Bob Denver, who had previously been portrayed as a beatnik, played the title role. He'd been previously known for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. All of the actors in the short run series ended up typecast, in cluding the talented Alan Hale, Jr.
UPI critic Rick Dubrow commented: "It is impossible that a more inept, moronic or humorless show has ever appeared on the home tube."
As a kid, I'd often watch the show, already in syndication, when I got home from school.
Rebels in the Congo rounded up of all foreigners trapped in Stanleyville and Paulis.
The "High National Council" was installed to function as the legislature for South Vietnam.
I've always really liked them. Meet The Press and This Week respectively.
But recently, it's become almost pointless to listen to them.
The political guests tend to be complete hacks. Any GOP guest is going to support anything Trump says, or refuse to answer while stating something else. The Democrats aren't much better. And now the panels are the same way. The Republican panelist won't say anything critical of the GOP, nor will the Democratic panelist say anything critical of the Democrats.
Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
Well, maybe I'll try Face The Nation. It seemed to be holding up better.
So we sat around the TV, and I had that sort of anticipatory, open-mouth grin that people have when they’re waiting for something to happen, that they know is going to be really great. And ... it never happened. It wasn’t funny. Not one thing was funny. There was not one utterance of a laugh or a giggle.
At least she realized it. Saturday Night Live has been mostly unfunny its entire run. It's mostly National Lampoon snark.
Pope Francis commented on childless couples and pets.
Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that. And here we have just such an example. Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.
Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.
Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.
Oh you know where this is going to go. . .
Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "
Yeah, whatever.
Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.
Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes. People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.
Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone. Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one. More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal. Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour. In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall. Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well. I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.
Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm. Oh, but it'll get better.
The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin. And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.
A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time. There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.
Will they now?
Well, they ought to.
Am I going to?
No, not really.
I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp. I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really. People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think. And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.
At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor. In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question. As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".
That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career. It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together. And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case. Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any. About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.
It's also a lie, of course. Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions. Statistical data more than demonstrates that.
The Pope, by the way, is not against pets.
Messe ocus Pangur Bán, cechtar nathar fria saindán; bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg, mu menma céin im saincheirdd
Caraim-se fos, ferr cach clú, oc mu lebrán léir ingnu; ní foirmtech frimm Pangur bán, caraid cesin a maccdán.
Ó ru·biam — scél cen scís — innar tegdais ar n-óendís, táithiunn — díchríchide clius — ní fris tarddam ar n-áthius.
Gnáth-húaraib ar gressaib gal glenaid luch inna lín-sam; os mé, du·fuit im lín chéin dliged n-doraid cu n-dronchéill.
Fúachid-sem fri frega fál a rosc anglése comlán; fúachimm chéin fri fégi fis mu rosc réil, cesu imdis,
Fáelid-sem cu n-déne dul hi·n-glen luch inna gérchrub; hi·tucu cheist n-doraid n-dil, os mé chene am fáelid.
Cía beimmi amin nach ré, ní·derban cách ar chéle. Maith la cechtar nár a dán, subaigthius a óenurán.
Hé fesin as choimsid dáu in muid du·n-gní cach óenláu; du thabairt doraid du glé for mu mud céin am messe.
I and Pangur Bán, each of us two
at his special art: his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft. I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science: not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art. When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone, we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness. It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net, and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning. His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence: I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is
very feeble. He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw: I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question. Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other: each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone. He himself is the master of the work which he does every day: while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.
Pangur Bán, a poem by an unknown Medieval Irish monk.
The Seamus Heany translation, which I like better. It really gets at the nature of the poem:
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes
a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So
in peace our task we ply, Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice
every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
The Values candidates
Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a pacifist, and voted against delcaring war in 1917 and in 1941. She's a hero, as she stuck to her declared values.
While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives. This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.
This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like. I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time. So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?
Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it. If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.
Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons. But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that. And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason. More often than not, the reason is money and career.
Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces. Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews. That's not even remotely similar to having children, however. Not at all.
I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke, 16:10.
I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?
One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up. That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.
Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation. Maybe there is one. I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham. That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.
If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.
The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection. From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.
The Primordal Connection
St. Jerome with lion. St. Jerome is supposesd to have taken a thorn out of a lion's paw, and the lion thereafter stayed with him. While some might doubt some aspects of this, St. Jerome's lion is also recounted as having caused fear in the monestary in which he lived, and having adopted the monestary's donkey as a friend.
Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.
There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other. We're one. We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice. We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation. And so on.
We miss them.
One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things. Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.
And could be, again.
Warped legacies
An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged. There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.
Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.
And, of course, Sex and the City.
She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.
M'eh.
A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:
When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.
Carrie was about helping women? Well, excuse me if that was deluded.
Scary legacies
This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
Eew, ick.
Connection? Well, none directly.
Or maybe. More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.
It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.
On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine. I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.
Boston Marriages
Some recent headlines from the ill historically informed press department:
What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms
And:
Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together "I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."
Oh my gosh! This means that people don't always default to acting like their characters in Sex In The City or Sex Lives of College Girls!
Could this be a new trend?!? Oh my oh my, what would it mean.
Well, maybe people are just defaulting back to normal, but we're unable to grasp that as we've been steeped in seventy years of Hugh Hefner pornification of absolutely everything.[1] This isn't new. Indeed, we've dealt with this here before in our Lex Anteinternet: The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past...
post. Let's take a look:
But there is more to look at here.
Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream. I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage". Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways. Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be. Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage.
Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today. Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means. Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.
Hmmm. . . .
Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really. Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not. This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex. I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.
Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know. For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.
At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe. It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt. People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.
For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out. After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it. In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.
People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not. Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.
I can recall all of this being the case when I was a kid. My grandmother's neighbor was a bachelor his entire life who worked as an electrician. After he came home from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp following World War Two, he just wanted to keep to himself. A couple of my mother's aunts were lifelong single women and, at least in one case, one simply didn't want to marry as she didn't want children, and the other had lost a fiancé right after World War One and never went on to anyone else. Her secretary desk is now in my office. In none of these instances would anyone have accused these individuals of being homosexual.
Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual. Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component. Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it. People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.
Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.
Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time. Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?
Tatting for attention?
Kourtney Kardashian, I think (I can't really tell the various Kardashians from one another and don't really have a sufficient interest to learn who is who), apparently is now all tatted up now that she has a tattooed boyfriend or fiancé or something that is. And by this, we mean heavily tattooed.
Like, enough already?
Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo. I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.
Footnotes:
It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this. This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.
The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on. As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.
Linked to Sid Richardson Museum, as this is a 1916 dated painting, it should be public domain. Russell: "Man's Weapons Are Useless When Nature Goes Armed".
Tomorrow is what some people call "Thanksgiving Eve".
Not most people, but some people, and today and tomorrow are days in which a large number of Americans are on the road, going home to be with family and friends.
So, some reasonable requests, in anticipation of those gatherings.
From now, through next Monday, please:
If you are a candidate for major office, don't say anything. . And I mean anything. Don't voice your opinion on anything for the next few days. The nation deserves it.
This is particularly the case if you have some snotty opinion you wish to voice about something, or somebody, which only panders to your base.
If you aren't a politician. but are one of those folks who insist on voicing your political opinions in a large group, as if everyone else, or at least everyone else in your family, holds the same opinion, just keep it to yourself.
After all, if you are really convinced that everyone believes the same thing as you do about Trump, January 6, infrastructure bills, and the like, you really don't need to say anything at all, now, do you? At best, you're only going to learn that somebody has an equally strong, opposite, opinion, and you're off and running on an argument.
Okay, I feel differently about non-political issues, just don't mix them with politics. I'm fine with people expressing their opinions on why people should get vaccinated, which means that you have to put up with people who are going to hold the opposite opinion. And other health and scientific opinions as well, as long as they don't get political or wacky conspiratorial. I.e, if you are tempted to say, "you know, influenza is simply a Portuguese plot introduce by Vasco Da Gama. . ." have a glass of port, or coffee, or something else instead.
If you live in Wyoming, or know a Wyomingite, please don't bring up the series Yellowstone. M'eh. It's really about the same as asking people in the physics department about The Big Bang Theory or people from New York if The French Connection depicts their daily lives.
Don't be a rube.
Also, don't drop in some surprising personal belief that is in tune with the times, to show everyone how in tune with the times you are. As in, "you know, new evidence suggest that Christopher Columbus was a shipjacking dog kicker fleeing for his life. . . "
If you have some objection to Thanksgiving in general, and I know some of you do, just keep it to yourself.
If there are of college age or just out of college people are there, don't ask. . . "so, when are you two going to tie the knot?" or "how's school/job/the Navy?".
For that matter, if there are the older beleaguered there, on their one-day off from work, don't ask "so, how's work?", or "I don't mean to bother you, but you're a bicameral legislative mechanic and I am working on a bicameral legislative operative device and I was wondering. . ."
Regarding the Navy, and every military service, if you are one of the people who do it, resist posting on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/TikTok some item of veteran hagiography. Not every holiday needs to be Veterans Day. You know what I mean, skip the "While you are safe and warm enjoying your @ER$@# turkey, I hope you remember that somewhere some kid is behind a M4 carbine eating MRE's keeping your lazy civilian butt safe" or "Only the few will remember what it was like to be stationed at the ammo dump in Guam for Thanksgiving in 1967 worrying that the Red Chinese were going to swim the Pacific Ocean and. . . "
If people drove out to visit you in some distant location, and that location is cool, has neat things to do, or is just scenic, don't insist people stay in and eschew it, as in "oh, thanks for coming to our private chalet in the Swiss Alps, and yes that's our private ski run. . . now, let's pull the blinds down and talk about Donald Trump/football/gall bladders".
And by the way, if you are an employer, don't dump on the employees as they leave the door, as in "have a good @#$@#$ holiday. . . I'll be here working to feed your lazy butts. . .and by the way, whatever you are doing, you are doing it wrong, you lazy @#$@#$".
Finally, if you are one of those people with dietary concerns, self-imposed or otherwise, just spare the rest of us.
I.e, don't go to a Thanksgiving dinner and ask if the turkey is a free-range, free trade, free Tibet turkey. Just save it. And nobody wants to hear about your vegan/Keto/Waffle House/ or whatever diet.
The absurdly goofball separation of the extra atmospheric duties of the Air Force were being done must fine by the Air Force. President Trump didn't need to yield to whatever goofball Looney Tunes suggestion that a new branch of the military was needed. Heck, we have more military branches already than most nations.
