Dealing with terrorist

According to breaking news, ISIL increased its demand for the release of Kayla Mueller after the administration bargained for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan.  Bergdahl is now charged by Army authorities with desertion in relation to his captivity and is set to stand trial in a court martial for the same.

This doesn't mean that the young woman, who was in Syria by her own volition, would have been freed by ISIL but for the administration securing the release of Berghdahl in the fashion which it did.  But it is something people should stop and consider.  Mueller was a devout Christian (something that the news media has largely ignored regarding her, and there is evidence that she was handed out as a war prize bride to an ISIL fighter by that entity, somewhat applying a practice that Mohammed sanctioned for his fighters in allowing them to take captive women for their own, in consolation for their separation from their spouses.  ISIL has been dolling out Christian and Yazidi women to its combatants as "brides". That fate was most likely grim for Mueller but it may also have been keeping her alive.  Of course, that status may also have kept her there.

At any rate, a person should pause to consider, in light of this, what unfortunate lesson was conveyed by the US bargaining with prisoners for the release of a man we will now try as a deserter.

Lex Anteinternet: The return of a perennial bad idea, the transfer o...

The bad idea discussed here; 

Lex Anteinternet: The return of a perennial bad idea, the transfer o...: Every few years Wyoming and the other western states get the idea that the Federal government ought to hand over the Federal domain to the ...

is still advancing, having gone form the Senate to the House.  As it proceeds, its gaining opposition from Wyoming's sportsmen.

Legislators would do well to remember that past proposals that drew the ire of sportsmen came back to haunt the individuals who voted for them, in some instances.  I suspect that this one would.  I know that it will impact my view of anyone who has supported it and will be included amongst the things I consider in the future, when they run again for office.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Ewing T. Kerr Federal Courthouse, Casper Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Ewing T. Kerr Federal Courthouse, Casper Wyoming:

Sunday Morning Scense: Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Denver Colorado:

Cities and Yeoman's First Law of History

Research and the University of Colorado suggests that:

Our findings indicate the fundamental processes behind the emergence of scaling in modern cities have structured human settlement organization throughout human history, and that contemporary urban systems are best-conceived as lying on a continuum with the smaller-scale settlement systems known from historical and archaeological research.

And; 

What we found here is that the fundamental drivers of robust socioeconomic patterns in modern cities precede all that.

And that wealth and monuments were easier to find in ancient cities, like modern ones.

Can't say we're surprised.  Yeoman's First Law of History at work again.

Random Snippets: Saturday Night Live really isn't all that funny, and never has been.

Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 40th Anniversary right now, and it recently had a special in which all of its surviving old hands came in and reprized some of their famous skits.  And everyone has some that  they like.  I, for example, like the memory of The Samurai Delicatessen, even if when I see it rerun it doesn't seem to be that funny. And some of the mock ads, or the some skits, I find genuinely funny.  And nobody can deny, I think, that the mock political debates are hugely funny, as are occasionally the satires of individual Presidents (the ones of Clinton were hilarious).

Having said all of that, by and large, the show just isn't all that good.

Now, humor is very subjective, but for a lot of Saturday Night Live to be funny, you have to have both a sophomoric sense of humor that even most sophomores in college or in high school don't have, and I think it helps if you fit into a downtown, middle class, east coast urban demographic.  That demographic seems to fill the population of television writers in general, and indeed years ago on NPR I had heard how a surprising number of comedy writers all come out of the same Ivy League school which is why they all have the same sense of humor from their college days, which never really changes.  Humor is, I"m pretty sure, both genetic and cultural, and there's a lot of funny stuff out there which just isn't going to make it on to something like Saturday Night Live, let alone television in general. In contrast, there are entire acts that one demographic finds funny and another does not. Chevy Chase, for example, isn't funny.  In anything.  But somebody must think so.

But Saturday Night Live, in spite of not really being all that funny, by and large, is long running, and television likes to celebrate itself, and so it has been. And that's part of the appeal, I think, of Saturday Night Live.  The culture believes its funny as to maintain otherwise would be to suggest that we've all been playing along. 

Of course, it could all be subjective.  My wife thinks Wayne's World is hilarious.  I think its stupid.  My son and I find the Grand Budapest Hotel to be very funny, my wife does not.  Everyone here loves Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, but one of my in laws can't stand it.

Old Picture of the Day: Nethers, Virginia

Old Picture of the Day: Nethers, Virginia: Welcome to Nethers, Virginia Week. This week we will look at a little slice of American History that is lost forever. The experience t...

Old Picture of the Day: Japanese Surrender

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Old Picture of the Day: Iwo Jima

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Old Picture of the Day: USS Bunker Hill: Today's picture shows the USS Bunker Hill moments after it was struck by Kamikazes. The ship was supporting the invasion of Okinaw...

Old Picture of the Day: Battle of Okinawa

Old Picture of the Day: Battle of Okinawa: Today's picture shows a view from the Battle for Okinawa. Some of the most intense fighting of World War II occurred on Okinawa. T...

Old Picture of the Day: Normandy Invasion

Old Picture of the Day: Normandy Invasion: This is another picture of the Normandy Invasion. This picture was taken after the troops had established a beach head. It is amazing a...

Old Picture of the Day: D-Day

Old Picture of the Day: D-Day: Today's picture is an iconic image of soldiers as they approach Omaha Beach on D-day. The striking thing to me is that most of thes...

Agricultural Ignorance

As somebody with a foot in agriculture, and a foot outside of it, I have a view of both worlds and how people in one perceive the other.  I don't know that this is always a good thing, but it is something I experience.  One thing about it is it makes it plain how often one group mus-perceives the views and the status of the other.  I've written about this a bit here before, often in the context of how those who have spent their lives in agriculture don't appreciate, in some circumstances, the unique gift they have in the modern world to be able to live on the land, and how they erroneously believe that "good" city jobs are the path to idle richness.

But perhaps a bigger misconception, in the West, is the one held by a select group of liberal environmentalist on how nature actually works, and how that dovetails with real agriculture.  This ignorance, moreover, can bleed over to the general non agricultural population country wide, and can have, or threaten to have, really negative consequences.  It also leads, in part, to the pretty pronounced distrust that agriculturalist have for "experts" outside of agriculture, and of those who brand themselves to be environmentalist.  As somebody who is very familiar with farmers and ranchers, I've sometimes wondered why they seem so opposed to what would seem to be sensible conservation efforts, or what seems to be well established, if controversial, scientific matters.  Or even, in some circumstances, environmental positions.

But, if you spend much time listening to environmentalist, you'd know why.  They can be as blind and ignorant as anyone.

As an example, take the current issue of The New Republic.  I've mentioned the magazine, now just past its 100th year, here before.  This pat issue was an odd one anyway you look at it, but included in its oddity is an article blaming ranchers in the west, and more particularly the dreaded "public lands rancher", for drought in the West.

 Stock tank, several years ago during a drought.  The water is on, but no cattle are to be seen, a  there weren't any in this pasture, which never looks any better than this, but which does support both deer and antelope, and seasonally, cattle.

Bull.

The thesis is, basically, that cattle drink up all the water and cause drought.  Nonsense.

Cattle do require a lot of water, but everywhere the brake on range carrying capacity is grass, not water.  Even in the arid West, in the parts I'm familiar with, there's generally enough water if there's enough grass.  And if there's truly not enough water, all the cattlemen I'm aware of cut back on the number of cattle they have.  In the modern West, I've never seen an instance of cattle drinking a water source dry.  And generally, if there's that little water, there's not very much grass, and cattle numbers were accordingly cut back anyhow.

Beyond that, the old idea that use of water creates drought hearkens back to the long discredited views of the 20s and 30s that "rain follows the plow" or that trees cause rain. They don't.  It was sincerely believed that production agriculture created rain clouds in the 1920s, and seriously advanced as a theory, to the detriment, and over the opposition of, cattlemen.  In the 1930s, when the dust bowl had disproved this (and the plowed ground started going back to rangeland), the new theory about trees was advanced and the Federal government planted them all over in droughted areas under the naive belief that they'd cause rain, when in fact their water consumption did the opposite.

It isn't, of course, that cattle don't drink water, they do, but precipitation in any one year, much of which in the West comes during the winter, isn't controlled by that.  The snow that fell here over the past two days came from moisture stored up in clouds over the Pacific Ocean, not over a local stock pond.

