2020 Election Post Mortem XII: Where does that leave Wyoming?

I started this right after the election, and last typed on it, before now, on December 8.  

My how things have changed since then.

On December 8, it was easy to suppose that the Republicans would win in Georgia and we'd have divided government.  Even if we didn't, the Senate divide would be so close that it would have been unlikely, we would have supposed, that there's be any really divisive Biden agenda.

And then Donald Trump started to refuse to acknowledge defeat and to spin lies about winning . . .and things in Georgia and the nation started to look different.  So we held off, as the tide was changing

Then came January 6 and a Trump inflamed insurrection in Washington D. C..  The first real strike at the government since 1860 and the first insurrection of any kind since 1917, which came on the same day that Trump's extreme insistence that he won, or his extreme lies on the same, brought the Democrats into control of the Senate.

Things are sure different now.  Indeed, I've just posted on that:

2020 Election Post Mortem XI. The Post Insurrection Administration and Congress.

Here's what I'd last written in this thread, before all the turmoil and the insurrection:

So now that the semi delusional youthful street dancing and spontaneous celebrations are over, the dust settling, and AOC contemplating becoming a homesteader in the realization that the past election wasn't a left wing tidal wave, where does that leave Wyoming?

Wyoming, as has been noted here before, has been a Republicans state since its inception.  Only in the wake of the Johnson County War have Democrats controlled the state, and only then briefly. Still, the state once had a serious Democratic Party and it wasn't all that long ago that it had a Democratic Governor.

Starting in the 1990s, something really began to change, as we've noted before.  During the Clinton Administration, the state's Democratic Party began to die.  It was in real trouble well before Barack Obama became President, but it more or less completely collapsed during his two terms in office.  It rebounded just a bit this cycle, which may or may not mean much.

In the meantime, Wyoming has become a one party state, and that party has been the GOP.  But as with any democratic body, the formation of what George Washington termed as "factions" is inevitable, and during the last eight years the Wyoming GOP has become badly split into two factions, one the old time "mainstream" Wyoming GOP, and another an insurgent nearly alt right GOP.  That latter faction is on the rise and it gained ground in the last election, as it has the last few before it.

Now what?

Well, what we know is that the US opted to go right down the middle of the road.  If we don't have a divided government after the January runoffs, we darned near will.  All politics is local, of course, but the country seems to have moved to the right, sort of, while opting to have a slightly left brake on things.  Or it really moved slightly to the center right and just voted to hold Donald Trump in personal contempt.

What it didn't do, however, is take a giant jump to the right.

If you'd listed to the 2020 campaigns in Wyoming you'd have been justified in believing, at least occasionally, that we were preparing to take Washington D. C. in a Trump populist storm.  Cynthia Lummis campaigned her support of Trump, and against Progressives. The Democrat Progressives are now in disarray but Trump is leaving the White House.

So what does this all mean for Wyoming?

It means we probably better rethink some things.

It probably means that one of the really big issues here, gun control, is amazingly back off the table, which I wouldn't have predicted just two months ago. There's not going to be Congressional support for that, so as an issue, it's probably in the background once again.

It will mean, however, that oil, gas and coal are not going to be favored industries.

It isn't as if they actually were in Washington in the first place.  The Trump Administration did do a good job of addressing a lot of regulatory burdens 

Solid analysis, in my view, in early December.

And wrong now.

Big changes are coming, and the state's in for a gigantic shock. 

The state and its political leadership is largely unprepared to handle any of this.  On the same day that insurrectionist stormed Congress the head of Wyoming's Republican Party, which as steadfastly supported the administrations absurd and dangerous fantasy that Donald Trump would still get a second term after he'd obviously and clearly lost, was in Washington D. C. at the gathering that developed into an attempted coup or something like it.  Cynthia Lummis, the newly elected Wyoming Senator, voted, even after the attempt to force the defeated President into an illegitimate victory, to reject Pennsylvania's electoral vote on a basis that, if it had logic to it, would have made her own election invalid by implication.  On the same day the most conservative members of the Wyoming legislature were at a protest in  Cheyenne demanding that the two remaining members of the Wyoming delegation in Washington, Senator Barrasso and Congressman Cheney, be hauled in front of the legislature in order to explain their allegiance to the Constitution rather than their support for a doomed effort to subvert democracy.  

By todays' date, the new world and what means is starting to sink in.  Ted Cruz of Texas who could imagine himself as the Presidential candidate for the GOP in 2024 is defending himself against cries for his resignation and he is now likely to go down in defeat in his next Senatorial campaign to a candidate much to his left, something he only barely held off during his last election.  Cynthia Lummis is explaining away her actions on the basis that she didn't intend it to actually defeat the Pennsylvania vote.  The head of the Wyoming GOP has urged everyone to wait until the facts are all in, which they have been since the very day of the event, but he's also noting that he was back in his hotel before the insurrection commenced.  The head of the Wyoming Democratic Party has called for Lummis to resign.  Other Republicans are being quiet hoping the storm will blow over.

