Thursday, November 3, 2022

This is why we can't have nice things.

And this is absolutely appalling.

The State of Wyoming and Natrona County will actually make more money by way of this purchase than it does keeping the property in private hands. So what is this really about?

Well, that requires reading the wind, but if you do, it's plain that the Republican Party of the state abhors the concept of public land to at least some degree. All of Wyoming's current Congressional delegation supported the concept of turning the Federal lands over to the state during the 2016 race, and likely still think that way, even though average Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to it. Governor Gordon's knee-jerk reaction to the Marton transfer seems to express that view as well.

Underlying it all is the concept, generally, that only immediate generations seem to count, and everything is better privatized. Listen to Republican politicians in the state generally, and you'll commonly hear that view. While few will openly state it, the general concept is that it's best to transfer all the land to the State, and for the state to sell all of it to private parties. That will generate "wealth".

It'll also convert the state basically into Ohio, but as it seems that monied interests are the only ones that count, much of the current GOP is deaf on this issue.

Now, we can't say that this is 100% true. The GOP itself is split between the Trumpite populist wings and the old party. Many in the old party are not of this mind, and others remember the era when Governor Geringer and legislators who supported him, like Jim Hageman, Harriet Hageman's father, attempted to privatize the state's wildlife. But many more do not recall anything of this sort.

Indeed, the state has become amazingly blind, at least politically, to think long term, a disturbing symptom of a society that's in deep existential distress. Like late stage Weimar Germany, people are reaching out for simple solutions to long term systemic problems, and only the most extreme views seem to be really having an influence.

Wyoming at one time had an actual two party system. Today is an anniversary of various events which demonstrate that, as noted here regarding past Democrats elected to state office.

1896 Democratic Governor John E. Osborne elected to Congress from Wyoming. He would serve a single term.

1933 John B. Kendrick, U.S. Senator from Wyoming, and sponsor of the Kendrick Irrigation Project in Natrona County, died. Prior to being elected Senator, he had served as Governor.

1936 Henry H. Schwartz, Democrat from Casper, elected to the U.S. Senate. Schwartz served one term and was defeated in his reelection bid. The Ohio born lawyer practiced law in Casper.

Henry H. Schwartz

1942. Lester Hunt, DDS, the sitting Wyoming Secretary of State and a Democrat, narrowly defeated Governor Nels H. Smith.

Lester C. Hunt.

Hunt would serve as Governor for two terms before going on to becoming Wyoming's Senator. He killed himself in 1954 after Washington, D. C. policy picked up his son in 1953 for soliciting a male prostitute. The scandal was kept quiet for a while, but political opponents threatened to use it against him as a threat to keep him from engaging in a 1954 bid for office.

1958 Gale McGee was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was the first, and so far the only, University of Wyoming instructor to be elected to the U.S. Senate. He was a Democrat.

McGee fit into another era in Wyoming's politics in that he was able to be elected as a Democrat and, perhaps even more surprisingly, the Class 2 Senator position was occupied by a Democrat at the time that McGee was elected, making both of Wyoming's Senators Democrats. He served from 1959 until 1977. That he was elected in the late 1950s is surprising to recall, because his somewhat flashy sartorial style really fit in with the early 1970s. Nonetheless, his service stretched all the way back to 1959 and he was sworn in as Senator by Vice President Richard Nixon. After being defeated for a reelection bid in 1976, a campaign which he was largely absent in, he was appointed by President Carter as the Ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Politically, McGee was slightly liberal, but remained a popular Wyoming politician. His defeat in 1976 was attributed by the national media to his opposition to the Vietnam War which was almost certainly incorrect. McGee did oppose the war, but his seat remained safe throughout it. There has been some speculation that by 1976 he no longer wanted to remain in the Senate, but for one reason or another ran anyhow. That would be more consistent with his campaign that year against Malcolm Wallop in which Wallop was allowed to run a nearly unopposed campaign. McGee was the last Senator from Wyoming to be a member of the Democratic Party.

The Post Office in Laramie is named after Senator McGee.

1964 Teno Roncolio, a Democratic lawyer originally from Rock Springs, but living in Cheyenne at the time, elected to Congress.

Roncolio would only serve one term from his 1964 election, and then attempt a run for the Senate. His Senatorial run was unsuccessful, and he would regain his position in the House in 1970.

Roncolio's 1964 election meant that two out of the three members of Congress (House and Senate) from Wyoming were Democrats, an event which would be almost inconceivable today.

Roncolio received the Silver Star while serving in the U.S. Army during World War Two for heroism in the invasion of Normandy, and he was one of the sources interviewed by Cornelius Ryan for his Book "The Longest Day." Roncolio was the last member of the Democratic Party to be elected to Congress from Wyoming.

And this is just from this day in history. It omits such figures as Governors Ed Herschlar and Mike Sullivan.

It's frankly almost impossible to imagine Wyomingites voting for any of these figures now. Osborne was elected because of something, while over a century ago, that directly relates to what we see now with Gordon, an effort by large landed interest to drive out small ones. They were engaged, quite frankly, in an attempted Republican Party supported public lands, land grab. The effort has never really stopped.

Roncolio was a war hero and McGee a University of Wyoming professor. McGee would be reviled for merely occupying that profession today. Roncolio would be harder to lambaste, as you really couldn't do that with somebody who had landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. That's instructive, however, in that much of the death of the Democratic Party in the state is due to the Democratic Party itself.

