What's It Mean? Getting the "race" story all wrong

 The American concept of race has been long lasting, but who fits into a "race" has changed dramatically over the years.

One of the most persistent stories we have heard before the election, and now after, is that Donald Trump won the election due to "white people". Even George F. Will, citing demographic information that supports this "white people" thesis, notes this in his lament over Trump's election in his recent post election column.

The problem is, who are the "white people"?

The press, when it talks about this, tends to redefine it if it looks at it in depth, as the analysis doesn't seem to work from the very onset, so we soon learn that they aren't talking about all "white people", but something like white men without college educations, or maybe white people without college educations, or maybe white people who are or were blue collar.

Well, bumpkis.  This is part of the whole, clueless, press analysis this year.

Here's the problem.

This way of looking at demographics is racist, but fits in with an historical American approach.  Traditionally, although not for a long time, "white people" meant White Anglo Saxon Protestants.  The mere fact that we, in the US, define who is white and who is not dates in large measure to this.  Speaking of WASPs was common when I was still young, and it basically fits this mold, except that the WASPs, to the extent its any kind of real classification, doesn't really fit what actually occurred in this election or what is supposed to have occurred either, let alone what actually occurred.  It does have a lot to do, however, on how Americans inaccurately categorize "race".

This is actually a flyer for an old detective movie, but the press could use some historical detectives themselves.  They use the term "white" as if it is a real classification, which is questionable, without even pondering what it means and how it came to mean anything.

I've written on this before, but this entire way of looking at the world dates to an era when to be a "real American" meant you were probably descendant from a British Isles Protestant.  Some continental Europeans got a pass, but only somewhat.  But many didn't.  If you look back at literature of a century or more, you'll see that Italians, Irish, Greeks, and Eastern Europeans were not "white people".

Oh, surely you say, that can't be right.

It most certainly can be.

All of these groups shared certain characteristics, the most common of which is that they were not likely to be Protestants.  They were likely to be Catholics or Orthodox. Virtually nobody admitted that their racial concepts were based on this, but in fact, they largely were.

Added to this is that the British went into a period during the Victorian Era when they hugely admired the Saxon invaders of their homeland and came to the conclusion, erroneously as we now know, that everyone in England was descendant from the Saxons as surely the Saxons had killed off all the Britons who didn't end up in Wales ultimately. As it turns out they did nothing of the kind, and the English are, genetically, more Celtic than Germanic, but at the time, they were imagining the opposite. This fit neatly into the early views of the United States which emphasized British colonist as being on a civilizing, Protestant, mission.

At the tend of the day, therefore, what defined "white" was whether or not you were part of the culture of the Reformation.  The English fit that nicely, the Scots less so as they were not Germanic, but they were British, and were given a pass, and even the continental Germans and Dutch were as they had to be to fit this definition.  And oddly enough, this definition persists.  In looking at this earlier, I noted: 

So turning to race in general once again, consider that up until probably World War One or so Italians and the Irish were regarded as separate races, and as much so as American Indians or blacks.  Jews were very much a separate race.
Indeed, so were the "Anglo-Saxons".

And that tells us a lot about how "race" categorizations are false.

The early colonist in this country were largely from Great Britain. They were also almost all Protestant, if not all the same type of Protestants. And their view of the world was that they were the vanguards of Protestant Christianity against Catholicism and Heathenism.  They were English and Scots pioneers, and they viewed themselves as right thinking.  People could come around to their way of thinking, or get out of the way. Those who didn't, even if it was King George III, would be pushed out of the way.

Over time, what happened to these various non white (in the concept of the time) is that they were assimilated into the American mix and became "white" Americans.  It sure didn't happen all at once, however.  With the Irish it started with the Mexican War but it lasted all the way until the 1920s and the real assimilation was accomplished by World War Two. This is true of the Italians as well, who were some sort of weird, swarthy, dirty people in the public eye up until after World War Two when they were just part of that great old American melting pot society.  

 Political cartoon from the 1860s, depicting the fear that the United States would be consumed by Irish and Chinese immigrants, who are both depicted as odd looking races.  In the cartoon, the Irish and Chinese immigrants swallow the US, and the Chinese immigrants swallows the Irish one.  Today, nobody would regard the Irish as a separate race, and by and large Asians tend not to be either.

Of course, in this time frame some things had actually changed, both in these groups and in our view of them. The odd accents, and in some cases the strange languages, became less common. And as they worked themselves into positions in the Middle Class, association with them caused familiarity and they seemed more American all the time. And of course, they actually became more American.

And as that occurred, they became "white". That was a pretty significant development, as in doing this, the meaning of "white', except apparently to the American press, changed quite radically.  Irish Americans would never have been regarded by early 20th Century Americans as real whites.  But by the mid 20th Century anyone would laugh at that notion.

And that's because concepts of race are purely cultural, and not without prejudice, having no other basis in anything at all, other than perception.  The culture had changed to accommodate Christian people who weren't Protestants.  Bizarrely, it still hasn't accommodated African Americans to the definition, keeping its oldest racial category, in spite of the fact that most African Americans are more a part of the culture than many more recent arrivals, and more part of the original colonizing culture, which forced them over and into it, than many of the later ones now regarded as "white".

