Saturday, June 22, 1946. History rhyming

U.S. Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi, a former Governor of that state, running for re-election in the Democratic primary, said in a radio broadcast that he was calling on every "red-blooded Anglo-Saxon man in Mississippi to resort to any means to keep hundreds of Negroes from the polls in the July 2 primary.And if you don't know what the means, you are just not up on your persuasive measures.

He won the primary and the generals, but the Senate would refuse to swear him in due to his racist comments.

Today he'd be a Republican, they'd excuse his comments, and he'd be sworn in.

Bilbo retired and wrote a book entitled; Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization.  He died in 1947.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 20, 1946. Allied withdrawal.

Labels: 1940, 1946, 1950s, 1955, 1957, 1960s, 1962, Allied Powers, Allies, Bulgaria, China, Italy, Manchukuo, Monarchy

Friday, June 18, 1926. Egyptian troops at Mecca.

Egyptian soldiers fired into a crowed of Muslims Najadis, killing 25 of them, following a protest that began when the Egyptians were playing music while carrying the Mahmal through the holy city of Mecca during the Hajj pilgrimage, to which the Najadis took offense.

It's often forgotten in the West that Islam is far more internally divided than Christianity, a fact that's aided by the fact that there is no central head of Islam.

The Fédération Internationale de Philatélie was formed for stamp collecting and other branches of philately in at Castagnola in Switzerland.

It's the oldest such organization in the world.

Princess Olga Constantinovna of Russia, 74, former Queen Consort of Greece from 1867 to 1913 as the wife of King Geórgios I, and briefly regent for one month in 1920, died in exile in Rome.

Congress was getting ready to go home.

Congress of that era, and all the way up into at least the 90s, really did work harder than it currently does.  I've heard an interview of a member of Congress who was out of office for a decade or more and who was shocked when he went back about how much real work had decreased.  It's not hard to see that the current Congress is a model of being ineffective.

I wonder, in part, if modern transportation contributes to that.  And the net definitely does.

You could get really fresh butter in Casper.

I knew that you could get locally produced butter in the 20s (and 30s, and 40s, and at least the early 50s), but I didn't really give that all that much thought.

Weirdest coffee ad ever.

And Out Our Way explored a misunderstanding.

Last edition:

Monday, June 14, 1926. The Calles Law.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Brazil, Catholic, Christianity, Cristero War, Emiliano Zapata, It was because of the Mexican Revolution, League of Nations, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Plutarco Elías Calles, Porfirio Díaz, religion

"Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act have separated. "

Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided that the killing takes place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance or assent to the adulterous connection.

Law of the State of Texas prior to 1973.

Frankly, whatever the law is anywhere now, if I were on a jury, I'd consider not convicting under these circumstances.  Of course, that's exactly why I'd never be on such a jury.  I probably would, but I wouldn't be keen on it.

Indeed, you have to take an oath that you'll uphold the law, and killing somebody is flat out wrong, but I'd not like that duty.

For that matter, I'd be a poor choice for a juror when an "ex" spouse killing a "new" spouse of his former spouse, as that is adultery, as divorce itself is a civil sham.  Same story there.  I guess I'd uphold my obligations as a juror, if I survived voir dire, which I probably wouldn't.

In some ways, the weeneyness of the current law is a shame.

Maybe the dilution of the current law is the real shame.  The old law, including the "heart balm" laws, were regarded as harsh.  They weren't harsh, they were realistic.  The decline in realism in this area since May 9, 1960, has not bee a good thing in every conceivable way.

 

We Investigated Social Security Offices. What We Found Will Shock You.

I'm not shocked.  Life in Trump's America.

People who depend on Social Security are billionaires who get trips to Epstein Island. Why would Trump care about  them?

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 132nd Edition. Voting with their feet

For the first time in US history, more Americans are moving to Europe than the other way around.

Indeed, European immigration to the US is at historic lows.  US emigration is at historic highs.

Why?

