Froma Harrop: How Low Can Deviancy Go?

 

How Low Can Deviancy Go?

Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Hmmm. . . that's interesting.  Trump's now okay with it.

Trump and his acolytes went from demanding their release, to absolutely opposing it.  Now they're in favor of it again.

What gives?

Well one thing may simply be that so much time has gone by, these files are now scrubbed.  Sounds conspiratorial, I know, but files can be scrubbed, or lost.

The problem here is that the whole thing sounds so, well, all over the place that an effective scrubbing might be impossible.

Another one is that Trump might already know it won't get past the Senate.  Just yesterday loyal flunky John Barrasso stated he wasn't sure if they'd vote on it or not.  Figures like Barrasso figure their Senate seats are so safe that they're untouchable.  They aren't, and he was running pretty scared last time, but they tend to think that way.

Or it just isn't worth the political capital that it was burning up.  That would suggest that whoever is getting protected just isn't worth this level of damage, particularly that some formerly loyal MAGA's have gone overboard into the lifeboats.  The Republicans only barely control the House now and are set to lose them in the midterms.  If only two or three more Republicans in the House abandoned ship, Mike Smarmy Johnson is done for and the GOP would start to break free of King Donny.  Two Republican House members, including amazingly Marjorie Taylor Greene, are openly poking the king and he's been able to do nothing about it.

Yet another is that, related to above, Trump just intends to lie his way out of whatever they say, if they're damaging to him, and so far we have no reason to believe that in spite of his personally gross behavior towards women, that he's implicated in kiddy diddling.  At the worst, it's possible that he knew what was going on and didn't do anything about it,  and there's likely a lot of rich and powerful people in that boat.  Or maybe he actually didn't.  Epstein was a creep, but just having young bikini wearing women on the premises doesn't necessarily mean that diddling is going on.  So whatever is in there, he may be confident won't touch him directly, and whomever it does, well he can always say it includes Democrats too, which it probably does.

Which may be, after all is said and done, the biggest lesson.  Since Ronald Reagan this country has followed the absurd notion that's what's good for the wealthy is good for everyone.  As Oliver Bullough has stated; "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly".   

Businessmen plotted to take over the government and install fascism in the 1930s.  The plot failed, and nobody was prosecuted.  Reagan sold the American public the idea that vast wealth trickles down.

Epstein hung out with the rich and powerful. Some of them he supplied with teenage girls.  The money didn't trickle down, and its not trickling down.  Rather, it's morally corrosive and effectively the Business Plot ultimately won out with the election of Donald Trump, aided by the Democrats prime strategy being a judicial coup rather than an oligarchic one.  

There's still time to reverse that. This might be a good place to start.

While Trump defenders insist that the new e-mails don’t “prove” Trump wrongdoing—besides multiple examples of Epstein claiming he was “dirty” and “knew about the girls”—they definitively prove the corrupt, chummy, sex-and-money chasing culture of elite American men.

 

While Trump defenders insist that the new e-mails don’t “prove” Trump wrongdoing—besides multiple examples of Epstein claiming he was “dirty” and “knew about the girls”—they definitively prove the corrupt, chummy, sex-and-money chasing culture of elite American men. To see journalists and financiers and academics at best gossiping with Epstein and at worst providing him care and counsel is to see how the #MeToo movement never went far enough.

Joan Walsh, The Nation.

The Agrarian's Lament: Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Distributist remake of this country.

The Agrarian's Lament: Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Dis...: 

Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Distributist remake of this country.

I was going to use the work "revolution", but didn't as I don't want it suggested that I mean an armed revolution.  I'm not.  Indeed, I'm not keen on violence in general, and as I intend to refer to the American Revolution in this essay, I'll note that had I lived in the 1770s, I'd have been genuinely horrified by events.  I highly doubt that I would have joined the "Patriots" and likewise I wouldn't have joined the Loyalist either.  I'd have been in the 1/3d that sat the war out with out choosing sides, but distressed by the overall nature of it.

The other day I posted this:

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 10...: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The... :  CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and w...

In that item, I noted this:

Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State.  The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.

Oligarchy is now where we are at.