Democrats are not going to suddenly sweep into office in Wyoming. The party has gone much to far to the left.  There's a reason that Wyoming hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since the last one left in 1977.  But that doesn't mean that Wyoming Republicans should take comfort in that.  

Indeed, it may be noticed that two of Wyoming's counties have become Democratic in the last few years, those being Teton County and Albany County.  Fremont County remains a heavily Democratic County as well, a legacy of its earlier blue collar status and also due to the fact that the Wind River Indian Reservation, which contributed a candidate to the House of Representatives race this past year who took about 25% of the vote, a not unimpressive result in context. The Democratic challenger to Cynthia Lummis took about 30% of the vote, which is also impressive in context.  Republicans running form Teton County and Albany County, and perhaps Laramie County, now will face bigger challenges than they did previously.

But beyond that, much more is now going to occur.

Within the Republican Party itself in Wyoming the open spit that now exists in the party nationally had already developed by 2018. The insurrection by the Trumpist populist wing will spill back into Wyoming and quickly.  Chances are that the now minority establishment wing, in the Wyoming context, will hit back and quickly as the insurgent populists, living here in isolation, are going to choose Trump as the hill they are going to die on.

And the party itself may die.  There's a very good chance that in the next couple of weeks to the next year the national Republican Party becomes two parties.  If that occurs, it will occur in Wyoming as well.  The insurgent wing in Wyoming is very well funded, and indeed its funding explains its rise, but if that occurs, the conservative establishment party is likely to become the majority party in Wyoming and the Democratic Party will definitely revive.

Irrespective of that all of the things that the Republican Party has used in Wyoming as talking points and stalking horses are about to actually occur.

Prior to the election The Economist, the respected European center right journal that has wide intellectual circulation in the United States (since the demise of The New Republic) flat out urged for an end to coal as a fuel source.  That will now be the official policy of the United States and there will be steps taken to bring that about.  Coal leasing on Federal lands is now over, at least for four years.

Oil and gas leasing may be over, on Federal lands, as well.  Knowing that this might be coming, and throwing out a bone to part of its industry support, the Trump Administration rushed through a lease sale in Converse County that has already occurred.  However, that's now been challenged in Court.  Should the challenge prevail, that sale is likely dead if the new administration chooses to cease oil and gas leasing.

If both of these things come about, in a state that has as much public land as Wyoming does, the mineral era in Wyoming is effectively over. There will still be oil and gas exploration on private lands and on state lands, but the lands available for the extractive industries will be reduced beyond measure.

All of that sounds dire, and for Wyoming's budget, it will be.  It's possible, of course, that oil and gas leasing, and in particular exploration for gas, will continue on. But it shouldn't be presumed that it will be the same.  In part it will not be the same as the new administration, now unleashed due to the insurrection, will definitely "go green" in transportation.

This is something that is already happening and industry is well aware of it. But the state has been insistent, at the street level, that it just won't.   The common statement that "well you can't go into the hills with an electric pickup" never really was any kind of an argument in a nation where most vehicles haul kids to soccer games.  But the argument is about to simply not matter.  Sympathy for the argument wasn't supporting the industry anyhow, which in actuality gets by largely on its own.  But an administration that's actually hostile to it and which will seek to accelerate the change to a carbonless world, which the Biden Administration will do, will have a real impact on the state.

Indeed, Wyoming hasn't faced a financial disruption of this type since the Great Depression and it hasn't seen an industry disruption like this since World War Two.  We're not prepared to handle it.  The legislature has been struggling with revenue issues for several years but without much success.  There's no reason to believe that they'll be successful this year.  Next year, however, may present a new world that can't be ignored.

Additionally, much of the regional conservative and populist (and they aren't the same) projects are about to be frustrated, probably permanently.

The anti Wyomingite "take back the land" movement that's been a feature of the hard right in Wyoming is now dead at the Federal level. That movement was always a horrifically bad idea, but its over.  Indeed, the state can now expect an expanded Federal presence on the Federal domain with some land being permanently "withdrawn" from development.  There will be a renewed emphasis on the "multiple use" aspect of the Federal domain that Wyoming hasn't really seen since the 1980s.

An issue much on the mind of many Wyomingites, gun control, will actually be back for the first time since the Clinton Administration and there will be legislation without a doubt.  Conservatives and populist have long decried Democratic support for gun control but in reality the Democrats have done nothing on the topic since the 1990s and there's been less gun control in the nation since that time since at any point since the 1960s, save for some measures actually brought in under Trump.  That will now end as the insurrection has evaporated Democratic tolerance for this topic overnight.  Gun control will be back and new gun control measures will pass Congress in 2021.

The Democratic Congress will also be a boon to left wing social positions that conservatives have long held, but which they've been uneven in making progress with the public on. These issues are national issues, not unique to Wyoming, but Wyomingites are now going to have to accept a retreat on some conservative advances that have been made over the last twenty years and an acceleration of some liberal or progressive advances that have been made in the last twelve years.  Indeed, if the Democrat's have a worm in their apple, it is that they'll be tempted to push these hard and potentially provoke a conservative counter reaction by 2024.