Perhaps one of the best examples of this are Lebanese Americans, of which there are a lot.  They're regarded as white.  I have a large collection of Lebanese-Irish cousins and nobody would ever put them in some separate race.  Nor would I.  But, in terms of DNA, they share genes from the Middle East, which some Americans today would regard as the land of a separate "race".  Most Lebanese Americans are Catholics and always have been, and indeed Christianity is the sole defining thing, really, between who was Lebanese and who was Syrian at one time.  I suspect most Americans today would regard most Muslim Syrians as members of another race.  They aren't.

Because, as noted, race is cultural and a matter of perception.  

Or let's take Bernie Sanders.  He's white, right?

Well, he is today, but a century ago he would have been a mistrusted member of the "Hebrew Race".  Indeed, one of the 1916 newspapers I just ran referred to Americans who were Jewish in that fashion.

Modern Americans don't regard Jewish people as members of a separate race even though they have a distinct culture.  And we haven't had that view for a long time.  The reason is that acceptance of the entire culture came in as they largely assimilated.  This came to be so much the case that an entire meaningless word was adopted to rationalize it, that being "Judaeo-Christian".

Judaeo-Christian as  word, is entirely meaningless. There is no such thing as a Judaeo-Christian culture and the United States is not a Judaeo-Christian nation.  The US started off, basically, as a nation with a Protestant Christian culture and its evolved into one with a broad Christian culture, although its still more Protestant than anything else.  We just adapted our definitions and accepted the Jewish culture into our redefined definition.

Which brings me to election puditry babble.

The entire concept that there's a "white vote" is a completely erroneous way of looking at the election demographics.  What it does is make a false assumption that skin color defines how a person thinks and what they are, and it more particularly acts as if being an Hispanic or a Latino is some deep DNA classification that defines how a person thinks, as if they are a separate species.  

And this is important, by speaking of the new "minorities" or "diversity", in an ethnic sense, the Press, while it includes other groups, mostly means Hispanics.

In truth, as we've noted before, the term Hispanic is so broad a person can be an Indian, black, or a European American and still be attached that label.  It's a fairly meaningless label, therefore.  

It's particularly meaningless as quite frankly but for the fact that most are of relatively recent arrival, and have Spanish names, a large percentage of these individuals would otherwise be classified by people who must make such classifications as "white".  And this is what will occur in fairly short order.  Here's what we noted before:

This brings me to Hispanics and other new groups.  I'm constantly reading that the country is becoming more "diverse".  Maybe it is, but I suspect that Hispanics are a group that's going to be regarded as its own race, now that they are a significant demographic, about as long as Italians were, and for the same reasons.  Fifty years from now, to be Hispanic will be to claim a certain ethnic heritage, and that will probably be about it.

Indeed, it's already the case that I read piles of wedding announcements in the newspaper every week between people with Spanish surnames and English, or other, names. These cultures are already mixing at an extremely rapid rate, and not just in terms of marriage, but culture.  Some time ago I attended something at Mass where a person self identified as Hispanic, but who would have been impossible to identify that way by appearance, and this is becoming the absolute norm.  Hispanic last names are rapidly only indicating ethnic heritage and not race, and usually mixed American ethnic heritage, the same way Irish, German or Italian last names do.  Hispanics may have been a strongly identifiable minority in many places, and indeed they still are, but they're rapidly entering the mainstream and vice versa, the latter being an interesting process we rarely think of.  Just as minority cultures pick up and adopt large parts of the majority culture, the majority culture adopts parts of the minority culture as well.  Across the street from my office, for example, there's a Mexican restaurants that's really Mexican.  It's very popular with local Hispanics, but most days at noon, any more, it's swamped with everyone else.  An establishment that started off being patronized mostly by members of its own culture now no longer is, even though it hasn't changed a bit.  Restaurants are, of course, a superficial example, but it's also interesting how many people now celebrate Cinqo De Mayo in some fashion, and Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated at Catholic parishes everywhere.

This doesn't mean that any one ethnic group doesn't have its own unique cultural aspects to it, of course. But the differences in culture do decline over time. St. Patrick's Day, for example, is still a serious day with strongly Catholic Irish Americans, but it's also a national party for those looking for one.  Cinqo De Mayo has already gone from being a date somewhat remembered in Mexico as the anniversary of a battle against the French, to being an excuse to have Mexican food.  Columbus Day still brings out Italian Americans in some parts of the country, but in most regions they ignore it like everyone else.  And of course the American habit of intermarriage means that after awhile everyone is pretty much everything.

And this is why the Press is so far off the mark.

This election wasn't about "race", but rather culture and economics.  And the cultural war here isn't between "white America" and " the new more diverse America".  It's between the deep urban white upper middle class and upper class America and middle and lower class America.  So, if there's a cultural war going on, it's between two different "white" demographics, with any other ethnic groups merely filling in, in a highly temporary fashion, where it suits their immediate needs.

This is certainly the case with the Hispanic demographic.  Almost completely missed in this entire story if the fact that while a large Hispanic minority many be somewhat new, that same demographic is assimilating so fast it soon will not be there in the sense that the press imagines it to be.  In this fashion, that particularly demographic strongly resembles that other "race" of our early history, the French.