Simple, the US has become a dumpster fire.  It's no longer really a democracy but a semi democracy presently ruled by an insane (if we don't assume worst) megalomaniac who is destroying the economy.  We look like uneducated morons, which a lot of us actually seem to be.  There are absolutely no positive indicators which the US tops the charts at.  We are the 23d happiest country on the planet.  Finland, Iceland, and Denmark are the first three.  We cling to obsolete signs of greatness, such as refusing to have a national health care system and having a tax system that grossly under taxes Americans and funds a government that benefits us little, while people like Reid Rasner campaign for even lower taxes.  We've gone from being a country that had nearly no military to having one that has a bloated military that serves an insane President.

What's not to love?

Well, there is the country, but that involves being realistic, which will get you accused of being a left winger (which should not in and of itself be regarded as an insult) by insufferable twat waffles like Chuck Gray.

We are really due for an overhaul.

Ironically, the orange buffoon destroying the White House probably helps show us the way on this.  He's shown us where we have massive institutional defects.  And he's taken us off the global map as a great power and made us a second rate one.  Part of our descent into ignorance was a legacy of what was then a noble Cold War response to things, including a big military and governments that meddled bigly.  

Now we are going to have to dance to the tune of others, but the good thing is that the others are adults.

To progress at all, which doesn't mean a return to high immigration or anything of that sort, we're really going to have to get back into education, which people like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and other right wing zealots hate.  Better to be dumb is their default position.

Better to be smart, and educated, and face our problems honestly.

And the sooner the better.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 131st Edition. Ballroom Blitz

Labels: 2020s, 2025 White House Vandalization, 2026, Donald Trump, Epstein Scandal, The Second Trump Administration, White House Correspondence Dinner Assassination Attempt 2020s, Zeitgeist

A Fossil Fuel Free Future is Here.

This was obvious, but will remain unrecognized for quite some time, for the same reason that coal is almost dead, but people don't grasp it.

Average people's ability to really grasp an existential change in something is pretty poor as a rule.  It's not so much that people choose to live in the past as it is that they have no grasp that the past of their younger lives and of their parents lives, the latter of which a lot of people hold to in a sort of mythical way, evolves.  We see that a lot in the U.S. right now.

The entire imaginary economy of Donald Trump is one that's grounded in a mythical 1970s, when he was young and clubbing and men lusting after girls in their teens was basically okay, du e to the sexual revolution.  MAGA, for its part, imagines a mythical 1950s economy, not understanding why the economy of the 1950s was the way it was.  In both instances, and particularly in regard to the 1970s economy, things were not as rosy as imagined.

Coal has been dying ever since the Royal Navy went to oil for ships.  We've discussed that before here:

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

Labels: boats and ships, British Navy, Coal, Daily Living, Industry, Lodging, Mid-Week at Work, Petroleum, Railroads, Transportation, U.S. Navy, United States Fuel Administration

Coal is not coming back.  In fact, it's demise is accelerating.  Lot of the globe, including China, in spite of what a demented Donald Trump thinks, is racing towards renewables.  Trump can't really imagine it as he's 80 years old and in the 70s there weren't very many big windmills, although even then there was a push towards renewable power.

Indeed, that push was started by the Arab Oil Embargo and people have been working on the technology ever since.  Now renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels for power generation.  Only nuclear can compete.

Every since the 70s engineers have been working on electric vehicles as well. Their day has arrived.

And Donald Trump started a war that will accelerate the pace of this change, rapidly.  Trump might end up being recalled as the greenest President ever, accidentally.

The change just won't be a switch to clean electrical power, and that switch is rapidly coming and no amount of John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman calling for the mythical "clean coal" will stop it.  It's also going to be a switch away from the sort of vehicle based economy we have now.  People aren't going to stop owning cars, but already a younger generation really isn't all that enamored with them.  Self driving vehicles, as much as I hate the idea, are coming in. With them will come self driving semi tractors and more importantly, in my view, remotely driven electric trains.

There's no reason that railroads can't be controlled like giant model train layouts.  Model trains already provide the model for it.  We're not far from that day.

That day is coming now whether Donald Trump, Harriet Hageman, John Barrasso, or people with an emotional tie to fossil fuels like it or not.  Your livelihood depending on it won't matter either.

It's already happening.

 

Teen birth rates hit another historical low in 2025, CDC says

Donald Trump. Flagellum Dei?

A man who has conquered others, should conquer himself

Pope Leo the Great to Atilla the Hun.  He never did.  He died following drinking too much on his wedding night.