Roncalio was a lawyer who was a Catholic Italian American. Sullivan was a Catholic Irish American. Herschlar had been a World War Two Marine Corps raider. Kendrick was a Texas born rancher. Al these men essentially had "the bark on" in some fashion, and you knew that they held views that were close to those of common Wyomingites, including rank and file Republicans. That day has really passed. While some very solid Democrats remain, its nearly impossible to find one that holds middle of the road views on major social issues. Statewide races are sometimes the exception, but often the state's Democrats can be predicted to be impossibly left wing to elect.

Up until now, this has been stemmed a bit by the fact that the majority of the Republican Party has been grounded in the traditional middle, but during this election that has already massively slipped. It could be seen to be slipping when Barack Obama was elected, an event to which many Wyomingites had a strange knee-jerk reaction to that's hard to explain. Following that, it became increasingly clear that major existential changes are occurring to industries that the state has long depended upon. While massive amounts of coal are still being mined, it's clear to anyone with eyes to see that this is a temporary situation, and one which the state hasn't begun to adjust to. The same is now true of oil and gas. Instead of addressing the economic crisis head on, the popular reaction has to been to blame the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party, in turn, by nationally embracing increasingly left wing causes, has made itself easy to blame.

This election really demonstrates this. Absent a real surprise, Wyoming will be sending Harriet Hageman to Congress. Neither Cheney nor Hageman can be regarded as "greens" (and while it's hardly been noted, Sen. Barasso has been quietly backing electric charging stations for oncoming electric automobiles in the state), but hardly a day has gone by this week where some Hageman campaign flyer hasn't arrived here, some of which just have silly theses. To read Hageman's propaganda, the Federal government is at war with the state and keeping it from doing whatever it wants due to over regulation and by refusing to allow the production of oil and coal. In reality, Federal oil and gas leases are going unused.

There's always an extreme danger in listening to people who tell you that nothing is your fault, and that everything is somebody else's, that person being somebody that you probably don't actually know. One day in the early 30s somebody is telling you that the Deutsches Heer didn't really lose the war, and was somehow "stabbed in the back" by the Jews, and the next day you are freezing in a muddy trench in Stalingrad. Well, that's your fault for listening to such complete nonsense.

Around here, right now, there seems to be very little push back on the concept that the voice of the public can be ignored, everything ought to be privatized, and everyone will benefit from never being able to go on the land again as we'll all have jobs for Big Out Of State Entity. That's nonsense. But until there's a way to cause politicians to suffer at the polls for such positions, this will keep on keeping on.

Friday, November 3, 1972. Mutiny on the Constellation

For the second time in a month, a U.S. Navy vessel experienced a mutiny.

By JohnKent - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60128644

In this instance, 132 mostly black sailors of the USS Constellation refused to leave the mess deck in protest over announcements made the day prior that sailors would be discharged, including five with less than honorable discharges, all of whom were black.

The story of the mutiny and what led up to it is somewhat involved. The ship's home port was San Diego. In 1971 the ship had been the target of an effort by the Concerned Officers Movement which resulted in a straw vote in the city that it not redeploy to Southeast Asia. Of course, a city cannot vote in any binding way upon such a thing. Nonetheless, a lot of military personnel voted in the straw poll and were opposed to redeployment. This resulted in a Stop Our Ship movement.

When the ship did deploy in 1971 nine crewmen went AWOL and took refuge in a Catholic Church, acquiring the term the "Connie Nine". They were arrested, charged and the latter honorably discharged from the Navy.

In 1972, back in San Diego, the ship reported that it had 250 more men than it needed or could house, resulting in the discharges. The remaining discharges were to be honorable and were to be men culled because their enlistments would expire while the ship was deployed, but this turned into a rumor that black sailors were being discharged. This led to the passive uprising.

While the Navy officially does not regard this as a mutiny, it fairly clearly fits at least a loose definition of one and, moreover, serves as an example on how the US military was becoming unglued in the later stages of the Vietnam War.

Tuesday, November 3, 1942. The 1942 Election.

Today was election day in 1942. Overall, the nationwide election saw an increase in Republican office holders.

In Wyoming, the following occurred:

1942. Lester Hunt, DDS, the sitting Wyoming Secretary of State and a Democrat narrowly defeated Governor Nels H. Smith.

Lester C. Hunt.

Hunt would serve as Governor for two terms before going on to becoming Wyoming's Senator. He killed himself in 1954 after Washington D. C. policy picked up his son in 1953 for soliciting a male prostitute. The scandal was kept quiet for awhile, but political opponents threatened to use it against him as a threat to keep him from engaging in a 1954 bid for office.

In the Senate Hunt had been an opponent of Joe McCarthy.

In the same year that Wyoming went from Republican to Democrat for the Governor's mansion, the state went in the opposite direction for the Senate. Edward V. Robinson defeated incumbant Harry Schwartz.

Robinson.

Robinson's election was part of a nationwide treand that year that saw a Republican increase. He's serve only one term and lose a bid for reelection. He was Welsh and had served in the British Army in the Boer War, and is little remembered as a Wyoming politician.

Hunt's death, it should be noted, remains an enduring tragedy of the McCarthy Era, and one which, at least in some Wyoming circles, came to define McCarthyism and certain right wing elements of the press.

Baseball, Politics, Triumph and Tragedy: The Career of Lester Hunt

Robinson, on the other hand, gives us a rare example of a nearly completely forgotten Wyoming politician. In some ways, that's a shame, as his life story was one that was somewhat typical of the era in that he was an early, post Frontier Era, immigrant to the state when a person could still enter ranching, which he did, in spite of having an engineering background. Following his defeat for reelection he ultimately retired to Pendleton Oregon in 1958, where he died in 1963.