What, you didn't know that French were a race?  Oh yes they were.  Or at least the early English colonist thought they were, as long as they were Catholic, which they almost all were.  And they did something the English did not, they intermarried at a high rate with other cultures.  This is true, we should note, of Hispanics as well.

A person can get into the history of this, and we need to a little, but the entire topic would be a lengthy one.  Basically, it gets back to their Catholicity.  Anglo Saxon, i.e., English, culture of an earlier period discouraged intermarriage.  It's a complicated story, but the English colonist to the United States and elsewhere saw themselves as a superior, Protestant, civilizing people, as noted above.  No matter how down and out you were, at least you were English, and that made you, in the 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries, part of a civilizing mission to the world.  I don't want to be all down on the English, who did a much better job of colonial administration than most other European people, but that was part of their outlook at the time.  The French were bad colonial administrators, and in their later colonial period they also saw themselves as missionaries for French secular Republicanism, but early on, and shared with the Spanish, their rank and file colonist were fairly devout Catholics who believed that everyone was an equal before God.  So intermarriage was not uncommon at all, resulting in a highly mixed population wherever the French and Spanish went.  This carries right on to the present day and unlike some other immigrant cultures they do not spend the first several generations principally amongst themselves.

Which doesn't mean that their culture evaporates.  Like the Irish Catholics, and Italian Catholics, it'll tend to assimilate with the existing culture.  The  point is that people who imagine that the Hispanic culture is some mysterious other, and practically genetic in nature, with a genetic affiliation for the Democratic Party that will cause it to rise up unaltered once again, are fooling themselves.

Indeed, we should note that this year it was the GOP that ran one Catholic Hispanic and one Protestant Hispanic in the primaries, while the Democrats ran two really old white people.  Cuban Hispanics, which would describe the two individuals just noted, are already highly assimilated and. . . gasp. . . frequently Republican.

Hmmmm.

And New Mexico has had Hispanic governors twice who were. . . Republicans.

Gee.. .

Anyhow, that takes us to the next step of this.

If this years vote doesn't amount to a pure racist "I'm white and you are not" vote, what does it mean?

Well, I've already noted a lot of what it means just recently.

But what I think it means is that people paid their $20.00 to come to Ray Kinsella's field.

Eh?

Recall this line from Field of Dreams:

Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

Okay, what do I mean by that?

Well, this.

People don't like what the United States has become and they're sick of being told to accept it.

This has been going on for a long time.  Indeed, it's always going on to some extent.  But its been much more noticeable over the past twenty years and now a lot of average people are really fed up. They're fed up in part because the GOP has kept telling them that it would address their concerns, and the Democrats  kept telling them to learn to love the new reality that the Democrats would bring and that everyone would be happy on that bright, shiny, Greenwich Village on the Hill.

So what are they fed up about?

By and large, contrary to what pundits tend to believe, and particularly contrary to what the political left believes, and to the surprise of people from other nations, Americans culturally are a fairly conservative people who go through bouts of liberal fevers.  They have private libertarian tendencies, but they aren't "liberal" or "progressive" in the way that the Democrats would like them to be.  Basically, therefore, to put it crudely, a lot of voters looked at the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton and barfed up all over it.

As noted earlier, what people are saying is that they liked the more rural, more working class, lives they once had.  They are also saying that they value traditional societal views even if they don't adhere to them, which has often been the case for a lot of people.  They were appalled when, and it may have been the final straw for them, when Anthony Kennedy wrote a legal opinion that said that there really wasn't any difference between men and women, as they know that there is, as unlike Kennedy, they live in the real world.  They're sick of being dragged to the cultural left. And they want things to slow down, and even reverse. And that's their right.  That doesn't make them bigoted, and it doesn't make them wrong.

Also, and very importantly in this context, we are also seeing something within the "white" culture that seems likely to spread to the "Hispanic" culture as it assimilates.  And that's that the Catholics, who have never defined "whiteness" in this society, suddenly rediscovered themselves as a voting block and bolted the Democratic Party. This is a huge, and missed, development.

No Catholic voter could have been comfortable with Trump, but sincere Catholic voters found themselves in a situation in which they cold not morally vote for Clinton. Clinton defined the death from cradle to grave view that Progressives have taken up.  Indeed, its been noted a bit that the demographic that's most identifiably Democratic, the white, urban, Protestant, upper middle class is now in the self eliminating mode as it doesn't reproduce. A person can analyze what that means, but it is curious that a group that has come to define marriage in terms of "happiness", "life support" and economics is the one that backs gay marriage. It would, as it has come to believe that sex is a species of entertainment and that personal Joy is the end of life, and that at that end, that's pretty much that.  Most people don't think that way at all, as they live in the real world, and Catholics definitely don't think that way.

Indeed, not only most people not think that way, most people don't live in an economic strata that would allow them to.  Most people still have children, still have bills, and still struggle to some extent to get by.  It's easy to imagine how nifty the new economy is if you are a comfortable urban sophisticate in the high value condo district, with two  high incomes, not children, parents you don't need to take care of, and enough surplus cash to afford anything you reasonably want to your exclusive enjoyment, but that doesn't define most people.  It's come to define, however, many in the upper echelons of the political class. Think Huma and Anthony, before the implosion.  I may be completely unfair (knowing nothing about them personally), but do they match the nature and appearance of the couples of the same vintages you know?

