New Years Resolutions For Other People (and maybe some for everyone) 2020.

In some years I've done a post entitled this, in other years not.

Usually its satirical, with some seriousness.  This past year, and perhaps its just my current perception, the year has been so odd and generally negative that it'd be impossible to do one that isn't negative.

Indeed, while I've never done this before in this thread, maybe this recent article by a Wyoming journalist simply sums things up better than any article here could do:

Resolve to Childish Rules

Published on December 30, 2019December 29, 2019  in Column/Range Writing

We'll give it a try anyway.

1.  For everyone.  

A.  Accept that "I feel it", "want it" or "desire it" doesn't make it anything other than an individual feeling, want or desire.

Your own particular desires of any kind don't rise to a level of a societal need that society needs to personally ratify.

They may not even be legitimate.  Just because you want something, no matter how deeply you feel it, doesn't mean its disordered.  Just because you want to eat all the cake, for example, doesn't give you a protected right to do so and it doesn't mean you really should, for a multiplicity of reasons.  And if you do eat it all, that doesn't mean that you have to demand everyone else accept that you ate it and agree that the problems its causing you aren't real problems.

B.  Consider The Fourth Law of Human Behavior.

In addition, the time has really come for everyone to reconsider our fourth rule of behavior and really ponder it, it is:

Not every standards that used to apply to human behavior and institutions needs to be retained for all time, but it's a mistake to believe that they existed at whim.  There's trend, fashion, and fancy, and then there's long term standards.

From time to time, almost every society throws off a bunch of old standards.  When they do that, they usually declare them to have been irrelevant for all time, but they hardly ever are.  They were there for a reason.  Sometimes, they no longer apply, but that's because something deeply fundamental has changed.  Other times, the underlying reason keeps on keeping on and the reason for it tends to be rediscovered, slowly, as if its a new discovery.  People fail to think about the deep basis for standards, the really deep ones, at their behavior.  Again, that doesn't mean that some shouldn't be changed, or should never have come into existence, but even in those rare instances careful thought should be given to the matter so that the basic nature of the underlying error can be understood.

Along these lines, it might be worth actually noting that a lot of the recent horrible behaviors of all types we have "discovered", we didn't. They've been horrible all along, but we started pretending they weren't and ended up bearing the consequences.

We had less of the "Me Too" movement in 2019 than we did in 2018, but it still provides a good example.  All the misbehavior violated an old, old law of societal conduct.  Much of the reason that it doesn't go away is that those noting the misbehavior and decrying it the violation an old, old law are busy violating other old, old laws, and don't want to stop.  You really can't  accept something as deeply wrong if you don't stop to ponder why it is, that its deeply wrong.

C.  Time to consider some evolutionary biology.

When I was young I was a geology student and, as a result, I was in that class of people who studied evolution in detail.  I know that there are those who don't accept evolution, but evolution is a natural fact and denying that doesn't make it less of a fact.

In keeping with that, we have our place in that picture and we're really busy denying that right now.  It's time to get over it.  This relates strongly to the item discussed in Paragraph B above, and there's another one of the laws of behavior governing it.  We'll set that item out here:

Holscher's Third Law of Behavior.  I know why the caged tiger paces.

Everyone has been to a zoo and has seen a tiger pace back and forth, back and forth.  He'll look up occasionally as well, and the deluded believe "look, he wants to be petted," while the more realistic know that he's thinking "I'd like to eat you."  You can keep him in the zoo, but he's still a tiger.  He wants out.  He wants to live in the jungle, and he wants to eat you for lunch. That's his nature, and no amount of fooling ourselves will change it.

It's really no different with human beings.  We've lived in the modern world we've created for only a very brief time.  Depending upon your ancestry, your ancestors lived in a very rustic agrarian world for about 10,000 years, long enough, by some measures to actually impact your genetic heritage.  Prior to that, and really dating back further than we know, due to Holscher's First Law of History, we were hunters and gatherers, or hunters and gatherers/small scale farmers.  Deep down in our DNA, that's who we still are.

That matters, as just as the DNA of the tiger tells it what it wants, to some degree our DNA informs us of what we want as well.  I do not discount any other influence, and human beings are far, far, more complicated than we can begin to suppose, but it's still the case.  A species that started out eons and eons ago being really smart hunters combined with really smart gatherers/small farmers has specialized in a way that living in Major Metropolis isn't going to change very rapidly.  Deep down, we remain those people, even if we don't know it, and for some, even if we don't like it.

This also impacts the every sensitive roles of men and women.  Primates have unusually great gender differentiation for a  mammal.  Male housecats, for example, aren't hugely different from female housecats.  But male chimpanzees are vastly different from female chimpanzees.  Male human beings are as well, but even much more so.

That's really upsetting to some people, but it simply isn't understood.  If understood, this does not imply any sort of a limitation on either sex, and indeed in aboriginal societies that are really, really, primitive there's much less than in any other society, including our modernized Western one.  Inequality comes in pretty early in societies, but some change in condition from the most primitive seems to be necessary in order to create it.  So, properly understood, those very ancient genetic impulses that were there when we were hiking across the velt hoping not to get eaten by a lion, and hoping to track down an antelope, and planting and raising small gardens, are still there.  That they're experienced differently by the genders is tempered by the fact that, in those ancient times, a lot of early deaths meant that the opposite gender had to step into the other's role, and therefore we're also perfectly capable of doing that.  It's the root basic natures we're talking about, however, that we're discussing here, and that spark to hunt, fish, defend and plant a garden are in there, no matter how much steel and concrete we may surround ourselves with.

The reason that this matters is that all people have these instincts from antiquity, some to greater or lessor degrees. But many people, maybe most, aren't aware that they have them.  Some in the modern world spend a lot of their time and effort acting desperately to suppress these instincts.  But an instinct is an instinct, and the more desperately they act, the more disordered they become.

This doesn't mean, of course, that everyone needs to revert to an aboriginal lifestyle, and that's not going to happen.  Nor would it even mean that everyone needs to hunt or fish, or even raise a garden.  But it does mean that the further we get from nature, both our own personal natures, and nature in chief, or to deny real nature, the more miserable they'll become.  We can't and shouldn't pretend that we're not what we once were, or that we now live in a world where we are some sort of ethereal being that exists separate and apart from that world.  In other words, a person can live on a diet of tofu if they want, and pretend that pigs and people are equal beings, but deep in that person's subconscious, they're eating pork and killing the pig with a spear.