The Marines and Army begin an offensive on Guadalcanal at Koli Point.

Marine Corps pack artillery in action at Koli Point

Cis

A Morganucodon, our great, great, great. . . . . grandmother or grandfather. Really. You'll have to read below to get the point. By FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15356075

A post on a Twitter account I follow, because the fellow is a clinical veterinarian who is really interesting on topics of veterinary medicine, science, and wildlife stated the following:

National Coming Out Day.
Fair warning: I’m a contrary bear here. Always have been.
When do cis-het people have to come out?
Why do LGBTQ+ people feel like we _should_ do it?
Why aren’t we just people? People where you find out organically/naturally, when you get to know us?
P.S. You _don’t_ have to do it. You do you and make choices that make you happy/content/secure. If you ever want my support either w ay just holler.

The author of that tweet is a homosexual, but as he more or less implies in this post, he really doesn't post on that topic very often, and if so only in a societal, i.e., non-personal, way.

I had to look cis-het up. The definition is:

To be cisgender means that you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth. If you are cisgender, which is often shortened in discussion to "cis," chances are you have not experienced gender dysphoria, where you feel unaligned with your assigned gender.
People who identify as cisgender may never have to think at all about their gender identity. That is a privilege.
People who are gender non-conforming, transgender, or of another marginalized gender identity often have a much more complex journey in relation to their gender identity, and face much more discrimination than cis people do.1

Hey! That's me. I don't have to think about my gender identity whatsoever, as I am a (married) man who is in fact attracted exclusively to women.

I don't know if that's a privilege per se. I think it's actually undoubtedly the norm. But in this day and age in which we live in a society so rich that apparently a lot of people have lots of free time to think of nothing otter than their genitals, apparently a new category was needed.

I know, you are thinking, wasn't there already a word for this.

Well, yes, heterosexual, or in colloquial terms, "straight".

But that word won't do if you are part of the UberWoke on these topics, as that its more fun to assume that some people are heterosexual due to acceptance of societal roles. Hence, these explanations, from Quora, the most worthless social medial outlet on the Internet.

I don't know who started it, but its a concatenation of cis; short for cisgender which means your gender and sex are in alignment; and hetro; short for heterosexual aka straight. The term cishet stuck because lacking a better word, cishet people would term themselves “normal” in comparison to LGBTQ people, which was offensive, even though most of the time the offensiveness was unintentional.

And:

Cishet is derived from the words cisgender and heterosexual. Cisgender, as opposed to transgender, is an adjective applied to someone who identifies with the same gender as their assigned gender at birth.
Heterosexual is someone who’s straight.

As I like the etymology of words, I tried to find it for this word, which is apparently closely related or perhaps identical to the word cisgender. It isn't easy to do, but I did find it, and what it derives from, in the first part, is the Latin word "cis", which is:

cis-
word-forming element meaning "on the near side of, on this side," from Latin preposition cis "on this side" (in reference to place or time), related to citra (adv.) "on this side," from PIE *ki-s, suffixed form of root *ko-, the stem of demonstrative pronoun meaning "this." Opposed to trans- or ultra-. Originally only of place, sometimes 19c. of time; 21c. of life situations (such as cis-gender, which is attested by 2011).

Or, as the online Latin dictionary would have it:

cĭs
preposition
This word is an invariable part of speech
1 on, to this, near side of, short of
2 (time) before, within

It is posed as the opposite of "trans". So, if you like this word what it is supposed to mean is, in the case of cisgender, loosely, is "within your gender". I.e, your sexual attraction is within the category natural, for your nads, for your gender.

Cishet is more complicated, as it means it derives from cis and heterosexual, and heterosexual is a compound word. Here you go for heterosexual:

hetero-
before vowels heter-, word-forming element meaning "other, different," from Greek heteros "the other (of two), another, different; second; other than usual." It is a compound; the first element means "one, at one, together," from PIE root *sem- (1) "one; as one, together with;" the second is cognate with the second element in Latin al-ter, Gothic an-þar, Old English o-ðer "other."
Compounds in classical Greek show the range of the word there: Heterokretes "true Cretan," (that is, of the old stock); heteroglossos "of foreign language;" heterozelos "zealous for one side;" heterotropos "of a different sort or fashion," literally "turning the other way;" heterophron "raving," literally "of other mind."
sexual (adj.)
1650s, "distinctive of either sex, of or pertaining to the fact of being male or female," from Late Latin sexualis "relating to sex," from Latin sexus "a sex, state of being either male or female, gender" (see sex (n.)).
The meaning "pertaining to copulation or generation" is from 1766, on the notion of "done by means of the two sexes;" hence also "pertaining to erotic appetites and their gratification" and "peculiar to or affecting the organs of sex, venereal" (1799). The phrase sexual intercourse is attested by 1771 (see intercourse), sexual orientation by 1967, sexual harassment by 1975. Sexual revolution is attested by 1962. Sexual politics is from 1970. Related: Sexually.

We should note, however, how the online etymological dictionary characterizes this word:

cisgender (adj.)
also cis-gender, "not transgender," in general use by 2011, in the jargon of psychological journals from 1990s, from cis- "on this side of" + gender.