Catholics have generally been Democrats since they first showed up in the country in numbers as the Democrats were good at organizing them and passing out patronage.  That tradition reflects itself in the Hispanic community today, but with it assimilating so rapidly, that's unlikely to continue.  If this election is any guide, the demographic time bomb may be going off inside the Democratic hall, not the Republican one.  Indeed, it may have exploded this election.

This election it appears that a majority of Catholics, who are a minority in the country (recall, they weren't even mostly "white" until the 20s and 30s, the way the culture defines it) voted for Trump. They likely held their noses and voted for Trump, but they did.  They felt they had no choice.  This is huge, however, as its the first time that they've voted as an identifiable voting block since the 1960s, its the first time that they really strongly followed the homily from the ambo on a political issue in all that time, and its the first time that the Church itself came out with blistering attacks on cultural issues in the political sphere.

Snotty Progressives did notice that this was going on early on, but their reaction was to bitterly attack the beliefs of the Church and make no effort to accommodate a demographic that had been loyal to them, and indeed Progressive, for well over a century.  Now they're gone.  John Podesta should get a dope slap for his insulting comments on Catholics and should have been fired about 30 seconds after they went public, but instead the Clinton campaign kept him on, just as it stupidly entrusted its campaign to people too close to the Weiner scandal.  Now, Hispanics are overwhelmingly Catholic in culture, even when they are not individually Catholic. As their economic fortunes increase and they come more and more into the American mainstream (i.e., as they become "white", as the press defines that) they'll quite being Democratic for patronage reasons and start acting more on their individual cultural beliefs.  That doesn't bode well for the Democrats at all.

Does all of this make Trump nifty?

Not hardly.

Indeed, its flat out bizarre that multiply married, super rich, former Democrat Trump became the choice for voters in this class.  As a salesman, he tapped into the current and read it right.  That doesn't mean that he personally believes any of it.  We have no idea.  But as a salesman, with something to sell, we can suspect that he'll keep selling it for at least four years.

During that four year period the GOP and the Democrats have a chance to reform. But will they?  I doubt the Democrats will.  The Democratic Party's halls of power seem to be mostly populated by the ghosts of the politicians of the 1970s.  George McGovern seems to be their guiding hand every year.  A party that claims to represent minorities can't seem to find a single person of color to run. This is particularly bizarre in that African Americans, who have been highly loyal to the Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, just can't seem to get into the Presidential race and be treated seriously.  The only black candidate this year who performed at all was in the GOP.  This does not mean that there should be a racial litmus test to run for President, but how could a party that actually ran a post Baby Boomer black candidate, successfully,  the past two terms only mange to find a pants suit wearing 1970s throwback and a pre Baby Boomer New Yorker (yes, I know he was the Senator from Vermont, but he's a New York) to run this go around?

Indeed, are there no viable Democrat candidates located outside of New York state?

It's hard to take the Democrats seriously and the voters didn't.

And my guess is that they won't reform.

The Democratic Party is too controlled by crowed that go to trendy cocktail parties in big cities to begin to grasp that most people aren't vegans who wear their trousers five sizes too small.  A world in which women gush at little babies, where boys oogle attractive girls, where those girls seek to be chased, where men go hunting on the weekends, and where crowds spill beer rooting for baseball teams that have no chance of winning is completely foreign to them.  If they have any chance of success, after this, they have to find some candidates that 1) aren't ancient, 2) don't see every womb as a chance for sterilization; 3) seem to care about the native born; 4) don't hate Catholics, Orthodox, and Orthodox Jews.  But are there any left that have a chance?

This doesn't mean that the GOP can sit on its laurels either. The GOP basically lost this election at the Presidential level, as Trump isn't a recognizable Republican.  He's something else, somebody, the way he ran this time, who would have been more at home in the old Populist Party of the 19th Century.  But as he ran as a Republican, and as the Republicans held on to Congress, and as Trump adopted the positions of the social conservatives, they have an opportunity that they didn't before.

They also have a duty to act on it.  If the GOP doesn't act right away to curtail abortion and to reverse the court imposed redefinition of marriage, it's sunk.

It also has to act on immigration, as Trump does, but it ironically has an opportunity here to begin to reshape itself into something that the new immigrant communities and the old persistent minorities  can recognize and support.

Immigration in the US has been controversial along ethnic lines forever.  But in modern times, and seemingly now forgotten, the post World War Two battles over restricting immigration came originally from the far left.  It was organizations like Zero Population Growth that argued for strict immigration control, and still do, on environmental grounds. They argue, and frankly correctly, that you can't take in an infinite number of immigrants and still have a country that is nice living in, basically.  Put another way, we don't want to have the population density of India or China. That has nothing at all to do with "race".

Democrats and Republicans, at the Congressional level, have given lip service to immigration issues but at the end of the day the Democrats imagine every immigrant as a Democratic voter and the Republicans imagine every immigrant mowing their lawns.  So they've done nothing.  But poorer Americans, white, black and whatever, know that more immigrants mean more competition for jobs.  And middle class Americans who are not on the threshold of being rich know that more people in general make for towns, cities, and a countryside, that's more crowded.  All of that's what fuels anger over immigration, not really the culture of the immigrants.

