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".

The Wyoming Tribune, the 3:30 edition. . not so sure now.

By 3:30 the Tribune was less certain, but still thought it was Hughes, probably.

And other news had crept back onto the front page.

Cheyenne State Leader for November 8, 1916. Getting the election right

The less dramatic leader, however, called the election correctly.

The first edition of the Wyoming Tribune for November 8, 1916: HUGHES WINS

Except he didn't.  The Tribune had been hoping for Hughes. . . perhaps a little too much?

Monday at the Bar and other things: Troubled Lawyers, Troubled Tribal Court, Deluded Law Students and Troubled Trials.

A veritable Monday morning cornucopia of legal stuff.

None of it particularly cheery, however.

And none of it having anything to do with tomorrow's election.  So maybe it's not as bad as it could be.  Indeed, all of the election stuff on this site today (which has been frankly over posting recently) pertains to the election of 1916.

At least that is one which we know how the story unfolds.

The November issue of the Wyoming Lawyer, or maybe it was the October issue (I don't tend to read them right away) recently arrived and I finally got around to perusing it.   It often takes me awhile, as I frequently do not find the articles to be terribly interesting, other than the new case synopsis. I can usually read anything it that I find interesting in about five minutes, which perhaps I should be embarrassed to admit.  This time, however, I was surprised by a couple of items.

The Wyoming State Bar has been really trying to draw attention to its Lawyers Assistance program.  It goes by an acronym I ought to remember, but I don't.  Anyhow, it has been doing this.  I guess a lot of states now have these.  These are all designed to try to aid lawyers that are having troubles in one fashion or another.  And by trouble I mean addictions or depression, and things of that type. 

As has been noted here before, lawyers are far more prone to these things than other professions.  Perhaps we always have been, but I doubt it.  I think the profession has evolved in that direction and frankly I think the forces that have created the conditions that give rise to these things are not going away soon.

Indeed, it's a bit disturbing to realize that the profession is basically running what amounts to field hospitals for its wounded.

 Medics in training, World War Two. . . analogy for the State Bar?

So once again, maybe, we have the unfortunate analogy between practicing law, and fighting in wars.  I know that seems a stretch, but when we start seeing an institution that is setting up crisis entities to deal with its own psychologically wounded. . .. hmm.

Anyway, the issue had articles by two lawyers I've worked in cases with.  I don't know either of them very well, but I do know them,.  In their articles they noted they had problems in the past and detailed them a bit.  One had problems years ago, and related taking them on when there was no help available.  I was, frankly, shocked as he's in the category of people I'd regard as a "big success". This fellow wasn't specific, but it sounds like he was struggling with anxiety issues or depression and ultimately sought help from his physician for it, who didn't really know what to do and sent him to a counselor.  Apparently that helped him out of that swamp.  He was recently, it was reported, an expert in a case and donated the fees for that to the State Bar's program. Pretty darned admirable. . . both to do that and to be willing to write about it.

The other article was by a lawyer younger than me who spoke of his battle with alcohol.  He related that this problem predated his entry into law school, so the law I suppose can't be blamed for that, but the program did help him in overcoming it.  He was apparently the first graduate of the Bar's program on that, and apparently it helped him where other programs hadn't.  Having worked with him, I was frankly shocked to learn that he had a problem. I'd never have guessed it.  Of course, maybe his story diverts a bit here as he didn't become an alcoholic, it should be noted, due to the practice of law, but entered it as one.  I sure have to say that I never realized that, but maybe being a lawyer sort of saved his life I guess, in a way.

Pretty brave of those guys to write those articles.

But, I think we have to confess that if even the big guns in the law, whom have what seem to be hugely successful practices, are driven into periods of despair there's something at work here and its not just the individuals.  Something bad.  And whatever it is, probably requires fundamental reform of a deep nature.  A line of work shouldn't be destructive to its practitioners.  Something here seems to be.  We lawyers like to claim that we have the best justice system in the world (something I frankly do not believe is true), but a system that destroys its own in surprising numbers isn't the "best".

