And below, delegates from Minnesota delivered their states electoral votes for the 1920 election.
I started this right after the election, and last typed on it, before now, on December 8.
My how things have changed since then.
On December 8, it was easy to suppose that the Republicans would win in Georgia and we'd have divided government. Even if we didn't, the Senate divide would be so close that it would have been unlikely, we would have supposed, that there's be any really divisive Biden agenda.
And then Donald Trump started to refuse to acknowledge defeat and to spin lies about winning . . .and things in Georgia and the nation started to look different. So we held off, as the tide was changing
Then came January 6 and a Trump inflamed insurrection in Washington D. C.. The first real strike at the government since 1860 and the first insurrection of any kind since 1917, which came on the same day that Trump's extreme insistence that he won, or his extreme lies on the same, brought the Democrats into control of the Senate.
Things are sure different now. Indeed, I've just posted on that:
Here's what I'd last written in this thread, before all the turmoil and the insurrection:
So now that the semi delusional youthful street dancing and spontaneous celebrations are over, the dust settling, and AOC contemplating becoming a homesteader in the realization that the past election wasn't a left wing tidal wave, where does that leave Wyoming?
Wyoming, as has been noted here before, has been a Republicans state since its inception. Only in the wake of the Johnson County War have Democrats controlled the state, and only then briefly. Still, the state once had a serious Democratic Party and it wasn't all that long ago that it had a Democratic Governor.
Starting in the 1990s, something really began to change, as we've noted before. During the Clinton Administration, the state's Democratic Party began to die. It was in real trouble well before Barack Obama became President, but it more or less completely collapsed during his two terms in office. It rebounded just a bit this cycle, which may or may not mean much.
In the meantime, Wyoming has become a one party state, and that party has been the GOP. But as with any democratic body, the formation of what George Washington termed as "factions" is inevitable, and during the last eight years the Wyoming GOP has become badly split into two factions, one the old time "mainstream" Wyoming GOP, and another an insurgent nearly alt right GOP. That latter faction is on the rise and it gained ground in the last election, as it has the last few before it.
Now what?
Well, what we know is that the US opted to go right down the middle of the road. If we don't have a divided government after the January runoffs, we darned near will. All politics is local, of course, but the country seems to have moved to the right, sort of, while opting to have a slightly left brake on things. Or it really moved slightly to the center right and just voted to hold Donald Trump in personal contempt.
What it didn't do, however, is take a giant jump to the right.
If you'd listed to the 2020 campaigns in Wyoming you'd have been justified in believing, at least occasionally, that we were preparing to take Washington D. C. in a Trump populist storm. Cynthia Lummis campaigned her support of Trump, and against Progressives. The Democrat Progressives are now in disarray but Trump is leaving the White House.
So what does this all mean for Wyoming?
It means we probably better rethink some things.
It probably means that one of the really big issues here, gun control, is amazingly back off the table, which I wouldn't have predicted just two months ago. There's not going to be Congressional support for that, so as an issue, it's probably in the background once again.
It will mean, however, that oil, gas and coal are not going to be favored industries.
It isn't as if they actually were in Washington in the first place. The Trump Administration did do a good job of addressing a lot of regulatory burdens
Solid analysis, in my view, in early December.
And wrong now.
Big changes are coming, and the state's in for a gigantic shock.
The state and its political leadership is largely unprepared to handle any of this. On the same day that insurrectionist stormed Congress the head of Wyoming's Republican Party, which as steadfastly supported the administrations absurd and dangerous fantasy that Donald Trump would still get a second term after he'd obviously and clearly lost, was in Washington D. C. at the gathering that developed into an attempted coup or something like it. Cynthia Lummis, the newly elected Wyoming Senator, voted, even after the attempt to force the defeated President into an illegitimate victory, to reject Pennsylvania's electoral vote on a basis that, if it had logic to it, would have made her own election invalid by implication. On the same day the most conservative members of the Wyoming legislature were at a protest in Cheyenne demanding that the two remaining members of the Wyoming delegation in Washington, Senator Barrasso and Congressman Cheney, be hauled in front of the legislature in order to explain their allegiance to the Constitution rather than their support for a doomed effort to subvert democracy.