I've been thinking about it, and Dr. Jones has really hit on something.  The nature of Americanism, if you will, is in fact not its documentary artifacts and (damaged) institutions, it is, rather, in what it was.  At the time of the American Revolution the country had an agrarian/distributist culture and that explained, and explains, everything about it.

The Revolution itself was fought against a society that had concentrated oligarchical wealth.  To more than a little degree, colonist to British North America had emigrated to escape that.

We've been losing that for some time.  Well over a century, in fact, and indeed dating back into the 19th Century.  It started accelerating in the mid 20th Century and now, even though most do not realize it, we are a full blown oligarchy.

Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments are held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which has been repeatedly mentioned- to have a care that the loyal citizen should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined.

Aristotle, Politics.

Corporations were largely illegal in early American history.  They existed, but were highly restricted.  The opposite is the case now, with corporations' "personhood" being so protected by the law that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political spending is a form of free speech and corporations can spend unlimited money on independent political broadcasts in candidate elections.  This has created a situation in which corporations have gobbled up local retail in the US and converted middle class shopkeeping families into serfs.  It's also made individual heads of corporations obscenely, and I used that word decidedly, wealthy.

Wealth on the level demonstrated by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump simply should not exist.  It's bad for average people and its corrupting of their souls. That corruption can be seen in their unhinged desire for self aggrandizement and acquisition.  Elon Must acquires young white women of a certain type for concubinage  Donald Trump, whose money is rooted in the occupation of land, has collected bedmates over the years, "marrying" some of them and in his declining mental state, seeks to demonstrated his value through grotesque molestation of public property.

Those are individual examples of course, but the government we currently have, while supported by the Puritan class, disturbingly features men of vast wealth, getting wealthier, with a government that operates to fork over more money to those who already have it.  The MAGA masses, which stand to grow poorer, and in the case of the agricultural sector are very much already suffering that fate, deservedly after supporting Trump, continue to believe that the demented fool knows what he's doing.

I don't know the source of this, but this illustration perfectly depicts how MAGA populists treat Donald Trump.

This system is rotten to the core and it needs to be broken.  Broken down, broken up, and ended.

The hopes of either the Democrats or the Republicans waking up and addressing it seem slim. The GOP is so besotted with it's wealthy leaders that the Speaker of the House, who claims to be a devout Christian, is attempting to keep the release of the names of wealthy hebephiles secret.  Only wealth and power can explain that.  The Democrats, which since 1912 have claimed to be the part of the working man, flounder when trying to handle the economic plight of the middle class.  Both parties agree on only one thing, that being you must never consider a third party.  

It is really time for a third part in this country.

In reality, of course, there are some, but only one is worth considering in any fashion, that being the American Solidarity Party.  Perhaps it could pick up the gauntlet here and smack it across the face of the oligarchy.  Or perhaps local parties might do it.  In my state, I think that if enough conservative Republicans (real conservatives, not the Cassie Cravens, John Bear, Dave Simpson, Bob Ide, Chuck Gray servants of the Orange Golden Calf Republicans) it could be done locally.  The U.S. has a history, although its barely acknowledged, of local parties, including ones whose members often successfully run on the tick of two parties.  New York's Zohran Mamdani and David Dinkins, for example were both Democrats and members of the Democratic Socialist Party.  Democrats from Minnesota are actually members of the Democratic Farm Labor Party, which is an amalgamation of two parties.  There's no reason a Wyoming Party couldn't form and field its own candidates, some of whom could also run as Republicans.

Such a party, nationally or locally, needs to be bold and take on the oligarchy. There's no time to waste on this, as the oligarchy gets stronger every day.  And such candidates will meet howls of derision.  Locally Californian Chuck Gray, who ironically has looked like the Green Peace Secretary of State on some issues, will howl about how they're all Communist Monarchist Islamic Stamp Collectors.  And some will reason to howl, such as the wealthy landlord in the state's legislature.

The reason for that is simple.  Such a party would need to apply, and apply intelligently, the principals of subsidiarity, solidarity and the land ethic. It would further need to be scientific, agrarianistic, and distributist. 

The first thing, nationally or locally, that such a party should do is bad the corporate ownership of retail outlets.  Ban it.  That would immediately shift retail back to the middle class, but also to the family unit.  A family might be able to own two grocery or appliance stores, for example, but probably not more than that.