Shortly after I read the article noted above, I was spending a tired morning working on something outside the office when a lawyer I know suddenly went off on the profession.  It shocked me as he's always seemed to be one of the happiest practitioners I've ever known, although recently he has seemed troubled and not himself.  Anyhow, in a totally unsolicited outburst, he really came down hard on the practice.  I'll not be able to think of him the same way again.

This is the second time I've had this happen in recent weeks. The first time was during a deposition in front of a subpoenaed office.  Here too, I was really surprised as I didn't expect this from these quarters. In that case, I only know the lawyer as an opponent in cases and I don't even really know him personally at all, although he's extremely gregarious. Again he seems a super happy

And that oddly led me to consider Law School. 

Before I note that, I'll also note, fwiw, even though its completely unrelated, that the same lawyer mentioned last related a story about a really well known lawyer that was truly foul.  I don't think he thought of that way, but I note this as we've been hearing a lot about the comments Donald Trump made (let's set aside the accusations of conduct) that shocked many people. Well, I was shocked about these as they were vile and also involved comments of a vulgar nature, although not about acts of any kind against other people, other than they sounded downright abusive to the lawyer relating the story, which was from when he was a young lawyer.

I note this, as I wonder how common such vulgar comments are in some context.  Probably a lot more than I care to know.

Anyhow, law school and delusion.

I read yesterday, in the Casper Star Tribune, an article about a Vietnam veteran who returned home and briefly went to law school before returning to work on his family's ranch in LaGrange.  It was an interesting article.  Just two days ago I was working cattle, when an old rancher I know mentioned to me "it seems like you are busier and busier (with the law) all the time".  I said yes, and then he said "well, I guess that's okay if you enjoy it."

That might be right.  

But I think almost every rancher enjoys his work. Statistically, in the US, a lot of people do not.  According to what state bars and the ABA puts out, a fairly high percentage of lawyers don't, but then I have seen the reliability of those statistics questioned as well.  Maybe we really don't know the answer.  But it's interesting to hear work put in the context of being worthwhile if, but only if, "you enjoy it."

And that gets me back to law school.

Law schools teaches people nothing at all about the actual practice of law.  Nothing.  Most law professors at this time don't know anything about the practice of law themselves.  As Judge Posner recently noted, law schools tend to be refuges from the actual practice of law and populated by people who fled it. And yet law schools put out propaganda about  how nifty the practice of law is, and how nifty a law degree is.  They still even occasionally put out the complete crap that "you can do anything with a law degree", which is bull.

That relates to the above, quite frankly, as I think that we now have an environment where a lot of people enter a field that they don't, to put it in the rancher's frame of reference, "enjoy".  Its apparently making a lot of lawyers miserable, if the statistics are to be believed.  Law schools are culpable in that in that they're doing nothing to educate their young charges in that fact.  Indeed, law schools, being populated by professors that are only dimly connected, quite often, with real work, are complicit in creating an illusion for the young that law is a happy, exciting, morally upstanding, profession.  Maybe that's inevitable, as who would emphasize that it's really hard work with a high dissatisfaction and psychological problem rate, with lots of substance abuse problems (apparently, if we believe the stats).  But I think law professors are largely clueless, or worse yet, they're early refugees from the profession and aren't clueless, but complicit.

Maybe some firms are, however, educating their young charges on these topics, even if accidentally.  One of the firms I know of had a young woman who graduated high school with my son. She was a valedictorian for her class last year.  She seemed very nice and pleasant and apparently had a life long dream, I'm told, of becoming a lawyer.  And she planned her future education that way.  Well, according to what I heard, the members of her firm slowly came to her before she departed the state to further her education and mostly warned her not to become a lawyer.  Again, I was amazed.  I guess that's to their credit, but what an indictment of the profession. Rather than encourage her they set out to crush her plans, one by one, but in the apparent hope of saving her from what they worried would be a mistake. Apparently it worked and she's abandoned that career plan, even if she doesn't, I'm told have a replacement.  That's remarkable, and disturbing.

But, back to the rancher's comment, if it seems a high percentage of lawyers don't "enjoy" their profession, but are seeming to endure (a scary thought, really), maybe that's the American norm?  Some time ago I ran an article from one of the statistics outfits that revealed a majority of Americans actually dislike their jobs, and it was a high percentage.  According to news outfits, which may be somewhat exaggerating the way the poll put it, "70%" of Americans "hate" their jobs.  Even if that's not quite right, that's a sad statistic.  And perhaps, therefore, lawyers aren't that unusual.

