openly, but they weren't admire for that.  And the reaction to violation could go far beyond mere internal contempt.

Amongst the rules were some that seem pretty minor.  You always opened the door for women, including women you didn't know.  You walked around a car to let a woman out of the car and opened the door for her, and when entering a car you opened the door for her.  Both of those actually reflect an era when doors were heavier, including car doors.

A man got up from his seat when women approached to address them, something depicted in the final seat of True Grit when Frank James does not get up when she approaches, and when she leaves she states "Keep your seat, trash".  

That is how that was viewed.

More seriously, however, men, including teenage boys, were taught not to insult a woman's virtue in any fashion.  The instruction was so serious that if you were in a relationship with a woman so insulted you were expected to immediately intervene, but it went beyond that.  If you were in a setting where that was done you were also expected to intervene, particularly if you knew the girl or the knew somebody who was in a relationship with the girl.  It was universally understood that a verbal rebuke of a person talking smack or insulting a girl, or saying the kind of thing Trump was saying, didn't cause them to knock it off, a fistfight was the probable result.  Generally, the exchange went something like:

"Hey, knock it off and leave her alone."

The reply normally was:

"Hey dude, I didn't mean anything by it".

If,, however, the insulting person did not back off, a fight often ensued.  

This is, of course, amongst younger men.  If an older man, like Trump, said something like that, a verbal rebuke and walking out was the norma.

That went something like:

"You sir, are being insulting and owe her an apology".

With an old baffoon like Trump, that was normally met with:

"Um, I all I meant. . . 

At which point the other men started leaving.

This is all 20th Century stuff, I'd note, and 20th Century middle class stuff.  Even when I was young in rougher society fights could arise in this fashion which went right to knives.  In European and European American middle class and upper class society of the 18th and 19th Century failing to yield often outright resulted in a duel.  

Now, these guys just stand there like lumps, saying nothing.

One of the things about our current society is that it's really become White Trash.  The gutter morals of men who view women as objects and who can't speak with any proficiency are dictating the culture of the country, and combined with this is the corruption that wealth has always brought about.  

Again, Trump provides us a fine example of that.  He's an immoral man who is steeped in immorality. He's hung around with the rich men who abuse teenage women to the point where questions about his behavior are legitimate questions.  He's made creepy comments about his own daughter when she was young. The wheels are coming off of his ability to restrain himself.  He gets closer and closer to the point at which he's going to outright proposition a woman on national television and not one male reporter has the courage to do anything about it.

But we're going to have to start doing something about this behavior.

Part of the claim of the MAGA movement and entities like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is that they were restoring America. Instead, they're just White Trashing it up.  Chuck Gray have us just such an example the other day when he acted like a 12 year old brat the Cowboy State Daily video program.

One of the things about the old rules is that even one person enforcing them was normally effective.  Even within the last few years I've seen that when an official got mad about something and started swearing and another official rebuked him with "there are ladies here".  I hadn't heard that in years, but it resulted in an immediate apology.

People around Trump need to start calling him on his behavior.  People around Trump who pretend its not important need to be called on that.  But beyond that, people in everyday conversation need to do the same.  The long road back won't become from the top of the generation in charge.  It'll have to come from the bottom.

Thursday, April 4, 1946. Hirohito lucks out.

The Far Eastern Commission exempted Emperor Hirohito from war crime prosecution.

Richard C. Miller took a series of swimsuit photographs of Marilyn Monroe.  In them, which because of copyright we will not post here, she appears of much more normal proportions than she would later, which is interesting for a variety of reasons we've already covered.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 2, 1946. MacArthur bans fraternization, Murray tries for national health insurance.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Democratic Party, Douglas MacArthur, Health, Insurance, Irish Canadians, Japan, Montana, Politics, Sex, The relationship between men and women, Truman Administration

Have some of you seen any daylight recently?

 

This is amusing.  Chloe Winters is not unattractive, but the married Galwegian dresses like what she is, a market gardener.  It's a dirty job.  Her only adornment, normally, is a cross denoting her Christianity.

The fact that she's getting hit on for gardening videos. . . well it's just sad.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 118th Edition. Why are the women discounted? The corruption of wealth. Hanging around in a cult will make you a weird cultist. New links and the fallen. A gift of cash on the floor of the legislature.

Ruslana Korshunova, a Russian model who had been to Epstein Island, and later went out a 9th story window.  Suicide was the official ruling.  Lots of Putin's enemies go out windows.  A lot of badly emotionally scared women kill themselves.

Why are the women not believed?

At some point in the past, due to sex scandals, it became common to demand that we don't doubt the women who claim they were assaulted or abused.

And for good reason.

The rumors about Playboy and things associated with it proved to be true. Rape, suicides, at least one young woman associated with it simply disappearing, a la The Limey, Hugh Hefner's out right perversions, 

It's not as if there weren't signs before. They were just ignored.  And the rich and powerful played along with it.

Including Bill Cosby, who was a frequent guest at the Playboy Mansion, and who turned out to be into drugging and raping women.  It's not as if there weren't rumors.

And there was Harvey Weinstein, about whom the knowledge of his demanding sex from starlets was pretty well known.

Weinstein, by the way, shows up in the Epstein files.

With each of these scandals, once they broke, women came forward after a first few brave ones broke the news.  It was emphasized at the time that women needed to believed when they claimed they were raped and abused.

It hasn't worked that way at all with Epstein.

Virginia Giuffre was flat out doubted when she came forward that she was provided to Prince Andrew by Epstein.  As time has gone by, it became more obvious that her claims were not lies.  Now she's dead, but it took pretty much all the way up to her death for her to be believed. And we now know that Andrew's association with Epstein is worse than at first imagined.

The Epstein files are packed with claims by young women against the rich and powerful. They include allegations of rape, but also murder.

And yet, the accusations are simply disregarded to a very large extent.

