May 27, 1941. An Unrestricted Emergency.

President Roosevelt delivering a fireside chat.  His address of May 27, 1941, obtained the largest share of a radio audience, 65%, of all time.

President Franklin Roosevelt, in his 17th Fireside Chat, declared an unlimited national emergency on this day in 1941.

I am speaking tonight from the White House in the presence of the Governing Board of the Pan American Union, the Canadian Minister, and their families. The members of this Board are the Ambassadors and Ministers of the American Republics in Washington. It is appropriate that I do this for now, as never before, the unity of the American Republics is of supreme importance to each and every one of us and to the cause of freedom throughout the world. Our future independence is bound up with the future independence of all of our sister Republics. 

The pressing problems that confront us are military and naval problems. We cannot afford to approach them from the point of view of wishful thinkers or sentimentalists. What we face is cold, hard fact. 

The first and fundamental fact is that what started as a European war has developed, as the Nazis always intended it should develop, into a world war for world domination. 

Adolf Hitler never considered the domination of Europe as an end in itself. European conquest was but a step toward ultimate goals in all the other continents. It is unmistakably apparent to all of us that, unless the advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western Hemisphere will be within range of the Nazi weapons of destruction. 

For our own defense we have accordingly undertaken certain obviously necessary measures: 

First, we have joined in concluding a series of agreements with all the other American Republics. This further solidified our hemisphere against the common danger. 

And then, a year ago, we launched, and are successfully carrying out, the largest armament production program we have ever undertaken. 

We have added substantially to our splendid Navy, and we have mustered our manpower to build up a new Army which is already worthy of the highest traditions of our military service. 

We instituted a policy of aid for the democracies -- the Nations which have fought for the continuation of human liberties. 

This policy had its origin in the first month of the war, when I urged upon the Congress repeal of the arms embargo provisions in the old Neutrality Law, and in that message of September 3, 1939, I said, "I should like to be able to offer the hope that the shadow over the world might swiftly pass. I cannot. The facts compel my stating, with candor, that darker periods may lie ahead." 

In the subsequent months, the shadows deepened and lengthened. And the night spread over Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. 

In June, 1940, Britain stood alone, faced by the same machine of terror which had overwhelmed her allies. Our Government rushed arms to meet her desperate needs. 

In September, 1940, an agreement was completed with Great Britain for the trade of fifty destroyers for eight important offshore bases. 

And in March, 1941, the Congress passed the Lend-Lease Bill and an appropriation of seven billion dollars to implement it. This law realistically provided for material aid "for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." 

Our whole program of aid for the democracies has been based on hard-headed concern for our own security and for the kind of safe and civilized world in which we wish to live. Every dollar of material that we send helps to keep the dictators away from our own hemisphere, and every day that they are held off gives us time to build more guns and tanks and planes and ships. 

We have made no pretense about our own self-interest in this aid. Great Britain understands it -- and so does Nazi Germany. 

And now -- after a year -- Britain still fights gallantly, on a "far-flung battle line." We have doubled and redoubled our vast production, increasing, month by month, our material supply of the tools of war for ourselves and for Britain and for China- and eventually for all the democracies. 

The supply of these tools will not fail -- it will increase. 

With greatly augmented strength, the United States and the other American Republics now chart their course in the situation of today. 

Your Government knows what terms Hitler, if victorious, would impose. They are, indeed, the only terms on which he would accept a so-called "negotiated" peace. 

And, under those terms, Germany would literally parcel out the world -- hoisting the swastika itself over vast territories and populations, and setting up puppet governments of its own choosing, wholly subject to the will and the policy of a conqueror. 

To the people of the Americas, a triumphant Hitler would say, as he said after the seizure of Austria, and as he said after Munich, and as he said after the seizure of Czechoslovakia: "I am now completely satisfied. This is the last territorial readjustment I will seek." And he would of course add: "All we want is peace, friendship, and profitable trade relations with you in the New World." 

Were any of us in the Americas so incredibly simple and forgetful as to accept those honeyed words, what would then happen? 

Those in the New World who were seeking profits would be urging that all that the dictatorships desired was "peace." They would oppose toil and taxes for more American armament. And meanwhile, the dictatorships would be forcing the enslaved peoples of their Old World conquests into a system they are even now organizing to build a naval and air force intended to gain and hold and be master of the Atlantic and the Pacific as well. 

They would fasten an economic stranglehold upon our several Nations. Quislings would be found to subvert the governments in our Republics; and the Nazis would back their fifth columns with invasion, if necessary. 

No, I am not speculating about all this. I merely repeat what is already in the Nazi book of world conquest. They plan to treat the Latin American Nations as they are now treating the Balkans. They plan then to strangle the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada. 

The American laborer would have to compete with slave labor in the rest of the world. Minimum wages, maximum hours? Nonsense! Wages and hours would be fixed by Hitler. The dignity and power and standard of living of the American worker and farmer would be gone. Trade unions would become historical relics, and collective bargaining a joke. 

Farm income? What happens to all farm surpluses without any foreign trade? The American farmer would get for his products exactly what Hitler wanted to give. The farmer would face obvious disaster and complete regimentation. 

Tariff walls -- Chinese walls of isolation -- would be futile. Freedom to trade is essential to our economic life. We do not eat all the food we can produce; and we do not burn all the oil we can pump; we do not use all the goods we can manufacture. It would not be an American wall to keep Nazi goods out; it would be a Nazi wall to keep us in. 

The whole fabric of working life as we know it -- business and manufacturing, mining and agriculture -- all would be mangled and crippled under such a system. Yet to maintain even that crippled independence would require permanent conscription of our manpower; it would curtail the funds we could spend on education, on housing, on public works, on flood control, on health and, instead, we should be permanently pouring our resources into armaments; and, year in and year out, standing day and night watch against the destruction of our cities. 

Yes, even our right of worship would be threatened. The Nazi world does not recognize any God except Hitler; for the Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God. What place has religion which preaches the dignity of the human being, the majesty of the human soul, in a world where moral standards are measured by treachery and bribery and fifth columnists? Will our children, too, wander off, goose-stepping in search of new gods?

We do not accept, we will not permit, this Nazi "shape of things to come." It will never be forced upon us, if we act in this present crisis with the wisdom and the courage which have distinguished our country in all the crises of the past. 

Today, the Nazis have taken military possession of the greater part of Europe. In Africa they have occupied Tripoli and Libya, and they are threatening Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Near East. But their plans do not stop there, for the Indian Ocean is the gateway to the farther East. 

They also have the armed power at any moment to occupy Spain and Portugal; and that threat extends not only to French North Africa and the western end of the Mediterranean but it extends also to the Atlantic fortress of Dakar, and to the island outposts of the New World -- the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. 

The Cape Verde Islands are only seven hours' distance from Brazil by bomber or troop -- carrying planes. They dominate shipping routes to and from the South Atlantic. 

The war is approaching the brink of the Western Hemisphere itself. It is coming very close to home. 

Control or occupation by Nazi forces of any of the islands of the Atlantic would jeopardize the immediate safety of portions of North and South America, and of the island possessions of the United States, and, therefore, the ultimate safety of the continental United States itself. 

Hitler's plan of world domination would be near its accomplishment today, were it not for two factors: One is the epic resistance of Britain, her colonies, and the great Dominions, fighting not only to maintain the existence of the Island of Britain, but also to hold the Near East and Africa. The other is the magnificent defense of China, which will, I have reason to believe, increase in strength. All of these, together, are preventing the Axis from winning control of the seas by ships and aircraft. 