The remote and corporate ownership of rural land needs to come to an immediate end as well.  No absentee landlords.  People owning agricultural land should be only those people making a living from it.

That model, in fact, should apply overall to the ownership of land.  Renting land out, for any reason, ought to be severely restricted.  The maintenance of a land renting system, including residential rent, creates landlords, who too often turn into Lords.

On land, the land ethic ought to be applied on a legal and regulatory basis. The American concept of absolute ownership of land is a fraud on human dignity.  Ownership of land is just, but not the absolute ownership.  You can't do anything you want on your property, nor should you be able to, including the entry by those engaged in natural activities, such as hunting, fishing, or simply hiking, simply because you are an agriculturalist.

While it might be counterintuitive in regard to subsidiarity, it's really the case, in this context, that the mineral resources underneath the surface of the Earth should belong to the public at large, either at the state, or national, level.  People make no contribution whatsoever to the mineral wealth being there. They plant nothing and they do not stock the land, like farmers do with livestock.  It's presence or absence is simply by happenstance and allowing some to become wealthy and some in the same category not simply by luck is not fair.  It 

Manufacturing and distribution, which has been address, is trickier, but at the end of the day, a certain amount of employee ownership of corporations in this category largely solves the problem.  People working for Big Industry ought to own a slice of it.

And at some level, a system which allows for the accumulation of obscene destructive levels of wealth is wrong.  Much of what we've addressed would solve this.  You won't be getting rich in retail if you can only have a few stores, for example.  And you won't be a rich landlord from rent if most things just can't be rented.  But the presence of the massively wealthy, particularly in an electronic age, continues to be vexing.  Some of this can be addressed by taxation. The USCCB has stated  that "the tax system should be continually evaluated in terms of its impact on the poor.” and it should be.  The wealthy should pay a much more progressive tax rate.

These are, of course, all economic, or rather politico-economic matters. None of this addresses the great or stalking horse social issues of the day.  We'll address those, as we often have, elsewhere.  But the fact of the matter is, right now, the rich and powerful use these issues to distract.  Smirky Mike Johnson may claim to be a devout Christian, but he's prevented the release of names of men who raped teenage girls.  Donald Trump may publicly state that he's worried about going to Hell, but he remains a rich serial polygamist.  J.D. Vance may claim to be a devout Catholic, but he spends a lot of time lying through his teeth.

And, frankly, fix the economic issues, and a lot of these issues fix themselves.

Who Is Timothy Mellon, The Reclusive Wyoming Billionaire Who Gave $130M To Troops?

 In what deluded headline writer's mind is Mellon a "Wyoming Billionaire"?

Who Is Timothy Mellon, The Reclusive Wyoming Billionaire Who Gave $130M To Troops?

An East Wing Post Mortem.

 

Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception.

I've never seen the East Wing of the White House, and of course, now, I never will.  I have very little, as in no, interest in touring Washington D.C. and  have even less interest than that now that the illegitimate Trump gang of insurrectionist is occupying the nation's capital.  

This has been a very revealing series of events however, and we can take some things away from it.

The first thing we have learned is how utterly desperate Donald Trump is to amount to something.  He started too late in life and his character is too fixed in order to achieve that, absent late in life inspiration of an existential type which would require him to make a profound change in his behavior.  Born into wealth and a playboy by character, he's desperately trying to buy and build himself into seriousness and relevance.  In the back of his mind, or frankly maybe in the forefront, he knows that he's a fart in a windstorm.  After he's out of office, and no amount of far right fantasizing is going to keep him there, his successor, right or left, will begin the process of trying to repair the damage Trump has done.  If its a right wing leader, like wannabe NatCon J. D. Vance, it'll be National Conservative far right, but less insane than Trump.  It probably won't be Vance however, but somebody from the political center, particularly if the Democrats get their act together and dump their own wackadoodle far left, which there are signs they will, or from the actual libertarian populist right.

My prediction, early though it is, is that the next President will be Tammy Duckworth, maybe on a Duckworth Klobuchar ticket.  I can see, however, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul taking a run at Vance's dreams and keeping them from happening.

Vance would keep the Trump monument to himself up and pretend to like it, as he only is where he is now due to Trump, but as soon as somebody who wasn't a Trump sycophant is in the Oval Office, it's coming down.  That will be symbolic of the entire Trump legacy, destruction that will ultimately come down, and have to be rebuilt.