It's accepted, now, that Epstein provided young women to the rich and powerful, but the nameless rich and powerful.  So far, when direct accusations are made, they're shuffled aside.  Former model Carol Alt, for examples, says that while she was dating Epstein (showing some questionable decisions right there) she was groped by Trump while Epstein just stood there.

That accusation has simply gone nowhere.

Why?  Alt has no reason to make it up.

Those are, we might note, amongst the less grotesque that are associated with Trump, who is accused by some Epstein victims of outright rape, receiving a handjob from a teenage girl, and witnessing a murder of an infant.  All of which are simply totally discounted.

Are they false accusations, or perhaps simply mistaken ones?

They could very well be, but its interesting how they simply aren't taken seriously.

Bill Gates was accused of some things in the Epstein files that he denied and that appeared headed into being forgotten until Melissa Gates somewhat revived them, although she didn't actually say that what he was accused of, he did.

So, do we take all of these claims at face value?

If we don't, why not?

Granted, it's well demonstrated that every claim made by a woman against a man is not true. And some of these claims are outright fantastical.  But then, if you'd told me that Bill Cosby drugged women to rape them, I'd have claimed that was fantastical.  If you'd told me (even though it was publicly known), that one Playboy Centerfold posted things claiming Hefner was demonic on her apartment walls before killing herself, I'd have thought that fantastical.  At one point, if you'd told me that two of the Playboy centerfolds had been 17 years old when they were photographed, I'd thought that impossible.  If you'd told me that Prince Andrew was screwing a teenager procured for him by an American john, I'd have thought that fantastical.

If you'd told me some rich Floridan kept an island staffed with what amounted to teenage sex slaves, well I'd have thought that fantastical.

Trump we might note, is hardly free from being in the smoke where there is fire.  He has associations with men who have been ephebophiles that go way back.  A video recently surfaced of Trump at a 1991 beauty pageant dinner where he was the judge in which the servers were the very young models in very tight bathing suits. That's creepy in the extreme. A 2020 investigation by the Guardian revealed that the competition was used by Elite Model Agency founder John Casablancas and others to engage in sexual relationships with the vulnerable young models and that the competition was part of a broader network, sometimes with connections to Jeffrey Epstein, that placed young contestants in precarious situations with wealthy men.

Trump hasn't been directly accused, however, of raping anyone in association with that.  

Be that as it may, former contestants from Miss Teen USA (1997) and Miss USA (2006) have stated that Donald Trump entered the dressing rooms while they were changing.  Some were as young as 15 years old

Now, some of the stories in the Epstein files (the murder one in particular) are really wild.  

But some well within the realm of believability, which of course doesn't mean they're true. . . or that they should be immediately dismissed.

The corruption of wealth.

One common element of all of this is the absolute corrosion caused by wealth.  The singular aspect of Epstein island is that rich and powerful men wanted to go there, and that some of them wanted teenage sex slaves.

This isn't a new phenomenon of any sort.

We just posted on Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands 

I'm not saying he was something like an Epstein associate, or that he had the moral depravity of Donald Trump.  But noted in his story were two illegitimate children by mistresses.  Charles Lindbergh, who went from being an American hero, to disdained, to somewhat of a hero again had children by three German women in the 1950s and 1960s, including two women who were sisters.  All told, he had thirteen children, seven of which were illegitimate.  Keeping Elon Musk's genetic broadcasting straight is a difficult project at best, and he's now fighting with Ashely St. Clair, his most recent, um, whatever, over their son Romulus.  Bill Gates had one known affair.  It goes on and on.

And then we have Trump.

What we also have is ephebophilia, which is a primary sexual attraction to mid-to-late adolescents, 15 to 19 years of age.  Unlike pedophilia and is not classified as a mental disorder in the DSM.  And we have Hebephilia, the attraction to teens below that, which is classified as a mental disorder in the DSM.

Some of these girls are indicated to be pretty freaking young, although I haven't kept track of it.  It seems to me that I've seen references to at least one being 13, which is really freaking young and one was apparently 11 years old, which is absolutely horrific.  Most seem to be in the late teens, to the extent we know, but the operation  of U.S. law is keeping the identify of the girls secret, so we don't really know all that much about them.

We know it was really weird, however.

What we also know is that a respected scientist who studied ephebophilia found that most men of adult years would react to attractive females in that age range.  I.e., they'd notice an attractive female in the late teen age range, which is not at all the same as engaging in improper behavior with them.  The researcher himself was horrified to find that he did, but it makes some sense.  The 18 years of age brightline under U.S. law is somewhat artificially drawn and in fact it'd make sense to draw it higher, perhaps at 20 or 21 as it used to be for most things.  Playboy, as noted above, knew this and actually intentionally targeted down towards lower ages before nearly getting in trouble in Europe, which in the 1950s and 1960s had some very strict prohibitions on pornography.  Nonetheless more than one Playboy model was 17 years old when photographed, and others were just 18.  Eighteen years old is within the ephebophilia age range (and hence a good reason to boost such things up to 21).

We note that first and then go on to note that its been shown that men who have had about eight women sexually being to depress the age downwards.  I.e, their sexucal moral fences start to come down.  I don't know how this works for women, but it's known there is an effect on them as well, as as the "body count" increases the ability to form attachments decreases.

All this is because our species is naturally monogamous, with some slight collieries that have to do with death.  In a non disrupted state of nature we know that a strong bond forms between a couple that has known only each other, and it can be so intense that if ruptured, usually by death, a second one never forms.  We also know that a fair number of people are plagued by thoughts of their "first", as that's where the bond biochemically formed and they're incapable of getting over it.  What we noted above is that the more biology is ignored in this fashion, the looser the bond becomes.  Men that "cheat" tend to keep on cheating, no matter what, and at the eight number, they start to look downwards to younger bodies.  With women what seems to occur is that they simply lose the ability to stick with anyone, and as the number becomes higher, the more superficial and temporary their relationship become, even if the relationships form children.

