The really ugly American
An excellent, and exactly correct, article.
And who we are isn't very pretty.
Many people worried that the election of Donald Trump, a thoroughly reprehensible man, would mean the end of the American democracy. It probably won't, but it does mark the complete end of the United States as a great nation in every sense.
We have no claim, as of this last election, to any sort of exceptionalism. A certain moral status, hard won and defended in the Civil War and the wars of the 20th Century has been forfeited, and for blisteringly limited self interest. Indeed, much of the electorate, frankly, proved themselves ignorant, choosing the interests of billionaires over their own, based on mean and vindictive promises and a false vision of the past. Others, limited in their minds to a binary choice in which they felt compelled to choose between the threat of progressivism in the Democratic Party, which never saw a gender perversion or mental illness it didn't want to glorify and demand you do too, and a GOP which at least looked to some sort of sanity on such issues. Yet others chose a narrow issue, gun control, abortion, which they highly valued and made the leap. Others were simply mad about being lied to for decades by the Democrats and pre Trump Republicans on matters like job exportation and immigration.
Not all Trump voters are alike by any means.
But there's only one Trump.
Since being elected he's insulted Canada repeatedly in a childish manner. On the day I'm typing this out (originally), he's threatening Panama, suggesting we're going to demand a return of the Panama Canal. Since then he's been demanding Greenland.
The amazing thing is that in spite of the utter lunacy of these ramblings, plenty have signed on board to back them. People who wonder how the absurdities of the Nazi Party found acceptance after 1932 now know.
I don't expect Trump to serve out his term. Behavior like this shows that the nation's incoming Chief Executive is returning to his middle school years, years which caused his parents to send him to military school, and that return is probably organic in a man who is flabby and ancient. We'll see, of course, but it appears to at least me that the dementia train has left the station, as it earlier clearly did for Joe Biden.
Merely having a chief executive this age is, frankly, dangerous.
At any rate, I suspect that backers of J. D. Vance are just wanting to give things a decent interval before a cabinet finding of non compos mentis is delivered.
I'm not a Vance fan, but the sooner, the better.
Trump Derangement Syndrome
One of our dear readers, who has I might note a truly excellent blog I keep meaning to link in here, gently noted that this blog suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It's a fair accusation.
As is evident, I just can't grasp why a thoughtful highly intelligent person like our reader would vote for Trump. I know plenty of them I might add. Highly educated, very well spoken, very well read, individuals who voted for a person I find nearly loathsome.
I wish they could explain it to me.
I wonder too if they fear for the nation the way that those of us who recoil form Trump do.
I will note that I perfectly grasp why people didn't vote for Harris, and wouldn't have for Biden. Biden's descent into incapacity aside, the Democratic Party has just become, well, weird in many ways. I noted at the time that Obergefell was decided that disaster loomed, and frankly, I was spot on. Contrary to Kennedy's naive assumptions about his legally bankrupt ruling, Obergefell really opened the doors of a sexual and sexually perverse pandora's box, although frankly that box had been unlocked in the post war by Kinsey and Masters.
By the way, there's actually an article in Psychology Today about TDS.
Anyhow, for the Trump supporters who are routinely insulted by my posts regarding Trump, but stop in to read anyhow, thanks for doing so, and if you can explain your support for the man, I'd appreciate your doing so.
I'll confess. I feel that Trump should have been tried for sedition and should be in prison, so my view is indeed harsh and unyielding on him. I hope I'm proved wrong, but I expect him to be a disaster.
Waiting in the wings
Vance in uniform, and not that of a military prep school
As noted, I'm pretty confined J. D. Vance is waiting in the wings, and isn't much more of a Trump fan than I am. I also think as a National Conservative, he's the real deal.
Love him or hate him, Vance would have made a much better contrast to Harris than Trump. Vance actually has an intellectual concept of where he wants the country to go, and it doesn't appear in any fashion to depend on Elon Musk personally arresting the decline in the North American birth rate.
Must is a National Conservative, as noted. He couldn't have been elected in a race against Harris. The National Conservatives, who ranks are filled by some real intellectuals, know that they have a very limited time to get in their man.. That time is limited to the next four years. Vance won't be able to pull off a post Trump win in 2028, and they know it. In order to make the reforms they want, and they are genuine and massive, they need to get Vance in before then, and that depends on Trump being gone.
Age may very well remove Trump, through death. If it doesn't, my guess is dementia will. Then we will have Vance, and that will be quite interesting.
Oligarchs.
Drone Bee. By Guillaume Pelletier - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59927223
A really interesting thing about the incoming Trump administration is the now open and obvious influence of the mega rich on it. The most obvious example is the overarching presence of the world's most wealth many, South African Elon Musk, but he's far from the only one.
It wasn't all that long ago that Republicans continually suggested that mega rich Hungarian George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg were a big problem. Even now, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wants to do something about "Zuck Bucks".
Love of money, as we know, is the root of all evil, and and one thing it does is to buy power. Absolute power, we're told, such as the U.S. Supreme Court has pretty much handed over to the Executive Branch, corrupts absolutely.
Something needs to be done about this and what that something is, quite frankly, includes taxation. Populists have to decide if they want to be drone servants of their party, or the owners of their party in this regard.
So far, it looks like the drones have it.
The immigration spat
The best argument for doing away with H1B I can imagine. Also, not only a crude dip into vulgarity, but an unfortunate sexual insult by a man who clearly knows that's now how that actually works, given his many progeny by many willing women. And explain to me how Evangelicals feel that this camp is moral?
It is interesting, however, how a fight has suddenly broken out in the MAGA camp which is related to this. The GOP campaign against immigrants in the general election blurred the lines between legal and illegal immigrants. It was relatively clear that basically many hardcore Rust Belt and rural Trumpies didn't like immigrants in general.