Which bring us to how they define jargon, which is:

jargon (n.)
mid-14c., "unintelligible talk, gibberish; chattering, jabbering," from Old French jargon "a chattering" (of birds), also "language, speech," especially "idle talk; thieves' Latin" (12c.). Ultimately of echoic origin (compare Latin garrire "to chatter").
From 1640s as "mixed speech, pigin;" 1650s as "phraseology peculiar to a sect or profession," hence "mode of speech full of unfamiliar terms." Middle English also had it as a verb, jargounen "to chatter" (late 14c.), from French.

Exactly.

Which all gets to the really odd nature of the modern world today.

We did a very long post on the the topic of etymological and societal genital angst some time ago, which can be found here:

The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.

In our view, it's still very much worth a read.

Okay, well, so what.

Well, this, and being at war with it:

Genetics I: After all the propoganda, this is what actually matters.

In a span of over a little over 150 years, we've gone from a society which had just introduced the term homosexual to one that now has so many terms that, for the standard genetically programmed (and that is what it is) attraction, which we've been calling heterosexual, we now have to circle back around and come up with two additional ones, cishet and cisgendered.¹

That's insane.

And it's also deeply anti-scientific.

Now, there's the thing. Let's look at that Cis-het definition again:

"To be cisgender means that you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth."

Eh?

Let's break that sociological concept down, start with "the gender you were assigned at birth."

Your gender was assigned?

Men being assigned their gender. . .oh wait, that's not it. Um. . . men voluntarily recieving vaccinations so they can serve in the Army. . . oh, gee. . . that's not it either. . . Draftees who have been compelled by the United States to serve in the Army during time of war getting a vaccination whether they darned well want it or not.

That makes gender sound like something you get in a long line at basic training. You know, you are in a big long line and "here's your three sets of utilities. . . here's your cap. . . here's your two pairs of boots. . . here's your gender. . . "

Why assigned the gender and how was that done? Did central administration assign you a gender?

That's almost the way this is now treated. Mr. Smith, you were assigned a gender by administration as a male, but I see that an opening in classroom 3B for a female has opened up, would you like to take that?

That's really weird.

The way it really works, of course, with mammals, which we are, is described here in Wikipedia:

A zygote (from Ancient Greek ζυγωτός (zygōtós) 'joined, yoked', from ζυγοῦν (zygoun) 'to join, to yoke')[1] is a eukaryotic cell formed by a fertilization event between two gametes. The zygote's genome is a combination of the DNA in each gamete, and contains all of the genetic information of a new individual organism.
In multicellular organisms, the zygote is the earliest developmental stage. In humans and most other anisogamous organisms, a zygote is formed when an egg cell and sperm cell come together to create a new unique organism. In single-celled organisms, the zygote can divide asexually by mitosis to produce identical offspring.

Zygote. By Nina Sesina - File:Zygote.tif, CC BY-SA 4.0,

That's how your gender is assigned. Sperm and egg meet, zygote is formed, and your DNA starts rolling. Your gender is determined, not assigned, by your DNA.

More particular than that, however, is that your DNA is determined by a long line of evolutionary influences going back to the first life. Young earther's aside, you go way, way, back in evolutionary terms.

As we've noted before, our species supposedly goes back about 150,000 years, which probably means it goes back 250,000 to 500,000 years. We almost always get that wrong.

Anyhow, we've noted this story, and this science, before:

Human beings are mammals and mammals. Of the mammals, primates have the highest sexual dimorphism by quite some measure. Members of the Homo genus, moreover have the highest sexual dimorphism of the primates. It's basically off the charts in the animal kingdom. If you were a space alien and popped down on this planet with no prior knowledge of our species, you'd assume it was two different species the way that you'd note that cattle and sheep are two different species, and one of the things you'd probably note is that one of the species had quite a different body from from the other, and that other was fascinated with it the way that cats are with catnip mice. The dimorphism extends to our physical bodies in an off the chart fashion, and it also, like it or not, extends to our psychological makeup.
Part of that is that human beings, our species, Homo Sapien Sapien, has the highest sex drive of any member of the primates. So we are the pinnacle, for good or ill, in this category. We're extremely unusual in terms of a mammal, including a primate, in that both males and females are attracted to sexual intercourse outside of the females reproductive receptivity. Men are, moreover, off the charts on this, and interested pretty much at any time, if the conditions arise.

Your "general assignment", it's tempting to say, was determined 210,000,000 when the first Morganucodon's, the very first known mammals, began to produce cute little babies, but even that really wouldn't completely be true. It would be true that the path was up and running and, frankly, accelerating as an evolutionary strategy. Warm-blooded, smart, and male and female, they were off and running on raiding reptile eggs and making a general nuisance of themselves to the taxonomic order that had dominated for millennia.

Of course, even earlier than that, around 250,000,000, mammals started to evolve out of reptiles, and reptiles were also male and female, and go back over 300,000,000 years.

In other words, the male and female thing is really baked in. It goes all the way back, and as mammals came on, "la différance" increased in fashions that matter in many mammals, and in particular in primates, and particularly in primates amongst the genus homo, of which you, dear reader, are a member of.

So am I saying that homosexuality isn't a thing?

Well, I'm coming really close to saying something like that.

What we know for sure, of course, is that homosexuality, just like cis-het, is a word, albeit not one that almost meant the same thing.² As a word, it actually refers to a psychological classification, not a biological one. And it dates from the early 20th Century in its current use. That's significant in that almost 100% of early psychology has borne out to be wrong, and by wrong "whopping wrong" would probably best define it. Arguably other fields that deal with the mind, such as the law, politics, and theology, have much better track records on what's going on in the psyche than psychology even approaches having.

