Acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt, et De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, et Regula Ernii Pyle. The reaction to the Death of Lindsey Graham.

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.

Lindsey Graham, 2016.

I hadn't intended to post more on Lindsey Graham after my note on, well not Graham, but his dying at age 71.  

Not too surprisingly, however, he was a topic of all three new shows this weekend.  Meet The Press had yet another interview with Donald Trump (they've had a pile of them yesterday), on Graham.  Trump claims to have spoken to him just before his death and of course, Graham was for the Stopping Americans from Voting Act that Trump hopes will pass and save his bacon this fall.

The other interviews were more interesting.  I thought one of them gave a really good insight into Graham's evolution from a Trump opponent into a Trump supporter, that being pure politics.  He was, the person claimed, simply play politics, basically, and by cosying up to Trump was able to influence him and get what he wanted overall.

That might be right, and is the only good explanation I've ever seen for it. The question is, at what point have you gone too far.  Frankly, I think Graham went too far.

Lucien Truscott obviously feels that and has one of the most blunt applications of the Ernie Pyle Rule I've ever seen by a well known writer.*

The hole in the Senate named Lindsey Graham

Truscott outright states that Graham was a homosexual and betrayed his like attracted.

That brings up my first observation.

I don't know if Graham was a closeted homosexual or not, but if he was, it didn't seem to impact his votes at all.  That's part of what Truscott is complaining about, but on the Twitter, the epicenter of nastiness, I've seen.

Here's the thing, however.  A lot of the speculation on Graham's sexuality comes from his never marrying.  He was asked about it over his lifetime and his response was that he never found the right girl, or the right girl was lucky enough never to have found him.

Anyhow, as an observation, which of course is part of what this blog does in a evolution of time fashion, merely being a single adult doesn't mean a person is a homosexual.  One of my law school colleagues never married, for example, and I've known him since he was a pre teen.  He's definately not same sex attracted.  An older friend of mine is the same way.  He's now in his 70s and has never married.  He's not a homosexual, he just has a very unique personality that's operated against marriage.

If you'd asked me when I was in my late 20s, I would probably have said it wasn't going to happen.  At that age I'd lost a pretty serious girlfriend and broken up with a girl was sort of serious about me, but not the other way around.  Had things kept going the way they seemed to be going, and I thought at that point they definitely would be, I'd have reached the age of declining prospects pretty quickly and likely have been a single guy my whole life.  I wouldn't have liked that, but it happens.

Still, most men do marry, or at least if they aren't married, you can find pretty serious love interests they've had.  I've noted that above in regard to myself.  Its not as if I hadn't dated at all in my 20s.  It's odd for somebody to have no friends of the opposite sex who they're interested in that way, but it does happen.  

The opposite also happens, I'd note.  One of my high school friends was undoubtedly a homosexual, but he did marry a girl.  They divorced and he died quite young.  If you read his obituary it doesn't say of what, but I suspect I know.

Anyhow, I don't care if Graham was a homosexual at all and as it wasn't an open part of his life, and he didn't make it some sort of big political deal, I don't know why it matters.

On a finale note, the current Wyoming election season features one man who is an open homosexual but doesn't work that into his campaign.  One of his opponents is like Graham, there's no known female friends at all that have ever popped up, which raises questions if you are campaigning on the far edge of the far right.  And, fwiw, Wyoming has had one very good state office holder in the past who was a homosexual, while it never came out, and there's questions about a well known political figure as well.

The rest of Truscott's article, I'd note, is really blunt.  And Graham may deserve the application of Pyle's rule.

Public Interest wasn't much kinder:

Lindsey Graham and the rot of modern conservatism

From Gingrich to Trump, Graham was a fixture as the GOP became increasingly malignant.

Their article stated:

Lindsey Graham died a coward. His three-decade career in national politics should be remembered for more than his shameless, pusillanimous capitulations — but not, unfortunately, for some noble pursuit or purpose he used his chameleon-like political skills to secure. He should instead be remembered for using his power to bow and scrape, to change his political colors, largely if not solely in service to himself.

I guess that reminds of, in a way, of the maxim Acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt. There comes a time when reform is too late.  Medieval texts used to worry a great deal about the powerful dying with their sins unconfessed.  Well, many regular people do.  There's a lesson there.

Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic:

But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. Graham went out of his way to telegraph his closeness to the president. He played golf with Trump, made excuses for him on television, and supported him as he slowly destroyed the alliances that Graham had defended all his life, even as he undermined the institutions of democracy at home. In 2021, Graham refused to vote to convict Trump, even after he assaulted the Capitol and tried to reverse the results of the election.