Some evangelical Christians excuse Trump's lack of Christian adherence by casting him as Cyrus the Vance, the Persian Emperor who was not Jewish, but who regarded himself as appointed by God and whom advanced the cause of the  the Jews.  In their minds, the non believer Trump is advancing the cause of (Protestant) Christianity.

More of his Christian loyalists, however, come from a certain Christian worldview that's very strong in the US, but only in the US, the comforting, but completely false, "once saved, always saved" view of Christianity.

It's expressed here in the misunderstood posting of one Franklin Graham.

Graham is the son of the late Billy Graham, the famous Evangelical pastor beloved by many American Protestants.  I never grasped his popularity, and perhaps things like this are why.  What Graham posts here, and what has been widely misunderstood by those shocked by the comments, is in fact absurd.  Graham espouses the minority Protestant view that you can never lose your salvation.  Believe in Christ as your savior once, and you are good to go thereafter no matter what.

This sort of view explains why so many people who attend mega churches live in such flagrant disregard for the basic tenants of Christianity, particularly the sexual tenants.  And the belief, taken from and misinterpreted from one single line in the New Testament, is completely condemned by the whole of the Gospel.  St. Paul, who specifically spoke of people losing their salvation after their conversions, would be appalled.

But for somebody as lazy intellectually as Trump, it's no doubt comforting, assuming he worried about the afterlife at all.  He's lived a life of moral dissipation but, hey, he's okay.

The belief on Trump's part is no doubt not only comforting to him, but it probably emboldens him as well.  Compared to Cyrus, backed up by the intellectually think "once saved" theology and pastors who repeatedly assure him he's on a Devine mission, and with people like Pete Hegseth in his cabinet, what could go wrong?

Well, everything, in fact.  And indeed, everything is going wrong.

And therefore, we might legitimately raise this question.  What if Trump's place in Salvation History is  not that of Cyrus the Great, but rather Atilla the Hun?

It sounds absurd, but frankly its not less absurd that he being a Cyrus the Great, and certainly no less absurd than the claims he's a "Godly man" that some of his supporters make. 

Attila the Hung, during his lifetime, was called the Flagellum Dei, the Scourge of God.  The thought was that Rome having became so sinful was being served by being whipped by Atilla by license of God.

The modern US is certainly no less sinful that Rome was from 434 to 453, the reign of Atilla.  The country still practices infanticide, something that only became legal anywhere in the US in 1970 (Hawaii).  The country has the reputation of being deeply religious but the Playboy Culture that came in starting in 1953 has lead to rampant sexual immorality and indeed sexual confusion.  The materialistic culture that started to come in during the 1950s has converted a class dominated culturally and economically by the middle class to one controlled by and for the extremely rich elite, the pinnacle of which was on display on Epstein Island.  Closeted homosexuals in office pretend they hold family virtues.  Office holders who maintain their deep love of family espouse divorce and contracept to avoid having one.  Money is everything.  We are willing to fight and die for oil rather than address the damage that it causes.  We go so far as to excuse our lifestyles and occupations, no matter what they are, surely endorsed by God, effectively mocking him.

All along, we pretend we are a devout people.

Vice President Vance, who is a National Conservative, lectures the Europeans about their losing their culture while the American Civil Religion is such a washed out version of Christianity that it must shock the listeners.  He has a point, to be sure, the West in general had engaged in massive moral decline with a life made easy after the recovery from World War Two.  But it's hard the case that the United States can look ti itself as a champion of Western values.

Which leads back to this.  

The Protestant  Reformation brought in the modern world.  It's dying before our eyes.  The United States is a Protestant country, and the United States as a great power is over.  It started to take blows when fallen away Methodist Hugh Hefner started to prostitute the image of  young women in a particularly harmful way.  As the culture became steeped in immorality, the mainline Protestant churches adopted it rather than offend.  And off in the corners some Evangelical Churches took a more radical view, with those views now expressed in the MAGA movement.

Closely related, although not appreciated to be, a culture that fell into lust naturally fell into greed.  No decent society, let alone a Christian one, would allow the wealthy the leeway they have in our society, nor would it seek to allow their unabated accumulation of wealth.  Greed and lust are, in fact, the two primary attributes of American culture.  The fact that we don't seem to realize that is because a third deadly sin has become manifestly American as well,. pride.  To state that Trump is a prideful man, and that MAGA is prideful movement, is to state the blatantly obvious.