The Axis Powers can never achieve their objective of world domination unless they first obtain control of the seas. That is their supreme purpose today; and to achieve it, they must capture Great Britain. 

They could then have the power to dictate to the Western Hemisphere. No spurious argument, no appeal to sentiment, no false pledges like those given by Hitler at Munich, can deceive the American people into believing that he and his Axis partners would not, with Britain defeated, close in relentlessly on this hemisphere of ours. 

But if the Axis Powers fail to gain control of the seas, then they are certainly defeated. Their dreams of world domination will then go by the board; and the criminal leaders who started this war will suffer inevitable disaster. 

Both they and their people know this- and they and their people are afraid. That is why they are risking everything they have, conducting desperate attempts to break through to the command of the ocean. Once they are limited to a continuing land war, their cruel forces of occupation will be unable to keep their heel on the necks of the millions of innocent, oppressed peoples on the continent of Europe; and in the end, their whole structure will break into little pieces. And let us remember, the wider the Nazi land effort, the greater is their ultimate danger. 

We do not forget the silenced peoples. The masters of Germany have marked these silenced peoples and their children's children for slavery- those, at least, who have not been assassinated or escaped to free soil. But those people -- spiritually unconquered: Austrians, Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Southern Slavs -- yes, even those Italians and Germans who themselves have been enslaved -- will prove to be a powerful force in the final disruption of the Nazi system. 

All freedom- meaning freedom to live, and not freedom to conquer and subjugate other peoples-depends on freedom of the seas. All of American history—North, Central, and South American history -- has been inevitably tied up with those words, "freedom of the seas." 

Since 1799, 142 years ago, when our infant Navy made the West Indies and the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico safe for American ships; since 1804 and 1805 when we made all peaceful commerce safe from the depredations of the Barbary pirates; since the War of 1812, which was fought for the preservation of sailors' rights; since 1867, when our sea power made it possible for the Mexicans to expel the French Army of Louis Napoleon, we have striven and fought in defense of freedom of the seas for our own shipping, for the commerce of our sister Republics, for the right of all Nations to use the highways of world trade -- and for our own safety. 

During the first World War we were able to escort merchant ships by the use of small cruisers, gunboats, and destroyers; and that type, called a convoy, was effective against submarines. In this second World War, however, the problem is greater. It is different because the attack on the freedom of the seas is now fourfold: first -- the improved submarine; second -- the much greater use of the heavily armed raiding cruiser or the hit-and-run battleship; third -- the bombing airplane, which is capable of destroying merchant ships seven or eight hundred miles from its nearest base; and fourth -- the destruction of merchant ships in those ports of the world that are accessible to bombing attack. 

The Battle of the Atlantic now extends from the icy waters of the North Pole to the frozen continent of the Antarctic. Throughout this huge area, there have been sinkings of merchant ships in alarming and increasing numbers by Nazi raiders or submarines. There have been sinkings even of ships carrying neutral flags. There have been sinkings in the South Atlantic, off West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands; between the Azores and the islands off the American coast; and between Greenland and Iceland. Great numbers of these sinkings have been actually within the waters of the Western Hemisphere itself. 

The blunt truth is this -- and I reveal this with the full knowledge of the British Government: the present rate of Nazi sinkings of merchant ships is more than three times as high as the capacity of British shipyards to replace them; it is more than twice the combined British and American output of merchant ships today. 

We can answer this peril by two simultaneous measures: first, by speeding up and increasing our own great shipbuilding program; and second, by helping to cut down the losses on the high seas. 

Attacks on shipping off the very shores of land which we are determined to protect, present an actual military danger to the Americas. And that danger has recently been heavily underlined by the presence in Western Hemisphere waters of a Nazi battleship of great striking power. 

You remember that most of the supplies for Britain go by a northerly route, which comes close to Greenland and the nearby island of Iceland. Germany's heaviest attack is on that route. Nazi occupation of Iceland or bases in Greenland would bring the war close to our own continental shores, because those places are stepping-stones to Labrador and Newfoundland, to Nova Scotia, yes, to the northern United States itself, including the great industrial centers of the North, the East, and the Middle West. 

Equally, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, if occupied or controlled by Germany, would directly endanger the freedom of the Atlantic and our own American physical safety. Under German domination those islands would become bases for submarines, warships, and airplanes raiding the waters that lie immediately off our own coasts and attacking the shipping in the South Atlantic. They would provide a springboard for actual attack against the integrity and the independence of Brazil and her neighboring Republics. 

I have said on many occasions that the United States is mustering its men and its resources only for purposes of defense- only to repel attack. I repeat that statement now. But we must be realistic when we use the word "attack"; we have to relate it to the lightning speed of modern warfare. 

Some people seem to think that we are not attacked until bombs actually drop in the streets of New York or San Francisco or New Orleans or Chicago. But they are simply shutting their eyes to the lesson that we must learn from the fate of every Nation that the Nazis have conquered. 

The attack on Czechoslovakia began with the conquest of Austria. The attack on Norway began with the occupation of Denmark. The attack on Greece began with occupation of Albania and Bulgaria. The attack on the Suez Canal began with the invasion of the Balkans and North Africa, and the attack on the United States can begin with the domination of any base which menaces our security—north or south. 

Nobody can foretell tonight just when the acts of the dictators will ripen into attack on this hemisphere and us. But we know enough by now to realize that it would be suicide to wait until they are in our front yard. 

When your enemy comes at you in a tank or a bombing plane, if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you. Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several thousand miles from Boston. 

Anyone with an atlas, anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the sudden striking force of modern war, knows that it is stupid to wait until a probable enemy has gained a foothold from which to attack. Old-fashioned common sense calls for the use of a strategy that will prevent such an enemy from gaining a foothold in the first place. 

We have, accordingly, extended our patrol in North and South Atlantic waters. We are steadily adding more and more ships and planes to that patrol. It is well known that the strength of the Atlantic Fleet has been greatly increased during the past year, and that it is constantly being built up. 

These ships and planes warn of the presence of attacking raiders, on the sea, under the sea, and above the sea. The danger from these raiders is, of course, greatly lessened if their location is definitely known. We are thus being forewarned. We shall be on our guard against efforts to establish Nazi bases closer to our hemisphere. 

The deadly facts of war compel Nations, for simple self-preservation, to make stern choices. It does not make sense, for instance, to say, "I believe in the defense of all the Western Hemisphere," and in the next breath to say, "I will not fight for that defense until the enemy has landed on our shores." If we believe in the independence and the integrity of the Americas, we must be willing to fight, to fight to defend them just as much as we would to fight for the safety of our own homes. 

It is time for us to realize that the safety of American homes even in the center of this our own country has a very definite relationship to the continued safety of homes in Nova Scotia or Trinidad or Brazil. 

Our national policy today, therefore, is this: 

First, we shall actively resist wherever necessary, and with all our resources, every attempt by Hitler to extend his Nazi domination to the Western Hemisphere, or to threaten it. We shall actively resist his every attempt to gain control of the seas. We insist upon the vital importance of keeping Hitlerism away from any point in the world which could be used or would be used as a base of attack against the Americas. 

Second, from the point of view of strict naval and military necessity, we shall give every possible assistance to Britain and to all who, with Britain, are resisting Hitlerism or its equivalent with force of arms. Our patrols are helping now to insure delivery of the needed supplies to Britain. All additional measures necessary to deliver the goods will be taken. Any and all further methods or combination of methods, which can or should be utilized, are being devised by our military and naval technicians, who, with me, will work out and put into effect such new and additional safeguards as may be needed. 