Nature, in the non Disney reality of it.

I frankly don't know why it is that so many in our day and age can't accept this fact and believe instead that our realities are self described and self made. They aren't, any more than they are for a jackrabbit on the plains.

C.  Time for some Distributism

I've written about Distributism here a fair amount, but this year the need for a reassessment of economics is really evident.  On one had we have the Democrats embracing Social Democracy and all the vast cost and expenses associated with it, on the other we have a roaring economy which Republicans are telling us is the best for decades.  In the middle is everyone else with a vague feeling that things just aren't right.

They aren't right as not everything is about money.  Neither the "let's all move to cubicle jobs in Big City" view of the economy or the "Government will fund all the needs you can't fund yourself view" is making people satisfied.

Having something of their own, close to home, might.

2.  The Political Parties.

It's tempting to say "just stop it", but that's too flippant.

At any rate, however, the insanity of the two party system is now more evident than ever.  You'd think that with this being the case, a third party or fourth party or something would come along, but that's not going to happen rather obviously.

With that the fact of the matter, this polarity is too much for the country to endure long term.  It has to end.

In order to end it, however, some basic facts have to be accepted by both, and one is that the absurd level of name calling can't keep on keeping on and, moreover, whoever is in the Oval Office was put there through the process we have.  Eight years of Republicans asserting that President Obama was illegitimate have been followed by (now) three of the Democrats yelling that President Trump is illegitimate.  And it goes on down from there.

As party of the need for real change, party purity tests need to stop.  The Democrats are initiating this on a national level, informally, and locally the GOP has done this formally.  Parties aren't religions and there should be room within them, particularly in a two party system such as we seem to be captive to.

Finally, government can't solve everything.  The Democratic platform basically is that it can, and that's absurd. The GOP one isn't, but the thought there is that the economy solves everything, and that isn't correct either.

Having discussed politics, let's move to religion

3.  Confusion of Faith

I know that this is a topic that people aren't even supposed to discuss, save on Twitter and Facebook and I guess on Blogs, but this is a history blog, supposedly.

None the less, we've strayed into this topic a fair amount and so we're going to discuss it here.

A.  Pope Francis

I don't know what Pope Francis' overall theme on things is, but if we were to give him a grade on his overall Papacy so far, it'd be a C at best.  His vague comments, refusing to answer questions, and the like, are causing turmoil.

It's seemed lately that the Pope has an unfortunately Eurocentric view which is missing the real story of what's going on in Christianity in general and Catholism in particular, which is exploding in growth in the third world.  I get the concern over the Western World, but the sort of weak leadership we're seeing and suggestions that we're retreating in one way or another while leaving things vague isn't helping.

I don't know what he can do about it as it seems ingrained in his personality.  But a course correction seems in order.

B.  The German Cardinals

One group that needs the course correction is the German Cardinals who are practically acting as an independent body.  Somebody needs to point out to them the fact that their leadership hasn't been working and, moreover, the day in which people really listen to the Germans on about anything is over.  What African Cardinals gather and say is more important now.

C.  The Coffins and the Marshalls

Lest this seem exceedingly one sided, the Patrick Coffins and Dr. Taylor Marshalls of the world need to really re-assess their tone and what they're saying.  I don't think any new schism are on the horizon, particularly from the Rad Trads, but if there were to be, Coffin would have to at least pause and consider to what extent his comments pushed some in that direction.  Shows that come close to stating that the Pope may be illegitimate encourage schism as are shows that are blisteringly opposed to the current Pope.

You don't have to agree with a Pope, or a President. But that doesn't mean they're illegitimate.  A person has to work within the system if its a system they declare themselves to have faith in.

D.  The Irreligious Religious

Those of all faiths who proclaim to be faithful but then omit the tenants of their faiths need to knock it off.

This is particularly pronounced in Protestant Christianity, although it shows up in "liberal" Catholicism as well, at least in the United States. Boatloads of Christian churches proclaim themselves loyal to the Gospels, except where the Gospels address sex, for example. They say what they say and mean what they mean.  If you don't like it, that means you have something to work on, not that you just omit it.

4.  The Movie Industry

Stop it with the Marvel comic movies. They're stupid. Enough already.

I should note that I've typed out the start of a thread eons ago asking why movies have become so juvenile, but I've never finished it.  I should.

5. The Television Industry

Television is stupid, and one of its stupidest acts is an assumption that its to be on the cutting edge to race to the bottom in the depictions of human behavior that involve morality in any sense. We get it, television, you don't believe morality of any kind exist.  You are part of the problem (see above regarding the old standards).

Additionally, it's time to admit, Television, that graduates of the Harvard Lampoon aren't really funny.  Quit  hiring them as script writers for television and fire the ones you have.

6.  Colorado fishermen

Is there no place to fish in Colorado?  Look for one.

7. Twitter, Facebook and Reddit Posters

You are only heard, by and large, by a small limited audience.  Posting vitriol of one kind or another just feeds our polarization. Take the year off on that and post on some interest other than politics or your concept of social justice.  Posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook change nobody's minds on those topics whatsoever.

8.  Militarism.  Enough already.

A  person has to be really touch saying anything about this as they come across as not being a patriot or not supporting the military, or the like, but the United States needs to be at the point where it seriously reconsiders the nature and status of the military it created to deal with the Cold War.

From the countries earliest history, as colonies, up until 1947 when the Cold War started, the US based its defense on having a very small standing Army backed up by state militias, combined with a standing Navy.  The Navy developed into a global force first when the age of sail yielded to the age of steam at the turn of the prior century.  That made sense, as ships take years to build, last for years, and it isn't really possible to build a Navy from scratch during wartime, although we came pretty close to doing a bit of that during World War One and World War Two. 

Armies, however, we pretty much built by having a small professional Army, very small, backed up by state militias.  Early on, membership in the state militia was compulsory, but in later years it became voluntary.  If the war was a big war, like the Civil War, World War One or World War Two, we built a large citizen Army while the Regular Army and the militia, the National Guard in later years, held the line.  That's basically the way we fought the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One, World War Two, and the Korean War.