Aspects of psychology have improved enormously since the mid 20th Century, which is also when the field of sociology, given a boost by the Great Depression, arrived at the scene. But nonetheless, psychology tends to be plagued with error, and the newer a concept in psychology is, the more likely it is to be massively off. Giving people lobotomies, or zapping them with electricity, for perceived psychological aliments was common just a few decades ago and is now regarded with horror.³

Currently, the trend is to list every human condition that is somewhat problematic to really problematic as a psychosocial ailment. People who are anxious, who eat too much, who are shy, who are attracted to drugs, alcohol, or sex (or at least too much of those) aren't simply lapsing the boundaries of desired conduct, they have psychological conditions.

Well, many don't.

Indeed, at some point we'll find that people like Bill Cosby who acted like creeps around women weren't "sex addicts" or whatever, they were just creeps. Which returns to evolutionary biology, and theology.⁴

Leaping back, we know that our species evolutionary strategy features long childhood and high sexual dimorphism. We've gone over this a lot, but what the general gist of it is that male and female are bound, and are male and female, in a unique way that, well, involves sex. We also know that this is how we started off, but as we've advanced, assuming we have, and that's pretty debatable, we've really fallen into all sorts of disorder. Indeed, you really won't find any human beings that, in a state of nature, grow really fat, or have anorexia, or suffer much from depression, or frankly dally a lot with other people's spouses, the latter of which pretty much guarantied getting a person killed. The introduction of modern civilization, and all its wealth, luxury, and unnaturalness and high stress, combined with unnatural living arrangements and conditions, has brought all of this about.

Indeed, going back to a line used in a comment here recently, that of "rum, sodomy and the lash", navies provide a good example of this. Navies, at one time, were indeed havens of rum, sodomy, and the lash, as well as a host of other vices that they supported. The reason is pretty obvious, the living conditions in them were deeply unnatural and completely divorced from the normal outlets for deeply ingrained genetic drives, which remain there nonetheless. Modern navies, or at least those who have incorporated women into shipboard service, are really no better, with a notable percentage, up over 10%, and sometimes well over that, becoming pregnant during their combat vessel tours. ⁴

The point of this is that many of the departures from the norm in our primary drives stem from departures from a natural manner of living, and they really don't arise until that point. I'ts not as if departures, disorders and the unusual don't exist from way back, they do, but not in the same degree, and in some circumstances for more newly found psychological disorders, they just wouldn't have been recognized as such.

By way of elaboration, going way back, or at least into the aboriginal, almost everywhere around the globe all children are under the care of their mothers, directly, until they're around six or seven. At that time, which is also generally the "age of reason", the age at which the average person can distinguish right from wrong, male children have already started to heavily lean towards male activities as play, i.e., hunting and war, and female children have already started to heavily lean towards female activities. After that age, they begin to actually take them up, essentially in a student role.

This is true in agricultural societies as well, and the interesting thing about that is that we now know that agriculture has been with humans so long that at least some human cultures have genetic adaptations as a result. Tolerance for certain foods, for example, is a genetic thing, showing that those populations have evolved into it. At any rate, traditional agricultural societies work almost identically in terms of how children develop.

This is all in general, of course. As time has gone on, it's possible to find exceptions in everything, but we're speaking of the average here.

It isn't really until societies develop into early civilized ones and develop classes and leisure that the exceptions really start. Those societies really started stratification as well, including social and gender stratification. And once entire groups of one gender were separated from the other for long periods of time, we get a noticeable degree of same sex attraction that's fairly consistent. Navies are one such example, British boys schools another. Those are more recent examples, of course, and others go way back.

Looked at that way, however, homosexuality as currently understood by psychologists, which tends to change due to social pressures darned near every day, wasn't understood the same way. Same sex attraction clearly existed in different groups, and there's plenty of evidence of that. But the concept that it was so deeply programmed into a person that it formed a person's essential core character did not.

And let's be clear here. Same sex attraction obviously exists. The degree to which some people have it varies quite a bit. The men and women who have it, have it, no doubt. But why they have it isn't really grasped, in spite of the way it is currently discussed.

For those who do have it, why they have it probably isn't enormously important on a daily basis, if at all. I.e, a person may learn why they have something, which doesn't mean, for the most part, that it impacts how they view that inclination. And by the same token, while the nature of the inclination should be a genuine social topic, and one of importance, the reason a person has an inclination is not a societal excuse for treating them badly.

So what do we know about same sex attraction and its source? Not very much. The thought that it's genetic is thinly supported. It seems more likely therefore that its psychologically of origin, although genetics may play a role in how a person's early influences may cause them to incline in this direction, or resist doing so.

When study of it was still regarded as okay, which it largely isn't now, it seemed to be the case that the source of it was different for men and women, which reemphasizes how different men and women really are. With men, what tended to be the case was that something, often worked, removed men from the lives of their sons around the age of reason, leaving only a protective mother as an influence on a daily basis. It seems that this separation, something only common in antiquity due to some unique circumstances in some societies, and otherwise common in all industrialized societies, was the origin of it. It was particularly exhibited in some societies, such as boys schools and militaries, such as the example of the Prussian/Imperial German officer corps, which separated boys from their families entirely and raised them in all male environments. In those examples, the introduction of a minority number of young men exhibiting it pretty clear spread it beyond the limited extent to which would otherwise exist. Sexual impulses being strong, the introduction of all of these elements or some of them in these very early ears seems to have been the best guess for what really caused and causes it.