Trump want to see himself as a great man, a sort of Napoleon being crowned, but knows that he's more like Napoleon on Elba.  He's not going to get there.  He's really extremely pathetic.

Also sad is the degree to which it has been demonstrated that a life of extreme wealth is corrosive.  Trump's entire life of largess already showed this, but he really does believe that the White House needs a huge overblown rushed ballroom as he's seen those of failed monarchies in Europe.  The republics, or in one case dictatorship, that inherited that stuff still uses it as it's a human instinct not to rip things down.  That's why the Brandenburg Gate, which should have been blown to rubble in 1945, is still standing.  Yes, it's a monument to German militarism, but it's big and already there so we keep it around.  That's the reason the Eiffel Tower is there, even though its a giant ugly radio tower, or why the "egg beater" thing in Casper Wyoming is still there.  We just can't bring ourselves to rip things down, no matter hideos they are, or how symbolically problematic.

The egg beater in Casper Wyoming.  It's ugly.

This will come down.

It'll come down in part as it just won't work with an 18th Century large house built on a budget.  It wasn't constructed to be a palace, but just a big house.

Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps the West Wing, after actually going through the proper process, ought to be taken out as well.

No attachments to the structure are really consistent with its original concept.  It isn't supposed to have a lot of offices and the entire concept of the First Lady needing room for anything is absurd.  The First Lady is simply the President's wife, or Trump's case in regard to the monarchical role to which he aspires, the current concubine, or in the American Civil Religion context, his current wife. 

Maybe it ought to be just scaled back to its original footprint.

Some would object that that would mean that it wouldn't have enough room for its purpose Well, No. 10 Downing Street has less room than the White House.  And if more space is really needed, they can find it somewhere else in Washington D.C.  Nixon actually did that with the nearby Eisenhower Building.

The White House in 1846, when it was first photographed.

Restoring the White House back to scale would also be symbolic.  The entire office of the Presidency needs to be restored to scale.  Right now, Trump is in fact ruling as a dictator, with the complicitly of the Dixiecrat Party that has taken over the GOP.  That needs to end, and end to an enormous degree.

The drift towards an imperial presidency started with Theodore Roosevelt, who is a person I admire, but whom I admire more than I once did.  TR, like Trump, tended to act unilaterally, the difference being that Roosevelt was a profoundly intelligent and moral man, where as the opposite is true of Trump.  The East Wing started off in his administration as the fairly modest East Terrace, which looked nice and wasn't an overblown Sun King structure like the proposed ballroom will be, but it nonetheless got the modification trend rolling.

It would be TR's cousin Franklin that really got the modern Presidency established, however, and that due to the emergency of the Great Depression and World War Two.  Franklin Roosevelt did not rule as a dictator, although people liked to accuse him of that at the time.  Ironically, a President that the Republicans hate to this very day is the one, in some ways, that Trump has tried to emulate, even to the extent of wishing for a third term, which he cannot legally occupy.  Franklin, of course, redid the East Wing, which was done in part due to the bomb shelter that was constructed underneath  it.

The West Wing also dates back to TR's time in the White House with the construction of what was supposed to be a temporary structure.  That structure was expanded in 1909 and ultimately came to be the White House office space.  I don't doubt that they need office space, but as noted, maybe it can just be somewhere else.

And in fact, for the most part, it should be.

Taft family milk cow Pauline Wayne, one of two milk cows the Tafts kept and allowed to freely roam the White House grounds. What is now known as the Eisenhower building is in the background.  This is as things should be.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 104th edition. Buy the Big Ugly or we'll shoot this government. An Epstein offer somebody can't refuse. Ignoring Trump's dementia, Not knowing the details, Religious and Cultural appropriation, Why Wounded Knee?

Buy the Big Ugly or we'll shoot this government.

Famous cover of the National Lampoon, used under the Fair Use doctrine to illustrate the Trump regime's tactics on the budget negotiation.  Oddly enough, the dog was actually shot and killed by an unknown person in rural Pennsylvania, where its owner lived.

Headline says it all:

Government to shut down after midnight barring last minute breakthrough in Congress

It's a game of chicken.