The problem became that for much of the Cold War we were somewhere on the brink of a hot war a lot of the time.  Sometimes the Cold War broke out into hot wars, as in the examples of Korea and Vietnam, other times it just threatened to.  It's now known, unbeknownst to us, that the US and the USSR became very very close to to going to war by accident in the early 1980s, and its likely only the fact that the Soviet Union's aged leadership remained cautious about war due to their memories of the Second World War, even though they were pretty convinced that NATO was about to invade them.

The USSR is gone and the wars we're now in are much, much smaller than those of the Cold War were.  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while definitely real wars, are minuscule compared to Vietnam and Korea.

The size of the military has very much decreased since the end of the Cold War, but it's still pretty darned big. The U.S. Army has 476,000 soldiers in it, with the National Guard adding an additional 343,000 and the Army Reserve another 199,000.  In 1990 when the Soviet Union folded up its tent, the Army had 750,000 men and the national Guard nearly that, combined with at least 400,000 in the Reserves. 

So the military is much smaller, but it has a lot of problems and those problems are highly concentrated in the bureaucratic culture that naturally came about as a result of the Cold War.  The pre World War Two U.S. Army lacked that to a significant degree as it was so small and had so much to do.  The bureaucracy now ingrained in the military is highly corporate and it hurts the nation's defense.  It's not surprising that the Marine Corps, the nation's smallest military branch, is the branch that is the most martial, if you will.  Even it, however, is restrained in its internal nature by an infection of social politics that has gotten into it.

In the post Vietnam War period the Army really suffered as its cohesion was destroyed by the war.  This was much less the case for the other branches of the service but they all suffered to some degree.  Ronald Reagan, however, put the Cold War service back on its feet in its final years and in a lot of ways the military we have today dates to that period.  Reagan deserves a lot of credit for what he did at that time, but the vestiges of it have become a problem.

One of the ways that's constantly exhibited is the absurd flood of money that enters the service's coffers on a continual basis that should't.  The Army has been working on a replacement for the lousy AR rifle platform for decades now when just about anyone who knows anything about service rifles well knows that adopting something in the 6.5x55 range with an action that's something like the G3s or the FALs is what is needed.  Floods of money, however, have gone into what nearly amounts to a permanent project that produces no results.  To make matters worse, nearly any small arm adopted by the infantry branch of the Army is rejected by the Marines, whose budgeting allows it to buy something else, which is absurd.  The Army and the Marine Corps can't even agree on what boots to buy, so they don't.

The most flagrant example of things being out of control is the recent creation of a United States Space Force, which was created last year in anticipation of a need to defend our interests in space.  This is flat out absurd.  Right now the Air Force is perfectly competent to do that, to the extent we need to.  And there isn't much of a need to.

The Space Force ends up becoming our eighth uniformed service, including the Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, NOAA and the Public Health Service.  This excludes, of course, police branches of various government agencies of which there are now a plethora,  but which is a separate topic entirely.

We don't need a Space Force and never will.  If we ever need something like that, we have it handled right now.  And we also need less of a military in general and one that costs a lot, lot less.

That sounds pretty radical in this day and age, particularly with two wars still going on. But the service needs to be cut down to size now that the Cold War is over.  We could once again get by with an Army of 250,000 men backed up by a National Guard twice that size.  I won't opine on the size of the Air Force or the Navy, as I don't know enough about their war fighting needs to do so, but scaling back the cash register at this point is really necessary.

So, I guess, that's a 2020 budget resolution.


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So what did we say on this before? Well, here's the prior editions:

New Year's Resolutions for Other People, 2015

New Year's Resolutions for Other People. 2016 Edition

New Years Resolutions For Other People, 2018

New Years' Resolutions for Other People. 2019 Edition

End of the Decade and Ten plus Years of this Blog. A retrospective

Ostensibly, the first entry on this blog was made on May 1, 2009, so we officially crossed the ten year mark, by adding ten years to that date, on May 1, 2019, i.e, several months ago.

That first post looked like this:

Lex Anteinternet?

The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new.

What the heck is this blog about?

The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book I've been pondering. And part of it is just because I'm curious. Hopefully it'll generate enough minor interest so that anyone who stops by might find something of interest, once it begins to develop a bit.

May 1, 2019, in contrast, looked like this:

Ten Years?

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet?: The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new. What the heck is this blog about? The intent of this blog i...

Maybe even a little longer, as this blog was at first a highly inactive blog while I had a couple of others.  Indeed, I've wiped out versions of this blog at least twice, or rather other blogs that represent what this one became.

But it's likely ten, as this one was formed very early on, and indeed may have been the first one formed. At that time, as noted above, it was to aid in the writing of a novel.  The novel is still unfinished, and risks never being finished, even though I still intend to.  In the meantime, due to another one of my blogs, I did write and complete a book on Wyoming's history.

This month I'll also enter my 29th year of practicing law, and in fact my association with where I work goes back thirty years in the form of my first legal job, which morphed into my permanent legal job about a year later. In the interval my second legal job, the only other one I've ever had, in the minor form of being employed to write a paper with a professor that was published in a law journal, occurred. So in that sense, this month commences my 30th year in the profession I currently occupy, or I should say one of the two professions I currently occupy. It is of course the profession that I shall occupy until retirement, should I live so long, assuming I retire, which few lawyers that I know do.  Prior dreams of entering the judiciary are now slaves to the passage of time, where they'll accordingly remain dreams unfulfilled.  A path not taken not because of a choice not to do so, but because fate burned the bridge before I could cross it, that in fact being the fate of the majority of people who contemplate that career, and therefore being a fate that cannot be lamented.

The lack of progress on the book can probably be lamented, however, at least by me.  It may have to wait until the aforementioned retirement.  At least I'm not making much progress on it, other than in my mind, where I write almost everything that I write long before I commit it to the visible form.  So perhaps in that sense, there is progress.

Certainly this blog has made it much improved.  I know a lot more about the era its set in than I did before. And it's been fascinating indeed.

I've enjoyed this blog.  I hope have as well, and are continuing to.

Mid Week At Work: The good the bad and the ugly - Work for a living

Blog Mirror: No, robots are not coming for your jobs

No, robots are not coming for your jobs

So says Robert J. Samuelson.

I hope he's right.  Artificial Intelligence and electronic automation are something I do worry about.  I'm glad that I'm not young in an era in which I'll have to face it really.