Determining the situation for women has been harder, but it often seems to involve something similar, sort of in the reverse, but not quite, for some women. In those cases, the mother is often completely checked out mentally for some reason, and the young girl comes to nearly completely identify with her father and her role. For other women, however, it's driven by protection, as men are dangerous. Faced with predation early on, they take refuge in this fashion with other women, whom are unlikely to be violent.

It might be worth noting at the same time that something similar seems to go with other sexual departures from the norm. In recent years, it's been clear that early and frequent exposure to pornography alters the mental landscape of men, and some of them severely. Programmed to be monogamous and with sex to be unitive, the brain overcomes it with sexual images in which, essentially, the mind marries itself, if you will, to hundreds or thousands if imagined women whose images trigger sexually.

And before we depart from it, something else similar seems to have developed with abuse. Sexual license overcomes the naturally unitary binding that sex creates, with its genetic programming to be permanent and life long, which has been associated at a certain point with predation upon the vulnerable, specifically minors. The number of sexual "partners" that seems to be that breaking point is apparently eight, which is also very close to the average number of the same for Americans.

Weren't we talking about "cis"?

Yes, so here's where we are really at.

All men are programmed by their DNA to desire women, sexually and women are programmed by their DNA to desire men.

In spite of what pervert Hugh Hefner wanted to claim, and he was a sick creepy weirdo, human beings only really want a single mate, for life, and sex actually creates that bond when it occurs, which means that people ought to be really carefully and not treat their nads like toys. You can break them, psychologically.

Some people have same sex attraction, but it's a tiny minority.

Some people imagine that they want to be members of the other gender, which interestingly comes much closure to the original understanding of the term "homosexual". This isn't a popular view, and frankly transgenderism doesn't really exist, except as a questionable psychosocial definition. This is likely, in most cases, an unusually developed example of homosexuality as what it entails is so identifying with the sexual nature of the opposite gender, that these people think they want to switch genders. Rather than conventional homosexuality, in which men continue to identify as men, and women as women, they want to cross over to basically rationalize their same gender orientation. Having said that, however, in some cases, they identify as homosexuals of the opposite gender.

All these things really only come about in any significant degree in richer societies which have departed from the historical norms of living patters. Yes, I'm sure that there are exceptions, but contrary to the line in Major Dundee, there probably were a few "fat Apaches" too. Just hardly any.

That fact, that this tends to really only come up in these very pronounced forms in societies that have surplus, is an interesting one. It does, as noted, come up even in societies with think resources, but not to this degree, in spite of what modern sociologists have sometimes claimed. Indeed, historical and anthropological examples bear this out. In societies that feature some cross-dressing men, for example, it tends to bear out that these men very much identify as men and don't like being accused of being transgendered or homosexual. Their clothing affectation serves a different purpose of some sort, usually. Likewise, in societies in which we believe, not always very accurately, that there was a notable instance of homosexuality, we tend to find that they're really early examples of societies that had surplus wealth. Of course, as noted above, you can also find in some early civilizations, and then throughout history, examples of societies departing from the natural norm and separating the genders pretty tightly, in which cases this always arises.

None of which is not to say that in all ages and all times, and in all societies, some small percentage of the population has a strong same sex orientation.

In our society and culture, this was at first just regarded as a moral failing, in the same categories, loosely, as being a sexual libertine. I.e, sodomy, adultery, fornication, etc, were all regarded as vices, rather than personality traits. It can be argued that this treatment was a more natural one, and a more scientifically based one, and less condemning one, than the sharp classifications that came about later and are still with us, save for the part that, like most sexual transgressions, at later points in time they were criminalized. Early on, they were not.

Because this is how this was viewed, there was no real concept that people were homosexuals, as we now define it. Rather, the concept is that some people fell into moral vices for various reasons, and some moral vices were worse than others. "Wenching", for example, was regarded as dangerous and immoral, but tolerated among younger men, and indeed that was basically true into very recent times, and it still is, except in a different form. Sodomy was regarded with disdain, but a person who was guilty of a handful of such known instances wasn't regarded as permanently tainted, and oddly enough those who committed in the context of all male military service were regarded as simply giving outlet due to conditions. A person had to show a persistent attraction to sexual vices before it really attached to their personality in a permanent fashion.

As time went on, and as I've addressed elsewhere, ultimately all of this became criminalized and while not widely recognized, the criminalization is still with us. Sodomy, due to a United States Supreme Court opinion, is no longer illegal, but prostitution, which is part of the same legal developments, is. I'm not suggesting that it be legalized, but this is interesting to note, as it wasn't always illegal in Western Society, just disdained. It still varies widely, we might note, in how it's viewed in the law, with it being a felony in some Eastern states, while being a misdemeanor in many Western ones.

The psychological classifications that exist in this area and the sociological ones came much later, and really ought to give us pause. Quite frankly, the history of psychology, as noted, should give us no room for comfort on these topics as psychology as been more often wrong than right and has also been subject to the pet view of psychologists. As noted elsewhere, homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness by psychology until a paper by a homosexual psychologist suddenly changed that.

Sociology is even worse, as it's an exclusively Western discipline that views the West as the archetype of everything, even while often disdaining it. Often it's doing no more than serving as a mirror on liberal popular culture and in this area it's deeply at odds with Eastern societies, which regard homosexuality as an exclusively Western European Culture thing, and not without some reason. This is in fact a common view worldwide. It can't help but be noted that Western European cultures are by far the most wealthy in the world, and have by far the most idle. In other words, these societies, which ours is one of, are really the only ones in the world where a lot of people have a lot of time to think about sex in a nearly narcissistic way.

