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Last edition:
Friday, September 19, 2025
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Things in the air. Some observations with varying degrees of introspection.
Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life. Therefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.
St. Philip Neri.
I've recently had the opportunity, or rather no choice, but to observe some interesting personalities at work.
The first one I'll note I've known for a very long time, and over time I've watched this person sort of crawl into themselves.
They're mad.
I'm not really sure at what. But I'll make an observation below that may explain it.
This person had a really rough early life, but it picked up considerable in the person's teens. Still, coming from a "blended" family, this person sort of got the short end of the stick on a major family deal, and was quietly resentful about it.
Now the non blood "step" is seeking to address it. The person is middle aged, and the other person is in early old age, as am I. The middle aged person is now outright refusing to accept the fix.
What the crap?
"They could have done that years ago. . .".
Dumbest excuse for being a difficult pain in the ass ever.
Same person has something much like this shorter term.
I've also had the occasion to observe a really angry person. The really angry person is obviously pretty intelligent, but also obviously very uneducated. It's a bad combination.
A lot of fairly intelligent, but uneducated, people like to use words that they don't know the meaning of, so they use them incorrectly. This person does that repeatedly. If you know what the words actually mean, it's really very sad.
It's also a bit sad to see how this works when the bloom is off the rose of righteous, if misguided, indignation. When lots of people have their pitchforks out, a person in this situation is sort of a leader. But real people, with family, jobs, children, move on. They have to. New things develop, olds things go by the wayside.
Watching somebody getting into a one sided yelling match while everyone else is just bored is sad, in an odd sort of way. You can tell they know that themselves. The spotlight moved on.
There's a lot of Twitter Twits raging about how pastors didn't preach on Charlie Kirk last week. As I've said before, why would they? And if they did, in a truly Christian fashion, what would they have said.
Mind you, I'm a Catholic, not a member of a do it yourself protestant church that is heavily invested in the American Civil Religion.
Truth be known, Americans always have been.
If you did preach on Kirk, the preaching probably would be awkward for all. You could simply make it:
We see today the horror of the Western world's perversion of our God given natures, and how that warps the mind and leaves it prey to evils of all kind. Let us keep that in mind in our society, as we address such lies as transgenderism.
But that's only one such ill that warps our nature. How did we get there? Allowing for mass societal infanticide, which Kirk complained about? Yes. But also making our reproductive organs chemical cesspools designed to destroy nature from the onset, and ignoring the injunction against divorce, warping marriage into a big party for "fulfillment" Those of you in the pews contracepting, or living with third or fourth "spouses", you are as much to blame for the death as transgenderism is.
So too those who now identify their religion with any political party. Our home is in the next world, not this one, and the Republican Party or Democratic Party are not an apostolic synod. If you are finding your politicians to be saints, you need to sit alone and pray for yourself.
Bear in mind also that our time will come like a thief in the night. We cannot rely on a future to repent, as we may not have that future. The sins we commit for any reason, including with our words, may find themselves still on our souls. Let us resolve to be right with God today.
Probably everyone would be mad
Which gets me to this.
Charlie Kirk, I'll fully accept, was Christian. He said some very Christian things, and some very non Christian things. He was a provocateur, and that's a dangerous thing for a person's soul.
As for the other two people mentioned here, I don't know about one, but I do know about the other, that being the first one. That person is a Christian but more or less a lazy American sort of Christian. They believe in God, have a grasp of Christ, and figure if you don't steal or shoot people, you are probably good with God and they don't want to know much more than that.
That describes most Americans, quite frankly.
That hasn't always been the case, however.
Those Christians who are all upset about Kirk not being mentioned from the pulpit are too heavily invested in the American Civil Religion. When the next world arrives for them, and it will soon, and they're not recognized, saying "I left my church as there was no preaching about Kirk" won't make up for not feeding the poor, letting people die in droves in Gaza, and the like. Presenting your "I'm a real read blooded (white) American card" isn't going to get you a free pass.