Indeed, immigration at the level we have is most harmful to urban blacks, who often have a really seething resentment towards new immigrants for that reason.  The late Richard Stroud, a liberal, used to argue that the employment impact on American blacks was so severe that immigration should be shut down completely until blacks achieved economic parity with whites. That's hardly a "conservative" or "racist" position, but it's one that a lot of people hold instinctively.

Beyond that, no national conversation about immigration has taken place for at least thirty years other than the incredibly lame "we're a nation of immigrants" argument that everyone hauls out.  I often think that if you are Sioux or Shoshone, etc. that argument must be really aggravating, as in "yeah. ..  your nation is one of immigrants, Wašíču".

Anyhow, as the public is reacting on this, and the GOP has to accordingly, this is a chance for the GOP in numerous ways.  If the GOP doesn't begin to appeal to the social views of Hispanics while taking in its more corporate and collective cultural concerns, it has to be staffed by idiots. At the same time, if it doesn't seek to rebuild an immigration policy based on the countries present population, actual economic needs, and the special concerns of African Americans and Indians, it will have missed the boat as well to come across as more rational less bombastic in an odd way.

And indeed, the GOP has to.

This is the last chance, I suspect, for both of these parties.  The voters have screamed that they don't want any more lies and they're willing to gamble on a nearly completely unknown on the hopes that he'll do what he says, as much as that may scare most of the politically attune.  In doing that they've told the GOP we don't want any more boring Bush's and we don't want your country club culture either.  They've told the Democrats they don't want any more Clinton's and they don't want to have their likes and religious beliefs insulted or ignored.  Maybe this guy won't get the job done of getting that message through, but they're willing to gamble that he will, or that he won't be worse than getting ignored anyhow.

It's going to be a wild ride, that's for sure.

But it doesn't have anything to really do with race, in the mind of the average voter.

Indeed, as close as this election was, and it was incredibly close, if Trump hadn't gotten the support of Catholics, he would have lost.  If he didn't get the support of cross over Democrats, he would have lost.  If he didn't get the support of some African Americans, he would have lost.  If he didn't have the support of some Hispanics, he would have lost.

And for the Democrats, he Clinton didn't have the support of most Hispanics, an eroding base of support, she would have done much worse.  And if she didn't have the support of African Americans, the Democrats most loyal and most ignored based, she would have done even worse.

A clear wake up call for both parties.

But not one based on "race".

The Laramie Republican for Monday, November 13, 1916. Record Cold.

The weather a century ago definitely isn't what we're experiencing this year.

Holding meetings and flat out ignoring the comments

Arrogance.

That's how I'd define it.

A legislative committee, styled the Federal Natural Resource Committee, met this week in Riverton Wyoming for a public hearing on a proposal to amend the Wyoming Constitution to provide that there'd be no net loss of public lands acquired from the Federal Government, should the state acquire any.

Keep in mind the Wyoming Constitution presently "disclaims" any claim to the Federal lands, and has since Wyoming became a state.

A large crowd appeared at the hearing.  Opposition to the transfer was hugely overwhelming.  

The Committee voted to keep on keeping on, but to look at amending their draft.  In other words, they voted to wholly ignore the public on this issue.

Not that this is new, they've been ignoring the public on this all along. It's a disgrace.

Here are the names and email address of the Committee members:

Senator Eli Bebout: eli.bebout@wyoleg.gov
Senator Larry Hicks: larry.hicks@wyoleg.gov
Senator Gerald Geis: gerald.geis@wyoleg.gov
Representative JoAnn Dayton: joann.dayton@wyoleg.gov
Representative Norine Kasperik: norine.kasperik@wyoleg.gov
Representative Tim Stubson: tim.stubson@wyoleg.gov

I wrote all of them.  I received a reply from only one, Senator Bebout, which is to his credit.  I'd note that Rep Stubson is leaving the legislature and won't be in the next one, having given up his seat to run for US House.  Stubson was one of the two Wyoming candidates who basically cancelled out each other resulting in Cheney's advance.

These guys deserve a lot of email.  They also desire, save perhaps for Sen. Bebout who at least graciously and clearly writes back, to be retired forever from Wyoming's politics.  If they can't listen to the voters perhaps the voters need to send them a message with their future that they can't ignore. . .  go home.

There's obviously a battle coming up in the upcoming Legislature.  If you care about access at all, better let your representatives know that this is a no go.

Oh, and why am I so sure?

Well history is one reason. But I'll give another recent example.

Just recently, a couple of weeks ago, my son and I went deer hunting.  Or tried to.  We were shadowed, however, by the reluctant goons of a local rancher (I know him) to make sure that we didn't step foot on any private land.  They can't keep you off public land. . . yet, of course.  But their shadowing was so persistent that was the effective impact.  "There an automatic $1,000 trespass fee".

Oh, bull.

Because I could tell these guys were very reluctant in their role as the Stasi, I didn't bother to tell them that they'd just threatened me with a threat that wasn't legal and I'm a lawyer, and that as a result I'd ponder all the next week what to do about it.  They did point us towards where we could go, and they very clearly felt that they'd been given a sh**y job by their employer.