And now, with their new dress uniform, they're expanding the spacey nature of the entire idea. These are the stupidest looking uniforms since Nixon's brief palace guard uniforms for the White House Marines.
Anyone else noting the homage to Star Trek in the globe and orbit device.
Well, here's a news flash. Star Trek was bad television. Seriously, the original 1960s television series was just junk. Enough already on the Star Trek crap.
If an increasingly troubled Biden Administration wants to pick any low hanging fruit for an accomplishment, this one is still available.
Eliminate the Space Force and fold it back into the Air Force.
Take any officer who voluntarily transferred into the Space Force and reduce them to Private E-1s in the Army and send them to Cook & Baker's School.
Take any officer who was transferred into the Space Force by assignment involuntarily, but who didn't protest, and transfer them back into the Air Force reduced two grades and assigned to Diego Garcia.
It's a huge container ship, stuck sideways in the Suez Canal.
There has to be a moment, when you are piloting something like this, in this situation, when you think "oh pooh".
The owner of the ship has apologized. But, while no doubt sincere, there's something odd about that.
Perhaps my neighbor down the street who routinely abandons a car in snow days will learn some lesson about this.
The stuck ship has been the subject of an endless number of memes and jokes, but it actually is impacting world commerce. 10% of the globes trade goes through it, and there are now concerns about toilet paper and coffee prices.
A debate on arms
M231 Port Firing Weapon, a fairly short lived machinegun variant of the M16 that was designed for firing from ports of armored personnel carriers. The concept was short lived, although some are still retained for Bradly AFV crews. The layout is closer to the AR 556 than to any common M16 or AR15.
I thought about not commenting about this at all, and when I started this most recent edition to this thread it wasn't here, as that was prior to an insane man's assault on a grocery store in Colorado. But as this is now prominent in the Zeitgeist, the history of this blog would provide for commenting in some form, so I'll do it here.
First, the rush to conclusion.
At the point at which I'm typing this out, we still don't know much about the assault other than its tragic consequences. Both sides in the gun control debate are rushing to conclusions, which means the conclusions will largely be pre made ones rather than any which are the product of analysis. What we do know is this.
The killer was insane and had a history of violence. He was short tempered and paranoid. His condition appears to be progressive, and while he was violent in high school, he wasn't constantly so.
He was born in Syria, but brought to the country as an infant, so he can't really be considered to be a Syrian migrant in the conventional sense. This is somewhat relevant, however, in that neighbors of his household report that the family lived in a style that's more familiar to immigrants of earlier eras in that it was multigenerational, something common in many places but odd to Americans. This isn't particularly relevant to anything other than that, according to one report, living next to the family was a bit of a nightmare in some ways as they sort of spilled out into the street in an unruly fashion. So, basically, he lived in a large and somewhat unruly setting. To the extent that matters, if it does, it would be because living in his family would make a person an outsider simply because of the very non American style of life in an otherwise middle class neighborhood.
He is Muslim but this can't be said to have an obvious tie to Islamic extremism.
Indeed, he simply seems to have gone progressively insane. Members of his family who have been interviewed noted this.
He was convicted of third degree assault in 2018 and sentenced to 48 hours of community service.
All this should serve to diffuse any suggestion that this has anything to do with his ethnicity, although I'm sure on some quarters of the net, it's not viewed that way.
On this, while the press reports have concluded that his purchase of firearms was legal, it's not immediately apparent that this is in fact the case. It would depend on the nature of the conviction, but frankly I'd lean towards his purchase actually having been illegal. If this is the case, the background check system failed to reveal the conviction. Having said that, I'm not firmly attached to that position. This may be such a "simple assault", i.e., fighting, that it wouldn't register. If that's the case, the background system didn't fail. We should assume here it didn't fail.
The firearm used in the event was a Ruger AR-556 pistol.
The AR-556 "pistol" is one of a series of arms produced to dodge the National Firearms Act on short barreled rifles. There's no doubt about this and while somebody no doubt will eventually log in to state otherwise, this recent trend serves no other purpose. This has allowed for the manufacture of very short barreled rifles, marketed pretextually as pistols, and also semi automatic replicas of submachineguns which would otherwise be illegal under US law. This is part of the trend we've noted here before of the AR lead militarization and pseudo militarization (tacti-cool) that has become so prominent in the US.
Indeed, the problem with weapons like the AR-556 pistol is that they make it exceedingly difficult for defenders of firearms to do just that. While fans of the AR15 in general can point to legitimate sporting use for the rifle, finding a real sporting use for a pistol variant of it is extremely difficult to do. Everyone knows that the configuration is simply a dodge around the law. A fan of pistols would be better off with a real pistol, a person who wanted a semi automatic carbine variant of the AR can find one easily. The "pistol" configuration really appeals to a limited market that is buying it mostly based on appearance. This is all less true for collectors who want something like a firing replica of something like the MP40 in semiautomatic, but even there, because the MP40 is a purely military arm, it gets difficult to really make the argument. That puts defenders of the Second Amendment in a difficult position as even the defense argument that can be made has to really yield to an offensive argument. I.e., you can't easily argue you need a AR-556 for self defense. You can argue it, but you'll always be faced with an argument about a conventional pistol being a better choice.
As added factor that's been discussed is that Boulder recently attempted to ban "assault" weapons, but the ban was struck down as unconstitutional.
So what does that immediately tell us?
