Okay, I've said it once, and I'll say it again. The UAP's, or UFO's if you prefer in this instance, have a more mundane original. They're ours.
Let's start with the first sentence of the very short (seven page) report:
The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP.
Uh huh. That probably tells you about all you really need to know, right there. It's not high quality, as the source of it, doesn't want it to be.
Well, let's take a look at the rest of the non tome.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) considered a range of information on UAP described in U.S. military and IC (Intelligence Community) reporting, but because the reporting lacked sufficient specificity, ultimately recognized that a unique, tailored reporting process was required to provide sufficient data for analysis of UAP events.
•As a result, the UAPTF concentrated its review on reports that occurred between 2004 and 2021, the majority of which are a result of this new tailored process to better capture UAP events through formalized reporting.
•Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.
In a limited number of incidents, UAP reportedly appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics. These observations could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception and require additional rigorous analysis. There are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the range of appearances and behaviors described in the available reporting. Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall “other” bin.
UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security. Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain. UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.
Consistent consolidation of reports from across the federal government, standardized reporting, increased collection and analysis, and a streamlined process for screening all such reports against a broad range of relevant USG data will allow for a more sophisticated analysis of UAP that is likely to deepen our understanding. Some of these steps are resource-intensive and would require additional investment.
AVAILABLE REPORTING LARGELY INCONCLUSIVE
Limited Data Leaves Most UAP Unexplained… Limited data and inconsistency in reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP. No standardized reporting mechanism existed until the Navy established one in March 2019. The Air Force subsequently adopted that mechanism in November 2020, but it remains limited to USG reporting. The UAPTF regularly heard anecdotally during its research about other observations that occurred but which were never captured in formal or informal reporting by those observers.
After carefully considering this information, the UAPTF focused on reports that involved UAP largely witnessed firsthand by military aviators and that were collected from systems we considered to be reliable. These reports describe incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2021, with the majority coming in the last two years as the new reporting mechanism became better known to the military aviation community. We were able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained.
144 reports originated from USG sources. Of these, 80 reports involved observation with multiple sensors.
Most reports described UAP as objects that interrupted pre-planned training or other military activity.
UAP Collection Challenges
Sociocultural stigmas and sensor limitations remain obstacles to collecting data on UAP. Although some technical challenges—such as how to appropriately filter out radar clutter to ensure safety of flight for military and civilian aircraft—are longstanding in the aviation community, while others are unique to the UAP problem set.
Narratives from aviators in the operational community and analysts from the military and IC describe disparagement associated with observing UAP, reporting it, or attempting to discuss it with colleagues. Although the effects of these stigmas have lessened as senior members of the scientific, policy, military, and intelligence communities engage on the topic seriously n public, reputational risk may keep many observers silent, complicating scientific pursuit of the topic.
The sensors mounted on U.S. military platforms are typically designed to fulfill specific missions. As a result, those sensors are not generally suited for identifying UAP.
Sensor vantage points and the numbers of sensors concurrently observing an object play substantial roles in distinguishing UAP from known objects and determining whether a UAP demonstrates breakthrough aerospace capabilities. Optical sensors have the benefit of providing some insight into relative size, shape, and structure. Radiofrequency sensors provide more accurate velocity and range information
But Some Potential Patterns Do Emerge
Although there was wide variability in the reports and the dataset is currently too limited to allow for detailed trend or pattern analysis, there was some clustering of UAP observations regarding shape, size, and, particularly, propulsion. UAP sightings also tended to cluster around U.S. training and testing grounds, but we assess that this may result from a collection bias as a result of focused attention, greater numbers of latest-generation sensors operating in those areas, unit expectations, and guidance to report anomalies.
And a Handful of UAP Appear to Demonstrate Advanced Technology
In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics.
Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.
The UAPTF holds a small amount of data that appear to show UAP demonstrating acceleration or a degree of signature management. Additional rigorous analysis are necessary by multiple teams or groups of technical experts to determine the nature and validity of these data. We are conducting further analysis to determine if breakthrough technologies were demonstrated.
UAP PROBABLY LACK A SINGLE EXPLANATION
The UAP documented in this limited dataset demonstrate an array of aerial behaviors, reinforcing the possibility there are multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations. Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall “other” bin. With the exception of the one instance where we determined with high confidence that the reported UAP was airborne clutter, specifically a deflating balloon, we currently lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations.
Airborne Clutter: These objects include birds, balloons, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or airborne debris like plastic bags that muddle a scene and affect an operator’s ability to identify true targets, such as enemy aircraft.
Natural Atmospheric Phenomena: Natural atmospheric phenomena includes ice crystals, moisture, and thermal fluctuations that may register on some infrared and radar systems.
USG or Industry Developmental Programs: Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected.
Foreign Adversary Systems: Some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity.
Other: Although most of the UAP described in our dataset probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection processing or analysis, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them. We would group such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them. The UAPTF intends to focus additional analysis on the small number of cases where a UAP appeared to display unusual flight characteristics or signature management.
UAP THREATEN FLIGHT SAFETY AND, POSSIBLY, NATIONAL SECURITY
UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary.
Ongoing Airspace Concerns
When aviators encounter safety hazards, they are required to report these concerns. Depending on the location, volume, and behavior of hazards during incursions on ranges, pilots may cease their tests and/or training and land their aircraft, which has a deterrent effect on reporting.
The UAPTF has 11 reports of documented instances in which pilots reported near misses with a UAP.
Potential National Security Challenges
We currently lack data to indicate any UAP are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary. We continue to monitor for evidence of such programs given the counter intelligence challenge they would pose, particularly as some UAP have been detected near military facilities or by aircraft carrying the USG’s most advanced sensor systems.
EXPLAINING UAP WILL REQUIRE ANALYTIC, COLLECTION AND RESOURCE INVESTMENT
Standardize the Reporting, Consolidate the Data, and Deepen the Analysis
In line with the provisions of Senate Report 116-233, accompanying the IAA for FY 2021, the UAPTF’s long-term goal is to widen the scope of its work to include additional UAP events documented by a broader swath of USG personnel and technical systems in its analysis. As the dataset increases, the UAPTF’s ability to employ data analytics to detect trends will also improve. The initial focus will be to employ artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms to cluster and recognize similarities and patterns in features of the data points. As the database accumulates information from known aerial objects such as weather balloons, high-altitude or super-pressure balloons, and wildlife, machine learning can add efficiency by pre-assessing UAP reports to see if those records match similar events already in the database.
The UAPTF has begun to develop interagency analytical and processing workflows to ensure both collection and analysis will be well informed and coordinated.
The majority of UAP data is from U.S. Navy reporting, but efforts are underway to standardize incident reporting across U.S. military services and other government agencies to ensure all relevant data is captured with respect to particular incidents and any U.S. activities that might be relevant. The UAPTF is currently working to acquire additional reporting, including from the U.S. Air Force (USAF), and has begun receiving data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Although USAF data collection has been limited historically the USAF began a sixmonth pilot program in November 2020 to collect in the most likely areas to encounter UAP and is evaluating how to normalize future collection, reporting, and analysis across the entire Air Force. •
The FAA captures data related to UAP during the normal course of managing air traffic operations. The FAA generally ingests this data when pilots and other airspace users report unusual or unexpected events to the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization. •
In addition, the FAA continuously monitors its systems for anomalies, generating additional information that may be of use to the UAPTF. The FAA is able to isolate data of interest to the UAPTF and make it available. The FAA has a robust and effective outreach program that can help the UAPTF reach members of the aviation community to highlight the importance of reporting UAP.