But it's also quite clear to me that given any chance, people who take this approach would do what they could to lock up the land entirely.

This ranch, by the way, has a nice story that's published to go along with it about how it was founded by a European over a century ago who immigrated here as he dreamed of being a cowboy. Rags to riches. Well, they ought to remember that the essence of that is that the Federal Government stole the land from the native population and had it nearly free for the taking, discounting the massive amount of risk and labor it entailed to homestead, for those willing to do it.  It worked close to the way its recounted in the opening of Red River:

Dunson: Tell Don Diego, tell him that all the land north of that river's mine. Tell him to stay off of it.
Mexican: Oh, but the land is his.
Dunson: Where did he get it?
Mexican: Oh many years ago by grant and patent, inscribed by the King of all of Spain.
Dunson: You mean he took it away from whomever was here before. Indians maybe.
Mexican: Maybe so.
Dunson: Well, I'm takin' it away from him.
Mexican: Others have thought as you, senor. Others have tried.
Dunson: And you've always been good enough to stop 'em?
Mexican: Amigo, it is my work.
Dunson: Pretty unhealthy job.

Now, I'm not casting moral blame on anyone. But this recounting is pretty good film dialog and not bad history.  People who sit on land today that their poor ancestors acquired can't sit back and really have a "we built this land" attitude, cleanly.  Partially, yes.  But partially, it's simply "we got here 20 seconds before you did, so it's mine all mine".  Not good.

And there's a further lesson to be learned as well. There's a general feeling right now that money always talks. Well, people who have that view and are in the Wyoming Liberty Group mindset best realize that they just watched a massive populist revolt seize the White House and burn down both political parties.  Populist aren't libertarians. . . they're a species of liberal actually, at the bottom, popular, level.  People who would lock up land should recall that there's a large group out there, much larger than the monied interest, who aren't really keen on ranchers being on the public land at all.  I'm not in that camp by any means.  But keep out one or two Ohio hunters who aren't rich enough for "trespass fees" or guides and . . . pretty soon you have an Ohio Congressman who not only doesn't think that you should be able to buy the Public Domain, maybe you ought not to be using it at all.

Well, for me. . . Politician/Rancher mentioned above, next time I see your name on the ballot the answer is "no", and the next time I see you at a branding you're getting an earful.

The anti war film War Brides released, November 12, 1916

A now lost American film, War Brides was a melodrama in which a young pregnant widow leads a protest against her country's monarch after he seeks to have his nation's young women marry departing solders to produce another generation of fighting men. The heroine actually commits suicide in front of the monarch after leading a female protest.

If the plot sounds far fetched during World War Two the Nazis did in fact encourage SS men to marry appropriately "Nordic" women for the very purpose noted, one of their many weird efforts during WWII.

Lines at the time of the release were reportedly so long that people waiting in line with the $2.00 admission fee had to be turned away.

Sunday State Leader for November 12, 1916: Guard to remain Federalized, Villa avoids encounter with Carranza's troops.

The Laramie Republican for November 12, 1916: Villista outrages at Parral

Poster Saturday: For the Glory of Ireland

Brats

There has been protests, some of which have turned violent, about the election of Donald Trump.

Now, I didn't vote for Trump and frankly I don't care for him.  I didn't vote for Clinton either, and I think the Democratic Party received a huge wake up call on Tuesday.

And I also think we might have seen some of this had Clinton won.

But we are seeing it now that Trump has won.

Well, it was an election under the Democratic process.  People who are protesting, and who sympathize with the protests, essentially stand, intellectually, with Southern successionist in 1860.  I.e., if I can't be quarterback I'm taking my football and going home.  Time for them to grow up.

And yes Clinton took, albeit only barely, the popular vote, but the American process, designed to govern a spread out nation, places executive power in the hands of an individual who is chosen in a combined state/popular vote, combination.  This gives the people most of the say, but filtered through their home states.  This is what keeps every President from being a Californian or a Texas.

So they need to grow up.

And, on a final note, Liberals, who have changed their name recently to "Progressives", have become terribly anti democratic, which should give everyone pause.  A lot of the social change that they've been boosting in recently years, well. . . . all the way back to 1973, has come through the courts and is being foisted upon people.  A lot of the reason they have to deal with a President Trump now is because of the judicial coup given voice by Anthony Kennedy last year, which sparked a massive shift in the election demographics that's hardly been noted and is being misinterpreted.  The lesson there is that Liberals might actually have to try to convince voters that their ideas are sound, rather than simply sue their way into nirvana.  Pouting won't do it.

The Casper Weekly Tribune for November 10, 1916: Fine Wilson Sweep

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election: I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits. It's been a wild election year. Yesterday, Donald Trum...

The popular vote:

Trump: 47%:  59,611,678

Clinton:  48% 59,814,018

Johnson:  3%  4,058,500

Stein:  1%  1,213,103

Others:  .07%  802,119

A disappointing performance for Stein, given that she was trying to riff of the popular Sanders.  Not very impressive for Johnson either, whom some thought would do well.  That's probably at least 3,000,000 votes off of Trump, however.

Trump becomes President with a minority of votes cast.  Clinton took more, albeit only 200,000 more.  An example, perhaps, of every vote counting, or not, depending upon your view.

What's it mean?