By todays' date, the new world and what means is starting to sink in. Ted Cruz of Texas who could imagine himself as the Presidential candidate for the GOP in 2024 is defending himself against cries for his resignation and he is now likely to go down in defeat in his next Senatorial campaign to a candidate much to his left, something he only barely held off during his last election. Cynthia Lummis is explaining away her actions on the basis that she didn't intend it to actually defeat the Pennsylvania vote. The head of the Wyoming GOP has urged everyone to wait until the facts are all in, which they have been since the very day of the event, but he's also noting that he was back in his hotel before the insurrection commenced. The head of the Wyoming Democratic Party has called for Lummis to resign. Other Republicans are being quiet hoping the storm will blow over.
Democrats are not going to suddenly sweep into office in Wyoming. The party has gone much to far to the left. There's a reason that Wyoming hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since the last one left in 1977. But that doesn't mean that Wyoming Republicans should take comfort in that.
Indeed, it may be noticed that two of Wyoming's counties have become Democratic in the last few years, those being Teton County and Albany County. Fremont County remains a heavily Democratic County as well, a legacy of its earlier blue collar status and also due to the fact that the Wind River Indian Reservation, which contributed a candidate to the House of Representatives race this past year who took about 25% of the vote, a not unimpressive result in context. The Democratic challenger to Cynthia Lummis took about 30% of the vote, which is also impressive in context. Republicans running form Teton County and Albany County, and perhaps Laramie County, now will face bigger challenges than they did previously.
But beyond that, much more is now going to occur.
Within the Republican Party itself in Wyoming the open spit that now exists in the party nationally had already developed by 2018. The insurrection by the Trumpist populist wing will spill back into Wyoming and quickly. Chances are that the now minority establishment wing, in the Wyoming context, will hit back and quickly as the insurgent populists, living here in isolation, are going to choose Trump as the hill they are going to die on.
And the party itself may die. There's a very good chance that in the next couple of weeks to the next year the national Republican Party becomes two parties. If that occurs, it will occur in Wyoming as well. The insurgent wing in Wyoming is very well funded, and indeed its funding explains its rise, but if that occurs, the conservative establishment party is likely to become the majority party in Wyoming and the Democratic Party will definitely revive.
Irrespective of that all of the things that the Republican Party has used in Wyoming as talking points and stalking horses are about to actually occur.
Prior to the election The Economist, the respected European center right journal that has wide intellectual circulation in the United States (since the demise of The New Republic) flat out urged for an end to coal as a fuel source. That will now be the official policy of the United States and there will be steps taken to bring that about. Coal leasing on Federal lands is now over, at least for four years.
Oil and gas leasing may be over, on Federal lands, as well. Knowing that this might be coming, and throwing out a bone to part of its industry support, the Trump Administration rushed through a lease sale in Converse County that has already occurred. However, that's now been challenged in Court. Should the challenge prevail, that sale is likely dead if the new administration chooses to cease oil and gas leasing.
If both of these things come about, in a state that has as much public land as Wyoming does, the mineral era in Wyoming is effectively over. There will still be oil and gas exploration on private lands and on state lands, but the lands available for the extractive industries will be reduced beyond measure.
All of that sounds dire, and for Wyoming's budget, it will be. It's possible, of course, that oil and gas leasing, and in particular exploration for gas, will continue on. But it shouldn't be presumed that it will be the same. In part it will not be the same as the new administration, now unleashed due to the insurrection, will definitely "go green" in transportation.