Expand Collection
The UAPTF is looking for novel ways to increase collection of UAP cluster areas when U.S. forces are not present as a way to baseline “standard” UAP activity and mitigate the collection bias in the dataset. One proposal is to use advanced algorithms to search historical data captured and stored by radars. The UAPTF also plans to update its current interagency UAP collection strategy in order bring to bear relevant collection platforms and methods from the DoD and the IC.
Increase Investment in Research and Development
The UAPTF has indicated that additional funding for research and development could further the future study of the topics laid out in this report. Such investments should be guided by a UAP Collection Strategy, UAP R&D Technical Roadmap, and a UAP Program Plan.
APPENDIX A - Definition of Key Terms
This report and UAPTF databases use the following defining terms:
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP): Airborne objects not immediately identifiable. The acronym UAP represents the broadest category of airborne objects reviewed for analysis.
UAP Event: A holistic description of an occurrence during which a pilot or aircrew witnessed (or detected) a UAP.
UAP Incident: A specific part of the event.
UAP Report: Documentation of a UAP event, to include verified chains of custody and basic information such as the time, date, location, and description of the UAP. UAP reports include Range Fouler1 reports and other reporting
Okay, what can we take away from all of that?
Well, most of these UAP events are explainable. Some aren't, but its very few, and they're not telling you what they are. and they need more money.
In short, they don't want to panic people that they're "aliens" from outer space, and they don't want to reveal what they really are. And the reason for the latter, as we've said before, is that these almost certainly represent a U.S. government program of some sort, and its a military one. Either we have a high tech technology that we want to leak just a little, or we want our adversaries to believe we do.
Does that mean that the military is lying to Congress? Not necessarily. The report says so little, it likely contains no real lies, just no real information.
On this date in 1941, the Spanish government began to organize a division to serve with the Germans against the Soviet Union. It's effort would be the most successful example of a non German contribution to the German armed forces during World War Two, outside of the complicated topic of Soviet volunteers to the same.
The German government requested that Spain contribute to Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, the date of the opening of the offensive, hoping for a Spanish declaration of war. Spain did not take that step, but as the Spanish army was favorable to a contribution, Franco agreed to it on June 24, providing that the Spanish army be in charge of the organization of the unit. Organization commenced on this day and recruitment the following day. Technically the unit was not to be a unit of the Spanish armed forces and therefore its contribution not a causa belli.
By early July the unit was sufficiently manned, with over 18,000 volunteers, that it was sent to Germany for further training. It acquired its nickname the "Blue Division" as it adopted a dress uniform that features the Falangist blue shirt, most of its volunteers being Falangists. The same uniform featured a red Carlist beret and the Spanish Legion's khaki trousers. In combat it wore German uniforms. It was incorporated into the Wehrmacht on July 31.
It's performance inside the Wehrmacht would be a good one, showing the dedication of its Falangist volunteers. Ultimately 47,000 Spaniards would serve in the unit, and less than 200 fascist Portuguese, and it would inflict 49,000 deaths upon the Soviets. The unit was responsible for the desecration of the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina Street in Novgorod, which perhaps says something about the often mistaken assumption that the Falangist held a charitable view on religion.
Indeed, inside of Spain, while Falangist celebrated the German invasion, conservative Spaniards and the Catholic Church opposed the contribution to the German cause and Allied pressure made it increasingly uncomfortable for Franco. In October 1943, by which time the handwriting was on the wall on an eventual German defeat, he ordered its official withdrawal. 3,000 mostly Falangist refused Franco's order and remained, and were incorporated into the SS.
At the same time, but with an undeterminable date in June, French far right politicians approached the German ambassador in France about contributing up to 30,000 volunteers for the same cause. Notable among them was Jacque Doriot who had been a former Communist, but had turned to the hard right.
The symbol of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism.
The Germans accepted the idea, but not trusting the French, limited the contribution to 10,000 men and began organizing them in July. Less than 3,000 volunteers, however, came forward to serve in the unit, showing that it the German cause was not popular even among the hard French right. The Vichy government tolerated its formation but didn't support it, unlike the Spanish government. The unit was ordered disbanded after the western Allies landed in Normandy and its surviving members were incorporated into the SS.
Ironically one of its members was Said Mohammed, a notable member of the Algerian independence movement after the war. He was later sent by the Abwehr into Algeria where he was caught and arrested. He seemed to somehow associate his membership in the unit with Algerian independence. Completing the irony of his life, he died in Parish in 1994.
As noted, the largest number of individuals who served with the Germans during World War Two who were not German, were Soviet citizens, with the numbers ultimately being massive. Their story, however, is much more complicated than those discussed above, so it'll have to be addressed elsewhere.
Kassa Hungary was bombed by unidentified aircraft, which was used as a pretext by the Hungarian government to declare war on the Soviet Union. The event remains controversial today as the origin of the aircraft remains unknown, with the two likely suspects being the Germans, in a clandestine role with the cooperation of the Hungarian government, or the Soviets, by accident. The latter seems the most likely. In any event, Hungary was going to join in with the Germans, so it was a mere pretext no matter who was responsible.
What all this tends to show is how bad the ability of humans to predict the future really is. Germany was receiving support for its invasion of its massive neighbor right and left, but the outcome was very far from certain at the time. With the first couple of days being successful, and with the German record up to that date seemingly in their favor, it was simply assumed they'd win.
Well, it's pretty clearly now the case that absolutely everyone who hopes to be in politics or has dreamed of it, and who is to the right of Liz Cheney, is now set to run against her.
I last reported on this on May 2014. Since then, there's been new entrants. Here's the current list, with new additions, and slight changes:
Of note this is just the Republican field. No Democrats have filed yet. Some will.
Liz Cheney. You know who she is, of course. She's the incumbent and probable nominee, in spite of the heavy rightward leaning slate of candidates against her.
Robin Belinsky: Belinsky is a business woman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene and therefore predictably endorses the Trump's narrative that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.
Greene is among the most disturbing of the Congressional Trump backers, so not only does Belinsky make a strong contrast to Cheney, it's one that isn't likely to get very far.
Anthony Bouchard: Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature. He originally came into the public eye through a firearms organization he's central to. He was also the first well known candidate to announce against Cheney.
Bouchard is firmly in the Trump camp and appeared, with Chuck Gray, at the Matt Gaetz rally against Cheney. Bouchard is well known due to his prior political activities and therefore is likely to make it to at least the primary, which many in this crowded field will not.
Chuck Gray: Gray is a hard right member of the legislature whose first appearance in the Wyoming political scene was an unsuccessful run at the seat he now occupies in the House. He was appointed to that seat upon his predecessor's death and is a Natrona County radio personality.
Gray and Bouchard will be competing for essentially the same demographic and in some ways have analogous political careers after having obtained office. When this occurs, it tends to result in a regional contest, with supporters from various regions supporting their local candidate. That disfavors Gray as candidates from Casper are rarely supported by the rest of the state, although a lot of the state isn't that keen on Cheyenne either. In any event, if Gray and Bouchard stay in through the end of the primary, which they are likely to, they'll soak up a lot of the support base for each other.
Bryan Eugene Keller: He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered but I don't know anything else about him. A Google search didn't turn up much either. It's likely safe to say that Keller, absent something really surprising, will draw very few votes in the race.
Denton Knapp: Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard. He's from Gillette originally and claims to be generally fond of the Cheney and to respect her past role in Congress.