And speaking of stock ponds, one of the real ironies of current environmental baloney on this topic is that it always cites to wildlife, when in fact the creation of ranch based water projects, and some farm based ones, actually caused and supported the boom in wildlife numbers in the middle of the 20th Century.  Old accounts make it plain that prior to stock ponds much of the prairie was devoid of large wildlife as a rule.  Small ponds changed that.  And as wildlife habits differ from those of cattle, stock ponds benefit wildlife more than they do cattle.  Indeed, I've been stopped by a game biologist years ago just so he could ask me about a windmill driven stock tank.

Deep down, I don't t hink that the opposition to agriculture in the West, and this sort of animosity is centered in the West in terms of its focus, really has much to do with the environment in real terms.  If it did, environmentalist would be backing ranchers, not opposing them.  Indeed, the irony of this is pointed out by one of the books written by an anti, a University of Wyoming law professor, who laments early in her book that her view from her house in Laramie is despoiled by a cow, which means that here house, at the time the book was written, was most likely relatively new in Laramie and in fact had directly despoiled the prairie itself.  And that points out what I think is the real root of such views.

Almost all hardcore anti agriculture views of this type, just like hardcore veganism, or the like, come from deeply industrial supported urban lives.  People who life in cities, even if they oppose it, are so deeply supported by industrialism that they can hardly grasp it directly.  It often seems, however, that they sort of sense that, and as they feel uncomfortable with it, they strike out at something.  With some, it causes them to view the wildlands preserved by Western ranching as parkland, for their hobby use, in a deeply industrial supported manner.  The armies of Gortex clad weekend hikers up in the hills are there only because of their petroleum fueled lifestyles, and are even wearing industrially produced synthetic clothing.  They're about as close to nature, in that sense, as workers in a chemical plant, but they don't acknowledge that.  Perhaps they sense that, to a degree, but at any rate with urban jobs supported by an advanced industrial economy that has economic roots and supply lines across the globe, they react by wanting to drive ranchers and farmers, who actually live on the land, off it, and thereby convert the land into what they think will be an even bigger or more pristine park, but what will in fact be busted up into more little divisions and thereby destroy the land itself.

At some point this becomes a real problem, as a society so divorced from real nature, is really in trouble.  And perhaps that's where another radical idea may be in order, at this point.  There's a myth of government supported agriculture in this country, which is largely untrue except in certain specific instances.  But the system of mega agriculture is supported in so far as the American economy is a corporatist capitalist economy.  Some other nations, France being an example, go more for a distributist agrarian model in agriculture, recognizing that there's value in a densely populated nation in keeping a percentage of that population on the land, and grounded in reality.  With our nation becoming so distant from nature, and yet with so many people yearning to be part of it, or part of agriculture, perhaps we should consider something of the same.

1954 Bel Air

The other day, I posted my thread on automobiles.  After I'd written it, I took this photo of a very nicely restored 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air.

I had a 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe myself, a picture of which is provided below.

 

 I used mine as a daily driver, while I had it.  It was a really neat car, and I should have kept it, although using it that way turned you into a full time mechanic.

Anyhow, the Bel Aire, which should have rear wheel well covers, but in the very nice example above does not, provides an example of something I didn't talk about in my recent entry. That 54 Bel Air is an automatic transmission.

Automatic transmissions go further back than that, but they weren't the transmission of choice for legitimate reasons. But about that time, they started to improve to the extent that they soon would be.  Sluggish at first, by the 1960s they'd improved a great deal.  By the early 1970s they were coming out in pickup trucks, and within the last decade they started to supplant standard transmissions in trucks, even 1 ton 4x4 trucks.  You can still get standards, but its getting difficult to do so. Standards are gone in mid sized cards entirely, and when you find them in a car today, it's probably in a small sporty car.

Quite a change.

My 54 had a three speed transmission with column shift.

Lex Anteinternet: The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men: Lex Antein...

I've been posting on the oil field slump here pretty regularly in a string of posts of which this one is part,  Lex Anteinternet: The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men: Lex Antein.... It isn't  the only one by any means, however. 

Anyhow, in today's Tribune there's a story that on the very day that Halliburton's local lift division (pumps) was to move into their new quarters, they ended up laying off the entire local division.  Pretty dramatic event really.  How many people that is, is unclear, but the paper noted that at the end of the day there were 25 trucks in the lot that didn't leave.  That would presumably equate with 25 lost jobs at least.

In fairness, it must be noted that Halliburton recently merged with Baker Hughes, and this might be principally due to that merger. The paper's article seems to suggest it probably is, based upon their overviews of Halliburton personnel, and that makes sense to me. Halliburton acquired Baker Hughes for a reason, and that reason was to acquire its business, but it would make sense that there was some overlapping business to start with.  Indeed, as I think of Halliburton as a service company, I was surprised that it had a division that installed oilfield pumps.   Chances are high that Baker Hughes, which started off as an equipment company, would be more likely to have a more developed line of business doing the same thing really, so that may explain it.

Still, even though the article still includes some people who take a "it may be temporary" and "things are still going on strong here (referring to South Dakota)", that things aren't going well in the oil patch right now is pretty evident.  I'd guess that for those who were looking at going right from school into the oil patch, things are looking much different.

Who is AARP pitching to?

A lot of mornings I iron a pair of pants, or a shirt, and turn on the television to catch The High Chaparral.

Who doesn't?

Anyhow, as I'm watching, by doing that, a really old television show, early in the morning, I'm watching something that is probably being watched, I guess, by a lot of retired folks. At least the advertisers must think so. And one of those advertisers is the American Association of Retired Persons.

AARP has an add that pitches its automobile insurance, through Hartford, to people "50 years old and older".

Really? Are a lot of Americans in their 50s retired?  I really doubt it.

Oh, no doubt some are, but not most.  AARP, which also sends out their "join AARP" stuff to you when  you hit 50, seems to be fishing at the deep end of the pool there, but come on, how many Americans in their 50s are retired.

For that matter, fewer and fewer Americans in their 60s are retired and the retirement age is climbing.

Not that the AARP is the only organization that does this sort of thing. Some years ago I had  the occasion to have to interact with The American Legion, and during that an individual who was effectively recruiting for them asked me if I ever had any service, and if I'd like to join.  I have nothing against The American Legion but I didn't think I wanted to join, as I'm not a combat or wartime veteran after all.  I told the person I had been in the Guard but I was sure I wasn't eligible.  Well, it turned out that for some weird reason I was.  My period of Guard service had overlapped some bad event, I think our involvement in Lebanon (I was in basic training at that time, which actually put you in the Regular Army for that period of time), so I could be a Legion member. But why?  Doesn't seem what they'd want.

Of course, organizations need members to be effective, so I guess I can't blame them for trying.  But I'm not retired. Based upon my observations of other lawyers I know, my chances of retiring are really slim at that.

Random Snippets. It snows in the winter.

In much of North America, indeed in darned near all of it, it snows every winter.

In the northern 2/3s of the US, it snows without fail every winter.  And in the top half of that, it snows a lot.

This is not news.

So why the panic on the press about something that happens, without fail, absolutely every year?  It's really absurd.

Lex Anteinternet: Civil Holidays

Today is President's Day.  I worked it.  I always do.  I'm sure I've never had it off in any job I ever had, save for the period of time during which I was employed part time by the Army National Guard.  I'm sure I would have had it off, if I were working on this day otherwise.

I looked at these types of holidays this past October in this thread:

Lex Anteinternet: Civil Holidays:  Leann posted an item on her blog about Columbus Day, urging Congress to consider changing it to Indigenous Peoples Day .  I'll confess ...

President's Day is a Federal holiday that came about due to the amalgamation of Washington and Lincoln's birthdays as a holiday, both of which occurred in February.   They were great men and they certainly deserve a Federal holiday.  But how many take it off?  Did you?

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The Islamic State in Iraq and th...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The Islamic State in Iraq and th...: As of today, the situation discussed here has gone from bad to worse.  ISIS, or ISIL, depending upon the term you use, has taken the city o...

And now this horror has spread on to the Libya, where ISIL beheaded 21 Egyptian  Coptic Christians simply for being Christian.  Egypt has retaliated with airstrikes against ISIL in Libya.  This is significant in two ways.  One, it shows that ISIL's reach is expanding.  Secondly, Egypt has now joined Jordan as a Middle Eastern, Moslem majority, country that's now actively engaged in warfare with ISIL.