I say that the delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative. I say that this can be done; it must be done; and it will be done. 

To the other American Nations- twenty Republics and the Dominion of Canada—I say this: the United States does not merely propose these purposes, but is actively engaged today in carrying them out. 

I say to them further: you may disregard those few citizens of the United States who contend that we are disunited and cannot act. 

There are some timid ones among us who say that we must preserve peace at any price- lest we lose our liberties forever. 

To them I say this: never in the history of the world has a Nation lost its democracy by a successful struggle to defend its democracy. We must not be defeated by the fear of the very danger which we are preparing to resist. Our freedom has shown its ability to survive war, but our freedom would never survive surrender. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." 

There is, of course, a small group of sincere, patriotic men and women whose real passion for peace has shut their eyes to the ugly realities of international banditry and to the need to resist it at all costs. I am sure they are embarrassed by the sinister support they are receiving from the enemies of democracy in our midst the Bundists, the Fascists, and Communists, and every group devoted to bigotry and racial and religious intolerance. It is no mere coincidence that all the arguments put forward by these enemies of democracy -- all their attempts to confuse and divide our people and to destroy public confidence in our Government -- all their defeatist forebodings that Britain and democracy are already beaten -- all their selfish promises that we can "do business" with Hitler -- all of these are but echoes of the words that have been poured out from the Axis bureaus of propaganda. Those same words have been used before in other countries -- to scare them, to divide them, to soften them up. Invariably, those same words have formed the advance guard of physical attack. 

Your Government has the right to expect of all citizens that they take part in the common work of our common defense take loyal part from this moment forward. 

I have recently set up the machinery for civilian defense. It will rapidly organize, locality by locality. It will depend on the organized effort of men and women everywhere. All will have opportunities and responsibilities to fulfill. 

Defense today means more than merely fighting. It means morale, civilian as well as military; it means using every available resource; it means enlarging every useful plant. It means the use of a greater American common sense in discarding rumor and distorted statement. It means recognizing, for what they are, racketeers and fifth columnists, who are the incendiary bombs in this country of the moment. 

All of us know that we have made very great social progress in recent years. We propose to maintain that progress and strengthen it. When the Nation is threatened from without, however, as it is today, the actual production and transportation of the machinery of defense must not be interrupted by disputes between capital and capital, labor and labor, or capital and labor. The future of all free enterprise -- of capital and labor alike -- is at stake.

This is no time for capital to make, or be allowed to retain, excess profits. Articles of defense must have undisputed right of way in every industrial plant in the country. 

A Nation-wide machinery for conciliation and mediation of industrial disputes has been set up. That machinery must be used promptly -- and without stoppage of work. Collective bargaining will be retained, but the American people expect that impartial recommendations of our Government conciliation and mediation services will be followed both by capital and by labor. 

The overwhelming majority of our citizens expect their Government to see that the tools of defense are built; and for the very purpose of preserving the democratic safeguards of both labor and management, this Government is determined to use all of its power to express the will of its people, and to prevent interference with the production of materials essential to our Nation's security. 

Today the whole world is divided between human slavery and human freedom—between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal. 

We choose human freedom—which is the Christian ideal. 

No one of us can waver for a moment in his courage or his faith. 

We will not accept a Hitler-dominated world. And we will not accept a world, like the postwar world of the 1920's, in which the seeds of Hitlerism can again be planted and allowed to grow. 

We will accept only a world consecrated to freedom of speech and expression—freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—freedom from want—and freedom from terror. 

Is such a world impossible of attainment? 

Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation, and every other milestone in human progress -- all were ideals which seemed impossible of attainment -- and yet they were attained. 

As a military force, we were weak when we established our independence, but we successfully stood off tyrants, powerful in their day, tyrants who are now lost in the dust of history. 

Odds meant nothing to us then. Shall we now, with all our potential strength, hesitate to take every single measure necessary to maintain our American liberties? 

Our people and our Government will not hesitate to meet that challenge. 

As the President of a united and determined people, I say solemnly: 

We reassert the ancient American doctrine of freedom of the seas. 

We reassert the solidarity of the twenty-one American Republics and the Dominion of Canada in the preservation of the independence of the hemisphere. 

We have pledged material support to the other democracies of the world -- and we will fulfill that pledge. 

We in the Americas will decide for ourselves whether, and when, and where, our American interests are attacked or our security is threatened.

We are placing our armed forces in strategic military position. 

We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to repel attack. 

We reassert our abiding faith in the vitality of our constitutional Republic as a perpetual home of freedom, of tolerance, and of devotion to the word of God. 

Therefore, with profound consciousness of my responsibilities to my countrymen and to my country's cause, I have tonight issued a proclamation that an unlimited national emergency exists and requires the strengthening of our defense to the extreme limit of our national power and authority. 

The Nation will expect all individuals and all groups to play their full parts, without stint, and without selfishness, and without doubt that our democracy will triumphantly survive. 

I repeat the words of the signers of the Declaration of Independence -- that little band of patriots, fighting long ago against overwhelming odds, but certain, as we are now, of ultimate victory: "With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

The US was now really rapidly rolling towards war with the Germans having issued what amounted to a warning only days prior that US escort actions were an act of war.  German restraint, oddly enough, was keeping a full declared war from breaking out as at this point the Germans were still afraid of what that would mean, and moreover, were getting ready to attack the Soviet Union.  Hitler had officially taken the position that Germany would not enter into a war with the US until the Soviet Union was defeated, something he was confident would shortly occur.

On this day in 1941 the Bismarck was sunk by the Royal Navy off of Ireland.

Today in World War II History—May 27, 1941

The end of the Bismarck

The story is literally famous in story and song, and has been made into movies as well.  It was a real victory for the Royal Navy.

It was also an airborne victory as British torpedo bombers, haplessly obsolete biplanes at the time, had damages the ships rudder the day prior, and the day prior to that its location had been spotted by a Catalina flying out of Northern Ireland, with the spotting done by a U.S. Navy officer on a training assignment to the Royal Navy.

The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had broken out into the North Atlantic to act as surface raiders, a threat the British took seriously, as they needed to, but which was frankly an odd use for the small battleship.  Indeed, the enter episode was an anachronistic.

Surface raiding had been done extensively in World War One and would be done in World War Two as well, in much the same fashion.  But advances in radar and the development of long range aircraft, and indeed aircraft alone, we're rapidly making it a thing of the past.  The engagement that brought the Bismarck to its end in some ways closed the episode out, showing that the ship could not run from a concentrated air and sea search.  As the entire event was mere months away from Pearl Harbor, the obvious final dominance of aircraft was about to occur.

Indeed, sometimes missed by those who look back on the Battle of the Atlantic, the British were about to deploy the first Escort Carrier, a class of ship that would make submarine attacks much riskier.

While the battle was a victory for the British, on the same day the British Army reported Crete lost and recommended evacuation. The British would temporarily halt German advances on the island in the Battle of 42nd Street, fought this day, but the obvious end was in sight.

The British took the last Italian position in Ethiopia, thereby conclusively ending the Italian presence in that region.  They lost, however, Halfaya Pass in Libya to the Germans. They were advancing on Baghdad.

May 27, 1921. Horrors in Oklahoma and Futile Acts in Russia.

The body of Anna Brown, an Osage Indian woman, in Osage County, Oklahoma led to an investigation which which ultimately determined that a large number of Osage women were killed over a period of years, but the reasons and perpetrators, and even if they were related, were largely never determined, although there white men were convicted of murders.  It is thought that the killings may have been done to effectuate inheritance to non Indians, as at the time the Osage were the wealthiest people in the world due to oil production.  As a result of that suspicion, Congress ultimately passed a bill prohibiting the inheritance rights to pass to non tribal members.

Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in Osage County, Oklahoma.

Mensheviks seized control of Vladivostok from Bolsheviks.  

The Mensheviks were a  more numerous Socialist group than the Bolsheviks, and less radical, which doesn't mean they were not radical.  They failed in their contest with the Bolsheviks and, by this time, they'd actually been outlawed due to the Kronstadt Rebellion.

May 26, 1921. Rickenbacker crashes in Cheyenne.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 26: 1921   Eddie Rickenbacker crashed a mail plane near Cheyenne.

And this photograph was taken of Craig Street in Montreal, five  years before my mother was born in that city.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 16. Reality check. Je me souviens.

Perversion.

On May 24, I ran an item about the 1941 sinking of the HMS Hood.

On the same day, the same item, had an item about the sinking, on the same day, of the SS Conte Rosso.  Those two events both resulted in massive loss of life, with man of those lives being young. The Conte Rosso, a pre war Italian cruise liner, is forgotten, but the Hood certainly is not.

I don't note this to suggest moral equivalency or something in this, but rather to note something completely different.  

The Battle of the Denmark Straits is an epic event of World War Two, but like all epic events of the Second World War it resulted in massive loss of life.  It's not funny.

One of the things that has occurred since World War Two is the pornification of everything, and across cultural lines.  This is bad in the US, but frankly its worse in other countries.  Japan, which doesn't have a Western culture, and therefore doesn't have the remaining restraints of the Apostolic faiths and their protestant split offs, has a much different culture in this regard, and indeed in regard to the societal view of women in general.  Japan, quite frankly, tolerates a lot of things in this are area that are outright perverse.

One of the things that it tolerates is a pornographic cartoon industry.  Unfortunately, with the Internet, that's developed a huge American fan base, predictably.  And oddly enough, and it is really, really odd, a feature of Japanese weird cartoon art is the cartoon treatment of World War Two warships, personified as improbably shaped women in the Japanese cartoon style.

I note this as when I ran the item on the Hood I ran across quite accidentally, on a net search, a cartoon depicting the Hood, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in this fashion, in what I guess was intended to be a cartoon representation of the Battle of Denmark Strait.  And its deeply, deeply, weird and perverted.

We have the Internet in part to thank for this.  It's not good.

A existential shift?

One of the things about living in one place for a long time is that you both experience changes and aren't aware of them when they're happening.  The recent Anthony Bouchard matter brings this to mind.

I've followed Wyoming's politics since I was a teenager.  The first election I really recall closely watching was the 1972 Presidential election.  I was nine years old at the time.  I paid more attention to the 1976 Ford v. Carter election, where I definitely had an opinion (I was for Ford).  So I have a long political rear view mirror.

My entire life the Republican party has been the majority party, although we've also had three Democratic governors, one Democratic Senator and one Democratic Congressman in that time frame.  And for almost all of that time we've never fit the national mold.

Wyoming Republicans tended to be more like independents elsewhere.  Wyoming Democrats, it was often noted, would have been Republicans elsewhere.

Something happened when Clinton was President and its still hard to figure out looking back.  Clinton was not, in retrospect, a bad President and he wasn't actually detestable while he served in any real sense.  But the Democratic Party simply died here during that period and it reflects the fringe today.  The serious Democrats, including the ones in the legislature, pretty much picked up and moved to the Republican Party.

You'd think that would have cemented the party in the center, and for awhile it sort of looked that way.  Maybe it has, but we're about to see.

The Wyoming Republican Party of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, was highly centrist and independent.  When a Natrona County member attempted to introduce an anti phonography bill in the 80s he was pretty much howled down as messing in other people's business.  Efforts by out of staters to move into the Powell region of the state to set up a white enclave met with an open public demonstration.  Whether you thought they should or not, the party wouldn't touch social issues.  An effort by ranchers to take over hunting licenses met with a near public rebellion.

But something has happened since then.

I'm not sure what it is, but that party has been captured by real right wing populists and they actually openly hate the old party.  By accident and without my desire, I ended up being a silent recipient on an email list for at time made up of Republican figures in the state who are fairly well known.  I asked the list owner to drop me off as frankly I'm sure that they wouldn't have wanted me there and I don't know why I was included in the first place.

What that revealed, however, is an open contempt of the populist who control the state's GOP for the old party.  

The question is, where are the voters and is the old party still around?

Up until recently, I've thought it was.  And I still think and hope it is. But I have to acknowledge that something has really crept into the GOP here and taken it over.  

Whatever it is, it isn't conservatism.

To some extent, I wonder to what degree this is imported, and if that's the case, to what degree the importation is permanent.  Some of the figures I recognized are very much Wyomingites, but perhaps notably of demographics and regions that were outside the mainstream up until now.  But other figures in this change are out of staters.

That really matters as out of staters, or more accurately out of the region immigrants, bring their views and politics with them.  They often don't know it, however.  Be that as it may, people come here for various reasons and instantly set about trying to make this place like the place they left.

In the last Gubernatorial election the state had a candidate that hailed originally from Wisconsin but who had taken an adult trip, so to speak, through Texas and Arizona before ending up here, part, I suppose most, of the year in that county that's the domain of the wealthy, Teton County.  His campaign struck me like something out of the South in the 1970s, complete with lightly clad young women in a climate that's cold most of the time.  At one time I saw a car licensed in Colorado that had a bumper sticker for him that proclaimed "Christians for    ".

Now, I'm a Christian, but prior to the 2018 race you never would have seen that sticker here.  Wyomingites aren't anti Christian, but they tend to be "leave me alone" in their view of things.  People simply wouldn't have attempted to garner the support of somebody by citing their religious faith prior to that time.  Indeed, I know one of the prior Governors somewhat and know that he is very observant in his faith. At least one of the other prior ones had a profound personal conversion. And yet another candidate in the 2018 race was Greek Orthodox but that was largely unnoted.

That's because what's really meant by that claim is "I'm an evangelical Protestant", usually.  And that's interesting as Wyoming is the least observant state, religion wise, in the country.

That's not new to Wyoming, it's always been the case.  Over the state's century long history there's been an evolution in Protestantism however.  The Episcopal Church was once very prominent in the state, but it's now declined massively and continues to. The Presbyterian Church and the Lutheran Church had pretty strong bases in certain demographics.  The Latter Day Saints are very strong in certain regions and have been since before the state was a state.  And Catholics form a unique demographic as they're a minority in Wyoming by a long measure, but they're a fairly observant one which actually makes them sort of prominent in terms of groups actually going to church.

Fundamentalist Christian faiths have always been here as well, but the real growth of them is quite new.  In the 60s and 70s, your church attending Protestant school mates, probably went to a Lutheran, Episcopal or Presbyterian church.  I can recall having one friend who went to a Baptist church, but only one.  One of the girls I knew in junior high and high school was the daughter of the Methodist minister and I later knew some Methodists.  I knew one Mormon.  I knew one Jehovah's Witness.

Indeed, of my immediate grade school friends, one was a Baptist (mentioned above), two were Lutherans (although oddly one of the brothers of one of them became an Episcopal, and then Anglican, priest), one a Mormon, and one wasn't of any religion I can recall, which probably means his parents didn't attend church.  

Of my close junior high/high school friends, two were Lutheran, one Episcopalian, one Mormon, and one nominally Catholic.  In my wider circle, one was the aforementioned daughter of the Methodist minister and one the son of the Greek Orthodox priest.