This is something that is already happening and industry is well aware of it. But the state has been insistent, at the street level, that it just won't. The common statement that "well you can't go into the hills with an electric pickup" never really was any kind of an argument in a nation where most vehicles haul kids to soccer games. But the argument is about to simply not matter. Sympathy for the argument wasn't supporting the industry anyhow, which in actuality gets by largely on its own. But an administration that's actually hostile to it and which will seek to accelerate the change to a carbonless world, which the Biden Administration will do, will have a real impact on the state.
Indeed, Wyoming hasn't faced a financial disruption of this type since the Great Depression and it hasn't seen an industry disruption like this since World War Two. We're not prepared to handle it. The legislature has been struggling with revenue issues for several years but without much success. There's no reason to believe that they'll be successful this year. Next year, however, may present a new world that can't be ignored.
Additionally, much of the regional conservative and populist (and they aren't the same) projects are about to be frustrated, probably permanently.
The anti Wyomingite "take back the land" movement that's been a feature of the hard right in Wyoming is now dead at the Federal level. That movement was always a horrifically bad idea, but its over. Indeed, the state can now expect an expanded Federal presence on the Federal domain with some land being permanently "withdrawn" from development. There will be a renewed emphasis on the "multiple use" aspect of the Federal domain that Wyoming hasn't really seen since the 1980s.
An issue much on the mind of many Wyomingites, gun control, will actually be back for the first time since the Clinton Administration and there will be legislation without a doubt. Conservatives and populist have long decried Democratic support for gun control but in reality the Democrats have done nothing on the topic since the 1990s and there's been less gun control in the nation since that time since at any point since the 1960s, save for some measures actually brought in under Trump. That will now end as the insurrection has evaporated Democratic tolerance for this topic overnight. Gun control will be back and new gun control measures will pass Congress in 2021.
The Democratic Congress will also be a boon to left wing social positions that conservatives have long held, but which they've been uneven in making progress with the public on. These issues are national issues, not unique to Wyoming, but Wyomingites are now going to have to accept a retreat on some conservative advances that have been made over the last twenty years and an acceleration of some liberal or progressive advances that have been made in the last twelve years. Indeed, if the Democrat's have a worm in their apple, it is that they'll be tempted to push these hard and potentially provoke a conservative counter reaction by 2024.
And its 2024 that all eyes are on now. The GOP came out of the last election nationally figuring that they might take the House in 2022 and the Presidency back in 2024. They might do the latter, if they still exist as a party, but its far less likely. Indeed, they'll likely lose seats in the House and Senate in 2022 as they're likely to still be in disarray at that time.
And locally, it'll be about 2022 when the results of what just occurred last week really start to sink in here. The Federal Government doesn't care about Wyoming's budgetary woes and it doesn't care about the economy of a state where fewer people are employed than in a mid sized Mid Western city. They also don't care about our "lifestyle" and those who have now come into power know that politically we're irrelevant. It's only in our own self isolation that we imagine that we matter.
And peoples that don't matter have the unfortunate task of making themselves relevant by some means or reinforcing their own irrelevancy.
It's a new world now. What we make of it is yet unknown.
To
the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Ordinaries in Peace
and Communion with the Apostolic See. Venerable Brothers, Health and Apostolic
Benediction.
1.
We regard as most opportune that solemn festivities will be held for the
seventh Centenary of the Third Order of Penance. Many motives prompt Us to
exalt the occasion in the eyes of the Catholic world, in virtue of Our
Apostolic authority, but before all is the hope of the incontestable advantages
which the Christian people will draw therefrom.
2.
In the next place there is the personal remembrance which they evoke for Us. We
love to recall that in 1882, when the centenary of his birth spread amongst the
mass of the Faithful the fervent cultus of Francis of Assisi, We wished to
range Ourselves amongst the disciples of that great Patriarch, and received
regularly the habit of the Tertiaries in the celebrated Church of Ara Coeli, served
by the Friars Minors. Today, placed by Providence on the chair of the Prince of
the Apostles, We are particularly happy to seize this occasion to testify Our
devotion to Saint Francis in exhorting the Catholics of the entire world to
affiliate themselves with eagerness or to remain faithfully attached to this
Franciscan institution, which today responds marvelously to the needs of
society.