Which takes me back to Saturday's public lands rally.

 

One of the speakers at that rally was Chris Madson, formerly the editor of Wyoming Wildlife.

I think Madson, fwiw, was a good editor, but his writings tended to be very gloomy, more I thought than deserved.  Reading him tended to be a bit like watching The Seventh Seal and The Last Emperor in a double feature.  But, he served a purpose.

Well, at the rally he was predictably gloomy, but had this interesting observation, which he repeated in an article (as he mentioned) on his website:

These days, Americans are dispossessed, confined in our apartments, on our quarter-acre lots, estranged from the land that, in large part, has defined our character as a people and a nation. We are held prisoner by economics. One of the few physical expressions of freedom we have left is the public domain. Together, we can use it without destroying it; we can enjoy it without dividing it.

I don't know that we're dispossessed, but could be, for the reasons that he noted.  And I think, frankly, that the wholesale adoption of the modern global, everything is about consumption, we must have ever more crowded cities and every more cubicles economy, is causing a lot of the dissatisfaction in work mentioned above, legal or otherwise. We weren't made for four walls and big cities. But increasingly, we are left with fewer choices but to adopt those conditions.  One more reason, as Madson noted, to preserve public lands as public.

On the "best justice system in the world" and on public lands, that justice system, let the Bundy wildlife refuge occupiers off the hook. This has to be a case of jury nullification, and the jury should be ashamed.

I almost always ask for juries, but I have to wonder in a thing like this if a jury serves justice.  I suppose there will always be guys who drop the ball on juries, but this is an OJ jury like fumble.  They should be ashamed of themselves and I hope they come to be.  As another speaker noted at the rally, the local ranchers hadn't wanted them there and it wasn't the occupiers who missed duck season on that refuge that year, members of the public that they were, but rather local duck hunters.  People like the Bundys are a threat to local agriculture and a threat to public land use.  The sooner they bear the just implications of their actions the better, so perhaps in their upcoming trial they'll actually get justice from the best justice system in the world.

Among lawyers having a miserable time right now we'd have to include Tribal Court . . . well now Arapaho Tribal Court, Judge St. Clair.  Apparently the CFR court that will take over for the Shoshones has told him to get out of the court he's occupying, as it belongs to the BIA.  My goodness, what a horrible mess.  Where will they go?

 

 Poor photograph of the Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court.  The BIA has told the (now Arapaho) Tribal Court to get out.

I think there was a building on the Reservation that was an Army court.  And I think it's over by the parade ground on Ft. Washakie.  I don't know what its used for now, but if that building contained a court (and I only vaguely believe that it did) it hasn't been used that way for decades.  And how can one geographic space contain two courts based not on territorial jurisdiction, but on a combination of territory and race?

Addendum

As an addendum to this less that cheery entry, we note that Janet Reno, who was the first female Attorney General of the United States, died today at age 78. She had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease.

Her death, coming as it does, on the even of the 2016 General Election is likely to pass less noticed than it otherwise would.  I'll simply note it here. She was appointed AG by Bill Clinton and held the post for a longer period than anyone in the prior 150 years had. Her occupancy of the position was not without controversy, if for no other reason than the Clinton era seems to be the commencement of the modern political period we are in which has featured controversy about everything.

Of some note, however, her first may have seemed to be a really significant first to a greater extent than the first which we're likely so see tomorrow, that being the first woman President.  I still hear that first touted on the weekend news shows but I really think, at this point, nobody cares.  What seems to have been missed on that  is that by this point the acceptance of women and minorities in every walk of life is so general that a first woman President is truly an irrelevant statistic to most people.  The election of Elizabeth Rankin to Congress a century ago was actually truly much more of a milestone.

General Election Day, 2016

We've looked at 1916.  So now on to 2016.

So tomorrow is the General Election.