And its 2024 that all eyes are on now.  The GOP came out of the last election nationally figuring that they might take the House in 2022 and the Presidency back in 2024.  They might do the latter, if they still exist as a party, but its far less likely.  Indeed, they'll likely lose seats in the House and Senate in 2022 as they're likely to still be in disarray at that time.

And locally, it'll be about 2022 when the results of what just occurred  last week really start to sink in here.  The Federal Government doesn't care about Wyoming's budgetary woes and it doesn't care about the economy of a state where fewer people are employed than in a mid sized Mid Western city.  They also don't care about our "lifestyle" and those who have now come into power know that politically we're irrelevant.  It's only in our own self isolation that we imagine that we matter.

And peoples that don't matter have the unfortunate task of making themselves relevant by some means or reinforcing their own irrelevancy.  

It's a new world now.  What we make of it is yet unknown.

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, Old Highlands Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, Old Highlands D...: 

Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, Old Highlands District, Denver Colorado.

This is the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church in the Old Highlands District of Denver, Colorado.  The church was built in 1890 and at the time it was built, it had no surrounding structures.  The Gothic style church is still a Methodist church today.

2020 Election Post Mortem XI. The Post Insurrection Administration and Congress.

Actions and words, we're told, have consequences. And we're told that because they do.

During Trump's rise to power and during his administration his biggest ally in the press has been Fox News, which for the most part has reliably been on Trump's side.  That started to come apart after the election during which Trump's increasingly extreme efforts to deny the reality of his loss grew, but even then they still supported him when they could conscience it.

A couple of days ago a Fox commentator, Ainsley Earhardt made this observation on her show Fox & Friends:

There are 75 million people that voted for President Trump. And they are scared. They are worried about what the future of this country looks like. They are confused and heartbroken that their candidate didn't win and they don't want to be forgotten.

She was pretty rapidly shouted down in the media.

That doesn't mean that Earhardt isn't right.  Indeed, she largely is, although the 75,000,000 figure for the brokenhearted and scared isn't correct.  Donald Trump did receive 75,000,000 votes, but some of those votes were from lukewarm supporters who won't cry over his departure now.  Quite a few conservative voters felt that Trump was the only option they had, which doesn't mean that they otherwise were his fans.  Catholic and other Apostolic Christian voters often felt they had to vote for him as, ironically, his Catholic opponent seems to stand for principals that are deeply contrary to their moral beliefs, but quite a few of them otherwise found the President to be repulsive.  And Donald Trump's actions following his November defeat have turned quite a few of his former supporters definitively away from him.

That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't have a lot of support.  The down ballot results for the GOP show that the populist wing of the Republican Party definitely had a lot of support going into the November election, although it lost some in formerly Republican Georgia as a result of Trump's behavior.  It's no doubt lost more now.

Still, Earhardt has a point.

Populist and conservative voters, and the two may overlap but are not the same, have a real reason to be scared, worried, confused and heartbroken.

And the reason for that is that Donald Trump's post election behavior has brought in a united Democratic government that's not only united by party, but united against Trumpism, and licensed for radicalism to a large degree.

In other words, since the election, Donald Trump has machinated for reasons that are difficult to discern, but which seem rooted in narcissism, to bring about the very situation which he claimed to be the one who was protecting against it.

Early after the election we did a series of "post mortems" on where it appeared things were headed, but we did note that the Georgia election would determine a lot of that.  What we didn't see was an insurrection and an administrative support for it that has caused some overseas to regard it as an attempted coup.  

And that changes everything. . . probably.

We really only have three examples of something like this, with one so old as to be probably not worth really discussing in this context. The three would be the post Revolution government of the United States, the second the post Civil War, and the third being the post Watergate.  

The post Watergate is the most analogous.

We don't remember very much of what occurred in the US after the American Congress won the war against the United Kingdom.  What we do tend to recall is the prolonged effort to work out a form of government, which was messy and which involved a lot of infighting.  We won't go into it in detail, but it's worth noting that we commonly hear about the American Revolution was that it was a "conservative revolution".

It wasn't.

The American Revolution was a radical revolution based on the concept, by its end, if the people being sovereign.  It was framed, however, by a largely common culture that had largely shared values and a preexisting governmental structure.  It's overall thesis; monarchs meant nothing and the rights of individuals as expressed through legislators was radical.  The country rejected the concept of monarchy and the rights of monarchs entirely.  It also adopted a type of nationalism that is prior sovereign had not expressed and would not for many years.  It went so far as to see the severance of the dominant church, the Church of England, which claimed apostolic succession, from its acknowledged head, an act of near schism that went along with the Revolution.