Well so what, you may ask?

Well, on my work now there's two churches that are of very much different theology, one being a very large Assembly of God church and one purporting to be free of a denomination, which actually puts it into the evangelical protestant arena.  Across town there's a very large non denominational church in that category. A person may say, so what, but this is evidence of something.  Truth be known, up into the 1970s these latter types of Christian denominations were pretty rare here and had small congregations.  That's changed.

And that's evidence of something demographic, and that reflects back to what I've just noted above about politics.

In the 1970s we had an oil boom that died by the early 1980s.  When it died, the folks who had come in during it left.  This was the age old pattern here.  The mainline protestant churches and the Apostolic churches had congregations made up of people who had roots here, or who had sunk roots here. Some were oilmen and oilfield workers, but an awful lot of them had some other long standing base here.  

The recent oil booms, there being two, of post 2000 vintage also brought in the oil demographic, which tends to be from Texas and Oklahoma, and that's really when we saw the rise of the evangelical protestant churches.  It's also when our politics really began to change as well.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who goes to one of the evangelical protestant churches is an outsider, nor am I saying everyone in the populist GOP is. As we'll note on the latter, however, some definitely are.  But there's a phenomenon in invasions, if you care to look at it, of the outnumbered invader changing the culture of the invaded territory.

Pre Saxon Britain was populated, not surprisingly, by the British, a Celtic people.  It was long wondered if the Saxons killed most of them, although there was little evidence of that, when they came in. We now know, thanks to DNA testing, that they didn't.  Indeed, the modern English, or the Anglesch, or the Angles, are pretty much Celts, genetically.  The Saxons simply took over and their culture became the dominant one.

I wonder if we something like that going on here.  The population of Wyoming at any one time contains more outsiders than Wyomingites.  A lot of the immigrants are from the region, who largely share the same culture, but not all of them are. Some are form outside and bring their culture with them.

Indeed, I'm personally familiar with just one such example of a transplanted Midwesterner who is pretty much incapable of leaving his big city, Midwestern view, behind him.  He can't, as that's who he is, and there's nothing wrong with that. But very few people realize that they have a regional culture, and that the culture is shaped by where they are from.

The traditional Wyoming culture is pretty Woody Guthrie-esque.  "This land is my land", in other words.  A lot of the imports don't view it that way at all.  And most of the old Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Mormons here pretty much figured that their religion informed their daily actions and politics, but none of them would have said "vote for me, I'm a . . . "

Maybe what I'm noting hasn't really happened.  I hope not.  But I wonder.  One of the current Congressional candidates came out of hte chute announcing he was  "pro-God, pro-family, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-business, pro-oil and gas, pro-coal."  No Wyoming candidate of the 1970s and 80s, would have dared say that they were "pro God" as it would have been presumptuous in the extreme.  For that matter, none would have said they were "pro gun" as that would have been assumed, and statements on the extractive industries would have been more intelligent than that.

That candidate is from Wyoming, but he's backed by the Teton County former candidate mentioned above.  Of the remaining field we have one from Florida who has acknowledged, but not really show contrition, for what would amount to statutory rape in Wyoming, followed by what would have been pretty much regarded as a shocking marriage to a child by most Wyomingites prior to 2000, but which doesn't seem to now.  One who has made a comment about Liz Cheney not really living here, a fair enough criticism that I've made myself in prior years, isn't from here either, but is at least from a neighboring state.  Two have long military careers which by definition puts you out of contact with the state and I'm  not sure if one is from here. The other most recently lived in California, supposedly the antithesis of all things Wyoming.

Some have noted that Idaho's politics were basically taken over by the populist wing of the GOP and Idaho has definitely gone through something like this in the last decade.  Maybe we have too. ^[1]. 

I hope not.

Je ne regrette rein. . . mais peut-être que je devrais

Another thing, I suppose, we have the Internet to thank for is the recent decline of politics and the rise of anger as a virtue.

A lot of the current crop of GOP candidates here, which is all we really have so far, are just hoping pissed off mad.1. Now, being mad in politics can make sense, but it's really gotten out of hand.

It has to be kept in mind that people rarely make rational decisions when mad, and the essential element of a demagogue is keeping his followers mad.  Mussolini never went to the balcony, and said, "gee, Romans, its such a nice day. . . let's do what Italians do and just take the day off . . . ".  Nope was mad, and so his followers were mad.

While comparing anything contemporary to the Nazis is always fraught with danger, the same is true of Hitler.  You can view, and if you speak it listen, to lots of Hitler speeches. And he's hoping mad. He's really mad at the Jews.  Mad, mad, mad.  His followers were mad too. . . so mad they never stopped to think "what exactly has this tiny minority of people in our country actually done to us. . . oh yeah. . nothing".

As I noted in another post, Wyoming populists are busy accusing old line Republicans of being not Republicans.  Some mad person put up a RINO billboard here recently, apparently not realizing that may be the majority of the state.  Anthony Bouchard is mad at the "fake press" for reporting news that isn't fake.  

In earlier eras it took radio and posters to keep people whipped up to this state of perpetual frenzy.  Now its the Internet, and that doesn't take nearly as much effort.  In large part, that's why the Trumpites of the GOP are mad, and its' why the left winger of the Democratic party, who really love being mad, are made.

Everyone ought to listen to Gene Shepherd's "Fanatics". Truly.

As part of this, nobody seems to publicly repent of their sins.

Not that everyone has to, but let's be honest.  If you are public figure and you acted badly, you ought to acknowledge that.  Now, nobody is.  Up until recently, they did.

And there's some bridges that you just can't cross.  Rape, including statutory rape (which is usually consensual we'd note), is one.  If it comes out, you have to confess guilt or it says something about you that's icky.  Even if you do the right thing, you have to.  You can note that you did the right thing, but you can't blame "the fake news media."

And you can't praise the guilty either.  Mussolini did make the trains run on time, and Hitler did fix the rather odd German civil legal structure, supported a modernized highway system, and backed the Volkswagen, but that's not a reason to set his greater transgressions aside.

In other words, you can't really let Roman Polanski off  the hook.  You just don't want to go where that leads.  If you start to try to wipe off the shit, you'll smell like it.  No two ways about it.

Retrospect

I typed most of this out on a day that happened to be my birthday.

My birthday tends to be no big deal to me.  Indeed, I'm always caught off guard when people note it and to a certain degree, with people that I don't know, it can irritate me to have it noted.  I know this is unusual.

I note it here as the past year has been hopelessly odd, globally, and only now things are beginning to become less strained. Be all of that as it may, because of a variety of things, I'm irritated and disappointed, but not at anyone I know.  From deep thinkers, however, I do appreciate thoughtful wishes.

One of the things that routinely happens on birthdays where I work is a communal late day birthday celebration.  I absolutely dread it.  Indeed, I always note to people who aske me what I want, etc., for my birthday that I don't really want anything, or if they are going to get me something, they ought to get me a mule, which I really do want.  I'm perfectly serious about the mule, but nobody ever gets me one.  I think they think I'm joking.

People don't take seriously the request that a birthday not be observed either.

I suppose that's because most people really enjoy having their birthdays celebrated widely.  I don't really.  

I always try to keep in mind that this is a view that's personal to me.  And it isn't for the reason that you hear some people cite about being closer to death.  I'm now 58, and at 58, if you are honest, death can come at any time.  Oh well, that's the way that is.

Rather, I think it has to do with my early years, which of course people will always say is responsible for everything.  But here it actually is.