Indeed, frankly, I think technologically we're over the point where our technology is helping us and its clearly hurting.  Tragically, people can't go back as they can't imagine doing so. But things are not improving in this area, in  my view.

May 1, 1919. A Red May Day

May 1, May Day, has long been associated with the far left as its the International Workers Holiday.  In 1919, with Communism on the rise everywhere, May 1 was notably Red everywhere.

The evening Casper newspaper  noting the riots in Cleveland as well as the anarchist bombing campaign.  This paper also discussed the acquisition of property with a future eye towards social services.  Costa Rica and Mexico were trying to get into the League of Nations, the paper also noted, but weren't admitted due to political instability.

In the United States, the Communist Party USA was founded, rapidly gaining membership (while always remaining a minor political party) in the wake of the decline of the Socialist Party in the United States, which had come under the eyes of the law for its opposition to World War One. 

The CPUSA would have its glory years, if they could be called that, in the 1920s and the 1930s, during which it not only was a serious, if minor, political party, but during which it was also an organ for espionage for the Soviet Union.  It never had more than 80,000 members at its peak.  It's role as an arm of the efforts of the NKVD were already known, if not fully appreciated, by some who tried to bring it to the government's attention by the 1930s, and indeed a precursor to what later became known as the McCarthy Hearings actually occurred in the late 1930s and focused on some of the same people who would be examined later, but it was not until the end of World War Two when the full horrors of Communism in Russia were revealed that the CPUSA really started to decline to the trivial, where it remains today.

In Cleveland riots occurred on this day, springing from a Socialist march that was supported by Communist and Anarchist.  The imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs was the spark that ignited that flame.  There were about two deaths as the result of the riot, and about forty injuries.

In Winnepeg construction workers went on strike.  It would soon expanded to be a general strike.

In Bavaria, German forces, supported by Freikorps, breached the Communist defenses in Munich bringing the Bavarian Soviet Republic to an end.

Cheyenne was having an air show on this day in 1919.

In the U.S. the news was also still breaking about the anarchist bombing campaign that had been started but detected.  The campaign would revive later.  It wasn't connected with any other radical group, although it likely had the appearance of that to the general public at the time.

All of this would contribute to making the summer of 1919 the "Red Summer", as it was termed by James Weldon Johnson.  It would also fuel an ongoing "Red Scare" that had commenced during World War One.  With the summer beginning the way that it was, that the scare would occur was pretty predictable.  And in fact, the far left of 1919 was not only radical, but seeing a fair amount of global success.  It's chances of success in the United States were frankly slim and always would be, but the combination of the news produced a predictable reaction.

A New Japanese Emperor

Japanese Imperial Standard.

While Japan no longer has an empire, it does have an emperor (an odd thought), and as of today, it has a new one.*  Emperor Naruhito.

It has a new Empress as well, Empress Masako, who was a career Japanese diplomat prior to marrying Naruhito.  For reasons that aren't clear to me, Empresses don't go through the formal investiture ceremony in Japan.  That may have something to do with the traditional role of the Emperor as a Shinto Priest.

Naruhito, age 59, is the first Japanese Emperor to take office since World War Two who was not alive during World War Two.  Having said that, there's only been three Japanese Emperors since World War Two, if we include Hirohito, who was of course Emperor during World War Two and up until 1989.  After Hirohito came his son Akihito, who just resigned, making Naruhito the first Emperor in 200 years to take office following a resignation of his predecessor.  Akihito was born in 1933 and was therefore 12 years old when World War Two ended.

That's significant as well in that Akihito was born into a Japanese royal family whose heirs had a technical claim to an expectation to be accorded an official deity status, although that is really fairly grossly exaggerated in the West.  The Japanese royal family dates back to vast antiquity and its origins are so ancient that they frankly aren't very well known.  The first generally recognized emperor is Jinmu, who reigned starting in 660 BC, which is a very long time ago.  Not surprisingly, with a family tree that ancient, the claim to the title of Emperor isn't completely unchallenged and there have been competing lines over time.  Having said that, the fact that the Japanese imperial family tree can be traced back that far is really impressive.

Jinmu with a long bow, as depicted in the 19th Century.

The role of the Emperor has been a hard one for westerners to figure out.  At various points in Japanese history the Japanese crown had nearly no power at all.  In the history of modern Japan, it really acquired power with Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1867 until 1912 and who, with the aid of his supporters, both modernized Japan and restored the power of the Imperial crown.  Following the Meiji Restoration the crown had power of some sort, but it's always been difficult to discern.  During the 1920s that power may or may not have waned following what amounted to a sort of right wing military coup following an attempted young officers left wing military coup.  Everyone acting in both coups claimed to be acting with the interest of the Emperor at heart.

The pivotal modern Japanese Emperor Meiji.

From the 1920s until the end of World War Two a confusing era resulted in which various historians claim that Hirohito had more or less power.  He clearly had a fair degree, no matter which view a person might take.  That came to an official end in 1945 when the Imperial crown was really saved from termination by the Allies, who found it useful to preserve it.  Hirohito retained his position as Emperor for a very long time after that, but with no real official power, although as late as a couple of decades later it was discovered that high ranking officers of the Japanese Defense Force still consulted with him on matters, resulting in a scandal.

Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito in 1945.

Hirohito, as noted, had been required to renounce claims to a divine status following World War Two but the claim was rather vague in the first place.  A more significant role was that of Shinto Priest, which the emperor always was.  The Imperial heads of state always receive the treasures of the Japanese crown, which date back centuries and into antiquity, that have Shinto significance, but I don't know if the Emperor remains a Shinto Priest as they once did.**  At any rate, the strong claims, to the extent they existed, of divinity were boosted by the Japanese military in the 20s through the 40s and post war surveys by the Japanese government found that the Japanese people had never actually believed the Emperor had divine status anyhow.  His renouncement of the claims, therefore, had no real impact on their views.

In any event, for the first time in modern history a Japanese Emperor has ascended to the thrown who was 1) born after Japan was no longer an Empire; and 2) was born after the crown had disclaimed any divinity.  A new era of some sort, in an era when monarchy remains, but its hard to tell why.

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*Having said that, it's hard to figure out exactly why the Japanese Empire is historically regarded as such prior to the 20th Century, unless you take the view that the consolidation of power in the crown in the Japanese islands themselves constitutes an empire.