1. The killer is almost certainly insane.
2. He lived with his family, so not institutionalization occurred that would have alerted anyone.
3. The firearm was purchased legally.
4. The firearm is a type that's principal appeal is simply its strange looks. While the description will not doubt be "military style", in fact it is not, unless the briefly manufactured armored vehicle port guns are considered, which did pretty closely resemble this sort of weapon.
So what can we draw from that?
Perhaps not much.
Democrats are crying for the passage of gun control bills that will make it through the House, but they won't make it through the Senate. The bill with the broadest support, expanding background check to include all firearms, would not have impacted this whatsoever. This purchased passed the background check and would have passed the proposed expanded one.
More radical measures, such as banning "assault weapons" would have precluded the sale of the AR556 in question. That can be noted. Having said that, there's no reason to believe that a man in this mental condition wouldn't have simply switched to something else. Indeed, no matter how expansive you make such a "ban", it would fail to ban everything that somebody like this would employ. So that would do nothing.
Having said that, in the case of these "pistols" that are now in this category, here actually is something that those who are wondering what can be done by way of Executive Order fits that bill. This is only a "pistol" by regulatory interpretation, and its a strained one at that. The ATF could be directed to reclassify these as long guns as they have features which are overwhelming only appropriate for long guns. That would subject them all to the NFA overnight, which would make the simple retail of them nearly impossible and subject future transfers of them to the NFA. Indeed, it 'd make the current owning of them subject to NFA requirements.
That would address the arm, but it also wouldn't address the killing.
And frankly, in this particular case, only a massively expanded mental healthy system in the US which reincorporated compulsory institutionalization, and indeed expanded it beyond any scope it ever had, would have prevented this. That isn't going to happen either and it certainly isn't going to happen in an era in which there's a Democratic Congress.
Which means, once again, probably the only real solution, and its imperfect in the case of the insane, is societal. Not all evil can be prevented.
Indeed, what this might tell us is something simply about ignoring evil and the violent, but we've always tended to do that. We constantly read of criminals who commit some horrific act who have a past history of violence, or of people who have no major criminal past but a distinct demonstrated attraction to it. It's clear the mental health treatment available in the US is lacking, but at the same time even if it were much more extensive, we'd likely not catch something like this. We'd have to have a much more stable, and probably agrarian, society in order to address much of that, and even then, we wouldn't catch it all.
And that would, I suppose, involve a society that prayed for not being lead into temptation, and to be delivered from evil, but I don't see that coming on any time soon.
Poor Joe Manchin
Joe Manchin, one of the few conservative Democrats left on the planet, is suddenly constantly in the spotlight.
The reason that his is, is because as a conservative Democrat, he's suddenly a power broker simply by occupying a position on the political map that used to be one that was crowded, the middle ground. Democrats can't really get things through the Senate unless he supports it.
This came up in the context of gun control, as Manchin doesn't support any of the two bills that have passed the House. This called left wing brat, Rachel Maddow, whose style is mostly 100% pure snark to lambast him and accuse him of falling down in front of the "nearly dissolved" NRA.
The NRA is in bankruptcy, but it's far from nearly dissolved. What will happen to it remains to be seen, but the widespread assumption that its now powerless is pretty presumptive. It's goals are still shared by large number of voters and as a practical matter its influence in the past has been so extensive that it may outlast its current decrepit leadership that needs to go.
Be that as it may, Manchin is actually a supporter of some gun control and recently sponsored his own background check bill. He has a "D" rating from the NRA.
Maddow, the loudmouthed smart aleck kid in the junior high class we all remember from those days, probably didn't know that.
This is part of the problem with debates such as this, for the reason noted in our first entry. Arguing that gun control that could realistically be imposed in the US would have prevented this is a lot like arguing that Hitler wouldn't have committed mass atrocities if only more people had bought his art. The logic train is derailed on it.
And then there's the states
The Flight, Frederic Remington.
At the same time that the Democratic Congress and Administration is seeking to impose gun control, state legislatures all over are attempting to do the opposite, including going so far as to pass obviously unconstitutional statutes.
Wyoming is taking a run at one which, even though its been taken to the weed whacker to the extent that its original drafter, the alt right Wyoming Senator Anthony Bouchard, no longer supports it, pretty clearly violates the Supremacy Clause. Lots of these statutes do. The only one I've seen that may not is one that has been suggested in, I think, South Carolina which simply proposes to make all the residents of the state members of the militia.
Indeed, that's the cleverest approach I've seen so far. I haven't read the bill, but there's some logic to a bill that makes everyone a member of the militia and all their arms part of their militia service. It's grounded in the U.S. Constitution, rather than giving it the middle finger salute like so many of these other bills do.
Irrespective of that, the really interesting thing is that the national legislature is going one way while state ones are going another. That tells us this really is a coastal issue, with some lefty islands dominated by urban areas. That makes any action on this that those on the left, and even the center left, imagine, pretty much impossible.
But it's not only that. We're not only politically polarized. We're now geographically polarized. And heavily.
The Intelligent quarter riots.
Dr. Oz faces backlash ahead of 'Jeopardy' gig, called a 'disgrace' to Alex Trebek's legacy
So read a headline in the net entertainment news, which I read even though I normally don't, having followed the link from Twitter.
I'm among those who find having Dr. Oz on Jeopardy irritating. He claims to have been a friend of the late Alex Trebek, which he may have been, but he's also a quack.