And, additionally, the pastors whom they want to preach on Kirk probably ought to instead preach instead on greed, divorce, shacking up, and other stuff that the American Civil Religion is pretty okay with.
And, also, here's something else.
I saw a Twitter Twit who was outraged as a transgendered person murdered his parents in Utah awhile back, and the news, he thought, had not paid any attention to it.
Well, I'm sure they did in Utah, but that's not a national news story. Part of our contemporary problems in this country are that we treat local stories as if they're of global importance, while ignoring global stories because they don't pertain to us.
Christians, mostly Catholics, are being murdered in droves in Africa. That is important. Why don't we hear about that?
Well, they're black, African, and Catholic. Ho hum. . .
But there's more to this, Outraged Twitter Twits. Charlie Kirk was murdered last week. Most Americans no longer care one bit.
That may be uncomfortable for those who are a member of the populist Sturmabteilung, but it's the truth. Charlie Kirk isn't going to become their Horst Wessel as most Americans just don't care. They're desensitized to killing, which is actually at a record low in any event, and by now most average Americans are sick of the right and the left and worried about groceries, while starting to watch the national opiate, football. Sydney Sweeney's cleavage falling out of her jeans jacket will have longer legs than this.
We aren't going to have a civil war. There's not going to be a lot more violence. And they'll be disappointed.
Speaking of crawling into one's self (you'll have to go back up to the top for the reference), I've seen that happening to somebody I know, whose husband I know better.
And frankly I sort of see this in a fair amount with younger Boomer and older Gen X women . . . women who bought the lie that careers will make them happy.
Frequently it plays out with the same script. Well educated middle class women of this vintage married well educated men. The men of the same generation were still part of the "you need to get a good job to support your family" culture, as we've seen before, but the women were part of the "a career will make you happy". What seems to have happened to a lot of them is that work didn't make them happy, no surprise, and at some point many, but not all, dropped out of it.
Kids grew up and moved on, if they had kids at all. Now they're getting to what would normally be retirement years and they feel cheated and lost.
The story for a lot of men isn't much different. I see it with professional men all the time. Earlier this week a lawyer in his 70s told me gleefully how he loves his job. Oh horseshit. There's just nothing left. The thing is, however, for women who bought off on this, there's really nothing left. Quite a few of them, however, are in pretty good economic situations due to a husband that worked for decades to support everyone, and who has kept on.
Anyhow, in this case, the spouse, probably of over 30 years, packed up and left basically with no warning.
She'd been seeing a counsellor, a profession that does so much damage to people it isn't funny. The counsellor had told her to work on herself, which is pretty close to instructing somebody to be a narcissist. She moved out, moved away, and is camping with her adult daughters. They're getting a "grey divorce".
The husband, whom in my view should have retired some years ago. There's some fault there. A lot of times when I see some old male lawyer keeping on keeping on, I really wonder what his relationship is at home.
All in all, I suspect, he worked too much, she got lonely, and wondered why life hadn't turned out like Cosmopolitan promised it was supposed to.
Well, it was never going to.
I'd also note that he was raised Catholic, while she was not, but he fits into the Catholic satellite category. That is, the lessons of the faith were just too inconvenient for him to apply. He, and his siblings, remain cultural Catholics, basically, but not practicing ones. It clearly tortures him as he knows better. Probably not that much should have been expected out of her, however, as she was never Catholic.
And so you have a couple living the 1970s version of the American Dream, which turns out to be a pretty shallow dream at that. Same with the folks mentioned above.
And the shallowness of that dream explains a lot about post Boomer generations abandoning it and returning to more foundational existential beliefs.
The State bar convention is going on. I never go it in person. I don't have the time, and I'm such an introvert that I don't want to go to the dinners and the like just on the random chance one of my lawyer friends might be there, but now you can attend some of it electronically. I did that yesterday as I needed the CLE credits.
I wish I hadn't.
The first CLE I attended I picked up as I needed the ethics credit. It was an hour of "mindfulness" which is usually a bunch of bullshit suggestions on how to deal with stress that you really can't implement in the real world. That's what it turned out to be, in part, but it descended into "this job really sucks" for an hour. All of the panelists, including a judge and a justice, had to have counselling at some point in their careers for work stress.