I'll likely do a series of posts on what the recent election means, and lessons learned.

Of course, given my poor performance as a prognosticator in this election, the value of such articles may be fairly questionable.

Be that as it may, I think its interesting to note that fully vested organs of the hard left and hard right have already rushed to print with analysis that amounts to "we were right all along".  Right now, right wing comments of that type necessarily have more credence than those of the left, but the basic gist of some of these is "nope, nope, we've been right all along and don't have to listen to anyone" Suffice it to say they aren't rushing out to buy Thomas Frank's book "Listen, LIberal:  Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People.".  Put another way, simply reassuring yourself that you are right and everyone else is an idiot is an effective analytical tool

Anyhow, I'll put in my two cents, from the outside, here in coming posts.

For the meantime I'll merely note that one thing this election means is that relying upon people like Miley Cyrus to bring you voters is not a sound campaign strategy.

The 2016 Election

I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits.

It's been a wild election year.

Yesterday, Donald Trump won the Presidency.  I frankly thought that impossible.

As I noted here yesterday, I figured that the coronation of Hillary Clinton meant that her enthronement as President would merely need to be ratified yesterday.  I was sure off the mark, and badly so.

So was about 100% of the national press, I'd note ,which was discussing the inevitable Clinton victory as late ago as early last night.  What happened?

Well, a massive working class revolt against both parties happened.  After well over a decade of being lied to, they poked both parties in the eye.  

When this became inevitable or even probable is hard to say, but the Democrats deserve a lot of the blame or credit, depending upon your view, for trying to coronate a 1970s throwback that was widely despised.  Frankly, had Bernie Sanders been nominated by the Democrats he'd likely be yesterday's victor. But rather than do that, they went solidly with a candidate that nobody loved and who was consumed her entire life with politics.  Most people aren't consumed with politics and are disgusted with it right now. So the disgust flowed over onto her.

And the disgust was deserved.  Clinton had spent her entire life in politics in one way or another.  Her role in the Senate may have made sense to the people who voted for her, but to a lot of Americans elsewhere her relocation to New York appeared purely opportunistic.  Her association with her husband, who I never felt to be a bad President, left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people who recalled how she defended some of his bad personal conduct, and it further left people suspecting that her marriage had become a political wagon with a certain direction, whether that was right or wrong.  The Trump comment "such a nasty woman" struck the upper middle class and upper class elements of society as incredibly rude and sexists, but it sort of defined the way a lot of average people already viewed her.

Beyond that, and perhaps more significantly, she defined a certain 1970s view of the world that the Beltway Democrats have and which they deeply believe in, but which is not the same view held by huge segments of the Democratic base, let alone average Americans.  Existing as long ago as the 1920s, but coming up in the world following the disaster of Watergate, this world view virtually defines the Democratic Party's official outlook and has all but killed it off in rural areas which can find nothing to identify with in it.  This even translated to younger Democratic women who did not see a modern American female ideal that they felt any commonality with.  In turn, the old entrenched feminist in the Democratic Party were outright hostile to younger Democratic women whom they felt should shut up and take orders.

Everything combined meant that the Democratic Party nominated somebody who was deeply out of sync with the electorate. The GOP nominated one that was deeply despised indeed, but not in the same way that Clinton was.  We learned yesterday that there were a lot of Democrats and independents who had supported Sanders and detested Trump and Clinton, but forced into a choice, the populist message of Trump called more than the 1970s vision of Clinton.

But that also tells us that a large amount of the vote was based on absolute disgust.

And on to the entire system, quite frankly.

 Bea Arthur in an advertisement for Maud.  Arthur played the brash, loud, pants suit wearing feminist in two 1970s era television series.  For those who recalled it, Clinton tended to come across rather unfortunately as a character from Maud or at least from the era. Younger women never warmed up to her at all, and indeed people who weren't voting by the 1970s were left fairly cold.

Additionally, the late Democratic administration and things associated with it combined with things that have been brewing for a long time overwhelmed both parties.  It turns out that you cannot take in 1,000,000 immigrants a year and tell rust belt voters that they just need to adjust to the new economy, you can't tolerate shipping endless employers overseas and tell those voters that new better jobs will come, you can't tell people who can tell what gender they are actually in that people can determine their "own gender identify", and you can't threaten to reverse course on firearms possession when people have pretty much determined how they feel about that.

The voters who revolted are, no doubt, going to be accused of being racist.  But to desire the America they grew up in, which was more Christian, more employed, and more rural, doesn't make them that way.  The Democrats have been offering them Greenwich Village, the Republicans the Houston suburbs.  It turns out they like the old Port Arthur, Kansas City or Lincoln Nebraska better, and want to go back. That's not irrational.

 

Port Arthur Texas.  I listed to people discuss the upcoming election two weeks ago at the Port Arthur Starbucks and thought they'd really be surprised when Clinton was elected. Turns out, they were much more on the mark than I was.  And it turns out that people in Port Arthur like Port Arthur the way it was twenty or thirty years ago, and they don't like a lot of big, hip trendy urban areas that they're supposed to.

Will Trump be able to do that?

Well, any way you look at it, it's going to be an interesting four years.