Another commentator noted all of the post death accolades by members of the press who knew Graham.  He was a frequent press guest, having appeared for example on Meet the Press some sixty times.

Here's what Lindsey Graham should be remembered for--not corporate media's whitewashing

The whitewashing of Graham is awful!

That item started off with Shakespeare, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Adam Kinzinger was much kinder, which in turn has resulted in Kinzinger being attacked on Twitter.

Some Brief Thoughts On The Passing Of Lindsey Graham.

Ann Telnaes ran a series of her political cartoons.

Sen. Lindsey Graham dead

A shameless political opportunist and one of Trump's chief enablers has died

In short, the "legacy media" was kind to Graham and his legacy. The print and pundit media, not so much.

In my view, he probably didn't deserve much respect.  The thing he should be remembered that he did best was rising to the occasion of his father's death (his mother had died less than a year prior) and raising his 13 year old sister.

On that, I noted here the other day that his father was 69 years old when he died.  My comments on age got some shocked rebukes in other quarters.  "71 isn't old".

Yes it is. 

Just looking at the social history aspect of this for a second, Graham was apparently 21 when his father died.  That would have meant that his father 48 years old when Graham was born, old to be a father.

Florence James "F.J." Graham was married to Millie Waters.  She was 52 when she died in 1977.  Graham's sister was only 13 when he died, meaning that their father was 56 when she was born, very old to become a father.  Their mother was was approximately 33 when Lindsey was born, and approximately 41 when she was.  41 is quite old to have a child for a women.  I don't know when they married, but there was an age gap of about ten years there, which isn't that uncommon.  More uncommon is that they apparently married sort of late with the mother in her very early 30s, or they had a hard time having children.

Some Twitter Twits have absolutely freaked out about his dying, attributing it to a conspiracy.  Complete nonsense.

By the way, Sam Neal died yesterday at 79, 8 years older than Graham.  James Van Der Beek at 48.  Catherine O'Hara at 71.

Trump, in an interview, said several times "I thought he would live forever".  He claims to have told Graham that several times, but with Trump, you can never tell if that's true.  That probably says more about Trump than Graham.

Graham came up during the Reagan era.  Reagan remains the huge hero to conservatives, but more and more he doesn't deserve to be.  It was Reagan who caused the sweep of old Dixiecrats into the GOP which has lead to its ultimate destruction.  I can't say that Graham was a Dixiecrat, but I will note that he was endorsed early on by Strom Thurmond, who most definitely was.

Graham had been a major supporter of the US effort in Afghanistan and  he was a big supporter of Ukraine.  I agree with him on both of those things . Ironically, given how close Graham was to Trump, it was Afghanistan that really started the riff between Liz  Cheney and Trump which lead to Harriet Hageman.

After January 6, Graham appeared to briefly find his moral ground.  For a few weeks there it looked as if Trump might be impeached.  Graham lead a speech from the floor that absolutely condemned what happened and implicitly condemned Trump.  Like most of the GOP, however, he went back to Trump boot licking.  That will be his legacy.

Well, legacies matter I suppose to the living, and for a reason. For the dead, they're beyond that.

May the perpetual light shine upon him.

Footnotes:

*Ernie Pyle, the famous World War Two reporter, once reported on troops reaction to having to pack a dead lieutenant they didn't like out of the Italian hills on a mule  A Sergeant stated "Son of a bitch alive, son of a bitch dead".

Related thread:

The death of Lindsey Graham. A timely American reminder.

Labels: Baby Boom Generation, Death, Middle Age, Old Age

Monday, June 28, 1976. First women in a service academy.

155 out of an entering class of 1,600 at the United States Air Force Academy were women, the first females to be so admitted.  This was the day of their admission.

They were also the first women to enter any US service academy, although the following week women would enter West Point and Annapolis.

Basic recruit training for the first class with women recruits.  Note that M1 Garands were still being used at the time.

The People's Revolutionary Tribunal of Angola found three American and ten Britons guilty of war crimes connected with their mercenary service in the Angolan Civil War.  Americans Daniel Gearhart and British citizens John Derek Barker, Andrew McKenzie and Tony Callan (Costas Georgiu) received the death sentence.

Gearhart was a Vietnam veteran who had advertised his services in Soldier of Fortune.  He arrived in Angola just days before his capture and may never have fired a shot in the war.  Callan, a Greek Cypriot, in contrast, was described by other mercenaries as a homicidal maniac.

Soldier of Fortune still exists, although you don't hear about it much anymore.  It was hugely destested in Africa at the time due to its embrace of mercenaries, with the 60s and 70s being highwater mark of a sort of romantic view of soldiers of fortune.

British character actor Stanley Baker died at age 48.

The News had a report about a hijacking.