If this all seems familiar, it's because we went through this once before with under the Trump regime.  Chuck Schumer, in his political dotage, didn't really know what to do, which has characterized his leadership of Senate Democrats since Trump's illegitimacy in general.  The basic hope was that Trump would suddenly start acting semi normal.  Since that time, he's acted more abnormal.

The GOP rails against Democrats being Marxist, Socialist, Communists, Fascist, Monarchist, Muslims most of the time, but now wants them to pay nice on a continuing funding resolution that, they say, will give them seven more weeks to work out a budget.  The last budget, The Big Ugly, is so unpopular that the GOP is working on changing its name.

The risk here is who the public blames the looming government shutdown on. Republicans are already trying to blame the Democrats, even though they refuse to give the concessions the Democrats are seeking.  Trump, whose "art of the deal" style of business tends to be all pressure base, is responding by saying he'll fire Federal workers.

Quite a few members of the populist far right will cheer that, at least up until it impacts them.

Democrats are accusing Trump of acting like a mob boss, and not without reason.  His negotiation style often seems to resemble one.

Somebody is getting an offer they can't refuse.

And speaking of that. . . 

This is a nice look at a grim topic.

Trump isn't supporting releasing the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein as somebody is getting protected, and that somebody is afraid.  We don't know who it is, but that's fairly clearly what's going on.

Somebody close enough to the Oval Office to impact it was screwing underaged girls provided by Epstein.  Maybe it's a collection of somebodies.  Or/and somebody is being blackmailed.

On this, efforts that seem designed to divert attention from this are getting just sillier.

Whoever the somebody is, they're wealthy.  

The Democrats did release a new list of names of people who were pondered as flight passengers to Epstein Island, which included Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon.  Musk has denied every going there, and his denial is likely completely backed up.  It may be the case than none of these individuals went there, or if they did, they didn't do any kiddie diddling.

Still, it's clear that Epstein got rich as a procurer and it's nearly impossible to believe that everyone who went there didn't know something was going on.  Epstein was targeting the rich.  The video claims he was blackmailing them.  Somebody is being protected right now, or perhaps blackmailed.

More and more unsound

Robert Reich posted this item the other day

Having seen dementia up close, I keep wondering the same thing.  Trump is increasingly demented.  

Have you ever been in the house of a demented person?  It's demented.  And that's what's occurring to our entire government right now.

Again: Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?

Trump’s increasingly bizarre behavior can no longer be attributed to a calculated “strategy.”

We are on increasingly dangerous territory.  Those on the right largely want to keep claiming that we're just not used to Trump's unconventional management style, which is correct as he's slipping into dementia and we haven't had to contend with that in any fashion since Ronald Reagan, who was demonstrating signs of it in his last term.  Reagan seemed ancient at 77, two years younger than Trump is now, when he left office.

A sign that we're in a dangerous area is the increasingly obvious fact that other people are suddenly really prominent in a way that they were not before. Steven Miller is an example. Miller is impossible to like but he's now very much in the forefront.  J. D. Vance has reemerged quite a bit as well.

Some have asserted that in Reagan's decline Nancy Reagan took over some of his roles behind the scenes.  This definitely happened when Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and Edith stepped up to the plate.  As Franklin Roosevelt declined nothing like that happened, but then he didn't have mental lapses.  

We can be rest assured that Melania isn't going to step in.  The question is who is, and what are they doing right now.

Stake Center Shooting

We've become so acclimated to bizarre murders that it seems the news on the LDS Stake Center shooting in Grand Blanc, Michigan, has already cycled.  Maybe it should have, as stories like this are local stories.

While we really ought not to notice it, we'll go ahead and note anyhow that in stories involving the LDS the Press, and politicians,  clearly shows it knows nearly nothing about them.  Almost all the Press reported the attack as being on a church, which isn't the way the Mormons characterize this, the most common variety of their religious structures.  That probably doesn't matter but it'd be sort of like calling a synagogue or a mosque a church.

Some politicians were quick to claim it demonstrated increasing violence against Christians, which they've wanted to claim about the Kirk assassination as well.  Trump, for instance, stated ""yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America".  Kirk seems to have been murdered because he spoke against transgenderism, not for an expressed religious position, but I suppose you could argue that his opposition to transgenderism was based on his faith, although that would be a rather underdeveloped argument.