When I was growing up, we always observed birthdays, but after your very early years it was an immediate family type of deal. And this was the case for the entire extended family.  I get birthday wishes from my cousins, and they're sincere, but we don't have parties or exchange gifts.  After I was about 7 or so, there were no birthday parties with friends and I can recall my parents even discussing that.  It just wasn't done.  You'd always get some gifts, but big gifts were particularly associated with real milestones.  They didn't come every year.  As my birthday comes during the school year, when I was at university I was usually not home when it occurred, and a phone call was about it, which is about all I expected and frankly I appreciated that.  To compound things, after I was 13 my mother was so ill birthdays were really a thing that my father, whose birthday was one day after mine, was really the one observing it, and vice versa.

With that background, birthdays are deeply personal and private to me.  I don't expect nor desire light wishes and I really don't want gatherings, particularly at work.  One at home with my family is fine.  I almost always work my birthday and when I'm at work, I'm working.  I don't want to take a break late day to eat something.  I know that's weird, but that's the way I feel about it.

I don't mind celebrating other people's birthdays, as they aren't mine.  I get that.  I get the larger cultural tradition.  I'm just not participating in it and I never have.

An added part of that is that personal focus or attention is something that a really private person keeps really private.  I don't want to respond to a fully day of birthday wishes as people stop by my office as the day is private and frankly, given my history with it, wounded.  

I oddly feel the same thing about my first name.  My mother was the only one, when I was growing up, who called me by my entire first name.  Everyone else, absolutely everyone who knows me, uses a truncated form of it.  My mother and I shared that truncated name as our names are male and female variants of the same name.  I note that only her siblings called her by her full name.  The same name reoccurs in my extended family and nobody uses the full variant of it commonly.

But at work people do.  You can't break them of it, and you can't really tell them to knock it off.  Why would they know?

Finally, I suppose, birthdays are a reminder of the things I didn't get done over the past year, which are the same things I didn't get done the year before that, and the same things I made resolutions on at New Years.  At this age the things you need to work on are persistent, and even if they'd be easy for a younger person to address, at over half a century, they're not.  I suppose the reminder is a good thing, in a way, and the birthday serves as a speedbump in that sense, but being reminded of perennial failure is a bit irritating.

Footnotes

1. Ironically, if this upcoming election is like the last, the real Wyomingite who gets the Democratic nomination may be the real Wyomingite.

Is it just bad male behavior, or. . .

is it the predictable tide of the Sexual Revolution going back out to reveal what the flood wrecked?^[1] 

Public domain snipped of Gone With the Wind.  In the film Butler is portrayed as a womanizing cad, but a charming one, who become entangled with Scarlet O'Hara, who is a scheming, not very nice, person.  It's not often noted, but the two central characters of the film are extremely flawed, while the really admirable ones meet with bad ends. 

Not that evidence of wreckage was really needed.

Consider this.

Starting some years ago, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, dob 1952, was revealed to have engaged in an entire string of really icky behavior concerning women, ranging from rape, to pressuring them in sexual matters, to simply being gross.  He's now in prison.  Weinstein's behavior in regard to women was well known inside the industry and even the subject of at least one on stage joke at an awards ceremony before it all broke.

Following Weinstein, or more or less contemporaneously, Bill Cosby, dob 1937, legendary family friendly comedian was revealed to have engaged in serial rapes, basically drugging women and then, well. . .   Apparently rumors about Cosby, who was a pal of uber creep Hugh Hefner, had been circulating for years before they finally broke out into the full media and prosecution results.  They resurfaced when made the target of a routine by another black comedian.  Frankly, the frequent hanging out at the Playboy Mansion, something not consistent with being "America's Dad", should have clued somebody into something.

Andrew Cuomo, dob 1957, appears to be going down in flames, career wise, after a string of accusations have been made against him. They're not, so far, like the Cosby and Weinstein accusations, however.  He's mostly accused of inappropriate touching and behavior.

Matt Gaetz, dob 1982 who doesn't  have the appearance of being the mostly manly of men, is now accused of taking a 17 year old across state lines for immoral purposes.  Just in the past few days an associate of his plead guilty to procuring.

Al Franken, dob 1951, a few years back, saw his political career ruined overnight when it was revealed that he'd engaged in unwanted contact, but not sex, with a string of women.

Now, Tom Reed, dob 1971, a New York politician, has faced accusations that in 2017 he unhooked the bra of a female lobbyist and ran his hand up her thigh, accusations that he at first denied, and then admitted but attributed to alcoholism, which he says he's now defeated.

We'll see, I guess, how Bill Gates does, now that its shown that the super rich philanthropist didn't have just philanthropy on his mind.

Now, also consider this.

Weinstein's behavior, however, isn't all that different from that of Harry Cohn's (1891-1958) who was the long time head of Columbian Pictures.  Cohn pretty much demanded sex from actresses and caused Jean Arthur to retire from acting from a time due to his attacks on actresses.  Not every actress yielded to his advances, however, with the tough as nails Joan Crawford actually stopping by his office and telling him to "keep his pants on" as she was having lunch with his wife and sons the following day.

Natalie Wood, it was revealed after her death, was raped in a hotel room by "a big star" when she was 16 years old.  Her mother told her to keep it a secret, which she did, as revealing it would wreck her budding career.  It should be noted that while there is speculation on who the rapist was, there's no real evidence of that person's identity at all.

John F. Kennedy's conduct with women was so flagrant and abysmal that we have to hardly even go into it.  Frankly, it's not only gross, but if it broke today, he'd never survive politically. His worst conduct was with Mimi Alford, who was an intern, age 20, whom Kennedy made a mistress, but whose actions today would, at least in regard to their initial encounter, would be regarded as rape today. Oddly, he remains a national hero in spite of his behavior generally being well known.

Bill Clinton, dob 1946, survived a series of sex related scandals, one of which is so famous we need not go into it.  Having said that, Clinton's White House behavior was mild in comparison to Kennedy's.

And of course, as we all know, the Teflon Don, dob 1946, survived some accusations as well.

What's the point of all of this?

Well, I guess this depends a bit on how you interpret the evidence.  One simple thing that you can gain from it is that men have been taking advantage of women for a really long time.  After all, we've been looking at things a century past and we just passed the centennial of the inauguration of Warren G. Harding.  Harding was a popular President at the time with a wife that pushed his career (he'd never really wanted to be President).  He also had a long running affair for much of his married life that only  avoided being a scandal, his mistress had German sympathies and may have been a spy during World War One, as the Republican Party bought her off and sent her packing.  That didn't stop Harding from taking on besotted Nan Britton as his mistress. The mid 20s Britton was employed as his secretary and became pregnant, later writing a kiss and tell book with the sordid details of their affair, which included Harding posting Secret Service guards at the door and taking her into a closet for, um dictation.

So, once again, we can take this evidence and conclude that men have been acting badly in this department for a long time.

But something is different about this here maybe.

It's hard to define, but it's the sense of shame that goes with all of this, which is only now just returning.

Thomas Jefferson pretty surely kept Sally Hemmings as a bedmate after his wife died and until he died.  People gossiped about it, but in an era when private lives were truly private, it never really came out into the full light of day until many, many years later, and was only really confirmed, pretty much, after DNA testing became available (there's a string of thought that it could have been Jefferson's brother, but that's probably wrong).  Jefferson and Hemming's relationship was really close to that of a common law, but very weird, marriage and probably the interracial nature of it kept that from every actually occurring, together with the scandal that would have attached to it at the time.