Knapp received a lot of press for his announcement yesterday, but almost all of it boils down to "Retired Army Colonel. . . " which won't get him far. In the last Senate Race one candidate was prominently noted to be a retired Air Force officer and that didn't take him anywhere. Truth be known, while the country remains in a post war hagiographic era regarding veterans, a lot of that has become shallow acknowledgement and his long career in the service isn't likely to get him very far and may even hurt him in nativist Wyoming. Gone for thirty years? Brig Gen of the California National Guard? He'll have to come up with a lot more than that.
Knapp is presently a Californian, living in Orange County, and will have to reestablish residency in Wyoming. This will also hurt him. After a thirty year absence and then a relocation to Wyoming, coming back just to run for Congress won't be well received. In fact, it wasn't well received when Liz Cheney did that, which is why in her first race she took fewer votes than her two combined opponents in the primary.
Bryan Miller: Miller is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel who has twice run for Senate and lost. Now he's trying the House against a candidate who is presumed to be embattled.
Miller is a strong Trump supporter and supports Trump's false claims that the election was stolen.
Miller's association with Trump's false claims makes him somewhat distinct from the other retired military officer running this election, Knapp. There's something disturbing, beyond what is otherwise disturbing, about a military man supporting Trump's attempts to subvert the election. My prediction is that Miller's campaign won't go far although he'll stay in until the end of the primary as he seems to have a very strong desire to be elected to office and there has become a perennial candidate.
Marissa Selvig: Mayor of Pavilion. Selvig announced early and has a website, but has received very little attention thereafter. She's disadvantaged to a degree as Bouchard and Gray have a bigger audience by default.
Selvig interestingly focuses on her dedication to the constitution, which she holds is the "second" most important document in the American system, the first being the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is a single purpose document with no post declaration legal import, so that's an unusual position. Otherwise, her stated positions are conventional typical local Republican.
Selvig's campaign is unlikely to gain steam anywhere. Her stated positions don't really serve to distinguish her from Cheney, and if she was to distinguish herself by going in the now trendy rightward direction, she'd be indistinguishable from Bouchard and Gray.
Darin Smith: Smith is a businessman and lawyer in Cheyenne, according to the information he's put out. He was the campaign manager for the failed Foster Freiss Gubernatorial run and his views reflect that. Freiss is a backer of his. That fact probably gives Smith a spending advantage over other candidates trying to unseat Cheney. He stands out in that he's less fanatic in his endorsement of the Trump election stolen myth while still endorsing it in a lukewarm fashion.
Smith's stated positions on his campaign site by and large are typical for the Wyoming GOP including the insistence that "we" need to get coal back on the market. The problem with some of those positions is that they fail to acknowledge trends that have now passed a certain jump the shark level. Coal was declining, for example, under Trump. Regarding Trump, Smith's campaign site has the "Take America Back" phrase on the first page, which is really slang for "I believe the election was stolen" to some ears, whether Smith means that or not.
Smith joins Cheney in being a lawyer, which none of the other candidates are, which means that he knows that a lot of the pro Trump rhetoric that's grounded in the Constitution and what not is legally baseless and he should know its factually baseless as well. It'll be interesting to see if he, like Knapp, attempts to nuance his position on the 2020 election.
The thing that uniformly distinguishes all of these candidates from Cheney, except perhaps for Selvig and Keller, the latter of whom is a mystery, is that they're all backing Trump to some degree, with Knapp the less enthusiastic about it. Indeed the irony of this race is that Cheney's stance has brought her a fair amount of support from rank and file Wyomingites while also bringing her the ire of the county parties. Her original weakness was that she wasn't from here, which was a strike against her the first time she ran. In that race, the two main opponents split the vote and she took office. Since then she's risen in Congress and as a result of her stance, has risen in admiration in the eyes of a lot of people who were lukewarm about her before. She's almost certain to win this race.
Other races? Well, there is one that has a competition, sort of, right now, and that's the Governor's Race.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent, he'll run again. He hasn't registered yet.
Gordon defeated a slate of hard right candidates in the 2018 election. Some of those candidates were pretty unhappy about the results with Foster Freiss being the most unhappy. Given this we can expect some hard right Republicans to surface and challenge him, although he'll win reelection.
In fact, one such candidate has announced he'll run, but hasn't registered.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
May 20, 2021
The State Republican Party reelected its leadership.
The leadership in the past few years has been solidly populist. Frank Eathorne, who was elected to the top position in the party, specifically stated that Trump is the leader of the GOP, even though he occupies no such position formally. He went on to state that the Wyoming Republicans don't "worship" Trump, but he speaks to the state GOP like no leaders since Reagan, a statement that is more than a little ironic as the philosophical connections between Reagan and Trump would be mostly nonexistent. Indeed, the remaining Buckeyite conservatives in the GOP, which Reagan represented, largely detest Trump.
The election of Trump backers to the state's leadership is very significant, but it doesn't actually necessary reflect party registration, which thinly participates in the party itself. Indeed, the Wyoming GOP has been so successful at dominating the state's politics that its become, effectively, the only party, which means that it contains a large majority of people who barely participate in politics other than voting, and who tend to pay attention to the candidates therefore on an individual rather than party basis. As nearly any candidate can claim to be a Republican in Wyoming, most who run, run as Republicans.
What's mostly clear is that its the formation of an organization dedicated to taking the GOP back from the Trumpites, which is something, but which right now is a long haul. The organization is holding a national town hall on June 16.
May 21, cont:
In the form of the release of a video, in an effort to get ahead of the story, Anthony Bouchard has gone public with the revelation that when he was 18 he got a 14 year old girl pregnant, and that he married her the following year. The marriage later ended in divorce and apparently the relationship with the child, a boy, is somewhat strained and the boy's life somewhat problematic. The woman's must have been, as she committed suicide some time after their divorce (which I'm not saying is Bouchard's fault in any fashion, I don't know anything about it).
Also of note, Bouchard was living in Florida at the time and therefore is, at least it would seem, not a Wyoming native. This is of interest as Wyomingites tend to be nativist and at least two of the notable hard right Cheney opponents are imports.
FWIW, at least in Wyoming, a sexual relationship between an 18 year old and a 14 year old would be, I believe, felonious. This might not have been the case in Florida, I have no idea.
Whatever the nature of this stuff is, this will be a hurdle for Bouchard to overcome.
Note, this is in the spirit of noting political developments, not casting stones. I'm only commenting on the political race.
May 22, 2021
And the plot thickens, as the phrase goes, on the Anthony Bouchard story.
It's now been revealed that Bouchard, in breaking the story himself, was getting ahead of a news story that was getting ready to run in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail. Bouchard became aware of this when he was called by the Mail for an interview. Bouchard claims this was done by a "company", and as of yesterday it was vaguely sort of hinted Cheney was to blame, but the Cheney campaign completely denies this, and frankly the best evidence is that this is attributable to one of the campaigns running against Bouchard for a short at taking on Cheney, not Cheney.
The Daily Mail is a notoriously trashy British newspaper, something that defines a lot of British newspapers, but that doesn't mean its article is inaccurate. By all appearances, it's spot on the money. And the Mail's interview with a "Republican operative" makes it plain that the operative it interviewed is in the "Trump wing of the party". The "operative" was quoted, and said that details regarding Bouchard have been well known behind the scenes in the GOP and then stated something that's undeniably true and which Bouchard should have been aware of, that being ". . . the higher you climb on the flagpole, the more people see your ass", further indicating that Bouchard's blemishes are going to come out.