3.
That which matters now is to replace before all eyes the true moral physiognomy
of Saint Francis. The Saint Francis of Assisi whom certain moderns present to
us, and who springs from the imagination of the Modernists, this man, guarded
in his obedience to the Apostolic See, a specimen of a vague and vain
religiosity, is assuredly neither Francis of Assisi nor a saint.
4.
The striking and immortal services rendered by Francis to the Christian cause,
which have shown in him the defender whom God in such troubled times reserved
for the Church, found, as it were, their coronation in the Third Order. Is
there anything which proves more clearly the greatness and violence of the
burning desire which consumed his soul to spread throughout the whole earth the
glory of Jesus Christ?
5.
Profoundly saddened by the misfortunes which the Church was then passing
through, Francis conceived the incredible design of renewing everything
conformably to the principles of the Christian law. After having founded a
double religious family, one of Brothers, the other of Sisters, who pledged
themselves by solemn vows to imitate the humility of the Cross, Francis, in the
impossibility of opening the cloister to all whom the desire of being formed in
his school drew to him, resolved to procure, even for souls living in the
whirlpool of the world, the means to tend to Christian perfection. He founded,
then, an Order properly called Tertiaries, differing from the two other Orders
in that it would not bear the bond of the religious vows, but would be
characterized by the same simplicity of life and the same spirit of penance.
Thus the project which no founder of a regular Order had yet imagined, to cause
the religious life to be practiced by all, Francis first conceived the idea of
and the grace of God gave him to realize it with the greatest success. We have
no other proof of it than this beautiful homage of Thomas de Celano: “Marvelous
workman, whose example, direction, and teachings have this admirable result, to
renew in both sexes the Church of Christ and to lead to triumph a triple
phalanx of souls preoccupied with their salvation” (I Cel. xv. 40).
6.
We shall confine Ourselves to this testimony of so authoritative a
contemporary; of itself it suffices amply to show to what a depth and to what
an extent this initiative of Francis of Assisi shook the popular masses, what
notable and salutary reparations it worked therein.
7.
Uncontested founder of the Third Order, as he was of the two first, Francis was
for it, further, without doubt, the most wise legislator. We know that for this
work he had the precious aid of Cardinal Ugolino, who later, under the name of
Gregory IX, was to make illustrious this Apostolic See, and who, after having
whilst he lived, maintained the closest relations with the Patriarch of Assisi,
elevated later on his tomb a magnificent and sumptuous basilica. As to the rule
of the Tertiaries, no one is ignorant that it was regularly approved by Our
predecessor, Nicholas IV.
8.
But We shall not, Venerable Brothers, delay Ourselves too long on these
questions; Our object is here, before all, to bring to light the character,
and, as one says the particular spirit of the third Order, for the Church
expects from it special advantages for the Christian people in this age, as
hostile to virtue and to faith as was the epoch of Francis of Assisi. With his
profound sense of situations and times Our predecessor,
Leo
XIII, of happy memory, desirous to adapt better the regulation of life of the
Tertiaries to the social level of each of the faithful, brought, by the
Constitution Misericors Dei Filius (1883) to, their statutes or rule most wise
motivations which should put them in accord with the actual state of society;
he modified it in some secondary points responding but imperfectly to our
customs of today.
9.
“Let none believe,” said he, “that these changes take away anything whatsoever
from the essential principles of that Order. We wish absolutely that they
remain in their integrity, and secure from any branch.” The rule of the Third
Order has then undergone only retouchings of detail; its range and spirit have
been respected, which remain what their holy founder willed them. Now it is Our
conviction that the spirit of the Third Order, altogether impregnated with the
wisdom of the Gospel, would be a powerful element for the making healthy of
private and public orals if it were spread anew as in the times in which by his
word and example Francis preached everywhere the Kingdom of God.
10.