I thought about posting this as General Disaster Day, which his sort of how I feel about it.  Perhaps that's too glum. But the nation, today, will pick, because it cannot seem to accept that more than two parties can compete in an election, and because years of lying to the electorate has created situation in which the Republican party was overtaken by the populist revolt lead by a person of questionable qualifications (to the say the least) and the Democratic party barely survived a hostile takeover to emerge with its 1970s Democratic Princess intact, but barely. The diehard supporters of Trump hope he'll burn everything down and the diehard supports of Clinton are hoping for the Coronation of Queen Maud.  Everyone else is left wondering how we got here.

The results stand to be bad for the country, probably, no matter what happens.

If Princess Hillary is elected Queen Maud, the result will be the complete takeover of aggressively secular humanism in a liberal form in the United States  Supreme Court.  That will enshrine a version of the Constitution in Yoga Pants and Birkenstock's for at least a generation, if not permanently.

If Mogul Donald is elected, well who the heck knows?  At least there would be reason to hope that the Supreme Court would be able to actual read the Constitution, as opposed to having more of the likes of Justice Kennedy who can't seem to find his copy.

This grim situation puts really conscientious votes into a pretty depressing place.  For serious Catholic voters (as well as Orthodox voters, and others, for example) the situation is summed up by Monsignor Charles Pope pretty well:

Among the moral issues that have been most politicized are non-negotiable issues for any Catholic: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and same sex “marriage.”  These are non-negotiable issues because there is no room for nuance or degree of support. You are either for them or against them. There is no middle ground. They are outright forbidden by Church teaching and no Catholic may agree with or support abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research or same-sex “marriage” in any degree whatsoever. This goes for every Catholic from the highest political officials to the lowliest and most unknown Catholic in the pew. This precedes politics, party loyalties, political leanings or any such thing.

But did I mention Satan is no idiot? Indeed, he has convinced many that Catholics who clearly articulate Catholic moral teaching on these non-negotiable issues are merely “talking about politics; and how dare they!” And cowed by this satanic trick and lie many clergy and other Catholics sadly cave and run for cover in speaking to these issues at all, not just in political seasons. Other dissenting Catholics buy Satan’s lie because it gives them cover and helps to silence foes.

To again be clear, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex “marriage” are moral issues, and the Church must teach against them no matter where the political lines fall.

The Catholic position on these matters currently coincides with one political party’s platform over another. But this not the intention or fault of the Catholic Church. These are matters that most Americans once agreed on and are now matters that have divided out along political lines.

That effectively means that, for really the first time in decades, maybe well over a century, voters in this class basically are placed in the position of voting for somebody they might outright despise because moral issues leave them no other choice.

Likewise, many serious conservatives who otherwise detest Trump are left with no other option. Where are supports of the Second Amendment left to go?  Nowhere, really.  Where are those who have a serious philosophical view of a limited government to go?  Well, they have no place at all to go, but they really can't go to Clinton.

This dismisses, of course, the third party choices.

If we did not have an anti democratic two party system neither of these poor choices would cross the bar.  However, over the course of two centuries we've built a belief into our system that there can only be two parties, and have actually supported this legislatively, such that for most voters there doesn't seem to be more than two choices and for those in swing states, given the moral issues, there isn't.

But perhaps we can hope for more, and perhaps this election may serve to do that.

For those in swing states, their choice is between Trump and Clinton. The moral issues are too great to pretend otherwise.  But for those in states that are going to go for one or the other with a certainty this is the election to register the protest.  These voters, if they are not for Trump or Clinton can truly say enough.  And they should.

And in doing so, they don't have to pick seemingly clueless Johnson or wacky Stein.  Indeed, it's ironic that our two best known third parties are pretty repugnant in and of themselves.  Libertarianism, in the form that exist in the Libertarian Party, is a political philosophy best left to the subreddits of the politically naive, who never really hope their ideas come into fruition.  Stein's seems so far off the rails that she could be mistaken for somebody dedicated not to being elected.

These aren't the only third parties by any means.  There's the highly conservative Constitution Party, which seems conservative on a national level, if wacky on a local level. There's the new Christian Democratic Party the American Solidarity Party.  And there are others.  In the age of Google, it's pretty easy to learn about them.

So, perhaps in the non swing states we will get a record "enough" vote that will have some impact.