And a hijacking of a French airliner.

Apparently Pride Week was already a thing, and Colorado had a pornography law back on the books.

Last edition:

Friday, June 25, 1976. President for life.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, Idi Amin, Uganda

When I become President, every golf course in the United States will be grazing land.

Same thing with shopping malls.

National Park Service Uprooted on the National Mall

I know how to play golf, but I don't golf.  It's boring and sanitized.  The kind of sport for people who want to go outside, but fear the outside, or are hopelessly urban.  Granted, that's not the fault of all of the hopelessly urban, and that's the place for golf.

Golf is one of those sports that underwent an evolution in my mind when I was quite young.  I won't say that is rational or correct. 

My mother was a first rate golfer.  My father didn't golf at all.  None of the men I knew when very young golfed, and when I came to know some that did, as I aged, they were men who didn't do the things, or didn't do them to the same extent, as the men I knew.  Golfing men didn't hunt much, they didn't fish much, they weren't going to be found at brandings.  They all tended to be from the upper upper middle class, or the lower wealthy.  In my mind, they were effeminized as they were playing what seemed to me to be an effeminate sport.

That view of golf hasn't changed much for me and indeed its been reenforced as I've grown older.  I know that there are some really manly men that golf, but I don't know very many.  Of guy's guys that I know that golf, there's one really nice guy I know who does, and that somehow fits him.  He's a computer guy.  And there's one that's just too out of shape to do anything else, and you can be pretty out of shape and play golf if you use a cart.  Neither of them are effeminate.

I don't think, actually, that these feelings are as unique as a person might think.  At one point in time lawyers were associated with golf (not anymore) and some golfed as they felt they had to.  This was particularly the case with new lawyers.  I've known at least two new lawyers who golfed as they thought that's what lawyers did.  Interestingly, of those two lawyers, I know a third person, a woman, who insists that one of them is "gay" just by her observations of him, even though he's been a married man for years.  Maybe the golfing was too effeminizing.

In a weird sort of way, Donald Trump emphasized this a couple of years ago when he simply gushed over his probably totally fictional observations of the size of Arnold Palmer's penis.

Seriously?

Oddly enough, golf was definitely associated with lesbianism at one time.  This was the case for decades, and in some ways it cuts against what I'm noting here.  As a sport, it was a sport that women could participate in and do very well as professionals, and so perhaps, maybe, women who were sort of masculine in their internal inclinations participated at a higher rate that would have simply existed in the general population.

Oddly, golf at one time was highly segregated in every imaginable way.  Blacks flat out weren't allowed on private golf courses, but often women weren't either.  Lawsuits were required to end that.  Wealth played a role to play on private courses, and still does.  Indeed wealth played a role in keeping women off of golf courses, as business deals were conducted on them from which they were omitted, and that helped bring about the lawsuits later on.

All that probably offends my Irish egalitarianism.

I can't say much for golf. 

Golf also seems to me to be the ultimate boring urban upper middle class excuse for a sport, at least at one time.  Manly men might shoot hoops, or go play flag football, or something, but at one time towns and real estate developers put in golf courses as it was the default sport for aging white people.

Tennis is the other urban sport, or was.  It's joined by basketball and pickle ball in that category, the latter being a newer sport whose existence I don't understand.  The thing is, however, that to play any of those sports well, you really need to be in shape.  The same kind of guy that can really drive a tennis ball over the net can drive a baseball right down the field at lethal speed.

Supposedly golf has declined in popularity in recent decades, and its notable that at the same time the demographics of the country are changing.  Golf was heavily racist at one time and indeed it was more recently than a person might imagine, although there have been some really notable Hispanic and Black golfers.  Golf is apparently of Scottish origin, where it would have been pretty darned manly, so its an import of the British Isles.  People from other cultures don't really have any roots in it, and for that matter, lots of European Americans don't.  Shooting was the sport for Germans, and competitive shooting, like polo, was a major military sport.  Shooting was, and in fact is, a major civilian sport in many parts of the country.  Basketball is an American sport, as is baseball, and both were played by rural and lower middle class demographics at first.  Basketball is particularly interesting this way as it comes from farming country with bitter winters, so its a good indoor sport for a lot of pretty athletic people.

Football is actually of British origin, but the origin is from the British lower class and it reflects that origin to this day.  Hunting is a male human universal, which recent anthropology suggest had more female participation in antiquity than previously imagined.

Gardening, hunting, shooting, walking, running and nearly anything just seems to have more merit that golf.  But it hangs on in the minds of the elderly, a game of privilege from their youth.