As with a lot of things, as nature is violated, there are consequences.

Part of our natures is that when we were all aboriginal the wolf was always at the door.   That formed an instinct towards acquisition.  Maybe we could store up enough to last through the winter, when there were winters.  When we became more settled due to agriculture, that mean we could store up wealth.  Storing up a lot of wealth allowed at some point for people to directly engage in two of the seven deadly sins, gluttony and greed, with greed being the most obvious.  In a debased society, allows a person to engage in unrestrained lust as well.

In other words, love of money truly is the root of all evil.

Castrati

In a moral and just society, people would police their own avarice or society would police it for them.  

It's pretty clear that we don't live in a moral and just society.

After the horrors of the Weinstein crimes were releveled, there was a period of time in which progressives started creating a moral code that looked a lot like the original Christian moral code.  Weird, eh?  Anyhow, it's interesting here as it accepted that some sort of societal rebuilding needed to occur.

It does need to occur, but frankly what should be evident is that the curbs are going to have to be built in to take the food off the table.  What that means is taxes.

Ever since Ronald Reagan introduced the utterly bogus trickle down economic theory Americans have run around hating taxes and giving tax breaks to the super wealthy.  There's something frankly morally wrong with people who obtain vast amounts of wealth and then retain it, as opposed to people who obtain vast amounts and then apply it.  Indeed, a lot of people who obtain huge amounts of wealth, like Epstein Island level, seem to apply it to the Seven Deadly Sins, pride: greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.  

These people could be helped to avoid this fate, and I'm sincere about that, if they were simply taxed to prohibit it.  There's no reasons that people should be billionaires.  There's frankly no reason why a person should own more than one home, or at least not very expensive homes.

Of course, if we taxed people to keep them within a range of reason, say no more than $10M in personal wealth, many would scream that they were going to move to . . . wherever.  Let them go.

Most wouldn't, frankly.  Whatever is wrong with this class of people so that they must keep acquiring is so off base that they'll keep doing what they're doing that generates the wealth no matter what.

I'd note that just the other day Mehmet Oz, government figure, was running around suggesting that people should go to work earlier in life and work longer into life to help address the budget.  Helpful suggestions like this are always given by people who are nowhere near retirement or who don't work in dangerous jobs, so the recommendations are pretty much crap.    Be that as it may, if the administration can suggest that, and if it can be lead by a guy who is almost 80 and demented, well then we can tax the rich and expect them to like it.

They need to be, so they don't spend their money being destructive.

Hanging around in a cult will make you a weird cultist. 

Joe Epstein was really good at getting photographs of those who came to seek his favor.  So good at it, you have to wonder if that was part of a plan to make marks out of those people.

Will take down (Pope) Francis, The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.

Steve Bannon

The Trump administration, and those who surround Trump, are deeply perverted.   Which takes us to this:

Yeoman's Twenty-fifth Law of Behavior:  Hanging around in a weird cult will make you a weird cultist.

People often wonder how anyone associated with a weird cult ever believed in it.  It's not really that much of a mystery.  Most humans engage in groupthink.

Now, when talking of a "weird cult",  we must keep in mind that the term "cult" is grossly overused.  People frequently, for example, apply it to religions they just don't like.  On rare occasion some of those faiths may have started as "cults", but no long lasting religion is one, keeping in mind that by long lasting, we mean long lasting, not a few years or, in some cases, even a few decades.  And here, while some of the things we'd regard as cults claim to be religions, we're using the term both more broadly and more narrowly.  There are plenty of civil movements, for example, that are cults.

In our use of the term, we mean a movement that's nearly always lead by a single individual who benefits from it personally in some fashion, which is based on the outrageous and outrageous conduct.  Cults always rationalize conduct that defies what is plain human logic, which is why people outside them are typically baffled as to how the dupe people into belonging. Warren Jeffs'  Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a good example.  What it proposed got Jeffs lots of underaged sex.  NXIVM was a sex cult as well.  Scientology is a cult, albeit without that element.  QAnon followers are basically a cult.

The thing is with cults is that they are insular.  You really don't get to know what their adherents are thinking unless you are part of them, and then you keep it to yourself.  They are secretive at their inner core, and self associating.  Hang around all day every day with weird cultist and chances are, you will become a weird cultist.

One of the things a lot of people are now starting to notice about the Trump Administration is how downright weird it is, and how weird many of its central figures are.

It's been lurking there all along, and its more than a little bit of what caused people who were conservatives, but not MAGA, to really feel uneasy, in varying degrees, about hardcore deep MAGA.

Steve Bannon is, in my view, a disheveled creep.  Both inside the MAGA movement and outside of it, he seems just filled with hate.  Bannon claims to be a Traditionalist Catholic, but he's been married and divorced three times, placing him well outside of what the Church tolerates in this area.  And here we see he wanted to "take down" Pope Francis.

Pope Francis was a controversial Pope in the United States.  I was not personally a fan of Pope Francis, but he drew more criticism from Americans than he deserved.  I really wasn't a fan of his synodality movement, which lingers on, but which I suspect will sort of die a quiet death.  

At any rate, what we're finding out as the Epstein files get released is not only did he have a lot of associations with the very rich and powerful, those relationships carried on well past the point where there's any benign explanation for it.  Bannon hoping to take down world figures with Epstein's help.  Lutnick taking his family to Lolita Island.  It just goes on and on.  

It's really not possible to believe that all these people didn't know that sex slaves were on the menu.  It's hard to believe that most of them didn't know that.  More likely, they just didn't care.

Which leads to this:

The Trump admin posted that yesterday, on Valentine's day.

The use of the term "Daddy's Home" is openly perverse.  It's a sick joke that has heavy sexual and abusive, and sexcually abusvie overtones and always has.  In a lot of contexts, it has a heavy homosexual overtone.  All of that is true here.  Trump's the "daddy" to a large group of people who seem in that fashion.  It's perverse.