Will Jenny McCarthy be next?
As a total aside, maybe we can hope for Kate Upton. I'm serious on that. She's photogenic, as was Trebek, and by all accounts is highly intelligence, and doesn't sell snake oil. She's also sort of disappeared off of the cheesecake circuit now that she's a married woman and a mother.
Anyway you look at it the fact that Jeopardy fans are upset by Oz is a good thing and shows that even in some quarters of the vast wasteland, there are reservoirs of intelligence.
Breaking news
The late Mary Tyler Moore in 1978.
The BBC reported on March 25 that Mary Tyler Moore had died. It was due to a technical glitch.
Which is correct, she died in 2017.
Money and universities
Isaac Royall, Jr., one of the founders of Harvard law and a man with connections to slavery.
Jeffrey Epstein, it turns out, had connections to several universities. One professor has now lost his position due to this, as he basically facilitated the Epstein connection.
Well, whatever Epstein's connection with universities may have been, it was probably just money. That doesn't tell us much other than that universities need money, and that universities are particularly prone to retroactive self righteousness. They have the money, he's dead, they ought to just leave it at that, absent some suggestion of actual impropriety by members of their staff or that he somehow influenced their work.
If anything, what this ought to tell us is something about money and universities. Within the past couple of years we've had the "scandals" about bribed admissions, more or less, into well regarded schools by entertainment figures for their children. This is no surprise to anyone really familiar with universities. And then there's been the flap on the East Coast about the early founders of universities having made lots of money on slavery, which is indeed bad, but they're all dead now.
Absent all universities being government funded, which has its own problems, this sort of thing will occur. University funding is a big topic in the US right now, but nobody is really close to figuring it out and the left wing "make it all free" solution wouldn't address this and would devalue university educations further. Mostly what this is an example of is societal hypocrisy. We know that universities take money from donors, this isn't new. The money is already spent, leave it at that.
I have a Twitter account that really just serves as an advertisement for this site.
I don't know that a person should feel proud of that. Twitter is really stupid. And one thing that having a Twitter account does is expose you to the really superficial Zeitgeist of the moment. . . every day.
When I checked in this morning a big Twitter story is that Jimmy Fallon was apologizing for a Saturday Night Live appearance he did in black face a decade or so ago. I'm not going to look that up, but Fallon is an entertainer and Saturday Night Live has been bad for decades. Black face should have gone out before it came in, but as this apparently has been around for a really long time, blowing up about it now seems a bit late. Perhaps it might just be better to note that Saturday Night Live should be Exhibit A in the trial of the People v. Harvard Lampoon Not Being Funny.
Indeed, if that trial were to occur, one of the primary expert witnesses would have to be a sociologist on the topic of how, at any one time, alleged comedic geniuses are such only by societal acknowledgement, as many of them are truly never funny. Charlie Chaplin is a good example. Not funny. Not even once.
Chaplin. Not funny.
In the category of funny is Kathy Griffin, who is also blowing up Twitter today for a comment she said about injecting President Trump with air.
Griffin is occasionally funny. I didn't hear the comment but it doesn't strike me as funny. It also doesn't strike me as something that serious people need to waste much air time on.
President Trump for his part ought to stay off of Twitter, but was on complaining that Michelle Obama had gone golfing at the same time that he, Trump, is taking flak for golfing.
I don't golf and it strikes me as boring. I realize that not everyone feels that way. My mother was a superb golfer when young and taught me how to golf as a child. It didn't take.
Rants about golfing, by whomever is making them, are really about something else. Americans of both parties like to complain that the President is insensitive and lazy whenever he's seen not doing something that seems to be work. Democrats are complaining about Trump golfing as its an opportunity to complain about Trump. Republicans complained about Obama golfing while he was President for the same reason.
Driving by the golf course every morning I always look out upon it, but not because I like golf, but because I'm hoping the foxes will be back.
This year, it seems, Mr. and Mrs. Fox have chosen to have their brood elsewhere. So, instead, I see that Americans are out golfing.
Well, at least that's being out, which seems to me to be okay. The argument that we should shelter in our basements for the rest of eternity doesn't seem to me to be a sound one. I get it, if you are in the former cow pasture that New Yorkers now call Central Park there's going to be a lot of people, as New York is crowded, and you ought to be careful and wear a mask. And that advice goes for other places as well, and I'm not saying otherwise.
I'm just not too worked up about the golfing.
Or Griffin.
Billie Eilish is apparently worked up about body shaming which caused a lot of people to engage in virtue signaling by supporting her for being against body shaming.
This is in some ways associated, I think, with a song (I think) in which the words "not my fault" appear" somewhere where she decries people who have judged her based on her clothing or appearance. I'm not in that category as, perhaps to my discredit, I don't really care about Eilish at all, other than she's pretty clearly an object of fascination for being a certain sort of teenage/twentysomething idol in the same way that James Dean was, whom I also am pretty disinterested in.
What are you rebelling against?
What have you got?
M'eh.
Eilish has been the subject of a lot of fascination because she wears bulky clothes. In the video for her comments, song or whatever it is, she apparently strips down to a tank top in reaction to being the subject of a lot of fascination about what her wearing bulky clothing may mean.