Something true of all the candidates.
So what the story now is that Bouchard, age 18, impregnated Frances Lynn Webb, age 14, in Florida, around 1983. This is interesting in part because knowing the actual background of the hard right Bouchard has been hard to do. I usually try to put something about a candidates background in if it can be determined, but for such a well known candidate, anything about Bouchard has been hard to find. In contrast, his nearest rival, Chuck Gray, is easy to find information out about (from South Dakota, went to the Wharton School of Business, once aspired to be a lawyer, moved to Wyoming to work at Gray media which owns media outlets, is a practicing Catholic but doesn't note that in his campaign). Bouchard is mostly known for being the head of Wyoming Gun Owners, a gun owners organization that's more radical, if you will, than the NRA and in which Bouchard has been in very vocal public spats. Otherwise, the only thing easily known about his non political life is that he attended, but apparently didn't graduate, from a Florida university.
In Wyoming at any point in recent decades an 18 year old having sex with a 14 year old would be a felony. According to the Tribune, its impossible to know if that's the case or not in regard to Florida in 1983. The Mail also had trouble determining that but it seemed to lean towards it being a crime. According to the Mail, under a Florida "Romeo and Juliet" law, it was possible for a person convicted of what is commonly called "statutory rape" in circumstances in which the couple were in their teens and within a certain age to have his requirement to register as a sex offender removed, but that still doesn't otherwise remove the conviction itself.
Bouchard was never charged with a crime. In Wyoming there is no statute of limitations on crimes, so if this was a Wyoming event, he could still be charged and in fact Wyoming does levy charges against sexual crimes that occurred decades prior. I don'[t know the situation in Florida.
Bouchard married Webb in 1984 and claims that this was, basically, to do the right thing. He further claims that he resisted pressure to urge Webb to abort the child, and that she resisted it too. That may all be 100% true. It's worth noting that in the early 1980s, and indeed well into the 1990s, it was still the case in the larger American culture that having a child out of wedlock was a scandal and many couples that found themselves in this situation, removing for a moment the statutory rape element of it, married to mitigate the scandal Having said that, it was also fairly common at the time for a girl in this situation to have the baby and give it up for adoption.
Which gets to the next thing. In this region of the country a marriage between a 15 year old, which is what Webb was at the time, and an adult was extremely unusual. Given the years involved, this makes me only slightly older than Bouchard and I can't recall anything of this type happening here of which I'm personally aware. I do recall a married high school student in my graduating class, but the marriage would likely have been when she was 17 or maybe 18. Indeed, in my graduating class there wasn't any of the "getting married right after high school" stories that you hear about now, and have classically heard about. But I don't live in Florida.
Florida is part of the South and I don't know where in Florida this all occurred. I'll note that as even as late as the 1980s it was still the case that in some parts of the South really young girls got married, even without scandal. As I've noted here before, I once knew a man from Louisiana who married his wife when she was 13 and he was 19, without the scandal element attaching at all. They just got married, and were when I knew him some twenty years later.
Having said that, there's something deeply odd, putting it mildly, between these relationships. People change at a blistering pace at that age and generally 18 year old men are not interested in 14 year old girls. Again, back when I was that age we tended to have girlfriends, if we had them, who were just about the same age as we were, or perhaps one year younger. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and looking back the only girl I dated in that period was probably 17 when I briefly dated her, 16 at the absolute youngest, but I don't think so. The only one of my friends who had a steady girlfriend at the time dated one of my cousins who was slightly older than he was, so 18 nd 17.
Having said all of that, right out of high school a friend of mine who must have been 18 at the time dates a really young girl who was 14 or 15. I recall that for two reasons, one of which was that we regarded it as deeply creepy, and the other being that he was a member of a religion where there's pressure to marry really young and she was too. He soon dumped her and soon thereafter was dating a second girl who was also a member of that religion and who was within about a year of his age.
The latter point illustrates something, however. The changes in people in this age range are so swift that normally, in most of American society, 18 year olds don't have much interest in 14 year olds, and 14 year olds are children. As people age, the gap between their years widens, and later on its not unusual at all to see a decade between the ages of a married couple, with the man usually being the older. Once girls hit 18 years old, its not unusual for them to date men several years older. By the time they're 20, that age gap widens. Right about then, a decade's difference isn't unusual and that gap tends to remain for the rest of a person's years. I.e., a 50 year old marrying a 40 year old doesn't' raise eyebrows.
The difference between age 14 and 18 is four years. So is the difference between age 14 and age 10.
To complete the story, the couple's son was born. The marriage lasted only three years. Webb's father was dead from suicide prior to their relationship commencing. She took the same path at age 20. Not much more than that can be said about that, other than that she was troubled in some regard. The son is as well, as he's being held in California on some extremely serious sexual assault charges. Bouchard claims to be "nearly estranged" from the son he raised, and which he always had custody of after the divorce, and that may well be true.
Turning to the overall event, Bouchard should have realized from the onset, as the GOP operative stated, that this was going to come out. But what impact will it have?
Well, it probably ought to have some. It's getting a lot of press and the reaction has been interesting.
Bouchard termed the tragic story a Romeo and Juliet story, and that quote has gotten a lot of press. Bouchard's probable reference here is to the fact that the story is a tragedy and that the couple in the story were teenagers. I don't know the ages, however, of the couple in Shakespeare's play as I've never seen it performed and its one of his works that frankly doesn't interest me. Looking it up, apparently Shakespeare never says the protagonist ages, but there's scholarly speculation that she's 13 and he's somewhat older, which gives me even less incentive to read this than before.
Bouchard's use of the play has, interestingly, received a lot of criticism for improper citation to Shakespeare. I don't want to defend Bouchard, but here he's actually using the play correctly in my view. It's a tragedy, and the story related by Bouchard, no matter what you think of him, is overall really tragic.
Some of the commentary in this area tries to defend the play by noting that, in context, the central characters would be older now. Well. . . I get that, but probably not It probably reflects something else in those cultures and that time. For what its worth, the central characters in War and Peace are introduced at a party in which the female protagonists are also that age, and the male ones in their 20s, which is creepier still. But before we take that too far, its worth noting, as we have before, that marriage ages in earlier times actually aren't higher than they are now, and that child brides were really unusual then as well. Young marriage ages may have been legal, and girls, who weren't in school at the time, perhaps introduced as future marriage candidates fairly young, but actual really young couples and marriage wasn't a thing, for the most part, in western society. Exceptions of course exist.
Beyond that, what's really interesting is that Bouchard's die hard supporters, and he had them before he announced, aren't phased a bit but are actually fired up. They see him as the victim of a conspiracy and his confession as proof of his nobleness. It's the last part that's really baffling.
Donald Trump's supporters have frequently talked of "Trump Derangement Syndrome", a phenomenon they claim features a person having a violent reaction to all things Trump. There's something to that, but it could also be claimed that there's a Derangement Syndrome that operates the other way. I've repeatedly seen populist who have fallen in love with Trump excuse things he did, when they were revealed, even if it meant doubling over backwards on their beliefs. Now we're seeing that with Bouchard.
There's no way to defend an 18 year old screwing a 14 year old. None. Granting the classic "people make mistakes", with this being a particularly icky mistake, this is a really icky story. There's now way to sweep it under the rug, but there are ways to handle it, I guess. Bouchard has tried to do that, apparently (I haven't watched his video), but something he should do is to damp down the "see what a hero he is" reaction. Granted further, if the story is true that he resisted calls for an abortion, and she did too, they really did act heroically in that fashion, but this story is gross any way you look at it. Bouchard probably owes it to the facts to call on people to stop praising him in this area.