As there is some ethnic diversity in the overall island holdings, that's not an illegitimate view.  Hokkaido was in fact the home of an ethnically separate people.  The Japanese started colonizing the island in the 1330s.  Okinawa is also the home of an ethnically separate people.  It didn't become part of the Japanese Empire until 1879.

**Like a lot of things surrounding Japan, the Japanese Imperial Regalia are mysterious.  They consists of a named sword, a named mirror, and a jewel. They are not as impressive, reportedly, in appearance as a person might suppose.

The sword is known to have existed as far back as the 680s, but it's older than that.  The mirror is also ancient and may or may not have been destroyed and replaced in a fire in 1040.  The jewel is likely prehistoric.

These items are not revealed to the general public and its sometimes speculated that they've been lost or destroyed.  Japan, however, is remarkable in its ability of preservation of artifacts so the better bet, in my view, is that they're all original.  They're all absolutely ancient as well.

Therefore, rather obviously, something that really occurred over the decade was the massive expansion of daily posts.  One short one started us off, and that was how things ran for a long time, with days and days between entries, and now there are days when three or four posts aren't unusual.

Having said that, anyone who stops in here has probably noticed that there are now fewer posts. The centenary of the Punitive Expedition gave us a chance to explore the topic on a daily basis, something of use to the ostensible purpose of the blog.  That naturally flowed directly into World War One and that, in turn, to the immediate post war era. But now that's gone and the daily posts have also declined.  There are no doubt those who are interested in the railroad crisis and the strikes that followed the war, and we are as well, but not enough to turn the purpose of the blog to them.  It's not as if, of course, that blog is ending, but its returning more to its original format. . . sort of.

But only sort of.  Early on this blog expanded to include a lot of other topics and it in fact absorbed a couple of other blogs that were contemporaneous with it.  We originally didn't post on social issues, news of the day or politics here. We did that on another blog we once had. We shut that one down and much of it is just flat out gone, but quite a bit of it was incorporated into this one.  Based on what we can find left of it, the very first blog didn't survive at all, so there are lost posts that would go back to 2009 if we did. But the successor blog's posts have been picked up here and incorporated in earlier years.

But what about those years?

I wasn't young when I started this blog.  I would have been 45 years old, and that's not youthful.  But I do frankly feel older now even though I'm in pretty good shape for somebody who is 56.  Indeed, I'm in a lot better shape. 

I'm a faster writer as well, although I was fast to start with.  Typing here has honed my speed which has been at use to me in all sorts of ways, although it hasn't been in terms of getting my book done. 

I've published a book since I started this blog and was commissioned for a second, but work (It ell myself) kept me from getting the second done.  In truth that book, and the novel I'm working on, don't get done in part because I write here.  It's time to devote more attention to those other efforts.  That won't stop the blog either, but it is time to see if we can get those done, if we're going to.  Who knows, we may very well not. As I often tell people when it comes up, in spite of the fact that Americans are made massively uncomfortable with it, once a man is over 30 years old, you are really living on borrowed time.  Indeed, I'm now well past the age of my father's father when he died, nearly the age that my mother's father as when he passed away, and not that much younger than my father when he passed.  That's the way thing are.  On the other hand, I'm just a bit under half the age my mother's mother was when she passed away, and my own mother lived a long life.  Only God knows how many years a person has been allotted, but they pass much quicker than a person could ever imagine.

The last decade has not, to my way of looking at it, passed nay quicker than any other for hte most part. Where I really notice it is in terms of work, in that matters I worked on a decade ago often don't seem that long ago.  But the country and society has undergone enormous changes, it seems to me, in the past ten years and most of them are not good.

It's not that uncommon for people who are past mid stream to look back and think things have gotten worse.  A lot of things have not. But the nation's social structure has as its evolved in a contra-scientific and contra-natural manner.  At some point in the last decade the political philosophy of relativism triumphed in such a manner that its now the case that people's whims, delusions and even baser desires are regarded as all important even when they rebel against the laws Darwin first set out so long ago.  It's not possible to continue to go in this direction indefinitely, and while I would have regarded as absurdly alarmist earlier on, it's now possible to seriously ponder if the very long domination of the west in the affairs of the world is ending as the western world just isn't serious any more, even if it regards itself as such.  If that's the case, the western world at this point would be in a place where it deserves that fate and would even benefit from it, being replaced on the stage by more serious cultures, many of whom have taken the best of what the western world developed over two millennia and have incorporated it into their own thinking in a serious manner.   If so, it would be the acting out, as has happened so many times before, of what Tennyson noted in stating:

The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

Of course, it's easy to have such glum thoughts in an era in which the nation's politics seem to be hopelessly adrift and the nation with it.  I recall as a child hearing such things stated during the Administration of Richard Nixon and the following Ford Administration, which was characterized by the Watergate episode and the following impeachment drama, and then capped off by the nation's obvious defeat in and abandonment of South Vietnam.  Much of the past few years has had that feel to it, and indeed much of the past decade has been like living through a second 1960s.  The 60s, which really lasted from 1964 to 1975, was an awful decade full of societal drama and decay combined with a losing overseas war that seemingly had no end to it, followed by a political disaster.  As some say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and the 2010s have had that feel to them, with societal institutions of ancient origin redefined outside of the election of the culture, an ongoing set of wars that stretch all the way back to 2001, and two political parties that are moving away from each other faster than the opposite ends of the universe.  Fatigue from that alone would be inevitable, and the pessimism that fatigue brings about.

So perhaps the 2020s will be better, and in some ways they nearly have to be.  Some things may have reached bottom or will in the next decade.  But others are not likely to.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne*?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.


For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
 
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

December 31, 1919, New Year's Eve, and . . .

contrary to widespread commentary here and there, it wasn't the last New Year's Eve prior to Prohibition.

A scene not yet arrived.  Woman pouring whiskey into a glass of Coca Cola in 1922.

That's because Wartime Prohibition remained in effect, the Supreme Court having decided that "wartime" meant until a peace treaty with the Central Powers was entered into by the United States, which had not been done.

The war was over, of course, and the Versailles Treaty had been entered into, but the Senate hadn't ratified it. A technical state of war therefore remained. And so did wartime prohibition.  This New Years was dry.

And that even where state prohibition, as in Wyoming, Montana and Colorado, hadn't taken effect.