What Francis wished to shine out, above all, in his Tertiaries, and which ought
to be as their characteristic mark, is fraternal charity, most watchful
guardian of peace and concord. Knowing that charity is the special commandment
brought by Jesus Christ and the synthesis of the whole Christian law, Saint
Francis was careful to make of it the spiritual rule of his children; and he
attained this result, that the Third Order rendered naturally the greatest
service to the entire human family.
11.
Further, Francis was powerless to contain in the recesses of his heart the
seraphic love which consumed him for God and his brothers; he was compelled to
permit it to overflow on all the souls which he could reach. Thus it was that
he set himself to reform the individual and family life of his disciples in
forming them to the practice of the Christian virtues with such ardor as would
make one believe that it was all his program. But he did not dream that he
ought to limit himself to this; individual conversion was but an instrument of
which he availed himself to reawaken in the bosom of society love of Christian
wisdom, and to gain all men for Christ.
12.
The preoccupation which had moved Francis of Assisi to make of the members of
the Third Order messengers and apostles of peace in the midst of the bitter
discords and civil wars of his time was ours in the days wherein the
conflagration of a horrible war was kindled in almost the entire world; it has
not ceased to be so at a moment in which, here and there, the smoking hearth of
this ill-extinguished conflagration still shoots out flames.
13.
To this scourge had been added the interior crisis which the nations are going
through, first of the forgetfulness and prolonged disdain of Christian
principles. We wish to say that this fight for the sharing of goods which sets
in conflict the different classes of society is so relentless that it threatens
already to lead to a universal catastrophe.
14.
In this so vast field, wherein, as representative of the pacific King, We have
lavished Our especially attentive cares, We make an appeal for the zealous help
of all those who claim for themselves Christian peace, but especially for the
collaboration of the Tertiaries. They will exert a marvelous influence in
restoring concord in spirit the day wherein their number and their efforts will
be developed. It is, then, desirable that in every city, town, and even in each
village, the Third Order count henceforth a sufficient group of members, not of
inactive adherents satisfied with the mere title of Tertiaries, but instead, of
those who spend themselves with zeal for their own salvation and the salvation
of their brothers. Why even should not the various Catholic associations which
multiply everywhere, associations of youth, of workmen, of women, not affiliate
themselves to the Third Order to continue to work for the glory of Jesus Christ
and the triumph of the Church with the same zeal that Francis had for peace and
charity?
15.
The peace for which humanity cries out is not that which the laborious
treaty-making of human prudence can decree, but that which Christ brought by
its message: “My peace I bring you; I do not give it as the world gives it.” (John
14: 27). The accords between State and State or between class and class which
men have been able to shadow forth will not be durable, and will not have the
force of true peace except on condition that they are founded on the
pacification of hearts; and that itself is only possible if duty has bridled
the passions whence all conflicts spring. “Whence comes,” asks the Apostle
James,” wars and quarrels amongst you? Is it not from your passions, which
combat in your members?” (James 4:1.) Now to regulate wisely all the movements
inherent to nature in such a way as to make man the master, not the slave, of
his passions, submissive himself, and docile to the divine will, the hierarchy,
which is at the base of universal peace, that belongs to Christ, and its action
manifests a marvelous efficacy in the family of Franciscan Tertiaries.
16.
This Order, having for its object, as We have said to form its members in
Christian perfection, even whilst they may be plunged in the embarrassments of
the age, so true is it that no state of life is incompatible with sanctity, it
happens, as it were, necessarily, where the Tertiaries in numbers observe
faithfully their rule, that they are for all about them a source of
encouragement in fulfilling their duties, and even to tending towards a
perfection of life superior to the exigencies of the common law. The testimony
rendered by the Divine Master to those who attached themselves closely to Him:
“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16) may
justly be applied to the sons of Francis who, if they observe the evangelical
counsels of mind and heart as far as possible in the world, may lawfully put to
their account the words of the Apostle: “As for us, we have received not the
spirit of this world, but the Spirit which comes from God” (1 Cor. 11:12).