The problem with that is that its almost guaranteed that a lot of her juvenile, and probably not so juvenile, fans will stop in to see the video not to bond with her statement, but because now they get to find out what she looks like under those threads. It's sort of like protests here and there in which women go topless, but not nearly as extreme. The message gets mixed.
That gets into the topic of decent clothing, of which there's an entire cul de sac on the web where people rage on that topic, some with really extreme views. It's a tough topic to engage in, in regard to women, as standards applying to female dress change every few seconds, or so it seems. Having said that, if you dress really oddly it tends to be the case that, no matter what you're saying, you're doing it to draw attention, in which case some of the attention will be unwelcome. Eilish may deserve credit for slamming body shaming, but simply dressing in a less "look at how oddly I'm dressed" fashion right from the onset would probably have accomplished that more effectively. Well, her video probably doesn't hurt. . . except to the extent juvenile males are checking into it the same way that they check into Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions.
All of which brings us back to this. In this era of COVID 19 introspection, American culture, as reflected on Twitter, isn't looking too great.
Yeah, so its a Congressman from Tarpon Springs, Florida with a giant sponge (on February 25, 1920). So what, it's a million times more interesting than This Is Us.
NBC is involved in a Communist, Fascist, Anarchist, Monarchist conspiracy to bring down Western society through a fit of hyper sappiness slopped about the landscape through the abomination of the television show This Is Us.
That ain't us. That isn't anybody, except in the fevered cavernous mind of some screenwriters at NBC. No real person could stand this collection of saps in the real world. They need a quick kick in the rear and an rendition to Aleppo.
In some years I've done a post entitled this, in other years not.
Usually its satirical, with some seriousness. This past year, and perhaps its just my current perception, the year has been so odd and generally negative that it'd be impossible to do one that isn't negative.
Indeed, while I've never done this before in this thread, maybe this recent article by a Wyoming journalist simply sums things up better than any article here could do:
1. For everyone.
A. Accept that "I feel it", "want it" or "desire it" doesn't make it anything other than an individual feeling, want or desire.
Your own particular desires of any kind don't rise to a level of a societal need that society needs to personally ratify.
They may not even be legitimate. Just because you want something, no matter how deeply you feel it, doesn't mean its disordered. Just because you want to eat all the cake, for example, doesn't give you a protected right to do so and it doesn't mean you really should, for a multiplicity of reasons. And if you do eat it all, that doesn't mean that you have to demand everyone else accept that you ate it and agree that the problems its causing you aren't real problems.
Along these lines, it might be worth actually noting that a lot of the recent horrible behaviors of all types we have "discovered", we didn't. They've been horrible all along, but we started pretending they weren't and ended up bearing the consequences.
We had less of the "Me Too" movement in 2019 than we did in 2018, but it still provides a good example. All the misbehavior violated an old, old law of societal conduct. Much of the reason that it doesn't go away is that those noting the misbehavior and decrying it the violation an old, old law are busy violating other old, old laws, and don't want to stop. You really can't accept something as deeply wrong if you don't stop to ponder why it is, that its deeply wrong.
C. Time to consider some evolutionary biology.
When I was young I was a geology student and, as a result, I was in that class of people who studied evolution in detail. I know that there are those who don't accept evolution, but evolution is a natural fact and denying that doesn't make it less of a fact.
In keeping with that, we have our place in that picture and we're really busy denying that right now. It's time to get over it. This relates strongly to the item discussed in Paragraph B above, and there's another one of the laws of behavior governing it. We'll set that item out here:
Holscher's Third Law of Behavior. I know why the caged tiger paces.
Everyone has been to a zoo and has seen a tiger pace back and forth, back and forth. He'll look up occasionally as well, and the deluded believe "look, he wants to be petted," while the more realistic know that he's thinking "I'd like to eat you." You can keep him in the zoo, but he's still a tiger. He wants out. He wants to live in the jungle, and he wants to eat you for lunch. That's his nature, and no amount of fooling ourselves will change it.
It's really no different with human beings. We've lived in the modern world we've created for only a very brief time. Depending upon your ancestry, your ancestors lived in a very rustic agrarian world for about 10,000 years, long enough, by some measures to actually impact your genetic heritage. Prior to that, and really dating back further than we know, due to Holscher's First Law of History, we were hunters and gatherers, or hunters and gatherers/small scale farmers. Deep down in our DNA, that's who we still are.
That matters, as just as the DNA of the tiger tells it what it wants, to some degree our DNA informs us of what we want as well. I do not discount any other influence, and human beings are far, far, more complicated than we can begin to suppose, but it's still the case. A species that started out eons and eons ago being really smart hunters combined with really smart gatherers/small farmers has specialized in a way that living in Major Metropolis isn't going to change very rapidly. Deep down, we remain those people, even if we don't know it, and for some, even if we don't like it.
This also impacts the every sensitive roles of men and women. Primates have unusually great gender differentiation for a mammal. Male housecats, for example, aren't hugely different from female housecats. But male chimpanzees are vastly different from female chimpanzees. Male human beings are as well, but even much more so.