Also perverse is Trump's obsession with weight.

On Valentine's Day the Trump Administration posted a cartoon of Gov. J. B. Pritzker mowing down junk food.

Pritzker is a stout guy, but he's one of those stout guys who looks like he's fairly fit.  One of the things about weign in American culture is an overarching belief that everyone who is overweight is a slob, which just isn't true.

Now, it's not good to be overweight.  74% of Americans are overweight.  Donald Trump is quite overweight.

Indeed, there's something really weird at work here, as Trump looks fat and flaccid.  Pritzker looks overweight but fairly fit.  Chris Christie, who Trump likes to poke fun of due to his weight, is in between.  

A fat guy call other fat guys fat, is pretty weird.

Another example of our Twenty Fifth Law of Human Behavior came out last week in the form of a totally unhinged Congressional rant by Pam Bondi.  It was spectacularly weird.  

Bondi went from supposedly having some sort of Epstein stuff in her desk to not having anything to being in charge of an agency that redacted a huge amount of stuff.  Clearly, the government had a lot of stuff, and every time more of it is revealed, we learn of additional powerful men, some in government, who had connections with the teenage sex slave broker.  The Trump Administration has been in full blown panic about it for months and keeps hoping it can order everyone to move on.

What Bondi did was just fly off the handle, actually arguing that we should be paying attention to the Dow Industrial Average rather than raped teenagers.

Bondi is 60 years old but doesn't look it.  Like other members of the "family values" party, she's been married twice and divorced twice.  All of a sudden her visage is catching up with her age.  Stress will do that, and being cruel is stressful.

Bondi wouldn't look at the rape victims.  I've long said that the biggest enemy of women achieving full equality in our society is other women.  

Well, look at the Dow. . . 

New links and the fallen.

I've added a lot of new links in different categories here recently.  I never post when I've done that, but I have.  I've also been moving links that have been long dormant over to the inactive blog list.  Basically, if there haven't been any posts in over five years, I move them over there.

I always wonder why an active blog suddenly stops posting.  Sometimes, reading them, I'm pretty sure it's death.

I took two blogs in the military section out.  One is the Duffle Blog.  It's supposed to be comedic, but it just wasn't very funny, so it came down.  The other one was Mandatory Fun Day.

I loved Mandatory Fun Day when I was first made aware of it, but recently it's been off.  I suspect I knew what was going on, but the most recently entry confirmed it, that being the one where the blogger notes he's getting out of the military soon.  I suspect that he's taking a twenty year retirement.  Many members of the military do.

The reason it seemed off, however, is that for some time posts with his wife and children, or even references to them, just flat out stopped.  His wife and four daughters had appeared fairly regularly.  Commentors on the post on his getting out of the military started asking about them, and then one confirmed  what I'd suspected.  The couple divorced.

Being a married military couple with children is reputedly hard, due to long deployments.  Without anyone saying it, frankly, the situation has gotten worse since the inclusion of women in the military.  Cheating by soldiers has always been a problem, and cheating by married people in offices where they were close together has been a problem for a long time.  But take people away from their spouse for a year or more and plop them down somewhere where they're working cheek to jowl seven days a week, well. . . 

I don't know what happened with Austin Von Letkemann and his wife Katie, but apparently a year or two ago Mrs. Von Letkemann, who had her own creator content (TikTok?) accused him openly of cheating on her and they divorced soon thereafter.  I hadn't really followed them personally, but that opened up that content and it's really sad.  He's obviously always been a weight lifter, but he's gone form a fairly robust size to huge, which I'll comment on in a moment. She was originally a cute young woman but not what you'd regard as a bombshell and was fairly overweight.  They were a cute couple.  At some point she started working on her appearance and she's somehow gone to bombshell, of a certain type.  Contemporary bombshell, I guess, of the same type that people who think Erika Kirk is a bombshell.

Erika Kirk.  This is a certain sort of contemporary look.

She's also extremely angry and is making it plain she's never marrying again and that she feels really abused to be cheated on as she's now a single mother with four girls.  I don't blame her a bit.

Which I suppose makes these comments somewhat inappropriate.

Kate von Letkemann is a really attractive woman.  She has the Erika Kirk look, but is genuinely much better looking than Kirk.  Therefore this will seem a bit odd.

She was always very pretty, and I suspect when they married, she was extremely pretty  But in their early photos she went from cute to pretty.  She had auburn hair, and obviously relished her role as a mother of four.

At some  point she became a very blond, blond and had a tummy tuck. She's really made up like a doll now.

I wish people didn't do that.  Just look yourself.

And that leads me to Lt. Austin Von Letkemann.

Von Letkemann was always up front about suffering from anxiety.  Based on his videos, he must suffer from it quite a bit.  Some of the stuff he sells on his page would be of such a nature that I'd tend to call for a welfare check if he was a friend of mine.  I've wondered for a long time how a serviceman could get away with posting what he' posts, and now he's announced that he's a short timer.  

An Army officer who retires as a lieutenant is a very unusual thing.

Anyhow, during the time during which he's been doing is Vlog he's become massive as a weightlifter.

I've known some guys who lifted weights, some weightlifters, and some really big weightlifters over the years.  When guys get super huge, they tend to get obsessed with their size, normally, although I know a couple of instances in which this was not true.

Guys getting obsessed with their size is a bit odd, and it's actually not very manly.  Quite the opposite, actually.

Perhaps its vanity, but when weight lifting goes from wanting to maintain strength to "look how beautiful I am" it crosses a certain threshold.  Perhaps what that threshold is, in both of the instances noted here, is the threshold of nature.  A powerfully built man whose within the realm of reason can hold that strength and build for actual use, whether its work, being in the outdoors, or combat.  Once you get huge, however, its beyond the practical and into appearance.  There are no gyms out in the prairie or in the trenches.