Of course, people here and there did hoist a glass. And bootleg liquor, including deadly wood alcohol stuff, was already making the rounds.  But for a lot of people, indeed most people, this New Years would be celebrated sober.

Looking back on the 1910s

We've now completed the entire decade that is the primary focus of this blog in sort of real time, although in fairness we didn't really start focusing on things in that fashion until 1916.

It's really been interesting.

In terms of the purpose of the blog, this exercise has achieved what we started out to achieve.  The authors now know a lot more about 1910-1919 then they did previously, including everything from details on the Punitive Expedition and the Great War, to picayune details of daily living.

One thing that historians, and we can fancy ourselves that if only from a amateur point of view, tend to do when they look back on an area that they've concentrated on is to to emphasize how that decade changed things, and by saying they emphasize it, they risk overemphasizing it.  Or perhaps its that every major event changes the world in ways that are only appreciated, and large, later on.  But, having noted that risk, we'll go on to say something that's obvious but under appreciated.

The 1910s changed everything.

Things were changing anyway, and in part because they're always changing.  But the pace of change in the 1910s was blistering.  Cheap automobiles had only been introduced in the prior decade, the 1900s, but already by the 1910s they were making major changes in daily life.  Commercial air travel, something completely nonexistent in 1910, as aircraft only dated to 1903, had actually arrived in its infancy and aircraft were also starting to carry the mail.  Serious long distance travel remained the domain of steam locomotives, if on land, and would for many years to come, of course.  On the sea, modern ships now dominated, although surprisingly enough the age of sail hadn't completely passed and wouldn't for another couple of decades.

At the conclusion of the decade, 1919, horses remained a major economic factor and major means of transportation and they would continue to do so into the 1920s and beyond, but what surprised me is, by the end of the decade, the degree to which it was recognized that the day of the horse was in fact rapidly passing.

Wyoming Stockman Farmer, March 1, 1919.

That passing was causing a revolution in industry that was hugely accelerated by World War One.  The outbreak of the war caused a major increase in the demand for petroleum oil well before the U.S. entered the war, something very much accelerated due to the Royal Navy having started the transition away from coal. That latter trend is one that we're now still playing out to this day, as coal enters what is likely to be its final industrial stage, having been in a decline now for over a century.  At the same time, the 1910s really saw the creation of the Oil Age, which we are still in but which is also in a present state of transformation. The 1914-1919 demand saw an increase in the refining capacity of the United States that would impact towns like Casper Wyoming and convert them into cities with massively increased populations virtually overnight.  That same era saw the last great boom in equine farming in the world, something Wyoming participated in, which was followed by a massive crash.  1919 would be the last year that farmers enjoyed economic parity with urban dwellers in the United States.

Sidewalk stamp from 1919 in Casper Wyoming.

That the equine age hadn't passed yet, but was on the way out, was perhaps best demonstrated by the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy that we just featured this past year, but the events of The Punitive Expedition, the Mexican Revolution, World War One, and the Russian Civil War did and were demonstrating that horses remained hugely viable in the present at that very time.  Very little appreciated now, going through events demonstrated this to a great degree.  Motor transport largely failed in the Punitive Expedition.  Horses, and even cavalry, remained employed in the Great War including in France. The German 1918 Spring Offensive, in the end, failed in no small part due to a lack of horse transportation combined with the onset of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

French war dead, World War One.

On that, we might note that in an era when we constantly hear about how bad things are in our own time, the 1910s say the absolute acclimation to death.  The entire Western World engaged in a massive bloodletting on a scale that most would not are endure in our current era.  By the end of the war entire cultures were so used to it that they kept on fighting in bloody civil wars without a let up, making the war fatigue claim we so often hear about the Great War seem rather false.  In the U.S., acclimation to it was so high that the country thought nothing about sending airmen on a cross country race that featured constant fatalities.  Newspaper headlines constantly discussed death by criminal violence, and the country didn't really get that upset about massive race riots that defined 1919 in certain ways.

War dead of the Mexican Revolution, which started before World War One and continued long after.

The country was about to go into the "Roaring Twenties", but like the violence of the post Civil War American West, a question really has to be asked if the violent Roaring Twenties was hugely impacted by the violent 1910s.  Nothing in the 20s or early 30s would replicate the violence of World War One in scale and thousands upon thousands of men were released from wartime service all over the globe with little thought to what they'd been through and how that would impact them.

The 1910s also saw the massive popular onset of Prohibition, which was a movement that gained momentum in the entire English speaking world in that decade. That would help fuel the violence and lawlessness of the 1920s, but at the time to support prohibition was to be a Progressive and to be on the "right side of history".  World War One again caused the movement to accelerate and actually come into being, first as a wartime measure, in the United States.

Christmas Day edition of the Cheyenne State Leader celebrating the permanent passing of John Barleycorn.  It wouldn't be so permanent.

By far, however, the biggest event of the decade, and the one that is still with us today, is the smashing of the Old Order, brought about by World War One, in a fashion which failed to replace it with anything.  That lead to immediate, and long lasting, violence, and the reverberations are still very much with us.

The demise of the imperial and monarchical regimes due to World War One is well known, but the vast impact of it is still poorly understood, particularly because the second great war of the century, World War Two, came to define the century and the aftermath of it, the Cold War, dominated over half of it.  Given that, what occurred before seemed like a prelude when in fact the events are all closely tied and the sorting out of what occurred has still not been completed.  And this is no wonder if we consider that the Old Order was 1,500 years old at the time, in some ways.

By the Old Order, we mean that monarchical system that had dominated in Europe for most of its post Roman Empire period.  Indeed, even now, we live in a period in which the passing of that system is really very brief.  The system was never uniform and isn't anything like its commonly recalled, but its existence was remarkably long lived.

Crowned heads of states, many of whom early on never wore a crown, reentered the European scenes in the 400s as the Roman Empire collapsed.  Indeed, during that period, with the Roman Empire separated into to two governments, in the East it was itself rapidly returning to monarchy.  Following the collapse of the empire in the West, strongmen from Germanic conquering tribes evolved from heads of family groups, the kin into kings, men who were at first heads of tribes, and then of larger bands, and then in later years, that arrived in different places in Europe at different times, then of nations.  By the middle of the Middle Ages the system was unquestionable, even if the legitimacy of an actual monarch may not have been.