That's really upsetting to some people, but it simply isn't understood. If understood, this does not imply any sort of a limitation on either sex, and indeed in aboriginal societies that are really, really, primitive there's much less than in any other society, including our modernized Western one. Inequality comes in pretty early in societies, but some change in condition from the most primitive seems to be necessary in order to create it. So, properly understood, those very ancient genetic impulses that were there when we were hiking across the velt hoping not to get eaten by a lion, and hoping to track down an antelope, and planting and raising small gardens, are still there. That they're experienced differently by the genders is tempered by the fact that, in those ancient times, a lot of early deaths meant that the opposite gender had to step into the other's role, and therefore we're also perfectly capable of doing that. It's the root basic natures we're talking about, however, that we're discussing here, and that spark to hunt, fish, defend and plant a garden are in there, no matter how much steel and concrete we may surround ourselves with.
The reason that this matters is that all people have these instincts from antiquity, some to greater or lessor degrees. But many people, maybe most, aren't aware that they have them. Some in the modern world spend a lot of their time and effort acting desperately to suppress these instincts. But an instinct is an instinct, and the more desperately they act, the more disordered they become.
This doesn't mean, of course, that everyone needs to revert to an aboriginal lifestyle, and that's not going to happen. Nor would it even mean that everyone needs to hunt or fish, or even raise a garden. But it does mean that the further we get from nature, both our own personal natures, and nature in chief, or to deny real nature, the more miserable they'll become. We can't and shouldn't pretend that we're not what we once were, or that we now live in a world where we are some sort of ethereal being that exists separate and apart from that world. In other words, a person can live on a diet of tofu if they want, and pretend that pigs and people are equal beings, but deep in that person's subconscious, they're eating pork and killing the pig with a spear.
I frankly don't know why it is that so many in our day and age can't accept this fact and believe instead that our realities are self described and self made. They aren't, any more than they are for a jackrabbit on the plains.
C. Time for some Distributism
I've written about Distributism here a fair amount, but this year the need for a reassessment of economics is really evident. On one had we have the Democrats embracing Social Democracy and all the vast cost and expenses associated with it, on the other we have a roaring economy which Republicans are telling us is the best for decades. In the middle is everyone else with a vague feeling that things just aren't right.
They aren't right as not everything is about money. Neither the "let's all move to cubicle jobs in Big City" view of the economy or the "Government will fund all the needs you can't fund yourself view" is making people satisfied.
Having something of their own, close to home, might.
2. The Political Parties.
It's tempting to say "just stop it", but that's too flippant.
At any rate, however, the insanity of the two party system is now more evident than ever. You'd think that with this being the case, a third party or fourth party or something would come along, but that's not going to happen rather obviously.
With that the fact of the matter, this polarity is too much for the country to endure long term. It has to end.
In order to end it, however, some basic facts have to be accepted by both, and one is that the absurd level of name calling can't keep on keeping on and, moreover, whoever is in the Oval Office was put there through the process we have. Eight years of Republicans asserting that President Obama was illegitimate have been followed by (now) three of the Democrats yelling that President Trump is illegitimate. And it goes on down from there.
As party of the need for real change, party purity tests need to stop. The Democrats are initiating this on a national level, informally, and locally the GOP has done this formally. Parties aren't religions and there should be room within them, particularly in a two party system such as we seem to be captive to.
Finally, government can't solve everything. The Democratic platform basically is that it can, and that's absurd. The GOP one isn't, but the thought there is that the economy solves everything, and that isn't correct either.
Having discussed politics, let's move to religion
3. Confusion of Faith
I know that this is a topic that people aren't even supposed to discuss, save on Twitter and Facebook and I guess on Blogs, but this is a history blog, supposedly.
None the less, we've strayed into this topic a fair amount and so we're going to discuss it here.
A. Pope Francis
I don't know what Pope Francis' overall theme on things is, but if we were to give him a grade on his overall Papacy so far, it'd be a C at best. His vague comments, refusing to answer questions, and the like, are causing turmoil.
It's seemed lately that the Pope has an unfortunately Eurocentric view which is missing the real story of what's going on in Christianity in general and Catholism in particular, which is exploding in growth in the third world. I get the concern over the Western World, but the sort of weak leadership we're seeing and suggestions that we're retreating in one way or another while leaving things vague isn't helping.
I don't know what he can do about it as it seems ingrained in his personality. But a course correction seems in order.
B. The German Cardinals
One group that needs the course correction is the German Cardinals who are practically acting as an independent body. Somebody needs to point out to them the fact that their leadership hasn't been working and, moreover, the day in which people really listen to the Germans on about anything is over. What African Cardinals gather and say is more important now.
C. The Coffins and the Marshalls
Lest this seem exceedingly one sided, the Patrick Coffins and Dr. Taylor Marshalls of the world need to really re-assess their tone and what they're saying. I don't think any new schism are on the horizon, particularly from the Rad Trads, but if there were to be, Coffin would have to at least pause and consider to what extent his comments pushed some in that direction. Shows that come close to stating that the Pope may be illegitimate encourage schism as are shows that are blisteringly opposed to the current Pope.
You don't have to agree with a Pope, or a President. But that doesn't mean they're illegitimate. A person has to work within the system if its a system they declare themselves to have faith in.
D. The Irreligious Religious
Those of all faiths who proclaim to be faithful but then omit the tenants of their faiths need to knock it off.
This is particularly pronounced in Protestant Christianity, although it shows up in "liberal" Catholicism as well, at least in the United States. Boatloads of Christian churches proclaim themselves loyal to the Gospels, except where the Gospels address sex, for example. They say what they say and mean what they mean. If you don't like it, that means you have something to work on, not that you just omit it. 4. The Movie Industry
Stop it with the Marvel comic movies. They're stupid. Enough already.