The thing is, at least right now, is that we seem to have no idea whatsoever why this guy attacked the Grand Blanc stake center.  Mormons actually are not regarded as Christians by at least Apostolic Christians, who are the first and original Christians, as their theology doesn't support it.  Mormons do assert they're Christians, but they certainly do not believe in a Trinitarian God like Christians do.  Indeed, their belief is so significantly different that an informed Christian really can't regard them as Christians, which doesn't have much to do with how they view themselves.

Anyhow, if the location was picked out more or less at random, well then it might have been targeting Christians.  Or it might be an act targeted specifically at Mormons for some reason.  Or this guy may just have been flat out insane.

As an aside, however, it's interesting to note the degree to which outside of the West, and more particularly outside of the Jello Belt, most people sort of assume that the LDS are sort of just very clean dressing Protestants or something.  This isn't casting aspersions, but it reminds me of the occasionally questions I'll hear directed as Jews by really ill informed Americans which assumes that Judaism is basically a Christian religion.

And the speculating probably ought to cease until we have an idea about what was going on, which might never occur.

The first storm

The first of the storms we wrote about on Sunday will hit Quantico today. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will address the flag officers.

Reporting so far is that Hegseth is just going to deliver a pep talk, in which case this is the most expensive example of boring people for no reason in the history of mankind.  I continue to suspect that more than that will occur.

Probably not what Hegseth will sound like later today.

We want our symbols back, dude.

Speaking of the wannabe War Secretary, we've noted here before that Hegseth is all tatted up.  Indeed, we noted that in an earlier version of this trailing thread, in which we stated:

The over tattooed and expropriation.

Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is taking a lot of flak.  Some of it is for things he's said or believes

Some of it for his tattoos, which are interpreted to mean things which they might not.

One of those tattoos is of a Jerusalem Cross.

The Jerusalem cross consists of a large cross potent surrounded by four smaller Greek crosses representing the spread of the gospel to the four corners of the earth.  It was used as the emblem and coat of arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after 1099.

Hegeth is a member of a church which is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.  Therefore, he's appropriating a Catholic symbol, while he's not a Catholic.  Indeed, he's not even close, as he's on his third spouse, something no adherent Catholic would have done.

He also has a tattoo on a bicep that states Deus vult, "God wills", a phrase that dates back to the First Crusade, but which has been appropriated by many groups over the years.   And it doesn't stop there.

“Israel, Christianity and my faith are things I care deeply about,” he's stated.

Perhaps he should learn more about the faith espoused by the symbols that he's had inked on himself.  Indeed, quite frankly, the men who cried Deus vult in the 11th Century and those who fought to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem would have regarded him as a heretic. 

Anyhow,  one thing that I've worried about since the rise of Christian Nationalist is that Catholics are the ones who are going to take a beating in the end, even though its really a Protestant movement.  I can already see it starting to happen.  Former Senator Adam Kinzinger, who comments heavily on Blue Sky and Twitter, had a post noting that "the Crusades weren't Christian".  Oh yes they were, the thing they weren't is the edited version that English Protestants came up with to attempt to tar and feather the Church.  Others have been running around claiming that the Jerusalem Cross, which Catholics use a lot, is a Nazi symbol, which it isn't, or a camouflaged swastika, which it isn't.

The United States remains a Protestant nation, including in the way it reacts to symbols and in its misunderstanding of history.

All this serves, I'd note, to bury a deeper item that should be of actual concern, which is the American Evangelical view towards Israel.  This is not universal, by any means, but there's a branch of American Evangelicalism which sees itself as having a direct role in bringing about the Second Coming through its interaction with Israel.  According to somebody who knew him and commented on it recently (therefore at least making it somewhat suspect) former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who has been nominated by Trump to be Ambassador to Israel, and who is a Baptist minister, has those views.

Really, people with the apparent views of Huckabee and Kinzinger really have no business in the offices they've been nominated to serve in.

We also very recently had an article on Christian Dominionism.

Because of that I'll note use of these symbols by far right Evangelicals, and frankly Protestants in general, is cultural appropriation.  If you dig what these convey, look into what the originally conveyed and study up.  You won't remain in the New Apostolic Reformation camp for long.