I hope some students were in the audience to see that. If even Wyoming Supreme Court justices say the practice is so bad they need psychological help to endure it, well that's pretty bad.
The last CLE of the day was the legislative panel. Usually I think of that as being new laws that are coming down the pipeline, which it partially was, but the first part started off as a plea from a lawyer/legislator for lawyers to run for office, noting how in Wyoming that's declined enormously. That turned into an outright dumping on the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which needs to be dumped on. The last part of that session, however, dealt with the ongoing massive decline in civil practitioners putting in for judgeships. They just aren't doing it. They were urged to do it.
As noted, I wasn't there to ask a question, but if I had been, I'd have asked why should they, when Governor's have agendas and the current Governor is only really interested in appointing prosecutors. It's extremely obvious. The one before that would almost always pick a woman, if possible, and was very open about that. If you are a male civil practitioner, just forget it.
Justice Kautz, who is now the current AG, noted how being a judge, and particularly a justice, was a great job for a law nerd. The last panelist, a current Fed defender who was a private lawyer with a very wide practice, noted how he had put in many times and urged people to do so, even though it was disappointing if you did not make it.
It's disappointing for sure.
For me, hearing Justice Kautz talk was outright heartbreaking, as what he expressed made up the very reasons I wanted to be a judge and replied repeatedly, with no success. I never even got an interview, even though at one point I was being urged by judges and members of the judicial nominating committee to apply. I'm frankly bitter about it even while knowing that I should not be. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that the system has become a bit of a fraud, frankly, particularly now that the committee has been rounded out to include non lawyers in it. I've felt for some time that the Governor's office had an influence on who was picked, even though I have no inside knowledge on that sort of thing. It's just a feeling, and not a good one. When judges are picked which leave almost all the practitioners wondering what happened, it's not a good thing.
It leads to me listening to everything Justice Kautz said about the reasons he wanted to be a judge, and myself realizing I once felt those things, but I no longer do.
Back on the stress part of this, a lawyer I've known for a long time, but who is quite a bit younger than me, recently took a really neat vacation. He came back to the office and announced he's leaving the law. I was so surprised I called him. He revealed that being on vacation had taught him he didn't have to live a miserable life.
Tuesday, September 18, 1945. The first desegregation student protest.
White students in Gary, Indiana, walked out of their schools to protest racial integration. It was the first such example of this in the United States, and an early effort to desegrated segregated schools.
The Red Chinese won the Battle of Xiangshuikou
Secretary of War Henry Stimson resigned. He'd also held the post from 1911-13 under Taft.
Stimson regarded Taft as the most efficient President he served under, and he served under more administrations than any other person in U.S. history. He said that the best President was "Roosevelt", not making a distinction between the two Roosevelts.
Look was out, with Ingrid Bergman on the covery in her role in The Bells of St. Mary.
Last edition:
Friday, September 14, 1945. Strike!
Friday, September 18, 1925. American Education Week.
Sultan Yusef of Morocco put a $25,000 bounty on the head of Rif leader Abd el-Krim.
Calvin Coolidge issued a proclamation establishing American Education Week.
Last edition:
Thursday, September 17, 1925. Establishment of the Polish Orthodox Church.
Supreme Court shouldn’t take up Wyoming corner-crossing appeal, hunters say
Supreme Court shouldn’t take up Wyoming corner-crossing appeal, hunters say: Elk Mountain Ranch owner’s petition for review of his failed trespassing suit is “procedurally deficient and doctrinally unfounded,” attorneys in public-access case contend.
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Thursday, September 17, 1925. Establishment of the Polish Orthodox Church.
The Eastern Orthodox Church granted autocephaly to the Polish Orthodox Church. The church has approximately 500,000 members today, of which 156,000 live in Poland.
Metropolitan Dionysius, head of the Polish Orthodox Church in 1925. He'd be removed due to Communist pressure in 1948.