I should note that I've typed out the start of a thread eons ago asking why movies have become so juvenile, but I've never finished it. I should.
5. The Television Industry
Television is stupid, and one of its stupidest acts is an assumption that its to be on the cutting edge to race to the bottom in the depictions of human behavior that involve morality in any sense. We get it, television, you don't believe morality of any kind exist. You are part of the problem (see above regarding the old standards).
Additionally, it's time to admit, Television, that graduates of the Harvard Lampoon aren't really funny. Quit hiring them as script writers for television and fire the ones you have.
6. Colorado fishermen
Is there no place to fish in Colorado? Look for one.
7. Twitter, Facebook and Reddit Posters
You are only heard, by and large, by a small limited audience. Posting vitriol of one kind or another just feeds our polarization. Take the year off on that and post on some interest other than politics or your concept of social justice. Posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook change nobody's minds on those topics whatsoever.
8. Militarism. Enough already.
A person has to be really touch saying anything about this as they come across as not being a patriot or not supporting the military, or the like, but the United States needs to be at the point where it seriously reconsiders the nature and status of the military it created to deal with the Cold War.
From the countries earliest history, as colonies, up until 1947 when the Cold War started, the US based its defense on having a very small standing Army backed up by state militias, combined with a standing Navy. The Navy developed into a global force first when the age of sail yielded to the age of steam at the turn of the prior century. That made sense, as ships take years to build, last for years, and it isn't really possible to build a Navy from scratch during wartime, although we came pretty close to doing a bit of that during World War One and World War Two.
Armies, however, we pretty much built by having a small professional Army, very small, backed up by state militias. Early on, membership in the state militia was compulsory, but in later years it became voluntary. If the war was a big war, like the Civil War, World War One or World War Two, we built a large citizen Army while the Regular Army and the militia, the National Guard in later years, held the line. That's basically the way we fought the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One, World War Two, and the Korean War.
The problem became that for much of the Cold War we were somewhere on the brink of a hot war a lot of the time. Sometimes the Cold War broke out into hot wars, as in the examples of Korea and Vietnam, other times it just threatened to. It's now known, unbeknownst to us, that the US and the USSR became very very close to to going to war by accident in the early 1980s, and its likely only the fact that the Soviet Union's aged leadership remained cautious about war due to their memories of the Second World War, even though they were pretty convinced that NATO was about to invade them.
The USSR is gone and the wars we're now in are much, much smaller than those of the Cold War were. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while definitely real wars, are minuscule compared to Vietnam and Korea.
The size of the military has very much decreased since the end of the Cold War, but it's still pretty darned big. The U.S. Army has 476,000 soldiers in it, with the National Guard adding an additional 343,000 and the Army Reserve another 199,000. In 1990 when the Soviet Union folded up its tent, the Army had 750,000 men and the national Guard nearly that, combined with at least 400,000 in the Reserves.
So the military is much smaller, but it has a lot of problems and those problems are highly concentrated in the bureaucratic culture that naturally came about as a result of the Cold War. The pre World War Two U.S. Army lacked that to a significant degree as it was so small and had so much to do. The bureaucracy now ingrained in the military is highly corporate and it hurts the nation's defense. It's not surprising that the Marine Corps, the nation's smallest military branch, is the branch that is the most martial, if you will. Even it, however, is restrained in its internal nature by an infection of social politics that has gotten into it.
In the post Vietnam War period the Army really suffered as its cohesion was destroyed by the war. This was much less the case for the other branches of the service but they all suffered to some degree. Ronald Reagan, however, put the Cold War service back on its feet in its final years and in a lot of ways the military we have today dates to that period. Reagan deserves a lot of credit for what he did at that time, but the vestiges of it have become a problem.
One of the ways that's constantly exhibited is the absurd flood of money that enters the service's coffers on a continual basis that should't. The Army has been working on a replacement for the lousy AR rifle platform for decades now when just about anyone who knows anything about service rifles well knows that adopting something in the 6.5x55 range with an action that's something like the G3s or the FALs is what is needed. Floods of money, however, have gone into what nearly amounts to a permanent project that produces no results. To make matters worse, nearly any small arm adopted by the infantry branch of the Army is rejected by the Marines, whose budgeting allows it to buy something else, which is absurd. The Army and the Marine Corps can't even agree on what boots to buy, so they don't.
The most flagrant example of things being out of control is the recent creation of a United States Space Force, which was created last year in anticipation of a need to defend our interests in space. This is flat out absurd. Right now the Air Force is perfectly competent to do that, to the extent we need to. And there isn't much of a need to.
The Space Force ends up becoming our eighth uniformed service, including the Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, NOAA and the Public Health Service. This excludes, of course, police branches of various government agencies of which there are now a plethora, but which is a separate topic entirely.
We don't need a Space Force and never will. If we ever need something like that, we have it handled right now. And we also need less of a military in general and one that costs a lot, lot less.
That sounds pretty radical in this day and age, particularly with two wars still going on. But the service needs to be cut down to size now that the Cold War is over. We could once again get by with an Army of 250,000 men backed up by a National Guard twice that size. I won't opine on the size of the Air Force or the Navy, as I don't know enough about their war fighting needs to do so, but scaling back the cash register at this point is really necessary.