And perhaps we can hope that whoever wins, Congress won't change much in  the makeup, but will in its sense of responsibility.  That would mean four years, basically, of "Tim, I don't think so" for whomever is President.

Which, sadly, is the best we can hope for.

Enacting prohibition by referendum. November 7, 1916.

 A pro-prohibition song, which we've run before here.

Arizona, which had the initiative and referendum system, voted itself into prohibition.

The initiative amended the Arizona Constitution to prohibit the sale, possession of distribution of intoxicating beverages.

The move towards nationwide prohibition was very clearly on.

South Dakota did likewise on this day, using the same process.

As did Montana.

Such an initiative failed in Missouri, however.  And Maryland.  And California.

But it passed in Idaho.

The November 1916 Election in Wyoming

Today is the centennial of the 1916 General Election, and of course the eve of the 2016 General Election. We have the advantage of the 1916 one, of course, in that we know how things turned out.  Something those voters who went to the polls in 1916 did not, both in the near term, and the short term.

I discussed the 1916 election a bit on our companion blog,  Today In Wyoming's History in that blog's November 7th entry.  In that entry I noted:

1916  President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected over Charles Evans Hughes, but the race was so close that the results were not known until November 11.Wyoming's electorate gave 55% of the vote to Wilson.

1916  John B. Kendrick elected to the Senate from Wyoming.

1916     Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress.  She would boldly cast "no" votes on the measures to declare war in World War One and World War Two.

As a total aside, I have to say, agree with Montana's Rankin or not, she sure had the courage of her convictions.

I also addressed the 1916 Election, also on Today In Wyoming's History, on the sidebar addressing Elections and History In Wyoming.  In that entry, I noted:

Woodrow Wilson took Wyoming's electoral vote that year (1912), receiving 42% of the popular vote.  The combined Taft and Roosevelt vote surpassed that, with Roosevelt taking 27% of the vote, a greater share than that taken by Taft.  Socialist Eugene Debs came in with an amazing 6%.  Given this, it is not possible to simply write off the election to the split in the Republican Party that year.  The combined Debs and Roosevelt vote made up a whopping 33% of the Wyoming electorate that was expressing support for a radical change in direction in national politics.  Wilson's 42% was not insignificant either. Even simply writing off the fact that any Democratic candidate of that era would have received at least 1/3d of the state vote, a surprising number of Wyomingites seemed to be espousing the progressive, and even radical, ideas that were the combined platforms of the Progressive and Democratic parties. Even accepting that the Democrats had come at this development through the Populist, which was reflected in their earlier nomination of Bryan, and in Wilson's appointing him to the position of Secretary of State, it seems something was afoot.  

 

Former head of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey, President Woodrow Wilson.

Indeed, in the same year, the sitting Governor, elected in 1910, Joseph M. Carey, left the Republican Party and joined the Progressive Party.  Carey, like most (but not all) of the Progressives, including  Theodore Roosevelt himself, would eventually return to the Republican Party, but it's at least interesting to note that a sitting, elected, Wyoming Governor publicly abandoned his party to join a third party.  A think like that would simply be inconceivable today.

Governor Carey just months prior to his defection to the Progressive Party, with a bored looking Dorothy Knight, the daughter of a Wyoming Supreme Court justice, at the launch of the USS Wyoming.

This tread, moreover, continued.  Carey's successor in the Governor's office was not a member of the Republican Party, nor a Progressive, but Democrat John B. Kendrick.  Kendrick did not remain in that office for long, however, as he was elected to the United States Senate by the electorate, now able to directly elect Senators, in 1916, a position he held until his death in 1933.  His companion in the Senate for most of that time, however, was very long serving Republican Senator Francis E. Warren (who of course had also been a Governor) who served until his death in 1929, when he was replaced by Republican Senator Patrick Sullivan.

 

Senator John B. Kendrick.