Charles the Great receiving the surrender of Widukind at Paderborn, 785

The acceptance of the permanency of a royal family took a much longer period to really arrive.  The post Henry VIII of the United Kingdom gives ample proof of that, with the current royal family not occupying that chair until 1714.  But that most nations would have a monarch, and that monarchs might claim more than one nation, was well accepted.

Which is not to say that it wasn't challenged and that it didn't evolve.  As early as 1215 English noble families, with that status meaning much less than it was to later, were able to force their king, King John, to acknowledge rights that went beyond the crown in the form of the issuance of the Magna Carta.  This act also establishes the permanency of the English Parliament which has existed in various forms since that time.  Parliament became stronger and stronger, as did the concept of representative rule, over the centuries and by 1642 it had become so strong that the Parliament contested the Crown for the rule of the country, suspending the monarch for a period until it was restored in 1660. That event, however, demonstrated that representatives bodies in Europe were now so strong that in Western Europe crowned heads served at their pleasure.

The Magna Carta.

That  pleasure wore out again with Englishmen, this time in the Crown's North American colonies, in 1774 such that by 1776 they declared those colonies independent and, in their following organic documents, they abolished monarch completely in favor of a conservative representative republic.  They had an advantage in their revolution, which went surprisingly rapidly from discontent to separation, in that they already had formed representative bodies and were used to acting independently already.

Declaration of Independence.

That conservative and radical concept provided an example, but in a people with no real democratic habits, in 1789 when the French, or more accurately Parisians, rebelled against their king in a revolution that would ultimately fail but which has ironically set the standard for revolutions ever since.  A person can debate whether the American Revolution or the French one really indicated that the age of monarchy had completely ended, but in truth it had been ending long before either.  The examples, if we include the English example as well, therefore, provide examples of how the end of monarchy could come about, that being either 1) in an orderly developed fashion through a process of natural evolution; or 2) violently and with the institutionalization of disorder as its feature.  The latter example, unfortunately, became a disturbingly common one.

French Charter of 1814, a bill of rights imposed upon Louis XVIII by the Congress of Vienna as a condition for his restoration.

From 1789 on various European monarchies struggled with this evolution.  The United Kingdom, which had started evolving away from monarchy by 1215, handled it best of all, having an institutionalized process for that evolution.  Many other European nations handled it much more poorly.  France went through cycles of revolution, monarchy, and republicanism, before it finally came around to permanent republicanism in 1870.  1848 saw republican revolutions all over Europe.  Other nations saw the old order retrench in their traditional governmental institutions suppressing democratic developments as much as they could, with Germany (which had only been a state since 1870) and Imperial Russia providing prime examples.

Uprising in Berlin in 1848, one of a series of republican revolutions that year which came close to creating a republican German constitutional monarchy only to see it fail due to disorganization.

Where the Old Order hung on with the least amount of surrender to a growing literate class, no matter how marginal that literacy may be, the struggle became malignant.  The difference in developments between societies that had democratic institutions that functioned and those that did not, with the latter often existing only as a bare marginal concession to the inevitable, was stark.  Everywhere, by the late 19th Century, radical challenges to the Old Order existed, even spilling into fully democratic nations that had made the transition well prior, but nowhere were these movements stronger and more active than in those nations that had monarchs who actually functioned as monarchs.  Imperial Russia, where the Czar remained as absolute of monarch as any in the Western World, provides a prime example, although Imperial Germany wasn't really far behind it.

Nicholas Romanov after his abdication.

In spite of the growing strengths of those movements, the nations of the Old Order went into war in 1914 seemingly unified and strong, and indeed the advent of the war in some ways boosted the strength of the monarchs as their populations and what functioning democratic institutions there were, rallied to their nations.  The Imperial German and Austro Hungarian crowns did not suffer from going to war in 1914, and the Imperial Russian one did not for the same.

A dapper Wilhelm Hohenzollern after his abdication, 1933.

The division of nations in terms of their development during that war was not a pure one by any means, but there was one that was notable nonetheless. Republican France and Parliamentary Britain lined up against Imperial Germany and Austria rapidly in the contest.  Various monarchies did join the Allied cause, but all of them were democracies in various degrees except for Imperial Russia, which provided an embarrassing exception until it collapsed in 1917.  On the other side, the Central Powers all featured governments that strongly endorsed central authority and a central authority that was autocratic and invested with the Old Order.  The Central Powers, for that reason, didn't find the Ottoman Empire to be an embarrassing ally the same way the Allied found Russia, as even though its underlying nature was different in every sense, the principal one that identified them, autocracy, was the same.

Halife Abdulmecid Efendi, the last Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, during his exile.  He came into the position post war and occupied it for the last two years of its existence, which came to an end in 1924.

As soon as the war's stresses became strongly manifest, a struggle which had from the very onset been touched off as a violent protest against Austrian autocracy and empire by a common man, saw working class radicalism develop everywhere in the old imperial regimes except for the Ottoman Empire, where instead nationalist and republican forces began to emerge.  Nowhere in the states most invested in the Old Order was there a long lasting society wide support of its continued existence.

Blessed Charles of Austro-Hungaria, who became the last Emperor of the Austro Hungarian Empire in 1916 with the war in progress. A devout man, he attempted to secure a separate peace with France upon ascending to the thrown.

The collapse started to come suddenly, first in 1917 in Russia where a decades long smoldering collection of underground forces and a small republican one toppled the Romanov's and then went into a fratricidal civil war against each other.  That followed rapidly into Germany where the forces of the radical extreme left made the continuation of the war by Germany and the continuation of the Hohenzollern monarchy untenable.  Indeed, as Kaiser Wilhelm went into exile in the Netherlands, the other more local German royal families rapidly collapsed as well, leaving the German Social Democratic Party to deal with the collapse, the rise of the radical left, and a war that had to be immediately concluded.  Germany descended into a brief period of civil war followed by a long period of instability until the forces of the extreme left  and the forces of the extreme right, in the new form of fascism, destroyed the country's democracy in 1932 with the Nazi Party claiming the thrown of the country.

Benito Mussolini, who became the Italian head of state in 1922.