The Escadrille Cherifienne, a French Foreign Legion unit composed of Americans, bombarded the city of Chefchaouen, considered a holy shrine of the Jebala people.
Syrian rebels attack Al-Musayfirah. The attack was at first successful but deployment of the French Air Force caused the rebels to withdraw.
Last edition:
Wednesday, September 16, 1925. B. B. King born.
Finding common ground over division
Finding common ground over division: Amid anger and division, it’s important to remember that Wyomingites have more in common than we might realize, Rep. Mike Yin writes.
The United States of factions
The United States of factions: Political parties have hijacked our democratic republic, writes columnist Rod Miller.
Barrasso should clean up RFK’s health care disaster he helped create
Barrasso should clean up RFK’s health care disaster he helped create: When ‘Wyoming’s Doctor’ said the Senate had every reason to take Kennedy at his word, columnist Kerry Drake asks, did we believe him?
Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we realize
Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we realize: On paper, the Equality State appears to have good annual growth, but pockets of extreme wealth skew the numbers, writes columnist Khale Lenhart.
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
American film giant, Robert Redford, has passed at age 89.
He was, truly, one of the greatest film actors the nation has ever produced.
Three of my favorite movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Natural, and Jeremiah Johnson, are Redford films.
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 103d edition. The tragic co-opting of death and politics.
I posted this the other day:
Lex Anteinternet: What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the...: This is not intended, I'd note, to be a hagiography of any kind for Charlie Kirk. The populist far right is already trying to do that, ...
I'll note that I'm already tired of commenting on Charlie Kirk and his murder. I guess I'm like a lot of Americans that way. But I will note some things here, which I hope will be my last commentary on this event, although it probably will not be.
The first one is that I still really don't know anything about Kirk.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to. The populist right's latching on to the story, not the man, has created a full blown set of hagiography. Kirk was a wonderful family man, and a man of God, we're told. Those not buying into this propaganda, which is now what it's become, have pointed out that he said some really horrific things. I saw a short clip of an African American pastor lambasting the late Kirk from the pulpit in one effort to address the record.
Where does this leave us with Kirk's character. . . the real one?
Well, there were things to admire about him, and things to detest, but where he seems to come out is on the end of populism that creeps up on being fascist in some ways. He's not the only one on the far right who hold those views.
Indeed, National Conservatives and Christian Nationalist come really close in some instances to holding these views, and they have Trump's ear, or more accurately, perhaps, his inattention.
Those who do hold those views appear to be making a dedicated effort not only to form the record, but to suppress anything counter to it. It's amazing. We've never been closer to an outright crackdown on dissent in the US than right now.
I'm also amazed by how people are intermixing religion in this.
As readers here know, I"m a Catholic and Mrs. Kirk is as well. Charlie Kirk was headed in that direction. It'd have been interesting to see what would have happened had he become a Catholic. I've never been in a Catholic parish that wasn't multiracial. Catholics have been reminded from time to time that while they are citizens of many nations, they're just passing through.
I support the Second Amendment, I'd note, but one other thing that I'm just baffled with is how some people seemingly must mix things that are political with their religion in odd ways. One example is the flood of Twitter commentators who are appalled that their pastors didn't mention Kirk last Sunday. If that's not odd enough, there's this:
This morning I walked into a church I’d never heard of, let alone stepped foot in. I prayed with strangers. I cried with people I’ve never met before. I held hands with them and sang about God.The Pastor openly talked about how important our gun rights are. How you cannot legislate against evil. How we cannot be afraid to speak out for fear of consequences from the HR department (this is an actual quote!!). He honored and spoke genuinely about the life and impact of Charlie Kirk for *the entire* service. It was absolutely amazing.If I told y’all how improbable it was that of all the churches I could have chosen to attend for the first time in many many many years that it would be this one…and that it would be so perfect…you’d believe me when I say that God absolutely led me there….He led me back home.
The pastor preached on gun right? He preached on Kirk for the entire service?
