Former German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, a widower of 63 years of age, married Hermaine Reusse of Greiz, a widow of 35 years of age. Very few guests came to the private wedding and town officials from Doom, Netherlands, where the wedding occurred, were booed by a crowed that had gathered.
The American Weekly went to press with a lush illustration. It was a Sunday news supplement for the Hearst newspapers.
"We keep you alive to serve this ship"
Ben Hur
Just observing things, It's really struck me over time how certain social programs, of the left and the right, basically amount to nothing other than serving the needs of businesses, particularly large business entities, no matter how they are styled. This is so much the case that certain huge proponents of some programs who would regard themselves as real fire breathing leftists are actually heavy-duty capitalists, and don't know it.
This shows in their justification for the programs.
Let's, once again, make reference to our evolved place in a state of nature, and where we are actually at.
In a state of nature we'd not do what most of us do daily, which is to leave our abode and clock in time somewhere else, to come back to our home. In our natural state, while we would leave our families, the family would be the focus all the time. In our industrial societies, our work is. Most people spend most of their lives with people they are brought in contact with solely because they serve an economic interest, and nothing else.
Men got there first, long before women. But starting in the early part of the 20th Century, if not slightly before, that changed for women and now women are basically expected to work away from their homes and families.
Everyone is.
When looked at this way, we see why left wing emphasis on child care, and paradoxically abortion, are part and parcel of serving industry. If women can be prevented from having children, they can, ie., they'll have to, go to work. That's what they should be doing, working. If they must have children for some weird biological and psychological reason, well then government sponsored child warehousing, i.e., daycare, will force them back into work in another fashion.
Either way, they'll be freed, i.e., forced, to serve work.
Almost all the post 1945 liberalization of domestic law and structure works this way. Easy no-fault divorce makes it easy to dump families, sending everyone unhindered and untethered into work. Where that results in women falling below the poverty line due to their children, as they foolishly chose to have children, government funded daycare will address it. Abortion must be kept legal, we are told, as it means women can go to work.
What if things didn't work this way?
Well, men would still be men, and women be women, but they'd have to fund their families themselves, and at least attempt to choose more wisely. That would have a lot of collateral impacts, but chief among them would be, frankly, less of a focus on work and more of a focus on the domestic.
But that would also mean that a society based on consumption, and which reduced its members to consumers, would be focused on families instead.
And then who is going to make and buy all that crap?
So the next time you here Bernie Sanders spouting off about something like universal child care, remember, what he's really saying, whether he means it or not, is:
"We keep you alive to serve this ship"
Today in World War II History—November 4, 1942: British Eighth Army is victorious at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Carlson’s Raiders (US Marines) land at Aola Point, Guadalcanal, to harass Japanese.
As Sarah Sundin so notes on her blog, things were really swinging towards the Allies everywhere. Lots of hard fighting, but still, the war, for the Axis, was rapidly becoming a defensive one.
Also on Guadalcanal, it might be noted, the Matanikau Offensive ended with an American victory.
Ahmet Tevfik Pasha resigned as Grand Vizar of the Ottoman Empire, there no longer being the post following its elimination by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, and there also no longer being an Ottoman Empire.
The position was essentially that of Prime Minster by power of attorney through the Sultan, who also no longer existed.
On the same day Ali Kemal, former Turkish Interior Minister, was kidnapped from a barbershop in Istambul under orders of the military governor of Izmir. He'd be murdered two days later.
Colorado was hit by severe weather:
The Colorado killer tornadoes of November 4, 1922
British archeologist discovered the Tomb of King Tutankhamen.
This story has never fascinated me the way it does other people. This is not to say that it isn't significant, it certainly is, but many people are fascinated with it, which I'm afraid I am not.
This blog now has 1,001 comments.
Some of which are mine.
Some blogs have lots of comments all the time. For a blog with 1,047,169 views,, and 9,886 posts it's not all that many.
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.
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.
For the second time in a month, a U.S. Navy vessel experienced a mutiny.
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.
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:
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:
We should note, however, how the online etymological dictionary characterizes this word:
Which bring us to how they define jargon, which is:
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:
In our view, it's still very much worth a read.
Okay, well, so what.
Well, this, and being at war with it:
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?
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.
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:
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.
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:
V. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.
R. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace. Amen.
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.
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.
The American Indian Movement took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The organization had been formed in 1968.
Stars and Stripes, which had its birth as an Army newspaper during World War One, was reborn.
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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.