And while we are at it, we might note that envy has now uniquely entered the picture  We evny what Denmark has in Greenland, and what Venezuela has it itself.

And look at Trump, and consider sloth. , , 

And finally, listen to Trump, on anything, and consider wrath.

These would be bad enough in one man, but when that man is elevated to the leader of a nation, that nation has endorsed it.  We, as a nation, have adopted all seven of the deadly sins as our primary national virtues.

So why wouldn't we invite a scourging, if only by our own conduct.

Nobody knows whether Donald Trump is going to Hell after his death.  That is not for us to know. Franklin Graham doesn't know. What we do know is that the Presbyterian raised Trump has lead a strongly immoral life in multiple ways even without examining the worst accusations against him, which in fact now deserve to be examined.  But the same is true of many supposedly "devout" Christians.  Indeed, the number of Christians attempting to be Christian, of all branches of the faith, is likely a tiny percentage of Christians in the U.S. overall.

What Trump is serving to do is to bring forward the hypocrisy of the American civil religion, the easy Christianity where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Sincere devout Protestant Christians have been deeply distressed by Trump.  They should be.  But there's another emotion in some quarters as well, a sort of principled schadenfreude.  I.e., knowing that everything is collapsing and taking a sort of delight in it.

That may sound deeply odd, but perhaps it isn't as much as it might seem.  The moral draft that's been going on has been going on for decades, and its been an obvious problem. The sort of worship of money that divests the middle class and which exalts economic activity above everything, including the happiness of average people and the environment, has been going on for decades as well.  The profligate use of American armed force is not new. The hypocrisy of our ruling class, now at an all time high, has been developing for quite some time.  Some times it takes a crisis for people to wake up. If they don't, they just perish and somebody less dense takes over.

Will Americans wake up?

I think they might, but when they wake up it's not going to be morning in America.  That country has died.  It was already ill, and had been very ill since the 2010s, but Trump came in like the batshit crazy anti vaxers that are part of his overall movement and administered a lethal does of ignorance and stupidity.  The country they wake up to may, in fact, be more like an old one, hopefully.  One less powerful on the international stage, and less willing to throw its weight around without the cooperation of others.

In other ways, it's going to be something entirely new.  Far right Evangelical Protestantism will not survive Donald Trump.  People like Franklin Graham and Paula White are going to be regarded as ignorant fools.  The big box mega churches will be exposed for what they are, worship service centers think on the hard lessons of Christianity.

Faith won't die, and it hasn't anywhere.  The Ancient Faith has started to revive in France, the Eldest Daughter of the Church.  The Apostolic Faiths in North America are growing as the young turn their back on the American Civil Religion and Americanism in general, seeking the real.  The Protestant Reformation was already dying, but now that death will accelerate, even if the Protestant faiths, particular those of the early Reformation, will live on, particularly in their most conservative, and frankly Catholic, forms.

Holy Week started yesterday.  We live in interesting times.

Were Muffins Less Sweet a Hundred Years Ago?

 

Movies (Television) in History: Dawson's Creek.

Over this past weekend I was horrible sick with what was probably the "stomach flu".  My wife is now.  I'll write more on that latter.

Anyhow,  I woke up in a bad state (I'll spare the details) and spent most of the weekend on the sofa, falling asleep.  

A lost weekend.

Anyhow, my wife had Dawson's Creek on, which was on as one of the major actors, James Van Der Beek  recently tragically died of colon cancer, something I relatively recently dodged the bullet on myself.  FWIW, quite a few actors who were on the series have passed away, although he's the youngest (although barely so) to do so.  It was a tragic death.

Dawson's Creek, 1998-2003, sucks.

The question would be why I put it up here at all, and I don't have that much of a good reason, but it reminds me of how television shows featuring teenagers of recent years fit a pattern.  The other one is One Tree Hill.  

Their nighttime soap operas, but they're bad, and at worst, perverted.