Following the Revolution the country did adopt an orderly form of democracy that we retain, with modifications, today.  But it also expelled Loyalist through community action and kept them out through legal process after the war, turning large numbers of Americans into refugees simply because they took loyalty to the legitimate government seriously.  It's not well remembered now, even though it was a dramatic hostile act at the time, and it formed the real origins of Canada, through loyalist refugee communities.

Tory Refugees by Howard Pyle for Harpers, 1901.

Following the Civil War, in contrast, the nation rejected the guidance of the Radical Republicans.  The Radical Republicans would have reformed the South by dispossessing the rebellious large property owners, vested the land in the former slaves, and would have tried significant rebels for treason.  It's often believed that President Lincoln's kindly view of his defeated countrymen kept this from happening, but I frankly doubt it.  Had Lincoln lived the shrewd lawyer and politician likely would have adopted some of the radical desired policies and indeed, the nation should have.  

Most of the Radical's policies were not, however adopted and by the 1870s, a very short time after the war, the nation was giving up on Reconstruction in general. The Compromise of 1877, which has been in the news again, was a result of that as the election of 1876, expressed its final end.  From 1865, or even earlier in some instances, the victorious Union did attempt some reforms in the South, but gaps in their enforcement caused a beaten population to revive, combined with Congress quickly readmitting the recently defeated Southern representatives to Congress.  This had resulted in a tight election in 1876 and the Southern Congressmen, writing the script for which we just witnessed again in 2021, attempted to hold up certification of the results.  

In 1876/77 the effort was much more successful than the one which was just experienced in 2021 and the Republicans compromised by promising, unofficially, to end Reconstruction and withdraw troops from the South.  During the 1865 to 1876 period real progress had actually been made on advancing the rights of blacks and poor Southerners, but it all evaporated over the coming decades and it wasn't until the 1960s that real progress would return.

There are a couple of real lessons from the post Civil War era that should be instructive here.  One is that a victorious side in a real dispute was essentially lead by those only committed in concept to a principal, that being restoration of the Union, and who were only weakly committed to the remainder of what had been fought for.  That is, while the war was over slavery, commitment to reconstruction the South was only barely there a decade after the traumatic event that brought it about.  In 1865-70 the will to really remake things was strong, but by 1871-76 that will had faded.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the failure to really overhaul the South after the Civil War is, in spite of how it might be remembered now, one of the nation's great historical failures.  From 1876 to 1900 the nation crept back into a type of virulent racism that disenfranchised blacks whose legal rights had only barely been established.  The entire civil rights movement of the 1960s would really have been completed during the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century had that not occurred, and the disastrous result of the failure to remake the nation in the late 1860s is something we are still living with today.  Indeed, had we handed the post Civil War reconstruction correctly, we might have avoided what occurred last week.

The bloody flag of treason which has spread in recent years throughout the country.

The final example we have, and the most analogous one, is the Watergate scandal.  And is lessons are the ones that should worry conservatives and populist now.

The entire Watergate break-in episode was a wholly avoidable example of stupidity by overzeals paranoids.  The nation was going to support Richard Nixon's reelection in 1972 and the Democratic Party lurching to the left in the wake of 1968 and all that had occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s was going nowhere.  But the break-in followed by Nixon's complicity in trying to cover it up brought him down and the Republicans with him.  It also swept into power Democrats who were far to the left of their predecessors.

They were there already, but they weren't in control of the overall party.  The Watergate scandal changed that.  Following Nixon's downfall Democrats swept into control of Congress, although ironically the Presidential candidate whom they chose to run in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was really a middle of the road politician.  Carter likely saved the country from going deep hard left in the 1976-1980 time frame, both by the fact that he wasn't a radical, and by the fact that he was a pretty ineffectual President.  Four years of Carter were enough to allow the Republicans to reorganize and come back with Ronald Reagan in 1980, and it also started the formation of the modern Republican Party and its bipolar personality.  Reagan was a conservative, but he stoked the flames of populism and the GOP further abandoned a long standing support of strong civil rights so that it could make headway with Southern voters who remained deeply resentful of changes brought about in their region in the 1960s and 70s.  An ineffectual management of the economy, moreover, by Nixon, Ford and Carter aided in Carter's downfall.

President Carter with Roslyn Carter and Hyman Rickover.

What that lesson tells us is that in a very brief amount of time real left wing Democrats were able to make major inroads into Government.  Some of them still remain there today.  Their period in control was actually surprisingly brief, but it was preceded by an advance in their fortunes during the 1960s and was made real by the collapse of a center right President due to scandal.  Voters were disgusted with Republicans and punished them at the ballot box in 1976.  They got over a lot of it by 1980, which is really amazing in context.

Nixon had his supporters right to the end, and even after, and even today.  But much of that support was lost pretty quickly and Gerald Ford's actions in pardoning Nixon wrecked his chances at reelection.  Democrats in Congress who were mad at what occurred lurched left.  Even during President Ford's administration he didn't attempt to stop that direction as it was unstoppable.

And that's where I suspect we are right now.