So that a bloated old man with money would choose to wreck things for golf, makes sense.  People tend to hang on to the era in which they were young, and the wealthy have more of an ability to do that than other people.  The super wealthy have the ability to afflict that on everyone else.

Chiles v. Salazar.

A victory for free speech, rational thought, and science.

Only one dissenting vote.

Only the synopsis is provided.

 

Rachel Maddow, Openly Gay MSNBC Anchor, Returns to the Catholic Church

Froma Harrop: How Low Can Deviancy Go?

 

How Low Can Deviancy Go?

Ezra Klein looks at the state of the Democrats. . twice.

The Ezra Klein show recently ran two really interesting vlog episodes on why the Democratic Party is in the dumpster, even as the Republican Party makes the entire country a raging dumpster fire.  They're instructive, but in the case of the first one, not for the reason the guest likely hoped for.

It wasn't all that long ago, we should note, that political scientists had declared that the GOP doomed to demographic extinction.  It was, and is, a small tent party.  The party needed to reach out, it was told, and bring in all the people in the Democratic camp.  Long time readers here, of which there are likely very few, will recall that I predicated that some of the demographic  analysis was flat out wrong, and that Hispanics in particular would start moving into the Republican Party.

I was right.  

Now we live in the opposite world.  People hate the Republican Party but they hate the Democratic Party more.  Really a new party is needed, one that doesn't see global warming as a fib but which opposed abortion, for example, would have a lot of appeal.  But that's a post for some other time.

Let's look at what the experts have to say.  First, as it was first in time, is the interview with  Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell and co-author of the new book “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy"

The interview is here.

I could tell in listening to it that Klein thinks the book is wrong, and while I haven't read it, I know it is, if it espouses the same views that Mettler did in her interview.  She looks at everything economically and that's about it. Social issues don't mean anything.

Well, I lived through this and saw a Wyoming that had a large, but minority, Democratic Party almost completely die.  Most of the major active Democrats in the party started to move to the Republican Party during the Clinton Administration and that trickle became a flood.  All sorts of respected "traditional" elder Republicans in Wyoming were once Democrats.  They left as it increasingly became impossible to be a centrist or conservative Democrat.  There's no room for a pro life Democrat, for instance, in the party anymore.  Once homosexual marriages, transgenderism, and showing up at rallies with blue hair became the norm, the normal largely dropped out and won't come back.

That's what killed the Democrats in the West.

This interview with Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, is much better as Abbot is realistic and not hopelessly clueless, as Mettler seems to be:

Abbot actually admits that he isn't sure if the Democrats can come back from political exile in rural areas, but the examples he gives of people running from the outside are excellent.  Nebraska equivalent of Wyoming's John Barrasso, Deb Fischer, provides an interesting example as she nearly went down in defeat to independent Dan Osborn.

Osborn's race is really instructive as he wasn't a Democrat, but called bullshit on a lot of Fischer's politics.  Osborn himself is a working man, and he's pretty conservative.

And there's the real lesson.

Democrats right now can't get any traction in rural areas as frankly nobody can stand to vote for anyone they are putting up, most of the time, and then when they do put up a good candidate, the party's platform kills them.  The Democratic Party became, quite frankly, the Transgendered Vegan Party, and that's going nowhere.  It not only became that, it can't get away from it.  Look at any protest of Trump's policies that's a public one, and you'll see the usual suspects.  If there isn't a hugely overweight middle aged woman with blue hair, you just aren't looking hard enough.

Indeed, this has become so much the case that that left wing protests that are popular now are sometimes all Republican.  In Natrona County the recent Radiant Energy No Nuke protests were lead by Republicans including a Wyoming Freedom Caucus member of the legislature.  Chuck Gray came up and lead his support, sounding like he was Chuck Gray from Greenpeace.  If Democrats can't own that issue . . . .

There seems to be a little waking up, but only a little.  Public lands is what did it.

Back in the 1980s, when I switched from the Republican Party into the Democratic Party (I left the Dems with the great flood of us who couldn't hack the weirdness), public lands and attention to environmental issues is what did it.  People worship Ronald Reagan now, but James Watt, his Secretary of the Interior, was an Evangelical Christian zealot in favor of ravaging the land now, as he was certain that the Second Coming was going to be very soon.  That land ravaging instinct remains very strong in the GOP and recently came out in spades.

Wyoming Democrat Karlee Provenza picked right up on that and came out in front.  The Democrats need to do more of that.  Land issues are near and ear to Wyomingites and the Republicans are very vulnerable on them.  That issue alone might, if really exploited, bring the Democrats back if their campaigns were really strategic.  