A slow shift began to take place in the early teens, however.  In the 1916 Presidential election the state again supported Wilson, giving him 49% of the vote.  3% supported Socialist candidate Allan Benson, and those votes would certainly have gone for a any more left wing candidate than the Republican Charles Hughes, but a period in which Wyoming leaned Republican but which would swing towards Democrats was emerging.  The state went very strongly for Warren Harding in 1920 (60%) and for Coolidge in 1924.  In 1924, however, the Democrats fared very poorly in the Presidential election, with the Progressive Candidate Robert LaFollette, who had taken up where Theodore Roosevelt would not have wanted to leave off for him, and then some, receiving 31% of the Wyoming vote.  David, the Democrat, came in a poor third, showing that a strong Progressive streak remained in the Wyoming electorate at that time.  That election saw the nation nearly completely go for Coolidge except in the South, which went for Davis.  Geographically it was one of the most divided elections in the nation's history.

I'll be posting some newspapers from 1916 that give a flavor of the election that year (and indeed already have) but I thought here I might look at a couple of things a little more in depth.  And, as I noted above, there were clearly some long term trends at work that would continue to play out for the next several years.  Robert LaFollette taking 31% of the Wyoming vote in 1924?  Amazing, in that LaFollette was a real socialist, not a social democrat like this year's Bernie Sanders.

Anyway, let's look at the 1916 election.

Who was voting?

Well, for one thing, in Wyoming, women were voting, as they had since statehood.  This wasn't so in all of the United States, however.  Oddly, in a large part of the East, together with the South, women did not have the franchise and would not until the 19th Amendment became law in 1920.  In western states, however, they largely had the franchise, which would  probably not be what many people would guess today.  Wyoming's state nickname, The Equality State, stems from it having always had the franchise for women.

Indians, however, could not vote in much of the United States as they were not citizens even in their own land.  American Indians would not become uniformly citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.  That seems simply stunning, but that was the case.  The concept of being born within the United States automatically making a person a citizen did not apply to them if the sovereignty of their tribes was still recognized.  Indian tribes retain sovereignty today, but all the native born, of any race, are of course regarded as citizens now.  I don't know that they didn't have the franchise in Wyoming, but I strongly suspect that they did not as the two tribes that resided in Wyoming, and still do, were part of the western reservation system, which would have made their having had citizenship up until 1924 highly unlikely.

Other minorities, I'd note, did have unrestricted access to the ballot in Wyoming.  This went back to the state's early history.  Indeed, by 1916 both women and blacks had served on juries in Wyoming, and while that went back in forth in regards to women, it did not as to blacks. Indeed at least one black juror had served on a death penalty case in  Wyoming prior to 1916.

As I noted in the long second thread linked in above Wyoming was not a conservative state the way that is now, in 1916. This is something a person must approach with caution as its easy to assume too much of the opposite, and conservative and liberal in the current context isn't something that's easily to uniformly compare with conservative and "liberal" in past eras.  Still, some comparison is interesting.

As I first noted in the sidebar mentioned above, a person has to consider that early in the state's history, it was the GOP that was, or could be, liberal, in context, while the Democrats were the opposite. As I noted there:

Wyoming obtained statehood in 1890.  1890 was still well within the influence of the Civil War, and that continued to have an impact on politics that late, and for about a decade after that. The fortunes of the Republican Party had been somewhat solidified as a result of the war, but that was also true for the Democrats.  In a way, what succession had attempted was reflected in the popularity of the political parties.  The GOP was very strong in the North, and the Democratic Party dominated the South.  States in the Midwest tended to be in a state of flux.  In the West, were most of the territory was just that, territory, the GOP was by far the strongest party as a rule.

The GOP of that era, 1860s, had a strong "liberal" element in it, which was particularly reflective of its anti slavery policy of 1860-1865.  That part of the party had grown in strength during the war, and by the end of the war Radical Republicans, who favored a harsh Reconstruction designed to immediately address racial issues in the South, were a strong element in the party.  They never took control of it, however. The party also was pro business, and was in favor of governmental assistance to business when it seemed merited.  The best example of that is probably the Transcontinental Railroad, which was backed by the Federal Government and which was a massive expenditure in various ways. That wasn't the only example, however. The Homestead Act, which gave away Federal Property, which had formerly been held until turned over completely to newly admitted states, created an official policy of bribing emigrants with offers of land from the Federal stock of the same.  The Homestead Act was a Republican Act.  The Mining Law of 1872, which worked in a similar fashion, likewise was a Republican Act.