Joe Biden goes all the way back to that era, but he's really an East Cost centrist Democrat, just as Jimmy Carter was a Southern centrist Democrat.  Like Carter, however, Biden is going into office with a now invigorated Democratic left.  Right now, while he has a unified government, it's only barely so, but a lot of Republicans, just like Republicans in 1973, have become disgusted with their President.

Moreover, Donald Trump has actually managed to make Richard Nixon look good.  Nixon was paranoid but he didn't attempt to retain power and actually resigned, rather than be impeached and convicted.  He didn't have the support of his party at that time, of course, and he knew it, but Trump has rapidly lost much of his support in Congress as well and doesn't seem to acknowledge that other than to lash out at those who have left him.  Nixon's GOP, however, remained largely intact in 1976 and reorganized, with an insurgent wing that still remains, by 1980.  That new party, part establishment and part populist, just ripped apart and is only barely a single party.  There's a good chance that it will split into two.  

So, here's what I think follows.

At this point, Biden has no reason not to go as left as he wants to and there will be no real hindrance to him going as far in that direction save his own inclinations and those of Democrats who are really in tightly contested regions.  All the warnings and crises about "Socialism" and the like mean utterly nothing whatsoever right now, and they won't for the rest of the year.  Ironically, therefore, Donald Trump has brought about the very situation which he used to stoke the flames of his support.

Moreover, Biden is beholding to his party's left and has now lost the argument he had for not giving it much of what it wants.  He can't maintain that a divided government forces him to play ball with the GOP in the same way he could have before last week.  He can still make that argument, but it's much weakened as the Democrats can get their legislation through unless they themselves do not support it.

And this means that we're going to get a lot of pent up Democratic legislation. There will be new environmental regulation and it will go much further than anything prior to it. There will be gun control.  Policies favoring abortion and new categories of sexual identity are going forward.  The courts are now going to take a giant leap to the left in terms of new appointments.

The country isn't going to be completely made over, but much of it is.  And the people the country can thank or blame for that are those who stormed Congress last week.

Poster Saturday: A Lifelong Job

 

The horror of progress.

The horror of progress can only be measured by someone who has known a landscape before and after progress has transformed it.

Nicolas Gomez Davila

Friday Farming: From 1941.

 

January 8, 1941. Death of Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts.

January 8, 1941 date stamped on reverse.

Lord Robert-Baden Powell, 1st Baron Baden Powell, died on this day in 1941 in Kenya.  He was 83 years old at the time.

Baden Powell was a British cavalryman who founded the international "Scouting Movement" and who lived to see it rise to enormous popularity during the "Muscular Christianity" era. Creation of the movement was a result of his experiences in the Boer War in which he admired the scouting skills of troops raised in the region and those recruited or otherwise from North America.  

First issue of Scouting for Boys, 1908.

At the time of the movements founding Baden Powell, the son of a professor who was also an Anglican Priest who died when he was three  years old, had already served a long and distinguished military career, but its for the creation of Scouting that he is principally remembered.  The movement became enormously successful almost immediately and from its inception until some time into the 1960s it was a very significant youth organization for boys.

Illustration by Baden Powell form the Wolf Cub Handbook, 1916.

Baden Powell was also instrumental in the formation of the companion groups for girls, but he likely would have been  horrified by later developments in Scouting, including the scandals associated with the Boy Scouts USA in later years and the co-ed nature of the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts today.  Indeed, there's a lot of say for his original vision of the organization over its current form which sought to bring bushcraft to youth who were losing it and which was an outwardly Christian organization.

Lady Olave Baden Powell, widow of Robert Baden Powell.

Married late in life, he left a widow 36 years his junior and three children, ages 8, 6 and 4.

The RAF bombed Naples.  Thai forces advanced against Vichy French forces near Siem Reap.

Other events in World War Two, including Canada's decision not to enlist Japanese Canadian citizens into its armed forces, can be read here:

Today in World War II History—January 8, 1941

And also here:

Day 496 January 8, 1941

On this day, this old building in Morristown, New Jersey, was photographed.

And more employees of banks and trust companies were as well.

January 8, 1921. The death of Lt. Langdon.

On this day in 1921 Japanese sentries shot and killed United States Navy Lieutenant Warren H. Langdon in Vladivostok as took leave from a group of Russian friends who were celebrating Christmas on the Orthodox calendar.  

Langdon was walking down the street at night with a "hand lantern" on his way back to the USS Albany when he passed by a Japanese post. A Japanese soldier stopped him and Langdon, dressed in his uniform, identified himself and proceeded. The Japanese soldier shot him in the back, killing him.

USS Albany, a "protected cruiser".

Japan apologized for the incident and court martialed the soldier involved.

Japan had a significant military mission in Siberia at the time and was aggressive in its presence there.  The overall military mission of the Allies in Siberia had always been vague, but Japans had territorial asperations as a backdrop and they retained a presence there long than other Allied nations from World War One.

The 25th Amendment.

You've been hearing about it, what does it say?