Some of that strategy has to be getting really personal.  Sure, Hageman is for turning public lands over for sale. . she's from a "fourth generation" ranching family, and the ranchers always believe they'll get the land, even though they won't.  Same for Lummis  Sure, Dr. John is for it, he's a Pennsylvanian not a Wyomingite.  Did you every see him at your favorite fishing hole?

But one issue alone is a risky proposition. What they also need to do is dump the weirdness.  Being lashed to transgenderism is a completely losing proposition.  A Democratic candidate is going to be asked about it . . and could really make hay on it.

But only if they're willing to fight dirty, which the GOP definitely is.  But they're not prepared for the same.

For instance, if a public lands Democrat was running for the House, and asked about this issue, we would expect the usually milk toast fall in line answer they normally give.  But if they said, "oh gosh no, that's a mental illness and it needs to be treated that way, and women's sports and role in society needs to be protected. . . " it'd leave the Republicans flat footed.

They'd be on their heels, however, if it went further.  If you added "and by the way, I constantly hear our GOP talk about being pro family.  I don't know how pro family you can be if you are jacking up their cost of living and particularly their insurance rantes, but what about that family stuff?  Hageman's been married for years and she ain't got any children. . nephews and nieces aren't the same thing, and Chuck Gray is 36 years old and unmarried. . .what's up with that?  Why I think a decent man ought to marry a decent woman young and have some kids. . . and when that doesn't happen that's because they aren't focused on families, darn it".

Yeah, that's nasty, but how do they reply?  It is the case that Hageman and her husband have never had children.  Maybe there's a medical reason, but maybe it was a focus on careers and using pharmaceuticals to avoid it.  If so, that ain't very populist Republican.  And Chuck Gray is 36 years old and unmarried.  I know that he's a Mass attending Catholic, and I'm not accusing him of any intimate immorality, but I will note that by age 36 men are usually married, or in our current society, living with some female "partner".  Gray doesn't appear to fit either of these which is odd, as it demonstrates something about his character, perhaps simply an unlikeable character, that's keeping it from occurring, unless he just doesn't want to get married, which is unlikely.

FWIW, as I'm a bit connected, I know that Gray dated women while living in Casper.  Obviously those relationships didn't work out.  I'm not claiming he's light in his loafers.

I will say, however, that once you get out there, there are die hard right wing Republicans in this state who are subject to some unwelcome attention on their personal lives.  Is that fair?  Well, if you are calling for suppressing certain groups, and you are part of them, you owe people an explanation.

Which gets back to the inevitable question that comes up now, "what about gay marriage".  Again, it's easy for a Republican to say "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman".  A Democratic coming back with "so do I, and I believe that union arises once. . . what do you think about that Dr. John. . . and is that why you abandoned your original faith?".  

Nasty.  But Dr. John wouldn't have a very good answer for it.

Abortion is always going to come up.  Abortion is the issue that ultimately drove a lot of us out of the Democratic Party, including me.  The Democrats should simply abandon a position on it and let candidates stake out their own ground.  There remain a few pro life Democrats out there, and to be one shouldn't be an anathema. 

And, indeed, if that was allowed, it allows uncomfortable questions to be asked.  Republicans claim to be pro life, but now their massively in favor of IVF, which kills most of the embrioes that it creates.  Current Democrats can't really ask about that without hypocrisy.  A pro life Democrat could.

Can the Democrats do all that?

Probably not.

Monday, October 20, 1975. Grain, Cubans, Primates, and AIDS.

The US and USSR entered into a five year grain sale agreement by which the US agreed to sell 6,000,000 tons of grain to the USSR each year, as its collective agricultural system tanked, and by which the US accidentally screwed Canadian farmers.

The Cuban Navy's El Vietnam Heroico, El Coral Island and La Plata brought the first Cuban soldiers to Angola to support the MPLA..

Presumably the El Vietnam Heroico didn't celebrate the numerous South Vietnamese who gave their lives in order to attempt to hold the Communist back South East Asia.

Cuban military support to Angola would lead to the introduction of AIDS into Cuba, that region of Africa having been ground zero for the disease.  Myths about the origin of the horrific disease, and a supposed ground zero in New York City, have abounded for years, but in reality SIVcpz, the strain in chimpanzees, was transmitted to humans via contact with infected blood, most likely during the process of hunting and butchering chimpanzees for meat.  It was a "crossover disease."  It spread undetected for some time in Central Africa, notably by hetrosexual sex, and into the Cuban population by that means of transmission.  In much of the Western World, of course, it spread through homosexual sex at first, and then by infected needle transmissions. 

FWIW, eating primates is a really bad idea. They're too closely related to us, giving rise to things like this.

It's an interesting example of how war brings plagues of all types.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 14, 1975. Operation Savannah.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Angola, Columbus Day, Namibia, Native Americans, Operation Savannah, South Africa, South African Army, Washington (Seattle)

Kiddie Porn and the library.