The display of big builds is also really strongly associated with homosexuality.  Back in the day when there were book catalogs that came by mail I used to get them and they often had huge selections of books.  If you thumbed through them, and they had books on everything, once you go to the ones displaying weightlifters on the cover they were heavily geared toward homosexual men.  I suppose that makes some sort of sense.  Even where not the vanity level of this class of lifters is a bit much.  I once had the unfortunate experience of being a silent listener to a group of them discussing women, and how they avoided those who weren't as beautiful as they were for, um, services.  It was an immoral discussion in general, but it was weird in particular.

On Twitter I used to get the feeds of a guy who was an Eastern European agrarian farmer.  It was weird, as he was so far beyond the Pale, but somewhat interesting.  It devolved into photos of himself and his physique.  That may be why I don't get it anymore.  That's, um, odd.

Anyhow, if you go back a few years, he was obviously very fit and moderately tattooed and she was pretty and obviously very happy.  His t-shirts fit loosely, like most men wear them.  Now his t-shirts are tight and he's heavily tatted up, and very big, and she's all dolled up following a tummy tuck.

Sad situation.

None of which explains why I took Mandatory Fun Day down.  I basically did as its content had sort of run out  It's become more of a commentary on world events, and some of it is pretty good.  However, it's also the case that recently a lot of them lead in with a short comment on some cheesecake TikTok tart.  Indeed, that's what lead me to suspect that something had happened.  A guy living at home with four daughters and a wife probably shouldn't be, and probably isn't, looking at TikTok tarts.  You either have to go looking for that, or its just coming up on your feed as you are looking at that.  Most wives would resent it and it's not a good thing to role model, in any fashion, to young women.  It's not content I need here.

Accidental renaissance.

Linked in from the Jackson Hole Guide:  "Rebecca Bextel hands a check to Rock Springs Republican Rep. Darin McCann on Monday during the 68th Wyoming Legislature’s budget session in Cheyenne. KARLEE PROVENZA/COURTESY PHOTO"

How darned dumb do you have to be to hand out checks on the Legislative floor?

It wasn't a lot of money, but it was money, and now there's a criminal investigation.  I don't think the investigation will go anywhere, but this really doesn't say much for Bextel, who is of course in the carpetbagger class of the far right.  The donor explained more of the story, he's a carpetbagger too, with a "oh shucks" type of response.  He apparently thought that Bextel wouldn't do something this darned dumb, but then why didn't he just mail the checks rather than have a third party deliver them?  That wasn't smart.

I think these really are campaign donations. There's no crime here.  But it does reveal a lot about a group of people who railed about traditional politics as they play, well, traditional politics, with a difference.  They're pretty heavily carpetbagger backed with much of their money, like many of their candidates, coming from outside of the state.

Related threads:

Secrets of Playboy

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 117th Edition. Sen. Lummis wakes up from a long winter's nap.

Thursday, February 7, 1946. France attacks in Bến Tre Province, Truman speaks. Bikinis appear in the press. Strike controls. Army shoes on the market.

France launched a large-scale campaign to take the island province of Bến Tre Province in the Mekong Delta which was held by the Việt Minh.

President Truman gave a press conference.

The President's News Conference

February 7, 1946

THE PRESIDENT. [1.] I have a most interesting letter which I would like to read to you this morning, from the famous Dean of Canterbury, Mr. Hewlett Johnson. He says:

"My dear Mr. President:"--

This is dated 31st of January, 1946·

--"May I categorically deny a statement, which I understand has appeared in the American press, that I regarded America as 100 years behind in everything save religion and 150 years behind in that." [Laughter] "That statement, which is of course ridiculous, was made in a jocular mood by my predecessor." [More laughter]

"I neither endorsed such a statement, nor do I think it is true.

"I believe and constantly affirm that America leads the world in industrial adventure, activity and achievement. Indeed, I am accused in England of over-enthusiasm for America's achievement.

"I am convinced that we in Europe have rich lessons to learn from America, especially in enterprise and the arts of production.

"I believe also that America may learn in the future from some European experiments in distribution and planned economy.

"I only write because had such a statement really been made by me, it would have shown the most gross ingratitude for the over-abundant kindness I received from you and your countrymen."

If anybody wants a copy of that letter, we will furnish it.

[2.] Now to get down to serious things, I am particularly interested in this food situation.

In most of the wheat-producing countries of the world, outside of the United States and Canada, there has been almost a total crop failure in wheat. Australia's crop is a failure. South Africa had a drought. All Europe suffered from a drought, so far as the wheat situation is concerned. And in the far East, the production of rice in India is from 12 to 15 percent short of the usual crop, and they are always an importing country on that part of their food, and they import from Burma and Siam and Indochina. Those countries' rice crops are, of course, a total failure on account of the fact that they have--were in this war situation, and they also have had adverse weather conditions along with the war situation. The Japanese crop, I am informed, is 15 percent short of normal, and they import usually 15 percent of their rice for food.

It is proposed under this program which we have inaugurated, that we hope to be able to ship 6 million tons of wheat in the first half of 1946. Now, if anybody needs a lesson in arithmetic, that is about 200 million bushels. The measures ordered should make it possible for us to come closer to what we want to do by about 500,000 or a million tons.

Wheat and other food products which we plan to export during the first 6 months of this year will provide 50 million people with a diet of 2,000 calories a day, or 100 million with 1,000 calories a day for a 6 months' period.

Now, some of the people in the devastated countries of Europe are living on much less than 1,500 calories a day. We eat about 3,300 here in the United States. The situation is so serious that we felt it was absolutely essential to take every measure possible to help keep the people in these countries from starving; because in those countries which are our friends and allies, they are not to blame for the situation.

And in enemy countries we can't afford to see our enemies starve, even if they did bring this situation on themselves. We can't do that and live according to our own ideals.

We have asked Canada and Australia, and all the countries which are supposed to have surplus foods, to join us in this program; and I think every one of them will.