Well. . . :

AMENDMENT XXV   

SECTION 1

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

SECTION 2

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

SECTION 3

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

SECTION 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

There's talk of invoking the 25th Amendment.  Frankly, there's good reason to do so. The President is acting contrary to the law and appears to be unable to accept reality.  An inability to accept reality is delusional by definition.

This would assume, of course, that President Trump really believes he won the election.  If he doesn't, and he likely really doesn't, he isn't delusional, he is instead seditious.

Taking Trump at his word, however, would suggest a strong element of delusion. And a delusional person with his finger on the nuclear trigger is a danger to himself, others, and the entire world.  Given that that, the 25th could be invoked.

If invoked today, and there's discussions going on to do just that, President Trump would be immediately removed from office.

He'd no doubt right a letter than he's okay.  

Vice President Pence, who reportedly feels betrayed by Trump due to abuse he received from him yesterday, would have to write a letter back that, no Trump is not okay.

Congress would have to assemble within 48 hours to discuss it.

What would Congress do?

Well, nobody knows.  Clearly at least half of the House and cleanly half of the Senate would uphold the removal.  But upholding it would require about 25% of the Republicans to go along.

Right now, they very well might.

Of course, Congress wouldn't really have to do anything.  It has 21 days, and there aren't 21 days left in the Trump Administration.  Simply scheduling hearing, calling witnesses, and frankly under the current circumstances requiring Donald Trump to undergo a psychological IME, would take more time than that.  Chances are, quite frankly, that the hearings would simply roll through the inauguration and into an ultimate criminal charge if the President was deemed fully in control of his faculties.

There'd be more riots and insurrections.  More absurd claims that Trump won the election, and probably more state legislators making arguments better heard in Munich in 1932 than in the United States at any time in its post 1860 history.

So there's the risk. Does it do more damage, or less, and is it justified?

But here's another factor.  Just like the German army officers who in July 1944 carried out a plot against Hitler as they wanted the world to know that there were Germans who didn't agree with what was going on, the GOP might have to take this action now to save itself.  

We'll look at it further, but right now the GOP has probably less than a 50% chance of surviving the past week.  It's now two parties, one a conservative party and one an insurrectionist populist party.   That can't keep on.  The conservatives either have to bolt or dramatically act.. 

And the 25th Amendment would be a dramatic act.

2020 Election Post Mortem Part X. What do you do with an act of sedition, and who has committed it, and how can the country get over it.

The flag of treason.  It's been flying everywhere.

Sedition.

We've been seeing a lot of it, in a lot of places, and by people who should, and frankly do, know better, those people seeing the citizens of the United States as ignorant dupes.

What exactly, you may wonder, is sedition?  Well, under the current law, it is defined as follows:

18 U.S § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

So, the elements are:

1.  Two ore more people who;

2.  Conspire to:

• overthrow; or
• put down; or
• destroy by force.

the Government of the United States; or

• to levy war against it;
• or oppose by force the the authority thereof
• or by force prevent, hinder or delay

the execution of the law; or

• by force seize, take or possess any property of the United States contrary to law.

There's no question that the Insurrection of January 6, 2021 was sedition by those who participated in it.  They are guilty of a lot of other things as well, but sedition is one of them.

But what about the political leader, the President of the United States, who urged them into the act?

Well, let's consider he not only did that, but he also made a telephone call, with his confederates, trying to pressure Georgia officials into throwing the election for him.

Sedition?

Well, I suppose it depends on what he meant.  During his impeachment trial it was maintained that things he said in his telephone call with the leader of the Ukraine could have meant more than one thing.  Perhaps that's the case here as well.  But a jury could decide either way here. . . and not just on the statements, but also by the collective acts of pressuring and then urging here and there.

And what about local leaders who backed this farce.  The GOP in more than one location, through its state organizations, has been backing the fantasy that the President won the election.  Is that sedition?  Probably not.  But its not very honorable.

But going further, what about legislators who know, or should know better, and who argue that Senators and Congressmen who are not going along with this should be brought before the state legislator to be held into account. Sedition?  No, but again, distressing.*

And this all matters enormously.

Twice in this country's history the nation has let those who committed grave offenses against the democracy of the nation get away with it; once following the Civil War when it did not try the guilty and punish them under the law, and once in the 1970s when an effort to steal an election through actual theft was covered up by the person it was intended to benefit.**  In both of those instances a national act of mercy was misbegotten and lead to further crimes and errors.  The Reagan administration barely got away with unlawful arms sales, for example.  And now Donald Trump has tried to steal an election, wrecked the conservatives party he belongs to, and put the nation in a state of insurrection.

This time, the guilty must be punished. The act is too brazen, the crime too great, and the implications too vast not to do so.  An insurrection has happened. The capitol has been vandalized for the first time since the War of 1812, when at least it was the British, not rebellious Americans, who did it.*** If we do not, we will pay for it as a nation.