People reading my comments on the illegitimate claimant to the Oval Office and the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, and indeed the general drift of Republican politics in this state, all of which are causing the ghosts of Mussolini and Franco to wonder "aren't they a little extreme?", may simply assume I'm a liberal, and that I oppose everything conservatives are doing.

They're wrong, I'm a social conservative, but anyhow. . . 

For those holding that view, this post will surprise.

October 14, 2025

Panel advances legislation restricting sexual content in Wyoming library books: The Judiciary Committee voted 11-2 in support of the measure, and the issue unified Wyoming Freedom Caucus lawmakers with Republicans not always aligned with them.

Committee Adopts Bill Greenlighting Lawsuits Over 'Sexually Explicit' Library Books

Here's the bill:

I have my doubts about the constitutionality of this effort, but I think this effort is worth it.

In spite of what people might say, some of these books are absolutely horrific.  Without detailing how I know it, two of the books that keep coming up in this discussion, Gender Queer and This Books Is Gay do not belong in the children's section of any library and frankly should only be in a limited adult section at that.  I don't overall object to them being in a library, but frankly the common assumption that they are aimed at "young adults" is correct.

Gender Queer is a "graphic" book, i.e., cartoon.  It depicts a scene in which a friend instructs another teenage friend how to stick a finger up a vagina, and that's not all.  This Book Is Gay is basically a homosexual sex manual for young people, complete with badly done illustrations.

Seriously?

This gets right to the roots of the culture wars.  Basically, the authors of these books believe that you are a homosexual from the second you are born, if you become one later, or even really if a person ever ponders such activity.  This is to "help" them get past what the authors regard unfortunate mental roadblocks.

The psychological support for such a view is basically nonexistent.  Homosexuality itself, while it occurs in all cultures, is particularly prevalent in the cultural West, so much so that in China its regarded as a Western thing.  At one time it was so associated with English public (that is to say private) boy's schools that it was called "the English disease".  We really don't grasp it all that well.

And frankly what we don't need to do is to push teenagers who might be pondering it, outright into it, which as a society is exactly what we are in fact doing.  Books like this help to do that.  They're Gender Queer is practically designed to do that.

Libraries have always restricted sexual content to the young. . . until recently.  I remember years ago reading an article in the Denver Post about how the Denver Public Library kept Playboy and a Buddhist sex manual in an area where you had to ask for them, with those publications being the two most requested in that section. The point is, they didn't keep bound volumes of Playboy down in the children's sections for teenage boys to peruse, even though a person could argue that it was just as instructive as those struggling with their sexuality as these texts.  And, moreover, any teen asking for either one of them would have been told to pound sand.

All this comes, as these articles make plain, against the background of a lawsuit over the topic that was just settled.  Not "won", but settled.  One ironic element is that the librarian spoke out hoping that her settlement, which is a settlement (i.e., she didn't win, or lose, the suit) would discourage the legislature from passing this bill.

Really?  It ought to encourage them to pass it.

Thursday, September 25, 1975. Three Days of the Condor and Oliver Sipple.

President Ford sent a letter of thanks to disabled former Marine and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Sipple, who had stopped Sara Jane Moore's assassination attempt earlier in the week.  Earlier in the week Sipple, who was living and working in San Francisco, had been outed as a homosexual by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen who had received tips from homosexual activists Reverend Ray Broshears and Harvey Milk.

Milk knew Sipple and claimed to be a friend of his, but neither man had his permission to reveal his homosexuality and Sipple, who had been badly wounded in Vietnam, had never told his family.  As a result, his family disowned him for a time and the stress of the situation was something he never really recovered from.  He descended into alcohol and depression and killed himself in 1989.

Milk has come down as a  hero, and even briefly had a ship named after him, which was renamed this year.  But outing Sipple was a lousy thing to do.

I managed to miss the incident that Sipple is associated with, which was the September 22, 1975 assassination attempt by Sar Jane Moore.  Sipple's quick reactions foiled the attempt, combined with the fact that Moore had purchased the handgun she used only that morning, after one she was familiar with was confiscated by the police the prior day.

Three Days of the Condor was released on this day in 1975.

This is an excellent Cold War thriller based on an underground movement in the US that's operating a shadowy independent mission.  Robert Redford, who passed away yesterday, plays the lead character.  The plot of the film involved Redford's character being a CIA analysts who reads books and steps out during the day, only to find his entire section murdered when he returns.  He flees and is pursued by what turns out to be rogue elements of the CIA.  Every actors portrayal in the movie is excellent, but the most intriguing character is a European assassin played by Max von Sydow.