17.
They will seek, then — completely strangers themselves to the spirit of the
world — to introduce the Spirit of Jesus Christ in the current of social life
on every side to which they have access.
18.
Now there are two passions today dominant in the profound lawlessness of morals
– an unlimited desire of riches and an insatiable thirst for pleasures. It is
this which marks with a shameful stigma our epoch; whilst it goes ceaselessly
from progress to progress in the order of all which touches the well-being and
convenience of life, it seems that in the superior order of honesty and of
moral rectitude a lamentable retrogression leads it back to the ignominies of
ancient paganism. In that measure, in truth, wherein men lose sight of eternal
goods which Heaven reserved for them, they permit themselves to be more taken
in by the deceitful mirage of the ephemeral goods here below, and once their
souls are turned down towards the earth, an easy descent leads them insensibly
to relax themselves in virtue, to experience repugnance for spiritual things,
and to relish nothing outside the seductions of pleasure. Hence the general
situation which we note: with some the desire to acquire riches or to increase
their patrimony knows no bounds; others no longer know, as formerly, how to
bear the trials which are the usual result of want or poverty; and at the very
hour in which the rivalries We have pointed out set by the ears the rich and
the proletariat a great number seem to wish to further excite the hatred of the
poor by an unbridled luxury which accompanies the most revolting corruption.
19.
From this point of view one cannot sufficiently deplore the blindness of so
many women of every age and condition; made foolish by desire to please, they
do not see to what a degree the in decency of their clothing shocks every
honest man, and offends God. Most of them would formerly have blushed for those
toilettes as for a grave fault against Christian modesty; now it does not
suffice for them to exhibit them on the public thoroughfares; they do not fear
to cross the threshold of the churches, to assist at the Holy sacrifice of the
Mass, and even to bear the seducing food of shameful passions to the
Eucharistic Table where one receives the heavenly Author of purity. And We
speak not of those exotic and barbarous dances recently imported into
fashionable circles, one more shocking than the other; one cannot imagine
anything more suitable for banishing all the remains of modesty.
20.
In considering attentively this state of things, the Tertiaries will understand
what it is that our epoch expects from the disciples of Saint Francis. If they
bring their gaze back to the life of their Father, they will see what perfect
and living resemblance to Jesus Christ, above all in His flight from
satisfactions and his love of trials in this life, had he whom they call the
Poverello, and who had received in his flesh the stigmata of the Crucified. It
is for them to show that they remain worthy of him by embracing poverty, at
least in spirit, in renouncing themselves, and in bearing each one his cross.
21.
In what concerns specially the Tertiary Sisters, We ask of them by their dress
and manner of wearing it, to be models of holy modesty for other ladies and
young girls; that they be thoroughly convinced that the best way for them to be
of use to the Church and to Society is to labor for the improvement of morals.
22.
Moreover, after having created divers charitable works for the solace of the
indigent in their wants of every kind, the members of this Order would wish,
further, We are sure, to cause those of their brothers who are deprived of
goods more precious than those of earth, to benefit by their charity.
23.
Here comes back to Us the memory of the counsel of the Apostle Peter, asking
Christians to be, by the holiness of their lives, models for the Gentiles, and
this in order that, “remarking your good works, they glorify God in the day of
His visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). Like them, the Franciscan Tertiaries ought, by
the integrity of their faith, the holiness of their lives, and the ardor of
their zeal, spread abroad the good words of Christ, to warn those of their
brethren who have gone out from the road, and to press them to reenter upon it.
Behold that which the Church asks, that which she expects from them.
24.
As to Us, we cherish the hope that the coming celebration will mark for the
Third Order a new development, and We doubt not that you yourselves, Venerable
Brothers, as well as the other pastors of souls, will make great efforts to
cause to flourish again the groups of tertiaries where they vegetate, and to
create others everywhere possible, and to render all flourishing, as much by
the observation of the rule as by the number of their members.