To my surprise, 10 to 15 percent of Egyptians are reported as being Coptic Christians, a much higher percentage that I would have guessed.  Generally they're second class citizens, but all Egyptians appear to be rallying to their cause.

Not unrelated, a Moslem terrorist also struck at a free speech event in Egypt.  Armed with an automatic weapon in a society which strictly controls access to firearms, he had a pretty free hand so the fact that the casualties were as low as they were is truly amazing.  This event should have the added impact of causing European nations to further wake up to the fact that Islamic extremists are both in their midst, and at war with their open societies.  While I am sure it won't have this effect, it should also cause nations in Europe to ponder their gun control provisions and consider the example of the US, which is the opposite of what they imagine, in that as gun control provisions have very much waned in the past 30 years gun violence has actually declined (which is also contrary to what many Americans imagine).  On a continent which now finds itself at war with a quasi invisible radical fifth column, with access to automatic weapons coming out of the Middle East, allowing the population to protect itself deserves some consideration.

Automotive Transportation II: Cars

Cars.  Automobiles that is.

With this entry, we pick up where we left off with trucks and where we started off with walking.  That is, our series of posts on changes in transportation.

 

Allegedly the first American automobile.  In the 1890s cars started to be manufactured, and as they were fairly primitive, some were also built at home.  Perhaps the first car in Wyoming was built by Laramie physician, Dr. Frinfrock.

Perhaps this one is the most obvious, and perhaps it nearly completes the circle, sort of, we began with walking.  We have another yet to go, but to most people the revolution brought about by cars is the most obvious.  Perhaps for that reason, and also for the reason that we've really touched heavily on this topic in numerous prior posts, we're not going to really dwell on it as much. There's no real reason to belabor the obvious too much.

The common myth, which we've already explored and pretty much destroyed, is that everyone rode horses until cars came about, and then everyone switched to them. As we know, there was never an era when everyone rode horses, and in the United States, bicycles were they really early rival for urban personal transportation to the horse, not the automobile.  Bikes were cheap, easy to store, and easy to maintain.  Early automobiles, by contrast, were extremely expensive and hard to maintain.  And as a rule, people weren't going all that far, in modern terms, anyhow.

Which isn't to say that automobiles didn't have a toehold by the late 19th Century.  They did.  And in a role that the early nickname for them reveals. They weren't called the "horseless carriage" for nothing. That's exactly what they were.

 

Buick, 1907.  Note the right hand drive.

Automobiles, even if not extremely widely spread, for economic reasons, did command interest pretty rapidly.  Their advantage was in fact revealed by their nickname, as was their basic design. They were horseless carriages.  Just as horsed carriages, however, were beyond the means of most, the horseless carriage was as well, although they did spread down into the middle class early on.  In terms of the amount needed to acquire one, they were amazingly expensive, which makes it surprising to see how widespread they really were.  A multiplicity of manufacturers made an appearance early on, some of which are still with us today.

1897 Oldsmobile.

As is well know, it was Henry Ford who sought to change all of that.  Before Ford, cars were virtually all hand made, even if made to a single design.  Ford applied the techniques along employed in some other industries, such as the firearms industry, and acted to mass produce a car, that car being, as everyone well knows, the Model T.  Aiming that car specifically at a mass market, it was targeted to be affordable to the men making it, and as time when on, and production efficiency increased, the price of the Model T dropped.

 

Early Model T touring car.

The Model T was truly a revolution in autos. The Tin Lizzy, introduced in 1908, was a tough, durable, but primitive automobile.  It bridged the gap from truly primitive vehicles before it, and more modern ones that would follow it, but the fact that it was readily available to so many in the American, indeed the global, market meant that for the first time many people could afford a car, and they did buy one.

 

Later model Model T, still in use in the late 1930s.

With the Model T, the introduction of cars came extremely rapidly.  Before that, cars had been the domain of the wealthy, the eccentric, or the pioneering.  After that, they came increasingly to be everywhere, occupying both a place in the carriage house and on the more humble curb.  And contrary to the common myth, Ford catered to its market, making the Tin Lizzy in a variety of models, with touring cars (open topped multiple seat vehicles) and roadsters (two seat convertibles), being amongst the options.  Multiple colors were also offered.

Like any revolutionary device, however, whether it be a mass produced car or a smart phone, imitators were soon to follow, of course.

Manufactured all the way up to 1927, the Model T became obsolete nonetheless surprisingly fast.  By 1915, Ford engine parts supplier the Dodge Brothers were operating a rival automobile company.  General Motors started operating in Flint Michigan the same year that Ford introduced the Model T.  Chrysler would form in 1925.  Louis Chevrolet opened his car plant in 1911.  The wagon make Studebaker, beat them all to the punch and had been working on automobiles since 1897, and even manufactured electric automobiles in the first decade of the automobile age.  By the 1920s there were dozens of automobile manufactures offering a mind numbing number of vehicles.

 

Legendary Jordan advertisement that launched modern advertising.

Indeed, in this era it was the automobile industry, with the Jordan Motor Car Company leading the charge, that introduced modern advertising. Advertising based on nothing other than image alone, which is exactly what that company did with its famous "Somewhere West of Laramie" advertisement, featuring the legendary enigmatic starting phrase that "Somewhere west of Laramie there's a bronchobusting, steer-roping girl who knows what I'm talking about."  Those reading the ad probably didn't know what Jordan was talking about, but they knew that they wanted one of his coupes.

While the car didn't replace the horse in many of its roles, the car had come to dominate the urban streets by the 1920s.  The age of the bicycle was over in the United States, and urban horses were very much on the way out in urban areas for conventional personal transportation.  Cars had taken over the taxi trade, and cars were now in the police patrolling role.  Cars had come in where the bike had started too, and they were offering daily, if somewhat expensive, transportation to hundreds of dangerous novice drivers.  The future appeared pretty clear, and Americans were crazy about cars.

Indeed, by the 1920s, the car was changing the very nature of the streets.  Paving wasn't new to cities by any means, and streets had been paved with cobble stones back into antiquity, but cars changed the amount of acreage that was paved.  Paving is unnecessary for animal transportation to an extent, although it serves wheeled vehicles, including wagons, of any type.  But cars very much favor paving, and the process of paving the urban landscape was well in swing by the 1920s.  While already discussed, of course, in terms of trucking, the increased number of cars also aided in the linking of towns via paved roads, something that wasn't really needed prior to the internal combustion engine.

Paving machine, about 1920.

Although Ford expanded its Model T production overseas, Europeans and other peoples were not nearly as enamored with cars as Americans.  Perhaps because their cities had been so long established for other means of transpiration, and perhaps because of their economic situation simply being different, while cars very much came into European societies by the 1920s, they didn't achieve the same overarching status that they did in the United States and Canada at the same time.  Americans were just berserk over automobiles by the 1920s, willing to spend a fair amount of their incomes to obtain one, and to maintain one. Europeans generally were not.  A real difference in modern American (and Canadian) culture, vs. European cultures, had already become clear in that regards.

 

Dusenberg touring car.

From fairly early on, cars took on a multiplicity of types.  Big Touring Cars were built for over the road trips with at least a few passengers, with some of the roads being pretty bad being considered, were a popular early type.  From the widely available Model T touring car, to expensive automobiles, these cars were larger serviceable cars.  Some European manufacturers, aiming for a different market, setting the standard for size and durability. Rolls Royce, fore example, built a touring car so durable that it was the platform for the excellent British armored cars used in World War One.  In contrast, coupes and roadsters, two seaters, were offered by most car companies even if only on a model that was otherwise built as a touring car, offering motorist a car that that had previously been occupied by the horse drawn dog cart.  In other words, an automobile really aimed at single men, or occasionally businessmen who didn't transport more than a single passenger.   Hard sided cars, with permanent roofs, began to replace touring cars by the late 1920s, in the form of sedans, which has been the standard for cars ever since.  By the 1930s, very large cars then known as "station wagons", "depot hacks", "estate cars", "suburbans" or "carryalls"  served the purpose of durable taxi, or hack, from train stations and hotels.  While some of these names are recognizable now, in terms of their descendants, none of them were, at that time, what they later became.  Indeed, a person would have to go to a vintage car show or watch an old movie in order to see one. 

Model T sedan.

 
Model T roadster.