All the characters, even the supposedly poor ones, are fantastically wealthy living in really good conditions.  They have nearly unlimited access to wealth that most middle class families in the real world struggle for and their lives are more or less unhindered by their parents, who are portrayed as a sort of older siblings, even in their appearance.  Nobody in this world has been worn down by age and responsibilities.  They're all beautiful. There's now an ugly duckling girls or awkward boy amongst them. Their entire lives involve endless love triangles, and at least in Dawson's Creek's case, statutory rape.  They're maudlin in the extreme.

All in all, they're a really weird look at the teenage years of Americans, and its weirder than people want to look back at teenagers that way.  It says something about our society, and not in a good way. That millions of adults would follow a series that deals, at least in part, with sexual encounters of minors, is weird.  Dramas, and comedies, focusing on youth have always been a thing, but not ones that focus on youth as well funded adults lusting or longing for each other.

As a complaint about television scripts, I suppose, it's interesting that television likes to keep a couple that should obviously be a couple nearly being a couple for years, and then conclude with them not being a couple.  This can be a legitimate dramatic element, as in the Western drama Wil Penny, but if its going to be done it ought to serve some purpose.  In television dramas, it simply tends not to.  The Wonder Years, well worth watching, provides another example.

On material details, this is set on the Eastern Seaboard which I don't know much about, but nearly 100% of the people depicted are white, which I don't think realistic.  Maybe my view of the Eastern Seaboard is off, however.  Made when it was, an obligatory sympathetically portrayed homosexual couple is included.

One thing I'll add to all of this is that this entire series' view seems summed up by its horrible theme song, which wasn't written for it, I Don't Want To Wait by Paula Cole.  Sung in such a muttering style that it hard to understand, the song is a lament that the singer's grandparents had to endure World War Two and her grandfather came back physically and mentally scarred by the war, and then seemingly implied that they had not lived their lives for the moment.  The lyrics are, in part:

o open up your morning light
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive
Then see the peace in every eye

She had two babies, one was six months, one was three
In the war of '44
Every telephone ring, every heartbeat stinging
When she thought it was God calling her
Oh, would her son grow to know his father?

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

He showed up all wet on the rainy front step
Wearing shrapnel in his skin
And the war he saw lives inside him still
It's so hard to be gentle and warm
The years pass by, and now, he has granddaughters

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be...

The I deserve happiness right now and can obtain it without repercussion sort of view was a common one with younger people at the time, memoirs of Gen X.  Indeed, the show is sort of Gen X Romeo and Juliet and the ballad fits that.  That sort of vapid view has really passed into the the rear view mirror and younger generations don't have it, been afflicted, as they are, by the real world.  The shallowness of the views expressed in Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, and Beverly Hills 90210 help explain the big turn towards inward conservatism in the generations that have followed. 

Anyhow, just skip this and watch 5-25-77 instead.  

Wednesday, December 30, 1925. Ben-Hur.

The first variant of Ben-Hur was released.

I tried listening to the book as an audio book once, but gave it up.  I should either try that again, or read it.

The Association of College Honor Societies was formed by representatives of six organizations, Alpha Omega Alpha; the Order of the Coif; Phi Beta Kappa; Phi Kappa Phi; Sigma Xi; Tau Beta Pi.  While nothing compared to the post World War Two boom in college attendance, the 1920s did see an increase in it, including an increase in female attendance.

Adding an item that would have properly been posted yesterday, but we were unaware of it, on December 28, 1925, this patent was granted:

We do not wish to be crude, but we do seek to track various developments on this blog.  Indeed, that's one of its main purposes.  This is a real development. This is a sanitary belt for menstruation, a very common, indeed the normal, method of addressing sanitary concerns until the tampon became common which wasn't really until the 1970s.

Anyhow, women in their current societal roles necessitated inventions such as this.  Kotex, the primary brand, was not introduced until 1920.

Related threads:

Clothing: It was because of World War One.

Labels: 1910s, Clothing, It was because of World War One, It was because of World War Two, Men, Standards, The roles of men and women, Women, World War One, World War Two, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Women and Trousers. No big historical deal, or the triumph of the harpies in trousers?

Labels: Christianity, Clothing, Islam, religion, Standards, The roles of men and women, trends, Women, World War One, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Last edition:

Sunday, December 27, 1925. Between time.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Cartoons, Christianity, Coal, Coptic, Disaster, Mexico, Mining, Oriental Orthodox

Tuesday, December 23, 1975. Going metric.