There are, I'd note, real reasons to be concerned about the American immigration rate. But for immigration, the US population would be falling, which contrary to widespread belief would frankly be a very good thing. But demonizing immigrants is flat out wrong, and we're not actually having the conversation we should be, which would have a lot more to do with conservation, economics, and yes, culture, than whatever it is that we are arguing about.
One thing now that we are arguing about is H1B, a visa program. I've seen an immigrant Pakistani Trumpy robustly claim that this program lets in illiterate people who can't speak English in Italian restaurants to, in contrast, Elon Must backing it on the basis that that he came in the country that way and as the world's richest sperm donor, he loves himself, and everyone else should too, as he's good for the country.
He's not good for the country.
Interestingly, there's some lingering questions if Musk violated the country's laws when he came in. He probably didn't, but it's interesting. If he did, and I'm not saying he did, that would make him one of those super nasty law breaking immigrants who should be back up and returned to their land of origin.
On other ironies which are worth noting, this spat has really taken weird turns. Ann Coulter told Vivek Ramaswamy that she wouldn't have voted for him as he's of Indian extraction, which is as racist as can be, but at least honest. Some Republicans are defending H1B, others are condemning it. Steve Bannon called Musk a toddler. Vivek Ramaswamy fought back and claimed American culture worshipped mediocrity, implying foreign cultures do not, which is ironic given that the Freedom Caucus tends to have a deep suspicion that education in general is bad.
Frankly, this debate, if it heads in the direction Ramaswamy is taking it, might be a good thing for the populists. Populism right now does exalt the stupid and vulgar over the educated and erudite. He used the example of the "prom queen", which is probably misplaced, unless we regard the Hawk Tuah Girl as the nation's prom queen, which right now she frankly is..
Ramaswamy has a point.
Trump clearly is okay with some immigrants, such as ones he'll marry. It makes me wonder what dinner talk is like at the old Trump homestead.
When things hit the news.
On this story, I had the odd experience of having somebody say the other day "I see you are now having trouble up there with immigrants too". They were from Texas, and this was a phone call.
I had to ask what he meant, but apparently the arrest of an illegal alien here made national news.
It's interesting in that this isn't all that newsworthy here. I don't know why people would think otherwise, but rural states like Wyoming have had illegal aliens just as long as anyone else, and given the blue collar nature of work here, probably longer.
Gerontocracy
Not only are we developing an oligarch problem, it has a gerontocracy problem as well, which this past election certainly pointed out. We have an ancient (and seemingly impaired) President, and an ancient, and rather odd acting, President Elect.
Trump is 78 years old, of course. Locally, one of our Senators is 72, and the other 70. Not young. Our Congresswoman is a comparatively youthful 62.
Texas Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger is 81, and is now living in a memory care facility. She hasn't cast a vote since July, which of course makes sense.
Of note, she spent a year, starting in January 2023, as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. That says something, and what it says is that mental decline can really be rapid.
Why, as a nation, are we comfortable with this?
On a positive, if perhaps sad note, she did not seek reelection.
The UK bans puberty blockers
The US should follow suit.
The entire "trans" movement is really based on an illusion of epic proportions. We are, truly, born male and female while some are more masculine than others, or more feminine than others, boys are boys, as they say, and girls girls. People who are confused on this point are, in reality, very few, and those who persistently are mentally ills. Almost all teens who claim to be "trans", aren't and the overwhelming majority of them come out of it relatively quickly. For that matter, adults who claim to be "trans" aren't.
Puberty blockers are child abuse on the Aktion T4 and there's no excuse for it.
Back to the populists for a second, it's insanity like giving children puberty blockers that helps explain their rise. In future years this behavior will be regarded the same way eugenics in Nazi Germany is now. How mass lawsuits have not broken out is beyond me.
Mjuk flicka. Soft Girls, Kept Women, Feminist Women, and a More Natural Life.
ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND
This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.
(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy. This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)
Mjuk flicka a Swedish term for "a kind pleasant" girl, but it sort of translates as "soft girl". In this context its a bit of a trend, and one that's worrying feminist.
It probably should.
We've had other threads along these lines, but its fairly clear that a fair number of women have come to the conclusion that the push into the business and working world that came along in the 1970s hasn't really done them as much as a favor as the propaganda then and now would have it. This recalls the TikTok breakdown some young woman had that's discussed here:
And also here:
One of the odd things that the "soft girl" is exhibiting is that she's an example of reinventing old social norms backwards and highly imperfectly, and that is concerning. Rather than acting as a very traditional wife, she's essentially reduced herself to concubinage. Her male supporter could sever ties at the drop of a hat. She's serving in the traditional concubine role, free of any children or responsibility, and providing what we might charitably refer to as companionship. This is bound not to go well, which reaching back to tradition without the duties of responsibilities associated it, usually does.
I can't help but note the contrast to the Mantilla Girls I continue to run into at Mass, including Christmas vigil. Due to being in a packed church, combined with my wife' s decision making process, we ended up in the cry room. This followed a brief pre Mass trip to the balcony, where there was room, but then the long suffering spouse brought up 200 other options which sent us back down. Anyhow, there was room in the cry room, which also contained one extended family with a baby. The baby never cried. One of the parishioners in the room was a Mantilla Girl, quite attractive and very nicely dressed.
Its interesting for a variety of reasons, including the contrast to the soft girl. The Mantilla Girls have a much more realistic grasp of the world.
Mehr Mensch sein.
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Labels: 2020s, 2024, Aktion T4, Capitalism, Civil Unrest, Corporate Capitalism, Crime, Distributism, Distributist Lament, Donald Trump, Narodnaya Volya, Populism, Terrorism, The wealthy, Zeitgeist
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