With competition heated for automobiles in the US in the 1920s, its no surprise that innovation was rapid as well. By 1927 the durable Model T was clearly wholly obsolete, and Ford, for  the second time in its history, introduced an automobile called the "Model A".  Originally Ford used that name for a primitive vehicle built from 1903 to 1904, but starting in 1927, it came back out with its second Model A.  A really modern car, the Model A was a huge success but was only built until 1931.  Starting the in 1932, the Model B took over, with their being an engine option for the first time which not only allowed the purchaser to buy something other than a 4 cylinder engine, but to actually have that choice be a V8 engine.  The era of the modern car had really arrived. By the mid 1930s, all the car manufacturers then in business, and in spite of the Great Depression weeding a number of them out, there remained a lot, was changing models yearly, rather than sticking with a single long manufactured model.

"LongBeachFord" by Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LongBeachFord.jpg#mediaviewer/File:LongBeachFord.jpg

 

Model A.

In Europe, the production of cars had likewise increased, and the spread of automobile manufacturing had commenced in Japan as well.  Nowhere but the US was the market as advanced as in the US, but it was there.  American manufacturers themselves spread to Europe with Ford's entry into the European market being particularly notable. As in the US, there were a multiplicity of types, but as a rule European cars were simply not as widely purchased by their public.  Price was part of the reason, and this inspired Nazi Germany to actually create a program whereby a worker could set aside funds in the hopes of acquiring a cheap German car, that car being Ferdinand Porsche's Volkswagen, or 'People's Car".  None were ever delivered during the horror of the Third Reich, although the Volkswagen plant did produce a car that was Jeep sized during the war, with that car being the Kubelwagen.  The VW "Bug" of course, would revive after the war and live on, Model T like, forever.

 

The 1937 Cord, an extremely advanced luxury car of the 1930s which would not survive the Depression.

 

1937 Chrysler Airflow.

While the US automobile industry took a pounding during the Great Depression, and while some automobile makers on the margins, like Jordan, were casualties, as were brand names like LaSalle that were made by bigger makers (General Motors in that example), the American automobile industry endured the Depression surprisingly well.  In the late 1930s, when  global rearmament commenced due to the German threat in Europe, surplus North American capacity in existing operating plants meant that North America had a vehicle production capacity like non other.  The United States, and to a lesser extent Canada, became the supplier of vehicles to the Allies.  Moreover, North American capacity was so vast that it simply dwarfed Axis production.  While every army that fought in the war used vehicles, including vehicles in the "car" class, American production alone was so vast that every single Allied army as equipped to some extent with American vehicles. To take the classic "car" class American vehicle of the war (although in military terms its a 1/4 ton truck), the Jeep as an example, Jeeps were found in the armed forces of every single Allied army during the war, including the Red Army.  Indeed, the Red Army was almost entirely dependent upon American motor vehicles for transportation by the end of the war.

It can't be said that cars advanced, like trucks did, during World War Two.  By and large, the cars that came out right after World War Two were the same models that were being offered in 1941.  No new automotive technology was really developed that was applicable to cars during the war, except for the perfection of conventional four wheel drive, which showed up, in terms of cars, only in Jeep class vehicles.  Regarding those, of course, the Jeep did go into civilian production by Willys, with Willys always having been a manufacturer that specialized in rural vehicles.  It soon had competitors from overseas, interestingly enough, demonstrating the global spread of the Jeep during World War Two.

 

M38A1, which in its civilian expression was the CJ5.  The CJ series of Jeeps went into production right after World War Two and while the designators have changed to YJ and TJ, they've basically never stopped.

By the late 1940s, however, American cars did begin to evolve towards big.  Cars of the 1920s and 1930s, save for touring cars, were surprisingly small.  Cab space was often quite tight, even in cars that appear externally large.  This began to rapidly change in the late 1940s, however.

In part that might reflect an enormous improvement in roads that occurred during the 1930s.  Automobiles of the 1930s were still all suitable for rural roads. They had high clearance, compared to modern cars, and they were relatively stiffly suspended.  During the 30s, however, most highways most places had become modern, and urban paving was the norm.  This in turn reflected itself in the late 1940s with cars starting to have lower and softer suspensions, and in turn they grew larger as well.  Larger engines also began to make the appearance, particularly in Fords which had pioneered the V8 engine.  Chevrolet's remains 6 cylinders at first, but in the mid 1950s Chevrolet also introduced a V8 for its regular car line. By the late 1950s V8s had become the American norm, even though 6 cylinder vehicles were still available.  Also during the 1950s some American cars had become simply enormous.

 

1954 Chevrolet Deluxe.

They probably bordered on absurdly enormous, and they began to shrink back down in the 1960s. By that time, however, the Station Wagon had evolved into a family vehicles that was very large and designed to carry an entire family and their stuff.  Station wagons were a staple of the 1960s and early 1970s, before being eclipsed by smaller vehicles and mini-vans in the 1980s.  At the same time, the same vehicle that had evolved into the station wagon had also evolved into Carry Alls and Suburbans, large family vehicles that were built on truck frames and which really were a type of truck.  Suburbans are still with us, even though station wagons are not.

 

1950s vintage Pontiac Super Chief.

Cars of the 1970s were generally powerful vehicles reflecting an American love of the open road.  Racing inspired cars even entered the public market by the late 1960s, and were sold throughout the 1970s, in the form of "muscle cars", sports cars with a high power to weight ratio that were capable of speeds in excess of any legal limit.

Still, the 1970s ushered in a change when the price of gas, and gas shortages, made fuel economy an American concern for the first time.  As fuel economy had been a concern everywhere else in the world, this made foreign imports really viable.  The Japanese and European manufacturers, devastated by World War Two, had largely recovered and had been focusing on their domestic markets, which demanded fuel economy. Cars like the Datsun, Toyota, or Fiat were suddenly marketable in the US, and the Japanese in particular, who had focused on making really good small cars, were able to make huge inroads into the American market.  The American market was permanently changed, and the number of American manufacturers declined to a "big three".

The shock of the fuel, and following fiscal, crises took American manufacturers a very long time to adjust to, but they have.  That takes us to the current market. If the Model A was a "modern car", as I've referred to it here, cars of the last ten years, with many American cars being prime examples, are "post modern". So much safer, longer lasting, and better than anything that's come before them, they can't even really be compared to cars of the 80s or 90s.  They are much, much better, longer lasting, and safer.  Oddly, Americans are now less interested in cars as well, which reflects perhaps a new post modern view of them.  For the first time, really, Americans now view cars the same way Europeans have for a long time, just a way to get around, if they really need one.

Body by Fischer.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Toronto Ontario Old Town Hall and York County Courthouse

Courthouses of the West: Toronto Ontario Old Town Hall and York County Cour...:

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: The Talking Wire Changes the West

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: The Talking Wire Changes the West

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Denver Colorado:

Botching history on the bully pulpit

Every year there's an event called the National Prayer Breakfast.  I'll confess I don't really know much about it, other than it happens in D.C., and the President usually goes to it.  Typically, most Presidents have been careful not to say anything controversial, but President Obama has been the exception. This year he made just such a statement when he said:

Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. …So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.

Now, this statement is one of those ones that's guaranteed to spark controversy, and I suspect that the President didn't quite mean this the way it sounds, but how does it measure up historically?  And beyond that, how does what it implies measure up?  So let's look at what the statement seems to say, and what it seems to imply.  It seems to say and imply:

1.  Some people are accusing Islam of being violent (and that's a correct thing to state, i.e., some people are saying that).

2.  Christianity has had its own examples of people doing terrible things in the name of Christianity; and three of those things are:  a) misdeeds in the Crusades; b) misdeeds during the Inquisition; and c) slavery and American segregation era racism.

So how do those claims, none of which is unique to the President, stack up? And how does the counter claim, which was essentially being addressed, that Islam is violent measure up?

Let's start with one of the most misconstrued periods of history of all time included in the list above, the Crusades.  Were bad deeds done in the name of Christianity during the Crusades.  Not so much.

The Crusades in and of themselves are very much misunderstood and this is principally due to the Reformation.  Prior to the Reformation western Europeans did not have a negative view of the Crusades, and even during the early part of the Reformation some figures, such as Martin Luther, were pleading for Christian intervention in defense of Catholic lands, such as Austria, against invading Islamic armies.  It was only later, when various Protestant groups developed a revisionist history that the suggestion that the Crusades were improper came about, and this was due to a desire to point fingers at their rivals and to distinguish themselves.  Like most big revisionist histories, the revision wasn't too accurate.