He might owe it to everyone to call of his race, but he doesn't seem inclined to. A mistake can disqualify a person for later office, even if they've repented. Sex with a 14 year old and a following tragedy that keeps on may be one of those.
Certainly the same political camp that's praising Bouchard now offered no such mercy to Joe Biden over the story of his son Hunter. Will they apologize now?
Resigning from campaigns doesn't seem to be a Republican thing anymore. So he may very well keep on. But what we now know about this candidate is that he had a real skeleton in his closet that produced an ongoing tragedy, and that he's not a Wyomingite in the way that a lot of Wyomingites qualify that category. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a Nebraskan who is associated with Wyoming, and who has taken a lot of heat, including from me, for think associations with the state. Bouchard moved here at some point and has lived here for some time, but for how long?
Bouchard's campaign claims that Wyoming needs a Congressman as conservative as he is. One more conservative than Cheney is almost impossible to imagine. Wyoming also needs an effective one, which Cheney has been. Bouchard has been loud, for sure, and is in the Legislature, but we're only now getting to know much about him. The Republican operative is right. The higher you climb on the flagpole, the more your ass shows.
May 25, 2021
The Wyoming Senate is considering censuring Anthony Bouchard over the 18/14 pregnancy matter.
Bouchard indicated that he's not dropping out of the race and his campaign coordinator indicates that he's campaign donations have gone up since the story broke.
That's frankly a bit disturbing.
The Tribune article on this matter interviews another member of the legislature that Bouchard has claimed is a supporter of the "deep state". That individual noted that Bouchard's video breaking the news, as we've noted above, isn't really an apology for what occurred. The Tribune article also makes it plain that the Republican "operative" acted to "clean" the field for Cheney opponents, so the suspicion that some have that its people associated with Cheney, as noted above is unwarranted.
Frankly, digging up dirt to discredit an opponent is reprehensible, for the most part. But there's something really unsettling here overall about the Bouchard reaction and that of his supporters. Democratic candidates over the last decade have apologized and resigned for much less than this. Bouchard isn't resigning (that's definitely his call) but dismissing this as merely a mistake, and some of his supporters really rallying to him, basically excuses what most people would regard as an extremely reprehensible act. And when such acts are excused, at some point, they become fully excusable.
This is probably an overall symptom of where the nation's politics are right now. If things like this really mean nothing, particularly in regard to Republicans, we're in a pretty bad place in terms of our overall culture right now, not that this is really a surprise, and our politics are in a really distressing place, not that this is a surprise.
May 25, 2021, cont:
The fight over and with Bouchard has actually grown much worse than the Trib has let on. Indeed, Bouchard ought to be praising the Tribune for its restraint.
One of the conservative Internet Wyoming news organs isn't showing such restraint however, and Bouchard is now in a real public spat with Ogden Driscoll, the majority floor leader in the Senate. For example:
Calling Bouchard a “predator”, Driskill said there is a “huge difference” between a high school student dating a younger peer and a high school dropout who had a job and was “hanging out with 13 and 14-year-olds”.
“That was not acceptable back then,” he said. “In fact, where I’m from you took your life in your own hands if you went out to date junior high girls.”
Yikes.
All this would suggest that the members of the GOP do more details than have hit the press. Somebody has now asked Bouchard if he was in high school when this happened, and at least as of press time, he hadn't responded.
Bouchard has, in turn, accused Driscoll of "lining his pockets", without details, and in a new video calls him "scum".
May 26, 2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the gadfly freshman Congressman who is pretty clearly a type of troll, has entered the Wyoming political scene in a bizarre way because of Anthony Bouchard.
Bouchard turns out to be a Greene supporter and he recently returned to his home state of Florida to participate in her "America First" rally . Matt Gaetz, facing potential charges for alleged sex with an underaged women, was also there giving a certain extra added element of irony to the Bouchard story.
A story was circulating the past couple of days that suggested that the Senate was looking a censuring Bouchard over his involvement with a 14 year old when he was 18. This lead to a very public spat with Senator Driskill whom he apparently doesn't get along with, which we noted above, which in turn led to Bouchard comparing himself to Greene and posting:
“The RINO establishment led by Sen. Ogden
Driskill wants to strip me of committees. Just like Pelosi did to #MTG BRING
IT,”
Cheney supported the Republicans in the House who condemned Greene's recent statements comparing mask wearing to the holocaust. Condemnation, we'd note, on this was very wide. Robin Belinsky, the doomed Wyoming candidate who calls herself Wyoming's Greene, distanced herself from the comments, a pretty good sign of how extreme they are, while still stating that Greene had a right to say them. Bouchard didn't comment on them, but this gave the Tribune the opportunity to note Bouchard's support for Greene, which given his participation in her populist rally in Florida, is obviously pretty extensive.
It turns out that the Senate isn't really considering stripping Bouchard of his committee assignments, but what is the case is just what one of his anti Cheney GOP critics noted, the higher he climbs on the flagpole the more his ass is showing. Driskill was brutal in his criticism of Bouchard, and if what he's hinting is correct it does put another element into this. Bouchard, moreover, who has some real populist support in the GOP but who no doubt wasn't widely followed in wider circles, let alone by the general (Republican) public is shown to really be in the extreme end of things thanks to the press he's now getting, as for example that he's a supporter of Greene. Greene seems to be focused on being a troll and has no committee assignments at all in Congress, meaning that she's reduced to nothing but making outrageous statements for attention.
Rather than taking a repentant tone over things, Bouchard is asserting that the "deep state" is coming after him.
The primary, it should be noted, isn't until next year. All the inside predictions favor Cheney, but obviously that's been no deterrent to a flood of primary candidates. This field will narrow enormously as time goes on but Bouchard, who some populists favored, is being subject to a spotlight that's sufficiently bright that at lease one member of the state Senate doesn't mind openly criticizing him and, moreover, much more is coming to light about him. While its very early, my predictions are that he'll stay in through the primary, but his Wyoming political career has basically ended.
May 28, 2021
Foster Friess, Republican "megadonor" who had relocated to Wyoming and involved himself in the state's politics in recent years, albeit not successfully, died at age 81. While is death of bone marrow cancer takes him from the political scene directly, it will none the less have an impact on the race as he was the campaign manager for Darin Smith, who had been Friess' campaign manager when he ran for Governor.
Friess was not a Wyomingite, but had grown up in Wisconsin and then later lived in Texas, but in very recent years was eligible to run as he'd claimed Jackson Hole as his residence, making him part of the super wealthy set from there. He ran in the 2018 Governor's race unsuccessfully and was somewhat bitter about his defeat in the primary election, coming in second, but a not too distant second. In 2019 he had an exploratory committee working on his chances for another run but terminated it soon thereafter. His 2018 campaign had a real southern feel to it, featuring for example scantily clad young women. Smith's present campaign, absent the young women, somewhat has a feel reflective of Friess. He definitely had an impact on the state's politics, although it can be debated whether it was good or bad, with that probably being reflective of your political views.
While potentially in bad form to note it, Friess' death points out, to some degree, the lack of wisdom in continually electing ancient candidates to office. He did not win, of course, but had he, the Secretary of State in Wyoming would now be the Governor.