But another way, you won't find too many women of Madonna's age coming out as late in life Lesbians in Chad or Botswana. They have other things to think about.

Which brings us back to this.

Cis, doesn't exist. As a matter of nature, or genetics, which are part and parcel of each other, the mammalian default is boy wants girl, and vice versa. But that however you might want, dog wants bitch, bull wants cow, buck wants doe, and vice versa. That's the way that is, universally, without exception.

Among primates, that's very much true.

And among Homo sapiens, it's pretty much over the top, compared to anything else in Animalia.

Like anything else that nature develops to extremes, there's going to be a small percentage that fall outside the norm. And as we're extreme in this regard, it's where disorder is likely to manifest. We show this in other areas as well, as in our intellectual faculties. We're one really darned smart mammal, but we fail in this category with real note as well.

Okay, well so what? What am I suggesting?

Well, just a few things, really.

One is not to modify human intuitions of antiquity to fall outside of their long ordained, and likely highly natural, purpose. Marriage is the prime example. It serves as a framework to deal with male/female relationships and their natural byproducts. That really has nothing to do with 1) love, or 2) homosexuality. Justice Kennedy and his fellow travelers got that wrong.

Another is don't criminalize things that fall outside the norm unless they're really destructive to others. It makes no more sense to criminalize overeating than it did to criminalize homosexuality.

The final one is just an observation. Western society is pretty clearly in a state of advanced, but well funded, decay right now. It's unmoored from anything, other than our fascination with ourselves. Indeed, the very ethos of the age is we can define our own realities.

We can't. Reality is reality. In an imperfect world, few of us comport with an ideal, but that doesn't mean the departures mean reality doesn't exist. Words, terms, and definitions don't change that.

Reality is defined in nature, and that was defined long ago.

Footnotes.

1. When the term "homosexual" was first introduced, it didn't mean same sex attraction, The etymology there "man"+"sexual" meant what some with vast vocabularies refer to as onanism, or attraction to oneself. I.e, self gratification. Interestingly, it was thought to lead to what we now call homosexuality.

2. See footnote 1.

3. Rose Kennedy was probably lobotmized simply because she wasn't as smart as the rest of the Kennedy family and was begging to show an interest in men. Townes Van Zandt, who really did have psychological problems, was zapped into worse ones.

4. First things has a really interesting podcast episode from several years ago in which they explore how the evolution of societey into a cruder and more sexualized culture has given license to the creeps to be creepy, and it obviously has. We've explored the same topoic, but not quite in the same fashion. It's undoubtedly true, however.

Related Threads:

The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.

Genetics I: After all the propoganda, this is what actually matters.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgist Part 13. Nature and Homo Sapien Sapien

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

But what if we are wrong?

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

All Souls Day

V. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

R. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace. Amen.

Mid Week At Work. Traveling Nurses

Almost all (but not all) of the nurses who attended to my care in my recent hospital stay were traveling nurses.

I'd never heard of traveling nurses until a few years ago when the daughter of some folks I know became a nurse, and opted to be a traveling nurse. It sounded awful to me, but she was young and unmarried, and well that's about all I knew about it.

More recently, I've become aware of how it's now common, but I had no idea how common. It predominates at our local hospital.

Even before I was in the hospital, I had become a bit aware of this. Most recently, just before I went in, I was behind a guy in a grocery store line who was married to a traveling nurse. He didn't work, and was talking about learning the local fishing spits.

Pretty good gig for him.

One of the nurses in my recent stay, the only male nurse in the recovery area (I had another on the surgical floor) related how he and his family had traveled all over the US in this role, living out of their big trailer. And when I mean all over, I mean all over. And when I say family, I also mean that. He and his wife had a very young child.

So here's an occupation that's an old and long one, nurse, in a new setting. One that, up until recently, I knew very little about.

Thursday, November 2, 1972. AIM takes over the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Trudeau steps down.

Pierre E. Trudeau announced that he would step down as Prime Minister of Canada following a 109 to 109 tie between the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservatives. The New Democrats would have thrown their 30 seats in with the Liberals, which Trudeau knew at the time.

Period banner of the Liberal Party.

The American Indian Movement took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The organization had been formed in 1968.

Monday, November 2, 1942. Stars and Stripes reborn.

Stars and Stripes, which had its birth as an Army newspaper during World War One, was reborn.

US made 105mm Self Propelled gun in British service, November 2, 1942.

Phase Four of the Second Battle of El Alamein, Operation Supercharge, commenced. Rommel, back in command of the Afrika Korps, cabeled Hitler, stating:

The army's strength was so exhausted after its ten days of battle that it was not now capable of offering any effective opposition to the enemy's next break-through attempt ... With our great shortage of vehicles an orderly withdrawal of the non-motorised forces appeared impossible ... In these circumstances we had to reckon, at the least, with the gradual destruction of the army.

Hitler replied:

It is with trusting confidence in your leadership and the courage of the German-Italian troops under your command that the German people and I are following the heroic struggle in Egypt. In the situation which you find yourself there can be no other thought but to stand fast, yield not a yard of ground and throw every gun and every man into the battle. Considerable air force reinforcements are being sent to C.-in-C South. The Duce and the Comando Supremo are also making the utmost efforts to send you the means to continue the fight. Your enemy, despite his superiority, must also be at the end of his strength. It would not be the first time in history that a strong will has triumphed over the bigger battalions. As to your troops, you can show them no other road than that to victory or death. Adolf Hitler.