In baseball:

December 23, 1975: The Reserve Clause Is Killed

President Gerald R. Ford signed into law the Metric Conversion Act. The country should have carried through with it, but abandoned it in 1982 when Ronald Reagan was President, the point at which, in the long history of the evolution of things, the country began its slide into idiocy, although it was hardly evident at the time.

CIA Station Chief in Athens Richard Welch, his identify recently exposed, was gunned down by terrorists in Athens.

Last edition:

Monday, December 22, 1975. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Christmas, Comedians, Gerald Ford, Growing up in the 1970s, J. Edgar Hoover, OPEC, Personalities, Petroleum, Terrorism

Seemingly missed in the story of prices at the pump being down is that the rig count is down too. And the coming economic storm in Wyoming.

Down 6.32% compared to this time last year, which means that less petroleum exploration is going on.

Presidents seem to always want to take the credit for the price of petroleum going down.  They also eschew taking the blame, and correctly at that, when the price goes up.  But because Americans are economic ignoramuses, this story repeats again and again.

Wyomingites tend to follow the price of petroleum as it directly correlates to jobs in the state.  The price must be over $58.00/bbl for Wyoming petroleum oil to break even, and really has to be over $62.00/bbl for it to be profitable.

Today it's at $55.95 for WTI and $59.72 for Brent.

Oh oh.

That doesn't seem to have made the news, but it has started to impact the field.

Part of the reason that it is going down is that investors are worried about the Trump buffoonery in Ukraine, where he's siding with the Russians, and because the US has taken up seizing Venezuelan ships carrying oil.  The latter might actually be justified for reasons having nothing to do with the murdering of drug boat crews, and it's interesting to note that the ship that was seized was seized by the Coast Guard, not the Navy which is relying on the Nuremberg defense for its actions in spite of the Government war manual actually referencing the murder of distressed crews as against the laws of war.  On the latter, Americans have become so psychologically fragile since the Vietnam War that we can be assured former sailors will be reporting that they have PTSD due to their role as hitmen in a few years, but that's another topic.  So, basically, Trump can take some credit for lower prices, but it's basically due to international investors figuring he's a rogue bufador, which he is.

Trump getting out his big box of GI Joes isn't the only reason, however.  Lots of refineries completed turnarounds, which are scheduled years in advance, and OPEC has an oil glut, things that would be causing Democrats to claim that Harris had lowered the price of oil, had things worked out differently.

So here's the thing.  How long will this slide go, and how low will it go?

Rumors, and that's what they are, are circulating that there's hopes that oil will go down to $30/bbl.  I  don't see how that can happen, absent an economic depression, and if that did occur, that's exactly what would occur in Wyoming.

For that matter, if oil stays this low, that's what's going to happen here.  

I wonder if all the MAGA loyalist here will be cheering in that event?

If oil stays down around $55/bbl for about three months, the oil economy in Wyoming will be very badly damaged.  Natural gas will prop some of it up, of course, and we really are more a natural gas explorating state now rather than a crude oil one. Still, crude is the rig count driver.

And if that happens, all the alternative energy projects which existed under the Biden Administration are drying up, the attack on them lead by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and people like Chuck Gray.  Coal prices are up, but not so much that anyone ought to be deluded enough to thinking that there's going to be a second era of King Coal.   Meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus is gutting the state's ability to fund anything.

And that is probably where we should close.  The Freedom Caucus basically would like the entire US to be a variant of 1930s Appalachia.  If this trend continues, we may get to be.

Blog Mirror and Pondering: Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

Let me start off by noting that as a rule, I can't stand Cassie' Craven's op eds.  They tend to be in your face unthinking populist, and I also resent (I'm not kidding) the co-opting of a cowboy hat that obviously doesn't fit.

And frankly I don't much like people spouting off about protecting Wyoming or what Wyoming is or was, when they aren't from here. She's from Nebraska, so that's not far off, but Nebraska is not Wyoming.  