Looking back on the 2018 election, Friess competition with Harriet Hageman perhaps was indicative of disturbing trends to come. Both candidates were hard right candidates, but Friess always came across as affable and even jovial, which perhaps won him some votes. It's difficult to know, of course, but the split in the vote in 2018 might mean nothing at all, or it might have been a sign of how far to the right the GOP was drifting. Friess, it should be noted, can't really be regarded as having been a populist.
June 6, 2021
Harold Bjork has started a campaign for the GOP nomination for Governor, although he hasn't yet registered as running.
Who is he? I don't know, but from what little you can tell, this "conservative" candidate is running pretty far to the right of Gordon and seems to be strongly opposed to the now expired mask mandate.
FWIW, all the candidates who run for this position, including the Democratic top contender, are conservative by conventional, or at least pre Trump, definitions. As the current trends have made these terms a bit obsolete, realistically candidates to the far right likely really fit into some other category.
June 14, 2021
Some sort of debate was held for the Congressional election on June 12, which was we might note an exceedingly busy day in Casper where this event was held. On the same day, Mills, the neighboring city, celebrated its 100th anniversary with concerts and a summer festival, the College National Finals Rodeo started, and the LGBQT community held a Pride event at Casper's Durbin Street Station. Suffice it to say, getting any attention in a day that had so many varied things going on would be difficult to say the least.
It appears to have been sponsored by an entity using the American First moniker, now associated with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Liz Cheney was not in attendance and there is no reason that she would be, as this event was specifically a remove Cheney event. Interestingly Anthony Bouchard, the standard bearer for the this line of thought in Wyoming, up until perhaps recently, wasn't there either. A supporter notes that he was elsewhere in the comments, but he's also been somewhat quiet since the events of his early years described above came to press. His nearest rivals were there, however.
A note, I haven't watched this video.
June 19, 2021
Candidate Gray visited the Arizona partisan audit, something some other far right populist have recently done. Liz Cheney has termed the audit an attempt to "subvert" democracy.
Gray, in his campaign materials, has a poster showing the diminutive Wharton School of Business educated Gray in suit and tie wearing boxing gloves taking on "never Trumpers" Cheney and Mitt Romney. Clearly he's angling for the populist vote. At some point, however, serious questions probably ought to be asked if some of these candidates are pitching softballs to what's being hit, or if they truly believe what they're stating, and if so, why.
June 21, 2021
Ammon Bundy, a member of the Bundy family that occupied a Federal wildlife refuge under a claim that they had the right to graze it, which ended up in a standoff with Federal authorities, is running for the Governor of Idaho. Given convictions due to that event its not clear to us how he can actually run.
June 24, 2021
It turns out that the individual who sponsored the America First debate mentioned above is a resident of Florida.
And, in an odd turn of events, both Liz Cheney and Anthony Bouchard have criticized the individual, K. W. Miller, who acted as the forum moderator. The spat with Cheney is an obvious one, but with Bouchard less so. None the less, an entity supporting Miller has attacked Bouchard and accused him of being in league with "George Soros affiliated" leftwing groups and have accused "Bouchard sycophants" of trying to disrupt the debate.
Miller has endorsed Chuck Gray.
Whatever the merits or demerits of Bouchard, it seems fairly clear that he and George Sorors are unlikely to share any connections.
June 26, 2021
The New York Times is reporting that Wyoming's Democratic Party, combined with some Republicans, were part of a targeted effort at, for lack of a better word, infiltration that had ties to the founder of Blackwater and funding from the Wyoming Liberty Group.
The effort appears to have been unsuccessful, and even inept, but it's a shocking example of just how weird politics have become recently.
Finland declared war on the Soviet Union with the goal of reclaiming territories lost in the Winter War. It's goals were limited in the war to the recovery of territory lost to the Soviets, which it advanced into, took strategic positions, and then stopped. This date is noted here:
The action put the Finns in bed with the Germans, and it wasn't a spur of the moment decision. The Finns knew that Barbarossa was coming, and had agreed to the prestaging of German troops on its soil. It was a calculated move betting on a German victory in the war, or at least on Germany obtaining a sufficiently advantageous result such that Finland would regain the territories it had lost.
Dealing with the Continuation War has always been a bit of a problem for Western historians as it does cut slightly against the grain in regard to the story of World War Two. Finland, with one slight exception, is the big exception to the rule regarding the Axis. Finland protected its Jewish population, with the exception of 8 individuals, and refused to hand them over to the Germans. It halted its advance and went on the defensive as soon as it regained the territory it had lost, which in context was probably a strategic failure as it could have gained ethnic Finnish ground in the far north which would have also choked off Murmansk to Allies, which would be a port of resupply to the Soviets during the war.
Finland gambled incorrectly, of course, and would pay the price, albeit not as much of a price as a person might have suspected it would receive from the Soviets.
Symbol of the German Army's 163d Infantry Division.
On the same day Sweden agreed to allow the Germans to transport the German 163rd Infantry Division across its territory from Norway into Finland. The request had been made several days prior and had provoked a crisis in the Swedish government in which the King intervened with the request that it be allowed. The motivations for allowing it are complicated but tied to aiding its neighbor. It's an example of how the neutrals of the Second World War not only were neutral, but frankly made significant concessions to nearby belligerents none the less.
The 163d spent most of the war with the Finns, being transported back to Germany late in the war. It was destroyed by the Red Army in Pomerania in March, 1945.
Anti Jewish pogroms broke out in Lithuania. Centered in Kovno, the murders were conducted by Lithuanian civilians, not the Germans, at first, as the Germans had not yet reached the city. Upon their reaching it the killing would continue under their direction.
In Serbia, the Utashi opened the Slana camp, an island concentration camp, and began transporting Jews, and later Serbian and Croatian communists, to the island to be murdered. The killing would stop when the Italians would occupy the island.
President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which read:
EXECUTIVE
ORDER 8802
Reaffirming Policy of Full
Participation in the Defense Program by All Persons, Regardless of Race, Creed,
Color, or National Origin, and Directing Certain Action in Furtherance of Said
Policy
WHEREAS it is the policy of the
United States to encourage full participation in the national defense program
by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or
national origin, in the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the
Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all
groups within its borders; and
WHEREAS there is evidence that
available and needed workers have been barred from employment in industries
engaged in defense production solely because of considerations of race, creed,
color, or national origin, to the detriment of workers' morale and of national
unity:
NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the
authority vested in me by the Constitution and the statutes, and as a
prerequisite to the successful conduct of our national defense production
effort, I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall
be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or
government because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and I do hereby
declare that it is the duty of employers and of labor organizations, in
furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and
equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without
discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin;
And it is hereby ordered as
follows:
1. All departments and agencies of
the Government of the United States concerned with vocational and training
programs for defense production shall take special measures appropriate to
assure that such programs are administered without discrimination because of
race, creed, color, or national origin;
2. All contracting agencies of the
Government of the United States shall include in all defense contracts
hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to
discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national
origin;
3. There is established in the
Office of Production Management a Committee on Fair Employment Practice, which
shall consist of a chairman and four other members to be appointed by the
President. The Chairman and members of the Committee shall serve as such
without compensation but shall be entitled to actual and necessary
transportation, subsistence and other expenses incidental to performance of
their duties. The Committee shall receive and investigate complaints of
discrimination in violation of the provisions of this order and shall take
appropriate steps to redress grievances which it finds to be valid. The
Committee shall also recommend to the several departments and agencies of the
Government of the United States and to the President all measures which may be
deemed by it necessary or proper to effectuate the provisions of this order.