The Australians captured Kokoda.

The BBC began French language broadcasts to Quebec.

Wednesday, November 2, 1922. The Girls Rifle Team

Central High Girls Rifle Team, November 2, 1922.

Photos like this tend to bring out the perfunctory, "see, back in the day. . ." type of comments, but not without reason.

These photos were taken on the East Coast, probably in Washington D.C. The Sullivan Act was already a thing in New York, so gun control already existed in at least that location. Be that as it may, it wasn't widespread.

Rifle teams were common in high schools, and as this photo attests to, there were boys and girls teams. Locally, the high school team here fired full sized military weapons.

It's something in our society that's gone wrong since then that seems to make such things dangerous. It wasn't always so.

Grim news was coming out of Anatolia.

I uploaded the second page for a couple of reasons. One is that it was a preelection issue, and lawyers were going on record supporting the retention of a sitting judge.

We still vote to retain judges, but there are never ads of this type to do so. Indeed, it might be regarded as improper.

Secondly, it was interesting to see who was practicing in 1922. I recognize a couple of the lawyers on the Natrona County list who practiced in the same building I do now. Beyond that, however, there are some names in that list of lawyers whose descendants still practice law in the state, or who were the founding members of firms that were around until just recently. One name is the same as for a currently practicing lawyer whose father was a physician, but whose grandfather must have been a lawyer.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Sunday, November 1, 1942. Excapes

Japan's Ministry of Colonial Affairs ceased to exist, its functions going to the Ministry of Greater East Asia.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—November 1, 1942: US War Department designates Japanese aircraft with human names, initially with male names for fighters and female for all others.

This came about later than I'd realized. She has a set of playing cards depicting Japanese aircraft up on her blog as well.

She also notes:

US ceases production of liquor—warehouses contain a four-year stock.

I was completely unaware of that. Note that this pertains to hard alcohol, not beer.

Films produced in this era routinely show casual drinking, which would at least suggest it was relatively common, and at least personal recollections I've heard suggest that very much was at the time. The cessation of production should have had no immediate effect on prices for anything aged, which would have been most hard alcohols.

Alcohol had only become legal, once again, in 1932, and even then it was readily available, as some later depictions suggest. Prohibition had a devastating impact on the production of Rye, which had predominated the quality American production prior to 1919 and which has never really fully recovered.

The Marines launched the Matanikau Offensive on Guadalcanal. It would run for four days and secure Koli Point.

The Germans took Alagir in North Ossetia, in the USSR.

Four German sailors broke out of Fort Stanton, New Mexico. They'd soon be captured by a mounted posse, during which one of them was wounded.

Portugal held elections, but as it was a one party state, the victory of the National Union Party was somewhat foreordained.

Pornographer Larry Flynt, who was responsible for Hustler magazine, was born on this day. Huslter followed in the wake of Playboy and Penthouse, and was cruder than either two, that avenue having been opened up for glossy smut due to Playboy.

It was the Solemnity of All Saints, as it is now, which is a Catholic Holy Day of Obligation. Given as this one fell on a Sunday, there would have been no requirement for attendance at an extra Mass for Catholics on this week in 1942.

Wednesday, November 1, 1922. Endings

The Turkish Grand National Assembly declared the Ottoman Empire abolished. It also ended Constantinople's status as the capital city.

Mehmed VI going into exile.

This ended Mehmed VI's status as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, but did not his status as caliph, among other things the head of the imperial family. He'd hold that position until November 19 when his cousin Abdulmejid Efendi was elected caliph, which he'd hold for two years, upon which time the Assembly would abolish the Caliphate.

Mehmed protested the removal of his position as caliph, effectively a claim to lead the Islamic world, which he declared he had not intended to resign. The destruction of the Ottoman Empire during the war had effectively eliminated Turkey's claim to occupy that position as a political entity.

He'd spend his exile in Malta and then later in Italy.

Mexican General Francisco R. Murguia, age 49, was executed for attempting a rebellion against President Alvaro Obregon. Mexican forces had captured him the day prior.

A village in Mexico is now named after him.

Courthouses of the West: Vote No on the Proposed Amendment B to the Wyoming Constitution

Courthouses of the West: Vote No on the Proposed Amendment B to the Wyoming...:

Vote No on the Proposed Amendment B to the Wyoming Constitution.

Let's get political for a second.

Oh no, you are likely thinking, isn't this blog dedicated to architecture and the like? Sure, it crosses over into the law itself, from time to time, but . . .

Well, yes, we're departing from our normal programming to bring you this public service announcement.

And in doing so, I'll note, I'm typing this just a couple of days out of the hospital, too beat up from surgery to go back into the office yet.

Lex Anteinternet?

This blog has been around since 2009. In the very first post, we asked the question: "What the heck is this blog about?"

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

We also noted: "Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book."

All of this is still true, but the focus of the blog has changed somewhat. It now focuses on the era from 1890 to 1920 in general, rather than on the law and lawyers specifically, although that may be far from obvious. It's also become the location where we comment on anything we feel moved to comment on.

We hope you'll feel moved to comment as well. While we moderate every comment, so as to weed out Spam, we greatly appreciate the comments where they are offered, and hope to see more.

Thank you for stopping in!