Following the Vietnam War, the public was learning a lot about the CIA and frankly the FBI for the first time, all of which made the movie's plot seem credible.  Frankly, back where we now are, it seems credible once again.

Oddly enough, the Church Committee revealed that the CIA had a gun designed to shoot toxic pellets to induce a heart attack just prior to this.

The cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show was also released on this day.

Last edition:

Friday, September 19, 1975. No cash.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Cambodia, Currency, Education

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 102nd edition. Short attention span and a Ballroom Blitz*. And self sabotage.

Attention span deficit.

Something I hadn't expected, but which really says something about our times, is that the murder of Charlie Kirk is already, for the most part, in society's rear view mirror.

Yes, there's a lot of discussion about it still, but it's in the chattering class, which I suppose includes this website.  Otherwise, things have already moved on.

The speed at which news moves, and the lack of attention to it, is a very bad thing.

Of course, now that it doesn't really appear to be a politically motivated killing, it's lost its attraction as a story to some degree.

A fictional narrative

The story, as noted, is now in the domain of the chattering classes, but also the possession of right wing myth makers, which are really working on it.  The odd thing here is that the media has an incentive to downplay what is being learned about the killer, and to an extent, the MAGA myth organ does as well.

What we now know about the killer, Tyler Robinson, is that he was a homosexual living with another homosexual who was in the process of being mutilated to take on the appearance of a woman.  Unless this isn't clear enough, they were in a "romantic" relationship, which means they were engaged in sodomy.  The "transitioning" roommate was apparently shocked by the killing, but according to one family member, that person was deeply anti Christian and hated political conservatives.

Now, the reason that this isn't getting this much press as the "transgendered" aren't particularly associated with crimes of any kind, let alone violent ones, and homosexuals certainly are not, but this story is deeply weird.  A man trying to become a woman is deeply weird, and it is not the same thing as homosexuality.  One man screwing another man who is trying to take on female morphology is very weird as well.

We touched on this in a post about Robert Westman, who was an actual "transgender" figure who committed a mass shooting recently.  Indeed, he's the only "transgender" figure I know of to commit one, the overwhelming majority are white hetrosexual men.

Anyhow:

A deeply sick society.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honor and are shocked find traitors in our midsts.  We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.  

C.S. Lewis.

I explored the topic pretty fully there, and I'm not going to repeat it here other than to note that finding a transgender person hating Christianity isn't surprising. Real Christianity holds that to be wholly immoral, even while real Christianity still loves the person. And such a person hating conservatism isn't surprising either, as conservatives hold a similar view.

Robinson wasn't the transgendered person here, but the whole story of this relationship would lend to the theory that he was pretty pliable as a personality.  The point is, therefore, this likely wasn't really an act of domestic terror in the conventional sense, so much as it was a person reaching out  under the influence of a sexual partner.  In an odd sort of way, this killing is more comparable to Dr. Carl Austin Weiss Sr.'s murder of Huey Long, which was over redistricting that impacted his father in law.  I.e., a personal connection is likely to have motivated it more than any overarching weltanschauung.

That's a story that's not really going to get explored, I suspect.  The right wing wants Kirk to be a martyr, the left doesn't want to talk about the mental health issues this really brings up.

Groypers?

I'd never heard of this term before, but apparently they are followers of Nick Fuentes.  As I don't pay any attention to Fuentes, I didn't know that.

Apparently they've drawn a lot of attention following Kirk's murder as there was some peculiar speculation that they were responsible for it.  They obviously are not, but that speculation was there, and I'm not sure why.

Fuentes, whose movement is outwardly anti homosexual, as well as anti a bunch of other stuff, has said some really odd things in this arena, one being that having sex with women is gay.  Eh?  Another apparently was that homosexual sex doesn't mean what it used to, as women aren't living up to their reproductive responsibilities.

A shit post?

This is a really interesting analysis of this topic.

Shit post.

The extra scary part of this is noting, as this person does, how many people in Trump's administration sort of fit into the same demographic.

Not in homilies

Apparently, at least according to Twitter, a lot of people are mad today as their parish priest didn't include a reference to Kirk's murder in their homilies yesterday.  

Why would they?

For Apostolic Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, and homilies probably largely had to do with that.  Moreover the Catholic Church is just that, catholic, i.e., universal, and this is a domestic American matter that remains unclear.  Kirk wasn't attacked because he was Catholic, he wasn't, and the attack upon him may only have a tangential relationship with his Christianity.

Nonetheless, I saw one person who was irate at the Pope for having not mentioned it.

Spencer Cox

The guy who is really coming out looking good after all of this is Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox.  He's spoken multiple times and has been a calming voice every time.