So, the first thing that must be done is to try the insurrectionist.  The penalty is clear, and they should get the full measure of the law.

And those seditionist otherwise involved in this sorry scene should pay as well, including Donald Trump.  The soul of the nation depends on it, and the future of the Republican Party.  Republicans should demand it.  And immediately.

And those politicians urging fantasies upon the people, both great and small? Well, they can't be tried, but it's lawful not to seat them.  

Urging an illegal overthrowal of the elected head of state simply because you disagree with him, and deluding others into the idea that the election was tainted, is the end state of democracies.  Not addressing it puts us on the path trod by Mexico in 1910, Russia in 1917,Germany in 1932, and Italy and Spain prior to that.  The choices are stark but the lessons of the failure to act are clear.

Choices have consequences, including bad and deluded ones.  Unfortunately, they have consequences for everyone, not just the person making them.

________________________________________________________________________________

*What about sinful?  At least one of the individuals doing this is my co-religious. Telling lies can be a pretty serious sin from the Catholic prospective. A public official telling them must not only confess his sins, but arguably must rectify the misdeed to the extent he can, which would be a public recanting of his statement.

This assumes knowledge, of course.  A person can't seriously sin if they don't know what they're doing is sinful, from the Catholic prospective. But blinding yourself to the truth may be a factor, perhaps.

And what about the pulpit.  If there's a parishioner in the pews telling lies is there a pastoral duty to correct?  Maybe.

**And in this act of Richard Nixon, it might be noted, there was the irony that his campaign had no need to do this.  Therefore, just as Donald Trump has thrown his party under the bus needless, so had Richard Nixon.

***The Capitol was not even touched during the Civil War, although mostly because the rebellious Southern states didn't have the capacity to do it.

Blog Mirror. Editorial: Another call for the justices to speak to the country

Editorial: Another call for the justices to speak to the country

January 6, 1941. Four Freedoms.

President Roosevelt delivered his famous "Four Freedoms" address as a State of the Union Address on this day in 1941.  As we've noted in our This Day In Wyoming's History Blog:1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of "Four Freedoms" for the world: freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of people to worship God in their own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress:

I address you, the Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union. I use the word "unprecedented," because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.

Since the permanent formation of our Government under the Constitution, in 1789, most of the periods of crisis in our history have related to our domestic affairs. Fortunately, only one of these--the four-year War Between the States--ever threatened our national unity. Today, thank God, one hundred and thirty million Americans, in forty-eight States, have forgotten points of the compass in our national unity.

It is true that prior to 1914 the United States often had been disturbed by events in other Continents. We had even engaged in two wars with European nations and in a number of undeclared wars in the West Indies, in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific for the maintenance of American rights and for the principles of peaceful commerce. But in no case had a serious threat been raised against our national safety or our continued independence.

What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition, to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past. Today, thinking of our children and of their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for any other part of the Americas.

That determination of ours, extending over all these years, was proved, for example, during the quarter century of wars following the French Revolution.

While the Napoleonic struggles did threaten interests of the United States because of the French foothold in the West Indies and in Louisiana, and while we engaged in the War of 1812 to vindicate our right to peaceful trade, it is nevertheless clear that neither France nor Great Britain, nor any other nation, was aiming at domination of the whole world.

In like fashion from 1815 to 1914-- ninety-nine years-- no single war in Europe or in Asia constituted a real threat against our future or against the future of any other American nation.

Except in the Maximilian interlude in Mexico, no foreign power sought to establish itself in this Hemisphere; and the strength of the British fleet in the Atlantic has been a friendly strength. It is still a friendly strength.

Even when the World War broke out in 1914, it seemed to contain only small threat of danger to our own American future. But, as time went on, the American people began to visualize what the downfall of democratic nations might mean to our own democracy.

We need not overemphasize imperfections in the Peace of Versailles. We need not harp on failure of the democracies to deal with problems of world reconstruction. We should remember that the Peace of 1919 was far less unjust than the kind of "pacification" which began even before Munich, and which is being carried on under the new order of tyranny that seeks to spread over every continent today. The American people have unalterably set their faces against that tyranny.

Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being' directly assailed in every part of the world--assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace.

During sixteen long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. The assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small.

Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress information of the state of the Union," I find it, unhappily, necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.

Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by the conquerors. Let us remember that the total of those populations and their resources in those four continents greatly exceeds the sum total of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere-many times over.

In times like these it is immature--and incidentally, untrue--for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.

No realistic American can expect from a dictator's peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion -or even good business.

Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. "Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the "ism" of appeasement.

We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.

I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war.

There is much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate.

But we learn much from the lessons of the past years in Europe-particularly the lesson of Norway, whose essential seaports were captured by treachery and surprise built up over a series of years.

The first phase of the invasion of this Hemisphere would not be the landing of regular troops. The necessary strategic points would be occupied by secret agents and their dupes- and great numbers of them are already here, and in Latin America.

As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive, they-not we--will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack.

That is why the future of all the American Republics is today in serious danger.