This is a very Catholic thing for me to say, but it's bizarre to me in the first instance that Protestants of some denominations will listen for an hour or more to some pastor talk. This isn't the way Apostolic Faiths work at all. And frankly, only an audience that is fully convinced of what you are saying will listen to that sort of address. Effective deliveries often tend to be short, and conclude suddenly, leaving the listener with a "oh crud" feeling.
Here's the reading that Catholics, and some others who follow the Latin lectionary, heard last Sunday.
Numbers 21:4b-9With their patience worn out by the journey,the people complained against God and Moses,"Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,where there is no food or water?We are disgusted with this wretched food!"In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents,which bit the people so that many of them died.Then the people came to Moses and said,"We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us."So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,"Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live."Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole,and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpentlooked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Philippians 2:6-11Brothers and sisters:Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.Rather, he emptied himself,taking the form of a slave,coming in human likeness;and found human in appearance,he humbled himself,becoming obedient to death,even death on a cross.Because of this, God greatly exalted himand bestowed on him the namethat is above every name,that at the name of Jesusevery knee should bend,of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue confess thatJesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.
John 3:13-17Jesus said to Nicodemus:"No one has gone up to heavenexcept the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,so must the Son of Man be lifted up,so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,so that everyone who believes in him might not perishbut might have eternal life.For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,but that the world might be saved through him.
As already noted here, it was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Most pastors of the Apostolic Faiths preached on that.
People have a strong tendency to want the Church to reflect their political views. That's a lot easier for people who are members of Protestant Evangelical churches which are often sort of do it yourself type of faiths. That doesn't challenge people in the pews at all. Here locally there's a massive Evangelical congregation which, I know, contains unmarried couples living in sin, people who have multiple marriages, and the like. They go to hear the Good News, and they should be hearing the Good News. But part of that news is a person needs to confess and repent.
We're not hearing much of that out there on the net.
Last edition:
Wednesday, September 16, 1925. B. B. King born.
The great B. B. King was born in Mississippi.
I saw him play in 1986. He was amazing.
U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg announced that British MP, Communist Shapurji Saklatvala would not be allowed into the United States to attend the congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union as a British delegate.
Primaries were being held.
The first version of Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments was showing at the Rialto:
He'd film it again some years later.
Last edition:
Monday, September 14, 1925. Mitchell's comments draw a rebuke. Rif siege at Tétouan broken.
Hageman defeated Cheney. She’s now slated to join a distinctly different Jan. 6th panel
Hageman defeated Cheney. She’s now slated to join a distinctly different Jan. 6th panel: Wyoming’s lone congressperson will serve on a newly formed congressional committee tasked with further investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the
Monday, September 15, 2025
Courthouses of the West: Suit Up.
Courthouses of the West: Suit Up.:
Suit Up.
Dear Members of the Wyoming State Bar,
Suit Up is a student-led organization at the University of Wyoming College of Law that provides students with access to professional clothing and helps reduce financial barriers to academic and career opportunities.
With the State Bar Conference in Laramie this week, we invite you to support our mission by making a monetary contribution. We welcome donations of gently used professional clothing. Our Career Services Director, Kristin Lanouette would be happy to collect donations on Wednesday, September 17, at the College of Law Welcome Reception. Your support will directly help students participate in networking and career events with confidence.
Thank you for considering a donation and supporting the next generation of young lawyers.
For any monetary donations we kindly take cash, checks, or Venmo @junuenth (last four digits are: 2933).
Additionally, for any questions, please feel free to email our President – Junuenth Daniels jmorale5@uwyo.edu.
Sincerely,
Suit Up Leadership Team
University of Wyoming College of Law
I should really do this.
Global Bulking has mysteriously caused some of my old suits to no longer fit. I'm sure it's not anthrocentric. . .
Anyhow. .
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 102nd edition. Short attention span and a Ballroom Blitz*. And self sabotage.
Attention span deficit.
Something I hadn't expected, but which really says something about our times, is that the murder of Charlie Kirk is already, for the most part, in society's rear view mirror.
Yes, there's a lot of discussion about it still, but it's in the chattering class, which I suppose includes this website. Otherwise, things have already moved on.