Trump will have to act on his populist world view.  I'm certain that it will be only momentarily before the pundits will start opining about how Trump, now that he is the President Elect, will moderate his views, etc., but there is no reason whatsoever to believe that. So far, his entire behavior has been true to what appears to be his basic character. We can anticipate that he will continue to act that way. And an electorate that, essentially, voted to rip everything down wants it down.  I suspect, therefore, that's what we will get.

I also, quite frankly don't think that this is universally bad. As noted, I never supported Trump, and I did not vote for him yesterday.  I'm in the camp so disgusted by both political parties and their candidates that I could not bring myself to hold my note and vote like so many others did. But I do think that Trump will listen to the blue collar element of American society, and somebody needs to.  I do not think that this segment, which knows its being forced out of work by a combination of forces that are not of its own making, but which are more than a little the fault of policies favoring the wealthy, will be quiet.  Clinton would not really have done anything for those people other than to lament their status, Trump will have to do something.  And I also think that Trump will actually nominate justices to the Supreme Court who do not feel compelled to stick to it, such as Justice Anthony Kennedy or who have a social agenda that colors and informs their decisions.  Justices who decide the law are needed on the Court and I think they'll actually be appointed.

Who knows what else shall occur, however.

Locally, 818 Natrona County voters went for write in candidates, myself included, for President and Vice President.  That has to be a record.

And a warning.

If even here, in solidly Republican Natrona County, 818 voters said no to all the recognized parties, and that doesn't include those who voted for Johnson or Stein, something is really wrong  with the system.

Locally, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney's locally repatriated Virginia daughter beat out Greene and has probably taken Wyoming's House seat in Congress for life, or at least until she wedges that into something else, which she almost certainly will.  The seat is the gift of two other candidates who were really from Wyoming and who destroyed each other, but who jointly took more votes in the primary than she did.  Hopefully she'll grow into her position and learn the lesson that the Democratic and Republican establishments did not on the national stage, that people love their local lives more than they do the big issues of any kind.  A local revolt with populist elements is brewing on these issues and it is not impossible that this will turn out to be a pain for politicians from this state who do not know which way the wind is blowing. While Cheney likely will hold her office no matter what, t his year did see a surprisingly resurgent Democratic Party in Wyoming and there is a growing and very active movement that's focused on public lands that isn't afraid of being very vocal.

More locally, Gerald Gay went down in defeat, a victim of statements he could not explain about women.  Gay was controversial in any event as he had sued fellow legislators and the Governor over matters recently and he may have been more set up to topple than people might have supposed.  His comments were inexplicable and did him in.  Dan Neal, whose campaign literature arrived in my mailbox every day for awhile, lost to Republican Jerry Obermuller.  In some ways, I think Neal may have been a victim of his supporters as his own mailings concentrated on public lands while his recent backers mailings urged support of him because of his support of abortion, LBGT rights and "reproductive health", which probably served to turn votes away from him. Being hugged enthusiastically by somebody who people doubt doesn't engender their support for you but Neal probably couldn't, maybe, have told them to shut up and go away, he was doing fine on his own.  Anyhow, at the close of his campaign the enthusiastic embrace by clearly left of center elements was probably just about as welcome as a big hug at your wedding reception from that lush of a girlfriend you never mentioned to your just married spouse.  Maybe he didn't know that.  Chuck Gray, young radio mouthpiece of the far libertarian right did get in, but the Democratic campaign against him was anemic.  I suspect that if Neal had contested with Gray, Neal would have won.  Todd Murphy, whose Facebook ravings brought attention to him in the press, did survive the sort of attention that Gay did not and ended up on the city council, to my enormous surprise.

The county commission was less surprising, with incumbents generally doing well.  A stable race, it seems.

Stripping Tobacco, 1916

LOC Title:  B.F. Howell, Route 4, Bowling Green, Ky. and part of his family stripping tobacco. The 8 and 10-year old boys in photo "tie up waste"; his 12-year old boy and 14-year old girl (not in photo but they lose a good deal of schooling for work) are regular strippers. Photo taken during school hours. Location: Bowling Green, Kentucky.  November 10, 1916.

Ah yes, the good old days. . . missing school to strip tobacco.

Enrico Caruso, November 9, 1916. They also work who sing.

 

Enrico Caruso, November 9, 1916. That cigarette couldn't have been good for that famous voice.

The Wyoming Tribune for November 9, 1916: Hughes leading.

Cheyenne Leader for November 9, 1916: Wilson leads

Pundit Fail

The election is far from over tonight, but I can't help but note that tonight, when I turned on the news, and only a couple of states were in, the pundits on the news channel I was watching had all but wrapped up the election in favor of Clinton, in spite of Trump being ahead.

Now, at 7:30 Mountain Time, they're stumbling all over themselves to explain why their predictions aren't turning out the way they thought.

I don't like either of these candidates. But its very hard not to feel that the press is very much a Clinton fan club in some ways.

Either candidate of the two major parties could win tonight. But the press has failed the nation, in my view.

The tumult and the shouting

I wonder if there's any chance that Facebook shall return to normal tomorrow or later this week. . . . to the extent it was normal.

Hmmm.

I guess that question answers itself.

The Laramie Republican for November 8, 1916. Results Uncertain

The Laramie Republican, however, was only will ing to go with "uncertain".