On this day in 1921, Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent an invitation to Eamon de Valera, putative president of the self declared Republic of Ireland, to discuss peace. De Valera would accept the following day.
Oil production commenced in the Los Angeles Basin.
One of the blogs we follow here is The South Roane Agrarian which is posted by an agrarian farmer in Tennessee. It's the best agrarian blog around [1].
It ain't easy being an agrarian in the modern world, or a distributist either. As an orthodox Roman Catholic, agrarian, distributist whose was once a geologist but who practices law out in the world, I can assure that may daily existence is a sort of existential crisis.
The reason for that is pretty simple. You can't really reconcile them, and the world, very easily.
Indeed, being a distributist in economic mindset puts you at odds with a lot of the American economic mindset to start with. Very few people understand what Distributism even is. Deeply conservative in nature, if you take a tour through Reddit's Distributism subreddit you'll find it populated by what are pimply faced teenagers fascinated with socialism and monarchy, which have utterly nothing to do with Distributism whatsoever. It's not even worth bothering with (and the fact that its moderated by one guy is, well, anti distributist. So that leaves you with the half dozen or so people on the continent who grasp and like the Chestertonian species of small, but very real, free marketism to start with. Most Americans now days figure the world is instead divided between Capitalism and Socialism, with the former not grasping the role of corporations in capitalism and the former not even understanding what socialism is, and that its a big giant massive failure (yeah, yeah, I know, some socialist will come by and say "oh, that's because real socialism of the Prudhommeistic, anarchist, monarchist fluffy bunny type has never been tried. . . ").
And being an Agrarian works the same way. People smile and think, how charming, and then wonder on. Maybe they'll tell you that the buy free range squab at the farmers market or something if they're inclined to talk at all. Maybe they think that your into "homesteading", a that term is used in the modern world, which is vaguely.
And we can't even begin to explain how much the remainder puts you outside the world. Apostolic succession. . . the real (and yes, it's real) influence of evolution in our mental makeup, the broken but fixed nature of our biological makeup. Pretty much 95% of contemporary Americans have any sort of grasp of that stuff at all, and depending upon who you are talking to, and why, people are going to assume that you are some sort of flaming left wing radical, or some sort of flaming right wing radical.
Indeed, I guess that latter point is pretty good evidence of being generally on track.
Anyhow, there isn't day that goes by that I don't think of what it would be like to step out of a low ceilinged log cabin and looking out at a range homestead (using that word in the old sense) knowing darned well that at my age that's never ever going to happen. Nope. Never. I have cattle, to be sure, but I'm almost 60 years old and the thought that someday I'll raise my family by that means alone is too late to be realized. Both of my children are in their 20s. When I die, and people ask them what I did, it'll be "he was a lawyer". Same with my friends. Same with everyone I know.
Most days I just keep all of this to myself as I have no choice. I'm like my father that way. To this day I'll occasionally hear "he was a great dentist", which is what his profession was. I oddly never think of him that way. He was an outdoorsman, a Wyomingite, and he put in a garden that was so large that it was effectively a subsistence farm. Dentist? Yes, but I'm more likely to think of him fishing than I am that way. It's not like I hung around at his office admiring that constantly. Indeed, in an era when dentist didn't make gobs of money, what I mostly remember about his work is the extraordinarily long hours he put in.
Same with me. Practicing law has became so time consuming, it's really about all I do for the most part. I have no big garden this year. I'm getting one day per week off due to what I have going on. Tomorrow they're gathering cattle. I'm not. I'll be in the office practicing law.
Bitter screed, I don't mean it to be. Like the Hyman Roth character in Godfather II, I could say that "this is the life we chose", but I don't think that's really terribly accurate for most adults. It is in part, but like T. E. Lawrence's character in David Lean's depiction of the man, we "can't want what we want". Circumstances play a big part in that.
All of which leads up to this. South Roane has posted a new entry (his are weekly, as opposed to the vast flood of meaningless stuff I put out on Lex Anteinternet) which is a Cri de Coeur.
Usually when I see a post like this, there's a back story of some sort to it. Some experience that somebody has had that causes them to put metaphorical pen to paper. I'm guessing there's one here. No matter, it's from the heart and its well worth reading. It sets itself well with this:
The past couple of years I've had the odd experience of driving up a road that I've known my entire life. The current owners of the land on both sides of the road have been familiar with it only a fraction of the time I have. It figured two sharp right turns that went around a beautiful hay meadow.
No longer.
Now the road goes right through it. For some reason, I'm told, the current owners, who don't depend on agriculture for a living, wanted it straightened out, possibly so it didn't go so close to their house.
It's a tragedy.
Further down the road WYDOT has taken out an old wooden bridge and put in a new one. It's completely absurd. I don't know what the motivation is, but the new one is a massive concrete structure that they had to elevate the road for in order to put it in. It's a good bridge alright, where no bridge was needed at all.
That bridge goes through a ranch yard that belonged to a family that we knew well. My father employed one of them for years, and we knew them, as a family, for many years longer. Decades. They sold it out to some wealthy people who posted the crap out of it.
At least they didn't bust up all their land for "ranchettes", which in this arid climate become weedettes. Land to fool new arrivals that if they buy a cow they're ranchers, before they go broke, abandon the cow and let the land go to the county.
All that is mild compared to what South Roane is noting, which is the unyielding development mindset. We must develop because we must. Unoccupied land has no value because its unoccupied, they seem to think. South Roane is bitter, and declares them to be the enemy.
Whether they are the enemy or not, we have to keep something in mind. We can't develop every square inch of everything and a society that doesn't allow average people to make their living from the land is fundamentally broken. We're already there.
I can't, or at least shouldn't, complain about my life. My parents were both extremely intelligent people and part of their inheritance to me was a pretty good intellect. I've made my living from it. I've really had no choice, however.
To say that isn't a complaint, but an acceptance of reality. In McPhee's excellent book La Place De La Concorde Suisse one of the central characters who is followed (the book is about a reconnaissance unit of the Swiss Army during its annual training) is a man who has a science degree related to agriculture. He'd wanted to be a farmer, but couldn't, the entry cost of becoming a Swiss farmer, like becoming an American one, being far too high to realistically do. He's not portrayed as bitter, only portrayed as taking a different direction.
Indeed, I know a lot of younger sons and daughters from ranch families who have themselves been faced with the same situation. There are a lot of lawyers and a fair number of doctors and dentists of my vintage and a little older who fit that definition. No place to go on the ranch, so they went into a profession, keeping a tie with the ranch in their communities.
I fit that category to an extent myself, although its a double remote connection in a way. My grandfather owned a packing house in his county which also had farm ground. It owned cattle, had a brand, and raised potatoes. They also owned a "creamery" which is the equivalent to a dairy. My father, as the oldest son in the family, one of two boys (he had two sisters as well) would have stepped into the business. My grandfather's death ended that. It was all sold. He was still a teenager.
That left him with no choice but to find other employment, which he did. But he never lost his interest in things associated with the outdoors, which his early life clearly involved. I've touched a little on that already.
I graduated high school, like my father, at age 17. At that time what I really wanted to do was to be a rancher, but I knew it was unrealistic. I looked into what I could, even looking at the options to homestead, in the old fashioned sense, in the Canadian far north. I decided to become a Game Warden, but concerns about being employed kept me from that. Instead, I went into geology, but when I came out, there were no jobs. Law followed.