The speed at which news moves, and the lack of attention to it, is a very bad thing.
Of course, now that it doesn't really appear to be a politically motivated killing, it's lost its attraction as a story to some degree.
A fictional narrative
The story, as noted, is now in the domain of the chattering classes, but also the possession of right wing myth makers, which are really working on it. The odd thing here is that the media has an incentive to downplay what is being learned about the killer, and to an extent, the MAGA myth organ does as well.
What we now know about the killer, Tyler Robinson, is that he was a homosexual living with another homosexual who was in the process of being mutilated to take on the appearance of a woman. Unless this isn't clear enough, they were in a "romantic" relationship, which means they were engaged in sodomy. The "transitioning" roommate was apparently shocked by the killing, but according to one family member, that person was deeply anti Christian and hated political conservatives.
Now, the reason that this isn't getting this much press as the "transgendered" aren't particularly associated with crimes of any kind, let alone violent ones, and homosexuals certainly are not, but this story is deeply weird. A man trying to become a woman is deeply weird, and it is not the same thing as homosexuality. One man screwing another man who is trying to take on female morphology is very weird as well.
We touched on this in a post about Robert Westman, who was an actual "transgender" figure who committed a mass shooting recently. Indeed, he's the only "transgender" figure I know of to commit one, the overwhelming majority are white hetrosexual men.
Anyhow:
A deeply sick society.
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked find traitors in our midsts. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
C.S. Lewis.
I explored the topic pretty fully there, and I'm not going to repeat it here other than to note that finding a transgender person hating Christianity isn't surprising. Real Christianity holds that to be wholly immoral, even while real Christianity still loves the person. And such a person hating conservatism isn't surprising either, as conservatives hold a similar view.
Robinson wasn't the transgendered person here, but the whole story of this relationship would lend to the theory that he was pretty pliable as a personality. The point is, therefore, this likely wasn't really an act of domestic terror in the conventional sense, so much as it was a person reaching out under the influence of a sexual partner. In an odd sort of way, this killing is more comparable to Dr. Carl Austin Weiss Sr.'s murder of Huey Long, which was over redistricting that impacted his father in law. I.e., a personal connection is likely to have motivated it more than any overarching weltanschauung.
That's a story that's not really going to get explored, I suspect. The right wing wants Kirk to be a martyr, the left doesn't want to talk about the mental health issues this really brings up.
Groypers?
I'd never heard of this term before, but apparently they are followers of Nick Fuentes. As I don't pay any attention to Fuentes, I didn't know that.
Apparently they've drawn a lot of attention following Kirk's murder as there was some peculiar speculation that they were responsible for it. They obviously are not, but that speculation was there, and I'm not sure why.
Fuentes, whose movement is outwardly anti homosexual, as well as anti a bunch of other stuff, has said some really odd things in this arena, one being that having sex with women is gay. Eh? Another apparently was that homosexual sex doesn't mean what it used to, as women aren't living up to their reproductive responsibilities.
A shit post?
This is a really interesting analysis of this topic.
The extra scary part of this is noting, as this person does, how many people in Trump's administration sort of fit into the same demographic.
Not in homilies
Apparently, at least according to Twitter, a lot of people are mad today as their parish priest didn't include a reference to Kirk's murder in their homilies yesterday.
Why would they?
For Apostolic Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, and homilies probably largely had to do with that. Moreover the Catholic Church is just that, catholic, i.e., universal, and this is a domestic American matter that remains unclear. Kirk wasn't attacked because he was Catholic, he wasn't, and the attack upon him may only have a tangential relationship with his Christianity.
Nonetheless, I saw one person who was irate at the Pope for having not mentioned it.
Spencer Cox
The guy who is really coming out looking good after all of this is Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox. He's spoken multiple times and has been a calming voice every time.
This isn't the first time he's waded into these issues. Following the killing at an Orlando gay bar some years ago he appeared at a vigil and stated:
How did you feel when you heard that 49 people had been gunned down by a self-proclaimed terrorist? That’s the easy question. Here is the hard one: Did that feeling change when you found out the shooting was at a gay bar at 2 a.m. in the morning? If that feeling changed, then we are doing something wrong.