That same story, but in a much less protracted form, had already played out in Italy, which had a parliament going into World War One but which had never been politically stable.  The Fascists toppled the elected government in the 1920s and brought in a new radical right wing order, although it allowed the King to remain on his thrown.  In Spain, which had not fought in the war, the monarch and the republican government collapsed giving rise to a bloody civil war which saw the forces of the right emerge victorious.  Portugal, another Allied power that was a republic but a weak one likewise slid into a dictatorship in the post war period.  Radicalism in Japan, which only had a semi functioning parliamentary body, caused a struggle in the Imperial army, which was divided not only politically but in terms of age, with older, right wing, officers prevailing over young, left wing ones, taking Japan into a finally highly autocratic era under its Old Order, the only one to really survive the period.

The drama also played out in newly liberated lands.  Many new countries oddly opted for constitutional monarchies, trying to somewhat recreate what they'd lately experiences, but some of those did not last long.  Poland briefly had a title to its ancient thrown, backed by Germany, but rapidly became a parliamentary democracy before becoming a practical dictatorship prior to World War Two.  Finland likewise briefly had a German monarch before he resigned in the face of the obvious and the country fought out its own civil war before emerging as a democracy.

Porfirio Diaz in 1910.

Even in North America this drama played out to a degree, and oddly somewhat before that in Europe.  Mexico had struggled since its independence with its own imperial legacy, never finding a way to transform into a functioning democracy.  In 1884 Porfirio Diaz had come to power and, while theoretically an elected head of state, he ruled as a practical imperial monarch, even appearing in his portraits as one.  In 1910, as a result of a stolen election, democratic forces rose up against him and deposed him before they descended into periods or counter revolution and revolution that would last nearly twenty years and which saw initially democratic forces slowly slide into more and more dictatorial ones until Mexico emerged in the 1920s as highly left wing single party state.

Plutarco Elias Calles, who would be the Mexican head of state from 1924 to 1928 and whose extreme left wing policies would lead to the Cristero Rebellion, the last phase of the Mexican Revolution.

All of this is highly significant as it makes the 1910s one of the most pivotal, and perhaps the most pivotal, decades of the 20th Century and modern history.  Vast portions of what was destroyed in terms of intellectual and societal deposit has never been recovered, restored or replaced and the struggles of the subsequent decades have failed to fill the vacuum.  It's common to note that the results of World War One brought about World War Two, and then to note, often in other works, that the conclusion of World War Two brought about the Cold War.  But in fact the cause and effect of the 1914-1918 disaster were far greater than that, and vast as those stated implications are.

A large Portuguese crowd observing the Miracle of the Sun on October 13, 1917. The events of Fatima were extraordinarily well documented and widely participated in.

In May through October 1917 three Portuguese children claimed to receive visitations by the Virgin Mary, the authenticity of which is widely accepted by Catholics as well as some Orthodox.  As a feature of those visitations, they claimed to have received three messages.*  Among the content that they included in the messages they received was:

If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.

That the war raging in 1917 was to end is obvious to us know, as it ended in about one year following the visitations.  That a worse one greater than the first occurred is of course obvious to all.  And that Russia, the flagship of Communism spread errors around the globe is easy to see as well.  But many have debated what the full extent of those errors were and the degree to which the errors coming out of the cataclysmic of 1914-1918 continue to manifest themselves to this day.

King Alfonso XIII of Spain, whose monarchy was abolished in 1931, only to fall into civil war in 1936.  The Nationalist had no desire to restore him to his thrown.

What is clear is that the strong resistance to the end of the cycle that imperial regimes exhibited from the 1770s onward built up like steam in a sealed vessel before it exploded in 1917.  By that time, that sealed political steam was not only explosive, it was corrupted and infected in that same atmosphere by a radicalism that countries that had developed no democratic habit could contain.  Even in those countries that were democracies, but which were weak ones, such as post 1918 Germany, Italy, and Spain, they proved impossible to contest and contain.  The festering of the far left would bring evolution across the globe from 1917 forward until the Soviet came to an end on December 26, 1991.  The festering of the far right would bring the world into a Second World War in 1939, assuming that earlier imperial far right wing malignancy in the Far East isn't included, in which case the world descended in 1932.  It would take that Second World War and millions of additional deaths to put to an end of the rise of a global far right fascist movement which, while extremely distinct in many ways, shared some of its most malignant traits, including a fascination and advocacy of the application of death, with the far left of Communism.

While that struggle is seemingly now concluded, what was never fully restored was a concept of humanity and natural order that existed earlier on.  The change came too rapidly to be coherent in that fashion and the forces that claimed an organic reason for their positions had not had them exposed in the full light of day before they were let out to spread like viruses.

Indeed, in some remarkable ways, no matter how different, and indeed they were radically different in a plethora of ways, most of the political and societal theory was that governed the globe's societies prior to 1910 may have been, they did have some central principals.  Most of these principals remain, but because of the radicalism of the 1917 explosion, nearly all of them have been challenged, most wish very little thought given to what that challenge meant, and nearly all without the influence of any scientific thought into them.  Indeed, on the latter, social theories that were bootstrapped into political ones of the late 19th Century and early 20th were often justified in the name of "science" when they were quite contrary to it, with horrific examples of the same playing out in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.**

It's always tempting, of course, when looking at an era that you're studying to conclude that that era was the conclusive one to history.  There are so many "pivotal decades" and the like claimed that they can't all be true.  Indeed, perhaps no one claim is really true as history is a stream, not a canal with a series of locks.  Having said that, the 1910s saw a lot of history vastly accelerated, diverted, and broken.  The world has been different since then, and in many ways that are not good ones.  The forces unleashed in the 1910s were akin to opening Pandora's box, and we've never been able to put the disorder that the decade saw released back into any state of order.  Many of the ills and confusion that we experience today have their origins in that fateful ten years.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*Sister Lucia, the only one of the three children to live into adulthood, recounted the messages as follows:

Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror. 

 You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fátima, on 13 July 1917 was as follows.

I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. 

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

It was later noted that:

The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction. Therefore we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”, such as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981 was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation. Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them.

The Fatima apparitions are widely accepted by Catholics and are also accepted by some Orthodox, as noted.

**The primary example of this would be how the science of genetics morphed into the social and pseudo science of eugenics, which in turn provided a pseudo scientific basis for Nazi racial policies and, ultimately, mass murder.

A lessor, but still disastrous, example would be the "scientific" nature of the Communist economic model which purported that history itself was subject to inviolate economic laws, all of which coincidentally justified the Communist economic model.

Many other such examples, we'd note, in all 20th Century societies, exist.