If you want a copy of these figures and things, Mr. Ayers will be able to furnish them to you after the conference.

Q. Mr. President, is it possible we may have meat rationing as a--may we have to come to that eventually?

THE PRESIDENT. I hope not. If the packing plants can run at full blast, it will not be necessary. If it becomes necessary, in order to keep 10 or 15 million people from starving to death, I think we ought to do it.

Q. Mr. President, can you throw any light, in that connection on that same story, in your meeting with the Cabinet?

THE PRESIDENT. That is substantially the statement that was issued yesterday as adopted by the Cabinet as a whole.

Q. Mr. President, under the Potsdam Declaration, the rations of the Germans should be no higher than the European average?

THE PRESIDENT. That's right.

Q. Does this worldwide shortage, particularly as it affects Europe, indicate there will have to be a cut in German rations?

THE PRESIDENT. There will probably have to be a cut in the whole European ration. There is a cut in the whole European ration now. That is what we are trying to meet. We are trying our best to meet the thing on as equitable a basis as we possibly can.

Q. But this thousand calories would be less than the Germans are getting. Are we going to feed the enemy better than our allies?

THE PRESIDENT. No, we are not. That is what we are trying to prevent. We are not going to do that. We are going to take care of our allies first. That figure is in Poland and Germany, principally.

Q. I was thinking of Poland, that is what I mean.

THE PRESIDENT. Poland and Germany. But we certainly are not going to treat our allies worse than our enemies, you can be assured of that.

Q. Mr. President, are there any mechanical difficulties in milling the flour?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't know. I don't know enough about the milling business to answer the question.

Q. Mr. President, can you say whether there is any problem of hoarding wheat in other countries at the present time?

THE PRESIDENT. I am not familiar with it, if there is.

Q. Mr. President, in connection with the extraction order, there are some rough spots in the milling industry, and I take it that the objection to that order is to get the wheat and the order--you would not object to the order being workable or flexible, so long as you got the wheat?

THE PRESIDENT. That's the point exactly. And I think we will get their cooperation-I don't think there will be anybody who isn't anxious to keep people from starving to death. It's un-American, I think, to have the idea to let people starve.

Q. Mr. President, when you were discussing this with the experts--with the agricultural people particularly--did they bring up details of this wheat shortage--grain shortage--in certain areas where farmers would be anxious to keep the wheat right with them, and you have to get it out? Is that part of the problem?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes. I think every phase has been gone into by the agricultural experts.

Q. Any particular answer to that situation ?

THE PRESIDENT. I can't give you an answer to that. We hope that this situation will work out. The reports that have been made indicate that everybody seems to think it answers the purpose.

Q. Mr. President, if there will be no rationing here, are the mechanics such that we will cut down, just not buy so much; that is, the American people--

THE PRESIDENT. Yes. Make contributions, just like they would clothing and everything else. I think they will do that. I think they will be pleased to do that.

Q. Mr. President, who will handle the equitable distribution of these food supplies in the various countries?

THE PRESIDENT. UNRRA will handle most of it.

Q. It will continue under UNRRA?

THE PRESIDENT, Yes.

Q. Mr. President, does this 6 million tons represent an increase in our commitments, or a decrease in our commitments?

THE PRESIDENT. No. There is, I think, a slight decrease in our first commitments. You will have to get those figures categorically from the Secretary of Agriculture, who has been the conferee with our allies in this setup.

Q. Mr. President, can you tell us what estimate you have on wheat saving from the livestock reduction program?

THE PRESIDENT. About--between 25 and 50 million bushels.

Q. Well, do you believe that this saving is justified in the light of the danger of short liquidation of livestock?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't think there will be any short liquidation of livestock. Livestock will be slaughtered at a lighter weight than they ordinarily would. And 225-pound hogs will, I think, make just as good eating as 300-pound ones; and I used to raise them.

Q. [Aside] Better.

[3.] Q. Mr. President, about Mr. Pauley. Are you going to withdraw his nomination?

THE PRESIDENT. I am not. I am backing Mr. Pauley. I think Mr. Pauley is an honest man, and I don't think he is the only honest man in Washington or in the oil business.

Q. Have you any comment?

THE PRESIDENT. I think he is a very capable administrator, because he was the Reparations Director up until just recently and did a magnificent job in that, and I have the utmost confidence in him.

Q. Did Secretary Ickes advise you of his testimony before?

THE PRESIDENT. No, he did not. I didn't discuss it with him.

Q. Do you intend to now?

THE PRESIDENT, No.

Q. Mr. President, did Ed Flynn confide in you yesterday, when he was going to leave your office, that he was going to criticize Mr. Ickes?

THE PRESIDENT. No, he did not. I didn't discuss Mr. Ickes with Mr. Flynn. He was discussing other matters.

Q. Can you tell us what you were discussing, sir?

THE PRESIDENT. It was political matters in the State of New York. [Laughter]

Q. Mr. President, you don't consider that this situation involves anything at all, any change in your relations with Mr. Ickes?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't think so. Mr. Ickes can very well be mistaken the same as the rest of us.

[4.] Q. Mr. President, how is the price-what is the situation on the wage-price balance?

THE PRESIDENT. I hope to be able to make a complete statement on that in a day or two. I can't do it now.

Q. Will it come today possibly?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't think so.

Q. Do you anticipate, sir, that that would bring on an early settlement of the steel and other big strikes?

THE PRESIDENT. I hope so.

Q. Mr. President, has the administration made any suggestions on that wage-price formula that may be under consideration by U.S. Steel and Labor in their current sessions?

THE PRESIDENT. I haven't discussed the matter with either one, up to the present time.

Q. I was wondering whether Mr. Snyder may have passed it along for some suggestions for a formula?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't think so. They are working on it. That's what they are working--it will all be worked out.