Cox's comments are clearly against the stream of the MAGA mainstream. He was originally a never Trumper but claimed to have changed his mind and voted from Trump in his Presidential contests. I suspect we'll be hearing more out of Cox going forward, and he may very well be a Presidential candidate in 2028.
Ballroom Blitz
King Donny went from being outraged by the Kirk killing to bemoaning how it interrupted his might fine, in his mind, ballroom from being the focus of everyone's adoring attention.
That's pretty weird.
Also weird is how quickly this is going up. It's apparently under construction right now. Trump clearly wants it up before he leaves office, on the theory that will mean nobody will take it down.
The monstrosity will now be 40% bigger than originally planned.
Quite frankly, I thought this vandalization of the White House would not actually occur, as it would, in normal times, take quite a while to design and engineer a building. Indeed, I was frankly planning on just that. I never thought the monstrosity would go up, as whomever is Present next won't be stupid or narcissistic enough to bother with a Trump "look at me!" ballroom. It's really moronic.
But it's going up.
If I were President, which of course I never will be, my first executive order would be for the Army Corps of Engineers to remove the offending pile of dogshit within twenty foour hours of my being sworn in. I'd have the resulting trash hauled and upmed in front of Trump Tower. But that won't happen. Trump is probably right. A giant cancerous growth will be there forever.
Here is the oldest photo of the structure, and what it's actually supposed to look like:
Of course, as it might be noted, the building has been altered before, most notably the addition of the West and East Wings. Those additions were made due to legitimate working concerns, however.
Again, if it were me, I'd be tempted to take it back to purse original. It's just supposed to be a big house.
The architects for the vandalization are McCreery Architects, whose website has an image of the interior of the structure as its first slide. The following slides show a lot of other impressive structures they've worked on. They do seem to favor heavily classic styles, which is nice. The site oddly doesn't have any text, but maybe if you need to hire a heavy duty architect, you don't need text and the equivalent of architectural headshots works better.
A rational question would be why does this bother me so much? Well, perhaps I just have an irrational reaction to all things Trump by this point. But the ostentatiousness of the whole thing smacks of trying to be The Sun King.**Have we reached that point in this country? I fear we have.
We've always had rich men, of course, but this is the era of fabulously wealth men. It's not right.
Something we may wish to consider a bit. . .
Maybe we have it too darn good (so we're self sabotaging).
It sounds absurd, but there's something to it.
The current Wyoming Catholic Register has an article pointing out that, in 1980, the year before I graduated from high school, 40% of the world's population lived in desperate poverty, an improvement from the mid to late 19th Century when it was 90%.
Now, just 10% does.
Big, huge, improvement.
By any objective measure, the condition of the world has massively improved.
Why do we believe otherwise?
Evolutionary biology has a lot to do with it. We evolved to live in a state of nature, and nature if pretty rough on everyone. So we're acclimated to things not being quite right, and trouble being just around the corner. Now, for most of us, that's not the case.
Gershwin wrote:
Summertime and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'
So hush little baby, don't you cry
Well, it turns out that in summertime when the cotton is high and the fish are jumping, we're looking for a thunderstorm and worried about work on Monday.
I know that I do.
And a super rich society, like ours, seems to make up its own problems.
This is all the more the case when the gates are off the door, as they are. Now, not only are there all our real and imagined problems, but we just go ahead and make new ones up. Woman trapped inside a man's body? Not if the Goths are at the city gates planning on killing everyone.
Anyhow, it seems like we're busy, now that we are in the richest period of our existence as a species, making sure that real problems appear. Apparently we missed them.
Footnotes
*Ballroom Blitz is an early 1970s, rock song by the band The Sweet.
**King Lous XIV.
Related threads:
A deeply sick society.Labels: 1960s, 2020s, AR15 Effect, Commentary, Health, Politics, Weapons, Zeitgeist
Sunday, September 14, 2025
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