That is why this Annual Message to the Congress is unique in our history.

That is why every member of the Executive Branch of the Government and every member of the Congress faces great responsibility and great accountability.

The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily-almost exclusively--to meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency.

Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end.

Our national policy is this:

First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense.

Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.

Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.

In the recent national election there was no substantial difference between the two great parties in respect to that national policy. No issue was fought out on this line before the American electorate. Today it is abundantly evident that American citizens everywhere are demanding and supporting speedy and complete action in recognition of obvious danger.

Therefore, the immediate need is a swift and driving increase in our armament production.

Leaders of industry and labor have responded to our summons. Goals of speed have been set. In some cases these goals are being reached ahead of time; in some cases we are on schedule; in other cases there are slight but not serious delays; and in some cases--and I am sorry to say very important cases--we are all concerned by the slowness of the accomplishment of our plans.

The Army and Navy, however, have made substantial progress during the past year. Actual experience is improving and speeding up our methods of production with every passing day. And today's best is not good enough for tomorrow.

I am not satisfied with the progress thus far made. The men in charge of the program represent the best in training, in ability, and in patriotism. They are not satisfied with the progress thus far made. None of us will be satisfied until the job is done.

No matter whether the original goal was set too high or too low, our objective is quicker and better results. To give you two illustrations:

We are behind schedule in turning out finished airplanes; we are working day and night to solve the innumerable problems and to catch up.

We are ahead of schedule in building warships but we are working to get even further ahead of that schedule.

To change a whole nation from a basis of peacetime production of implements of peace to a basis of wartime production of implements of war is no small task. And the greatest difficulty comes at the beginning of the program, when new tools, new plant facilities, new assembly lines, and new ship ways must first be constructed before the actual materiel begins to flow steadily and speedily from them.

The Congress, of course, must rightly keep itself informed at all times of the progress of the program. However, there is certain information, as the Congress itself will readily recognize, which, in the interests of our own security and those of the nations that we are supporting, must of needs be kept in confidence.

New circumstances are constantly begetting new needs for our safety. I shall ask this Congress for greatly increased new appropriations and authorizations to carry on what we have begun.

I also ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations.

Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need man power, but they do need billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense.

The time is near when they will not be able to pay for them all in ready cash. We cannot, and we will not, tell them that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have.

I do not recommend that we make them a loan of dollars with which to pay for these weapons--a loan to be repaid in dollars.

I recommend that we make it possible for those nations to continue to obtain war materials in the United States, fitting their orders into our own program. Nearly all their materiel would, if the time ever came, be useful for our own defense.

Taking counsel of expert military and naval authorities, considering what is best for our own security, we are free to decide how much should be kept here and how much should be sent abroad to our friends who by their determined and heroic resistance are giving us time in which to make ready our own defense.

For what we send abroad, we shall be repaid within a reasonable time following the close of hostilities, in similar materials, or, at our option, in other goods of many kinds, which they can produce and which we need.

Let us say to the democracies: "We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge."

In fulfillment of this purpose we will not be intimidated by the threats of dictators that they will regard as a breach of international law or as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their aggression. Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be.

When the dictators, if the dictators, are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. They did not wait for Norway or Belgium or the Netherlands to commit an act of war.

Their only interest is in a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance, and, therefore, becomes an instrument of oppression.

The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend upon how effective and how immediate we can make our aid felt. No one can tell the exact character of the emergency situations that we may be called upon to meet. The Nation's hands must not be tied when the Nation's life is in danger.

We must all prepare to make the sacrifices that the emergency-almost as serious as war itself--demands. Whatever stands in the way of speed and efficiency in defense preparations must give way to the national need.

A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups. A free nation has the right to look to the leaders of business, of labor, and of agriculture to take the lead in stimulating effort, not among other groups but within their own groups.

The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of Government to save Government.

As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for.

The Nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fibre of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.

Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world.

For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. 

Jobs for those who can work. 

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.

Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement.
As examples:

We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.

We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.

I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.

A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.

If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception--the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions--without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

The speech resulted in series of very widely known, and still produced, illustrations by artist Norman Rockwell; Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

The famous speech was later turned into a series of wartime posters by legendary illustrator Norman Rockwell.

It's easy to forget what desperate times they were really issued in, and what the atmosphere was at the time that Roosevelt delivered his address.

It's also hard not to lament the state to which we seemed to have declined, in national psyche, since that time, but perhaps that's putting too optimistic of spin on things in a way regarding the past.

More on the famous speech here:

Today in World War II History—January 6, 1941

Harry Hopkins left for the United Kingdom by way of Portugal on this day in 1941.   The circuitous air route was due to the war, with the risk of flying into a belligerent nation too high.  Hopkins was photographed on his mission as he boarded his plane in an era when air travel itself was much more arduous than it now is, but then was safer than sea travel due to the war.

More on this day in the war here:

Day 494 January 6, 1941

A photographer caught bank employees in New York at work.