Well, like some other populist things, or NatCon things, I'll confess that as a real conservative, and for htat matter a distributist agrarian, I find myself occasionally disturbed by a one of their members saying something that taps into something I've said myself.  This article by Craven does that:

Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

As much as I hate to admit it, and I do hate to admit it, she has a point, although in the typical populist manner, she starts off by saying something cruel to get to the point.  Indeed, it basically takes her 40% of her article to quit being an asshole before she gets to the point that 's worth considering, with this paragraph:

Welfare, in the 14^th century meant one’s good fortune, health and exemption from evil. This changed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as public assistance became a role the government took over from the private charities, which had historically helped to ensure that people fared well. Welfare was holistic, community-driven and just as much emotional and spiritual as it was physical.

The shift of society away from the church-based and community associations and toward the government was no good for our fellow man. Adding fuel to the fire were the rapid technological advances that made us distant, isolated, and serotonin-addicted.

This has addled people’s ability to engage in real conversation or romance.

Well, she's correct, sort of .

Craven seems to edge up on the point, actually and then wonder off again, being slightly mean spirited once again.  She never gets to the bigger point which is that a welfare system that creates semi permanent benefits, run by a bureaucracy, creates dependency, and corrupts.  Indeed, that was the huge difference, other than an inability to cover all who really needed help, from modern welfare and pre Great Depression charity.

Support form charitable organizations, and churches, and the like, was always very temporary.  And it tended to come with some requirements.  State funded welfare tends not to, although the GOP has attempted to insert some.  There are work requirements, of course, but it is difficult to tell how much they're winked at as the principles of subsidiarity have not been applied, so there's no real control.  In contrast, I know of a situation in which a Church collects directly for the poor and distributes directly to the poor.  In doing so, they do ask "are you working?"

And there are more uncomfortable truths as well.  Welfare has, ironically, been a major driver in the decline of Western morality, and more particularly, and arguably much more pronounced, American morality.

Prior to the current welfare regime, children were very much the responsibility of both parents, in every fashion.  We've discussed this in the context of the Playboy Philosophy and what not, but what was the case, even into the early 1980s, was that people that had children were normally married, and to a large degree, women who became pregnant out of wedlock either married the father or gave the child up for adoption (or after 1973, aborted).  Moral decay brought on by the Sexual Revolution, aided by pharmaceuticals, started to erode the two parent family however and in our current age that's pretty pronounced.  An African American commentator got in trouble a year or two ago by claiming that some women "married the government", but there's more than a little truth to that.  Kids raised in this environment are more subject to abuse by subsequent "boyfriends" of their mother, and are more likely to  be raised in poverty and declining morality.  It's simply the truth.

That in turn kicks back to society at large.  The American lower middle class tends to wade at least knee deep in a sort of moral sewer even while being horrified by those swimming in it.  This wasn't the case thirty year or more ago.  The trend line isn't good.

So, Cravens has a point.

But how do you end this? She doesn't opine on that, which is the cowardly way out.  Indeed nobody, except perhaps for those deep in the Heritage Society, is doing so.  What Project 2025 did, apparently, is to suggest an increase in work requirements, which was attempted sort of sub silentio earlier this year.  But then, the entire NatCon group in the government right isn't really willing, in general, to admit trying to bring into play any of their policies. They do them all silently while sometimes denying they're doing them at all.

Which is one of the things I really detest about the Trump Administration.  It's dishonest.  They should simply admit, if they think it, that "welfare is contributing to moral decay and we have to do something about it."

Of course, the problem here is that most Americans really don't want to do anything about the things they claim they do.  Bloated Americans who spend Sundays watching the NFL and who are living with their second or third wives or girlfriends might think about going to the megachurch once a month where the pastor is not going to equate their lifestyle with adulterous mortal sin, or preach about the dangers of wealth to their souls, and might bitch about homosexuals and the like even while being just as morally adrift, but they don't really want the responsibility of responsibility.

Of course, save for some, which explains a movement towards cultural conservatism in the young, thereby being proactive in the culture, even if not attempting to be cultural revolutionaries.

Ducking mystery solved; employee creates joy with tiny surprises > Defense Logistics Agency > News Article View

Ducking mystery solved; employee creates joy with tiny surprises > Defense Logistics Agency > News Article View: In the busy world of Defense Logistics Agency Aviation at Defense Supply Center Richmond, an unexpected yet delightful phenomenon has taken root: tiny duck trinkets, mysteriously appearing throughout the workplace, have become a symbol of joy and, Read news articles posted by the Defense Logistics Agency.

This has been going on in my office in a major way.