Early in my legal career my father and I had an opportunity to buy a small ranch. A real one, but a small one. Had we done it, I would have kept my job for some time, and he his, but ultimately, we would have done that. Then he died.
My mother would have supported me going on with my father's plan, but I didn't know that and I didn't bring it up to her. She'd been ill for a very long time, and as she was in her 60s, my thought is that she'd need every bit of saved money to carry on. She was just 65 at the time and in fact did live many more years. As each passing year went by, the cost of ranch land went up and up.
Now, I am married, as it were, into a ranch family and we do have cattle. That marriage has nothing to do with the above, other than how we met, a story which varies depending upon whose version of it you believe. At any rate, people who travel in common circles will commonly meet each other. I know other "power couples" who are married lawyers or married professionals, but we aren't. We're married rural people.
But as a rural person I've watched the houses spring up outside of Denver or Dallas, or any larger city you can name. And I have heard again and again the cries for progress. But what is that?
In our own benighted day and age the left wing of one of our two political parties, as we unfortunately only seem to have two that every get anywhere (although in reality, of course, there are several, and at least a grand total of five substantial ones) labels itself as "progressive" and is referred to in the press that way. This would suggest that they're progressing towards something, but what the end goal is, is never stated. You really can't label yourself as a progressive unless you have a plan to progress to a point, and that point has to actually be a final destination. There is no such thing as perpetual progress.
There's no such thing as perpetual growth either. Things that grow without bounds suffer. They grow too big, too fat, or too something, and die.
It's noteworthy that Solzhenitsyn famously noted that there is no progress. He tended to drive westerners nuts, as once he left/was ejected from, the Soviet Union the common assumption is that he was going to say "Wow! Free market economics, K-marts and consumer goods with no restraint, sign me up baby!". He didn't. Instead, he went on to be just as big of critic of the West as he had been of the Communist East.
Solzhenitsyn was deeply intellectual and deeply conservative in an existential sense. He tended to say shocking things. Doing that got him tossed out of Russia and doing that caused him to be criticized in the US. But in a very real sense, he was right. There is progress in various ways, but existentially, we progress very little and perhaps not at all. Indeed, the more removed we are from our natures, and our natures are pretty feral and agrarian, the more unhappy as a society we become.
Not matter what your current view of history may be, one thing that can't be ignored about the US is that it was settled in part because people could do here what they no longer could in their homelands, and that was to own, their own. And what often was, for many, was their own farm. Now that dream is dead for most Americans. We're no more able to own a farm than our ancestors were who stepped off the boat from Westphalia or Cork.
And that, in and of itself, makes the American Dream more than a little bit of a lie. There isn't perpetual progress if you can't progress towards the most basic of occupations. We're told, of course, that progress moved us off the land and into the city for great jobs and the like, but we know better when we go to the big box stores.
A land in which you must live in a big city, and you can't simply be a farmer, or even really want to be, is more than a little sad. It's unjust.
Footnotes
1. Not that there are very many. There are a few, but quality wise, South Roane's is far and away above the rest.
The same is true, I'd note, for Distributist blogs. There's a few, but so far none of them really measure up, and Reddit's Distributist subreddit is a mess. At least, however, its more active than the Agrarian subreddit, which is barely making a pulse.
What this says, I'm not sure of. Off the radar in general society perhaps.
German General Nikolaus Von Falkenhorst meeting Finnish General Hjalmar Siilasvuo on June 24, 1941. Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive (sa-kuva.fi). Free to use for every purpose if the the source "SA-kuva" is mentioned.
On this day in 1941 Latvia, occupied by the Soviets since 1939, declared independence in hopes of having that supplied by the advancing German army. It would not receive it, instead being part of the German Reichskommissariat Ostland. This was addressed somewhat in yesterday's post, but the overall plan in regard to Lativia was to kill its Jewish population, expel some of its population and "Germanize" the remainder. The Germans considered the Latvians suitable for the latter as the country had been influenced by the Danes and Swedes in prior centuries and therefore were Europeanized, in the view of the Germans. That Latvians, a people closely related to the Finns but with a unique history, didn't see themselves the same way.
On the same day, crowds in Madrid turned out to demonstrate in supporter of the German invasion of the USSR, something noted here:
As these entries show, not all peoples everywhere were in June 1941, of the same mind as the Allies. Of course, what the German invasion would mean wasn't fully appreciated at the time either.
Elsewhere, British officials confirmed that the United Kingdom would provide aid to the Soviet Union. And the Franklin Roosevelt publicly confirmed the same.
11th Field Artillery Brigade, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. June 24, 1921.
The text on the photo reads:
"Just before passing in review before the
Department Commander in this closely massed formation on June 24, 1921. (About
400 vehicles). No motor failed and formation remained intact, a record that
will rarely be equalled and never surpassed. Tiemann N. Horn, Colonel 13th
Field Artillery commanding. To General John J. Pershing, with the compliments
of the brigade. R. L. Dancy, Army & Navy Photographer.".
Employees of 7-20-4, R. G. Sullivan, Cigar Factory, Manchester, N.H., no. 192, 100 [percent] Members of Cigar Makers, International Union, June 24, '21
On the same day, the employees of a cigar factory in Manchester, New Hampshire, were photographed.
As was President Harding with Wyoming's Congressman, Frank Wheeler Mondell. Apparently that inspired President Harding to don an exceedingly large cowboy hat.
Mondell was originally from St. Louis, Missouri and had become a rancher and farmer in Wyoming, as well as a businessman involved in railroad construction. He'd was Newcastle's mayor from 1888 to 1895 and served in Congress from 1895 to 1896 and then again from 1899 to 1923. He was the House majority leader in the 66th and 67th Congresses.
On this day in 1971 the European Economic Community came to a resolution with the United Kingdom on terms for the UK to enter the EEC and its Common Market. The principal point of the resolution involved payments to the EEC by the UK.
And they all lived happily ever after. . . right?
Poland turned over 6,900 former German Churches, many of which had been Lutheran Churches, to the Catholic Church. This came about due to protests that occurred in Poland in December 1970.
This may seem odd, but at the end of the Second World War the Soviets had moved the German population east, clearing out much of eastern Prussia and all of East Prussia from its German residents. Many had already fled the advancing Red Army in 1944 and 1945 in any event, and many who remained were killed by the Soviets. The Soviets also, in turn, shoved the Polish population in eastern Poland west. Effectively the Russians redrew the map tin the way that they favored it and those borders have since stuck. While the forced resettlements may seem barbarous, and really were, they did have the effect of concentrating the populations in a fashion that involved a clearer ethnic concentration than they had previously.
As a Catholic jurisdictional matter, it's always the case that a Catholic diocese includes, from a Catholic prospective, all of the souls within its territorial boundary, and the Parish Priest is responsible for all of them. In Poland's case, nearly 100% of the population were and are observant Catholics. While there were Polish communists, the movement had never been very popular in Poland and such Polish communists as existed tended to have ended up in the USSR in the post World War One period. Catholics resisted the Nazi and Soviet occupation of 1939-1941, the Nazi occupation of 1941-45 ,and the Soviet occupation thereafter and the Church remained a strong force even in Communist Poland. As the Church needed Church buildings, the transfer made sense. Additionally, as a practical matter, many churches in northern and eastern Europe were for Catholic congregations at the time they were built, so the transfer was effectively a reversion to their original status.
As a final note, since fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, there has been a tourist phenomenon of Germans revising their former homes in what is now Poland. They're generally unwelcome.