Q. Is it a materially new wage-price stabilization policy, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT. No, it isn't. It's a working out of the situation we are faced with now, and I think it will be worked out in a very satisfactory manner.

Q. Can you say when, sir?

THE PRESIDENT. I hope in the next day or two.

Q. There has been some speculation, Mr. President, that this will be called "the big steel formula"?

THE PRESIDENT [laughing]. I haven't heard that one.

Q. Does that mean it will be temporary, Mr. President, in meeting the present situation?

THE PRESIDENT. Here is the situation that we are trying to meet: We are all aware of the fact that what we need is production. We know that if we get production--mass production--on the basis that we are capable of putting out here in this country, that the situation will adjust itself; and whenever that situation comes about there will be no reason for a wage-price formula, for that will adjust itself.

And that is exactly what we have been working for, ever since V-J Day. That was the reason for the first directive on a wage price formula. It was my hope that we would, as soon as possible, begin working just as hard as we could to create production to meet the demand that has now piled up as a result of the war.

We have had some stumbling blocks. We are trying to meet those stumbling blocks now. The first wage-price formula would have worked, if we had been able to arrive at the production we were hoping we were going to get.

[5.] Q. If the steel and other strikes are not settled, will there still be a Florida trip?

THE PRESIDENT. I am still going to Florida.

Q. [Aside] Good!

THE PRESIDENT. I can still do business by telephone.

[6.] Q. Has the committee from the House Territories Committee reported to you on their investigation of statehood for Hawaii?

THE PRESIDENT. That's right. They recommended

Q. Can you report your views?

THE PRESIDENT. They recommended that Hawaii ought to have statehood.

Q. As you made in your annual Message for immediate statehood?

THE PRESIDENT. That's right. I think they were--they are in favor of that very thing.

Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT, All right.

NOTE: President Truman's forty-seventh news conference was held in his office at the White House at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 7, 1946.

How nice it must have been to have a President who didn't sound like an idiot every time he spoke.

The India Burma Theater Roundup came out.  It was one of the many service newspapers of the Second World War.

The paper's masthead.

We've had Yank up here from time to time and that service magazine notably had a pinup in ever issue, an unfortunate indication of things to come, even though the pinup was always clothed.  Perhaps because of its distance from the continental US, the Roundup was packed with pinups.  This issue, which I'm not going to fully post, had a bikini clad young woman on every page.  I note that because, for whatever reason, I'd assumed that the bikini had come into being in the 1950s.  Not so, it had clearly arrived by the mid 1940s.

Because we put some newspapers up from the 1940s, well because we do it quite often, we've looked at quite a few and that's been revealing as well  The Rocky Mountain News was very obviously much more of a tabloid than it was later, and it had cheesecake photos in it a fair amount.  However, the other day going through it it had an article entitled "Denver Women Do Not Like Nude Look" featuring a woman wearing a see through blouse.  I don't doubt that Denver women didn't like it, but the fact that it even came up says something about the standards of the time.  Indeed, in looking at the issue for this day in 1946, a bikini clad actress was featured.  In a recent issue, a cartoon that focused on post war life had women a dressing room, naked bare backs to the viewer, in the drawing, with the cartoon page being the one that children favored.

Perhaps related, the Rocky Mountain News had this article for the day:

Hmmm.

In a more serious article:

And the Cold War was heating up.

This article for shoes in the same issue featured a type of shoe that we'd call a Service Shoe, that being an ankle high boot.  That type of boot has been discussed at length here, and is still made by companies like Red Wing and Whites.  They were the boot of the U.S. Army from 1902 until into World War Two, when they were replaced by the M1943 combat boot.  In 1945 some troops would still have had them.

The advertised manufacturer, Roblee, is still around.  They came into existence in 1908.  Roblee had been an Army contractor during World War Two and had made service shoes as well as jump boots.

Indeed both of the shoe designs depicted above would have worked for the Army uniform at the time, which leads us to suspect that these were contract overruns, or perhaps left over after contract terminations.

Related Threads:

Munson Last Boots, or how I became a hipster and didn't even know it. And reflections what hipster affectations mean.

Labels: Agrarianism, Agriculture, Army, Clothing, Commentary, Contra Mudum, Footwear, James Montgomery Flagg, Work

Tuesday, December 23, 1975. Going metric.

In baseball:

December 23, 1975: The Reserve Clause Is Killed

President Gerald R. Ford signed into law the Metric Conversion Act. The country should have carried through with it, but abandoned it in 1982 when Ronald Reagan was President, the point at which, in the long history of the evolution of things, the country began its slide into idiocy, although it was hardly evident at the time.

CIA Station Chief in Athens Richard Welch, his identify recently exposed, was gunned down by terrorists in Athens.

Last edition:

Monday, December 22, 1975. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Christmas, Comedians, Gerald Ford, Growing up in the 1970s, J. Edgar Hoover, OPEC, Personalities, Petroleum, Terrorism

 

‘Don’s Best Friend’: How Epstein and Trump Bonded Over the Pursuit of Women

Friday, December 14, 1945. Tragedy and ethnic Germans, the LDS and conscription.

As its copyrighted and I don't have permission to post it, I'll merely note it, it was of German women in their children, formerly of Lodz, waiting for a train in Berlin with hopes of going to the west.  One of the children is sick, and died during the photo session.

The First President of the LDS issued a postwar statement on the draft to Utah's Congressional delegation.

Press reports have for some months indicated that a determined effort is in the making to establish in this country a compulsory universal military training designed to draw into military training and service the entire youth of the nation. We had hoped that mature reflection might lead the proponents of such a policy to abandon it. We have felt and still feel that such a policy would carry with it the gravest dangers to our Republic.