 

Republican President U. S. Grant.  Two time GOP winner and hero of the Civil War.

The Democrats, in contrast, were more of a "conservative" party in some ways, although again the distinction cannot be directly carried into modern times. Democrats tended to favor individual "state rights" more than Republicans did.  For that reason Democrats had generally opposed the Union effort during the Civil War, no matter where they lived.

A huge difference between the parties at that time was that the GOP had a legacy of freeing the slaves and the Democrats had effectively been the party of slavery.  After the war, for that reason, the Democrats remained extremely strong in the South, where they continued to promote policies that were racist in nature.  The GOP drew the support of recently freed slaves, but it was moderate in its attempts to assist them.

So, in short, Wyoming was a Republican state early on and as such, it fit into the middle of the road to "progressive in terms of its political leanings.  This was very much the case for much of the West. There was a conservative wing of the GOP to be sure, but at that time, it was really the Democratic Party that was uniformly conservative.  Republicans in the West, moreover, leaned towards the more liberal wing of the GOP.

Republicans dominated Wyoming's politics at every level right up until the Johnson County War.  That event caused a disruption in Republican fortunes, although they soon recovered.  Nonetheless it would be a mistake to assume that Wyomingites were unfailingly loyal to the GOP.  Indeed, the extent of their progressive leanings was revealed in the next several Presidential elections in which Wyomingites uniformly went to the "left" with their vote.  As noted in the thread linked in above:

This would help explain the results of the Presidential election, in Wyoming, of the same year (1892).  In that year, pro business, Bourbon Democrat, Grover Cleveland became the only President to regain office after having lost a bid for reelection.  Cleveland was a candidate that those leaning Republican could generally support, which explain in part how his political fortunes revived, but he did not gain support in Wyoming.  In Wyoming, as we will see in a later entry, the state's electorate voting for representatives to the Electoral College for the first time, given its recent statehood, went for Populist James Weaver..  The general election of 1892 saw four candidates compete for electoral votes.  In Wyoming, President Harrison ended up polling just over 50% with Populist James Weaver taking 46% of the Wyoming vote.  The remaining percentage of the vote seemingly went to John Bidwell of the Prohibition Party.  Cleveland's percentage of the Wyoming vote was infinitesimal.

Populist candidate James B. Weaver in 1892.  He took Colorado's electoral vote that year and came close to taking Wyoming's

As surprising as this is, Wyoming was not unique in these regards.  Weaver polled so well in Colorado that he pulled out ahead of Harrison in that state and took that state's electoral votes.  He also won in Idaho, Nevada and North Dakota.  Cleveland was obviously very unpopular in the Rocky Mountain West in the 1892 election.  Indeed, Cleveland only took California and Texas in the West, and polled most strongly in the East and the South.  He polled particular well in the Deep South that year, although Weaver also, ironically, did well in the South.  Cleveland's status as a Democrat probably carried him in the South.

This probably is an interesting comment on both the evolution of political parties, and the make up of the Wyoming electorate at the time. Wyoming remained a Republican state then as now, but at that time the Republican Party had started to split between "progressive" and "conservative" factions.  While their fiscal policies significantly differed in general, the Democratic party had not yet started to have a significant populist branch, but it was already the case that its northern candidates, like Cleveland, were more easily recognizable to northern Republican voters than Southern Democrats were.  While Weaver didn't take any Southern state, he did however receive a large number of votes in the deep South, however, reflecting the emergence of Populist thought in the Southern Yeoman class.

All of this is quite remarkable in the modern context.  Weaver isn't probably really directly comparable to any modern candidate, but none the less he wouldn't be a candidate that we'd expect to have done well in Wyoming, based upon its modern politics, expect perhaps in the context of his populist appeal.  That populist appeal, moreover, would next lead Wyomingites to vote for a candidate which we  might, perhaps, compare a bit to Bernie Sanders of our day.  Indeed, continuing on:

This pattern repeated itself in the Presidential Election of 1896, in which William Jennings Bryan took Wyoming's vote over that of Civil War veteran William McKinley.  Bryan was a radical by all accounts, and his having gained both the Populist and the Democratic nominates reflected that parties swing to Populist thought nationally.  But Bryan was also popular in the West, as the Wyoming vote demonstrated.  Bryan took a whopping 51% of the Wyoming vote.