It's interesting, by the way, to note that when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down restrictions on interracial marriages it did so in the case of Loving v. Virginia, giving Virginia bookends on this matter.  I.e., Hemmings may have been an enslaved mistress, or an enslaved wife, but the relationship was illegal and slavery massively immoral, with the Supreme Court ultimately striking down the illegality of interracial relationships many decades later through a case arising in Virginia.

Anyhow, I don't want to sweep under the rug the icky nature of this.  Hemmings may have been Jefferson's late wife's half sister, but she was also a slave, and there's a lot that can be said about the nature of a slave and her "owner" in this context, that I'm not going to as others have and it doesn't really have to be said anyhow.

The point is, Jefferson kept this a secret and it would have been a scandal at the time, and not simply because of their racial diversity, but because they weren't married in addition.

Hamilton's affair, which did break out into the open, was a major scandal that his reputation has never fully recovered from.  It was, we would note, weird, and it was the set up for blackmail.

Grover Cleveland's illegitimate child by Mary Halpin did cause a major scandal as he was running for office, but his opponents political scandals also did.  Cleveland managed to overcome what should have been a career destroying event and went on to be a well known and well liked President.  In the background of that were two different version of the event which were extremely different.  Cleveland ultimately admitted to the paternity of the child, but his supporters managed to portray the incident as resulting from "youthful" indiscretion, when in fact Cleveland was nearly 40 years old when the event occurred, which wasn't a lot younger than his age at becoming President.  Halpin alleged that the child was the result of a single encounter  which amounted to rape after Cleveland had pursued her relentlessly.  Her story after the birth of her child, who went on to live in obscurity and who seems to have become a physician, was extremely tragic, which in part probably helped to discount her veracity at the time, but which would not now.  The story here probably is that this even would normally have destroyed Cleveland's political career, but the nature of his opponent and his ultimate stepping up to the plate, combined with a societal presumption that Halpin was a bit nuts (which she probably wasn't), ended up  weighing in his favor.  Conventional morality was challenged, but certainly not discarded.

In contrast, a long running affair of Franklin Roosevelt's was simply kept quiet by everybody who knew about it, and John F. Kennedy's really creepy moral depravity was wholly buried by everybody who knew him while he lived even though the rumors regarding it could barely be contained due to his flagrant tomcat behavior.

In the Old Testament we're told of the story of the two lecherous elders who make an accusation against a young woman bathing in her garden, in an effort to pressure her into sex.  They're cross examined separately by a profit, who reveals their lies, and they accordingly go on to be stoned to death.

That's the age old ancient standard in the West, and that's pretty much the one we're returning to.  

It isn't the universal global standard.

The Old Testament also provides that men who saw a comely widow in a conquered land, whose hatband had died in battle, could be acquired by a victorious Jewish man, but only have he observed an entire series of concessions to her and her family that were so extensive, it has to be wondered if anyone ever pursued such a conquest.  They included her right to honor the fallen husband and to mourn for him, as well as concessions to her family.  In contrast, Muhammed simply advised his combatants that they could take conquered women as slaves.

That standard was pretty much the global one.  Romans feared conquering barbarian tribes in their late history for a wide variety of reason, but standardized rape was one of them.  Arab tribes raided as far as the Atlantic and hit Ireland for female slaves in raids that had no other purpose. The Vikings took female slaves for obvious purposes wherever they went.  Even into the 20th Century national armies for some non Western nations conducted themselves in this fashion.  And beyond that, armies that fought for nations whose leaders had severed the ties with Christianity also did, the Red Army being the most notorious in this area, and being guilty of the largest mass rape of all time and the largest rapes per capita since ancient times, something that the reputation of that army still has to contend with.

This is not to say that no soldier from a Western nation ever behaved this way through 1945, or later, but it was much rarer and in contrast to the Soviet example, soldiers who were caught were prosecuted, and perpetrators generally tried to keep their conduct as secret as they could, so much so that some of the odder historical examples remain uncertain matters. Did Custer take a Cheyenne girl as an effective sex slave or not? ^[2].  Russian officers, in contrast, actually stood by while mass rapes of Germen women occurred  and egged their soldiers on, with the deaths of the repeated female victims being common^[3]. 

And then came the Second World War.

And we're not simply talking about Russian sexual assault on entire cultures, including their own, or of Japanese sex slaves.^[4]. 

We've presented this thesis before, although we're certainly not welded to it.  Something about World War Two impacted global morality and culture everywhere.  Having said that, in this area, things were undoubtedly evolving prior to the war.

Indeed, so much so that I've had some doubts on my thesis here, although not so much that I've discarded it.  I think it's still valid.  But what is undoubtedly the case is that when photography became less cumbersome, which is right about World War One, an evolution in the objectification of women really started.  There was already at that point pornography, but it wasn't hugely widespread. The war had a role in spreading it, however, through in part cigarette cards and other photographic distributions.  Advertising didn't stray into it rapidly, however, nor did popular depictions.

Movies seem to have started the acceleration of the evolution.  When movies really started to break out following the war, there were no restrictions on what they depicted at all, and film makers, including some really famous ones, picked up on that quickly.  Even Cecille B. DeMille, famous for such films as The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, issued an early movie ostensibly on the suffering of the saints which is regarded as outright pornographic in its depiction of torture of female subjects.

The Hays Production Code of course took that all on, but by then there was something going on. The World War One era had yielded to The Roaring Twenties, which was in large part a huge sigh of relief for the Great War being over and the accompanying post war recession having ended.  Coming when it did, when women were living away from home in increasing numbers, and the farm economy of the United States, and indeed the entire Western World, was increasingly yielding to a rootless urban culture, it created a certain libertine atmosphere that lead naturally to exploitation of women.  For the feel of it, the most recent The Great Gatsby really does it well.

It's easy to say that this all came to a screeching halt with the Great Depression, and people do say that, but just looking at the evidence shows it isn't so.  Magazine covers leading up to World War Two are shockingly revealing in comparison to those of teh 1910s and 1920s, even when done by the same artists.  Some of the female figures on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post from the 30s, and then into the 40s, are pretty revealing really.  When looked at that way, it isn't a long trip from Norman Rockwell in the late 30s and the 1940s, to Vargas in the 1940s, to Playboy in the 1950s.

Move poster from 1942's Casablanca. Regarded as one of the best movies of all time, there's not a single sex scene in it, and for a movie based on protagonists who are dispirited and dispossessed, their actions are classically moral.

What is I suppose different is that even though popular culture as okay with exploiting the female figure, or just outright exploiting women, in the 20s, 30s and 40s, it wasn't at the point where it was willing to regard women purely as objects and it wasn't willing to give outright license to men.  Things happened, of course, and Hollywood was an absolute moral sewer right from the onset, but there was no public celebration of it like there would be later.  Indeed, a lot of the female leads in movies from the 30s and 40s, are of the femme fatale variety, and are more than a little scary in some ways.  It wasn't until Marilyn Monroe that we're really offered a female lead who is both beautiful and portrayed as dimwitted.  Lauren Bacall may have been beautiful, but she certainly wasn't portrayed as dimwitted, and always seemed close to being ready to hurt you.  Ilsa Lund in Casablanca is definitely vulnerable and torn, but she almost shoots Rick and Rick never takes advantage of her.

Indeed, while it may be a cheesy way to do it, Casablanca provides us a really interesting example of how things started changing in the 1950s. The movie was made in 1942 and we know that Rick and Isla had been a couple in Paris, but we aren't provided any sordid details at all, and indeed the way the film portrays that, we'd be better off believing that there aren't any, other than Ilsa's mistaken belief that her husband, Victor Lazlo, is dead.  When presented with the opportunity to lead Ilsa astray, he doesn't, instead rising to morality fully in spite of his own checkered past.  The film is practically a morality play. A huge hit from the following year, The Song of Bernadette, is outright hagiography about a real life saint, something that is almost impossible to imagine Hollywood filming now.