Persistent cultural appropriation.

Bai-De-Schluch-A-Ichin or Be-Ich-Schluck-Ich-In-Et-Tzuzzigi (Slender Silversmith) "Metal Beater," Navajo silversmith, photo by George Ben Wittick, 1883

While I'm at it, I'll note that there's a politician I'm aware of who consistently angles for the Navajo jewelry look.

I guess that's the person's look, its just so persistent, black clothing with turquoise jewelry, that it's hard not to notice.  Perhaps its meant to look Western, which if that's the case, it sort of does, but it looks Southwestern.  And a person in this era needs to be, or should be, careful about that as the gulf between the regions Republican politics and Reservation views is growing a great deal.  

Indeed, I've been wondering if we'll see Lynette Gray Bull run again for office locally.  My prediction is that if she does, Harriet Hageman will not debate her.

My further prediction is that if Hageman is challenged from the center of her party, which is admittedly on the decline, she'll suffer a whopping defeat.

Remember Wounded Knee

Finally, Wounded Knee has certainly been back in the news, thanks to Hegseth.

What's going on here anyhow?  It seems like an effort to turn back the clock in a way, but to what point on the dial?  1915?  1945?  1955?

Finally, some really important news.

Blackpink member member Lisa went to the Louis Viton fashion show in Paris.

Why can't se  have Congress people who look like Lisa from Blackpink?  Shoot, if we're aiming for cultural appropriation, given Kawaii a chance.

And Bad Bunny will sing at the Stupor Bowl.

I'm sure I will not watch that, but a coworker of mine loves Bad Bunny.  I don't know why he's a bad bunny, and I'm not particularly inclined to find out, but I guess the Hispanic singer has been avoiding the mainland US due to the Sturmabteilung so it's a big deal to his fans.

Postscript:

Watching Patton one too many times.

Behind the stage on which Hegseth and Trump were expected to speak was a large American flag, with banners showing the words "strength, service, America" and the various flags of the armed services on either side.

Oh geez, now Donald Babbler is making an appearance and the stage is seemingly decked out like the opener of the movie Patton. 

This just piles absurdity upon absurdity.

My prediction is the Trump speech will sound something like this:

And Hegseth's?  It'll be rah rah, but when it falls flat, the next speech will be:

On a matter of serious concern, however, this is extraordinarily weird, but then much of what this administration does is extraordinarily weird.  Still there's a little reason to worry that this regime is concerned that the military's senior leaders are not going to endlessly back illegality.

I have to wonder what it's like to get a rah rah speech from a guy who, when his country was calling, when to the doctor's office.  Oh well.

More Kirk

I meant to put this up above, but I thought this interesting:

Blog Mirror: Sisters of Charity of New York Respond to Cardinal Dolan’s Remarks on Charlie Kirk

Because I paid so little attention to Kirk when he was alive, I still don't know what to make of the post mortems

Fr. Joseph Krupp, whose podcast and blog I follow, was a Kirk fan and had an interesting episode on him.  He stated that Kirk was basically a middle of the road Republican by most measures up until our current times, when middle of the road, in his view, is regarded as right wing extreme.  I'd agree that Kirk's views on things like transgenderism are in fact pretty average, up until quite recently.

Having said that, I also heard Kirk say that somebody should raise the bail money to bail out the person who attack Nancy Pelosi's husband, back after he was attacked. That's a flat out evil thing to say.

At any rate, I really think Cardinal Dolan let things carry him away.  Kirk a modern day St. Paul?  I don't think so.  I suppose Cardinal Dolan meant that Kirk was killed for saying things that are true but unpopular, but St. Paul never excused violence.

As noted here the other day, I think that Catholics have to be really careful about embracing figures from the Evangelical right, which Kirk was.  Kirk was headed into Catholicism pretty clearly, but hadn't yet made it there.  Assuming he was a Catholic figure may be assuming too much and embracing Dominionism is assuming too much.

Related threads:

Storm Warning.

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Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 103d edition. Missing the obvious demographic aspect of the story . . ."Wyoming Churches See Revival, Shakeup After Charlie Kirk's Death"

Labels: Catholic, Charlie Kirk, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Mainline Protestant, Populism, religion, Sunday Morning Scene, The Reformation, The wealthy, Zeitgeist