 

William Jennings Bryan, candidate for the Democrats and Populists, and Congressman from Nebraska.  Ultimately, his career would conclude as the misplaced Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson.

In the same election, the State sent former Governor Osborne to Congress, thereby electing a Democrat to the House of Representatives.  Seemingly, this reflected a populist streak of some sort that extended to all Federal candidates in Wyoming that year.  They returned a Republican to the Governor's office, however, in 1894, so the trend was hardly universal in the state.  And long serving, if generally forgotten, Clarence D. Clark remained in office throughout this period.

We next get to a beloved figure, and one that is no surprise that Wyomingites loved and continue to love, even if we forget that he was, by the end of his political life, one of the most radical American politicians to ever have significant support.

The next Presidential election would see Theodore Roosevelt run for office, and Roosevelt was a very popular President in the West.  He was also from the "progressive" branch of the Republican Party, so any Populist elements that were headed towards being Democratic were effectively cut off.

 Noted biologist, hunter, outdoorsman, conservationist, rancher, historian, and politician, President Theodore Roosevelt.

Republican fortunes gained during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, and when his hand picked successor, his Vice President William Howard Taft ran in 1908, Wyoming demonstrated that it had lost its fondness for William Jennings Bryan, who ran against him. Taft took 55% of the Wyoming vote.  Perhaps reflecting some residual racialism, or perhaps recent immigration from Eastern Europe in some counties, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs amazingly took 4.5% of the vote.  Statewide, Wyomingites seemed satisfied with Republican candidates once again.

 

Former Governor of the Philippines and Vice President, and future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William Howard Taft.

Taft had the misfortune of following Roosevelt, who was a great man, but who was still a young man, in relative terms, and who just couldn't avoid politics.  Taft basically acted as a reformist candidate, but a somewhat moderate one, and Roosevelt, for his part, was becoming increasingly radical.  By the election of 1912, the split in the Republican Party that this represented broke the party apart and after Taft was nominated it actually became two parties, with the Rooseveltians becoming the Progressive Party.  The Progressive Party would be a radical party even by today's standards, and it says something about the politics of the time that it mounted a very serious campaign and had nationwide support.  At the same time, the Democrats began to tack towards the Progressives themselves and pick up parts of their platform.  The transformation of the Democratic Party into a liberal party really began with the Presidential election of 1912, and the party by the end of the election was never again quite what it had been, although the change would continue on for years thereafter.

We pick back up here with the entry noted above and find that in 1916, Wyoming went for a slate of Democrats.  With the history provided above, this isn't too surprising.

Or is it? What does this say about the state in 1916?

Well, it was populist, which it still is.  It was also "progressive", in the context of what that meant as defined by Roosevelt's Progressive Party. That is radically to the left even now, in some ways.  Having said that, much of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in recent years almost any Wyomingite of 1916 would have found to be bizarre, if not appalling.  In the context of the times, it's clear that the population of the state, including the great and powerful of the state, had a concern for the "little man" and tended to favor the political and economic interest of average individuals over business. This, indeed, reflected itself in the state's laws which were generally aimed in that direction. Socially, however, the state was not radical, even though this was an era in which true radicalism was on the rise, and this too expressed itself in the state's laws.

It's often noted here that the purpose of this blog is to explore this particular era, and hence this is what we are doing with this and many other posts.  I know, from prior experience, even mentioning this change in Wyoming's political orientation is upsetting to some.  But Wyoming's orientation was common throughout the West at this time.  It reflects the views of the founding generation of the state, and colors the culture of the time.

Woodrow Wilson narrowly reelected on this day in 1916

Woodrow Wilson beat Charles E. Hughes, barely, in the Presidential Election of 1916.  He ran on having kept the United States out of war, but that wouldn't last much longer.

President Woodrow Wilson.

Charles E. Hughes.

John B. Kendrick was elected to the Senate from Wyoming.

.And Montana's Jeanette Rankin, who has the unique distinction of having voted no to the U.S. declarations of war in World War One and World War Two, became the first woman elected to Congress.