The "Crusades", which weren't called that until centuries later, came about as defensive wars designed to stop Islamic invasion of Christian lands, with much of those Christian lands occupied by Eastern, not Western, Christians. The Byzantines found that they were unable to stop invading Islamic armies, which had become newly aggressive after Islamic leaders, ironically non Arabs, first acted to subjugate Islamic Arab kingdoms in the Middle East. Those Islamic kingdoms sometimes had Christian majority populations, and the two groups had managed to settle into co-existence, but under this effort to subjugate those kingdoms, that policy ended and local Christians were persecuted or even given no choice but to convert to Islam. At the same time, Islamic forces began to expand into the region and threaten Anatolia.  The Byzantines asked for help, with Rome urged be provided.  Also, the same impulses acted to provide for armed escorts for pilgrims to the Holy Land, as they were subject to attack by marauding Islamic bands.

The initial efforts were successful.  Over time, the advancing Islamic armies were rolled back, areas that were occupied by them were once again under Christian rule, and in some places, over time, invading Islamic armies were completely and permanently defeated, such as in Sicily.  Less permanently, but significantly, Christian kingdoms, sometimes presented as invading kingdoms now, were created in various areas of the Mediterranean Middle East which very often had majority Christian populations newly freed from Islamic rule.   As we all know, the effort was not long term successful as the Ottoman Turks did manage to subjugate and defeat the Ottoman Empire, Islamic armies ultimately retook what they'd lost in the Middle East, and they even invaded up into Europe.  

So what were the terrible deeds?

Well, unless you consider the wars themselves terrible, not much.  The wars were fought under the conventional rules of the day, which weren't quite as nice as the modern ones, but they also saw a great deal less bloodshed than imagined as well.  Victorious armies of this, and earlier, periods grossly exaggerated their victories and usually claimed that vast numbers of enemy combatants, and even enemy civilians, were killed, but in reality, by one calculation, the number of people killed by the Crusading armies is actually less than those killed in pitched, but modern, battles today. That is, all the dead doesn't really add up to the same for one fairly typical battle today. Indeed, overall combat casualties were pretty low for the entire series of events.  And the claims about civilian towns people, including women and children, appear to be largely just made up.

The Crusaders did misbehave when they went through Constantinople, which cannot be denied, but nobody has every claimed that was done in the name of Christianity, quite the contrary.  In that, you have an example of Christians misbehaving, but not in Christ's name.  

So, the Crusades, a defensive war in the first place, turns out not to be an example of what the President claims.  The error would be understandable, save for the fact that he's so well educated.

Before we go on, let's look at the counter example, Islamic violence, which is what brings this topic up anyhow?  Is the same true of Islam, i.e., that its violence is conventional and misunderstood, in a historical context?

Well, here too, people who cite strongly to the "religion of peace" claim have history to contend with, but then so do those who would claim that all Islam is necessarily violent.

Very early Islam, that is Islam during Mohammed's life, spread at first through what was apparently his charismatic personality but then, during his life, took to violence.  From the outside, it seems that early on, when the more peaceful aspects of the Koran were written in these regards, it was a distinctly minority religion, and probably a Gnostic heresy.  It may have been quite a bit different than what it is today.  As Mohammad gained adherents, he turned to the violent spread of the new religion, and the later more violent portions of the Koran were written.  It seems fairly clear that the version of the Koran we have today doesn't actually match the earliest one, with the very earliest one held in a library in war torn Yemen, were nobody is allowed to view it, but the evolution was probably there. What this probably reflects, therefore, is that early on Mohammad wanted to try to make sure his faith wasn't unduly persecuted by the orthodox Christian faith, or the remaining Jewish faith, and so he urged peace and co existance.  Later on, when he was spreading the faith through the sword into mostly pagan areas of the Arabian peninsula, he was willing to take on Christians and Jews as well, and so the text grew considerably more dark.  So, Islam does in fact have a violent early history, in real contrast to Christianity which was hugely oppressed and non violent in its early centuries, and also in contrast to the Christian actions in the crusades.

Early Islam, in fact, spread mostly by the sword, being ultimately stopped in western Europe at Tours, and then rolled back, in the east at Vienna.   But that doesn't mean that all Moslems are violent, nor does it mean that Islam has been trying to spread by the sword every day of every year.  Indeed, right now the criteria for launching a violent action under Islam are relatively strict and basically can't really be done, as the authorities who would be allowed to decree it just simply don't exist.  So a good argument can be made that while Islam certainly has a violent past, those who act violently for it today may be heretical or at least out of the safe confines of their faith.

Okay, back to the other points, what about the Inquisition?

The term "Inquisition" usually means the Spanish Inquisition.  There are other Inquisitions, and for the most part they are inquiries of some sort or another.  The Spanish one is cited most typically, as it too gained currency as a "bad act" during the Reformation.  There's rich irony even in that, at least in the English speaking world, as any of the contestants in England were not shy about using force and Protestant authorities would go on to be very oppressive against not only Catholics, but other Protestants.

The problem overall is that its taken out of context pretty badly and also grossly exaggerated.

In order to understand it in the first place, a person has to be aware that the existing legal structure everywhere at that time viewed the Crown as the ultimate legal authority, and also, everywhere, viewed heresy as threat to the Crown.  It wasn't until the Reformation for the most part that European monarchies would have a concept of religious tolerance, although even then they typically did not. Henry VIII, for example, was happy to have his backer Thomas Cromwell be seen to be executed as a heretic.  Nations that went from being Catholic nations to Protestant ones quite often took the exact same position, except that they adopted a different church as the state church. So, in context, the concept of heresy as a state offense was very strong for a very long time.  This had to do not just with the Faith, however, but also very much with the concept of government.  In an era when monarchies could generally not act contrary to the faith, and when they all claimed to rule consistent with it, heretical acts were regarded as treasonous.  If a person could separate form the Faith, then they could also separate from the Crown.

This lead to various monarchies trying accused heretics.  In the case of the Spanish Inquisition, the Church became concerned that the judicial authorities were too ready to find people guilty, not to lax in doing so, and that the judicial authorities were also not competent to try such offenses. Given that, they Inquisition came about to look into such offenses.  This resulted in the accused being less likely, not more, to be found guilty.  Indeed, there were protests at the time against the Inquisition on that score, i.e., being too ready to find the accused innocent.

The trials of such things were not always pretty to be sure, and here perhaps the President has a point. But that's because all trials of serious matters were subject to shocking conduct by modern standards.  The concept of some sort of coercion was the norm, and it wasn't until centuries later that this was regarded as an improper judicial technique.  Even now, apparently, we haven't really come fully around to rejecting that concept in our own minds, as our own country has recently used what we must rationally concede to be torture to gain information from terrorists.  That doesn't excuse it, but it does place it in context.

So, again with the Spanish Inquisition. . . not so much.  It was an effort to reduce improper convictions, not to spur convictions, and its actions were consistent with those universally accepted then, but not now, in trials.  Interestingly, it resulted in many fewer deaths than British witch trials that would soon follow did, although those are generally regarded as attributable to Christian beliefs by their perpetrators.  The ultimate irony may be that pointing the finger at the Spanish Inquisition came up in the context of the Reformation, at which time the English Crown was always at a close state of war with Spain, but during which England itself was in a period of engaging in massive religious repression during which it wasn't shy about using violence.  Indeed, should the President have cared to make it, the actions of various British monarchs and political figures would have been a much better example of what he was trying to cite to than the Spanish Inquisition.

Well then, what about slavery and racism?

Here, I think, the President has a better point.  Nobody is claiming that Christianity sanctions slavery or racism, but people did make those claims.  Slavery in the South was sometimes excused on that basis, in no small part because the South was an overwhelmingly Christian region with a lot of serious Christians who had to reconcile their actions somehow.  Slavery is mentioned in the New Testament quite a bit, and so the rationalization was that because it isn't outright condemned, it must be sanctioned.  Well, actually it isn't, and the Greek word of the period in which the New Testament was written makes no distinction between a "slave" and a "servant", because in that period there really wasn't one. That reflects the economic realities of the 1st Century, but it has nothing to do with the 18th and 19th Century in terms of human bondage, and it doesn't license it.  Southern Christians, however, argued the opposite.