25.
In truth what is in hand definitely is, by imitation of Francis of Assisi to
open to the greatest possible number of souls the way which will lead them back
to Christ; it in this return that resides the firmest hope of salvation for
society. The word of Saint Paul, “Be my imitators, as I myself am of Christ” (1
Cor. 11:1), we can with good right put upon the lips of Francis, who, in
imitating the Apostle, has become the most faithful image and copy of Jesus
Christ.
26.
Thus, in order that these celebrations bear still more fruit, upon the
instances of the Ministers General of the three Franciscan families of the
First Order, we accord the following favors drawn from the treasury of the Holy
Church:
I.
In all Churches wherein the Third Order is canonically erected, and wherein
will be celebrated by a Triduum the solemnities of the Centenary in the year to
run from April 16, next: the Tertiaries each day of the Triduum, the other
Faithful once only, may gain a plenary indulgence from their sins. All the
Faithful who, with contrite hearts, will visit the Blessed Sacrament in one of
these churches may gain at each visit (toties quoties) an indulgence of seven
years.
II.
All the altars of these churches will be deemed for those three days privileged
altars; during the course of the Triduum every priest may celebrate there the
Mass of Saint Francis, following the rite of the Mass pro re gravi et simul
publice de causa according to the general rubrics of the Roman Missal inserted
in the last Vatican edition.
III.
All the priests who serve these churches may, during these same days, bless
beads, medals, and other objects of piety, enrich them with Apostolic
indulgences, and apply to beads the Crozier and Bridgettine indulgences.
As
pledge of Divine favors, and in testimony of Our paternal benevolence, We
accord with all Our heart, to you, Venerable Brothers, and to all the members
of the Third Order, the Apostolic Benediction.
Given
at Rome, near Saint Peter’s, the Feast of the Epiphany of the year 1921, in the
seventh year of Our Pontificate.
On this day in 1920 Karetnik and fellow RIAU officers went, with some reluctance, to a meeting with Red Army commander Mikhail Frunze who had ordered them place under a command of his army. On the way they were arrested and executed. Frunze was a successful Red Army commander who died in surgery in 1925.
The entire event also helps demonstrate the absolute mess that Russia had become in its late imperial stage. Anarchy was a theory that was never going to succeed because of its nature. Revolutionary socialist other than the Communist were never going to prevail in a struggle as they were insufficiently organized and single minded. The Whites couldn't succeed as they had no really strong central unity in fact or in theory. That doomed Russia to years of an alien whacky political theory that didn't match its nature or culture and which set Russia back so far in development that it is nowhere near overcoming it today.
The central feature of this rise of extremism had been a pre World War One governmental and economic system that was frozen in the distant past. With no outlet of any kind for a developing society, absurd economic and political theories festered underground. It's no accident that many of these theories were the same as ones that were then also circulating in Germany and Austria, which likewise had old order monarchical systems going into World War One.
A photographer was at work in Craig Colorado, where he took a photograph of the students of the school there, which must have been a unified (all grades) school. He also photographed the athletic teams of Craig and Meeker.
It was, of course, Armistice Day.
In the U.S., veterans gathered.
In France and the UK, their unknown soldiers were interred.
In the UK, Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act which provided for home rule in Ireland, in two separate political entities, north and south Ireland. It never went into effect in the south due to the Anglo Irish War. It simply came too late.
It was a close vote, passing by a margin of four, and only after some last minute changes in position came about.
Joseph P. Tumulty addressing crowd of American citizens of Polish birth or extraction, who called at the White House to present resolutions to President Wilson asking him to continue the present national policy in support of Polish independence.
Polish Americans wanted the US to do something about the fate of Poland, but there was really little the country could in fact do. Proposed military interventions had been considered by the UK and France, but Weimar Germany had blocked them. Therefore, the 1st Division, pictured below, didn't have to worry about imminent deployment.
1st Division, Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky. August 18, 1920.