This isn't the first time he's waded into these issues.  Following the killing at an Orlando gay bar some years ago he appeared at a vigil and stated:

How did you feel when you heard that 49 people had been gunned down by a self-proclaimed terrorist? That’s the easy question. Here is the hard one: Did that feeling change when you found out the shooting was at a gay bar at 2 a.m. in the morning? If that feeling changed, then we are doing something wrong.

Cox's comments are clearly against the stream of the MAGA mainstream. He was originally a never Trumper but claimed to have changed his mind and voted from Trump in his Presidential contests.  I suspect we'll be hearing more out of  Cox going forward, and he may very well be a Presidential candidate in 2028.

Ballroom Blitz

King Donny went from being outraged by the Kirk killing to bemoaning how it interrupted his might fine, in his mind, ballroom from being the focus of everyone's adoring attention.

That's pretty weird.

Also weird is how quickly this is going up.  It's apparently under construction right now.  Trump clearly wants it up before he leaves office, on the theory that will mean nobody will take it down.

The monstrosity will now be 40% bigger than originally planned.

Quite frankly, I thought this vandalization of the White House would not actually occur, as it would, in normal times, take quite a while to design and engineer a building. Indeed, I was frankly planning on just that.  I never thought the monstrosity would go up, as whomever is Present next won't be stupid or narcissistic enough to bother with a Trump "look at me!" ballroom.  It's really moronic.

But it's going up.

If I were President, which of course I never will be, my first executive order would be for the Army Corps of Engineers to remove the offending pile of dogshit within twenty foour hours of my being sworn in.  I'd have the resulting trash hauled and upmed in front of Trump Tower.  But that won't happen.  Trump is probably right.  A giant cancerous growth will be there forever.

Here is the oldest photo of the structure, and what it's actually supposed to look like:

Of course, as it might be noted, the building has been altered before, most notably the addition of the West and East Wings.  Those additions were made due to legitimate working concerns, however.

Again, if it were me, I'd be tempted to take it back to purse original.  It's just supposed to be a big house.

The architects for the vandalization are McCreery Architects, whose website has an image of the interior of the structure as its first slide.  The following slides show a lot of other impressive structures they've worked on.  They do seem to favor heavily classic styles, which is nice.  The site oddly doesn't have any text, but maybe if you need to hire a  heavy duty architect, you don't need text and the equivalent of architectural headshots works better.

A rational question would be why does this bother me so much?  Well, perhaps I just have an irrational reaction to all things Trump by this point.  But the ostentatiousness of the whole thing smacks of trying to be The Sun King.**Have we reached that point in this country?  I fear we have.

We've always had rich men, of course, but this is the era of fabulously wealth men.  It's not right.

Ah, sic transit gloria mundi.

Something we may wish to consider a bit. . . 

Maybe we have it too darn good (so we're self sabotaging).

It sounds absurd, but there's something to it.

The current Wyoming Catholic Register has an article pointing out that, in 1980, the year before I graduated from high school, 40% of the world's population lived in desperate poverty, an improvement from the mid to late 19th Century when it was 90%.

Now, just 10% does.

Big, huge, improvement.

By any objective measure, the condition of the world has massively improved. 

Why do we believe otherwise?

Evolutionary biology has a lot to do with it.  We evolved to live in a state of nature, and nature if pretty rough on everyone.  So we're acclimated to things not being quite right, and trouble being just around the corner.  Now, for most of us, that's not the case.

Gershwin wrote:

Summertime and the livin' is easy

Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high

Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'

So hush little baby, don't you cry

Well, it turns out that in summertime when the cotton is high and the fish are jumping, we're looking for a thunderstorm and worried about work on Monday.  

I know that I do.

And a super rich society, like ours, seems to make up its own problems.  

This is all the more the case when the gates are off the door, as they are.  Now, not only are there all our real and imagined problems, but we just go ahead and make new ones up.  Woman trapped inside a man's body?  Not if the Goths are at the city gates planning on killing everyone.  

Anyhow, it seems like we're busy, now that we are in the richest period of our existence as a species, making sure that real problems appear.  Apparently we missed them.

Footnotes

*Ballroom Blitz is an early 1970s, rock song by the band The Sweet.

**King Lous XIV.

Related threads:

A deeply sick society.Labels: 1960s, 2020s, AR15 Effect, Commentary, Health, Politics, Weapons, Zeitgeist

Last edition:  

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 101st edition. The Vandal in the museum.

Labels: 20th Century, Agnes Repplier, Americanism, History in politics, It was because of the Vietnam War, Politics, Populism, Red Scare of 1919, Red Scare of the 1950s, The Second Trump Administration, Zeitgeist