Be that as it may ,that was a position taken by individuals, rather than by any one church.  So, for example, the very large Episcopal church in the South didn't declare acceptance of slavery tto be doctrinal by any means.  Indeed, and again ironically, here too we have to bring in the United Kingdom as for much of this period the UK, which was home to at least two of the widespread Protestant faiths in the South, was the European standard bearer for the anti slavery effort.  The English may have gotten race based slavery rolling in North America to some extent, but they also really took it on later on, and often due to religious impulses.


Raced based slavery might, however, make it a better example here, as it might actually fit the President's example of some Christians misusing their faith to do a bad thing.  Although it was a rationalization, not doctrinal, but I think that was his point.  I.e., some people did do that, just as some Moslems now excuse violent actions the same way.

I don't really know how Christianity could be used to justify racism, but again, some have bizarrely tried that as well, so perhaps that too is a better example.  In the recent violent actions in France, for example, one of the attackers was living with his girlfriend, and their violent actions killed a Moslem policeman.  No way that Islam sanctions any of that, so a person engaging in that sort of activity has had to do some huge rationalization to get there.  I think in these instances you have the example of somebody believing so strongly that their actions are justified, that they then go to the conclusion that they can do anything they want.  No religion sanctions that, but some people behave that way.

So, on this one, I think I'd grade the President with a 50, a scale which would leave him with an F.  Back to the books.  Of course, these historical failings are commonly believed ones, and so maybe I'd reluctantly given him a C.

Census data and pure unadulterated baloney.

A really popular story on NPR reports that, for the years 1978, 1996 and 2014 the following have been the most common jobs in my state, Wyoming.

1978:  Farm workers

1996:  Farmers

2014:  Truck, delivery and tractor drivers.

Baloney.

Farm workers and farmers have not constituted the most common job here at any time in our state's history.  Granted, agriculture dominated the state's economy early on, but ever since the petroleum industry came in, that industry has, and there's absolutely no way whatsoever that farm workers or farmers constituted the most common job in the state in 1978 and 1996.  I well recall 1978 and 1996 and getting to be a livestock farmer (ie. a rancher) was very difficult to get into in either of those years if you were not born into it, and livestock farmers constitute the majority of our agricultural sector.

This shows, I suspect, the baloney nature of some statistics.  Its simply incorrect.  And I imagine its also incorrect for the several other states that are listed in this fashion.

At best, it might mean that more individuals identified with those jobs than any other one identified, signally, even if few occupied it compared to all other jobs combined, but I still doubt that.

I might believe driving some sort of truck, however, was the single most common job here in 2014, given the dependance on the oilfield on trucks.

Coast Defense Study Group | Coast Artillery| Sea Coast DefenseCoast Defense Study Group Inc. | Just another WordPress site

Coast Defense Study Group | Coast Artillery| Sea Coast DefenseCoast Defense Study Group Inc. | Just another WordPress site

Interesting site dedicated to the  Coast Artillery.

The Big Speech: From Study Out The Land.

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.

T. K. Whipple

Ancient town yields new clues to early life in Wyoming - News Columns | Wyofile

Ancient town yields new clues to early life in Wyoming - News Columns | Wyofile

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Mounted men and a train.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Mounted men and a train.

Mid Week At Work: Military Pilot, Punitive Expedition, 1916

Master & Servant*

I have occasion to shop at a store, quite frequently, that's part of a large national chain.  I don't have much choice in this, because of the type of operation that it is, I would have to go it or one of its competitors.  There's no local version of it, really.

The store, which has been in my community since the mid 1930s (when it started to displace the local versions of the same thing) was recently purchased by another chain. Not the entire company, but the local stores in my region.

I've wondered if both of the outlets would survive or not.  I have no idea, but I have noticed that one of the persons who operates the cash registers is now really unhappy. So much so, that I'd avoid that person's register if I could.  That person has taken up being a little violent towards the merchandise.  I don't know for sure that this is connected with the change, but I suspect so.  I suspect, without knowing that this person's position won't survive the change.

While I don't appreciate having my merchandise abused, I do feel for people in that situation, and it strikes me how much more liable people are to that sort of thing today.  In prior eras, so many more people were self employed at the retail level, it isn't even funny. And those who worked as clerks for those storefronts were employed by somebody that they knew, for good or ill, which makes downsizing them quite a bit different than it otherwise is today.

This also points out, I think, why people in their teen years looking at careers ought to think long and hard about their future.  Not everyone wants to be self employed, but having a skill that's in demand or translatable to one that's likely to be means a lot more now than just being an employee who shows up on time and leaves at the end of the day.  A loyal employee for Amalgamated Amalgamated might still just be a nameless number to corporate headquarters when the downsizing comes.  Careers that feature licensing of one kind or an other might be more valuable by their very nature, as t he license can usually translate into work.  If that's self employable work (as opposed to being self employed), so much the better, perhaps.

Not exactly the "do what makes you happy" advice that people like to hear, but perhaps something to consider to some extent.

_________________________________________________________________________________
* At law, the relationship between employer and employee is the "master and servant relationship".

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: False Fronts in the Old West

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: False Fronts in the Old West

The Mexican Revolution

This is one of those posts that start off and then sit around as a draft for a very long time.  Looking at this, I started the post, or just the topic really, in 2012, and here it's 2015 and I'm writing on it again.

Anyhow, what motivated me to write it is the excellent photos posted this week on the theme of the Mexican Revolution on the Old Picture Of The Day blog.  Or, rather, it was the comments that caused me to revive the post.  The reason being is that people really don't grasp the Mexican Revolution at all.

 

Mexican refugee entering the United States.  In spite of the caption, his wealth is probably all on this horse.

For one thing, people seem to think that the revolution was something like the Villistas against the Federales.  Not hardly, or at least that's not the whole story by a long shot.  So, let's take a look at what really happened, as its a significant story, and the long range impacts of it still very much impact us today.

Mexico has had an entire series of revolutions, as is well known, but they are not all of the same character.  I don't intend to list each and every one, as that would be a book in and of itself, but it's important to realize that revolutions have been part of the Mexican story in a way that they have not been in regards to the United States.  We had one revolution, or arguably two if you regard the Civil War as one, but in each instance ours had the feature of having the revolutionary side not even conceive of itself as being in rebellion, and featuring a democratic government.  It would have been perfectly possible for a soldier to serve, for example, in a New York state militia during the Revolutionary War and not conceive of himself as being in rebellion against anything.  Likewise, the Civil War, while a species of rebellion, wasn't quite regarded that way by either side that fought it.

Mexico's revolutions, however, have been real revolutions.  They didn't arise with the concept of protecting a set of liberties and rights from trespass, but sought to overthrow a rule or government entirely.

The first successful revolution was against Spain, of course, and it set the pattern for a large number of them that came thereafter in that they were really revolutions by Spanish aristocracy in Mexico against, at first, Spain and then later against each other.  The Mexican people had very little stake in them.  It wasn't really until Juarez rebelled against the French and their installed Austrian Emperor that a different type of revolution, that being the people against an perceived oppressor, arrived in Mexico.  Unfortunately for Mexico, and the Unites States, by that time a very pronounced political culture of having Caudillos, strong men, was well established, and in spite of a people's rebellion, it really couldn't be broken.

Caudillos, or strong men, aren't unique to Hispanic cultures by any means, and its worth noting that they almost seem to be the global rule, rather than the exception. They're the exception to us largely because we're heirs to English culture, where strongmen have not been appreciated very much.  Indeed, perhaps the biggest single example of an English language strongman can be found in that of Oliver Cromwell.  While the Lord Protector was a force during his life, not all that long after it the English Restoration occurred and Cromwell was posthumously sentenced to death, which required his body to be exhumed and beheaded.

A culture which feels so strongly about dictators that it'd dig one up to behead him isn't going to have very many.

In contrast, the example of a strongman whose is both a dictator while simultaneously being given as an example of the will of the people is surprisingly common in many cultures.  In our view, this is always negative, but in some cultures we can still find examples of such a person being heroically viewed.  Napoleon gives perhaps the best example. We think of him as a megalomaniac, but in France, and in much of the Latin world, he's viewed as a liberal hero.  In order to do that you have to separate his actions from his declared values, to some extent, but then he actually was a liberalizing force while also being a dictator, an odd combination.  That model is one which Maximilian I of Mexico, the unwelcome French installed Austrian "emperor" of Mexico himself sought to emulate.