By the 1950s, however, we were getting the Seven Year Itch and by the 1960 we were getting The Apartment, the latter being a criticism of a male dominated culture of economic seduction.  Indeed, The Apartment, for all practical purposes, illustrates most of the negative conduct complained of above, all the way 

Wilder, as this poster notes, had already directed Some Like It Hot by this time, a film which not only would be regarded as mild by contemporary standards, but which couldn't really be made now as the gender bending  comedy of the film would be regarded as offensive.  In this film, however, he took a distinct turn as both of the protagonists are trapped in situations they don't like and made miserable by the sexual misconduct of others.

A person could, and by this point probably is, asking what the point of all of this is. To try to get there, we'll note that maybe what the Church was concerned with which caused it to convene Vatican II was correct, although I don't know that their reaction to it really worked. There's some evidence that it didn't fully.  At any rate, what seems to have occurred is a combination of things actually following World War One, not World War Two as we've earlier suggested, got rolling, some caused by the war and some by the onset of new technologies, that disrupted human society for the worse.  We've been paying for it every since.

The Great War took millions of men away from home for a prolonged period of time and exposed them all to death, and most to vice, in varying degrees.  It's no wonder that the Communists came up violently starting in 1917, and its no wonder that there was massive social disruption in continental Europe following the war.  An established sense of order was grossly disrupted in nearly everything.  At the same time, photography in particularly developed to the point that it was comparatively cheap and easy to use, where as moving images became fairly easy to make.  What had before been a fairly difficult process to make use of, which by extension means it was a fairly difficult thing to misuse, suddenly became the opposite.  Once the technology was around the only think that could be done was to regulate its misuse, but that's always problematic.

At the same time social changes that had been in the works for some time began to accelerate.  Young women increasingly were away from home for the first time in appreciable numbers.  Young men were away from home in much greater numbers.  In both instances the "leaving home" was not accompanied by the shove into the adult world which is otherwise extremely distracting and time consuming.  The Roaring Twenties came around with a hedonistic emphasis that the Great Depression only partially abated.  By the 1930s the covers of magazines routinely featured young women in ways that would have been regarded as scandalous in the prior decade, and which are often cheesecake by contemporary standards.

That's the state of evolved society at the time the US entered World War Two.  Like all American wars, people look back on them and claim the time prior was "an age of innocence", but it really wasn't, and indeed it particularly wasn't, although it was nothing like the current era in that regard.  World War Two's amplified the uprootedness that the First World War and the Great Depression had already caused and made it worse.  A popular illustration and photography industry that crept up on cheesecake constantly made it easy for illustrations to cross right over into pornography during World War Two.  Hugh Hefner, post war, merely picked up on a development that had already occurred, but repackaged it in a slick and socially acceptable fashion, while at the same time radically attacking conventional morality.  By the 1960s his assault had become massive, and by the 70s it was copied and expanded.

It was in that last period of time that women went from being portrayed as objects of desire, but smart ones, to simply objects.  

Its from that status that women now are struggling to get back and away from. And its the current status which creates a situation in which a Republican Congressman can be accused of having sex with a very young minor and defend himself not on the basis that it didn't occur, but that what she received wasn't payment.^[5]

And that latter fact is really remarkable, and evidence of the transition.  Jefferson's transgressions were kept secret by Jefferson, but whispered about by those who knew him. Hamilton came clean about his, but he was openly mocked by his political opponents due to them.  Cleveland survived his scandal but only by ignoring what became an open political topic and subsequently marrying a (rather young) bride.  Roosevelt simply kept his long running affair secret, taking a page out of Harding's book, but without the human byproduct that the latter incident produced.  Everyone around Kennedy operated to keep his dalliances secret, which was a monumental chore, given their nature.

Even as recently as Al Franken, with the rise of the "Me Too" movement, politicians faced with allegations of sexual immorality resigned, and quickly.

Now we're seeing that they don't.  Gaetz and Cuomo are not going quietly.  Cuomo isn't saying anything at all, but following Trump's lead, he's just ignoring the accusations.  Gaetz sort of isn't, actually noting how generous he was to his illicit lovers.

And now, following this, we have the story of Anthony Bouchard and his first wife, although in fairness the events in that tale took place some 40 years ago.  The remarkable thing there, however, is that Bouchard, in breaking the story prior to it being broken on him, by the British press, isn't apologetic about what in Wyoming would amount to statutory rape (it occurred in Florida, where seemingly nobody can determine what the law was at the time) and rather praises himself for stepping up to the plate to deal with the situation.  While he does deserve some credit, and maybe even praise, for not resorting to abortion, under prior retained standards his political career would be over.  There were some bridges that you could not cross and come back from, and that was one.  Now, nothing seems to be a bridge too far.

Women, on the other hand, are now calling on virtue and have been since launching the Me Too movement, although I don't that this is what they realize they are doing.  Indeed, I don't think that the prime movers in the movement are aware that this is what they are doing.

And hence the problem of the era.  You can't correct this sort of abominable behavior without a resort to an ultimate standard.   And ultimate standards are unforgiving things.  You can't go halfway with them, you have to go all the way.

Until you do, you are left participating in an element of hypocrisy, sort of in the Godfather II type manner where Michael Corleone notes to the Senator Pat Geary that "you and I are engaged in the same hypocrisy". And without that ultimate standard, there's always a way for the counter reaction of boys just being boys to come in.

In other words, I suppose, its not only demanding favors in the garden, it's averting your eyes to start with, and trying to make sure that you have privacy in the garden bath.

Footnotes

1.  I started this thread after the news on that Gaetz figure got rolling and that's what inspired it.

After that, however, some news/gossip, or whatever it would be, circulated a little more locally which gave me pause on the same topic as I slightly knew one of, well more than one of, the characters involved.

It's pretty revolting and gross actually, but it sheds some light, I think on the situation we find ourselves in.

Following that, moreover, we had the entire Anthony Bouchard flap here locally, which ended up being a national, and even international, story.

2.  There's certainly reason to believe he may have.  

In contrast, the commanders of the Corps of Discovery's commanders, Lewis and Clark, studiously avoided all such contact with Indian women even though the offering of them was somewhat of an odd cultural courtesy with some of the tribes they encountered in their trip to the Pacific.  They did not restrain their men, however, and as a result treating them for venerial disease was a constant medical problem for the Corps.

3.  Sometimes missed in this is that Russian women were likewise the victims of Russian soldiers on a pretty wide scale.

Rapes by Soviet soldiers make up a well known story but are usually given in the context of rapes that started once the Red Army entered Hungary.  At that point they did reach a really massive scale that continued on into Germany.  Missed in this story, however, is that Red Army soldiers engaged in this conduct, but on a less massive scale, inside of Russia itself and Russian brutality towards the German population continued on some time after the war.

Setting aside the Germans, for which there's a cultural revenge angle to this, by and large the Red Army had real elements of simply being an armed mob.

4.  Japan, as is also well known at least in regard to Korea, kept sex slaves for their troops.  Less well known is that women from conquered Southeast Asian regions were also forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers.

5.  "I have definitely, in my single days, provided for women I've dated. You know, I've paid for flights, for hotel rooms. I've been, you know, generous as a partner. I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not."  Matt Gaetz.