It now appears that the proponents of the policy have persuaded the Administration to adopt it, in what on its face is a modified form. We deeply regret this, because we dislike to find ourselves under the necessity of opposing any policy so sponsored. However, we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position, and we regard the policy so threatening to the true purposes for which this Government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution, that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations:

1. By taking our sons at the most impressionable age of their adolescence and putting them into army camps under rigorous military discipline, we shall seriously endanger their initiative thereby impairing one of the essential elements of American citizenship. While on its face the suggested plan might not seem to visualize the army camp training, yet there seems little doubt that our military leaders contemplate such a period, with similar recurring periods after the boys are placed in the reserves.

2. By taking our boys from their homes, we shall deprive them of parental guidance and control at this important period of their youth, and there is no substitute for the care and love of a mother for a young son.

3. We shall take them out of school and suffer their minds to be directed in other channels, so that very many of them after leaving the army, will never return to finish their schooling, thus over a few years materially reducing the literacy of the whole nation.

4. We shall give opportunity to teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill, thereby increasing lawlessness and disorder to the consequent upsetting of the stability of our national society. God said at Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”

5. We shall take them from the refining, ennobling, character-building atmosphere of the home, and place them under a drastic discipline in an environment that is hostile to most of the finer and nobler things of home and of life.

6. We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar, all contrary to and destructive of the American home.

7. We shall deprive our sons of any adequate religious training and activity during their training years, for the religious element of army life is both inadequate and ineffective.

8. We shall put them where they may be indoctrinated with a wholly un-American view of the aims and purposes of their individual lives, and of the life of the whole people and nation, which are founded on the ways of peace, whereas they will be taught to believe in the ways of war.

9. We shall take them away from all participation in the means and measures of production to the economic loss of the whole nation.

10. We shall lay them open to wholly erroneous ideas of their duties to themselves, to their family, and to society in the matter of independence, self-sufficiency, individual initiative, and what we have come to call American manhood.

11. We shall subject them to encouragement in a belief that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.

12. We shall make possible their building into a military caste which from all human experience bodes ill for that equality and unity which must always characterize the citizenry of a republic.

13. By creating an immense standing army, we shall create to our liberties and free institutions a threat foreseen and condemned by the founders of the Republic, and by the people of this country from that time till now. Great standing armies have always been the tools of ambitious dictators to the destruction of freedom.

14. By the creation of a great war machine, we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.

15. By building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism, so placing upon the peoples of the earth crushing burdens of taxation that with their present tax load will hardly be bearable, and that will gravely threaten our social, economic, and governmental systems.

16. We shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies, headed by war-minded officers, will never rest till they are at one another’s throats in what will be the most terrible contest the world has ever seen.

17. All the advantages for the protection of the country offered by a standing army may be obtained by the National Guard system which has proved so effective in the past and which is unattended by the evils of entire mobilization.

Responsive to the ancient wisdom, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ obedient to the divine message that heralded the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, ‘. . . on earth peace, good will toward men,’ and knowing that our Constitution and the Government set up under it were inspired of God and should be preserved to the blessing not only of our own citizenry but, as an example, to the blessing of all the world, we have the honor respectfully to urge that you do your utmost to defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry. Should it be urged that our complete armament is necessary for our safety, it may be confidently replied that a proper foreign policy, implemented by an effective diplomacy, can avert the dangers that are feared. What this country needs and what the world needs, is a will for peace, not war. God will help our efforts to bring this about.

Respectfully submitted, GEO. ALBERT SMITH, J. REUBEN CLARK, JR., DAVID O. MCKAY, First Presidency.

I actually ran across this on Reddit, where it has been posted by an unhappy former Mormon.  It might be noted, of course, that at that age a large number of Mormons go on missions, which is an effort to consolidate them in their faith, so there was no doubt some reason for Mormon's to be concerned.   While I've heard it claimed that there's no pressure for them to do so, as a demographic, by my observation, they tend to marry young as well, which relates to one of the things noted in the letter, maybe more than one.

Still, the points made are interesting, and not necessarily invalid.  Indeed, almost every point raised in this letter is correct.

There is actually a lot to unpack here, and my own views on this have changed back and forth over the years.  In 1945, when this letter was written, there had only been a single instance of conscription into the Federal Army during peacetime in U.S. history, and that came right before World War Two. There was a history of mandatory militia service, but that had fallen by the wayside after the Civil War.  

Also of note, the National Guard, in peacetime, still did not receive Federal basic training in 1945.  Entry level soldiers were trained by their units by older NCO's delegated that task.  Given this, the nature of the training was always local, but it obviously varied in other ways depending upon who was delivering it.  In the case of this letter, the author could be assured that enlisting young men would have been trained by older soldiers of a like mind, with therefore much of the societal dangers noted avoided.  I'm not sure when the training system actually changed, but I suspect it was by the very late 1940s or certainly by the 1950s.  By the time I was in the Guard the Guard was incredibly integrated into the Regular Army, which is even more the case today.  Enlisting men received regular Army basic and advanced training, and were in the Army when they received it.

When I was younger, I held the view that conscription was a bad thing, save in times of war, as it forced a person to serve against their will.  That's a less developed point than the set of points noted above, but there is a point to it.  Having said that, what I don't think I appreciated earlier is the dangers of a large standing Army, which is why the US had a militia system for defense in the first place. We're seeing a lot of those dangers come into fruition now.  That's not directly related to conscription, it might be noted, but it somewhat is as we have a large, all volunteer, armed forces, which inevitably leads to a sort of military class.  Armed forces with conscripts are much less likely do to that, and therefore they make a much more democratic force that's much less likely to act as praetorian guards for a would be dictator.  

Additionally, as I've grown older I've noted that there's a distinct difference between people who served when asked, and those who avoided it.  Our narcissist in chief in Washington D.C., who avoided serving due to shin splits, is a good example. Donald Trump would have benefited enormously from two years as an enlisted man in the military.  But it's not just him, I've noted this in a lot of men who found a way not to serve.  Their characters would have been better off if they had.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 13, 1945. Crimes against humanity.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Crimes against humanity, Nazi Germany, War Crimes