In Mexico's case, pretty much every  revolutionary leader prior to the rebellion against France was a Cauldillo or Caudillo wannabe from the Spanish aristocracy, with very little concern being exhibited for the average Mexican. About the only exception was Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla who lead a revolution from 1809 to 1811, and whom was a Catholic priest.  He lead a rebellion against Spain, which failed, and which resulted in his execution, but he clearly sought to give voice to the peasantry and the onset of his revolution is today celebrated as the Mexican independence day, even though it didn't result in it.  Subsequent rebellion against Spain was not such an egalitarian affair and following revolutions in Mexico were, for many years, simply power struggles between the landed military Spanish elite.  It was not until Indian Benito Juarez successfully rebelled against Emperor Maximilian, the Austrian nobleman that France had installed as Mexican emperor, that a leader rose up through rebellion who was a member of the peasant class.  Even then, oddly enough, Maximilian was himself a species of liberal Cauldillo, espousing the liberal views of the French Revolution even while acting as a foreign born emperor in Mexico, while Juarez would not always strictly adhere to democratic values.  In essence, Maximilian was a foreign liberal dictator, much in the mold of Napoleon, while Juarez really started off as a liberal peasant rebel.

 

 Benito Juarez, Mexico's first president of Indian ancestry.

Juarez died in 1872, and from there things descended into confusion.  As I don't intend to do a history of Mexican politics, I won't, but rather I'll simply note that one of Juarez's electoral opponents was Porfirio Diaz, who had been a member of Juarez's army.  He entered politics thereafter, but rebelled against Diaz's successor, and like seemingly all failed Mexican revolutionaries, he took refuge for a time in the United States.  Returning to Mexico he secured election to the presidency and evolved into a dictator, occupying that position for thirty years.  He was another enigmatic figure in that he was a dictator, but a type of liberal, both repressing democracy and seemingly dedicated to the advancement of liberal ideas. Business did very well under his regime in Mexico, and he differed from prior liberal Mexican dictators in that he did not oppress the Catholic Church, which liberals often did in a seeming desire to crush the institution that the Mexican populace held closely. He also neither aided nor repressed the common population, something that was an unusual middle ground.

 

Porfirio Diaz in full military costume.

A person simply cannot rule for thirty years without being an autocrat, even accidentally, and at some point a revolution would become inevitable.  But the way it came about was particularly odd.  He gave an interview in an American magazine.

 

 Porfirio Diaz in Pearson's Magazine

By the first decade of the 20th Century Mexico had seemingly settled into a comfortable business oriented dictatorship.  Diaz was firmly installed in that role, and he ruled under the thesis that the Mexican people wanted him there, which some no doubt did.  His downfall came, oddly enough, when he expressed the opinion that Mexico was a real democracy in an interview given to the American Pearson's magazine.  That was in 1908.  In that interview he stated that if the Mexican people wanted to replace him in an election, they could do it.

That an interview in an American magazine would spark a Mexican revolution is fairly amazing, but perhaps it shows how interconnected the world was, even then.  That interview brought in Francisco Madero, one of the least likely Mexican revolutionaries a person could imagine to the forefront.  Madero was an odd character, to say the least.  Highly idealistic, he was very much given over to the spiritualism movement that was gaining ground at the time, and he believed he was in direct contact with the spirit of Benito Juarez.  Taking Diaz at his word, he challenged him for election in the campaign of 1910.  The Diaz regime, in the meantime, drew itself closer to the United States, with Diaz meeting with President William Howard Taft in a meeting in which he emphasized his role in boosting Mexican business and American business in Mexico.  Ultimately Diaz had Madero arrested, but, given leave to move about the city of Monterrey, he escaped and fled to the United States, a move common for almost all Mexican revolutionaries.

Unlikely looking revolutionaries, the Maderos.  Maderos entire family became involved in his efforts to bring about democratic reform in Mexico.

This sparked the revolution.  Madero, not willing to give up, raised an Army and crossed back into Mexico.  His supporters in other regions of the country rose up.  Colorful figures like Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Poncho" Villa appeared on the scene as Maderoistas.

 

More typically imagined in a sombrero, General Francico Villa.  The colorful, erratic, and perhaps somewhat mentally unstable Villa would attempt to retire to a ranch he acquired after his surrender to Obregon and Carranza, but he ended up being assassinated under cloudy circumstances in 1923.  His killer would live into the 1950s and declare at the end of his life that he'd rid the world of a "monster".

 Emiliano Zapata and his staff.  Zapata was an agrarian and looked the part, which we in turn tend to confuse with the look of the Mexican Revolution.  As with many leaders of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata was assassinated, although unlike Villa he still commanded an army in the field at the time of his death.

That revolution sought to install Madero as the rightful democratic president of Mexico, and it was opposed by Diaz's government and its conservative backers.  While it didn't have the expressed support of the United States, it had the implicit support of the US in that the local, highly conservative, American mission to Mexico viewed Madero as a species of dangerous radical, something akin to a socialist, and they feared both his movement and what it would mean for American business interest in Mexico.  Nonetheless, Modero's forces prevailed and Diaz surrendered in May, 1911, agreeing to go into exile.  Madero became the president of Mexico.

 

American soldiers observing the Battle of Juarez from the El Paso side of the border.

If only Madero could have been idealistic enough, and naive enough, to take on Diaz and win, he was also singularly unsuited to rule Mexico.  Having just overthrown very entrenched interests, he seemed to believe that he could take over the mechanisms of government and simply rule.  He therefore left the defeated Mexican army in place.  Diaz's army had little interest in the liberal ideas of Madero, and the result was virtually inevitable.  Moreover, Madero soon faced rebellions by his own former lieutenants, and a newly freed Mexican press exercised its voice for the first time in critizing Madero.  Soon Madero was faced with a plethora of rebellions from the right and the left, and had to rely both upon those forces which remained loyal to him, and the Mexican federal army.

In 1913 Victoriano Huerta, a Mexican Federal general whom had been successful in putting down revolts against Modero, launched one of his own with the support of remaining Diaz supporters and the support of American Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who distrusted Madero.  H. L. Wilson was not to be long in his role, as at that time Woodrow  Wilson was already elected to the Presidency and coming in, so his actions not only were improper, but they came at the very time in which he was going out and a more progressive administration coming in.

Henry Lane Wilson, whose views proved to be a discredit to the United States and which did damage to Mexico.

Huerta was successful in his uprising against Madero and ultimately the victors acted to have Madero killed.  Huerta was the new Mexican strongman.

 

Huerta looked every inch of the part he was to play in the Mexican Revolution.  He died of natural causes in an American jail after being arrested for plotting to involve Germany and Mexico in a war with the United States.

Almost immediately significant figures in Madero's forces, including Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata rose up in rebellion against Huerta, and in many ways the revolution we typically think of as being the Mexican Revolution, which was really its third act, got started.

 American soldiers of fortune in Mexico, serving in Villa's Division del Norte.

On this go around, revolutionary forces ultimately sort of coalesced around Venustiano Carranza, a Mexican revolutionary who was a rancher and a true radical.  Carranza never had the level of support that Madero had, and his views were to the left of Madero's.  In Carranza, the opponents of revolution in Mexico were faced with a man whom, while much weaker in support, was really much more of the man that they feared.  With the various revolutionary factions supporting him, Carranza managed to quickly defeat Huerta, who went into exile in 1914.  Ultimately, like deposed and losing Mexican forces and personalities seemed to do, he entered the United States in 1915, where he was cheeky enough to negotiate with German agents and Mexican revolutionaries in an effort to bring Mexico into a war with the United States.  Arrested, he died in an American jail of unknown causes.

 

 Revolutionary, intellectual, and radical. General Carranza.  His government fought Villa and Zapata successfully, but he'd go down in a coup lead by his own general, Obregon.

Before that could occur, however, the United States intervened, sort of, in the Mexican Revolution in the Tampico Affair.  Woodrow Wilson, justifiably horrified by the actions of Henry Lane Wilson, declared Huerta to be an illegal occupant of the office and enacted a blockade, of sorts on Mexican ports, preventing them from receiving foreign arms. Soon enough, an American sailors and Marines ended up having to land, and fight, in Vera Cruz, where their superior numbers guaranteed their success in the landing.

 

 Tower damaged by Naval gunfire in the Battle of Vera Cruz.

 

 

 Sailor searches Mexican man in Vera Cruz.

Indicative of things to come, perhaps, Huerta was defeated and fled while the United States occupied Vera Cruz, but he was no more pleased about the American presence there than a disgruntled Huerta was, who went on to plot with German agents to bring Mexico into war with the United States, as noted.  American forces withdrew in November 1914, but they'd be back, as we'll see, in a different location only shortly thereafter.  The intervention at Vera Cruz, however, did prevent the Germans from supplying a shipment of arms to Huerta, which may or may not have had an impact on the Mexican Revolution.  Ironically, the arms were actually American made as the Germans, in 1914, were not in a position to export arms to Mexico.

Carranza soon found himself fighting the two main stars of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa and Emiliano  Zapata. Zapata, while he receives less attention, is by far the most interesting of the two as he had a real political vision for Mexico, that being a distributist agrarian state.   Villa was more of a peasant free agent, with less defined goals. Suffice it to say, however, both had been highly successful revolutionaries and a betting man would have bet against Carranza at that point.

However, Carranza was a radical as well, and that position allowed him to undercut support for a war weary Mexican population in the south.  This began to undercut support for the agrarian Zapata, and he began to face supply problems and accordingly set backs in the field.  Nonetheless Zapata was still in the field in 1919 when he was lured into a trap in an effort to secure supplies and assassinated.

In the north, Pancho Villa, who had been a very successful natural cavalry commander, found himself unable to adapt to the changes in battlefield tactics that were also being used in Europe.  Constantly in battle against Carranzaista commander Alvaro Obregon, who used barbed wire and trenches, his fortunes rapidly declined.

 

Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

But before they did, Carranza, in spite of a dislike of the United States, approached the Wilson administration about transporting troops through Texas by rail to be used against Villa.  Wilson had been horrified by H L. Wilson's actions in bringing about Madero's downfall, and he deeply desired to see an end to the fighting in Mexico.  Deciding to recognize Carranza as the legitimate ruler of the country, he granted permission for this to be done in 1915. Traveling under arms, they were used against Villa.  Villa retaliated against the United States for its entering the conflict in this fashion by raiding Columbus New Mexico on March 9, 1916.

 

The raid on Columbus has seemingly baffled American historians ever since, but the reasons for it couldn't be more apparent.  Villa was a fairly simply man, not a diplomat, and he had been attacked by Carranza's forces after they'd crossed the United States by rail.  By doing that, the US had taken a position in the war, which indeed it had whether President Wilson recognized that or not.  Indeed, Wilson had been warned by those knowledgeable not to support Carranza, who deeply disliked the US, and when it wasn't clear who was going to win the civil war.  Wilson's actions did nothing to engender love from Carranza but it did inspire Villa to retaliate against the US.

 

U.S. Army ambulances headed south as part of the Punitive Expedition.

This resulted in what's known to history as the Punitive Expedition, in which the United States briefly became a participating, again, in a Mexican Revolution. Designed only to punish, and perhaps capture, Pancho Villa, the United States ended up basically mobilizing its military infrastructure in order to send a force into Mexico, and in order to be prepared for war with Mexico, which seemed likely to break out any minute.  An expedition under the command of General John J. Pershing was in the field in Mexico for nearly a year, penetrating ever deeper into northern Mexico, but never being able to catch up with Villa. The entire time relationships with Carranza's government deteriorated, and Carranza never viewed the US. as an ally in his fight against Villa.  By the end of the expedition American forces had exchanged gunfire with Carranza's troops and it was unclear to the men in the field who the enemy was.  As a purely accidental benefit, however, the expedition caused the United States to mobilize its military establishment prior to its entry into World War One and the Army had dusted out its cobwebs, used the National Guard on the border and conducted large unit maneuvers in field conditions for the fist time since the Spanish American War.  March 9, 1916, was arguably the start of American participation in the Great War.

 

These soldiers are probably National Guardsmen. Their campaign hats are the previous type, not the M1911 campaign hat, which had just come into service and which went to Regulars first.  Nearly the entire National Guard rotated to the border on border service during this period, out of a genuine fear that a war with Mexico was right around the corner.

 New York National Guardsmen serving along the border.  These officers are (self) equipped with the new pattern of campaign hat.  Col. Wingate carries the newly adopted M1911 .45 ACP pistol, in the pattern of swivel holster adopted for cavalry. The officer on his left carries the prior pattern of revolver, probably a double action Colt .45, a pistol which came into emergency service due to the failure of the .38 during the Philippine Insurrection.

 American serviceman in Mexico, probably serving in the Quartermaster Corps. This soldier is mounted on a stock saddle, not a McClellan saddle, which was a standard saddle for packers and quartermasters, and which would shortly be given an official designation of M1917 Packers Saddle. The saddle, however, had been in use since about 1905.

After Carranza died, Obregon took over. And that death came in the way that the Mexican Revolution featured.  He was murdered in a conspiracy featuring one of his own general, Obregon.

 

Mexican civilians, potentially refugees, in U.S. Army camp in Mexico.

Obregon, in spite of his dispute with  Carranza, continued to take Mexico leftward.  He faced a rebellion in his single term as president, and then handed the reigns to Plutarco Calles, who likewise continued to head left.  Calles and Obregon were, moreover, opponents of the Catholic Church, reviving an anti clericism of the left which became massive in some regions of Mexico.  Ultimately at least one governor of a Mexican state was so far to the left as to be practically a communist, if not in name, and killings of clerics became a localized feature of Mexican rule.  Suppression of the church and churchmen occurred, including closing of seminaries and a prohibition on wearing religious clothing in public.  The Mexican revolutionary state had effectively gone to war against the church, and ultimately in 1926 another rebellion broke out.

 

Calles, unlike all of his predecessors going back to Madero, was not assassinated.  After Calles' assassination, he continued on in power and became increasingly authoritarian, and he began to flirt with fascism.  He was ultimately forced into exile in the United States in 1936 but was able to return in 1940.  Ironically, given his hostility to the church,in his old age he joined Madero as a spiritualist.

Called the Cristero War, this war is properly recognized as one of the many wars of the Mexican Revolution, with this one again featuring peasantry against the government. The revolution failed, but not before the Cristeros lost 30,000 men, the government 50,000 and 250,000 Mexicans fled to the United States. This formed the last peasant rebellion against the state, but attempted military coups would occur as late as 1938.  In the 1980s, Zapatista forces once again appeared on the scene, recalling the agrarian dreams of their founder and the Mexican army never was able to really put them down.  By that time, however, Mexico was transforming, finally, into a true democracy, which it is today.  Decades of rule by the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, dedicated to unending revolution, came to an end.

So, as we can see, the Mexican Revolution is something that, in at least the common American view, we don't quite recall accurately, which isn't to say t hat we get it all wrong.  But it was a much, much longer struggle than we imagine, and a much more modern political struggle than we generally allow.  It plays well, indeed, in the sense of an early 20th Century revolution, featuring forces of the right and the left, including the hard right and the hard left.  Even Distributism, which also made an appearance with the Greens in the Russian Revolution, appears in the Mexican Revolution, where it went down to defeat as well.

And as a North American tragedy it stands amongst the most prominent and long lasting, a tragedy which the United States is more than a little responsible for.  Our representation in Mexico during the Taft Administration proved to blinded by his own ideology and views not to see that a new day in Mexico had arrived, and indeed a new day was arriving in his own nation, and his closing act in his role was to be a participant in the overthrow of a democratic president who deserved our support.  Would that have prevented the Mexican Revolution from descending into the radical cycle of violence it did? We can't know that, but we could have tried to avoid it. And for that matter, President Woodrow Wilson's act in supporting Carranza through the extraordinary allowance of troop transmission across the US was amazingly inept.

The relationship between Mexico and the United States, never an ideal one, would descend to its depths in the decades immediately following the Mexican Revolution, and wouldn't really start to improve until Mexico declared war on the Axis during World War Two, something that we were not to sure that the Mexican government didn't feel the other way about at first.  Mexico itself, in spite of having a "revolutionary" government wouldn't be able to really address the needs of its impoverished people until it developed a true democracy, by which time a culture of conceiving of itself as poor was well entrenched.  Today, the majority of Mexicans, for the first time in Mexican history, are middle class and the economy of the country is fully modernizing.  Mexico itself is a true democracy, although violence now has resumed due to the crime wars between those seeking to have an orderly society and those seeking to export illegal drugs to the United States. Still, it is once again a new era, and a better one, for Mexico.